Saturday: BayCon2

Posted on May 25, 2019 by Kate

Kage Baker loved the hall shows at conventions. Costumes abound, and she enjoyed the beauty, ingenuity and engineering skill that went into them.

Yes, she had spent the majority of her own life in costumes; but her’s were always of historical norms.  Her personal dress code at conventions veered between hippy beachcomber – Hawaiian shirts and wildly coloured high tops – and severe blouse and jacket combinations over slacks. She said she wanted to look like either a castaway, or Agent Sculley’s middle-aged librarian aunt. I don’t think she succeeded (the waist-length red braid tended to obscure both issues) but she was comfortable and memorable.

I like t-shirts with interesting messages, or shirts with excessive sparklies. I subscribe to the theory of dress which says If I’m wearing, it must be appropriate. My walking stick creates all the intrigue I need. And it doubles as an offensive weapon, which is always nice.

But the folks at conventions are simply fabulous! Wings were popular a few years ago; I recall some astounding ones, black butterflies 6 feet tall and scores of little sequined children dashing around like a casting call for Midsummer Night’s Dream. I’ve only seen one pair so far today, and they were a fine set of red leather bat wings: impressive.There were a variety of Time Lords of all ages and genders, including my friend Neassa – she has gone the minimalist route with a classic Doctor’s scarf she knit in all the right colours, but in a narrow ribbon. Elegant and eye-catching. I have seen Bobba Fett, Harry Dresden, and members of all four Houses from Hogwarts. Someone is dressed in a purple dragon suit. Someone else is doing a creditable job of Constantine, right down to the (unlit) cigarette dangling insouciantly from his mouth. Horns, tails and animal ears are all endemic.

What seems to be especially popular at BayCon are military companies – there must be representative of half a dozen space navies striding about and striking martial poses. They all look wonderful – the detail on their clothes, insignia and weapons is amazing – but it is kind of funny to see different services come together. Not everyone recognizes every other military uniform, and they circle round one another like male peacocks sizing one another up. I think they are trying to figure out 1) what each other’s rank is; and 2) are they at war with one another.

And of course, nearly everyone is wearing some partial talisman of a favourite story. No matter how ordinary your dress is, it can always be accessorized with a button, hat, weapon, or pin. A lot of folks sport long iridescent tails of various ribbon badges from their BayCon IDs, each declaring a different totem, philosophy, event or religion. The funniest part of the phenomenon is that the people with the most accumulated badges tend to be either little kids or the hotel staff.

I got to be the surprise moderator of my panel today – not a surprise for anyone else, apparently, but I hadn’t noticed I was tagged. Which I should have, because I proposed the panel in the first place … but all concerned rose to the occasion, the panelists were charming, erudite folks, and audience was enthusiastic. The topic was Juvenile Novels (old school) vs Young Adults (new school). We were favoured by a remarkable young lady in the audience who really was the target reader, actually read blurbs, and was splendidly lucid. A lovely time.

Now, Dear Readers, I am going to close a little early. I have accidentally wiped out this blog entry 5 times while writing it, and barely managed to save any of it each time. Either my nervous system is trying to tell me something, or the multi-dimensional aspect of the Marriott is eating all my other blogs. Maybe I am publishing in several branches of the multiverse.

More tomorrow, though! From whichever dimension  in which I wake up …

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Friday Night: BayCon I

Posted on May 24, 2019 by Kate

Kage Baker quite liked the Marriott in San Mateo. Despite its many physical peculiarities, it is a comfortable hotel. Best of all in its favour: the staff finds the convention attendees amusing, and works hard to make u comfortable.

But there are some real oddities about the place. It cannot be reached by freeway, although you can see the place from the 101. However, you have to get off in some other town entirely (there’s a portion of the Bay area where there are lots of tiny towns all clustered together in a mosaic) and wend your way to the Marriott via surface streets with demented names and altogether too many dead ends. My Google GPS Assistant – ordinarily a pretty garrulous AI – blew her zap and sent me to a Marriott miles away from my goal. I actually had to argue with her; at once point, I was getting the “I’m sorry, Kathleen,I can’t do that right now” routine, which had me wondering if she had found a way to evacuate the air from my car and suffocate me …

But I got here eventually, 3 hours late but un-asphixiated and having won my first argument with an AI. I probably shouldn’t gloat about that; Google GPS has really not evolved yet. It was like beating a toddler at gin.

The hotel itself is as weird as ever. They have completely redone the lobby, so you can’t find anything – including the doors; but there are lots of the staff all over the place, and they really work at helping the lost and confused. A charming young lady actually met me in the parking lot, and obligingly rolled my massive luggage all the way to my room. By the time I had to find the restaurant, Neassa had arrived and we were able to find our way together.

There is still the phantom second floor mezzanine, which can only be reached by one elevator in a corner of the lobby. On the other hand, this year the third floor is under re-construction, and it can only be reached by one elevator actually isolated on the second floor. And it is somewhere on the third floor where the Green Room is located. I may subsist on candy bars from the lobby shop. If I can locate it.

One of the most memorable features of the second floor is a room which appears to have been intended as a crematorium: it’s a circular room of bare brick with a strangely lofty ceiling and acoustics like the cellar of the Paris Opera House. Kage did a reading there from The House of The Stag – she told the audience she had intended a comic piece, but the room was so threatening, she gave them a bloody battle instead. I am pleased to report the place is still there, and as menacing as ever.

The food is good, and the bar is serving Lagunitas IPA, so there am I happy. This may be the last hotel in California that does NOT have an in-house Starbucks, but I can survive on Peet’s for a weekend.

There is not a lot to report about the drive up, except that the Memorial Weekend traffic was horrendous everywhere. Most of my fellow drivers were apparently zombies. There are far too many huge SUVs on the road these days, driven by people who can barely see over the steering wheel: especially nerve-wracking for a middle aged lady like me, driving a rented Toyota Corolla. Those Escalades and Rogues and Canyonados could drive right over me,  like a particularly crunchy squirrel. Alarming, to say the least.

But there was a marked absence of two-headed cattle, mythological creatures, migrating floor fans or any of the other fun things I have seen on I-5. I hope for better on the ride home.

At least things are amusingly peculiar among the Con attendees. Animals ears seem to be in style again, though one young lady was wearing rabbit feet on her head: large dangling rabbit feet, with pink toe beans. Funny t-shirts are, of course, everywhere; a Con is one of the places where you wan walk around staring at people’s chests and no one gets offended. They want you to read their shirts.

So far, my most memorable moment was having my knees go wobbly while searching for Registration on the phantom second floor – and having Bobba Fett solicitously help me to a bench while I caught my breath. Nice guy. He should really think about the people with whom he associates, though.

But he’s probably all right, here at BayCon. It’s in its own private universe, in the Marriott from another dimension. And we’re all a little odd here.

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The Road Is Calling Me-eee-eee-eee, eee-eee-eee

Posted on May 23, 2019 by Kate

Kage Baker really enjoyed going to conventions. She had a meticulous packing routine, special music for the road, and had always scoped out the on-site bar and restaurant so as to plan her meals and aperitifs ahead. (For example, she liked to know if she’d be teaching a bartender how to make one of her damned sticky retro cocktails …)

In the car, we would hash out whatever book on which she was currently at work, and Kage would go over her panels. She liked to discuss what might come up, and speculate on who’d be on with her. And as soon as we had a program in our hands, she’d Google all of the other writers, to see what they were like. She would be psyching herself up for the task, too, because she didn’t like having to fight for mike time: could she be polite, or would she have to be stern? Some writers are so fond of their own voices they forget to share …

Even at times when I am not living in a state of emotional melt-down, I am just not as efficient a preparer as Kage. Transportation, lodging and rations were my primary tasks, and I’m very good at those. I’m a lousy packer. I only did my laundry today, and I have packed only one item so far: my phone and Kindle charger. I’m excited to be on the road again, but worried about leaving my family here in Los Angeles – not that I am a lot of use these days, but I really can’t be of any assistance 300 miles away in Santa Clarita. On the other hand, I can’t cause any trouble for them up there, either.

My chief regret is that my nephew Michael is staying home to take care of his parents: as he should.I am not complaining. But he’s good company, and does enjoy travelling so … but my good friend Neassa will be meeting me there, so someone can make sure I don’t fall down or forget a panel. And she is great fun at these things, too. A muchly literate lady!

Always have an entourage, Dear Readers. It doesn’t matter so much if anyone thinks you are important, but having your own hive mind is always a good strategy. It makes a better impression than talking to yourself, too; although nowadays, just stick a bud in your ear and you can pretend you’re on the phone while you speculate on the motives, species and home planets of the crowd. But laughing at your own jokes is not as much fun.

Despite my packing handicaps (I run more toward garbage bags than nifty wheelie bags), I have located most of the clothes I mean to bring. I have enough underwear for a cholera epidemic. I have old-lady pressure stockings, lest I inflate like a toad, but they are all printed with the works of great painters: Monet, Renoir, Matisse, the godlike Van Gogh.   I have my writing hat. I have a brand-new laptop, a functioning phone, a Kindle, a portable power safe – so I can keep broadcasting for a while if the zombie apocalypse occurs over the Memorial Day weekend. And I have knitting for my copious free time.

Neassa and I will probably giggle half the night away – the last time we were in the glorious Green Gable Inn in Pacific Grove, we were snickering so late and loudly that our next door neighbors had to knock and politely ask us to please shut up … at our age, too. We’re on the cusp of clinging to youth and giving in to senility, and I can’t tell  where we are on that spectrum. I’m old enough to drink if I want to and eat dessert for dinner, and that’s enough for me.

I am really looking forward to this – even worried about my family, I am eager to be on the road again. It’s likely to be at least grey and probably wet, but I stopped fretting about getting wet decades ago. The hotel and my car won’t leak, so I shall be fine. Mind you, the hotel is located in a weird pocket universe – it’s difficult to get to on ordinary streets, and while you can see the damned thing from the freeway, getting to it is like navigating hyperspace. In a cheap Ford. Thank goodness for GPS!

Anyway, Dear Readers, I seem to be set for a new adventure. I am well supplied with gear if I break down somewhere, and I have friends in the area. And for all the peculiar geography of the Marriott, it’s a nice, comfy hotel, once you actually get there. Elevators and a bar and everything. Down pillows. Good coffee. A lobby shop well-stocked with candies and eccentric sodas.

And, of course, the inestimable company of the people who share my interests and actually like to read! Now, that is a draw like no other.

 

 

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The Hills Have Eyes, The Walls Have Ears

Posted on May 22, 2019 by Kate

Kage Baker was barely aware of the current modern sturm und drang over privacy. She never indulged in social media, she never owned a smart phone, and she seldom used wi-fi anywhere but at home.

However, she was well aware that everywhere she went online was tracked avidly by strangers. She thought of the Internet as a physical landscape, and so it only made sense that someone out there was watching. She kept an eye on her tracks, as much as she could; or, rather, she knew I was doing it – and that was only common sense. Although the dangers of spying, hacking, malware and the like were only beginning – and horrors like ransomware were barely known in the civilian world yet – she nonetheless expected the worst of anyone who wanted her money.

Which was everyone online, actually. For a certain enormous portion of the users, that is all the internet is for – to fleece the vast population of shills, marks and sheep which is, Dear Readers, the rest of us. So she wasn’t surprised when a casual Google search fetched days and days of related ads out of the aether; or when one of her rare comments on a public site solicited sudden offers from firms of which she had never heard.

What goes on nowadays would amaze her, though. Not surprise her – Kage would have gone into full-bore “I told you so!” paranoia over the antics of Alexi and the other electronic “assistants”. She would have seen at once the extreme perils of having an electronic auditor in any household with a parrot or a toddler – I certainly did, and am never letting one in ear-shot of my evil Harry. That way lies the delivery of a metric ton of popcorn to my living room …

The uncontrolled proliferation of “targeted” ads is now just something that happens on a daily basis. The most casual search for, say, Oxford loafers, will get you an avalanche of offers for shoes of all sorts, two-toned shoes of all colours and shades, lace ups of every description, and scholarships to Oxford University. That is illustrative of how the damned ads interact and breed carelessly with one another – it’s an infinite daisy chain of connections and vague correlations, colliding and bouncing off one another like sentient  balls on an enormous pool table.

I can understand why I get ads for things I have purchased – though not too much, because when I have already bought some specific thing, why would I want 8 more? I understand many of the comments I get here on the blog, as many of them are for promotional services, writing software, and advertising schemes. And I assume the sex-related spam is simply like mosquitoes: they’re just natural denizens of the aether, trying for a blood meal from anything that moves in their environment. I don’t like it, but I do understand how it works.

However, the last week or so I have been inundated with ads for termite extermination: we don’t have termites in our household, and no one has been inquiring about them. I have also been getting ridiculous amounts of ads for wedding planning, wedding gowns, and bridesmaids dresses. Now, I know it’s almost June, but I myself am nearly 66; there is no newlywed-wannabe in the household, nor have I been researching anything like that. And tonight, I actually had one entry in my spam queue for wedding-related pornography … the damned ads are breeding among themselves and producing chimeras and mutants.

The gods only know what I’m going to find in my comments after this entry. Now they will know I am aware of them. This may be fatal.

If I disappear again, Dear Readers, I may have been kidnapped by the growing civilization of memes that are reproducing in our electronic aether. Or, more likely, if I begin to try and sell you flood insurance, or to promote a paleo diet, or just to espouse some crack-brained political position – you can bet I have been taken over by the Electronic Illuminati.

Please send malware solutions, and hard drive bleach!

 

 

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Raining and Pouring

Posted on May 21, 2019 by Kate

Kage Baker was fond of the saying, It never rains but it pours. That, and a shrug, were her responses when life got peculiar and troubled.

Mind you, I think the phrase actually refers to the quality of Morton Salt (THE salt of our childhood) to continue pouring even when the weather was damp. Kage loved the old-fashioned labels, and salt in the house meant security to her. However, she chose to use it as shorthand for times when lots and lots of things went wrong; especially if things got weird and then went wrong as well. Weird diseases cropping up among our friends, or half the people we knew getting fired because their companies all relocated to East Earlobe, Nowhere In Particular. Animals running loose in the streets, or rashes of spontaneous human combustion.

All those happened a lot in Pismo Beach. But enough weird things happened the rest of the times and places we lived that Kage thought she discerned a pattern. And it had nothing to do with salt. Though if things weird enough, she’d start laying down salt at the front door of the house to repel malign influences. Or at least slugs.

Things have been riotously unpeaceful and rough around here lately. This is why I have not been posting much,Dear Readers. My nights have been spent in vigil over my sick brother-in-law, and my days have been spent sleeping. The household is trying to rally to a schedule to keep things as comfortable and peaceful as possible, but it’s been hard. Fate has not been helpful, and Ray has been taken hard. No one has enough sleep.

Slowly, though, things are approaching some plateau of normalcy among our current mountains of madness. And despite the troubles, I am still going to BayCon this weekend. It’s a war of conflicting responsibilities right now, but I’ll be a lot more use to Kimberly if I take a couple of days off to run around a convention.

Pursuant to the possibility that some of you, Dear Readers, may want to visit, here is my (at the moment, approximate) schedule of panels:

Science fiction: juveniles vs. YAs.

25 May 2019, Saturday 10:00 – 11:30, Synergy 5 (San Mateo Marriott)

In the 1950’s and 60’s, master writers like Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein wrote outright juvenile novels alongside their adult works. Eleanor Cameron wrote the Mushroom Planet books. Walter Brooks wrote Freddy the Pig, which not only starred frankly talking animals a la Animal Farm, but included actual space aliens. John Schealer wrote about Zip-Zip the Martian. No sex, no dystopias, no sparkles, no teenage angst. Panelists discuss the shifts in genre literature for young people.

Kathleen Bartholomew (Self-employed) (M), Rebecca Inch-Partridge, Gideon Marcus (Galactic Journey)

Evolution: What it is, what it isn’t, and what mistakes are prominent.

26 May 2019, Sunday 11:30 – 13:00, Engage (San Mateo Marriott)

A discussion about what evolution can bring us, and what it sadly will never produce, despite the fervent wishes of fiction writers.

Jacob Fisk (M), Jay Freeman, Kathleen Bartholomew (Self-employed), Dr. Ellen Coatney (Contra Costa College)

The Stars are Right!

26 May 2019, Sunday 13:00 – 14:30, Engage (San Mateo Marriott)

The resurging popularity of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos

Ian Grey (M), Frank Wu, Carrie Sessarego (Smart Bitches, Trashy Books), Kathleen Bartholomew (Self-employed)

Ebooks, audio and good old fashioned paper

27 May 2019, Monday 10:00 – 11:30, Connect 3 (San Mateo Marriott)

How many hundreds of books do you keep in boxes? And yet, does your heart belong to e-books? If yes, why? If no, why not? Is there a future for mixed media? (Bartholomew)

Kathleen Bartholomew (Self-employed) (M), Sarah Williams (Merrie Pryanksters), Marjory Kaptanoglu, Dr. Wanda Kurtcu (Retired Educator)

Urban Legends in Science

27 May 2019, Monday 11:30 – 13:00, Connect 3 (San Mateo Marriott)

Salt causes high blood pressure. We only use 10% of our brains. Vaccines cause autism. Where does this stuff come from, and why do these fallacies persist? Scientists and science-knowledgeable fans dissect some of the crazy things we hear.

J.L. Doty (M), Deborah J. Ross, Kathleen Bartholomew (Self-employed)

When I am not in one of these panels, I will be sitting in the bar and restaurant, knitting. Or I will be in my room, flaking out and hopefully posting. My general email is materkb@gmail.com, if anyone is hunting for me. My cell phone, when it is on, is 805-904-8040.

And now, back to our disasters already in progress. At least we don’t have slugs. Maybe Kage was right about the salt …

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Friday Night

Posted on May 18, 2019 by Kate

Kage Baker enjoyed Friday nights. Either we were on the road to somewhere, or we were comfortably snugged down at home.

It may have had something to do with growing up inside the weekdays are for school and weekends are for freedom structure. After 12 years of school, Kage went automatically to those schedules; even working didn’t change that, since she worked the usual Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 shift.

Spending weekends at a Faire didn’t count. A Faire weekend exists in a time warp that makes it last, subjectively, about a week: weekends were simply spent in another dimension of the multiverse. That same scholastic discipline meant Kage was never reconciled to having to work all summer, either. Faire weekends were like a week of summer for every week spent behind a desk. I don’t think she could have borne it, otherwise.

Strangely, once she finally stayed home writing full-time, Kage actually spent longer days – and more of them at a stretch – at her great oak desk, writing furiously. But she got to stay home to do it, and make her own hours. Working 14 hours a day was fine, as long as she knew she could knock off and go out for ice cream whenever she wanted.

To her credit, she never succumbed to the temptation to spend her writing day in her night clothes: Kage was a full-dress kind of grownup. She even wore shoes in the house, which was a discipline to which I was never personally broken.

At the moment, I haven’t put on an entire outfit of street clothes in 2 weeks. I’ve doing a lot of driving, to help out Kimberly with shopping and doctor appointments; but since I usually stay in the car, underwear and shoes have become optional. I am perfectly comfortable barefoot and in sweats. As long as I have my driving cap and my Kindle, I am prepared for most eventualities.

Good thing we haven’t gotten into any accidents. I’d have to get dressed, for that.

I’ll have to return to adult life and a hominid lifestyle over the next week, though. Next weekend, I am headed for BayCon, and I really should

…………………..Discontinuity……………………

Ah, Friday nights are not what they were.

The paramedics just left. Ray slipped in the bathroom, and we were unable to get him to his feet. If there were better help for Michael than two old ladies … but now Ray is back in bed, unharmed. The rest of us are winded, aching, tired. There are good nights and bad nights.

Well. Tomorrow, as Scarlet O’Hara said, is another day, Dear Readers. Hopefully things will be slightly more normal.

Things were easier with Kage.

 

 

 

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I’d Become A Nihilist, But I’m Not A Joiner

Posted on May 16, 2019 by Kate

Kage Baker subscribed, personally, to the famed quote by Groucho Marx: “ I don’t care to belong to any club that would have me as a member.”

Mind you, there were qroups to which she wanted to belong. Not many, though; and most of them were not the sort that solicited members anyway. She wanted to belong to the I Won A Hugo Club, but what she had really enjoyed was just being nominated. The rocket pins delighted her. She did win a Nebula, which would have meant more to her, anyway.

The things to which she most comfortably belonged were things that had no rosters, no boards of directors; they were things she had found fascinating, and with which she liked to be associated. Things like the Renaissance Faire or the People Who Preferred Keds. SFWA, and EBay. They described what she made, and what she liked to acquire.

I think a lot of the groups into which Kage naturally sorted herself had no idea she – or any other member – existed. They were not the sort of groups that kept track. Kage was just the sort of person who kept track, in her own head. And it pleased her to self-identify as certain things. In fact, she went so far as to create whole other worlds to which to belong.

She did a good job. Lots of other people decided to join her there.

I am not much of a joiner. (I had no choice about joining Kage’s multiverse. She assigned me there.) I did join the Renaissance Faire, it is true, but I was one of a gaggle of  young women who all joined as a lark, long ago in the springtime of the world … and none of us realized what we were getting into, until it was much, much too late. A good thing, too, because it was the best thing I ever joined.

I vote regularly, but I don’t like to join in Party politics – I am only a Democrat out of self-preservation. I do write to my representatives, but that too is in the interests of survival. My high school class will hit its 50th anniversary in 2021, and I have not been to a single reunion; I’ve always been too busy performing something or other to submerge myself in the warm tide of alumnae once again. I am suspicious of organized religions, of athletic associations, of book clubs. Basically, if they want me, I probably don’t want to go.

Lately, I don’t want to be part of anything any more. Emily Dickinson is where I have taken my inspiration. Not only the ascetic  “The soul selects her own society” but the much less high brow “I’m nobody – Who are you? Are you nobody too?”*

This past week has been a real shit show, Dear Readers. Not just for me, by any means; all of us here in the Land of the Free are racing as fast as we can just to stay ahead of the wolves. Soon, some of us will start throwing companions out of the sleigh and into the ravening jaws of the pursuers – the states of Alabama, Ohio, Georgia (and far too  many others) have already decided to toss half the human race to the wolves.

Things here in lovely Atwater have been unusually wretched the last several days. My daily perusal of MSNBC and the local news has left me physically nauseated. My email is full of people screaming for money, for support, for blood. The storm was nice this morning, but when it finally began to sweetly rain I had been awake for 24 hours – sleep has been hard to come by here of late, and while my family managed to actually get some rest last night, my insomnia decided to strut its hour on the stage. Interminably. I feel like an armadillo on the side of a Texas highway.

This is part of why I didn’t post last night, for which I apologize, Dear Readers. I kept thinking I would fall asleep, and lay there in the dark grimly relaxing, waiting for my brain to slip away. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I read  – The Uninhabitable Earth, by David Wallace-Wells. I thought it would be dry enough to stun me into sleep; instead, it made my hair stand on end and then strongly tempted me to set said hair on fire. It’s strong, nasty medicine about climate change. Read it if you have put all the sharp objects safely away.

In the meantime, I am abandoning good intentions for the night. I’m gonna drink gin and lime juice. I’m going to eat raw raspberry Pop Tarts. I’m going to take CBD oil. If I don’t sleep, it’ll be sugar and alcohol until dawn – my own private party club. Hallucinations are welcome, as long as I don’t dream of anything that is actually happening.

Let us all be nobody together for a while.

 

*I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

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Same Song, New Verse. Damn It.

Posted on May 14, 2019 by Kate

Kage Baker, in her final few weeks, told me to take her dying as a learning experience. She told me it would be useful, if I let it – that I would have learned new and vastly important things, things that not even the deaths of my parents and hers had taught me.

My parents both died suddenly, and I was spared their final care. I did help take care of Kage’s parents, and the death of her mother in particular ripped the heart out of both of us. I thought I had quite enough experience, thank you. None of it had ever helped with any other; each death was a fresh piece of broken glass in the soul.

“Oh, fuck you, drama queen,” Kage said when I observed this. “If there is one thing you’re really, really good at, it’s taking care of people. You’re a responsibility junkie. You’ll survive and you’ll find a lot of this helpful. Don’t you throw away any of this!”

Well. That was the woman who still had notebooks and plastic jewelry from her grade school days, so I’m not sure just how objective her instructions to save stuff could really be. But I ended up doing exactly as she advised, producing an awful lot of these blogs out of that horrible time. Also, two published  short stories and a novel, all fueled by grief and pain.

Kage actually thought that the adage about needing pain in order to create was a lot of bullshit. She felt that there is no point to pain, that a life without it could be perfectly fine, if it could be managed. But no one can get away with that particular trick, so the only thing to do was survive – give the finger to cruel fate – and try to use what you had learned for something better. Something else, at least.

Today was my brother-in-law Ray’s first round of chemotherapy. He has been diagnosed with liver cancer; a PET scan yestreday also showed metastases in various lymph nodes, and his cervical spine. Despite this, he has no cancer-related discomfort; no jaundice, no back pain, no nausea. Considering that he has also battled congestive heart failure, diabetes and Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease for years, it’s rather amazing that he feels as well as he does …

We can’t tell, yet, what side effects the chemo will have. He is already confined to a wheelchair, and long ago said goodby to his hair – he’s 70 years old, for heaven’s sake, and is already the oldest man in his family in 3 or 4 generations. The chemo is palliative treatment, to shrink or erase as much of the cancer as can be done. We are working on making him comfortable now, to make his last months as good as we can – because his oncologist estimates a life expectancy of six months. I hope so. Kage’s doctor said the same thing, and she was gone in 2 weeks. I hope six months is not their “hamburger, hamburger” sort of thing.

So, here I am. I know how to administer IM drugs, and have already been doing that. He may need a PICC line, which is a permanent IV port; I know how to handle that, as well, and can even knit some covers, as I did for Kage – though I think Ray will want nice masculine solid colours, like green or black, and not the tropical cocktail migraine stripes Kage liked … but, yeah, I know all about hospice care at home.

Kimberly, Michael and I will soldier through this. The physical part is the easiest to accomplish (though not to get used to); which is why I hope we have more than 2 weeks. I hope it’s as relatively easy as it was for Kage; I hope nothing new and horrible comes up.

We all owe God a death, they say. That is also a lot of bullshit – everything that lives, dies; except maybe for tardigraves, the little buggers – but why do we have to pay so much with other people’s lives? If it was just me, no big deal. I could handle that, no problem. Why do we have to make that mortal payment for other people? It’s not right. It’s not fair.

This is the conundrum that made Kage write about the immortal Operatives: the ones who save the past, who cheat death, who restore the lost and who, themselves, never, ever die. Kage wanted to know why we lose the ones we love. I hope she found an answer that satisfied her, when she herself walked into eternity; I am sure she sternly questioned God about it, and if the answer didn’t satisfy her, I’m sure He took great pains to correct that … He did if he’s as smart as He’s supposed to be, anyway.

Kage wrote to make the people and things she loved immortal. It helped to live with their absence, to know she had tucked them away safely in the care of the Company. I’ll have to try her solution.

Again. Damn it. Again.

 

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Inspiration

Posted on May 13, 2019 by Kate

Kage Baker began writing only about the things she personally liked.

That may seem self-evident as a writing gambit, but few writers have the self-control (I guess you’d call it) to stick to the tiny personal stuff. Real writing is a stronger siren than the urge to write fan fiction about the Martian Man-Hunter, and before long, most people find themselves writing about … things, you know, just fabulous irresistible things; important and philosophical and emotional things. Grownup things. Then they get drawn into serious research, and making sure things are spelled correctly and keeping the deorum ex machina to a minimum.

Either that or they go on to a long career of Adventures Among the Pea-pod Fairies, or careful little pamphlets on Miniature Golf Courses of the World. Being any kind of writer is inherently perilous.

Not everyone should go on to a fuller writing path, anyway. Ever since Amazon started listing self-published books on their inventory, a frightening number of people have gotten their second-stage stories out there in plain view. They have passed the adolescent first stage of writing about their favourite bands, and are writing about specific periods of history or their favourite wars. They write lots of novels that are their own takes on famous battles, romances, kings, gods, monsters.

They also write whatever the latest best-selling fad is among genre stories: brave girls who save the world.  Brave girls and boys who  save the world. Brave girls and boys who save the world and discover sex. Witches are perennial favourites, and urban fantasy has been simply getting more popular as time goes on. Zombies and werewolves and ghouls, oh my! Plucky teenagers are a must-have for some of these themes. Then they end up being sold on Amazon’s Remainder Table, which markets them for a couple of dollars – or even for free, if they can be rendered as an e-book. They get included as a freebie along with the other Prime treats, now that a Prime membership is over $100 a year …

However: this may be a second-stage in the multi-stage rocket of writing real books, but that’s not saying all of it is second-class. Far from it! Being intermittently impoverished, I scan the freebie books on Amazon every week, looking for something marvelous that will entertain me on sleepless nights. And I always find stuff, too. The financial necessity of “beggars can’t be choosers” has enabled me to discover many an excellent read being inexplicably offered for free. And as a side effect, I have ventured into side branches of he science fiction and fantasy genres at which I had, in more monied days, turned up my nose.

Kage always said I should be more experimental in what I read. She herself was willing to at least take a stab at writing anything for which someone was willing to pay. Only once did she take on a commission that she absolutely could not stomach – and that was not because the subject matter bothered her. No, it was because the people who control the Estate of Johnston McCulley wanted a dreadfully bowdlerized version of Zorro for their anthology – and rather than castrate her childhood hero like a fat tomcat, Kage ultimately refused the commission. But the stories she wrote before that were great Zorro stories.

She was right about my snobbishness. I have never been fond of werewolves or zombies, and had refused to read about them for years. I’m still not all that crazy about werewolves – I detested Twilight, and most of the pack fantasies are too BDSM for me – but zombies have turned out to be absolutely fascinating. I especially like the work of Mira Grant – but then, Ms. Grant is insanely talented, and managed to make a series about tapeworms sympathetic. M.C. Carey’s novels about post-zombie apocalypse Britain are also wonderful, moody and dark and yet ultimately hopeful.

On which note, it’s time to go look over my own notes on a zombie story. Yes, I have succumbed to the lure of seeing what I have to say about the subject. It’s gotten that interesting, and I have had an epiphany: just because I didn’t like it when I was 20 years old doesn’t mean it’s bad. It just means I was 20 years old once. Can’t blame me for that.

In the meantime, what would happen on a story arc where zombies intersect an HOA? Now, that seems like real urban horror to me …

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PSA II

Posted on May 12, 2019 by Kate

Kage Baker was never on Face Book. However, it is one the main places where I post these blogs.

Now that I am on a new computer, Face Book is being cranky about notifications – when you, Dear Readers, leave remarks and likes here on FB, only some of them get through.  It is not helped by the fact that FB is apparently busily selling its soul to a new demon, and it therefore somewhat more distracted than usual. If that is possible. This is maddening for both me and you, if you are anticipating a response.

So, I am asking: When you have read these blogs on FB (assuming you do) and want to express an opinion (ditto): may I ask that you follow the link to the blog here on WordPress and leave it there? It will help me to remember to answer like a civilized person. I will actually see it.

Thank you!

 

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