Villa Diodati 3-- The tradition continues

This time, the Villa Diodati workshop was held near Nice thanks to the organizational superpowers of Jeff Spock.

We came in on Friday, and Jeff made several car trips to pick us up and drop us off at this place. One of the best ooohs and aaahs of the first day at Villa Diodati is checking out the house we're staying in. So far, we've never been disappointed. The first workshop was held in a German castle, the second one in Jaulzy, near Paris. Both were beautiful and inspiring locations.

There were more participants this time and quite a few newcomers. Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Catherine M. Morrison and Benjamin Rosenbaum came for the first time. Ben has been involved in Villa Diodati from the start. Together with Ruth, he's the brainfather of the project, but he'd never made it to the actual workshop before. I was thrilled to meet those three.

Rochita I knew over the internet: I already had a soft spot for her writing style, which grew even softer over the course of the workshop. Her Villa story was delicate, hung on spiderwebs and deliciously understated.

I hadn't met Catherine before, but I developed an appreciation for her sense of humor. The story she brought was packed with really neat technical details (unsurprising, since she's an engineer). I liked the way she worked them seamlessly into the story.

Ben... Well. After having met him, I understand why he's so successful. His imagination is truly outstanding but he also has a feel for the internal logic of a story and can point out the plot holes and character motivation problems in the wackiest slipstream. He understands the underlying threads of a story better than anyone else I know and he shares that knowledge freely. His critiques were great.

And then there were the repeats: Jeff Spock (organizer, logistics officer, second-in-command), Ruth Nestvold (Our Beloved Dictator), John Olsen (chef, subtle fiction expert), Floris Kleijne (goof, goblin expert), Aliette de Bodard (Asian specialist, tea brewer), Stephen Gaskell (Englishman, monsters-in-the-cellar specialist), Dianna Carlyle (certified English-Teenager translator) and myself (talker).

We held critiquing sessions in the morning and wrote in the evening. There were prompts, writing marathons and the Surreal Oracle, a game which probably only works well with writers.

On Saturday, I came down with stomach flu, but I was fine by Sunday, so that was ok. Jeff made another slew of car trips on Tuesday to drop us all off.

I can't wait for Villa Diodati 4. I want to see how an AI writes (the Surrealist Oracle predicted that the AIs would come to Villa Diodati 4)

Sale! Shoes-to-Run to Asimov's

This is my third sale to Asimov's. Shoes-to-Run is a triumph of rewritting and workshopping. Thanks to everyone who helped out, particularly the folks over at Codex and Sean Markey who, as always, doubled as critiquer, motivator and submitter.

And now that I've reached my fifth pro sale, I can confess the Plan. The Plan is simple: when I sold my first story to Strange Horizons, I decided I wouldn't try for a novel until I'd sold ten pro stories. Eventually, I did try for the novel before then and the novel flopped. Hubris! I won't do that again. So, now that I'm 50% there, I think I can make the Plan public: I won't try for a novel until I've sold my tenth story. That looks achievable right now and, either way, I don't want to put myself through the trouble of writing something longer than a short until I'm good enough to pull it off.

Also, I just came back from Villa Diodati 3 and have all kinds of stuff to say about the workshop. But I won't say them now, because Villa Diodati deserves its own post and I can't really take more time off sleep. There was a 5 day vacation in the Canary Islands after that, which will also get a post. Hopefully. I'm kind of busy these days.

Sale! The Story in which Dog Dies to Shimmer

This is the second story they've bought which deals with sucky immortality.

I'm thrilled.

And special thanks to Sean Markey who practically forced me to write it.

Yay Dead Dog!

Ralan Fund Drive

The September Ralan Fund Drive is under way. If you use ralan.com as a market resource, consider heading over there and dropping 10E.

I give you flamenco-rap!

I can't decide whether this is wonderful or just plain wrong.

'Cause Octavia Butler and Ursula Le Guin weren't enough

...now I get compared to Tiptree!

I quote:

Sara Genge writes a complex story of alien sex with her "Prayers for an Egg." Like Tiptree whose work this was reminiscent of, Genge is an outsider, Tiptree coming from Langley and the mainstream, Genge from Spain; her rhythm and cadences equally exotic to American genre SF.

These stories mark the highpoint of this issue, their 'difference' from the norm giving the issue a rare depth.

And because I have a twisted feminist mind, I'll note that all three writers I've so far been compared to are women. Not that I mind, not with those three. Just sayin'

I think "exotic" needs to become part of my name, somehow. Sara Genge, aka "Exotic". Sooo cool.

If you write reviews...

...like this...

I don't really care if you put an "h" in "Sara". In every other case, I'd prefer if you didn't. (1)

Here's the excerpt, 'cause I can't help quoting.

Sarah Genge’s haunting description, psychological complexity, and careful evocation of real world parallels make “Prayers for an Egg” a standout story this month. Lasa is a household servant in a stratified society who feels honored to have been chosen as jaja-maid by her mistress, Jandala. But even as Jandala and the new master publicly demonstrate their “proper” disdain for the servants they believe to be biologically as well as mentally inferior, privately tradition demands that the newlyweds share some of their most intimate moments with them. Perhaps the masters’ culturally unacceptable desires are innate, perhaps they stem from that intimacy, or more likely they are an amalgam of these and the sort of attraction those in power can have to those they control, where the expression of that attraction is an abusive act of ownership. Another story by Genge, a memorable politico-romance entitled “Family Values,” appeared on Escape Pod a few weeks ago, and her most recent offering is just as original and well-crafted. In both stories, she somehow manages to ease her reader into understanding an alien culture without explicit exposition. Our understanding leaks in around the edges of the narrating character’s consciousness, her culture’s stated assumptions (which mostly feel quite organic, as opposed to contrived), allowing us to fill in the ghosts of both her deeper, unaccepted thoughts, and those which shaped her culture’s taboos. This is engrossing, thought-provoking SF in the tradition of Octavia Butler and Ursula K. Le Guin, and on its own well worth the cover price of this issue.

Yep. I will go and die of happiness now (2)


(1) I don't really know why I'm so opposed to "Sarah" with an "h". I think the main issue is that it isn't pronounced and "cut needless words" spills over into "cut needless letters". Also, there's a Spanish poet, Juan Ramón Jiménez, who was a fan of the phonetic spelling. He went as far as to remove all "h" from the Spanish language, the result being airy and childish seeming poetry which was in fact not very childish at all. More than a century later, copyeditors are still trying to catch the last of those deliberate misspellings--and failing. I have at least one edition in which the occasional "j" glares up in the page. It looks all comfy there, standing in for the "g", but it is an eyesore.

(2) I do think it's a bit obscene to compare my work to Octavia Butler's and Le Guin's, but, hey, I'm not complaining!

(3) Sarah Genge. This is so people will find my blog. There have been a couple of reviews and pubs lately that got the "h" wrong, and I'd hate to think of people getting lost in the Interspace, flailing around for want of direction and "h"