Welcome to my LiveJournal. I'm a science fiction writer with a growing collection of published short stories, and my collection Unwelcome Bodies is currently available from Apex Publications. It includes, among other stories, "Captive Girl," which was a 2007 Nebula finalist and which made the 2007 Gaylactic Spectrum Awards short list. I started this journal to have a place to talk about writing and the writing life, although you'll probably notice various digressions into belly dance and politics.

http://www.broaduniverse.org/broadsheet.html

"Leave the Vomit In, or, Learning to Trust Your Voice."

http://sfreader.com/Home/BookReview/tabid/55/Default.aspx?book=1198

Yep, I'll be saving this one to my hard drive :)

RCN changed their channel lineup on Tuesday. Apparently, no one told TiVo this, because everything we recorded from Tuesday on is wrong, with the exception of network TV, because the network TV channels didn't change. So I've missed three days' worth of Daily Shows and Colbert Reports, as well as a Rescue Me minisode and a few other things I'm less upset about.

*froth*

I called RCN. They said I had to call TiVo. I called TiVo. They said that they could fill out a form for me, and that it could take up to a week, and that they couldn't tell if someone else had already filled it out earlier, thus potentially shortening that week's wait.

*froth*

I have set TiVo to manually record by time and channel until Monday. If the lineup is still frelled on Monday, then I'll manually record another couple of days.

*froth*

In less frothy news, I have reservations to see Batman at the Premium Cinema on Sunday evening.

ETA: dsrtao saves the day! Thank you!

This one hosted by the fine folks at Apex:

http://apexdigest.livejournal.com/121052.html

Go ahead, ask me crazy shit. I can take it :)

The Boston area is currently being nailed with torrential rain. My pants got soaked all the way through just crossing the street to get into my car this morning. Then I discovered that my usual route to work was flooded out, so I went home, put on dry pants, and attempted to try two alternate routes, only to find them backed up so badly that the only sane answer was to give up and come home, wait an hour, and try again. "I can practice my dance for tonight during that hour!" I thought to myself.

So I logged on to email to tell my coworkers that I'd be late, only to discover that my dance teacher is sick, and between that and the weather, she thinks we should postpone.

*whew*

I think I'll do yoga while I wait for the roads to clear, instead.

ETA: What a difference an hour makes. I left home again at 10:00. Both the traffic and the puddles had cleared.

Practice went rather better tonight. I'm still not hitting my pops with sufficient emphasis to make myself happy, but I'm feeling more like I'm going to go through with the performance. I also decided to jettison my previous costume idea since I didn't want to be wrestling with a slipping belt, and practiced in my flowered skirt instead. Guess what? I stepped on it a few times. Whee. Still, it's better than the slipping tassel belt, so I think I'll stick with it.

Mind you, I wish I had more stamina. After about a half hour of rehearsing, I was dripping sweat, and my abdomen was so fatigued that I couldn't pop my moves for shit. I memorize by repetition, and when there's only so much repetition my body can do before pooping out... Feh. And then I still had to rehearse the dance for tomorrow's fusion class, by which point I was so tired my body pretty much gave up on doing anything even vaguely like the choreography. And between fusion class and my performance, I haven't had time to practice hip shimmies in over a week, so I fear any progress I've made there is slipping away...

*breathing into paper bag*

One cool thing did happen, though. I don't practice in front of a mirror when I'm running choreography, because I don't have a mirrored wall anywhere in the house. But as I was getting ready for my shower, I practiced an arm move in the bathroom mirror while doing what I thought of as one of my half-assed mini stomach undulations. Except it was neither half-assed nor mini. I had no idea! The damned thing actually looked good!

So, class tomorrow, performance Thursday (probably), duet rehearsal with my friend Kate on Saturday, writing group on Sunday (which means I have to read and crit on Friday and Saturday evenings)... Yeah, I'll write again next week.

I can't believe I forgot to post the link here!

http://josephmallozzi.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/july-18-2008-with-special-guest-author-jennifer-pelland/

Okay, oversight rectified!

And yes, I did have a lot of fun with it, if you can't tell :)

My spouse and I would really like to go to Gaylaxicon, but with hotel for three nights running $600, never mind gas and food and everything else, I'm not sure we can justify the expense. Are there any cheaper hotels nearby? Loathe as I am to not stay in the convention hotel, I'm even more loathe to skip the convention entirely.

I just spent 45 minutes trying to hash out my little two-minute dance for Thursday, and I think there's about a 50% chance I'm going to cancel. 3 times out of every 4 that I ran through the dance, I either felt really sloppy, or had to stop because I'd screwed up so badly, or both. Only 1 out of every 4 didn't feel embarrassing and leave me frustrated as all hell. And those odds, frankly, suck.

Unless I can vastly improve those odds tomorrow night, I'm canceling. I do not intend to go in front of people in public and look like amateur hour. Unless I can give a good performance, I'm not giving any performance.

I just watched "Turn Left" on SciFi last night. In general, I found the deletions to be fairly minor. However, people might want to know that ( light spoiler ). But that was the only deletion that seems worth commenting on.

Puzzling out choreography sucks.

Man, I will be glad when Thursday is over. I really hate choreographing myself. And I'm no good at just winging it, because I tend to just wriggle and fling my arms around without a plan.

We shall not even talk about the fact that my belts seem to have gotten larger. I know, what this really means is that my waist has gotten smaller. Which would be lovely, if it didn't mean that the belts I want to wear on Thursday are now too damned big.

*grump*

I got to the con this morning bright and early so I could enjoy the Viable Paradise brunch in the con suite before going to Beth Bernobich's reading. And the brunch was lovely. I got to hang out and chat with several VPers, as well as Doyle and Macdonald. There is no badness in that. Beth's reading was quite lovely, and then it was off to the dealer's room to see if the Broad Universe table needed any more copies of Unwelcome Bodies, which gratifyingly, they did. Then it was off to Doyle and Macdonald's reading, which was entertaining, as usual.

Then I had half an hour to kill before my reading, so I toodled around and saw the flyer racks being taken down. I looked to see how many UB bookmarks and Tattooed Lady postcards were left. And there were three Tattooed Lady postcards...but they'd been ripped into four pieces and left in a stack at the base of the racks. Um, WTF? I'm not quite sure how to interpret that, and I'm not sure I want the culprit to clarify. I mean, I can't even chalk it up to a Helix protest, since it looked like the image that was at the top of the stack was that of the other postcard model and not me.

My reading went fairly well, although it was the smallest audience I've ever had. Since the bulk of them had already read my collection (or at least read most of the stories in it), I read "Organ Nell," which is currently in circulation. Then I did a stint at the Broad Universe table until the dealer's room closed, and went to Victoria Janssen's reading, which was deliciously hot :P~~~~~

All told, I sold 13 paperback copies of Unwelcome Bodies this weekend: 3 at the Fair, and 10 at the con. Not too shabby!

Right, my dinner bloat has subsided enough that I think I should start rehearsing for Thursday. Eep!

I headed up to Readercon on Friday afternoon, making a pit stop at Patterson's Back Bay Dancewear on the way. Alas, they did not have quite what I wanted in stock, but they could order it, and it would arrive in three business days, which alas does not work for me, because in three business days, I'll be in Worcester for my dance class. So I'll look elsewhere early next week (maybe the place in Newton, maybe the place in Worcester, maybe Teddy's Shoes in Cambridge, although that's less likely), or wear my china flats on Thursday or something.

Then it was on to Readercon itself. I dumped a stack of books at the Broad Universe table and headed for my first panel (the writing groups one) where there were nearly as many people on the panel as in the audience. Then on to a stint at the Broad Universe table in the dealers room, then dinner, panelage, blah blah. I thought I might go home after my 7:00 panel (Waking up Sober Next to a Story Idea, in which I was the token baby writer among the panelists) because I was feeling rather out of sorts over the whole Helix thing. There are at least three writers at Readercon who are very much in the anti-Helix camp, and I found myself getting paranoid about how widely-spread the disdain was for multi-pubbed Helix authors. Plus, Andy had already left, which left me essentially alone. But I started running into people that I wanted to talk to, and then I had a few really enlightening conversations about the whole issue with a few other folks who are in my boat, as well as a few seasoned genre veterans who've been watching it from the outside, which was really, really helpful. And in the end, I ended up staying long enough to give away all my stickers at the Meet the Pros(e) party.

Today I spent a whopping two hours at the convention, then it was off to the Boston Fetish Fair Flea Market. The staff were extremely gracious towards me, treating me like a special guest, which was just lovely. My audience at the reading? Well, small. And I had about a dozen walk-outs over the course of the story. I think some were simply hoping for more sex, and others I think were bothered by the way the story wasn't 100% fetish-positive. And that's absolutely a fair cop. "Captive Girl" is a story about a woman who discovers she's a fetish for her lover, and has real struggles with it. It takes an uncomfortable look at the nature of consent. And I can see how someone who wanted an afternoon of fetish fun would be unhappy with that. Andy and I spent the hour after that looking at all the vendors, and it became clear to me that I was a tourist and not a participant. And you know what? That's cool. I'm glad to have been a tourist in that world for an afternoon, but it would be unfair to go back and be a tourist again. People don't go to the Fetish Flea to have Jane and John Vanilla gawk at them.

Of course, I did gawk at the ponies. OMG, they are the cutest BDSMers ever! Bondage gear...with prancing! And Maureen's pony had this incredible dignity about him. It really was something to behold. I think he might inspire a story some day.

After the ponies, Andy and I headed out for dinner, then came home. I'd originally planned to head to Teddy's Shoes on the way home, but I was just too damned tired. And while I'd love to go back to Readercon for the Kirk Poland competition at 10:00, I'm not sure I want to get my ass in the car alone (Andy's gaming) to make the drive when I'm this tired. I'd planned to spend my evening working out choreography for Thursday, but it's so freakin' hot, plus see above comment about being tired. But I have done some more dance name research. I'm still pondering Verity and Una/Oona, and have also tossed the following into the mix: Juniper (a play on Jennifer Juniper), Eris (although I fear that might be too pretentious), Morrigan (see previous comment), Nemesis (see previous comment), Zia, and a few others that I'm a little less thrilled with, but have scribbled in my notebook nonetheless.

Yes, mentions, plural :) Both "Mercytanks" and "The Last Stand of the Elephant Man" got them. Huzzah! They mark my first appearance in the SF honorable mentions section.

And I also got a mention in the intro...kinda:

"...and [Magazine that shall not be named] had another strong year, publishing good work by Robert Reed, John Barnes, Jennifer Pellard..."

*sigh*

Thankfully, if you Google "Jennifer Pellard" the top hit is an LJ entry by me bitching about how people sometimes misspell my name that way.

Congrats to everyone else in the honorable mentions, and special congrats to current and former members of my writing group Yoon Ha Lee and Margaret Ronald

With my first public solo performance coming up, I'm starting to think more seriously about the issue of taking a dancing name. And I don't think I want to take an Arabic name. A lot of the tribal folks that I've seen either use their own names (Rachel Brice), use unusual Middle Eastern names (Asharah), or take non-Arabic names (Phoenix, Aepril). I'd been thinking of using a Latin name, an Amazon name or perhaps an Irish name, but so far, nothing's really jumped out at me.

Names that seem okay, but not thrilling, are Una (Latin and Irish), Temira (Hebrew, means "tall"), Alcippe (Amazon), Verity (Latinish), and...I need to do more research.

I tried to find writerly names that would also make good dance names, but have so far failed. I also went through the constellations to see if I could come up with a science-fictiony name, but nothing jumped out at me.

I could just be lazy and use my old Arabic SCA name: "Layla." Meh.

I believe someone on my friends list recommended a shoe store in Burlington a while back as a good place to find reasonably-priced dance shoes. I'm actually contemplating doing a public performance next week, and my teacher recommends that I wear shoes for it, so it's time to buy a pair of black jazz shoes. And since I'll be at Readercon this weekend, I'll be in Burlington. Is it Back Bay Dancewear (http://www.backbaydancewear.com/)?

http://josephmallozzi.wordpress.com/2008/07/14/july-14-2008-unwelcome-bodies-by-jennifer-pelland/

He's got some interesting takes on my work. I do find it amusing that he tends to be happier with the stories the farther in he gets. Seeing as the stories are arranged chronologically by publication date, it's a nice bit of validation that I've been improving over time.

Anyhow, feel free to toss questions at me over there if you'd like! I'll be answering them later in the week (probably Thursday).

Posting this for fellow VP alum Scott Andrews (because really, why else would I know about a fantasy magazine?):

I've started a new online fantasy magazine called _Beneath Ceaseless
Skies_, specializing in literary adventure fantasy--character-driven
stories in secondary worlds. Our website is now online at
http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com . Feel free to drop by and read
about the magazine, check out our submissions guidelines, browse our
online forums, or log onto the forums and post any comments or
suggestions you might have.

Please feel free to forward this URL around to anyone who know who might
be interested, or to post it on blogs or anywhere else. We're paying
SFWA pro rate, and we open for public submissions Aug. 1.

http://apexdigest.livejournal.com/118544.html

*confetti*

So I went to peek at Joseph Mallozzi's blog to see if the conversation on Unwelcome Bodies had started yet, and read this at the bottom of the most recent entry:

"Oh, and quick reminder to finish up Unwelcome Bodies. Discussion on this unsettling and no doubt controversial collection of short fiction begins Monday and author Jennifer Pelland will be dropping by to field our questions."

Should I be nervous?