#clarion 2015

[daynaksmith]

WisCon 2018!

So, this is only my second year attending WisCon, but I think it’s gonna be a habit because it’s such a good spot for mini reunions. Clarion 2015 represent!

More under the cut!

The folks in this pic, briefly:

If you haven’t read Jess and Sara’s AMAZING joint-written story, what the hell are you waiting for? Hopeful near-future concept-AND-character-driven SF awaits you!

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/barber-saab_09_17/

Evan Mallon’s stuff is so good, we had to give it it’s own genre: Malloncholy. So be ready for that shit to hit your eyeballs and blow your lovely brains.

(Tiffany Wilson didn’t make it until later, but you can find a story of hers in this awesome anthology coming out soon!)

A con highlight was Shelley Streeby and Co’s awesome panel on the Octavia Butler archives. Seriously, I thought I already knew what was up with that material, but I actually got choked up seeing handwritten notes of self-doubt, righteous anger, and silly/familial love in Octavia’s own handwriting.

Octavia mused that we (anyone reading her stories) were all her children, and even No Thank You On The Children Dayner clutched her heart.

Shelley runs Clarion UCSD, and frequently participates in critiquing the stories written there-- she’s a sharp and generous soul. Her partner, Curtis, is a great conversationalist-- as are the Clarion 2014ers we met that day, Ellie and Manish.

I’m also super lucky to have shared a suite with a bunch of my novel camp buddies, the Happy Little Comets: Brooke Wonders, Alisa Alering, and James Brady.

All of their work in all places is The Best. (Brooke edits the painfully cool magazine Grimoire with Annah Browning, who is also my new bro.)

Other con highlights:

“Justice Demands Good Sex” panel moderated by Meg Elison, where she described people’s illusions regarding written sex as defaulting to “a simultaneous, orgasmic high five.” The call to arms (and legs, and sundry genitals) involved considering sex scenes (of all flavors and levels of success) as a vital component of both Character and Worldbuilding. (And honestly, where the hell is the Story if you don’t focus on both those things??) I have MANY thoughts on the subjects discussed, and will probably ramble endlessly once I get going.

So you all have that to look forward to.

The contributions of S. Qiouyi Lu and Alberto Yañez to the “Alternate Universes: The Anticolonial Version” (my version of the title, honestly can’t recall what it started out as). They and he, respectively, had many thought-provoking things to say about how to avoid cultural erasure while portraying a more engaged, egalitarian, interrogative social system from the get-go in secondary worlds. One of them (possibly accidentally) used the term “wokebuilding” as opposed to just worldbuilding, and I kind of love it.

WOKEBUILDING. TELL YOUR FRIENDS.

Getting to chill with Saladin Ahmed (our Clarion 2015 instructor from week two!) was awesome, as was chatting with various folks in the hotel bar, including but not limited to: Nino Cipri, Charlie Jane Anders, Annah Browning, Annalee Newitz, Maria Romasco-Moore, and Meg Elison again!

You guys, I cannot emphasize enough how nice and interesting people are at this con. I’m not usually one to strike up conversations with new people, but it’s yet to be anything but fantastic at WisCon.

Also, everybody had such incredible style game. I mean, Maria’s eyeliner, Meg’s SERIES of crowns, Nino’s tattoos, Annah’s earrings, Charlie’s hair, Annalee’s BESPOKE suit... I could go on.

It’s possible I was more aware of those little details this time around because I made such an effort with the blue lipstick in 90F heat...

Anyway, I’m so PUMPED to read everybody’s stuff if I haven’t already, and so down for next year!

See you in Madison next summer, and until then:

WOKEBUILD and WRITE SEX and talk to new people!

(Or at least read their stuff! Talking can be hard!)

Zoom your focus in and out, and make neat stuff!

[daynaksmith]

A Pestilence Come For Old Ma Salt

Well, it’s here, my little fishes! A story, a story to reeeeead!

I wrote the first version of A Pestilence Come For Old Ma Salt at Clarion in 2015, the week Karen Joy Fowler* clasped us to her continent-sized heart. It was the perfect thing to take to class that week, as it’s probably the thing closest to Karen’s vibe that I’ll ever write.

Ma Salt is about things unsaid as days, years, decades pass, a deceptively plain and simple life that appears to mosey on but will choke out the future. I grew up in middle-of-nowhere Michigan-- lower peninsula, I’ll grant you, so not AS in-the-middle-of-nowhere as Michigan can get-- absorbing my grampa’s folksy, Depression Era turn-of-phrase. I really enjoy writing with it-- perhaps too much-- and so lately I’ve also taken to Queering up some weird west. . . but that’s for another time.

I love writing salty drunks with a call to serve their fellows, and this is where Ma comes in. Hope you enjoy the folks on Verity Mountain, and that you freak out the next time someone coughs.*

*This will only make sense after you read, but during class on my story’s day, someone choked on their drink, and Karen pre-emptively wailed, “I killed my parents!!” It’s the new Gesundheit. Tell your friends.