... like an arrow (and fruit flies like a banana.)

Tomorrow is my friend Ken George's birthday (no I don't remember or care how old he is.) Ken is the guy who got me started with my first "weblog" back in September of 2000, among other things. Here is the text of the first posts I ever made there. I owe Ken a considerable debt for that and for kicking my ass regularly and frequently about getting off my spreading derriere and doing some actual writing and occasional other projects. Back in the day, you had to code it all yourself and I learned basic HTML and CSS (later CSS2) so I could do that. At the time I hung out a lot at the TTLG.com forums and got into virtual trouble with a lot of cool, creative and marginally insane people, many of whom I still know and keep in touch with--if sporadically--including my buddy Andrew who set up my fan forum recently, Amanda and Alex Pearson, and Mara Love (whose name I stole for a character in my first book.)

But back to Ken... see, tomorrow is his birthday and I thought I'd repost the embarassingly bad Flash animation I made for him back in 2001: The Pigeon of Death in the Shelter for Unwanted Baloon Animals (PG-13, so... be careful when you click). Partially to remind us all how far we've come, partially to get it back up and into the blogoverse again, and partially to say "Hey Ken, I still can't draw!"

Happy Birthday a little early, my friend!

Fair warning: this is me ranting. I'm not intending to be polite, nice, reasonable, or even accurate, but at least I'm going to tell you so first and I'm going to go on for a good long while below the cut. Ready? Okay, here we go.

I hate "Creative Non-fiction." I hate what it has done. I hate what it means and what it opens the door to. Let me explain....

I read a book recently that is just one of many examples of Creative Non-fiction. It reads like a novel--albeit an uneven and occasionally badly-written one. It used fiction techniques and narrative style to make dry facts more dramatic and readable. It's not a horrible book, but there is something deeply wrong with it--it's untruthful. It's full of facts, but those facts... well.. they aren't given in an honest and open fashion. The facts given are colored and hand-picked and massaged into the shape the author wants. That's not unheard of in a non-fiction book, especially one about people or events that are a bit confused, controversial, or historical. But the thing that really puts my nose out of joint is the way it's done, without adequate or even noticeable admission that there are more facts, that there are other sides and colors to this story. What's most distressing is that the author doesn't own up to that until the end and when he does, he doesn't provide the facts he chose to leave out in his footnotes or end notes either. He doesn't provide quotes or context or even decent citations for his references, much less standard MPL or APA citations so I can go look things up myself if I should feel the urge. No, he just gives the titles or archives he used once, then refers to them by initials ever afterward with nary a page number to cover his ass. It really pisses me off and it makes me wonder if he really did the research he claims to have done. Maybe he just read a couple of books, cribbed the rough story, and made the rest up... (I don't really think he did, but it gives me a very bad feeling nonetheless.)

I read another book a while ago that used a lot of the same techniques. It was a pretty good book, but the technique annoyed me a bit then too. However, the author was meticulous about his notes. He gave excellent citations and context in his footnotes as he went and he gave a great deal of additional detail at the end as well as being upfront about the fact that he dramatized and "imagined" some bits from evidence and facts known at the time and afterward. He was being "creative" but he was honest about it. He massaged the story, but he didn't lie about that. The fictionalizations annoyed me, but it was all so enthralling otherwise that I read it like a thriller. Good use of fiction techniques in non-fiction. But I wouldn't call it "Creative Non-fiction." Why? Well...

( Read more... )

Best. Christmas. Present. EVER! Someone likes my short story from Wolfsbane and Mistletoe: They Call Me the Oracle!: Knee-Deep in Reindeer Guts.

Yes, I have a "thing" about venison and reindeer.... I am a baaaaad person...

But at least I'm giggling and now... back to work!

Today is my last day blogging for Penguin. Here's the beginning of the final Kat-Blog (click the excerpt to read the whole thing):

"Where do you get your ideas?" There's a question many writers dread. Not because they order them wholesale from a warehouse in Schenectady, as a famous SF writer once quipped, but because ideas aren't the hard part. Not really. Ideas are like breakfast cereal; there're more than I can possibly consume in a lifetime, but the real trick is finding the ones that don't go soggy and getting my procrastinating backside into a chair and my fingers on the keyboard often enough and long enough to turn them into a story-meal worth serving up.

And today has already been interesting. I'm within a few thousand revision words, plus 3-6k new words of plot wrap-up, climax, and punch-out on the Novella, and since Jim's going to be shooting things that go "boom" in Idaho this weekend, I expect to be done by Tuesday (including the spell-check, clean-read-through and proof.) Maybe overly ambitious, but it's better than the alternative--considering I've asked for extensions on this one twice. Usually I don't.

Happy, happy!

"A couple of my writer friends really hate used bookstores. Some of them even hate libraries...."

And so begins my second day blogging at the Roc/Ace blog. Read the whole entry, if you can stand it.

Thus begins my first guest-blogger post at the Roc/Ace SFF blog:

I never would have expected it, but the most common question I get about Harper's world is "why doesn't she have a cell phone in Greywalker?"

To read the whole thing, go here.

But definitely a day in Purgatory.

At 07:30 local, Mr. Kat's alarm goes off. Which I try to ignore, but can't.

Just as I am rolling over to try and go back to sleep, I hear Dexter the ferret crawling into the litter box... and then crying. This is not a good sign in a geriatric male ferret with adrenal disease.

I get up, I look at the ferret. He gives me a dirty look and hops back into bed. OK: not dying, just having a hard time peeing--which is, as I said, not a good thing in geriatric male ferrets... blah blah.

While my hubby tries to dress, I call the vet--whom we just saw last Saturday with the assistance of the very able and long-suffering cmpriest --and ask for a call back as to what I should do. Then I take a shower and put myself together so I can have breakfast, deal with some other stuff and hope to get some work done before...

My mom calls to ask if we are still "on" for lunch or something after her post-surgical check up with her specialist. I say "yes, sure" assuming the vet will call back with simple instructions or maybe a Rx. Mom's appointment is at Noon, so I say I would like to hook up with a friend (the extra-cool blackaire ) who is signing books at Seattle Mystery Bookshop simultaneous with Mom's appointment and then we can hook up afterward. Mom is OK with this.

I do some work and notice it is getting latish for a call back from the vet if I am going to catch an appropriate bus to downtown, so I call the vet again. Quick discussion with Kim, the fabulous vet assistant, results in "get the ferret back in here." I hmm and haw and ask if this is a "right now" emergency or a "tomorrow" emergency and they say tomorrow is OK, but today would be better....

So I make an appointment for Saturday, just in case, but start trying to figure out how to get Dex to Kirkland (on the far side of the big lake) today if possible. Finally, I call my mom and apologize profusely for raining on her parade, but can she take me to Kirkland for the ferret's sake after her appointment? Mom is good with that, but it does kind of wreck plans for a relaxing afternoon.

Nothing else to do until then, I give the ferret the meds he still has from last time and head out to catch up to Caitlin.

Small signing, but much joy at SMB and finally waving Caitlin good bye about 13:20 while I camp in the Seattle's Best Coffee up the hill from SMB to wait for Mom. Not knowing what's going on in Mom land, and being beset by fire engines (tending a fire a block away), and then by four full-lights-and-siren police cars rushing past, my paranoia-meter is pegging and I drive my poor Mom mad by calling every 30 minutes to find out how she is and where.

Finally Mom and Eileen pick me up and we return to Ballard to fetch the ferret, then drive across the lake just ahead of rush hour, in a rainstorm, to get to the vet an hour-and-a-half early. But they take us early, too.

Ultrasound examination of the pee-less Dexter--who is suddenly less pee-less, but very unhappy about being touched "there," results in big drugs to make the litter box duty less painful.

Yes my friends: I have a dope-fiend ferret. Dexter is on morphine for a week.

Needless to say somewhere in all of this, I had no lunch and my recently-surgeoned gums are aching, but I soldier on and we have dinner with Mom, who is doing well, for a woman in her sixties who has recently--as she put it--been hollowed out like a canteloupe, and cannot walk more than a half block without something giving her a red light. But the Dr. says that's normal and she's doing very well--for a woman in her sixties, who... etc....

So Jim and I take Mom and Eileen out for dinner while Dexter sleeps off his fix, and my vet dreams of "ferret fetish" novels about rehab from the POV of the ferrets: "I would kill for FerreTone!" "Ferret-crack! Yes! To hell with 12-step programs, I just need the one: give me Morphine!"

Needless to say, writing did not get done, today. Guess what I'll be doing tomorrow? (Instead of dim sum or MWA meetings--which I'd love to go to, but can't eat with the surgery stuff and desperately need the word count. oh my....)

Because people ask and because I'm having trouble with spammers using my e-ddress as their "from" address--again!--I've set up a google group for news and updates and will soon be changing my site to reflect the new e-ddress and group, so if you want to sign up for automatic e-mail updates about my signing or convention schedule, appearances, and books, please go to my new Google Group: Kat Richardson News and sign up! And soon I'll be able to get my fan mail from the associated address: kat(dot)rchrdsn(at)gmail(dot)com. What fun!

(No, I'm  not running out on my blogs, just want to make it easier for the people who don't read blogs all the time.)