I gave a reading at Orycon this year.

As a member of Broad Universe, I was invited to take part in one of their rapid-fire readings. This is where all the interested members join together to share a room and time slot for a reading, and every member gets a few minutes to take center stage.

The closest I've come to doing a reading before was a few weeks ago. The Wordos get together and read holiday themed pieces of flash fiction right before Halloween, and I happened to have a short enough piece that fit the theme. Now, when I did that reading, I'm pretty sure my hands were shaking badly enough that anyone in the room could tell I was nervous. For the Broad Universe reading, I was determined to keep my hands steady and hide my nervousness if possible. In retrospect, I'm not sure that was such a good idea... My hands stayed steady, but I think that the effort diverted blood from other, more important parts of my brain. For instance, the part that translates visual input from my eyes.

Fortunately, I'd practiced the excerpt of "Otters In Space" that I was reading several times earlier in the day. So, some of it was ad-libbed from memory. However, I could hear the audience laughing at all the right parts. Then, afterward, several people sought me out to tell me how much they enjoyed my reading. One man even sought me out the next day!

Overall, it was an incredibly rewarding experience.

As I said, the last month has been all about writing. See, Elaine started going to preschool five mornings a week this fall. In honor of finally having a couple hours free every day for the first time in several years, I decided to devote pretty much every free minute I have (and some minutes that are not entirely free due to having a child bouncing around shouting, "Mom! Mom! Look at this!") to my writing. So, I've finished several short stories, and I hit the 30,000 word mark on "Otters In Space 2."

This was, apparently, not enough. So, as November -- and NaNoWriMo -- neared, I suddenly outlined an entirely new novel set in the Otters In Space universe. See, "Otters In Space" was originally started as a NaNoWriMo novel. I figured that no one would ever be willing to publish a piece of hard science fiction a la Arthur C. Clarke starring talking animals a la Brian Jacques. So, why not write it super fast as a NaNoWriMo novel? Except, by 15,000 words I realized I was writing something really special. So, I gave up on NaNoWriMo and gave "Otters In Space" the time and attention it needed to develop its full potential.

This means that 1) I have good associations with NaNoWriMo because I got "Otters In Space" out of it, and 2) I still haven't won!

So, I figured I'd try again this year, and either I'd finally win or at least get a good start. So far, I'm not quite 20,000 words into "Learning to Live and Love in a Dog's World," and it's going very well. I was even meeting my daily word count goals... until Orycon happened... which... of course... is when I burned out on "Otters In Space" in 2005...

Which brings us to Orycon...

The last month has been all about writing. Writing, writing, writing.

First off, I joined Wordos, the local science-fiction critique group. This is a group I'd heard about since looong before moving to Eugene. Members of this group win Writers of the Future almost every year. Needless to say, I was a little intimidated. So, even though I've meant to check them out since moving to Eugene, I kept putting it off. Then I finished a short story I started five years ago... This is the kind of story that is so complex and neat that it takes that long to write. Now, I don't mean I was working on it that whole time. In fact, I actually wrote the first few scenes quite quickly in 2005. But then I got stuck. I had the entire story outlined, but the emotional depth was beyond my abilities at that time. Then, three weeks ago, I suddenly sat down and over the course of two days hammered out the rest of it.

Needless to say, when you have a short story that is worthy of five years gestation time, it deserves that little bit extra to polish it up super nicely. So, I finally overcame my fear and joined the Wordos. And, I must say, the critiques they gave of that story last Tuesday were extremely valuable.

Of course, no matter how great the internet is for research, it still hasn't beat pulling out The Encyclopedia of Dog Breeds and The Encyclopedia of the Cat for researching dog and cat breeds.

A lot of writers say that the first step to making a lot of progress on their writing is to turn off the internet. For me, this is not the case. The internet is an incredibly amazing tool for me when I'm writing, and it can speed the process up a lot.

When I was in high school, I wanted to write a novel that had octopus-like aliens in it. But, first, I needed to really know what octopuses look like when they move. I needed to research octopi. So, I went to the library and checked out all the octopus books I could. This was fun and useful, but it didn't show me an octopus in motion. Next, I convinced my mom to take me to the coast for a day, and we hit every aquarium we could find. At one of them, there was an undersea show where a diver went in to the tank, picked an octopus up, and kind of waved its tentacles around. This made me sad, because it wasn't the octopus moving under its own motion and therefore was basically useless to me. At another aquarium, I stared at a sleeping octopus for three hours straight -- it twitched once. (Come to think of it, it's pretty amazing that my mom put up with this...)

Eventually, we did find a documentary video through an inter-library loan program. But... Seriously! That's a long, slow process for learning what octopuses are like when they move.

These days, if I want to write a story with owls in it, I don't have to drive over to the library, dig through the shelves, bring books home, put a video on inter-library loan, and schedule day trips to zoos and wildlife reserves. I can just type "owl" into youtube, and, WITHIN SECONDS, I'm watching and listening to owls! Within minutes, I'm back at my word document writing my story.

So, if I also spend an extra ten minutes writing a post like this... Well, I'm still coming out months ahead.

Kitten reorganization time!

This is when you find a kitten sleeping on, say, a couch; pick it up and carry it around until you find a different kitten sleeping on, say, a bed; swap the kittens; and proceed until kitten reorganization time is over.

There is an entire community of people devoted to pretending that animals can talk. Somehow, in all my years of mourning the end of Watership Down and quietly writing Otters In Space all alone, I never noticed this.

Last weekend, I attended Rainfurrest, up in Seattle. My limited research in preparation suggested that Rainfurrest would be a great deal like any science-fiction convention. Except a lot of people would be wearing animal costumes. In short, that expectation was about right. But... Knowing it and experiencing it were completely different.

The halls were filled with animals. Foxes, wolves, cats, otters, raccoons... Walking around, talking, exactly like people do. Because, of course, they were people. Wearing costumes. But... I can't explain it. I've sat at my computer dreaming about a world where the otters have spaceships for years... And, so, if I found the experience of a furry convention a little magical, I suppose it shouldn't be too much of a surprise.

The best part, though, was hearing Phil Geusz -- one of the writing panelists -- talk about the history and future of furry writing. I attended a reading he gave of two of his stories -- one about a rabbit on a spaceship, the other about a boy who convinced a magician to turn him into a horse. I didn't know anyone else was writing stories like that! And, to hear him tell it, we writers of fiction about anthropomorphic animals are at the beginning of an entire movement. He compared furry writing today to the first appearance of Golden Age science-fiction in the late 1930s. I don't know if he's right... But, god, I hope he is. It was incredibly inspiring.

So, now, until the next convention, I will return to quietly writing away. But, this time, instead of being a strange oddity, my work is part of an entire genre. Furry science-fiction. Sci-furry.