Some Thoughts on Gender and Community

personby Nancy Jane Moore
schedulePosted on

One of the many things my sweetheart and I bonded over when we first got together was a love of Whileaway, the place where people live in Joanna Russ’s story “When It Changed.”

We’d both like to live there – that is, in the there before it changed.

I should point out that my sweetheart is a man and, for those of you who haven’t read the story, only women lived in Whileaway.

But he would, in fact, fit into that world rather well, despite being essentially and comfortably male.

It was, in fact, by being around him that I realized the most accurate statement of my gender is “not male.” That’s despite the fact that I’m the one with a sword and a black belt and, even though I know better, much more likely to end up in a physical fight.

I’m not talking about the kind of masculinity we often discuss as “testosterone poisoning” (though testosterone is not nearly as powerful as many believe) or the toxic masculinity of the fascists who just got elected.

It’s not as easily defined as that. It’s a maleness that is not uncomfortable in an all-female setting while still being itself.

I wanted to do many things in my life that were coded as male, but I never wanted to be a man. I am resolutely not girlie, nowhere near as feminine in interests or appearance as many of the trans women I know, but I am still comfortably a woman.

I set my pronouns as she or they because I don’t have a lot invested in my gender identity, but I would, in fact, correct you if you called me “he.” I am not male. (I wouldn’t be offended, but then I am not someone who gets subjected to intentional misgendering, another issue entirely.)

It isn’t likely to happen. I may be big and aggressive and loud, with a black belt and a law degree and an unwillingness to let people walk over me, but people don’t ever seem to take me as male. I don’t know if it’s the hair or the way my body’s shaped or just my presence, but something about me seems to say “female” to most people in much the same way that my quieter and calmer sweetheart’s presence seems to say “male.”

In fact, I suspect it’s my apparently obvious womanness that makes some men get very angry when I don’t turn tail or apologize profusely when they try to walk over me (or run me down with their cars). Women are supposed to quail before men like them, and I do not.

I often put that attitude down to years in martial arts, but as I reflect on it, I think the attitude was there long before I started training. Training made it safer for me to stand up to such men because it gave me tools to use in response, but I was always going to demand my rights.

Funny, though, while those men scream at me and clearly want to hit me or grab me, they never do. That might be because even as they are dismissing me as a girl and showing their contempt for me, they can read something in my presence that tells them it would be a bad idea to lay a hand on me.

I hope that’s the case. I make every effort to convey the attitude that messing with me is a bad idea. I may look like an old woman, but don’t assume I’m harmless just because you have some stereotypical idea of old women.

Continue reading “Some Thoughts on Gender and Community”…

NaNoWriMo Thoughts

personby Deborah J. Ross
schedulePosted on

National Novel Writing Month is upon us. It’s an international month-long event in which

folks pound out the first draft of a novel, posting the progress, getting lots of cheers every step of the way, and exchanging writing advice. Lots of friends will be doing it, many of them regular participants.

Alas, or perhaps not alas, not me.

I always have specific reasons. This year, I’m very close to finishing a revision of an on-spec novel that I’ve been working on for some years now, in the time gaps between contracted projects. I’m on the brink of the climactic scene, which spans 4 or 5 chapters and brings together everything that has gone before with a bang and a few nifty twists. If I nail it, the book works. Needless to say, this book not only haunts my every waking hour but has inveigled itself into my dreams. Not the story, mind you — the writing and revising of it.

I began this book back in 2013 on a lark, one of those what-if ideas that just takes off on its own. It had been a long time since I’d embarked upon an unoutlined, unplanned, seat-of-the-pants story, especially one of novel length. I had not realized how much my creative spirit needed what I call taking a flying leap off the cliff of reality. Working on my netbook, I continued the draft while taking care of my best friend as she died of cancer. The story, with all its open possibilities — and it had quite a few surprises for me — gave me an emotional refuge so that I could return, “batteries recharged,” to be present with my friend and her family.

Am I going to set this aside and lose all the momentum I’ve regained during this revision?

Don’t get me wrong. I think NaNoWriMo can be a wonderful thing. I’ve done writing challenges before, way back when, and learned a lot about JustKeepWritingNoMatterWhat. I also think I could use a reminder course from time to time, when I slog through a period of stopping every 5 minutes for another round of online Scrabble. The community support, the exhilaration posting each day’s progress, is wonderful.

But every writer works in different ways, and I feel my hackles rise — not a lot, just a tad — at the “everyone’s doing this, don’t be left out” feeling. Maybe I’m creating that in my own mind, or it’s an echo of being in the “out” crowd during my formative high school years. I need to remind myself to pay attention to what works for me, and that posting daily word counts does not fit most of the time. For me, daydreaming that leads to a deeper story, a connection between characters, a surprising turn of events, is time well spent. Sometimes, a single insight means a solid day’s work, even if no words appear on the page. Other times, if I force that daily page or word count, I end up with something superficial and green, which is not necessarily bad as much of the real work for me happens in revision. But by working well, no matter how slowly, I can nurture that depth as I go along and be sensitive to the openings and connections that I might miss in my haste.

If you’re doing NaNoWriMo, more power to you, and may its many gifts be yours! But if not, join me in writing “deep and true and slow.”

Continue reading “NaNoWriMo Thoughts”…

Travelling from Australia

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

People are asking me “Are you going to Belfast next year?” and “Are you going to Seattle?” and “Will you return to Germany?” and “Do we get to see you in person in Baltimore?” I always explain to European friends and North American friends that the airfares are large and more and more often they reply, “Well, it’s difficult for me, too.” And it is.

Yet the obstacles appear, to me, higher than they were.

I wondered if I was shouting about fire when it was merely a match that was burning. I know that my recent trip was difficult because I needed more physical help than I could afford. Several friends stepped up and made it happen, but there were too many times when I was nearly stranded with no recourse, simply because of the health issues. I still have nightmares about 5 moments that were well-nigh impossible.

For any future trip that takes more than 8 hours, I will need help at the other end and along the way. I have to accept that I cannot do things alone easily, even things that look perfectly straightforward to other people.

Shouting at me, “Get a scooter” when I’m struggling at a science fiction conference does not help, and (what happened a lot in Germany) someone walking by stopping to pick up my bag and get it over the hump or up the steps helps immensely. Neither of these are standard for any trip, but they’re what I experienced. Five times in one day in Glasgow I was told to get a scooter or a wheelchair, when, in fact, if I’d done that I’d have been unable to walk at all long term (or even a few days after).

This is not the first time that strangers and friends alike wanted to treat me in the way they thought chronically ill and disabled people should be treated and not consider (or even ask about) my actual circumstances. Because I can walk a little, most friends would say, “Come with me” and leave me at the other end with no thought that, since I had not planned to get to that place, I had no way of getting back in time for programme or for transport: I have to plan.

All this means is that I have to plan more when I travel. I need to be able to see what I can do and then achieve it.

I had to cancel visits to key sites in Germany because the world and my health simply did not permit it.

I had to cancel a half day at Glasgow because there were problems with a room for the panel I was on. All I needed to do to make everything work, was to sit. Not to sit and move and sit and move and sit and move – just to sit. Standing had fewer after-effects, so I stood and awaiting until the re-assigned room could be replaced with something else and the missing computer could also be replaced. All this happened, and was a miracle of reorganisation, but I had not sat when I had planned to. I could have done it on a panel or in a lounge chair, but intermittent movement with that particular pain meant that after that panel, I missed everything that didn’t take place in a single comfortable chair. I was not even able to walk back to the hotel and lie down. I was very lucky that afternoon because a friend stayed with me and we had a lovely evening and she got drinks and found mutual friends and… listened and paid attention to what I was saying about what I could do. She also made sure I got safely back to the hotel at the end of the evening, which was not a given because my direction sense fails when I am at that point of pain. Also, she did not treat me as a charity case, but as a delightful friend and who she was happy to spend time with. This friend resulted in there being no sour taste in my mouth from my incapacity. She’s wonderful. I did miss 8 hours of programming I had intended to enjoy, however.

All these are reasons for being careful how I travel, not avoiding long-distance travel entirely.However, I’ve now acquitted all the grants I was given to get to Europe. I took a moment to do some calculations after the last form went through.

In future, I don’t think I can get further than New Zealand without financial help. The recent trip cost the equivalent of 45% of my annual income. That was without adding enough assistance to make the trip at all comfortable, (which is what I was unable to do this time) and I’m still paying physically for the return journey. I could only pay that amount with help from the friends I stayed with and from the bodies that gave me grants, and, if I wanted an equivalent trip to anywhere in Europe or North America for a conference or for research without as many problems, it would cost me 60% of my annual income.

Without grants it’s just not possible. That’s easy to explain. What is not easy to explain is that many non-academic programmes and some academic programmes are pulled together at the last minute in these days of everyone working with too much pressure. If I’m not giving an academic paper or on programme, I cannot claim that amount on taxes. If I do not know about programme early enough, that adds $1,000-3,000 to the total cost of the trip because airlines play games with last minute travellers who need to arrange things carefully so that they don’t hurt for weeks. That brings the cost potentially to over 55% of my income if I go the route that hurts, and over 70% if I plan to hurt much less.

I will miss everyone, but I can’t travel long distances under these circumstances, however much I adore being with people and researching and discovering amazing things and listening to brilliant people. Also, the next person from Europe or North America who claims the same experience will be sympathised with, because over 45-70% of one’s income for one journey is quite scary.

If anyone has solutions and would like to see me in person, I would love to talk. In the interim, please just say “I’m sorry – I wish you could do these things” rather than telling me “I suffer just as much as you” while planning your next trip.

Post-Election Rant

personby Nancy Jane Moore
schedulePosted on

I am, by nature, an optimist.

By that I do not mean that I emulate Pollyanna. (Do kids still read that in this day and age?) Nor do I agree with Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide that things are all happening for the best in “the best of all possible worlds.”

While I am well aware of the many negative things in this world, I have tended throughout my life to assume that we will muddle along and things will work out more or less all right. There will be suffering and great evils and progress will be uneven, but we will stumble forward.

The election has shaken my optimism to its core. I don’t seem much path for muddling forward after that.

Dave Karpf, a professor of political communication and a very interesting thinker, had some good observations on the day after the election. His thoughts aren’t particularly comforting – “I did not think American Democracy was in any way perfect, but I did believe we were at least better than this” – but they’re in keeping with my own and also not big on trying to fix blame on political decisions.

His focus is the future and his answers are bleak, but he does think the country will eventually come back. He observes, “This will get very bad for a great many people, and many of the effects will be locked in for decades.”

I don’t have decades. I look at the same things he’s writing about and think “this is the rest of my life.”

Continue reading “Post-Election Rant”…

My Day at the Poll

personby Madeleine Robins
schedulePosted on

In an pre-emptive attempt to keep myself busy on Election Day, I volunteered as a poll worker.  10/10 would totally do again. It was not only a way to keep myself from doom scrolling all day yesterday, but I met some good neighbors, and spent the day supporting, in a tiny small way, Democracy. As I write this (on Tuesday night before falling into bed–I reported to the Poll for setup at 6am, and got home at about 9:30) I know nothing much about how the election went.

What I do know is that–at least in California, although I have no reason to believe it’s vastly different anywhere else–election fraud would be very hard to pull off. The number of cross-checks at every step, from who is voting to what happens to the ballots (in California they are paper ballots that are tallied by electronic scanners–but the ballots themselves are preserved under lock and key) to the number crunching–is considerable. The people I worked with were diligent–both about doing the work and about not talking about the election. We had a lot of fun (there is a lot of downtime) but we all took the work seriously. I come to the conclusion that some of the people who froth at the mouth about election security have no real idea of how modern elections work. If I ran the Zoo, I might consider a policy where everyone has to work at a poll once in their lives–just to inject a little reality into their worldview.

At my polling place the number of people who voted with ballots on site was fairly small; most of the people who came by were dropping off their vote-by-mail ballots the day of. This makes sense in San Francisco, where the ballots were four pages long (including two double-sided pages of propositions on the state and city level) and required a cheat sheet or an extraordinary memory.There were the ballots that had been sent well in advance (VBMR, in poll roster speak, for “Voted By Mail-Received”). So our relatively small precinct overwhelmingly seemed to prefer filling out their ballot before the Day itself. I was one of them (since I didn’t know where I would be working, I opted to vote several weeks ago).

There were a lot of children–my neighborhood has a lot of kids in it, and it seemed like every parent wanted to bring their kids to expose them to the Civic Virtue that is voting. Since I did the same thing with my kids, I totally endorse this. We gave out I Voted stickers to a lot of children (but I note that almost all the adults who voted or dropped off ballots asked for their stickers too, with an almost childlike glee).

There were some… odd moments. Like the very nice older guy who announced to us that he was voting for “Trump of course”–we can’t and won’t ask, but he seemed to think it was a given. Because his eyesight was poor, he asked for assistance in completing his ballot, which he was given. Then his foreign-born wife came in; he reminded her that she was voting for Trump too, and while he didn’t exactly hang over her he made it pretty clear what the expectation was. She too asked for assistance in filling out the ballot, which she received. Both my co-worker and I were a little uncomfortable, but the husband’s behavior didn’t rise to the level of interference, and we’re bound by all sorts of rules about what we can do.

There was a guy down the street from the building (we were in the library–very plush surroundings when many San Francisco polling places are in neighborhood garages) for about an hour wearing a HARRIS WALZ t-shirt–but not accosting anyone. There are strict rules about how near to a polling place campaign materials of any sort can be.

At eight o’clock when the polls closed, we swung into action. Each of us had tasks: two people to count the vote-by-mail and provisional ballots, two people to print out the tally from the electronic scanner (a copy of the tally is posted outside the polling place ASAP) and get the cast ballots ready. All the materials are handed over to the Sheriff (including the SD card from the scanner) in sealed containers, and the numbers on the seals are recorded. All of the materials that had been put to use during the day were folded up and put into order so that the Department of Elections minions can pick them up.

A note about those Minions: when we got to the poll this morning there were boxes and bags of materials–ballots, provisional ballot envelopes, privacy folders, EDU ballots (for non-citizens with children under the age of 18 who are–in California–permitted to vote in school board elections only), and so much other stuff. Including those seals (yellow for beginning of the day, blue for the end of the day) which must be accounted for–every time we broke a seal it went into the Inspector’s folder–the inspector is like the team lead. There are signs of various sorts, and voting desks, and the accessible ballot machine (which can be used by anyone, but allows you to vote with a touch screen and various assistive devices) as well as the electronic scanner. And pens and hand sanitizer and masks and posters and … so much stuff. All meticulously organized and stored until the poll workers deploy them at the start of the day. At one point, as I do, I got lost in the image of all of the DoE Minions (as I thought of them). They do this for every precinct in the city, county, and very likely the state. There was nothing missing that we needed. It was thoughtfully and thoroughly done.

And now I am home, and very ready for my bed. And there are people for whom the job is only beginning, as they take in the tallies and the used ballots (and the unused ballots, which must be as carefully accounted for as those that are used, and those that are “spoiled” and voided).

There are a lot of moving parts to Democracy. It’s kind of awesome. As awful and contentious as this election season has been, seeing these parts up close gave me hope. Now, I’m going to bed.

ETA: The next morning. The national results are emphatically not what I wanted. But I stand by my day at the Poll and what I took from it. And I’m going to hang on as hard as hell to that.

When Events Collide

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

This is the year of many confluences. I want to note just three, because those earlier in the year were more confluences of grief and do not need revisiting.

The first one is tomorrow, that is to say, November 5.

First, there is the US election. I am hoping that the US turns out and votes in massive numbers and that the outcome is one of the better ones. This is not an easy election and I’m very glad I don’t have to deal with some of the issues everyone’s handling right now. I hope things improve and that clever voting opens the door to US lives being significantly better. I also hope that the idiots learn to listen and understand what rampant fools they can be, but this is probably a pipe dream.

The election is, obviously, the biggest thing tomorrow. The second biggest is a rather fraught historical memory. Australia mostly doesn’t celebrate Guy Fawkes Night any more, but I found out yesterday that New Zealand does. We never burned figures, even when we had bonfires and fireworks and for this I am so very grateful. I have to admit that it’s kinda appropriate that there is a history memory on the same day that the US is busy creating its own history memory.

The third thing tomorrow is a race. Not the same type of race as the US one, but a horse race. Victoria (the Australian state, not the city a long way from me) gets a public holiday and most of Australia stops to watch. Tomorrow I won’t, because the friends I usually drink with (because it’s a drinking festival, really) are busy and I have a lot to do and…

I feel as if I’m betraying my childhood with no race and no fireworks, but at least I don’t have to worry about supporting something that really is not kind to horses or an historical event that, in the way it’s celebrated, isn’t that kind to Catholics.

That’s tomorrow’s confluence: the election, Bonfire Night, and the Melbourne Cup.

The next one is on November 11. I might leave it until next week and tell you about it then. Let me just say that only one of the events that collide is celebrated in the US and the UK. Watch this space…

The other collision is a bit longer. December 25 is Christmas this year (as it always is) and, for a wonder, it’s also the start of Chanukah, thanks to a handy leap month last Jewish year. New Year is also Chanukah. So are all the days between the two. I feel it’s a bit of a cheat to call this a confluence, but it’s a fun one because it’s going to tangle all the folks who were finally accepting that Chanukah and Christmas are not on the same dates. The Christian calendar is solar and fixed to the sun. The Jewish calendar is lunar/solar, that is fixed to the moon with solar adjustments. This explains the leap month – the adjustments are a bit bigger because, really, the Moon and the Sun don’t talk to each other and make everything work in harmony.

The shape of the year gives you something to think about if you really, really don’t want to spend more thoughts on the election. The fact that I’m supposed to be frying food in midsummer (for Chanukah) is another useful distraction.

Good luck with your Tuesday confluence!

Embracing the Contradictions

personby Nancy Jane Moore
schedulePosted on

In November of 2020, right around the US election, Master Li Junfeng, with whom I studied Sheng Zhen (a practice related to Qigong) while in Austin, offered an online meditation workshop for – if I remember right – 17 days in a row.

I signed up, even though it was at 6 am Pacific Time, since Master Li was in China and they were trying to set it for as reasonable as possible a time for people all over the world. And I made every class.

It was a very good decision, despite the fact that getting up to do something at 6 am is not one of my favorite activities. I sailed through all the election nail-biting and even lessened my pandemic anxiety.

I did keep it up for awhile, but since then I haven’t been all that regular with meditation. I’m trying to get back in the habit now. What with the election, the multiple climate-change-caused disasters, and the fact that even with sane people in our government we haven’t even come close to dealing with public health crises – not to mention what all this stress does to my blood pressure – I need to take time to breathe deeply and find my center every day.

I do Tai Chi daily, but I need the meditation as well.

I’m a bit eclectic at the kind of meditation I practice. I’ve picked up some Zen Buddhist techniques over the years. Master Li’s approach comes out of Taoism, I think. Some days I just focus on my breath. Other days I watch the Qi or Ki (depending on whether I’m channeling Chinese or Japanese practices) flowing through my body.

Sometimes I recite this verse that I believe I learned from a book by the Zen Master Thich Nhat Hahn:

Breathing in, I feel my body.
Breathing out, I smile.
Living in the present moment.
This is such a beautiful moment.

And sometimes I try to imagine all the elements of our planet – from the tectonic plates to the oceans to the forests to all the creatures and people – and then go on through the Solar System to the Milky Way to the Universe.

When I do that last version, I remember that I am a part of the universe, and so are all the microbes living inside me as well as everything around me.

I am a tiny speck of the universe and whatever happens or doesn’t happen to me is part of that whole. Continue reading “Embracing the Contradictions”…

Monsters and Books

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

Today I’m dreaming of Jewish monsters. This is the reason: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ranthalix/jewish-monsters-and-magic-trading-cards

I heard about the project because the publisher of The Green Children Help Out is involved in it. There is an increasing number of people who, despite everything that’s going on in the world and all the antisemitism, are enjoying the wild and amazing stories that are part of all the Jewish cultures.

I saw that this weekend at the Virtual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. R Andrea Lobel  was a guest of honour (who has published a story of mine in Other Covenants – sometimes I think the world is a tiny place) and delivered her plenary on Jewish fantasy.

First, she explained something that had me nodding in sad recognition: right now, a lot of Jewish writers are being avoided by publishers, by booksellers, by many people. Jewish writers from all over the world, and Israeli writers regardless of religion or political views. My own income from writing has suffered from this. I’m visible in some places, and in others, it’s as if I never existed… and I’m one of those who have experienced less hate. No book sales, but also no death threats.

Seeing the Jewish monster cards made me smile. Something cool and fun is entering this world despite all the hate. Of course I’ve backed them. I told my friends that they are a combined Chanukah and New Year present for me, myself and I, but the reality is that they are a tool with which I can combat ignorance and hate. I can learn more about Jewish monsters… and also use them to teach writing. I miss teaching, and cards like this would make it enormously fun.

Rabbi Lobel talked about the history of Jewish fantasy (English-language history, for she did not have two hours! The Jewish Fantastic goes back a long, long way.) then she gave examples of some modern writers of Jewish fantasy for the attendees. I think you might be interested in her list. I’ll give it to you as a screenshot.

R A Lobel's list of recent Jewish fantasy writing
Jewish fantastic fiction

The thing is – and this is not a small thing – there are hundreds of works. Not so many in Australia, which is another story, and I am still a bit overwhelmed that I’m on the list along with Jack Dann. This means that 50% of the current Jewish Australian fantasy writers who have published novels and short stories containing Jewish stuff is on this list. I doubt anyone in Australia will even notice. Jewish fantasy writers are not included in Jewish Writers’ festivals in Australia and Jewish writers are currently not very welcome in the literary scene. I notice, however, and it means a great deal. Mostly, it means that I shall not give up on my fiction despite the current problems.

This week’s post is not deep. It’s a small moment of joy in a difficult time.

A Matter of Feet

personby Nancy Jane Moore
schedulePosted on

I recently bought new shoes.

Now this in and of itself isn’t monumental news. I don’t buy shoes all the time, but I do get new ones as needed.

What makes this time different is the kind of shoe, though you might not be able to tell the difference just by looking at them.

Black leather Birkenstocks oxfords with white soles

These are lace-up leather shoes, not precisely sneakers but not precisely oxfords either. They’re made by Birkenstock, a well-known brand, though not one I’ve favored over the years.

Here’s the thing: they have a very firm sole – they are not in any way flexible.

It turns out that I need shoes like this, because I not only have bunions, I have very rigid big toes, which is to say arthritis in the toe. There’s even a medical name for that: hallux rigidus.

And according to my physical therapist, shoes with very flexible soles aggravate that big toe, leading to various kinds of problems. Continue reading “A Matter of Feet”…

How Was Your Convention?

personby Madeleine Robins
schedulePosted on
The American Falls

I’m sitting in the lobby of the Niagara Falls Sheraton (US side) waiting until it’s time to get a ride to the airport to go home. It’s the tail-end–or perhaps the last sight of the tail-end–of the World Fantasy Convention, which was swell. At least MY convention was swell. But as one of the attendees commented this morning, everyone has their own convention; I can’t speak to anyone else’s.

As with every human endeavor, how we experience an event is colored by what we want out of it, what our individual concerns are, and what happens to us individually. The people planning a convention can be as meticulous in planning as one could want, filling the schedule chock-full of entertaining and informative and cool stuff–but for the individual attendee all that can be eclipsed by any number of things: a friend who ghosted them; a bad knee; the bad dinner; missing someone who is normally there… you know. Human stuff. And it is a Truth, universally acknowledged, that even at a relatively small convention like WFC (which hovers around 1000 registrations) you can run into some people over and over, and miss other people that you know are there, but never find.

Of course, this principle applies to everything: school, workplace, relationships, families (I swear my brother and I had two different families with shared players and specific events, mediated by our ages and genders). It’s not a matter of position, exactly. It’s a matter of what matters to you, how you’re treated, what distracts or focuses you in a given situation.

So how was my convention? I saw many people, some I hadn’t seen in years (including one of my stage-combat teachers and colleagues: it had been 30 years!).  I met cool new people, or people I only know from the realms of the internet. I ate (Indian, Nepali, Italian, and more quotidian fare) and talked and laughed and listened. I visited a foreign land (with Canada within a 15 minute walk across the Rainbow Bridge, how could I not?). But mostly, I talked and listened and laughed and thought about things in new ways, which is really what I go to conventions for. I had beadwork in the Art Show (every time is new–last year my climate change necklaces all sold; this year none of them did) and a gratifying number of pieces went home with new owners.

It’s a huge indulgence, being able to do this: go to Another Place, see friends, and talk about the issues and ideas that writers worry about and gnaw on. I’m very lucky to have the time and the finances and the flexibility to be able to do it at all. But I also spent a good deal of time talking with some people in indie publishing, and now have –maybe not a publishing plan, but enough hard information to be able to put together a publishing plan so that the 4th Sarah Tolerance book can see the light of day, and I can bring out the backlist in a uniform edition. I call that a successful business trip.

Short answer: My Convention was good. Now to go home and start the real work.