Transitions

Every so often, for no real reason, I’ve gone back to Intermedia Communications’ web site to see if it’s been updated. It hasn’t been since 2002, not too long after the company was purchased by WorldCom. The last time I went to look, though, the site had finally been taken offline. (The name resolves, but there’s just a cryptic text placeholder there.)

There’s some peculiar personal circle being closed over the last few months, I think. I’m back in the networking field—not with a permanent position, granted, but a better contract than either of the other ones I’ve ended up with out here. And I’m back at a really large company. I’m not feeling particularly stable—and the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas period is proving to be a very hectic one—but I’m feeling just a little more organized and a little more creative than I have in quite some time.

It’s a good feeling, but it’s a feeling that baffles me, too.

See, I had an image of where I’d be ten years after college, what I’d be doing, the whole lifestyle. I’d be a writer—not necessarily best-selling, but successful enough that I was making 100% of my money through writing—living on a secluded spot of land not too far from a quirky, civilized area. That area was, at various points, Key West, Taos, Tucson or Big Sur. And sometimes the career choice got varied a little. Maybe I could also do shareware. Or photography. Or run a bed and breakfast. Or run a coffee shop.

You’ll notice a common theme through all of those—independent, sole proprietor kinds of things. In all but the last two, fairly solitary, too.

None of them seems to have much in common with “work for large high-tech company,” does it? Yet, it’s objectively, undeniably true that my most comfortable periods since leaving college have been working for just such places.

I’ve had the somewhat flip thought before that my move to California has been a lot like going back in time a decade—back with housemates, back doing temporary jobs, back having long stretches of no income and worrying about whether I’m going to be able to pull together rent.

If this really is the case, I hope that the current contract ends up being like the temporary job that brought me to Intermedia nearly ten years ago.

And who knows. I’m only a few years out from the traditional age of the mid-life crisis, so the bed and breakfast in Taos may be a few years out.

Blatant book plugging

After a really long gestation period on my end of things, it looks like it’s actually happening, with any luck for a premiere at Further Confusion in a month (eek).

The book has fourteen stories in it, which if I can remember off the top of my head (I’m at a coffee shop, and don’t have the source files here)

• “Why Coyotes Howl,” the title story, which one might call therianthropic magic realism;
• “Dreams Are For Vixens,” a sort of slice-of-life furry romance that ran in Touch many years ago;
• “Seeing Things,” a non-furry suspense piece;
• “Vertical Blanking,” a furry-sort-of VR story I hope MUCK players will not kill me for (which tacit published an earlier version of, under the even more cryptic title “Recondite Directives”);
• “Daughter of Shadows,” a more-shaman-than-thou magic realism short;
• “The Moon in Water,” a more-Charles-deLint-than-thou urban fantasy piece that I hope smurf pagans (a term genesis_w probably remembers) will not kill me for;
• “Only With Thine Eyes,” hard science fiction following the somewhat Victorian style of epistolary novels;
• “Still Life, With Espresso,” the most literary-ish magic realism piece here;
• “Going to the Dogs,” the oldest piece and another furry story that never showed up in furry ’zines;
• “The Fence,” my contribution to chuck_melville’s shared world The Furkindred and a piece which is not a ray of happy talking animal sunshine;
• “Beast,” a science fiction retelling of a fairy tale;
• “The Fox Maiden,” which, as the name clearly suggests, is about a unicorn;
• “Without Evidence,” the only Ranea story here, a detective yarn featuring one of the nastiest—yet intriguing—villains I’ve written about;
• “Travelling Music,” a novelette which, if I do say so, is much lighter and funnier than a nerd-meets-dream-alien-woman story has any particular right to be.

Buy a copy! No, buy two or three! Buy ten and pass them out on street corners!

More seriously, I’ll be at FC and will be signing for anyone interested. (As far as I know, cover artist kyoht will also be there, and would probably also sign it. I don’t know if she’ll make prints of it, but she has lots of other cool prints. Buy all of them. Then buy another copy of my book.)

And, quasi-seriously, I’m more than willing to entertain suggestions on how to promote the book, both online and off.