My Twitter account has been suspended because once, a long long time ago, some evil people hacked my personal website. Despite repeated emails to the President, Congress, and King/Queen of Twitter, I am still unable to resume tweeting. A pox on them. That’s right, I went there. A pox!

Also, if any one knows how can I work around this blockade, please inform.

Or, send Twitter your own pox.

So you’re 70,000 words in. The end is nigh. All you need to do is wrap it up and make sure the finale does two things:

1) Make believable sense
2) Surprise and intrigue

Those are the main things. There are others.

You must also make sure the whole thing was worth the ride. So you go back to the beginning to remind yourself why you wrote this story in the first place. Then hopefully (hopefully!) you’ve stayed on track just enough that the journey has some cohesion. But also (and this is the tricky part), you hope that you’ve wandered just enough to keep it fresh and un-contrived.

At times it can be like a train track that doesn’t meet in the middle. Then you have to decide whether to finesse the beginning to match the ending or vice versa.

But most of all, you want that dismount to stick like Nadia Comaneci when she scored all those perfect 10’s.

Inquisitive people have been asking me fascinating questions about Cycler of late so I’m going to stick this post to the front page of my blog for a while. After that, I’ll keep a link to it over there in the sidebar on the right where it says “Ask Your Questions Here.”

This way all of these wonderfully insightful questions won’t get buried in the comments section of a blog post about running.

Provided your question isn’t obscene (which, of course, it won’t be given how pure and clean your mind is) I’ll answer it in the body of this post, unless you ask me not to.

Deal?

Okay, SPOILERS BELOW, so if you haven’t read Cycler yet, proceed with caution. Or better yet, read the book already!

(more…)

Today has been a rather insane day for reasons upon which I will elaborate at a later date. In the midst of the chaos, I managed to write a few sentences. They are as follows:

I’m alone in the cafeteria. The two freshman who were huddling together over a math book have left. The janitor and his giant fluffy broom have been and gone, leaving the floor clutter-free and shiny, but still gray. There’s no one here but the survie cams and me. All I want to do is speak to someone, but I’m out of friends. I guess that’s the hazard of only having one true friend. When she’s gone, you’re finished.

But when I look up at the smooth black lens of the nearest survie cam, I realize I’m not finished. And I’m not alone. Then I feel something awaken inside me. Something primal. Something true.

Off to London tomorrow. Catch up with you the day after.

So, I’m reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz, right now and it’s mostly written in Spanglish, which Wikipedia tells me is not a pidgin language. Fine. It’s not pidgin. I still love it. I love the constant code-switching between English and Spanish because, heck sometimes English works but sometimes you need to say pendejo.

Here’s a great sentence from the book:

“Hey, Dionisio, isn’t that the girl que dio una pela last week?”

This book won a Pulitzer and it’s easy to see why. It’s a heck of a read, with wonderfully dynamic, fully-human characters, set in that Pulitizer-friendly context of third world history. I’m learning about the history of Trujillo and the Dominican Republic and it doesn’t even hurt. Full of win, the whole thing really.

But…

Should he have translated the oodles of Spanish into English for his English readers?

I have no trouble with it because I speak Spanish, but a good friend of mine, an avid reader who I know would have loved this book, actually put it down because she couldn’t understand large portions of it. It just irritated her. Clearly, Senor Diaz is under no obligacion to make things mas facil por sus readers Americanos y Igleses.

Pero…

Should he have?

Like with a glossary of Spanish terms in the back?

Just curious.

I love Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway and all around fabulous innovator. But I think GM is playing a vicious joke on both him and us with this supposed “car” they’re prototyping.

It’s called the P.U.M.A. for Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility. But they should call it the P.I.D. for Personal Instrument of Death.

You can’t put a “car” like that on the streets of a real city. A single taxi cab will have it for breakfast.

Not to mention, to quote the always-eloquent, Woofy, “You’d look like a total ass going around in one of those.”

You know what this is? It’s another attempt by GM to pretend they’re working on a “green” vehicle, while in actuality ensuring no one will ever, ever give up their real car.

I live in a city. Two cities actually. And you would have to be severely deluded to believe that “driving” one of those is in anyway different from basically jogging in the middle of traffic.

Dean, please don’t be suckered by GM on this. Put your considerable talents to use on something better.

And for any one interested in a truly brilliant “Urban Mobility” vehicle. How about feet? Or bikes with real bike lanes?

… is filthy!

And awesome. There I am with my husband after a long day at the mill. And we’re both too brain tired to do anything but turn on the tube. What do we stumble across?

The Sex Education Show.

While we in the US are still arguing about abstinence “education” (a contradiction in terms, if you ask me), across the pond, Channel 4 is taking sex ed into their own hands with a blunt, unflinching examination of teen myths and ignorance about sex.

Unfortunately, YouTube has turned off the embedding function because of adult content, but here’s a link to a clip from one of the episodes.

I confess to being slightly scandalized when I stumbled across this show. It did, after all, feature 5 completely naked men displaying their private parts before a class room full of teenage students. It’s not often you see that on tv (or anywhere for that matter). But it was nothing short of revelatory watching the teenagers go from horror, to giggling, to curiosity, to honest questioning. The show revealed some really dangerous myths they had about sexuality as well as their tendency to seek out answers from porn.

Porn is not a great way to learn about sex.

But if adults aren’t going to teach it, guess where kids are going to turn?

Porn.

So hat’s (and pants) off to the United Kingdom for taking the great leap across the chasm of ignorance and giving kids the information they need to make healthy, safe choices about their lives.

Yes, that’s what it’s come to. In lieu of blogging about a shiny new topic, I’m simply going to regurgitate the best words I wrote out of the 1600 new words I added to Novel #3 today.

Without further ado, here they are:

The guards and counselors at Exborough Academy had seen it all. They knew every trick, evasion and petty scam. They knew all the hiding places, code words, and doublecrosses. Many of them were former juvenile offenders themselves. Resistance to their iron grip was futile.

Just a tantalizing hint of the diabolical tale to come.

The mind-bendingly talented Scott Westerfeld, author of Uglies, Midnighters, Peeps, and so many thrilling tales it strains credulity, has just posted an interview with me on his website. Some highlights:

What 6:00 AM is like
Alternate meanings for P.M.S.
How and why to erase a whole person

Dive in! (You know you want to.)

I know. I know. Two posts in one day. But this is excellent news.

From Cory Doctorow’s review of Cycler on BoingBoing:

…the plot is faultless, building from the weird premise (and the concomitant weirdness) to a series of ever-more-desperate scenarios that have you rooting for Jack and Jill even as you facepalm yourself and peer between your fingers at the wreck they’re making of their lives.

Full review here.

And not only does Cory have good taste in books; he also writes spine-tingling ones, like his latest, Little Brother. Check it!