Since this appears to be a blog that won't be going away (coz I'm having fun!), here's some linkage plugging me, my work and other people.
My agents are the Makepeace Towle Literary and they got me onto Ether Books, which allows you to download my fiction onto your iPhone or iPad. I was first published in Interzone after winning the James White Award in 2006. I have a flash fiction in The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, which is my first anthology publication and is really, really cool.
My academic publications are two chapters in Battlestar Galactica: Mission Accomplished or Mission Frakked Up? and a chapter co-written in The Worlds of Back to the Future: Critical Essays on the Films with Frank Ludlow.
So if I can figure it out, I'll be posting these links permanently on the home page, but for now, enjoy them here!
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Oddities
Trusty Companion and I were chatting and this story randomly popped into my mind.
Back in secondary school, I think in 1st year, but at any rate, somewhere before the Junior Cert, a boy from my year (but not from my class) tapped me on the shoulder during one of our breaks and asked me if I ever smiled. At first the blank look I gave him was a mixture of 'Who are you?' and 'Huh?' As he became visibly more agitated by my apparent inability to move my facial muscles, it started being fun. I was genuinely curious as to how long I could maintain it, and how long he would stand there. It didn't last long, but I won, and grinned as he wandered off. By now I have no idea who that boy was, and I can't even picture his face. But the fact that I was later told by one of my classmates that I was always smiling just goes to show how differently people can view the world.
Trusty Companion commented on my inability to remember anything about the boy. I think the surprise erased it. It was the first time I'd ever considered that anyone I didn't know personally would notice my lack of a smile, let alone be sufficiently bothered by it to comment on it to me. I was a tunnel vision kind of kid; unless I knew you, or were in class with you or otherwise had some manner of contact with you, I probably wouldn't notice you. I'm still very much like that. Child of Chaos has often said 'Oh, did you see that person with [cool thing/clothing] just go by us]?' and my answer has typically been 'Huh? Where?' As a writer, I should probably be more observant. As someone who is trying to get to work/college on time, possibly not.
The encounter taught me another lesson that I inadvertently put to use a couple of years back when someone came out with the most inexplicably misogynistic comment I've ever encountered. If somebody is trying to get a reaction out of you, giving them absolutely nothing will frustrate them no end. It simply ends the conversation more effectively than anything else I've encountered. In the case of the inexplicably misogynistic commenter, he looked rather downcast as he tried to explain that demeaning my entire gender for something that was actually a man's policy was supposed to be a joke. I continued to appear both confused and unaffected by his comments, largely, again because of shock.
(For those of you who think I'm giving him a hard time, his response to me following my work's payment policy was 'Women are always causing trouble'. Ah, no. Ignoring the women bit, doing my job is not causing trouble. Expanding it to all women and not just me only intensified my irritation. An appropriate joke there is 'I bet you're a real stickler for the rules, huh?' I would have laughed at that.)
I sometimes wonder if I should have been annoyed at the boy's frustration that I never smiled, but I can't judge it as if he was expecting me to smile. Apparently he'd never spotted me smiling and was confounded by it. He never told me to smile (though I think he did ask me to react during the blank face period) and he was honestly curious. True, he was being a bit of busybody, but most of the teenagers I knew were nothing if not nosy (I include myself in that).
And, in the way that I do sometimes, I wonder if he remembers that incident, if he ever wonders if I smile now. Or did it disappear into the same black hole that the memory of his face fell into?
Back in secondary school, I think in 1st year, but at any rate, somewhere before the Junior Cert, a boy from my year (but not from my class) tapped me on the shoulder during one of our breaks and asked me if I ever smiled. At first the blank look I gave him was a mixture of 'Who are you?' and 'Huh?' As he became visibly more agitated by my apparent inability to move my facial muscles, it started being fun. I was genuinely curious as to how long I could maintain it, and how long he would stand there. It didn't last long, but I won, and grinned as he wandered off. By now I have no idea who that boy was, and I can't even picture his face. But the fact that I was later told by one of my classmates that I was always smiling just goes to show how differently people can view the world.
Trusty Companion commented on my inability to remember anything about the boy. I think the surprise erased it. It was the first time I'd ever considered that anyone I didn't know personally would notice my lack of a smile, let alone be sufficiently bothered by it to comment on it to me. I was a tunnel vision kind of kid; unless I knew you, or were in class with you or otherwise had some manner of contact with you, I probably wouldn't notice you. I'm still very much like that. Child of Chaos has often said 'Oh, did you see that person with [cool thing/clothing] just go by us]?' and my answer has typically been 'Huh? Where?' As a writer, I should probably be more observant. As someone who is trying to get to work/college on time, possibly not.
The encounter taught me another lesson that I inadvertently put to use a couple of years back when someone came out with the most inexplicably misogynistic comment I've ever encountered. If somebody is trying to get a reaction out of you, giving them absolutely nothing will frustrate them no end. It simply ends the conversation more effectively than anything else I've encountered. In the case of the inexplicably misogynistic commenter, he looked rather downcast as he tried to explain that demeaning my entire gender for something that was actually a man's policy was supposed to be a joke. I continued to appear both confused and unaffected by his comments, largely, again because of shock.
(For those of you who think I'm giving him a hard time, his response to me following my work's payment policy was 'Women are always causing trouble'. Ah, no. Ignoring the women bit, doing my job is not causing trouble. Expanding it to all women and not just me only intensified my irritation. An appropriate joke there is 'I bet you're a real stickler for the rules, huh?' I would have laughed at that.)
I sometimes wonder if I should have been annoyed at the boy's frustration that I never smiled, but I can't judge it as if he was expecting me to smile. Apparently he'd never spotted me smiling and was confounded by it. He never told me to smile (though I think he did ask me to react during the blank face period) and he was honestly curious. True, he was being a bit of busybody, but most of the teenagers I knew were nothing if not nosy (I include myself in that).
And, in the way that I do sometimes, I wonder if he remembers that incident, if he ever wonders if I smile now. Or did it disappear into the same black hole that the memory of his face fell into?
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