Thursday,
March 27, 2003
Busy busy busy
While we were waiting for sandwiches at Schlotzsky's I pulled out the palm and added a couple of paragraphs to "By Any Other Name" -- considering that I got the idea for the story at LoneStarConII, it might be nice if I actually finished it one of these days.
Did I ever explain this story here? LoneStarConII was in 1997 -- I was in the SFWA Suite, chatting with someone about how car companies (andcoming up with new brand names and using words from other languages to create words that don't mean anything in English but look and sound pretty (and can lead to much hilarity in the other languages -- see the Coke "Bite the Wax Tadpole" issue in China and the whole Chevy Nova debacle in South America). This led on to how some t-shirt designers use Chinese and Japanese idiographs as decoration on shirts and other stuff, when for all they know the idiograph could mean, "I'm a Smelly Yankee Moron."
And suddenly I'm
thinking about alien idiographs being used as art, except we don't know what
they REALLY mean. I've been meaning to nail my ass to a chair for the last seven
years and get this mother cranked out, and now it finally looks like I'll get
it done. Whee!
I also have to start working on my Elizabeth Moon interview when I get home tonight -- with luck, I can have it polished and off to 3SF by Saturday, which will make the editor muy happy.
In the meantime,
Lyndon has been taking Tina out for more driving lessons, and is looking more
and more tired every evening. He's been looking after her since she was a baby,
and loves her more than the moon and the stars, but I think he's kinda looking
forward to her going home on Saturday so that he can get some rest.