From: Linda (EvergreenLM@aol.com)
I called Borders Books for the gazillionth time asking where my MARCH pre-ordered Always might be. To my delight, I was told I would have it in seven days.
NOW, why does that make me squiggly? I have a nephew who saved his hard earned money to buy a new, and very expensive, pair of jogging shoes. We noticed that after he got them he NEVER wore them. His explanation... he "didn't want to use them up."
THAT is exactly how I am feeling about finally getting the latest Aud series novel. I will get it, consume it, and then there will be no more-at least for a few years. I know how crazy that sounds but 'tis true, so true.
Suggestions Oh Mighty Oz?
When I was doing a lot of drugs in my youth, I used to worry about my supply. Sniffables were easy enough to get, but had often been stepped on so much it was practically inert. To ensure the supply of amphetamine sulphate, then, I started dealing in it. In terms of smokables, I liked sticky black Gold Seal hash, or Nepalese Temple Ball, or at least some Red Lebanese. But those weren't always easy to get. So to ensure my supply of reliable smokables, I grew it. (And let me tell you, that stuff, growing indoors, is beautiful. It made my whole flat feel all fecund and jungly, and the smell... If it weren't illegal, I'd grow it in a hot second here in Seattle. It's just so bloody pretty. But I'm a Good Girl now. Mostly.)
Anyway, it was also around this time that I discovered lesbian SF. As with drugs, there was a very limited supply of the good stuff. So, again, I produced my own. This is how I got started writing. (That and the rage.) I've talked about this in my latest essay, "War Machine, Time Machine," written with Kelley, for Queer Universes: Sexualities and Science Fiction, ed. Wendy Pearson, Veronica Hollinger, and Joan Gordon (LUP, 2008). Here's the publisher's blurb about the book:
Product Description
Contestations over the meaning and practice of sexuality have become increasingly central to cultural self-definition and critical debates over issues of identity, citizenship and the definition of humanity itself. In an era when a religious authority can declare lesbians antihuman while some nations legalise same-sex marriage and are becoming increasingly tolerant of a variety of non-normative sexualities, it is hardly surprising that science fiction, in turn, takes up the task of imagining a diverse range of queer and not-so-queer futures. The essays in Queer Universes investigate both contemporary and historical practices of representing sexualities and genders in science fiction literature. Queer Universes opens with Wendy Pearson's award-winning essay on reading sf queerly and goes on to include discussions about sextrapolation in New Wave science fiction, stray penetration in William Gibsons cyberpunk fiction, the queering of nature in ecofeminist science fiction, and the radical challenges posed to conventional science fiction in the work of important writers such as Samuel R. Delany, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Joanna Russ. In addition, Queer Universes offers an interview with Nalo Hopkinson and a conversation about queer lives and queer fictions by authors Nicola Griffith and Kelley Eskridge.
About the Author
Wendy Pearson is Assistant Professor of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. Veronica Hollinger is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at Trent University. Joan Gordon is Associate Professor of English at Nassau Community College.
It's out now in the UK and available for pre-order in the US. But like all academic books, it's really (really) not cheap.
So, to finally approach my point: it seems to me that when you get addicted to good books you have two main paths to ensuring your supply: deal (become a bookseller or librarian) or produce your own (become a writer or publisher). Or, y'know, pay some author huge wads of cash (hi!) to write the books especially for you...
