I’ve been cutting back on conventions this year so I can focus on revisions and my pretty new baby.
I’d even decided to skip Wiscon this year, even though it’s in Madison, which means it’s practically in my backyard.
But then I found out my friend Nnedi was going to be Guest of Honor there this year. (Remember Nnedi? I interviewed her for Worldbuilders last year, and talked about her book a couple months ago.) Anyway, getting asked to be GOH at Wiscon is a pretty big deal, and I don’t see Nnedi nearly as much as I’d like, so I decided to go.
Then the people at Locus dropped me an e-mail, asking if I wanted to do an interview. I said, “Sure.” Because Locus is a pretty big deal in the Sci-Fi Fantasy publishing world. And I like doing interviews, especially when they’re in person. I spend enough time typing.
So I meet up with the lovely folks from Locus. The interview is fun. They ask good questions. We hang out. Then they say, “Do you mind if we take some pictures?”
And I’m like, “Sure, if you’re into that sort of thing.”
Then a couple weeks ago, this shows up in the mail:
My first thought? “If I’d known they were going to put me on the cover, I would have gotten a haircut….”
My second thought was, “I’m on the cover of Locus.”
My third thought was, “Shit. This is kind of a big deal. I hope I don’t sound like an idiot…”
Then I open up the magazine and burst out laughing. Here’s what I see:
Why don’t we zoom in on that a little?
Yeah. There you go. You can click that to embiggen it if you want, but you might want to be careful, lest the intensity of my sheer awesome reduce you to a quivering wreck.
For those of you who are curious. My t-shirt says: “My Marxist feminist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard.” It’s a very specialized sort of joke, and there really isn’t any point in me explaining it if you don’t get it. Suffice to say that Wiscon is a feminist Sci-Fi/Fantasy convention. It’s the only place I can wear the shirt where people think it’s funny.
Anyway, after I had a good laugh at this picture I was much more relaxed. I get very nervous when people take me too seriously.
I read the interview and was very pleased that I didn’t come off sounding like an idiot. It was a lot more wide-ranging than a lot of the interviews I do, and we talked about some stuff I don’t normally talk about.
If you want a taste of it, there’s a few excerpts over on Locus’ website.
Still revising. One week ’til deadline.
pat
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