Welcome to my LiveJournal. I'm a science fiction writer with a growing collection of published short stories, and my collection Unwelcome Bodies is currently available from Apex Publications. It includes, among other stories, "Captive Girl," which was a 2007 Nebula finalist and which made the 2007 Gaylactic Spectrum Awards short list. I started this journal to have a place to talk about writing and the writing life, although you'll probably notice various digressions into belly dance and politics.

I know this is just a statistics thing, where they calculate the odds of your first and last name combination, but the number doesn't surprise me. I know of two other people with my name, although one married a couple of years back and changed it.

According to my personalized results, there are 1,416,936 people in the U.S. with my first name, and 1,064 with my last. I'm surprised at how low the first number is and how high the second is. Then again, my generation in particular is saturated with Jennifers. It was a rare name before that fucking Donovan song came out. So I suppose it's something of a feat that it's the 21nd most popular first name in the country. My last name? The 25,874th most popular. There are also five people with my brother's name, but when I put in my father's it goes down to two, and when I put in my mother's it goes down to one.

Oh, hey, when I put in my sister's married name, it also gives me a list of famous people with her last name. I didn't get one for Pelland. Go figure.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/TV/05/13/tv.newseason.ap/index.html

ABC is going to remake "Life on Mars"? On what planet does that sound like a good idea?

(Although the idea of Colm Meaney playing Gene Hunt is intriguing.)

Between the comments in the journal and the thoughts they inspired, I've come to the realization that it's not yet time to start a separate journal for bellydance stuff. Sure, it would be fun to set a new one up and come up with a pile of new user icons, but there's no real need for it yet. Maybe if I start performing, I'll start up a separate journal, but for now, no.

For those who aren't big fans of the bellydance posts, fear not, I shall continue to use bellydance-themed icons for them.

I've been posting more and more about bellydancing here, and since this is supposed to be a writing journal, I'm thinking about creating a different journal just for bellydance talk.

[poll closed]

ETA: I didn't put an option for "I'd rather read it here, but I will friend a new journal" because I'm trying to determine how many people I'll lose if I move the talk elsewhere.

Also, a perk of creating a new journal for it is that I'll be able to do more bellydance networking with a journal that's specifically bellydance-oriented than with this hybrid journal. But it may be premature to be thinking about that since I'm just a student and not a performer.

The time: 8:00.

The place: a dance studio in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The protagonist: a tall, nervous brunette in full-on tribal goth bellydance gear.

The protagonist volunteers to dance first. She hands the CD to the instructor, mentally rehearses the dance, then gives a short intro speech on the goddess Nemesis.

Cue music. Our protagonist finds she's a little shaky out of nerves, but she makes it through the opening music just fine. The first stanza goes well. The second goes well, although the swooping hand movements are a bit shaky. She completely forgets what the hell to do at the third stanza and waves her arms around as she fishes for what the fourth stanza is all about. At the last second, she remembers and dives into the move, and upon finishing it she promptly does the second half of the chorus first by mistake, which means she has to do the first half second, which isn't the world's best lead-in to the musical interlude, but tough shit.

The musical interlude, thankfully, is straightforward, although our protagonist's legs have gone shaky, so her slow descent to the floor while doing snake arms isn't as slow as it ought to be.

But she regroups, and gets the entire second verse right, then does the final chorus and fade-out in the right order.

Her fellow students profess amazement when she says she forgot half the dance and had to fake it. They are either genuinely amazed, or very good liars. At this point, she doesn't care.

It takes her five minutes to remember what the hell she was supposed to do for the third stanza, then kicks herself, because it had really cool arms and she wishes she could have shown them to the class.

She goes home, crumbles some Reese's minis into dutch chocolate gelatto, and is grateful she doesn't need to dance in front of anyone again for a long time.

(I already have my five winners!)

Gacked from gnomi:

The first five people who reply to this post, and who re-post this challenge: YOU WIN!!!

For your prize, I will send you a gift.

It might be something I've made, or something cool from my hidden stash of obscure grooviness. It might be a rubber duck, or a toy, or a pretty picture, or a book I think you might enjoy. A useful object, a tchotchke, a piece of jewelry, or something else that is taking up room in my house.

Whatever it is, I promise I will get it to you in 30 days of your posted comment or less, and you must e-mail me your mailing address. Even if you think I already have it.

E-mail your address to me via LiveJournal (jenwrites [at] livejournal [dot] com).

Caveat: You must have a U.S. or Canadian mailing address. If the address is Canadian, you'll get something groovy, but lightweight.

I had one of those rare weekends where I got everything I wanted to done and yet still had plenty of time to relax. I:

- did laundry
- rehearsed my dance for Monday
- showed Andy my dance for Monday and didn't die of embarrassment
- read through the WisCon manuscripts for the first time
- made tassels for the red tasseled hip belt that I bought this week (still need to sew them on)
- worked out
- read the other manuscript for critique for my own crit group next Sunday
- bought groceries

No writing, but I'm actually fine with that. I've got a couple of stories that I need to get back to one of these days, but with WisCon approaching, I suspect I'm on a writing vacation until it's over. Mind you, I could easily be wrong. I may very well surprise myself. For all I know, once I get past tomorrow night's bellydance class, my creativity might go back to the written page instead of being diverted entirely to my 2:30 long dance. We'll see.

Does anyone know what's up with Mercury Magazine? They wanted to reprint one of my stories, but I haven't heard from them in a while, and a query I sent them last month has gone unanswered. And since their web page is entirely in Hebrew, I can't even pretend to read it to see if they're simply behind schedule.

Note to self: next time you decide to choreograph a move that involves you doing snake arms while slowly lowering yourself to your knees, consider doing a different move instead.

My thighs are killing me. I'm hoping a long shower followed by a liberal application of IcyFreeze will help.

Mind you, if I practice this enough, it'll get easier. But probably not by Monday.

(And yes, I owe several people emails and/or LJ replies. I'll get to them by the weekend. I promise.)

So I decided that I wanted to get a Fringed Burnout Velvet Hip Scarf in black, and thought that I might as well order a red scarf of some sort while I was at it. The website has the Shisha Mirror, Brocade & Fringe Hip Belt in red that I've been looking for for a while now, but it also has this Chiffon Fringe and Bead Hip Scarf, which I also want in red. I believe the latter will be more versatile, but the former is still calling to me, and it seems silly to buy both (although I'm sorely tempted).

Actually, now that I think about it, everyone has that last hip scarf. So I think I'll stick with the first two and place an order now. There's something about typing it out that made everything make sense. :) And I've also gone to Amazon and placed the order for the "Modern Tribal Bellydance with Asharah" DVD that I've been eyeing for a while (the 45-minute-long track of exercises for developing precision muscle control sounds too good to ignore).

I've passed the three week mark at F&SF. If I hit four weeks, I'm dropping them an email to make sure the USPS hasn't failed me.

Balancing Creativity And The Day Job

Unfortunately, most of us can't support ourselves with our prose, nor do we have patrons who pay our bills for us. So how do you cram a nine-to-five job, a commute, exercise, writing, a personal life, errands, chores, entertainment, and adequate sleep into a twenty-four hour day without totally losing your mind?

Saturday, 8:30-9:45 A.M.. Senate B

Jennifer Pelland (M), Catherine Lundoff, Caroline Stevermer, Jordan Castillo Price, Vandana Singh

Captain Jack's Big Gay Torchwood

The 21st century is when everything changes, and you've got to be ready.' Is Torchwood breaking new ground, or just depending on our prurient tastes to grab viewers? Or both? Or neither? How do the gay relationships on the show compare with the straight ones? Finally, let's hold a comparison among the various gay kisses portrayed on the show.

Saturday, 2:30-3:45 P.M., Capitol A

Naamen Tilahun (M), Jennifer Pelland, Mary Kay Kare, Penny Hill, Victoria Janssen

Taboo (Reading)

Sunday, 1:00-2:15 P.M.. Conference2

M.K. Hobson, Jennifer Pelland, Rachel Swirsky, Vylar Kaftan

Powerful Protagonists or Fetish Fantasies: Female Roles in Modern SF Television

This is a panel discussion about modern SF shows with strong female characters such as Xena, Buffy, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, and Doctor Who. We will look at how these shows portray women and debate whether these are truly feminist characters.

Monday, 10:00-11:15 A.M., Capitol B

Michael D. Thomas (M), Allison Morris, Jennifer Pelland, Jorjet Harper, Lynne Thomas

The main guest actress in next week's Doctor Who looked familiar, so I thought I'd look her up. Well, I've never seen her before, but...

( Title and teaser spoiler for episode six )

How utterly meta.

Discussion of this is welcome in the comments, but please don't spoil me on anything that wasn't in the teaser.

I think I've ironed out most of the rough spots in the dance I need to perform for my bellydance class next Monday. I even practiced in costume. It's funny how much better a dance looks when you're in full costume than when you're in yoga pants and a crop top. I don't know why I've been so bad at practicing. I really enjoyed it. But then again, there's a big difference between practicing when you've got all day at your disposal, and trying to squeeze in an hour in the evening after a full day of work.

I also handed over my new short short to my writing group (now tentatively titled "...That Has Such People in It"). I'm sure there's a better title out there somewhere, and with any luck, I'll find it before the writer's group meeting two weeks from now. That's my short story for the month, although I may try to finish "The Galaxy's Oldest Human Calls it Quits" this month as well. We'll see. I've got a bunch of WisCon crits to do, so maybe not.

Hell, I even did laundry and grocery shopping this weekend. If I manage to do my ironing, that'll pretty much knock it out of the park.

Apex Digest needs subscribers, just like Mars needs women! The skinny (from apexdigest):

Subscriptions are a measly $20 for 4 issues in the US. $24 for Canada/Mexico. $34 for the rest of the world.

We've re-initiated the APEX FOR LIFE subscription option that gives you Apex until you die. This goes for $100.

If you're interested in the magazine, but want to check it out before taking out a subscription, then take a look through our ample back catalog.

Or, heck, if you're wanting to show your support but not necessarily want a subscription, check out our ample back catalog.

Every person taking out APEX FOR LIFE subscriptions will be entered to win the following prizes:
1) ARC copy of Broken on the Wheel of Sex by Jack Ketchum (Overlook Connection)
2) Signed limited copy of Orpheus and the Pearl by Kim Paffenroth (Magus Press)
3) Signed copy of Homebody by Orson Scott Card
4) Limited signed copy of When Dark Descends by Charles L. Grand & Thomas F. Monteleone (Borderlands Press)
5) Hardcover copies of Gratia Placenti and Aegri Somnia edited by Gill Ainsworth and Jason Sizemore

Furthermore, every person taking out a lifetime subscription will receive a TPB copy of either Unwelcome Bodies or The Next Fix.

http://www.apexbookcompany.com/cart.php?m=product_list&c=2

Let me sweeten the pot a little. If you buy a lifetime subscription and choose to receive a copy of Unwelcome Bodies, you can choose one of the following from me:

1. a short story critique (up to 10K words)
2. being written into the next story I have published by Apex Digest (if enough people select this option, I reserve the right to spread the names out over two stories)

Banged out a 1,500 word story today, tentatively titled "No Future for You," but I know there's a better title lurking out there, and I'll find it. Earlier this week, I wrote 750 words of a new piece that has real potential, but I need to get off my butt and write some more of it soon. This one is tentatively titled "The Galaxy's Oldest Human Calls it Quits," and is an offshoot of Machine (my second novel). It feels weird cannibalizing my own work like this. I know writers do this all the time, but when I think about doing it myself, it feels like cheating. Shouldn't I be coming up with new ideas instead of mining old ones? I guess that's the short story writer in me talking. Although accomplished short story writers do it all the time. I suppose when you can count on being able to sell story after story to the same magazine, it's a luxury you can indulge in. Perhaps I'll be in that position some day.

My submission to Polyphony 7 has indeed made it to the final round. Decisions will be made on the final TOC during WisCon. I even emailed the editor to make sure that no news was good news and not instead news that the USPS had failed me.

Still nothing from F&SF, which makes me think that I must have gotten to GVG's desk. JJA rejections have never taken more than two weeks to get to me, and I'm now at the two-and-a-half week mark.

Here's the photo I mentioned last night (click to enlarge):



It's very likely going to be the postcard for the Tattooed Lady Project, and exhibit that Deborah Morgan (guinnessfloat) will be putting on at the Washington Street Art Center this July.

Any woman who can get a photo like this out of me is a photographic genius. The little star that I'm revealing? It's over my biopsy scar. About six or seven years ago, I had a breast cancer scare, but after the biopsy came back with a verdict of benign, and after my fibroadenoma went a full year without growing, I went to a tattoo parlor to put a star over the spot to make it a positive place again. Neither of us could find the actual scar (it was just a needle-core biopsy, so the scar was tiny), but after the tattoo healed, the scar was clearly visible dead center in the middle of the star. In this scaled-down version of the photo, you can kind of see the light spot in the middle of the tattoo.

Did I mention the Tattooed Lady Project? It's a photographic exhibit that Deborah Morgan (guinnessfloat) will be exhibiting at the Washington Street Art Center this July. I decided to face my fear of photography and sit for her a few weeks back. This evening, I got a phone call from her saying that she and her friends all agreed that one of the shots she took of me should be the picture they use on the postcard advertising the exhibit. I had her email me a copy just so I could be sure it was a shot I was happy with.

I fucking love the picture.

So I've given her permission, and asked for permission in return to share the photo with my friends. If she says yes, I'll be posting it here. If she gives me a "I'm not comfortable releasing this photo to the entire internet," then I'll post the photo in a friends-locked post. Apologies in advance to anyone who is not in my strictest friends filter, but I suspect I'll be able to show it to the entire world once the postcard comes out.

Why yes, yes I did. I already mentioned the lovely time I had chatting with my sole fan, damonmwhite (who showed me some of his really cool art portfolio). I also went to the most excellent Space Squid party (photos here), where I was addressed as "Ms. Pelland," as was befitting of someone of my stature (I was still at that point someone who had the potential to win the Nebula, and not a big old loser). Plus, they gave me a big stack of delicious chocolate chip cookies at the signing on Friday night, which I spent the weekend methodically making my way through. Then there was our discovery of just how much booze 6th Street had to offer, even in their movie theater, which was running Blade Runner: The Final Cut (I'd only ever seen the original theatrical version before this weekend). And the Natural History Museum didn't suck either (although using HIV to demonstrate how evolution worked was a real downer).

And, best of all, I reconnected with my best friend from high school, who I hadn't seen in twenty years. If you Google "Daniel Alexander Jones," you'll learn how wonderfully accomplished a playwright he's become in those twenty years. I am absolutely thrilled for him. And it was amazing how easily we fell back into conversation with each other after these two decades without contact. Seeing him again? The absolute highlight of the trip. And thankfully, he'll be back on the East Coast (in NYC) again once the semester is over, so we'll be able to do this again without involving airplanes.

So yes, I did have fun in Austin.