Mabfan's Musings

I'm desperately trying to find the time to write up a Readercon 20 report. In the meantime, I've managed to label all the photos in my Readercon 2009 gallery, and I've gotten all but two names. So for those of you who are interested, here's the list of people whose pictures appear in the gallery:

Scott Edelman, Kristin Janz, Chris Davis, Mike Allen, Bob Colby, Danielle Friedman, Hildy Silverman, Jennifer Pelland, Vylar Kaftan, Warren Lapine, Gordon Van Gelder, Tom Purdom, John Benson, Lev Grossman, Allen M. Steele, Robert J. Sawyer, Michael Bishop, Barry N. Malzberg, Todd Giles, Art Henderson, John Joseph Adams, Ian Randal Strock, Debra Doyle, James D. Macdonald, Drew Morse, Robert Killheffer, Michaela Roessner, F. Brett Cox, Paul Di Filippo, Stephen Frug, Sara Frug, Joseph Frug, Margaret Ronald, and of course Nomi and me.

And to answer the question posed earlier: my college friend is Lev Grossman, who is just about to publish his third novel, The Magicians. Hopefully, I'll have more to say about him (and others!) later on.

College Friends: Lev Grossman, Michael A. Burstein Photo copyright ©2009 by Nomi S. Burstein

In the midst of everything else going on, I didn't want to miss boosting the signal on this event.

Tomorrow evening, the Somerville Public Library is hosting a publication party for Mary Alexandra Agner, whose new book of poetry, The Doors of the Body, has just been published by Mayapple Press. Mary is a good friend; her poems rekindled my interest in poetry and actually got me more interested in the intersection between speculative fiction and poetry.

I'm planning to be at the party to join Mary in celebrating the publication of her book, and I encourage anyone who can to stop by and hear Mary read. It'll open your mind.

The event listing can be found here, but here's the pertinent details:

Mary Alexandra Agner Book Party & Reading

Join Somerville poet Mary Alexandra Agner as she celebrates the publication of her new book, The Doors of the Body (Mayapple Press.) Agner writes of dead women, telescopes, and secrets. All her life she has observed the universe and written about it. She can be found online at www.pantoum.org.

This event is free, and all are welcome to attend.

Date:
Thursday Jul 16, 2009

Time:
7:30 PM - 9:00 PM

Location:
West Branch Library, 40 College Avenue

If you're a friend of mine who reads this blog without an LJ account, and you want to be kept up to date on recent personal events in my life, send me an email.

Nomi and I spent the weekend at the Readercon 20 science fiction convention, and I'm still catching up from it. I'm hoping to have something of a report as soon as I can; in the meantime, if you want to see some pictures from the convention, as yet unlabeled, check out my Readercon 2009 Photo Gallery. Note that it's three pages of photos.

To make this more fun, one of the pictures shows me posing with a friend from college who was in the same dorm as me freshman year. Guess who it is.

Yes, it's true. Nomi and I will be at Readercon this weekend, although chances are we won't be wandering around a lot. More likely, Nomi will pick a place to sit and stay there, so we'll expect the wandering vortex to come toward her.

I will be bringing hardcover and softcover copies of I Remember the Future for anyone who wishes to purchase an autographed book directly from me. If you know you'll want one, let me know in advance which kind. Copies should be available at the SF Scope table and directly from me at my Sunday 12noon Autographing.

Speaking of which, here's my schedule, including descriptions (let me know if you have any questions):

Friday 6:00 PM, RI: Workshop (60 min.)

Speculative Poetry Workshop.  Mike Allen with participation by Leah Bobet, Michael A. Burstein, Vylar Kaftan, Ernest Lilley

What is speculative poetry? How do you write it, why would you want to, and which editors will buy it? Come prepared to write on the fly.

Saturday 12:00 Noon, ME/ CT: Talk / Discussion (60 min.)

The Genre Roots of the Mainstream Tradition in American Fiction.  C. C. Finlay with discussion by Michael A. Burstein, Helen Collins, F. Brett Cox, Debra Doyle, Chris Nakashima-Brown

The plots of Charles Brockden Brown, America's first novelist, frequently hinged on scientific speculation. Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne employed fantasy elements, Edgar Allen Poe invented a range of genre tropes, and  James Fenimore Cooper introduced the series character-a staple of modern genre fiction.  In the last century, some of F. Scott Fitzgerald's earliest works depend on fantastic elements.  Mainstream American writers, in fact, have regularly created fiction that would now be considered part of the speculative genre.  Finlay will argue that genre elements are not isolated in a separate branch of the American literary tradition, but are instead at the heart of it.

Sunday 10:00 AM, ME/ CT: Panel

The Future of Speculative Fiction Magazines, Part 1: Introduction / Print Magazines.  John Benson, Michael A. Burstein (L), Warren Lapine, Tom Purdom, Hildy Silverman, Gordon Van Gelder

Are print magazines doomed?  (Heck, if _newspapers_ can't make it ...)  Or will they survive in their tiny niches? Are there ways to make them more viable?  Is that even worth the bother?  After all, online magazines are now easy and relatively inexpensive to start-are they the answer?  Part one of our discussion begins with an overview and then examines the future of print magazines.

Sunday 12:00 Noon, Salon F: Autographing

Sunday 1:00 PM, Salon A: Panel

We Won, We Lost.  John Joseph Adams, Michael A. Burstein, F. Brett Cox (L), Paul Di Filippo, Robert Killheffer, Michaela Roessner

[Greatest Hit from Readercon 12.]  It's an sf world. Our once-visionary iconography is now commonplace. The present turns into the future even before we wear it comfortably, let alone wear it out, and this sense of constant change is now the common currency of our culture  rather than our precious private truth. And yet the sf readership shrinks, or at least gets older, every year; as sf media ascends (and merges with real life), the written sf word seems ever more irrelevant-and certainly wins no greater prestige for its creators than in the past. Maybe this has nothing to do with sf, but just reflects the death of reading (a development we perhaps ironically foresaw). But maybe somehow the contents of sf, the accidents, have conquered mass culture, but some crucial part of the form, the essence, has been left behind. Is it an sf world after all? Or just a holographic simulation of one?

Sunday 2:00 PM, RI: Talk / Discussion (60 min.)

Lasers, Death Rays, and the Quest for the Ultimate Weapon.  Jeff Hecht with discussion by Ian Randal Strock

Nature invented lightning bolts first, but the ancients put them in the hands of their mythical gods, and ever since we've had dreams of destruction in fiction and in fact. H.G. Wells armed his Martian invaders with heat rays; Nikoka Tesla and others tried to build real death rays. In 1958, the director of the then-new DARPA said his agency would be interested in far-out ideas like death rays, and a few months later Gordon Gould arrived at their door with a plan to build the laser. Hecht will talk about the real (and the questionable) science, the fictional visions, the bizarre history, and the quest for the ultimate weapon of directed energy.

As I mentioned before the weekend, although I was (and still am) recovering from oral surgery, on shabbat afternoon I was scheduled to give a talk at my shul. The fact that July 4, American Independence Day, fell on shabbat was amusingly convenient. For one thing, it was more specifically the shabbat of the combined parshiot of Chukas and Balak, and so I had a convenient excuse to wear my Democratic donkey tie. You see, parshas Balak is the one that includes the story of Balaam talking to his donkey, and since my tie includes donkeys along with stars and stripes colored in red, white, and blue...

But I digress. A few people have asked me to reproduce the talk here. Since my talks tend to be extemporaneous, I can't reproduce it exactly, but for those who are interested, here's a short recap.

I began by riffing on the rabbi's drash from the morning, in which he talked about the great leaders sent to the Jews and the non-Jews, and I gave my opinion that the founders of American independence could be considered great leaders among the non-Jews. From that tenuous connection, I talked about freedom of religion in this country, and how it was never really the plan at the start to extend those freedoms as far as they did. The original colonists who came to these shores wanted religious freedoms for themselves, and in the end it turned out that the only way to protect their own freedom of religion was to protect the same freedoms for the many other sects that disagreed with them.

The idea that those same freedoms ought to be extended to the Jewish people was not one that a lot of colonists really would have embraced in the 18th century, but then came Washington's letter to Touro Synagogue in August 1790. Below, I've provided a link to the historical background, but the basic story was that Washington was touring the country and paid a visit to Newport, Rhode Island. The warden of the synagogue wrote a letter to Washington, welcoming him and giving Washington his own vision of the United States as a place where there would be freedom of religion for all. Washington responded with a letter in which he copied many of the warden's own words and made it clear that he agreed with the idea of freedom of religion for all.

The simple fact is that the United States of American was the first country in history to give full and equal civil rights to the Jewish people, and Washington's letter to the Jews of Newport is an important part of American history, for it established the precedent that all non-Christian religions were meant to be afforded the same protections.

I concluded my talk by ruminating on how lucky we have it here in our ability to practice our religion the way we want, and how I can't be sure if I would be able to manage trying to practice my religion in a society in which I would be persecuted for it. For the most part, in the USA (and especially in Massachusetts) my biggest problem in practicing my religion is arranging my vacation days for my holidays.


If you want more background, the story behind the letter can be found here: Jewish Virtual Library: George Washington's Letter to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island. The letter itself can be found here: Teaching American History: Letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport by George Washington.

For those of you who don't know, or were wondering, yesterday I had my wisdom teeth taken out. I'm doing generally okay, and gnomi has been taking good care of me.

In the meantime, tomorrow afternoon I'm giving a talk at shul. In honor of the Independence Day holiday, I'm going to speak about one of two topics: either the Jewish roots of Captain America, or the letter George Washington sent to the Jews of Touro Synagogue.

More later....

So, a few weeks ago, madwriter asked me if I wanted a Hebrew copy of Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions that had come into his possession. Now, while it's true that I can pronounce Hebrew, I don't read it too well, but I figured why not. After all, Nomi could read it, and maybe one day I'd be able to.

Dangerous Visions in Hebrew Photo copyright ©2009 by Michael A. Burstein

Dangerous Visions in Hebrew, Frontispiece Photo copyright ©2009 by Michael A. Burstein

Danny explained to me why he wanted me to have the book, though, and when he did, I felt a lump in my throat. I said to him, "I'm touched you would consider this gift for us. Rest assured we will treasure the book and keep it with all the other important books in our library."

Here's why:

Book Provenance Photo copyright ©2009 by Michael A. Burstein. Text copyright ©2009 by Danny Adams.

In case it's hard for you to read, here's the text on the page:

This book previously belonged to my uncle, science fiction author (and anthology contributor) Philip José Farmer. I brought it from his home in Peoria, Illinois on June 9, 2009. From there I offered it as a gift to fellow sf writer Michael A. Burstein and his wife Nomi.

Thank you, Danny.

Nomi and I have arranged for a friend, Carsten Turner, who is a certified instructor, to teach us CPR and First Aid at our place. He's willing to open up his class to any of our friends in the area that want or need certification.

Carsten will be teaching layperson CPR for adult, child, and infant, including choke-saving (what was previously known as the Heimlich maneuver) and the use of AED, along with First Aid. If we can get a few more people to take the class, it'll only cost $50 per person for the CPR part, and $80 total for those who also stay for First Aid. In addition to getting a wallet card showing certification, you'll also get a book with a CD. Also, if anyone wants to purchase a pocket face mask, Carsten has wallet-size ones for $10 and a larger one that's $15.

We're planning to hold the class on Sunday, June 28 at our place, from 1 pm to about 6 pm. If you're interested in signing up, reply here or send me an email as soon as possible, as I need to give him a number by Wednesday.

Reading back over my previous discussion about valuing creator's work properly, I've been pondering the correct way to ask someone to provide something for free. Specifically, I've been thinking about the request I had received to allow a nonprofit to reprint a story of mine in exchange for exposure. And I asked myself, if they knew from the outset that they couldn't offer me any money at all, was there a way they could have asked me that would have led to my agreement?

I already noted that I would have been more amenable if the man who made the request had started by asking me what I would charge as a reprint fee, or if he had said that they didn't have a lot of money but had offered me a token sum. That would have acknowledged from the outset his understanding that my work had value to it. But then I thought of one other approach he could have taken. I can't be sure this would have done the trick, but I think I would have been receptive had he said the following:

"I'm sorry to say that I can't offer payment. Would you be willing to donate your work?"

I would have been a lot more comfortable with this kind of request. Why? Because the original "offer" implies that "exposure" is a valid form of payment. But the request as phrased above makes it clear that the publisher understands that the work has value, simply by using the word "donation." And it implies a level of respect for the creator and the work that the offer of payment by exposure does not.

Of course, that mostly works if the asker is running a nonprofit or a charity, and if the writer can afford it.

Writers do donate things all the time, such as signed copies of their work or the chance for a person to appear in a book, to charity auctions. But people need to keep in mind that just because someone is a writer doesn't mean that they can actually afford to make donations. The writers who can are usually ones more famous and better off than I am, and yet there are a lot of people out there who seem to think that if you're a fiction writer you're automatically very well off, even if they don't see your name on the Times bestseller list.

I wouldn't be surprised to see someone like Stephen King on an episode of Celebrity Jeopardy, trying to raise money for a good cause (and if Wikipedia is to be trusted, King did in fact appear on the show to raise money for the Bangor Public Library in 1995). But most of us who are writers would rather appear on Jeopardy for our own benefit, so we can avoid missing our mortgage payments.

If you do approach a writer for a donation, and you're turned down, you ought to be gracious about it. When I was just starting out, I got an email from some school asking me to make a donation of a personal item for a charity auction. (These requests are a lot more common than people realize.) I emailed back, explaining that I was a teacher myself (low-paid, of course, as many teachers are) and had agreed with my employer that I would only make such donations for my own school's auction. The other school's representative emailed me back indignantly, saying that he had never heard of such an arrangement and casting aspersions on my moral character because I wouldn't part with one of my possessions to help them out.

You can be sure that I crossed that school off my list of places I would ever help out if I found myself in a position to do so.

So let's go back to the question of Google and the artists that spurred these articles in the first place. Would it have been better or more appropriate for Google to ask the artists to donate their work instead of offering exposure? I would say no, that Google isn't in a position to ask artists to donate their work, for the obvious reason. Google isn't a charity; it's a company that makes a large profit every year and is looking to increase its own profits with wider distribution of their Chrome browser. In the end, I return to the point I made at the beginning: if Google thinks that the artists' work has value, they should be willing to match that value with payment.

Today is Nomi and my fourteenth anniversary. Often we try to get to a movie on our anniversary, but it's been a busy and tiring week. I think we might end up going out to dinner instead.

Which is more, I suppose, than anyone reading this really needs to know...

When I first wrote about Google's offer of exposure to the artists, I didn't think I'd be writing about it again for another two days running. But as I keep thinking about the questions of how much creative work is valued and how much it should be valued, more thoughts I want to share come to mind.

Today, I want to discuss the concept of an option, which is relevant when a writer is contacted regarding the film or television rights to a story or novel.

For those of you not in the business, let me give you a simple definition of an option. Writers usually do not sell film or television rights to their work outright, because there's always the chance that the person who buys those rights won't end up being able to make the film or TV show, and then you can't sell the rights again because someone else owns them. This actually happened to Isaac Asimov. Orson Welles expressed interest in his story "Evidence," and Asimov was so thrilled by the thought that Welles was planning to make a movie out of the story that he sold Welles the rights. Welles never did make the film, and when Asimov optioned the rights to the collection I, Robot years later, he couldn't include "Evidence" as part of the deal. (FYI, Asimov's I, Robot never got made; the Will Smith movie is a different animal entirely.)

So when "Hollywood" comes calling, the standard custom is that you don't sell them rights outright, but rather, you sell them the option to try to develop the property as a film within a certain period of time. Options payments are much smaller than the payment for rights, so it also benefits the producers, as they don't have to tie up a lot of their money in your work. And when an option is sold, the agreement signed by both parties includes a payment schedule and explanation of rights that will be sold should the option be "exercised." If the producer is able to sell the film to a studio, then you end up with a payment for the sale of the film rights, and that's the end of that.

(There are other details, of course, such as whether or not you're holding onto literary rights to your work, whether you get a percentage of licensing, etc. But those are mostly irrelevant to this current discussion.)

Now, believe it or not, I do get emails and calls from Hollywood, asking whether the film rights for various stories of mine are available. Fortunately, I have a lawyer to handle those details for me, because some of the time, the people calling want to purchase what we would call a "free option." You can probably guess what that means simply from the name, but just to be explicit, a free option means that the producer wants the right to try to develop your story as a movie for some period of time, but doesn't want to pay for the privilege of doing so.

I can see situations in which a writer might be willing to grant a free option. For example, if the producer who wants to develop the property is a close friend who is just starting out, and if you're a writer who is just starting out as well, it might make sense to grant the free option. Or if the producer can show some emotional investment in the work, you might be willing to let them have a free option because you think they will do right by it should the movie get made.

But I see two issues with that offer. The first one is that if the producer doesn't pay you anything for the option, they have less incentive to try to get the movie made. Giving you money is their investment in the property, and it's only by selling the final film to a studio that they're going to get their money back. So if a producer has a free option, where's the incentive to move forward on the project?

The other issue is that movie rights usually cannot be sold non-exclusively. In other words, I can't sell the film rights for one of my stories to (say) both Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox, as they're competing studios. (Well. I could try, but I would be laughed at.) So during the time that Joe Neoproducer has a free option to my story, its rights are tied up, and should Stephen Spielberg come knocking on my door, I wouldn't be able to sell him the option. I'd have to wait until the option with Joe expires. And I doubt Stephen is going to wait around that long, given that the rights are tied up with Joe.

But overwhelming both of those issues in my mind is again the concept of the value of my work. So if someone comes to me wanting a free option, I have one question rattling around in the back of my brain: if you feel my work has value, then why aren't you willing to pay for it?

My friend Robert J. Sawyer discussed this in his own blog two years ago, in the post Film Options. I like how he describes the concept of a free option:

I've got a lottery ticket; you want me to hand it to you so you can hold onto it until such time as the drawing is held. If it's a loser, well, then you'll give it back to me. And if it's a winner, then you'll make a small payment to me.

Exactly. If you think my story has value, and you think you can develop it and sell it to the movies and make a ton of money doing so, you should be willing to risk some of your own money from the outset. After all, you're asking me to take a risk as well.

Come back tomorrow, and I may have more to say on the value of our work.

And in other news...

In August, Nightshade Books will be publishing the collection of vampire stories By Blood We Live edited by John Joseph Adams. Jennifer Brozek has reviewed the book, and had this to say about my contribution, a reprint of my story "Lifeblood":

For me, there are three outstanding stories in this collection that shine above the rest. It is their writing, perspective, and originality that made these stories stick in my head long after I finished reading them...

“Lifeblood” by Michael A. Burstein – This story tells the tale of combating a vampire with faith – Jewish faith rather than the traditional Christian faith. The use of song and prayer within the song is a brilliant reinterpretation of brandishing the crucifix.

It's very high praise to have a reviewer cite my story as one of the three outstanding ones in the book, even more so when the name writers in the book include Neil Gaiman, Anne Rice, and Stephen King.

The review can be found here: Review of By Blood We Live. It's also on her blog at jennifer_brozek.

Maybe I should start writing my own vampire trilogy...

Yesterday I wrote about getting paid for creative work, and sifting through the comments I realize that there is a point I'd like to make clearer or address better.

To start with, I want to emphasize that my main point was not that doing creative work for free or for exposure is wrong. As I said yesterday, I've done some creative work for free myself, and I even have a friend who is doing pro bono creative work for me (although I did offer payment for it, and would be willing to pay, if she wanted).

My main point can best be illustrated by the following story.

In his autobiography, Isaac Asimov told of the time a woman of his acquaintance asked him if he would take on some volunteer project for the community. From what I remember, Asimov said he would have been fine doing the project, but then the acquaintance went on to say that she would have asked Dr. So-and-so, but Dr. So-and-so was a very busy man.

And that statement stopped Isaac Asimov cold. He was incensed that just because he was a writer, this acquaintance assumed that he wasn't busy and had plenty of time. What bothered him was her unwarranted assumption about his life as a freelance writer.

And that's what bothers me about Google's approach to the artists mentioned in the article. It's the assumption that of course an artist would be happy with exposure as payment. Because it's not Google who gets to make that decision – it's the artists.

In the end, I'd go back to Google and anyone else offering naught but exposure, and ask them this – who exactly do they think is going to pick up the slack and pay artists if word gets around that they'll work for exposure? At what point would Google consider an artist's work to be of value? (As sethg_prime noted in the comments, Google surely paid Scott McCloud to create the online 39-page comic book introducing Chrome to the world. If McCloud's art is worth paying for, why isn't everyone else's?)

Expectations need to be set accordingly.

(As an aside, there's a fascinating chapter in the book Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely about social norms, and how we keep them separate from market norms. Ariely has placed an excerpt from that chapter here, and I encourage everyone to take a look.)

As a freelance writer, I frequently find myself concerned with the question of how much a particular piece of writing is worth. In general, the market sets the rates for writing, usually offering a few cents a word for a piece of fiction and more than that for a piece of nonfiction. We tend to expect a professional website to offer something reasonable for the use of our work, even in the Internet era of quick links and frictionless copying. My basic rule is a simple one; if the magazine or website is making money by selling advertising or access to their content, then I should be given some sort of payment for generating that content in the first place.

Even if the site isn't making money on its own, if it serves as a loss leader for a company, I'd also expect to get paid. For example, if a TV network sets up a website to attract viewers, even if that site loses money on its own, overall the site is helping them with their bottom line. I would expect to be paid for whatever I provide them, just like they pay studios for the programs they broadcast.

So I was intrigued by this article I read in the New York Times this morning: Use Their Work Free? Some Artists Say No to Google. Google has invited dozens of prominent artists to contribute work that they will feature on their new Web browser, Chrome, and when some of the artists asked how much they would be paid for their art, the answer was nothing. Google released a statement in which they said that while they don't usually offer money for the use of the art in the browser, they feel that they would be giving the artists an opportunity to display their work in front of millions of people.

In other words, no money, but think of the exposure!

How I have come to hate that word.

A few years ago, someone whose name I won't mention wanted to reprint one of my stories in a booklet that a nonprofit organization planned to distribute to a variety of synagogues across the United States. I had passed along the story at the request of a mutual friend, and he was so excited by the story that he really wanted others to read it and be as moved by it as he was.

But when he asked if he could reprint the story, his first words were to tell me that he wouldn't pay anything, but he could offer me "exposure." It rankled me to hear that. He wouldn't consider not paying the costs of printing the booklets or distributing them, but when it came to the content, he didn't seem to grasp why it was so wrong to offer no compensation at all.

The irony here is that in this particular case I really didn't want a reprint fee, just respect. Had the guy approached me and asked what the reprint fee would have been – or even if he had said something like we don't have a large budget for this project but I can give you $10 – I would have replied thank you for asking, but for your cause I'm willing to let you have it for free.

This is not to say that I wouldn't write something and offer it for no charge. I've written for fanzines before, and I would never think of charging them for an article, because that's not how the model works. (Also, fanzine editors make it clear from the outset that they're not a paying market.) I don't get paid for my blog posts, obviously, as this blog is my communication with friends and fans. (I do keep a small link on the side of the front page to a PayPal button, because I don't want to deny someone the choice of making a donation if they'd like, but I don't push very hard for donations.)

And this is not to say that I don't write for "exposure" sometimes. The difference, though, is that when I write for "exposure" I'm doing it on my own terms. I'm choosing to provide articles or stories for friends or for partners, and usually there's an added quid pro quo that is no one's business but my own.

What bothers me most of all is that people who believe their own industry is of value often think nothing of asking writers to provide work for free. Or think we should be happy if our work gets distributed without permission. A few months ago, a friend of mine who is in one of the professional fields suggested that I should be happy if a story of mine got copied over and over on the Internet and earned me millions of readers. After all, isn't that what a writer wants, to be read?

Well, yes. But a writer also wants to be paid. Does a lawyer offer all of his or her services for free? Would a doctor be happy to not draw a fee and simply treat people without payment?

Would you be willing to do your own job for no payment?

I think the executives at Google who made this offer of "exposure" to artists need to answer that question for themselves.

saxikath and I were just in one of the office kitchens, where someone had not yet taken their toast from the toaster. The smell of the toast was fresh and crisp, and it reminded me of this little diner around the corner from my childhood home. The diner, at the top of the subway stairs, was run by Jack, a Greek-American with a mustache and an accent, and he used to make these delicious grilled cheese sandwiches. I remember when I was a kid, Mom used to take my brothers and me there, where we would eat the grilled cheese sandwiches and drink these frosty, thick, vanilla milkshakes.

Years later, Jack retired and sold the place, and it became one store after another. Jack found out that he didn't like retirement, so he took a job as a doorman at one of the neighborhood apartment buildings. Eventually he passed on.

I miss the diner. And now I'm craving a grilled cheese sandwich.

I'm waiting in Woods Hole for a ferry to Martha's Vineyard, where I'm spending the weekend with friends. To the best of my recollection, I've never been to Martha's Vineyard before, although once I almost spent the day there with my lab group.

The drive down took us past a town I used to visit a lot when I was in college, because I dated someone from there.

Also, I'm going to be back in this area again in just a few weeks. At one point during the drive, we were mere blocks away from the Falmouth Public Library, where I'm speaking in two weeks on an authors panel. I was very tempted to visit the library this morning and say hello to the reference librarian organizing the program.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Nomi and I have arranged for a friend, Carsten Turner, who is a certified instructor, to teach us CPR and First Aid at our place.  He's willing to open up his class to any of our friends in the area that want or need certification.

Carsten will be teaching layperson CPR for adult, child, and infant, including choke-saving (what was previously known as the Heimlich maneuver) and the use of AED, along with First Aid.  If we can get a few more people to take the class, it'll only cost $50 per person for the CPR part, and $80 total for those who also stay for First Aid. In addition to getting a wallet card showing certification, you'll also get a book with a CD.  Also, if anyone wants to purchase a pocket face mask, Carsten has wallet-size ones for $10 and a larger one that's $15.

We're planning to hold the class on Sunday, June 28 at our place.  If you're interested in signing up, reply here or send me an email.

This past Friday and Saturday marked the holiday of Shavuot on the Jewish calendar. Although Shavuot is one of the Biblically mandated holidays, it isn't as well-known as some of the other ones, such as Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, or Pesach (Passover). Thematically, though, it's still rather important, as among other things it commemorates the giving of the Torah.

This year, Nomi and I spent the holiday at the home of Nomi's sister's in-laws, who in many ways have become something of another set of parents for us. (They had also invited Nomi's parents, so we got to spend time with them as well.) Because we were guests, we had a chance to relax more than we would have had we stayed at home. If we had stayed at home, not only would we have done cooking and cleaning, but in my role as a gabbai at Kadimah I would have helped organize the services. Instead, I got to enjoy services organized by others at Congregation Shaarei Tefillah. I even got an aliyah, as a guest.

The one disappointment was that our hosts had invited 530nm330hz, introverte, and their family to join us for one of the meals, but in the end they couldn't come because the kids had gotten sick. Still, we got to see many other people in the Newton community, and it was a nice way to spend the holiday.

Last night ended my participation as a Book of the Month Club author in Joseph Mallozzi's book club, which he runs on his blog.

Joe runs the book club as follows. First, he announces the book a few months in advance and encourages everyone to go read it. Then, when the discussion week arrives, he posts his own thoughts about the book and encourages his readers to comment and ask questions. He passes along those questions to the author, who has as much time as needed to compose answers to the questions. Finally, Joe posts those answers on his blog, and the book club moves on to the next book.

It's been a lot of fun having I Remember the Future selected as one of the books for the month of May. I discovered that Joe's readers, while sometimes critical and analytical, are also very respectful. Whether or not they like a story, they explain exactly what worked for them and what didn't. And I have to admit that it was a thrill to have the book chosen by a producer of one of my favorite television show franchises. Joe noted my love of Stargate as well, in his introduction to the post with my answers:

When it comes to making a selection for our Book of the Month Club discussions, I like to take several things into consideration: recommendations, reviews, an intriguing premise, and, of course, whether or not the author is a Stargate fan. Well, when I learned that author Michael A. Burstein was an avid follower of the Stargate franchise, I was delighted to pick his book, I Remember the Future, for a May discussion. Michael is not only an established SF writer and fan of the show, but a blog regular as well and so it gives me great pleasure to turn today’s entry over to him.

Because I'm a fan of Stargate, I had an idea for an appropriate picture to go along with the post. Nomi agreed to the idea, and our friend Ari Baronofsky graciously agreed to take the picture and let us use it.

So the "author photo" that went along with my answers is a picture of Nomi and me posed with our DVD box set of Stargate SG-1: The Complete Series, which we purchased as a present to ourselves when it was released.

Anyway, here's the link if you want to see the picture for yourself, and maybe even read my answers:

Joseph Mallozzi's Weblog: Author Michael A. Burstein Answers Your Questions

And for any of Joe's readers who make it over here, a bonus question and answer. No one asked me what my favorite episodes of Stargate SG-1 were. So, in order of broadcast, here they are: 1969, Window of Opportunity, 2010, 2001, Wormhole X-treme!, and 200. Yeah, I tend to flock to the fan favorites....

What's that? My favorite episodes of Stargate Atlantis? That'll have to wait for later.