Back from World Fantasy!

Hey, I'm back. I'll be posting notes I took at the various panels starting later today. If anyone who participated in a panel requests, I will take their comments down, but I hope my notes will be helpful and enrich the community.

Oh, so for the record -- my name's not Anna. It's Erin. When I first started LJ, I had just read some posts by an author who had serious issues with stalkers and was concerned about her family's safety. As I have the most adorable child in the world, that struck a nerve with me, and I wanted to remain somewhat anonymous. As for why Anna Bennett Strong -- well, I was working on a mainstream novel (which is on the back burner now, as I had real trouble with getting it to work as either urban fantasy or magical realism, but with ghosts being a main part of it, and it not being horror, I knew I had to go some such route. So I'm working on other things while I let that brew in the back of my mind.), and that seemed like a good pseudonym for mainstream.

As for current projects, I have a number of short stories in various stages, from idea to edit. The novel I was going to do for NaNoWriMo (a thriller) wasn't compelling me. So, following the "Ooh, shiny!" pattern, I'm beginning work on a comic fantasy -- based on what the Madison Concourse might look like as drawn by Phil Foglio, if magic creatures inhabited it.

Posts to come later today.

Root canals suck

I went in for the second half of a root canal this morning. It was supposed to be simple clean-up and placement of the permanent filling. Ha! Turns out they missed one of the roots last week, and there was mild infection at the base of the other root, and my tooth curves weird. Three hours of work for another temporary filling and an appointment next week.

The right side of my face is split between numb and sore. I think I'll be skipping lunch today.

And don't even get me started on the bleach solution they used to rinse my mouth!

(Oh, and I'm not actually listening to Little Shop of Horrors right now, but it seemed appropriate.)

WFC: Gender-Bending Fantasy

The first panel of the con, at 2 p.m. on Thursday, was on Gender-Bending Fantasy. Panel members were Ellen Klages, Terry A. Garey, Jeanne Gomoll, and Jill Roberts. Justine Larbalestier had stayed in New York because Scott Westerfield was down with the flu.

At first, this panel was supposed to be to discuss the Tiptree Award, but the people proposing it were told that special interest groups couldn't have panels. So they renamed it to "gender-bending fantasy" and discussed the Tiptree anyway. The Tiptree Award is given to fiction that gives insight into what it means to be male, to be female, to cross over those lines -- without focusing on those issues. It is, to quote, for "science fiction or fantasy that explores or expands our understanding of gender roles."

"If we haven't pissed someone off, we're not doing our job." (Speaking of selection of the winner or winners.) They want controversy, and what is gender-bending changes with time.

All discussions of the judges are being archived for future scholars, but are not currently available. The time frame given was 50 years after death of the last juror.

This past year, there were two winners, Johanna Sinisalo for Not Before Sundown, a love story involving a troll, and Joe Haldeman for Camouflage, a story about shape-changing aliens on earth.

Ellen commented that people don't want to use the label "feminism" because that's over, we won -- which is pretty much what people's attitudes were about racism before Hurricane Katrina. (Side note: I don't describe myself as a feminist because most of the women I've met who do tend to be femi-Nazis, as i saw it described on another blog.)

A goal for this award is to make people uncomfortable in the right way. A lot of Tiptree winners are from small presses; big publishers tend to be scared of controversy. The closer you are to pushing the edge, the harder it is to get published. And if you are published, it will either disappear without a trace or be critically acclaimed.

Tiptree-winning fiction makes you squirm; it will never be mainstream.

Someone from the audience asked about supernatural/mystical androgyny, as in Hong Kong action flicks or Bridget Lynn. An editor (Jill Roberts?) said that if someone was writing that, she'd love to see it.

The panel said that everyone should report any fiction they think should be considered for the award. (Web site is http://www.tiptree.org). Fiction is not considered separately by length -- short stories or novels are considered equally.

WFC: Medicine for Writers

The second panel I attended, 3 p.m. on Thursday, was Medicine for Writers, with panelists Lisa Freitag (a pediatrician and program organizer for the con) and Angela Lathrop (a veterinarian). Their other title for the panel was "Maim 'em Right."

Lisa's pet peeve -- a movie, rather than a book -- was in LOTR. What really was wrong with Aragorn? Was it supposed to be a head injury? Makeup was all wrong, and he should've been experiencing symptoms for hours or days afterward unless he was mystically healed by Arwen -- in which case, why wasn't it instantaneous?

Angela's pet peeve involves anatomy and nomenclature. It's the carotid artery, not vein, and lots of other things would get in the way and get hurt too if you were cutting it.

There was some discussion of "flesh wound" being an undefined term.

Fighting with a dislocated shoulder: you can't. It's stuck, and the muscles won't be at the right angles to move.

Concussion: few seconds to a few minutes unconscious, some retrograde amnesia, nausea, headaches. (More discussion about Aragorn.)

They mentioned the existence of a Coma Scale, from 1 to 10. Angela commented it wasn't precisely the same because you can't ask animals questions like what the date is or who's president.

A question was asked about long-term memory loss and what triggers its return. "Weird stuff happens." No good answers. Joke about "trans-cranial magnetic waves"

How far can you fall and survive? Being feline helps. It depends on what you fall on, how you fall, whether there's something to absorb the shock, how limp you are, what the ratio of muscle to body size is . . . landing on the head is bad, though. They suggest trying for no more than 1-2 stories, though some kids have survived 3-4 story falls.

Recommendation for D. P. Lyle's Web site, where he answers questions on medicine/forensics (http://www.dplylemd.com).

Infection from a sword wound? Bacteria from the skin get pushed into the wound. Anything that pierces the gut allows the bacteria that are there to ooze out. How long to incubate? A couple hours for flesh-eating bacteria to several days. A person can pine away for a long time. Peeve of Lisa: sepsis. Sepsis is extreme condition that needs to be treated with long courses of antibiotics; don't have someone find the right herb in the wilderness, chew it once, and get immediately better.

Angela commented that chocolate really isn't as bad for dogs as they say -- more like having 5 cups of coffee. Arrhythmia, if bad enough, could kill. Can use this for not killing off an animal when would expect to. (Shucks! There goes my plan to get rid of werewolves by serving them mole!)

What about tetanus on swords? Tetanus has to come from somewhere. It's carried by spores, but they're not omnipresent. (Lisa comments that the best way to poison a sword is to poop on it -- and it has to be a deep wound, anaerobic.)

The Red Book, published by the CDC, describes illnesses, including incubation times. (Available on-line at http://aapredbook.aappublications.org)

Healing time for extensive second or third degree burns, if clothes on fire? First degree burns have red skin, no blisters, pain gone in a couple days. Second degree burns blister, peel off over a week, granulate from the edges, can take a couple weeks to heal -- need to keep covered to prevent infection and moisturized so the tissue doesn't dry out. Third degree burns ooze. If the skin is pink under the blister, it will grow back. If gray, need skin grafts. Watch for skin contractures -- need to keep pressure around joints to make sure skin grows right and joint can be moved later.

Catnip is effective on tigers. (They didn't say this, but from my grad school days, I know that catnip activates cat-specific serotonin receptors. Not all cats have tho same subtype of receptor, which is why not all cats are affected.)

Can treat wild animals at larger wet facilities. Angela told of a time they treated a mountain lion. They kept it in a horse stall that didn't go all the way to the ceiling. They realized the problem before it climbed up to get the horse put in the stall next door. They won't treat primates because they carry too many diseases humans are susceptible to, and they bite.

Adrenaline rush? Don't expect it to last too long, maybe a fraction of a minute. Lisa said she doesn't think there are any documented cases of mothers pulling cars off their children, etc. Can ignore injuries for a long time, though, unless bleeding too much.

"There is probably a reasonably medically accurate way to make what you want to happen, happen." (incapacitate, suffer, recover, etc.) Write it first, then get depth and detail by finding people it's happened to.