Teaching Blogging

Headed back into SteamCon in another hour or so for a couple of panels, one at 11 on H.G. Wells and one at 2 on "Rustproof Steampunk" (underwater stuff, of which I can think of only a few.) I've got to say, I really think it's one of the better organized cons around, and holy cow, are the costumes gorgeous. I go wearing my jeans rather than try to assemble some half-assed costume that simply could not measure up to some of the creations wandering around.

The reading last night was fine, and the subsequent panel (I should be posting the notes next week) a good and lively one, plus I got to meet someone else writing about VIctoria Woodhull! I'm pre-odering Michelle Black's SEANCE IN SEPIA, which comes out next week, right now!.

Today I have been writing! Costa Rica is fabulous, and we’re enjoying Jaco. Walked out for breakfast this morning and later on to the super mercado for groceries. My high school Spanish is, luckily, coming back in leaps and bounds.

I’ve been working not on a story set here, though, but one in Vegas. Here’s the beginning of what is looking like it will hit novelette length at least, “Carpe Glitter.”

Carpe glitter, my grandmother always said. Seize the glitter.

And that was what I remembered best about her: the glitter. A dazzle of rhinestone, a waft of Patou Joy, lipstick like a red banner across her mouth. Underneath all that, a worry little old lay with silver hair and vampire-pale skin.

Not that she was one, of course. But grandmother hung with everyone during her days in the Vegas crowd. Celebrities, presidents, they all came to her show at the Sparkle Dome, watched her strut her stuff in a black top hat and fishnet stockings, conjuring flames and doves (never card tricks, which she hated), making ghosts speak to loved ones in the audience and when she stepped off the stage, she left in a scintillating dazzle, like a fairy queen stepping off her throne.

All that shine. And at home?

She hoarded.

I mopped sweat off my forehead with the hem of my t-shirt and attacked another pile of magazines. No cat pee – I’d been spared that in these back rooms, closed off for at least a couple of decades. Grandmother had bought the house when she was at the height of her first fortune, just burst onto the stage magician scene, a woman from Brooklyn who’d trained herself in sleight of hand and studied under the most famous female stage of her time.

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