AletheaKontis.com

The subject of my next piece of artwork is a Brazilian witch named Bruxa Evora. My goal was to make her look a little like Morena Baccarin. NOT Tricia Helfer.  I think it’s the eyes.  And the chin. And…everything. Did some paint-overs last night. Got to love acrylics.

Now if I could just get this stupid Bob Dylan song out of my head…

So I was working on some questions for my upcoming interview with  to talk about his novel trilogy…which led me to EscapePod for a production of his short story "Pervert." Since I was in the neighborhood, I decided to catch up on my Hugo Award nominees, so I listened to "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" by Kij Johnson, "Exhalation" by Ted Chiang, and "Article of Faith" by Mike Resnick. As a bonus palate-cleanser, I added two quickies: "A Preference for Silence" by Lucy Snyder, and a side-trip tp Podcastle for "Elf Aware" by K. Tempest Bradford (who had a birthday yesterday — Happy birthday,  !).

Despite being a final-round judge for the Audie Awards, I’m not a complete convert to audiobooks — it’s got to be pretty freaking spectacular to keep my attention for HOURS (and there have been some…perhaps I’ll make a list of my favorites one of these days). My lack of patience makes me a great judge…and a big fan of podcasts of stories that run less than an hour long.

Here are my quickie reviews of this morning’s fare:
"Pervert" — Odd. I got the point of the message, but the setting didn’t quite suck me in.
"26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" — Fun, light, and a good message.
"Exhalation" — A little long, but very well done, and beautifully executed. I see why I should be a fan of Ted Chiang.
"Article of Faith" — one of those classic talking head SF stories that is the exact reason some of that old-school preachy SF is not my cup of tea.
"A Preference for Silence." — Evil, and fun. Go, Lucy!
"Elf Aware" — I have to say, of all of the above, this tiny tidbit was my favorite. It was an emotional little piece, and the reader (Marguerite Croft) had the PERFECT voice for this. Highly, highly recommended.

Of course, I had another reason for doing some research on podcasting stories this morning…keep an eye on Apex Magazine to find out!

Where you can drink Tea in Space, the possibilities are infinite. Join Ingram buyers Alethea Kontis, Janet Lee, Kitti McConnell, and Lillie Rainey for tea and conversation, as they discuss the universe of genre fiction. This month, the Genre Chicks serve up Cecelia Ahern’s Thanks for the Memories, a new hardcover release from HarperCollins.

*

I became a fan of Cecilia Ahern through her amazingly performed audiobooks. If You Could See Me Now, There’s No Place Like Here, and of course the very popular PS, I Love You. All of Cecelia’s books have fantastic characters, great dialogue, and that slight fantastic edge — as any Irish girl worth her salt would.

Thanks for the Memories begins in the same magical vein. Justin Hitchcock is a visiting art history professor at Trinity College who reluctantly donates blood to impress a woman. In another part of Ireland, Joyce Conway falls down the stairs in her home and loses her baby. She wakes up in the hospital after a transfusion and suddenly speaks three languages and begins experiencing memories that are not her own.

Listen to the discussion here!

I was all set to write an Apex essay about introverts and tornadoes, but–as happens to writers from time to time–recent events compelled me to take my thoughts in another direction. Not about the huge lot of repairs my car suddenly needs, or the Unabomber squirrel who’s taken up residence in my attic, or the convention season I’m about to throw myself into, or–god forbid–Amazon.Fail. No, what’s been occupying my mind for the last few days nonstop has been Susan Boyle, Hero of the World.

If you’ve been hiding under a rock and haven’t managed to see Susan Boyle shock the world, watch it here. It’s seven minutes of your life you’ll be happy to lose over and over again. Don’t read the rest of this essay until you’ve seen it. And you might want a box of tissues handy.

I’m not sure what moment it was that I burst into tears watching this video. It might have been when that one girl in the audience turned up her nose incredulously. It might have been when Susan admitted to having never been kissed, or when she stumbled over the word "villages." It might have been after the second line of her song, when the audience all jumped to their feet in applause. It might have been Simon’s face, sighing and smiling like a kid who’s just been given the greatest gift in the universe. Someday I want to be looked at like that. Someday, I think we all do.

Whenever it was, I suddenly realized there was all this pressure in my chest and tears streaming down my cheeks. Like the Grinch,my heart grew so large it was hard to breathe. I have no idea what I was feeling then, but riding the crest of that wave of emotions was pride. I knew one thing without a doubt: Susan Boyle is my hero. And judging by the responses on Twitter and the posts I’ve seen scattered about the web, I’m not the only one who thinks so.

It was author C.E. "Catie" Murphy on whose blog I discovered Susan; if I didn’t love Catie to death already I’d certainly have reason to now. "What I love is how happy everybody is to share it," Catie wrote me. "She just keeps reminding me that everyone has hidden gifts."

It’s no secret that the world loves an underdog. It’s a foil, a trope on which many a book or movie has made millions. It’s the meek who inherit the earth. It’s the girl next door who lands on the moon. It’s the autistic boy who runs in the winning touchdown. It’s the Jamaican Olympic bobsled team. It’s the kid from Hawaii who becomes President of the United States. Dad once told me that he didn’t have to be a fan of a particular team in order to enjoy a sports game–he just sided with whoever was losing when he turned the television on. It made the game more worth the winning. Author Diana Rowland agrees that Susan Boyle’s story is right on par. "It’s the ultimate feel-good movie, boiled down into seven glorious minutes," she said. "Absolutely marvelous."

But forget movies–this is real life. Remember that man who saved the guy by pulling him under the subway? Remember the folks who helped get the kids out of the bus when that bridge collapsed? There are heroes living among us right here, right now. Any of us might be called to duty next, though few of us are actually brave enough to do so. What color is your soul? Do you have what it takes to bare it to this harsh, unforgiving world? Artists, writers, musicians — we folks claim to do this all the time. But do we? Do we really?

Consider the state of the world right now: we’re all afraid. We’re afraid of losing our jobs. We’re afraid of the stock market tanking all our 401Ks. We’re afraid of not being able to pay the rent or the mortgage. We’re afraid that storms or earthquakes will come and sweep away our houses like they’ve never been. We’re afraid we’ve been destroying the Earth all this time, and now it’s too late to take it back. We are ready to be mugged any minute by the monster in the back alley hungry to take our future, our identities, our homes, our jobs, and our lives. During the Cold War we were scared of the Russians. After 9/11 and 7/7 we were scared of terrorists. Now, it seems, we’re scared of everything. "What we get most of the time are horror stories," said Catie. "Imagine how much better the world might be if every day we were seeing stories like Susan Boyle’s headlining the news."

Indeed, what the world needed was not Spider-Man, or some alien from Krypton. The world needed some dowdy, pie-faced, forty-seven-year-old woman from nowhere, Scotland to step right up and show us the rainbow colors of her soul.

The moment she opened her mouth and sang that dream, Susan Boyle became a mirror to us all. We are all nervous and apprehensive, we are all overweight and unremarkable, we are all from a town no one’s ever heard of, we all have a cat named Pebbles, and we’ve all never been kissed. We’re not smart. We haven’t saved the world. We’re all hiding out on the Internet pretending we’re not lonely. Upon first glance, people look down on us. They yearn to make a snarky comment at our expense. They don’t know us. They don’t have to. They can go on living their petty, selfish lives without granting us so much as a passing glance. "We really can’t tell much of anything by looking at people," said Catie. "We justdon’t know anything about each other. My grandfather used to say there was something to learn from everybody. I think that’s true."

Deep down, we are all beautiful. We are all something special. We do make a difference, and we can change the world. The moment we touch someone else’s life, that person’s life changes. We are all Susan Boyle, and she is us. She taught us a lesson about who we were, and who we had the potential to be. And she shamed us all for misjudging her. "She showed that she deserved to be where she was," said Diana. "She deserved the standing ovation, and she knows that no one will ever snicker or roll their eyes at her again."

Susan’s song choice was simply icing on the cake. "I Dreamed a Dream," from Les Miserables has always been a beautiful song– be sure to look up the lyrics and read them all the way through. "I had a dream my life would be / So different from this hell I’m living…" In many ways, those words could be an anthem for our time. As Catie so eloquently put it, Susan Boyle’s performance was "a spark of brightness that offered some balance to a badly unbalanced world."

We all have hopes, and we all have dreams. Funny thing about dreams. A few decades ago, a thirty-four-year-old black doctor opened his mouth and told us about a dream he’d had. It was as much of an inspiration then as it is now.

No matter how old you are, you can be anything you want in this life. You can be a hero.  Just remember: heroes are as heroes do.

An interview in which Rich Dansky calls me a really cool person, and I proceed to act like a Geek Extraordinaire.
[Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Lee? Really?!? *smacks forehead*]

(Okay — technically I’m at Exit 76, but that’s how the song goes.)

The area right off Exit 76 is like a war zone. You used to take a left and stop at a traffic light right in front of the new hotel…there’s not a traffic light there anymore. I don’t mean it’s out — I mean IT’S GONE. You can see the stumps where the signs used to be. There’s a trailer set up as a control center for the Sheriff’s department — there must have been 100 cop cars along the street in front and to the side of it. None of the stoplights or streetlights on Medical Center Blvd are working, and The Avenue is completely dark. All I could see were flashing lights and men in reflectored jackets, escorting us along.

Every muscle in my body immediately started to shake. It was the first time today I had really been scared…but I was really scared. Happily, the next major intersection (Thompson Lane) had a working stoplight, and I drove into a land of electricity and life.

A couple of years ago, Mom gave me a timer, so that I never again had to return home to a dark house. I currently have a string of magenta Christmas lights plugged into it. I didn’t have power when I left the house this morning — all I could think as I turned the corner by the Boys & Girls Club was "Please let there be pink lights. Please let there be pink lights." And there were.

My house is in one piece, there are no trees down (hey – maybe my neighbors will now finally get rid of the dead tree on my fence!), and I have electricity.

And, for all of you who were worried about him, Charlie’s safe too. I found him in the bathtub with a bicycle helmet on, along with our usual Tornado Warning gear. That’s my boy.

This picture was taken from the Toot’s parking lot, about 100 yards from my house.
Mom, I AM OKAY. I’m at work.
Whether or not I still have a house remains to be seen.
I will be so mad if my teddy bear went to Oz without me.

I’m trying to kill myself with busy. It’s absolutely fantastic.
Which means that, apart from Twitter, I haven’t been around much.
The storms haven’t swept me away. I’m still here.
And I still have my camera.

More pics here.

David MacInnis Gill and I first met at Orson Scott Card’s week-long literary writing boot camp back in 2003. As an assignment, we all had to write a story in 24 hours. Mine was about a magical society of Victorian Lady Etchers. David’s was about space crabs. He won all the points for originality.

I can’t tell you how proud I was to hold the advance reader’s copy of David’s debut YA novel in my hot little hands. I knew that no matter what deal Bug Smoot made with the devil for her car, she was going to keep surprising me all the way to the end. And with a title like Soul Enchilada, David still wins all the points for originality.

Alethea Kontis: What make & model was your first car? What kind of car do you drive now?

David MacInnis Gill: My first car was a very used 1970 Buick Regal with a four barrel carburetor and a V-8 engine. It could flat-out fly. Sadly, it caught fire driving up Lookout Mountain and burned to the frame. I now drive a Toyota RAV-4. There’s nothing fiery about it.

AK: What was your dream car back then? Now?

DMG: 1958 Chevy Apache Short Bed Pickup. Then and now.

AK: How spicy do you like your food?

DMG: Hot. Very hot. So hot that the menu warns you not to touch your eyes while eating.

AK: People always ask about the genesis of ideas, but what inspired this novel in particular?

DMG: The idea came from a fellow writer, James Maxey, who gave me three story seeds as part of a competition to tell the most original Halloween story: A chocolate crucifix, the anti-ghost, and blistered roses. My job was to construct a tale using those elements, and the first image that came to mind was of a young man holding a pair of Twix bars to fend off a vampire. Except a vampire was way too easy. I tried to think of some other supernatural creature, one that would be offended by chocolate. Clearly, it had to be a demon, because chocolate is everything good in the world.

AK: What was your first job?

DMG: House painter. I started when I was six years old. I worked for my father. The first thing I ever painted was a door. I think it took two hours.

AK: Have you ever promised someone something you wish you hadn’t?

DMG: I once promised my father he could drive my Buick Regal up Lookout Mountain…

AK: What temperature would you guess would constitute a “cold day in Hell”?

DMG: -1 degrees Kelvin.

AK:  What sort of research did you do for this book? (Repo men, car washes, lawyers, witches, priests?)

DMG: Quite a bit, now that I look back on it. I’ve never celebrated Dia de los Muertos or been to El Paso, where the novel is set. So I used travel books, National Geographic, newspapers, and local forums (to get that authentic flavor of grumpiness that only natives can lend to a locale). My critique partners were a huge help, too, especially with smells, flavors, and sounds. To create the fusion of mythology, religion, and pop culture, I studied the Bible, the Testament of Solomon, and Old Scratch folk stories such as The Devil and Tom Walker. I also made several trips through a car wash and spent two hours in a convenience store examining its shelves and blocking out a food fight scene. The cashier thought I was shoplifting Cheez Whiz.

AK: Have you ever witnessed any supernatural events?

DMG: I wish. I’ve gone on ghost walks, stayed in haunted hotels, and eaten in spooky restaurants. I witnessed nothing scary, not even food that was a danger to my eyeballs. I have, however, seen UFOs and met Bruce Springsteen in person.

AK: What were your favorite books as a teen?

DMG: Logan’s Run, Lord Foul’s Bane (I seemed like to titles with possessives in them), Goodbye Columbus, The Amityville Horror, everything Stephen King (especially Salem’s Lot), and of course, Lord of the Rings. You know, books full of repo men, car washes, lawyers, witches, and priests. Not to mention hobbits.

AK: In your opinion, who was the most talented student in Orson Scott Card’s 2003 Literary Writing Boot Camp? (Other than you, of course.)

DMG: That would be the Amazingly Awesome Angel-Among-Demons Alethea Kontis.
Could there ever any doubt?

AK: If you could be any superhero or have any superpower, who/what would it be?

DMG: When I was in fifth grade, I wanted to be Captain America. I even practiced slinging a shield like him. Unfortunately, the shield was actually a rusted out washboard, which I had to stop slinging when I wounded my cousin in the forehead. Now, I would like to be Ghostrider. A kick-butt chopper AND a flaming skull? Who could ask for more?

Happy birthday, Anne McCaffrey.