Take a swim on the wild side

Posted on June 10, 2017 by José Iriarte

My family and I just spend a week at Madeira Beach, which near as I can tell is halfway between Clearwater and St. Pete Beach. We’ve stayed at the beach before, but for some reason we had a lot more encounters with sea life this time around. Apparently it’s totally a locally-known thing that dolphins pretty much parade down the inlet between Madeira Beach and Treasure Island right at dusk every night, and we were lucky enough to get to see this. I took a picture on my phone, though it’s not very good, because phone and because dusk and because distance, but here it is anyway:

Seen: dolphins, or possibly seaweed.

A couple nights later I went out for my walk-jog and had more or less the same view. Getting to see dolphins was a reasonably fair compensation for the sudden unaccustomed presence of bridges on my route.

I had my closest sea life encounter yesterday, though, when I was actually in the water. I was facing the shore, making sure I didn’t get carried too far from my stuff, when I heard a snort behind me. I turned around to came face to face with a snout, not four feet away. In hindsight, it was a manatee, coming up for air, but I admit, seeing nothing but snout, my first thought was sea lion. Which doesn’t make a lick of sense, I know, but cut me some slack—I was neck deep in the soup with it, whatever it was. So I pretty much blurted out jesuschrist and it turned and went away.

Next time I’ll bring a head of lettuce with me.

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Your AHCA Math Lesson

Posted on June 8, 2017 by José Iriarte

Every year at some point I end up teaching about mean versus median as measures of central tendency. The mean has the advantage of representing all the data points, but that same advantage can be its weakness, of there are outliers in the data. I typically make up some off-the-cuff example where I pretend I’m an employer and four or five of the kids in my class, usually one of the rows, are my employees, and list their salaries as $10,000/year, $10,000/year, $10,000/year, $10,000/year, and $120,000/year (I often jokingly suggest that this employee is my niece or nephew). I then point out that I can honestly say to prospective employees that they should come work for me because there is a lot of potential for salary growth at my company: the mean salary is $32,000/year. This is technically true, but not a fair representation of the salary situation at my company—the median salary of $10,000/year would be a far better representation of what a new hire could expect to be paid by me.

Well it illustrates the point, but it’s an extreme and far-fetched example, right?

Enter TrumpCare:

The average federal tax cut under the AHCA (read: our collective kickback for dismantling healthcare, such as it was) is $600, and yet more than 80% of taxpayers will get less than this? Why, how is this possible? There must be some truly dramatic outlier to make this—oh, there it is, on the right.

Posted in math, rants | 1 Comment

What are YOU gonna sing?

Posted on June 7, 2017 by José Iriarte

I’ve blogged before about how much I enjoy karaoke. I’ve been enjoying it more, recently, after a year or two during which I felt my range substantially diminish. I’ve been working on strengthening my voice and it seems to be paying off and I’m remembering what it’s like to really enjoy singing—and only just beginning to realize how much that joy had diminished.

Last night I was out singing and I had an annoying interaction I’ve had before, and it got me thinking about low grade anxiety, and how different people process anxiety in general.

I don’t suffer much from stage fright. I do get a bit of nervousness before I take a stage for any reason, but usually it’s the good kind–the hyper-alert in-the-moment adrenaline-rush that makes being on stage a rewarding experience, not a terror-filled one. So it might seem contradictory to talk about anxiety with regard to singing, but like I said, the nerves are still there, it’s just not particularly crippling.

So once or twice a year there’ll be some stranger seeing me getting ready to sing. Invariably I haven’t sung yet that night, or I sang before they came into the joint, so they haven’t heard me sing yet. And they ask me, “What are you gonna sing?” And I always react in kind of a stand-offish way. “Wait and see!” or, “I’m not sure yet!” And then they always get pissed at me and I’ve got someone in the audience guaranteed to be unfriendly to me.

But from my perspective, that can go one of two ways: 1) It’s a song they love, in which case now they won’t react with pleasant surprise once I start singing it because they already know it’s coming, or 2) It’s a song they don’t like or have never heard of, in which case their unenthusiastic response to hearing what’s coming will harsh my own enthusiasm before I even get to sing.

Or it’s a song they love but I won’t sing it well. Or it’s a song they love and I can sing it well, but I don’t look like the right kind of person to sing it.

(Last night, as it happened, I was getting ready to sing “Rosalinda’s Eyes,” a really obscure Billy Joel song that nobody’s ever heard of. I chose it specifically  because I’d never seen it on a karaoke list before, so I was excited to sing something I’d never sung before. Only then it turned out that even though the song was on the list, they didn’t actually have it. So I really didn’t know what I was going to sing.)

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about my own reaction, why I can’t just deal with it and move on, and I think it’s because it messes with that low grade stage fright. It makes me just a little more conscious of being judged, either on the coolness of the song, the quality of my performance, or on my own presentation. And so that low-grade not a problem stage fright becomes ever-so-slightly magnified by the interaction. Not enough to make me not want to sing anymore, but enough to make the experience just a bit less fun.

And it makes me think about other times when I or other people are dealing with anxiety. There’s this idea that anxiety is very visible—trembling, vomiting, stuff like that—but everyday anxiety can be much quieter than that. I do experience anxiety in other aspects of my life, and I think often people around me don’t know I’m experiencing it.

Maybe I miss the signs when people around me are experiencing their own anxiety, and I fail to be as . . . helpful/accommodating/up-building as I could be.

It’s something to think about.

Posted in blargety-blog, music | Leave a comment

Pretending to still love them

Posted on June 5, 2017 by José Iriarte

There’s this weird thing about being a selling writer that is obvious in retrospect, but that I totally didn’t see coming. When I write my stories, I feel varying levels of excitement about each one. But on some level, I have some love for each one, some sense that I’ve got something really good here, or I wouldn’t have finished writing it—or at the very least, I wouldn’t shop it. I am really comfortable trunking my own work and just shopping around the stories I think are any good.

So I’ll have this story, and I think it doesn’t totally stink, and maybe I’ll get feedback on it and my first readers—readers I can count on to tell me if something absolutely doesn’t work—will get excited and tell me I’ve got something good here . . . and then I start shopping the story . . .

Now I have had one story sell on its first time out the door (*bounce*bounce*bounce*) and quite a few of them sell on the second trip out, so I’m not talking about those right now. But some stories take a while to find their market. I’m not sure what the longest wait I’ve had between writing a story and selling it, but I’m sure it is measured in years. I think my record before selling a story is seventeen or eighteen rejections, but I think I have at least one still-not-trunked story that’s been rejected more times.

And every rejection carries with it the message, nope, this story isn’t good enough. I don’t need people to reassure me that this isn’t so, to share stories about stories that have been bought after multiple rejections, stories that have won awards after only being bought after multiple rejections . . . the intellect knows all this. Heck, as noted above, I myself have sold stories after multiple rejections. This isn’t an intellect thing, it’s a heart thing. My purpose in posting isn’t to seek reassurance, but to chronicle the things I experience and feel.

So I might spend a year or two being told over and over again that this story isn’t quite good enough, when suddenly it sells. Now the story gets published, and I need to promote it, but I no longer believe in it quite as strongly as I once did. More confusingly, I’ll have people read the story and really like it a lot and tell me it’s terrific, and it’s all cognitive dissonance for me, because I had a quiet year or two of becoming convinced the story wasn’t very good.

This is on my mind because I’ve got a story I’m getting ready to submit in the next few days, a story I care about more than most, but the (merely!) four rejections I’ve already gotten on it have already tarnished my feelings about it. And so there’s a bit of a hesitation I feel before hitting the submit button. Not enough to stop me, because you can’t sell anything if you don’t try. But enough to make me a bit gun-shy.

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Giving thanks for 5Calls.org, or, How Donald Trump is making me a better citizen

Posted on June 2, 2017 by José Iriarte

Not too long ago, somebody I followed on Twitter was wondering basically where and how our dystopian novel hero would arise. A decade or so ago it seemed we were getting fed a steady diet of dystopian young adult novels and movies, and now here we are seeing the evolution of religious-pandering, right-stealing, corporate swamp-building kleptocracy, and so what are we doing about it besides wringing our hands?

Well making phone calls doesn’t make much for action heroes, but I guess I’m too privileged to start blowing shit up, or too old and fat to be an action hero anyway . . . or maybe I still believe we haven’t quite gone over the precipice yet, and that it’s not too late for raising our voices and demonstrating and asking our representatives to actually represent us instead of their corporate sponsors. I’m probably naïve, but what the heck.

So my answer to the question “What moved you from outrage to action” was 5calls.org, because it basically took away every excuse I had for sitting on my butt and doing nothing. (Obviously 5calls shares my biases, so I don’t know what you do to be more civic-minded if your biases lean in a different direction from mine. I suppose issues are issues, so you could still use 5calls but change the script to reflect your POV. I customize all my scripts anyway.)

Some other online resources that I’ve been using include Town Hall Project and Indivisible. Which brings me to another point. It’s not heroic to spend five minutes making a few phone calls. It’s slightly better than nothing, is what it is. But what is more heroic is the people who are organizing these and other resources, along with the people organizing marches and protests and other actual civic action. And the people setting the example. A big part of what’s gotten me started is watching my friend Mike, who has formed a local resistance group and updates a facebook page with scripts every day on the major issues that are of interest to his group. I don’t live in his area, but I get his updates anyway, and each day’s update comes with an unspoken question from me to myself: What the hell are you doing, Joe?

And to bring this all the way back around to the title of this blog post, no, I’m not grateful to Donald Trump for a single thing, but it’s interesting that all of these years I could have been a more active, vocal supporter of the things I believe in. I donated money to politicians and to causes and groups whose mission I believed in, but I never called anybody, and I never showed up anywhere. I’m reminded a bit about how I got to know my neighbors in Miami so much better after Hurricane Andrew destroyed all our houses and we had to pitch together to share resources. Maybe it takes a disaster, like Donald Trump, to make us see what we’re capable of.

Posted in close to home, first world problems, tech geek, this I believe | 3 Comments

Some terrific short-stories of 2016

Posted on December 31, 2016 by José Iriarte

You do something two or three times, suddenly it’s a tradition. Here now is a non-exhaustive list of stories I loved in 2016. I may add to it in the coming weeks.

“Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0,” by Caroline Yoachim: Is this a funny sci-fi choose-your-own adventure, or a maddening documentary about our health system? ¿Porqué no los dos? Read this and laugh through your tears! Caroline is a regular in my year-end faves lists.

“The First Confirmed Case of Non-Corporeal Recursion: Patient Anita R.,” by Benjamin C. Kinney: The premise of this one is immediately engaging. It’s a ghost story, but it’s a science story. Figuring out the rules was a compelling puzzle. The characters have heart, and the ending left me smiling.

“Left Behind,” by Cat Rambo: Don’t worry, this isn’t some end-of-days rapture story. This story checks off a lot of elements that push my personal buttons–it’s an emotional story about aging, how we treat people when they become old enough to depend on us, and it features uploaded consciousnesses and virtual worlds, which are among my favorite spec tropes to read about.

“Four Haunted Houses,” by Adam-Troy Castro: I don’t consume very much horror. I generally don’t like horror movies and actively detest gore and jump scares. Lately, though, I’ve started to read a little bit of short horror fiction as I start to grasp that the literary genre of horror fiction is a very different thing from the film genre. This story is a perfect case in point. I love how this story begins breezily, self-aware, almost tongue-in-cheek, and lures the reader in, and I love how the actual horror at the end is rooted in real-world emotional trauma, how the story seems to say, Why are you afraid of these silly things, when the real scary things are the ones you allow into your life without even being conscious of it.

“When You Work for the Old Ones,” by Sandra McDonald: I seem to be developing a taste for horror stories as my years advance–or maybe it’s that the world is becoming so horrifying. In any case, I really enjoyed this creepy short. Like “Four Haunted Houses,” it starts off more amusing than horrifying, before taking a rather chilling turn, and I couldn’t help wondering if “working for the old ones” was a metaphor for being a freelance fiction writer. This story is a great example of what you can do in a very small space.

“Of Sight, of Mind, of Heart,” by Samantha Murray: If you know me, you know I love the stories that punch you in the gut. This story gave me all the parental feels. My daughters are about to finish high school this year and move on to whatever comes next, and I get emotional just thinking about graduation. This story encapsulated that journey into just a couple thousand words, against the backdrop of an interstellar war.

“Every Day Is the Full Moon,” by Carlie St. George: At first I read the mentions of werewolves, oracles, etc to be magic realism, which I love. Gradually it became clear that this was more straight fantasy in a contemporary setting, but with the fantasy elements still being used to illuminate the characters–the werewolf who is also just an asshole, the Valkyrie who can’t stand up to the asshole, the oracle who doesn’t see what’s coming for her, the girl with suicidal ideation who turns out to be . . . well that would just spoil things. The characters here felt real and I ached for them and loved them and wanted them to muddle their way through. I found this story unflinching but ultimately hopeful.

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My 2016 Award Eligibility Post

Posted on December 10, 2016 by José Iriarte

I was going to pass on doing an award eligibility post this year, though I’ve had several publications I am very proud of. I felt like all the information on my publications was already available elsewhere on this site, so I just wrote a facebook post pointing readers toward my favorite of my stories this year. But then it was beaten into pointed out to me that people who were unlikely to see my facebook post and who were unlikely to go digging through my bibliography were much more willing to follow a link to a post such as this one, so here we are.

These are the stories of mine that are eligible for awards for 2016. I would not want to receive an award on the basis of anything other than people’s genuine love of a story I wrote, so please don’t think of this as me asking for nominations or votes. If you are nominating for short fiction awards or are voting for short fiction awards, please nominate and vote for the best stories you have read. But if you haven’t read any of my stories, I would like to at least be in your consideration.

“Life in Stone Glass and Plastic,” published in Strange Horizons in June. This is my favorite of my stories. It’s gotten nice reviews from the various websites that report on the short fiction scene, and was even the subject of a lengthy discussion on the Literary Roadhouse podcast. It’s a story about the power and purpose of art, and about love and loss and aging. If you like stories with a hint of magic and a lot of emotion, then you might like this one.

“The Curse of Giants,” published in Daily Science Fiction in March. This is my most popular stories; it’s the first story for which I ever received “fan mail.” It’s a very short piece with a lot of punch, so if you prefer to read something flash length, this might be the story for you.  This is a story where the spec element is left ambiguous in meaning, which doesn’t appeal to some readers but does appeal to me. It’s also the story of mine which I think is most poetic in craft. Content warning: child abuse.

“Spirit of Home,” published in Terraform in June. This is a very personal little story using the popular trope of colonizing Mars as a metaphor for my own complicated relationship with Cuba. If you are particularly seeking out #ownvoices stories dealing with issues of ethnicity—like, say, if you’re reading for the Carl Brandon Society Awards—then this one might be up your alley.

“The Vampire’s Stepdaughter,” published in September in Fantastic Stories. This is my most approachable story if you like more traditional spec-fic. Vampires! That said, this story pleased me for other reasons. This is the first story I’ve succeeded in selling with QUILTBAG characters. It also deals—obliquely—with childhood sexual abuse, which is a topic that has touched my life, and which I have struggled to write about with any subtlety.

“Of Unions, Intersections, and Empty Sets,” published in Fantastic Stories in July. This is a short little story wrestling with questions of intentionality and free will. It’s a very quiet story. I’m proud of the fact that it has a story arc which is entirely one person’s internal emotional journey—virtually nothing “happens,” but there’s still an emotional arc. This story also marks the first time I’ve played with mathematics—the field in which I spend my days—in a story.

If you do choose to read any of my stories, I thank you. If none of them are your cup of tea, then I hope maybe next year or the one after that I will write something that appeals to you more.

Be well. 🙂

Posted in artist's life, lists, writing | 1 Comment

New Publication: The Vampire’s Stepdaughter (also, my first reprint!)

Posted on September 3, 2016 by José Iriarte

My new story “The Vampire’s Stepdaughter” is live today at Fantastic Stories of the Imagination. Check out this cool artwork they put together for it!

vampire-tocSo anyway, I hope you’ll give it a read and let me know what you think. You can find the story here!

Also this week, my very first reprint went up. My story, “Cupid and Psyche at the Caffé Sol y Mar,” originally published in Spring 2015 at Fireside Fiction, is in the inaugural issue of Spirit’s Tincture magazine. You can grab a copy here!

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In-Depth Discussion of “Life in Stone, Glass, and Plastic”

Posted on August 25, 2016 by José Iriarte

The folks over at Literary Roadhouse did an entire podcast on my Strange Horizons story from last June. It’s nearly an hour of about the most in-depth discussion one of my stories has ever gotten. 🙂

I stumbled across it over the weekend and just about had a heart-attack. I was all like, Nah, they’re not seriously going to . . . oh my god they’re really going to! And then I was sure they were going to just trash the story, because . . . well, just because, I guess. But really they were thoughtful and very gratifying. I’ve talked before about how all I really want to know as an author is that somebody is out there reading and caring and receiving what my heart is sending out. So this was about the best surprise I could get.

Anyway, you can find the podcast here on their website. Or you could experience it the way I experienced it–watching the discussion on YouTube!

Of course, if you haven’t already read the story, the conversation won’t mean much to you. Luckily, you can rectify that right here! 😉

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New pub day!

Posted on July 27, 2016 by José Iriarte

Pleeeeeease read my story, he begged!The new issue of Fantastic Stories is now available for non-subscribers, and it contains my story, “Of Unions, Intersections, and Empty Sets.” This story was inspired by my friend Pete, who kept giving me grief saying I should write a story with math in it, since I’m allegedly knowledgeable about the subject. As I said then—and as I still believe—I know enough to know how much I DON’T know. Somebody who knows less than me would be happy to use a lot more handwavium, but I’m super conscious of the possibility of being called out for my BS, and of being embarrassed by it. So in this story, the math is all off-stage, but still, it’s at least “math-adjacent.” *grin*

As usual, Fantastic Stories made an absurdly cool cover image to go along with the story. I love the pics they put together!

This issue also contains stories by Caroline M. Yoachim, Sunil Patel, and Beth Davis Cato, all of whom I am a big fan of. I can’t wait to read the other stories!

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