#21
February 14, 2003
From: Sly, esmatt@gci.net

My perfect pub isn't much different from yours Kelley. I would like to have all my favorite people close enough to drop by a lot. You really made me hungry with that menu and I agree with most of the food. I'd like my own easy chair maybe covered with dark old worn leather so it's soft. Tables for setting things on but not strictly as sitting at but some of those too. I loved the way you covered the wine. Lighting only bright over the pool table, subdued everywhere else. A variety of finger snacks in bowls here and there. Oh yeah that reminds me, no one would make desparaging remarks about anyone elses body size or make recommendations about how to make your life better based on their idea of what's right and wrong. That's not to say those things couldn't be in a discussion you dig. Weirdly enough I can see a book case with books that can be read there in a few of these chairs with lamps by them. (my efficiency expert mind is busy devising a system for this book thing. Or do they call those people system anylists now?) Is my quarter up on the pool table yet?


Your quarter is certainly up but you will have to check with Nicola to get the game going. I will sit in one of your lovely leather chairs with my beer and coach from the sidelines.

Doesn't seem weird at all to have books. It'll be a literary pub! Every once in a while we will have live music or live stories or some such fun. Talented people, famous and not, will clamor to perform there just for the company and the beer. There will be many interesting conversations between people who are comfortable with ideas and feelings and differences. Imagine, a cozy room full of cool grown-ups. How much fun would that be?

There will be no bullshit in our pub about body size, skin color, education, whether English is your native language, or who your daddy is. People will speak ASL and English and Spanish and French and whatever else, and we will all find ways to make ourselves understood. People who do not play nicely will be given the opportunity to change their behavior (free training provided!), and if they don't choose to change then they will be helped out the door by a big strong woman in big strong boots. The rest of us will smile and go back to our beer.

#20
February 12, 2003
From: Lindsey Main

Oversized mugs of hot chocolate for everyone!!! Oh, and there's fluff, little marshmallows, whipped cream and shaved chocolate if anyone wants some. I'm assuming it's -2 everywhere...Noreasters (sort of like Dairy Queen blizzards) for those in warmer places! I know...I'm taking the virtual beverage thing too far. But it's fun.

I just wanted to say that I agree with you about the pleasure of story. I mean, it was all that I took away from your short stories that led me to SOLITAIRE in the first place. I've been on this need-to-know-more kick. I read five really good stories this month, one right after the other (SOLITAIRE, the fifth), and so I've been thinking and thinking and thinking. And thinking. Restless, really. And then I thought, "Wow. I don't know as much as I thought I did". And so, the need-to-know-more thing...

And second guessing, which is new to me. Without realizing it, I think I just wanted to know what SOLITAIRE meant to you (and everyone else here), because I know what it means to me. For whatever reason, knowing what it means to me isn't enough. Maybe I should find a book club that plans to read SOLITAIRE (I'm laughing).

Have fun,
Lindsey

Don't laugh too hard (smile)! I would love book clubs from coast to coast to throw their arms around Solitaire and hug it hard. It's one of the best ways to make a book successful. The thing is, I know why you're laughing, too, because it's just not really book club fodder, is it? I'm not sure exactly why I think that only a book club brave of heart would take it on. Well, I know partly why-I think of book clubs as mainstream organisms, and expect them to be more enthusiastic about Bridget Jones and the Ya-Ya Sisters than they would be about a young woman with an identity crisis and a crocodile in her head. I am grateful for anyone who reads at all, even if they never touch my work, but I do think that many readers have a fairly narrow band of taste (even if the band is in some extreme part of the spectrum). People tend to like certain kind of stories, or certain ways of storytelling. I wish more readers knew that it's not necessarily the genre they like or dislike, it's the storytelling style or the story's concerns. Nicola and I often remark on how many people have said to one of us, "I don't like science fiction, but I love your stuff!" Well, if they like our stuff, of course there's a lot of other SF they won't like, because it's told differently, with different conventions and concerns (I can understand people saying, "I've never before read any SF that I enjoyed," which is to me a very different statement). But genre no longer means prose style and plot content. Things have become more subtle than that. I think genre these days is more about particular storytelling assumptions, freedoms and limitations that help us define something as SF or thriller or Russian Depression Novel. I do think there are plenty of formulaic books in all genres, but at the heart of each book is the story that wants to be told. Either a reader will connect with the story and the way it's told, or she won't.

And speaking of connecting, please join me in a virtual toast to the Nebula Jury who liked Solitaire well enough to put it on the final ballot for the Nebula Award, doing great honor to the book and giving me a very interesting start to the week.