Tired (not) Stalker Goodness

It’s a tiring sort of day, and though I have a few topics I’d like to cover, I simply don’t have the energy for it. So, a few brief observations:

• After overhearing a few twentysomethings talk among themselves at a local cafe, I realize that dialogue simply CANNOT be written the way people actually talk. The letters L-I-K-E would either seize up on a keyboard, or someone’d make a macro.

  Which actually gets vaguely deep vaguely quickly – because dialogue in fiction must sound the way we think conversations go… while not actually reproducing them. Which suggests a lot about how we shoehorn conversations in everyday life, doesn’t it?

• Before I get more serious, Jim Hines is running a charitable auction to support the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Check it out:
• Jim Hines mentioned being stalked in the past – something I worried about for a while, then stopped caring about. Even before I became more “real-name” friendly online, it would have been a relatively trivial thing for a determined antagonist to find me IRL.
• I don’t want to take away from Jim’s emotion – I understand it better than a casual observer might expect. Being stalked – or even vaguely threatened – is a low-grade drain on oneself. Even if – especially if – the threat never materializes, the “always on” state of stress is horrible.

  This is, by the by, why I’m firmly in favor of a person’s right to defend thier home, their loved ones, and themselves. You may choose different tactics than I, or choose a non-violent route, but some creepy guy hanging out on my porch is liable to hear the sound of police cars and ambulances right quickly. Stalker beware.

  (The fact that I live with several large dogs, all rescued from abusive situations and tend to be distrustful of strangers – bearing food or not – helps as well.)

• Which leads right into this: Now I realize why most of the authors haven’t written me back. Each year, after GenCon, I’ve sent thank-you cards to various author types. Why? Because they seem like genuinely neat people, and I want to be friendly. Only a few have actually responded, and I didn’t really understand why. It simply did not cross my mind that there were freakin’ weirdos out there bothering them as well.

  (Yes, I’m a weirdo, but a mostly harmless one. Unless you’re stalking me. Then I unleash the were-jaguar. Grrr.)

• Which goes back to the Meadian stuff from the last several days. The authors and I shared a lot of characteristics, so I made the mistaken presumption that their experience and point of view *were* mine. Whoops. And on the way home, I catch up on podcasts enough to find out that I’ve managed to (at least vaguely) creep Christiana Ellis out. Double whoops.

Okay, that’s enough for now. Go vote for me at 100 word stories, why don’tcha?