I don't spend a lot of time on self-promotion because I've got just about as much work as I can handle right now! But I do try to keep my website (www.edwardwillett.com) up to date (it's been around now since 1994 or 1995, so its quite venerable) and I do try to keep track of what various publishers are looking for in the nonfiction field just in case something really jumps out at me.
One self-promotion thing I do is make my weekly newspaper science columns available for free to anyone who wants to give me an email address. I have a couple of hundred subscribers now (maybe more, I haven't counted recently) from around the world. Whenever I have major writing news to announce—a new book coming out, that sort of thing—I append that to the column.
You, too, can subscribe to my weekly science column! Just visit www.edwardwillett.com/columns.htm. All of my past columns are available online on my website at that same URL.
Elsewhere, I post photos, story excerpts, reviews, and all that kind of stuff. I guess that's all self-promotion.
CD: Blogging seems to be the thing to do for a writer. Is it a job-related task for you or something you would be doing anyways?
EW: I'd blog no matter what, I think. I actually keep four blogs: my main one, Hassenpfeffer, at edwardwillett.blogspot.com, one called The Willetts on Wine where my wife and I blog notes about the wines we drink, at willettsonwine.blogspot.com, the SF Canada news blog, with members’ latest news, at www.sfcanada.ca/currentnews.htm, one I post too very very rarely called Walter Twiddle's Twiddlepated Rhymes, which I go to when I have an urge to write doggerel. (I'd never ever call it poetry!) It's at twiddlepated.blogspot.com. (Walter Twiddle is, of course, an anagram of Edward Willett.)
CD: Andy Nebula felt like it had everything a science fiction novel could possibly have. How did you fit it all in? Also, does American/Canadian Idol really scare you that much?
EW: Did it? And here I thought I left out the Singularity, nanotechnology, virtual reality and three-breasted green-skinned Martian Amazons.
I just wrote. It fit itself in.
Seriously, Andy Nebula came about because an exhibit at the Saskatchewan Science Centre on how memory works cross-pollinated with a news story I read about one-hit teen pop wonders in Japan who were washed up at 16. The former gave me my aliens, whose memory doesn't work the same as ours, the latter gave me the music-scene setting and the idea of Sensation Singles. The rest ... I have no idea. Stuff came to me, I wrote it down. It's been more than 10 years, so it's hard to remember anything about the process.
CD: Are you writing the sequel to Andy Nebula?
EW: It's written. Alas, Roussan, which published Andy Nebula, went belly-up. My agent doesn't think he can market Andy Nebula. So right now, Andy Nebula: Double Trouble remains unseen by anyone. I'm toying with the idea of turning them both into ebooks and giving them away for free on my website and blog.
CD: What is your favourite nonfiction topic to write about?
EW: I don't think I have one. I find any topic becomes interesting once you dig into it. Recent favorite topics have included Orson Scott Card, major engineering projects in Saskatchewan, genetics, the element neon, and Jimi Hendrix.
CD: You write a lot about science and scientific developments. What new things are most exciting to you?
EW: I'm fascinated and astonished by the pace of change in medicine, where we're learning new things about how our bodies work every week, it seems. My book Genetics Demystified was out of date before it could be printed, it seemed to me. I'm also excited—and slightly alarmed—by new developments in nanotechnology, and just plain thrilled by all the private space activity we're starting to see. I'm still hoping the daVinci Project, which failed to win the X-Prize, turns Kindersely, Saskatchewan, into a spaceport at some point. And I'd buy a Virgin Galactic ticket in a minute, had I the money.
CD: You've been involved with SF Canada. Tell us about that.
EW: I was just a member for a long time, but I took over the website (which was designed by Karl Schroeder) in the 1990s and then a few years ago agreed to become the administrative assistant, which means I handle membership renewals and applications (though we have a committee to which I pass applications I can't make a solo judgement on). The website has a new “issue” every three months (well, that's what I aim for, anyway) featuring fiction, articles and interviews. It used to be I just updated members’ news every three months, too, but now that's done as a blog which is updated as soon as I become aware of some newsworthy item—books sold, awards won, readings scheduled, that sort of thing. It's made the site much more timely and it really is a great place to find out what's up with SF Canada members, who range from writers just breaking in to established pros. There's also a SF Canada Bookstore, with Amazon.ca links for recent books by members (not just SF books, either; it includes romance, nonfiction, historical novels and other works by our members from outside the boundaries of speculative fiction, whatever those boundaries may be).
As far as the organization itself, it's very widespread, just like the country, and thus most members know each other, and interact with each other, via the listserver, which I also maintain (but not moderate; it's unmoderated). The listserver is open only to SF Canada members.
* * * *
You ‘know’ in your limbic brain. The seat of instinct. The mammalian brain. Deeper, wider, beyond logic. That is where advertising works, not in the upstart cortex. What we think of as ‘mind’ is only a sort of jumped-up gland, piggybacking on the reptilian brainstem and the older, mammalian mind, but our culture tricks us into recognizing it as all of consciousness. The mammalian spreads continent-wide beneath it, mute and muscular, attending its ancient agenda. And makes us buy things.
—William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
[Back to Table of Contents]
Bread by Jennifer Bosworth
Like a good meal, our town began with bread.
My father and mother, Master Bakers, were the first settlers in Golden Valley, where the soil is rich and dark and crumbles through your fingers, the best soil for growing wheat. They arrived when I was no more than a seed myself, and by the time I took my first steps, the wheat grasses they planted reached past my head, so when I wandered among the rows, all I could see was a forest of swaying gold.
We lived alone and isolated in the valley, but Mama and Papa welcomed travelers into our home, I think so that I would grow up knowing we were not the only people in the world. When I was a little girl, I thought the travelers who stopped for a night and a meal were family, cousins and aunts and uncles. I never voiced this belief, so no one corrected me. I once mistook a white-bearded traveler for my grandfather. He told me stories of the land he hailed from at the tip of the world, where they ate fish for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and decorated their hair and ears with the leftover bones. I cried when he said goodbye and moved on.
The old man—whose name I later came to understand was not Grandpa, but Spiridon Margolis—spread word of the Master Bakers who settled in Golden Valley, how it sparkled with young wheat, and how the bakers’ bread was better even than that served to kings. After that, we weren't alone in Golden Valley for long.
My parents were not pleased. They had traveled far to leave behind the city of their youth, where they were no better than slaves, forced to bake at all hours of the day and night to supply an aristocratic household with breads, most of which went to waste for the excess. They wanted only to find a place where they could start over, where they were required to bake for none but their own family, which had grown with the addition of my new baby brother, Stephen. But Stephen was only a baby, and not very interesting. I loved the travelers who came with their stories, who sat round our kitchen table, they with their cups of wine or ale and me with creamy milk, all of us munching on cheese and after-dinner breads made with oats and honey and cinnamon. I wanted them to stay so that one day, when I too was a Master Baker, I could be the one who baked for them.
I got my wish. Spiridon was the first to settle,
choosing a spot of land on the other end of the valley, so he wouldn't crowd us. He never came to us to ask for bread or if he could join us for dinner. He always waited for an invitation, and to my immense joy, he received them in plenty. His consideration softened my parents, and they soon came to cherish his company as much as I did.
"Spiridon is coming for biscuits and tea this afternoon, Harper,” Mama said one morning. “Would you like to learn how to make biscuits?"
Whatever I was doing, I dropped it in a blink. I was only six, but it seemed like I'd waited ages to begin my training. Every time I watched my parents standing side by side at the baker's table, kneading soft dough with hands that seemed all knuckles, every time I propped my chin on the table and watched the bread rise, wondering at the magic that made it do so, the secret that I would learn when I came of age, I knew I would follow in my parents’ footsteps. I too would become a Master Baker.
Biscuits were a specialty of Mama's that Papa couldn't match. Her biscuits were warm and flaky and melted on the tongue like salted butter. She demonstrated how to sift the flour, how to combine the dry ingredients first, then add the wet. My small fingers mimicked my mother's long, graceful ones as we kneaded dough together.
"What about the magic, Mama?” I asked when we had cut out our biscuits with round metal cutters and laid them out in even rows on a tin baking sheet. “Don't we have to do magic to make them rise?"
Mama's face changed, and for a moment I thought she was mad at me. Then she smiled. “The magic is in your fingers. It's already working. You see."
I did. My biscuits were rising, just like hers. They weren't quite as neat, weren't perfect circles, but I knew they were good. My chest swelled up with pride, like a hen after it lays an egg. I had the magic in my fingers, just like Mama and Papa. I would be a Master Baker.
"You mustn't speak of what you learned today, not to Spiridon or anyone else,” Mama warned. “Part of being a Master Baker is knowing how to keep our secrets."
I nodded, my eyes open wide. I knew she'd broken with convention by telling me about the magic before I came of age.
"Because, if everyone knew our secrets,” she went on, “they would take away our magic. And we would not be Master Bakers, only regular folk, like anyone else."
I didn't want to be regular. I wanted to be special. I would never tell our secrets, not for anything.
* * * *
Golden Valley continued to grow, filling with settlers from across the land and beyond the borders of our country, people who heard rumors that an entire family of Master Bakers lived in the valley. Dismal working conditions for bakers and their apprentices had prompted the Baker's Guild to initiate a strike, and bread was in short supply in the cities.
The settlers stayed clear of our wheat fields and gardens, but the newcomers were not so shy about knocking on our door to inquire whether we were willing to trade bread for a leather hide or a bolt of cloth. And because we so often needed the items our new neighbors came to trade, my parents spent more time at the baker's table. But they would not trade their freedom for dry goods and leathers and the occasional basket of eggs; instead, they put me to work. I became an apprentice on my eighth birthday, a full two years before my coming of age, and I couldn't have been more pleased.
It soon came time to expand the fields. My parents put some of the settlers to work, tilling and planting, harvesting wheat and grain, squashes and berries and a host of other vegetables and vine fruits.
By the time I was sixteen, the valley could no longer be termed a settlement; it was a full-fledged town, with a general store, an inn and an alehouse, a butcher, a blacksmith. My family had many friends and admirers, and, aside from the occasional grumble or complaint about crowding and lack of privacy, Mama and Papa were happy to see the way the town had grown up around us. The needs of the settlers kept us busy, and although I was still an apprentice as far as my parents were concerned, I was an accomplished baker in the eyes of the town. Folk requested my wares as often as my parents'.
From the beginning, I took to the work with a passion that was unspoiled by memories of grueling labor, as was my parents'. They loved their trade and rarely thought twice about putting in a hard day's work, but their true joy was in each other. They shared a love that only grew with the years. I doubted I would ever find a love like theirs, but the thought didn't bother me. I loved my work and couldn't imagine I had room for anything more in my life.
A knock came at our door one afternoon in the late summer of my sixteenth year. I had flour on my hands, on my nose and cheeks, in my eyelashes. I could see it in the wisps of hair that hovered about my face, clinging like a dusting of snow. My brother Stephen was supposed to stoke the fire in the oven, but he stood idly, picking at his fingernails with the tip of a knife.
"Get the door, would you?"
He pretended not to hear me. He was in the midst of what my parents referred to as his “uncooperative turn.” I didn't remember going through such a stage.
I sighed and wiped my hands on my flour-covered apron as the knock came again. “Stoke up that fire, you lazy fart,” I said to Stephen. “I have orders to fill, and Mama and Papa are busy overseeing the harvest."
When I opened the door, I expected to see the face of Mrs. Tepper, who always arrived early to pick up her order. But the boy standing on our doorstep was a stranger.
I tried to say hello, but the words stopped somewhere in the back of my throat.
He was older than me, but by no more than a few years. His hair caught the honeyed light of afternoon, making it the same color as our sun-drenched fields before autumn harvest. His skin was stained the color of chestnuts, and his light blue eyes appeared to have been bleached by the sun. It was his eyes that caught me and held me, struggling like a butterfly in a net, eyes as clear as dream-waters.
He shifted on his feet. “Are you the Master Baker?"
My hands went to my hair, my face, brushing at the powdering of flour that seemed to cover every inch of me. It puffed into the air between us. “Y—yes,” I coughed. “I mean, no. I'm—Harper. I'm an apprentice. My parents are the Master Bakers.” All at once, I felt very young and rather silly.
He waved at the air, smiling a little. “My grandfather, Spiridon Margolis, said that you—"
"You're Spiridon's grandson!” I wished I could have dampened the words, but they came out like an announcement.
His smile politely, but I could tell my enthusiasm caught him by surprise. “Yes. He told me—"
"Please, come in.” I realized with a kind of helpless dismay that I had interrupted just about everything he said. My cheeks heated and I glanced at his face for a sign of judgment. His smile had broadened to an amused grin, but he hesitated before stepping through the door, reaching out with a tentative toe, as though testing the temperature of a lake before he dived in.
My useless brother looked up from his nails, looked the boy up and down. I was reminded of the way dogs passing in the street size each other up. “What's your name?” Stephen asked.
I stared at the boy, stricken. I'd forgotten to ask his name. In our part of the world, it was considered bad luck to invite someone into your home before you knew his name.
"Jeremy Margolis,” the boy said. He feigned an impatient tone of voice, as though he were tired of saying his name. He gave me a quick wink that Stephen didn't see and I released a breath I didn't know I'd kept.
Stephen tossed aside the knife he was using to pair his nails. “You can stoke the fire,” he said to me. “I'm going to help Pa."
"Pleasure meeting you,” Jeremy said to my brother's back as he dashed through the backdoor that led directly into our fields.
"Sorry about him,” I said. Remembering that I'd left several mounds of dough rising on the table, I hurriedly placed a cloth over them, both to keep in the warmth and moisture and to hide them from the eyes of this stranger. But when I looked back at Jeremy, I saw he was looking everywhere but at the dough. This respect for the pri
vacy of our work made me like him instantly.
"You came to see my parents?"
He nodded. “My grandfather thought they might have work for me in their fields."
"I'll fetch them for you."
I turned to go, but he caught my arm. When he let go, the imprint of his fingers remained in the light coating of flour on my skin. I noticed he did not wipe the flour from his hand. “Grandfather mentioned you."
"Oh?” My neck and cheeks felt suddenly fevered. Had Stephen added more wood to the fire after all?
"I thought you might be willing to show me around the valley, introduce me to some of the townsfolk."
"Are you here to stay then?"
He nodded, and I felt a thrill of excitement.
* * * *
It was harvest time, and my parents needed the extra help. They put Jeremy to work the next day, cutting wheat. I often found myself standing at the backdoor, hoping to catch a glimpse of him in the fields. And each time my eyes lighted on him, my heart grew wings.
But it was the busiest time of the year for my family, as well as for the field hands. I waited for Jeremy to remind me of my agreement to introduce him around town, but for two weeks, he did nothing but nod and sometimes wave when he saw me.
One day I went to draw a bucket of fresh water from the well and found Jeremy there, filling his canteen. I almost turned and headed back to the house, but he smiled and beckoned to me. This time it was he who was disheveled, patches of sweat darkening his shirt, wet hair clinging to his neck and brow in snaky clumps.
"Are you busy this evening?” he asked. He was breathing heavily. I thought he might shake himself like a dog that's just come from a dunk in the river.
"Well, there's always work to do.” I don't know why I said it. Maybe because it was true. He tipped his head to study me and I quickly amended, “But I suppose the work will still be there tomorrow."
Challenging Destiny #23 Page 5