I foolishly signed up for the upcoming Turkey City Writer’s Workshop, to be held next Saturday in Austin. I need to finish a story by then, and I’m only about a third done at the moment.

The TC people are a bunch of cruel, inhuman monsters. Yeah, I’m talking to you, Jayme and Chris and Jessica and Lawrence. You’re monsters, don’t think we don’t know it. Monsters.

I therefore need to finish the best story I know how to, in order to keep them from sucking the marrow from my bones.

For those of you unfamiliar with Turkey City, it’s a day-long writer’s workshop that’s been held in Austin since the mid-70’s. It’s infamous in our little frog-pond. There’s a Wiki about it here.

Close examination of the Wiki will reveal that I’m not cool enough to be listed as one of its alumni. However, someone has kindly inserted my name on the Turkey City Home Page that Lawrence Person maintains.

Everyone brings one new short story, in the sf-fantasy-horror genre, which is read at a maniacal pace, along with all others throughout the morning. (The advent of e-mail has changed this dynamic a bit, but many of us are still finishing our stories on Friday night. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.) Pause for lunch. Then the savagery begins. Your story is disassembled in front of you, as it passes around the circle, by some of the sharper minds in the craft. No holds barred. Every flaw is exposed ruthlessly. Your shiny prose is scuffed and farted upon. You sit silently and absorb it all, whether you agree with the comments or not, until you are allowed to reply at the end of the critique. It’s not for beginners who still take critique personally, and I know pros who find this sort of system wounding for them. Sometimes the critiques are on-target and useful to you, sometimes not. Them’s the breaks.

Over the decades, some remarkably good stories have emerged from this crucible.

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I’ve just gotten back from washing clothes. I much enjoyed rolling the Shadow through this gorgeous clear 80-degree mid-December Spring afternoon in Bryan.

Here’s some orchestral techno from Sarah Brightman’s album ‘Harem’. It’s called ‘It’s a Beautiful Day’. The whole album rocks, incidentally, with a middle-Eastern flavor permeating it.

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Despite all the advances in technology, though, I respond more strongly to this old song by a band named, of course, ‘It’s a Beautiful Day’. The song is named ‘White Bird’, and was their big hit.

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Their eponymously titled album came out in 1969. I owned it and played it a lot. Admittedly, some of my fondness for it may have to do with lysergamides frothing along my brain-stem during many of the listening sessions. But I think it holds up pretty good. The violin lines still send a chill up my spine. And the soaring harmonies are transcendant.

From that album, we have also ‘Hot Summer Day’.

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