W2 - Wendy to the Second Power

The crappy treatment from Armadilocon* spurred me to find something else to do then. I was delighted to find an event up in the cool Northeast by the sea by Googling for writers' workshops in August. See how things work out for the best! Since I'm not so miffed anymore, I'll even see if the con wants to use me on programming on Saturday -- since Sunday morning I'll be flying out. If they've already booked their programming, no biggie.

*Got a warm, reaching-out-type of email from JohnG with ArmadilloCon, and want to state publicly that he's a great guy. Several people w/FACT are great. This year they allowed or encouraged people who aren't so great to run things in a crappy way however.

Looks like I'll have a fun, writerly adventure in mid-August, somewhere different from the extreme heat of central Texas. I found out about an annual writers workshop in Cape Cod -- in a tiny town called Craigville, Mass. So looks like J4 and I both will travel up to The 46th Annual Cape Cod Writers Center Writers Conference. W00t!

And they still have rooms in the 100-year-old Craigville Conference Center, where the event is held. Room and board for 6 days for $500-600, too. We've worked with the lovely Donna at the Center to get a semi-private rustic suite in the inn, so J4 will have her room and its (hopefully) peaceful quiet, while I will have my room with my white noise maker (because no place is ever quiet enough for me). Then we'll share the bathroom between us. No AC, but surely there are fans?

The location is across the street from one of the best beaches in the Cod -- the Centersville Beach. It's about 6 miles from the Barnstable Airport in Hyannis (where we will fly in and never drive a car for 6 days). And from the photos, the guesthouses, inn and Tabernacle are all tucked into a lovely, quiet, wooded area. Awesome!

I've heard good things from the coordinators about the screenwriter instructor, Diane Lake. And there will be some New York editors and Hollywood agent people there too, short story instructors, a mystery guy -- plus I just generally love love LOVE discussing and learning more about creativity. And this is education related to the business in my home, so it's a tax write-off. Win Win!

Dang, this day zipped by! I finished a book, did more work on my master bathroom renovations (more on that when it's totally done -- with before and after photos), got some shopping done, but didn't feel like driving downtown to park at my employer's garage and walk across the river to watch fireworks. Friends from work and around town were going to be there, but ... nah.

I hate driving downtown from N.Austin. There's never a good traffic day anymore! In fact, the neighborhood is so congested all the time now that they've built and built. And I have to drive down to Bookpeople at 9am tomorrow to make my screenwriters group meeting. Bleh.

Hey, but maybe next year when they've got the lite rail going from my neighborhood (that's a big reason for the boom) to the City Hall, I'll do the fireworks that way...

Oh, and happy 4th of July everybody!

I remember telling a gay gamer friend about this study a few years ago, and him getting a surprised and interested look on this face:

"I think it's almost beyond a doubt that genes have some influence," said Ray Blanchard, a researcher at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, who studies the effect of birth order in predicting whether a male will be born homosexual. "My personal view is that there is probably more than one biological mechanism contributing toward homosexuality. I think it's also safe to say that there is at least one non-genetic influence."

Blanchard found that with each older brother in a family, the odds increase by about a third that a boy born later will be gay. This effect is not thought to be caused by genetics, but rather by antibodies produced by the mother's immune system during pregnancy.

This aside about birth order was embedded in a study report about how one theory of "the gay gene" is that it makes the females/daughters more prolific, while it makes the males/sons gay. This model addresses the nature versus nurture questions about "how can homosexuality be inherited; it should have died out if so."

It was interesting about my gamer friend because he is Sibling No.8 in a family with 8 kids, many of whom are boys. Sibling No.7 is also a gay son, and Sibling No.6 is a son who "sometimes has feelings like that." The Blanchard study showed how a woman gets progressively more estrogen with each pregnancy, so that once past the 4th baby, the fetus is typically awash in it. The likelihood of the boy baby growing up to be gay is way more than the norm.

When I read about the study, the thing that occurred to me was all the Catholic and fundamentalist religions with an emphasis on large families. Especially macho Latin cultures. So those poor boys; biology combined with religion pushed them to have a certain orientation. But that very religion often required that they be closeted.

So misguided. I'm glad that the youth of today are being a lot more color blind and accepting of orientation...