Liminal states

Talk about “ripped from today’s headlines” … here’s an excerpt I was just editing last night from g0ddesses.net, my comic novel-in-progress. The scene’s set on a discussion forum that’s modeled after Hacker News:

Today, I saw a link on HackerNews to a Read Write Web story Quora for the Enterprise: Two Contenders:

Last week we asked whether we needed a Yelp for the enterprise. Ed Borasky* suggested that Quora could fill the role of providing crowdsourced reviews of enterprise software vendors. Focus.com, a more business-centric questions and answer site, could possibly do this as well.

But what about Quora for the enterprise?

Indeed!   And reading further in the story, discovered that one of the contenders is “is applying gamification principles in an attempt to drive adoption”.

Nice to know I’m in sync with the Zeitgeist.

Life imitates art.

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November was such a busy month that I didn’t do any journalling. But now, with the draft of g0ddesses.net wrapped up, it seems like a good time start up again.

So …

Wow, what a month. I wrote a novel! Well, at least a draft of one … 75,000 words. g0ddesses.net needs a lot of work of course, but still: I’m pretty darned happy about it. D got her novel done too, and I can wait to read it. Yay us! Tonight’s the end of NaNoWriMo, and we’re having champagne to celebrate celebrating. Thanks to ladysheishou and the nano_writers community. Dedication and links to some excerpts below.

And that’s not the only reason to celebrate. We made great progress on Tales from the Net this month, and the second half of the month was filled with activism. On the night before Thanksgiving, after National Opt Out Day, my Facebook profile said “i heart the grassroots” and wow it’s true. I think when we look back at what just happened we’ll realize that heroes across the country stood up and said “enough is enough”. The organizing happened on message forums, blogs (including me on I Will Opt Out and Pam’s House Blend), Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, tribe.net, and email; social networks really are the the future of civil liberties. I’m proud to have been a part of it and looking forward to working together as we fight for our rights.

So all in all, a great month. Pass the champagne!

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“Hellrazr and Nemesis is working with a startup for an interim interim CEO.  Are you interested? If so, I’m going to be in Seattle Saturday night.  Are you free for dinner?”

Interim interim CEO didn’t seem like a particularly empowered job so my first reaction was that I probably wasn’t interested … but hey, never say never: I was trying to keep an open mind as I was getting my consulting business off the ground.  On top of that it had been a few months since we had talked and when I heard her voice I realized that I was really looking forward to seeing her.  So even though I did have dinner plans on Saturday night, after D’s out of the blue Friday afternoon phone call I decided to reprioritize.

She was already there when I got to Rover’s, checking email on her phone as she waited.  She looked lovely as always, in a black velvet dress that highlighted her red-and-purple hair, and had already ordered champagne for both of us.  She seemed happy to see me as well, and as I sat down she proposed a toast:

“To the future!”

“Indeed — because that’s where we’ll be spending the rest of our lives.”

More here …

My novel g0ddesses.net is set in the Silicon Valley startup scene and there is a some corporate drama behind it, so I want to make sure that the organization and ownership stakes make sense.  Here’s what I’m currently thinking … feedback welcome!

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