As many of you may or may not be aware, I am a fairly prolific songwriter. And when I say 'prolific', I really mean 'I have released two albums, I'm recording a third right now, and if I had the money, I would be heading straight back into the studio for number four, just to try to get some of my backlog down on CD.'

It's been determined that there's just about nothing I'll refuse to write a song about. I'm not much for bathroom humor or things of that sort, but I've written songs ranging from the sweet and wistful to the cheerfully macabre, and the ratio stays pretty consistent at fifty/fifty 'really pretty'/'totally crazy.'

Last year, after reading a fabulous book called The Return of the Black Death: the World's Greatest Serial Killer, I wrote a song titled, naturally enough, 'The Black Death.' (The lyrics are linked so that you can understand the horror.) Several CDC installations have printouts of this song tacked to their walls, and at least one teacher has decided to use it as part of his lesson plans. I Have Arrived.

Quoth the teacher in question:

"I gave the students lyric sheets and had them listen and list 'reasons why epidemiologists think that the Black Death was NOT Bubonic Plague.' Some of the kids, when I asked the same question on the test, even quoted back song lyrics!"

I WIN AT EVERYTHING.

So I'm watching as, very slowly, the news that 'OMG SEANAN SOLD THE BOOKS!' spreads through my various social circles. People friend this journal (hello, people!). People I haven't spoken to for years drop me a line to say that they're proud of me (which is totally made of awesome). My cats look deeply perplexed at all the phone calls, and demand that I feed them more to make up for the disruption to their routines (totally fair, if one happens to be a cat).

BayCon was awesome, because for the first time, I got to tell people to their faces, and see their reactions. Lots of squealing. And sometimes, I am six, because I'm watching as 'toby daye' begins to spread as an LJ Interest, and I'm just giggling like a lunatic.

(Seriously, it went from three people to nine people, and I scared the cat.)

(Now I'm just waiting for 'newsflesh' to do the same thing.)

I've created weird LJ Interests before, but this isn't a weird interest, it's a legitimate one. I mean, this is people saying they're interested in my books. Mine. The ones I write, by sitting at this keyboard and whacking on the little letters until words fall out. While the cats may be entirely unimpressed by the awesomeness of this entire situation, I am fully impressed, and I can't pretend otherwise. I'm an LJ Interest! Everybody dance!