I tend to develop a somewhat...familial...attachment to the stores that I frequent on a regular basis, to the point that they monitor the status of my projects, warn me when things that may upset me have happened (my comic store guys are hysterical on days when certain X-titles come in), and generally know exactly what they're dealing with when I walk in the door. We argue, gossip, chat, and generally just have a good time together. It's pretty awesome, and I appreciate it.

My normal comic store, Flying Colors, is very much a family establishment, and the owner, Joe Fields, doesn't order anything of an 'adult' nature. This is a good thing, as there are a lot of unsupervised kids browsing at just about any given time. This is a bad thing, because when they advertised the new Hack/Slash special issue -- a crossover with the Suicide Girls -- it got listed as 'adult,' and was consequentially not ordered. (Believe me, I made sad noises when I got to the store on Wednesday and discovered this dismaying fact. I sort of figured that the existence of the title 'Hack/Slash' would make it an automatic order. Sad cat...is trekking to her alternative comic book store in Berkeley.)

Luckily for me, I have a backup comic store: Comic Relief, which has the added bonus of being located right next to the Other Change of Hobbit. I stopped in yesterday, and was gratified to find that yes, they had the issue in question, even as I confused the heck out of the on-duty staff, who see me about once every three months (when Flying Colors either sells out of something or, as in the case of my Hack/Slash-with-boobies issue, fails to order it). If they didn't know me from local comic conventions and geek meets and forums, they'd probably think I bought six comic books a year. Tops.

With the latest installment of the adventures of Cassie Hack (more on this later) firmly in my possession, I went next door to let Will know that I'd been assigned a cover artist. He and I (and some random store patrons, that being the way at the Other Change of Hobbit) had a fairly vigorous discussion of cover design about a month ago, which covered everything from 'marketing,' 'eye-catching design,' and 'current trends' to 'yeah, but that looks stupid' and 'I just can't understand why all these ass-kicking heroines have nothing better to do with their time than go around crouching on rooftops while wearing uncomfortable-looking latex catsuits.' (My ass-kicking heroines -- I'm currently working with three -- wear, respectively, jeans and T-shirts, track gear, and whatever she can manage to grab before the goddamn flying monkeys break her bedroom window again. Note the lack of inexplicable latex catsuits.) Anyway, as a consequence of this conversation, I wanted to tell him who the Toby cover artist was going to be.

Pathetically, as soon as I finished waving my hands and going 'we got a cover artist and he's awesome!', I forgot a) his name, b) Jim Butcher's name, and c) the name of the series Butcher writes and McGrath draws the covers for (IE, the Dresden Files). We eventually managed to fix this, and then there was much joyful dancing in the Other Change of Hobbit.

I was sitting down to spend some quality time with the two loaner kitties that the shop cat-sits for during the week -- Clearsword and Patch, a Siamese and his Oriental shorthair brother -- when Patch went Very Still And Quiet. I turned around to find myself looking at...

...a dog. A truly awesome dog, of a breed that I had never seen before. She was short-haired to the point of seeming to be made of suede, except for the ridge down the middle of her back, dark blue in color (which, for non-pet-people, means she was a very pretty sort of gunmetal gray), and had a long, intelligent face that made her look a lot like artistic representations of Anubis. I promptly threw myself upon the altar of dog-worship, and grilled her owner about her origins. Turns out she's a Thai ridgeback. So. Cool.

Yesterday, I got a new comic book, a happy dino dance party, and a new dog breed.

How was your Thursday?

Okay, now we REALLY have to have a dino dance party. Why, you may wonder? Why, you may ask yourself? Because I have just finished my first post-editorial pass through A Local Habitation, book two in the Chronicles of October Daye. And I have turned that puppy in. Yes! No longer is my manuscript malingering around on my thumb drive, looking lost and lonely and wondering whether it ever gets to go anywhere! It's gone, off to the magical wonderland of sunshine and zombie ponies that is DAW Books. (I've seen the offices at DAW. They're totally filled with sunshine and zombie ponies. I swear. Okay, not really, but wouldn't that be lovely? Zombie ponies for all!)

I kinda completely love this book right now. I mean, I kinda completely love this book all the time, because hello, my baby, all grown up and ready to go play with the big books, but also, I've just gotten up close and snuggly with all its little bells and whistles, and this has resulted in me kinda completely loving it. This is sort of awesome, as I have a very love/hate relationship with my books while I'm working on them.

I'm reasonably sure all this glowing happy 'yay my books are finished yay' is just the endorphin rush before the inevitable and soul-consuming crash. I'm basically okay with that.

Meanwhile, off in the land of 'people doing arcanely productive things that I don't understand but which fill my universe with buckets and buckets of awesome,' Tara is mostly finished with my website redesign, and Chris continues to keep the site itself alive and not eating people who happen to be passing randomly on the street. Let's be clear, here: my skill with HTML basically extends to the cutting-edge of 1997. I can close a tag with the best of them, as long as it's not, y'know, a hard tag. Once it gets difficult, I crawl under my desk and hide until Chris manfully rescues me. So credit for every ounce of visual and functional awesome? Goes to Chris and Tara, rather than to me.

Plans for this weekend include a lot of house cleaning in preparation for Terence's upcoming visit, a family funeral, and probably starting to dig myself into The Mourning Edition (which is the sequel to Newsflesh). I may also head for the Starbucks and spend a few peacefully isolated hours inking, as that's the best way to get ahead of myself.

I have finished this week in triumph.

DINO DANCE PARTY!