We are now thirteen days from the release of Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], and to celebrate, here are thirteen things about San Francisco!

13. Yes, parking is as difficult to find as I make it out to be in the Toby books. In fact, it's usually slightly worse; because Toby has magic (and narrative flow), she usually manages to find street parking after only a paragraph or two of driving around. The rest of us usually wind up paying for our parking. Lucky Toby.

12. In areas like Valencia, you can walk for miles without seeing a Starbucks, although you will encounter dozens of small, independent coffee shops and cafes. In areas like North Beach and the Financial District, you can find a Starbucks every two blocks. It's like the city has a median average to maintain, and has decided to dump them all in the same place.

11. Many San Francisco natives rarely, if ever, visit the rest of the Bay Area, and are surprised when interesting things happen in the East Bay. (Not 100% true, but definitely supported by my personal experience.)

10. San Francisco is a city which never met a hill it didn't think "hey, I could put houses there, and people will totally figure out how to park at an eighty-seven degree angle." And because parking is at such a premium, people do.

9. It may be apocryphal that Mark Twain once said the coldest summer he ever spent was in San Francisco, but there's a reason so many people believe it. Thanks to the marine layer, we often have heat waves in December, and cold snaps in July.

8. Despite the hills and the messed-up weather, we still have joggers. Joggers are insane.

7. San Francisco's pigeon population is fairly epic, and most of them are pretty healthy, because there's so much food dropped by the tourist trade. Also, they eat their own sick. It's disturbing and fascinating, like an avian recreation of The Lottery.

6. Cable cars, not really worth it. No, seriously. They're not.

5. Ghirardeli Square sells a sundae called "The Earthquake" which costs around twenty dollars and needs at least five people to eat it. It's a towering monument to gluttony, and all visitors to our fair city should treat it as a mandatory undertaking. Unless you're lactose intolerant or diabetic.

4. San Francisco proper covers a span of 46.7 square miles. That's why we have South San Francisco, San Bruno, and Colma. Because otherwise, we'd run out of space really, really fast.

3. A team of fae without human disguises on could probably run the Bay to Breakers without anyone saying anything but "cool costumes, man."

2. The Ferry Building Farmer's Market is one of the best in the state. It's huge, diverse, and a little bit scary, since who really needs an heirloom tomato the size of a human head? Me, that's who. Now gimme.

1. I do an incredible amount of geographic research when introducing a new location in the Toby books. Half of it gets thrown out the window in the interests of not turning into a guidebook, but I do it. And this city is really weird. That's what makes it so great.

First up, here is a message from my darling spectralbovine, who is, by the way, questionably insane, as well as being one of my favorite hotel roomies:

"Wow! A great many thanks to everyone who has already donated to 826 Valencia, helping me raise nearly $5,000! Our team has raised nearly $12,000, making us the most successful fund-raising spelling bee team in the history of 826. If you would like to be a part of this tremendous achievement, there's still time!

http://tiny.cc/sunilspellingbee

If you would like to see me put all this cheating money to good use against Michael Chabon, Lemony Snicket, Adam Savage, John Vanderslice, Tracy Chapman, and others (including a former National Spelling Bee competitor), I invite you to attend the Spelling Bee for Cheaters on Thursday, February 17 at 7:30 PM at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco.

http://www.cityboxoffice.com/ordertickets.asp?p=5324

Use the discount code 826VLNTR to get general seating for $15 and premium seating for $40! Bring giant foam letters to give me hints."

Now, his team is currently in grave danger from the various celebrity teams; Adam Savage, especially, has endangered their status as Most Successful Fund-Raisers Ever. So if you were considering helping this good cause, here's your chance!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (or back in my living room, depending on your point of view), Mom and I were shipping Wicked Girls CDs the other day, and discovered that one of the boxes had been partially damaged in shipping. So I have three CDs with cracked jewel cases and slightly damaged liner notes, but no damage to the CDs themselves. I'm selling these for $5 plus postage; please comment here if you're interested.

And that's the news.

So wow. February is more than halfway over, and I'm trying to clean everything up on my end of things, in the hopes that doing so will enable me to, you know, accomplish something for a change. Because I've just been sitting around doing nothing up until now. So...

1. All the damaged Wicked Girls CDs have been claimed, although some are still pending payment. It's highly unlikely that any more damaged CDs will show up; Mom and I have checked the boxes thoroughly at this point, and it looks like the unpleasant surprises are over. Thank the Great Pumpkin.

2. I am mailing the last of the paid-for "Wicked Girls" posters tomorrow. This means that, if you are waiting for a poster, you should have it in approximately a week (all the posters being mailed are going to US addresses). If you have requested a poster but not yet paid for it, you have ten days before I delete your name from the list, and release any held numbers back into the wild. If you're not sure whether you've paid or not, you can always contact me.

3. I'm going to be setting up my final pre-release giveaways over the next week or so. Finances are forcing me to restrict them to US addresses/international addresses only if you're willing to pay for postage. I'm really sorry about that. It's just that it costs me approximately three dollars to mail a book inside the US, and outside gets very spendy, very fast. Specific rules to come.

4. I'll doubtless be saying more about this later, but as we're getting into the period where people start getting excited about Deadline: I do not have ARCs. I am not going to have ARCs. Please don't ask me for them, please don't comment on other giveaway posts saying you'd take an ARC of Deadline instead of the stated prize, just please, please, don't. There are no ARCs of this book. I'm not holding out on you, I just don't got the goods.

...and that's our administrative junk for the night. Join me next week, when "administrative junk" will probably include port and drunkenly yelling at my rambunctious kitten.