It is August now. The Hugo voting is closed; the ballots have been cast, and what remains is fussing and fretting, putting on our finest things, and walking to the presentation room like Tributes to the Hunger Games (although we don't have to kill each other to win, which is probably* a good thing). Nothing we can do now changes anything.

I mostly haven't talked about my feelings about the Hugos, because it felt a little too much like campaigning to me, like even saying "I liked this" or "I didn't like this" would be casting too much weight behind an opinion. I'm not saying that my feelings are accurate; I've seen a lot of people dissect the ballot, and I don't think any less of them, and they didn't sway my votes. But it's hard to ignore the small, scared voice in your head that says "don't do that, it's not allowed," and I've been too tired to fight it.

I have strong feelings about almost every category. I have the Winners I Want, which may or may not bear any resemblance to the Winners Who Win. And no, I am not the Winner I Want in every single category. While I desperately want to win (please, Great Pumpkin, please), I actually want to be beaten in at least one category. I want to see people I love win. I want to see people I respect win. All the nominees are incredibly deserving of victory. Barring a statistically unlikely mass tie, not all the nominees are going to win.

And yes, I'm terrified. I'm the first woman ever to make the ballot four times in a single year, which is amazing, but if I become the first woman ever to lose four times in a single night, I'm not going to be in a very good mental place. More like a "hand me the port, lock me in the bathroom, and walk away before the crying starts" place. And it's not that I'm a bad loser, and it's not that I don't know every single winner will deserve it. It's that broken hearts are painful, and I've met me enough times to know that I'll be devastated, no matter how often I'm told not to be.

It is an honor to be nominated. I do, genuinely, want to win. I don't think there's anything wrong with my expressing that honest sentiment after voting has closed; it can't change anything, and no matter who does win, I know that they'll deserve it.

This is huge. It is amazing. It is an honor to be nominated, it is mind-blowing to look at the ballot and think, "these are some of the giants of science fiction and fantasy, and there I am, me, and my friends, some of my best friends, and we're with them, and to a little girl like I was, looking at this ballot in twenty years, we'll be them." When I was a little girl looking at pictures of Isaac Asimov's Hugo Awards, I asked Santa to bring me one (maybe I should have asked the Birthday Skeleton). Now I have the chance to get one the legitimate, non-supernatural-being-initiated way. And it's huge, and it's terrifying, and I have a very pretty dress, and two very pretty dates for the ceremony, and...

And it's August. It's almost here.

Oh Great Pumpkin who waits for Harvest, hallowed be thy patch...

(*Only probably. The Valente/Hines/Cornell/Bear/McGuire alliance would take out half of the science fiction community before we were forced to turn on each other. My dress has big skirts. You can hide a surprising number of knives under big skirts.)

I'm starting to wake up after the sheer awesomeness of Confluence 2012, where I appeared as their combo Author Guest and Filk Guest. I am the peanut butter cup of cool! I had a wonderful time in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the only city to greet me at the airport with a full-sized T. Rex skeleton. These people know how to party. I ate great food, met great people, hung out with Tamora Pierce, Michelle Sagara, and Jonathan Maberry, and basically partied like it was 2399 and human sacrifice had just been legalized on Jupiter's second moon.

I remain totally grateful to have been Confluence's Guest of Honor. It was an honor, and I had a fantastic time. The Confluence set list, with arrangement* notes, was as follows:

1. "The Sealskin and the Story and the Sky." (Seanan, vocals; Rand Bellavia, guitar; Gary Ehrlich, djembe; Kathleen Sloan, shaky things.)
2. "Counting Crows." (Seanan, vocals; Rand Bellavia, guitar; Gary Ehrlich, djembe; Kathleen Sloan, vocals.)
3. "Mama Said." (Seanan, vocals; Rand Bellavia, guitar; Gary Ehrlich, eggs; Kathleen Sloan, vocals.)
4. "Modern Mystic." (Seanan, vocals; Rand Bellavia, guitar; Gary Ehrlich, djembe; Kathleen Sloan, vocals.)
5. "Phantoms of Summer." (Seanan, vocals; Gary Ehrlich, guitar; Rand Bellavia, guitar; Cat Faber, mandolin; Kathleen Sloan, vocals.)
6. "In the Foam." (Seanan, vocals.)
7. "Dear Gina." (Seanan, vocals; Rand Bellavia, guitar; Gary Ehrlich, djembe; Kathleen Sloan, vocals.)
8. "Maybe It's Crazy." (Seanan, vocals; Cat Faber, mandolin; Gary Ehrlich, guitar; Cat and Rand, maniacal laugh.)
9. "What A Woman's For." (Seanan, vocals; Rand Bellavia, guitar; Gary Ehrlich, tamborine; Kathleen Sloan, vocals.)
10. "Evil Laugh." (Seanan, vocals; Cat Faber, mandolin; Gary Ehrlich, guitar; Kathleen Sloan, vocals and shaky things.)
11. "Burn It Down" (Vixy & Tony cover). (Seanan McGuire, vocals; Rand Bellavia, guitar; Gary Ehrlich, djembe.)
12. "Wicked Girls Saving Ourselves." (Seanan, vocals; Rand Bellavia, guitar; Gary Ehrlich, djmebe; Kathleen Sloan, Cat Faber, Judi Miller, vocals.)
13. "My Story Is Not Done." (Seanan, vocals; Cat Faber, mandolin; Rand Bellavia, guitar; Gary Ehrlich, guitar; Kathleen Sloan, shaky things; everyone on stage, vocals.)

The bridge for "Wicked Girls" was:

Mandy's a pirate, and Judi signs songs for the fairies,
While Deborah will pour you red wine pressed from sweet poisoned berries.
Dee poses riddles, while Erin plays tricks,
And Kaia builds towers from brambles and sticks...

As always: "Counting Crows," "Mama Said," "My Story Is Not Done," and "Wicked Girls Saving Ourselves" are on Wicked Girls. "Evil Laugh" is on Stars Fall Home (out of print). "Modern Mystic" and "Phantoms of Summer" are on Pretty Little Dead Girl (out of print). "Maybe It's Crazy," "Dear Gina," and "What A Woman's For" are on Red Roses and Dead Things.

"The Seal Skin and the Story and the Sky," "In the Foam," and "Burn It Down" have not yet been recorded.

Again, I am so very grateful to the Confluence concom for having me. I had a wonderful time, and I can't wait to go back.

(*It was a big band and a lot of skin-of-our-teeth arrangement, so I may get some of my instrumentation notes wrong. I will fix if this is pointed out to me, and mean absolutely no offense of any kind. I am simply a frazzled blonde.)

Words: 4,164.
Total words: 47,288.
Reason for stopping: chapter eleven is finished, it's time for bed.
The cats: Alice, floor; Lilly, bed; Thomas, cat tree.
Music: random shuffle.

I am done with chapter eleven! I am all triumphant and stuff! Largely because now that I have most of the linear pieces in one place, I'm needing to move them around and introduce them to one another, and seriously, sometimes I am tempted to kill half my cast, just because I miss the simplicity of the early books. (I won't do that. I wouldn't do that. For me, the joy of these books is the interaction of the people. But that doesn't make it not frustrating to have to introduce eighteen people to each other every time someone new appears.)

I'll be working on Chimes at Midnight for the rest of the week, and I expect to pass the halfway mark before I go to bed on Sunday night. At that point, I can reassess the rest of my workload and determine whether this book gets another week right now, or whether I can switch over to Half-Off Ragnarok for a little while. And SymboGen is on the horizon...

A writer's work is never done. And I wouldn't have it any other way.