Bits, bobs, and a bunch of whatnot.: seanan

Bits, bobs, and a bunch of whatnot.

1. I am almost ready for Marcon! If by "almost" you mean "a packing list has been made, although no actual packing has been done, and hey, look, I have a set list." I'll pack tonight when I get home; tomorrow, I'll decamp to Kate's, since we need to get up at four o'clock Thursday morning if we want to catch our flight. Oh, the things I do for the love of conventions.

2. Last night was one of those "sleep so hard you wake up feeling hung-over" nights. I appreciate this. I don't get many of those nights anymore, and after I get over hating the universe, I tend to be refreshed and peppy. This sometimes creeps people out, as they aren't accustomed to seeing me peppy. Full of pep! There is nothing more dangerous than a truly cheerful blonde.

3. I'm currently cleaning and indexing my room, as part of an ongoing attempt to get my possessions under something resembling control. In the process of so doing, I found three copies of my 2009 chapbook. Now, I was under the impression that I had sold all the copies of my 2009 chapbook, which means either a) I can't count, or b) three people didn't get their chapbooks. If you requested a chapbook and never got it, please let me know, so that we can sort out what happened (and you can finally get your poetry).

4. I've finally updated my Upcoming Appearances page to include appearances through June, as well as the two stops on the Murder and Mayhem Tour that I'm doing with

jennifer_brozek. I'll be adding more information to the June/July appearances, but at least now people will basically know where I'm going to be.

5. An Artificial Night is now on Amazon! What's more, it's on Amazon with a release date (September 7th), and actually relevant-to-the-book information (rather than the carry-over description of A Local Habitation that appeared there initially). The cover isn't up yet, but I'll totally scream when it appears, because every time one of my books is actually fully on Amazon, an angel gets its wings. I want my own CELESTIAL HOST, dammit.

6. I've rewritten the first six chapters of The Brightest Fell, and suddenly, without warning, this book has started to actually WORK. It's not uncommon for me to spend a hundred pages or so wandering lost in the wilderness, but The Brightest Fell is a particularly hard book. It's the last of the Toby books that was started pre-publication, which means it's been shelved several times while I worked on more urgent projects. To make matters worse, it's complicated, and changes a lot of things about Toby's world. So it's been kicking my ass, and I have finally started kicking back.

7. Who found a copy of Kelley Armstrong's out-of-print Eve novella, Angelic, while she was at Dark Carnival in Berkeley? Would that be me? Why, yes, I do believe it would be. I'll be doing more book gloating later, but I needed to offer this little snippet now. Because dude.

8. The cats come running when they hear the opening theme from The West Wing, because they know it means I'll be sitting still for at least forty-five minutes. Possibly longer, if the power of their purring is enough to make me start a second episode. Yes, I have managed to train my cats into taking an interest in the democratic process. When Lilly takes the state to court for the right to vote, you have permission to blame me.

9. It's cherry season. You do not want to know how many pounds of cherries I've consumed in the last week and a half...but as a hint, I could probably reforest Utah with my cherry pips, and I am now capable of telling fortunes for the whole of Oregon.

10. Zombies are love.

wendyzski

May 25 2010, 18:12:44 UTC 7 years ago

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I am almost ready for Marcon! If by "almost" you mean "a packing list has been made, although no actual packing has been done,

I'm at the "laundry has been achieved" and am now on to the "figuring out how to pack steampunk props in such a was as to not alarm airport personnel". Last year this involved pasting work-in-progress photos on the interior boxes with large friendly letters saying "PLEASE DO NOT DETONATE MY ART!"

amazon_syren

May 25 2010, 18:49:16 UTC 7 years ago

Ooo. That was a good idea. :-)

May 25 2010, 19:09:51 UTC 7 years ago

This is the item in question - http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y283/wendyzski/marcon3.jpg

I used to train TSA screeners, so I knew that that combination of wires/battery/metal/liquids was going to look pretty alarming on an X-ray, so I took precautions.

This year I'm bringing a 'backpack engine' which is mostly plastic but I still have to be careful as to how I layer it in my bag with other things like steel-boned corsets and medical equipment (nebulizer for asthma) so as to not upset the security peeps.

kyrielle

May 25 2010, 20:50:03 UTC 7 years ago

*grins* Worst moment I ever had in screening (luckily easily averted by unpacking the bag, at least) was for a carry-on. I had a camera (still, not video), the charger cord for my phone, the charger block for the camera, and a roll of quarters (that I had utterly forgotten about) in my purse. And they'd all subsided together into a lump at the bottom of my purse, which was in turn at the bottom of my backpack (because otherwise I would've had too many carry-on bags).

...oops.

May 25 2010, 20:57:14 UTC 7 years ago

If you stand too close to the cannon at Closing Gate Scene at the Kansas City Faire, you will test positive for explosives for weeks to come.

Also, if you roll up your steel-boned corset and your belt-with-all-the-metal-bits-on-it before packing them, you will have to wait while some poor security schmuck has to unpack everything from your stinky sweaty and overpacked luggage to figure out what it is that is so upsetting his machine. Then he has to get everything back inside somehow.

I do have the advantage of knowing the general (though at this point out-of-date) security protocols so I try to pack to avoid delay as much as possible.

seanan_mcguire

May 25 2010, 19:34:26 UTC 7 years ago

...yeah, that's a good request to make.

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Bits, bobs, and a bunch of whatnot.

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