I sometimes wonder if horror directors go to bed at night dreaming that someday, one of their movies will become a classic; someday, one of their movies will spawn an iconic monster that people will be screaming over for generations to come. Sadly, most of them won't make it. Even the ones who create a truly iconic villain won't necessarily get an iconic monster, because an iconic monster must be somehow generic enough to be used and abused by others, even as the person who first brought it to the screen is generally credited for its creation. The werewolf, the mummy, the vampire, even the mad scientist...they all had to start somewhere. Sure, most iconic horror movie monsters existed before the movies that gave them a terrifying life, but it's the cinematic realities that we remember. At least until the lights go out.

George Romero set out to make a creepy little movie with a social commentary and a shoestring budget. He succeeded in making history.

The concept of the ghoul or walking corpse has existed for centuries—maybe for as long as mankind has been aware that death exists—but it wasn't until Romero that it shambled into the modern age. Night of the Living Dead opened the doors to a new sub-genre of horror, a shambling, biting, hungry sub-genre that wouldn't rest until it had consumed the world. Zombies don't need sleep. They're already dead.

Without Romero, we wouldn't have Night of the Comet, Slither, Night of the Creeps, the Evil Dead trilogy, a large portion of Rob Zombie's musical catalog, or the Zombie Prom episode of Wizards of Waverly Place. We wouldn't have my own Feed, and that would make me a very sad girl indeed. George Romero changed the world. Maybe he did it on purpose, maybe he did it by accident. In the end, it doesn't really matter. He did it.

Here's to you, George Romero. And when you die, we're feeding your corpse into a wood chipper. Just to be sure.

When I was a kid growing up below the poverty line in California, I had a lot of toys that were "the hot new thing" about ten years before they wound up in my grasping little hands. This included the glory of the Creepy Crawlers machine, from Thing Maker. (Modern parents, prepare to be completely and utterly appalled.) It consisted of a small, open-faced grill component capable of baking things at incredibly high temperatures, nine solid metal molds, a metal hook for lifting the hot molds out of the "oven," and a bunch of bottles of liquid sludge called "Plasti-Goop." You plugged the oven in, chose a mold, filled it with multi-colored ooze, and then watched in amazement as heat slowly transformed harmless slime into boiling molten death plastic, and then into cheap quarter-machine plastic bugs, amphibians, and reptiles.

Best. Toy. Ever.

If my mother thought it might be dangerous for me to spend hours sitting on the steps in front of our apartment wearing cut-off shorts and breathing the fumes from a boiling cauldron of molten plastic, she never said anything; really, she probably figured it was cheaper than eating paste or sniffing markers until they dried out (big hobbies with the other kids on my block). Besides, my infinite supply of interestingly-colored plastic creatures meant I only tried to beg for quarters when I wanted gum or a superball, and that was much more reasonable than trying to feed my endless hunger for hideous horror movie props.

I was, I think, nine when my sister (Rachel, the youngest one) wandered innocently out onto the porch, grabbed hold of the cord on my Creepy Crawler machine, and gave it a good yank. The machine promptly flew into the air and stuck to the side of my right calf, at which point I began wailing like a banshee on acid. The machine fell down; the mold didn't. My mother came running out of the apartment and sensibly grabbed my little sister, who was in serious danger of being pitched off the balcony once I finished screaming, and then ran back inside to get some ice. I managed to knock the mold off my leg, leaving an enormous glob of bright orange molten Plasti-Goop behind. More screaming.

Mom came out, and wiped away the plastic; my leg was already starting to blister. I still have the scar, a strawberry-shaped white patch about the size of a man's thumb print on my right calf. It makes an entertaining conversation piece, since "Where did you get that scar?" is rarely answered with "My sister spilled a molten plastic caterpillar mold on my leg."

I miss my Creepy Crawler machine. And if I had it, there's not a parent I know who'd let their children near my house ever again.

Mary Robinette Kowal—who is fantastic and awesome and incidentally, the person reading the Toby Daye audio books, which means hers is a voice I'm going to be hearing quite a lot of—made a blog post previewing the upcoming fantasy movies of 2010. It's a good post, which is no surprise, since she's a good author and a great lady. But one line, talking about Disney's upcoming Rapunzel, sort of hit me the wrong way:

"Hey! Disney's doing another classic fairy tale. While I could wish that the princess here weren't your cliche blond, I also have to acknowledge that this is true to the Brothers Grimm story."

I'm blonde. This is a choice now, since I'm old enough to dye my hair, but when I was first forming my self-image, it was just a biological reality. I've spent my entire life being bombarded with Barbie and bimbo stereotypes, from Kelly Bundy on Married...With Children to an endless procession of evil stepmothers and nasty girlfriends on the silver screen. That wasn't always the case; "America's sweethearts" used to be almost exclusively blonde girls, who might not be smart or independent, but they were plucky and beautiful and they got the guy, so hey, let's rock with that, okay? But the age of the blonde as leading lady ended before I was born, and except for Barbie—who seems to be basically unkillable—it hasn't really shown much sign of coming back. Gwen Stacy was replaced by Mary Jane. Supergirl's comic got canceled on a regular basis. Maybe it's because all the science fiction I watched was supposed to be about the male hero, so they didn't want to make the women too "flashy," but all the smart, interesting, active women on television seemed to be brunette...unless they were all about their sexy hot bodies of sexy hotness, in which case, they could be blonde, but don't forget, unless you're hot and blonde, you don't count.

Growing up, I was able to find exactly three smart, blonde, accessible fictional characters to idolize as role models: Marilyn Munster from The Munsters, Sue Richards of the Fantastic Four, and Terra of the Teen Titans. Terra eventually turned out to be totally evil (and hence got dropped from the list), only to be replaced by Illyana Rasputin, who...promptly died. Whoops. Marilyn and Sue endured, and even if Sue was occasionally a soccer mom, they remained blonde and awesome. (Marilyn was also the first firm indication I got that it was okay to like monsters and frilly pink dresses. I owe a lot to Marilyn Munster.) Like every kid, I wanted some reassurance that I was okay the way I was, and a lot of what I got from the media was that I would only be okay if I either suffered severe head trauma or dyed my hair.

This? Sucked.

The ongoing transition of the blonde from girl-next-door and America's sweetheart has continued, and now she's not just the bimbo, she's the bad guy. I started making lists of movies and television shows with blonde characters, and nine times out of ten, if you have a blonde at all, she's evil. If she's not evil, the bad guy? Is also blonde. Movies that break this trend: Legally Blonde (where all the blondes are presented as well-meaning ditzes who are smart despite the satin-finish manicures, or dumb but sweet), and Jennifer's Body (where Needy is Hollywood ugly-pretty, and plays the foil to an evil brunette sexpot). There are more blondes on television (thank you, Veronica Mars, thank you), but they're still very rare in-genre, and there, they're usually cannon fodder.

And then there are the princesses. See, the reason this comment bothered me in the first place is that I've heard it before, many times. "Oh, at least Disney's new princess isn't blonde." "Oh, it looks insipid, but at least the princess isn't blonde." Well, excluding animals (so Nala doesn't count), there have been four blonde Disney protagonists: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Alice, and Eilonwy. Oh, and Tinker Bell, who sort of exists in her own little bubble. The most recent of these characters, Eilonwy, was created in 1985, when The Black Cauldron flopped at a theater near you. Prior to that, we had Sleeping Beauty in 1959. Princesses/protagonists in the last twenty years have been brunette (Belle, Jane), black haired (Jasmine, Pocahontas, Esmerelda, Mulan, Lilo, Nani, Tiana), redheads (Megara), or white haired (Kida). (Ariel just misses this cut, as The Little Mermaid came out in 1989. Redheads are really under-represented, by the way, unless you count Giselle from Enchanted and Penny from Bolt, and then they just wind up in the boat with the blondes.)

Blonde girls deserve a smart, savvy, modern Disney princess with agency. We didn't use up all our princesses when we got Cinderella and Aurora, and the fact that they left Alice blonde doesn't make up for turning Dorothy brunette. So instead of wishing this princess weren't blonde, how about we say "yay, about time," and keep making it okay for blonde girls to be smart, just like everybody else?

So I have a reporter from the Contra Costa Times coming over this afternoon to interview me and take some pictures for a local author profile piece. This is pretty cool. I've never been profiled in the newspaper before. We've cleaned the whole house (for values of "we" that mean "mostly my mother"), my room is slightly less of an EPA hazard zone than usual, and the cats have been thoroughly lectured on not throwing up in front of the cameraman. After a great deal of discussion, I have agreed to the following list of Things Seanan Isn't Allowed To Discuss With the Reporter (unless she starts it):

1. The Black Death.
2. Parasites.
3. How parasites caused us to evolve gender.
4. Endemic bubonic plague in California's ground squirrels.
5. The X-Men.
6. Crazy Australian mermaid shows.
7. Anything involving venom.
8. Dinosaurs.
9. The inevitability of the zombie apocalypse.
10. Anything that involves socially unacceptable hand gestures.
11. The ineffective nature of H1N1 as a slatewiper pandemic.
12. How my pandemic would be better.
13. Pandemics, period.
14. My collection of My Little Ponies.
15. My collection of plush weaponry.
16. My collection of plush viruses.
17. Banana slugs.
18. How to evolve a society of pseudo-mammal telepaths from parasitic wasps.
19. Why you would want to do that in the first place.
20. Giant squid.
21. Reality television.
22. Bedbug reproduction.
23. Anything Kate won't let me talk about during dinner.
24. Necrosis.
25. The slow conversion of aspartame into formaldehyde.
26. Monkeyspheres.
27. The fact that the turtle couldn't help us.
28. My limited and specialized knowledge of ASL.
29. The virtues of the machete vs. the meat cleaver.
30. That vial of liquid mercury I bought at a garage sale.
31. Tarantulas.
32. Cheese.
33. Jerusalem crickets.
34. What I did last summer.
35. The vast disparity between women's "appropriate" weight and the things women eat in television commercials.
36. Evil Dead: the Musical.
37. Why you should turn to cannibalism immediately when stranded on a desert island.
38. Kuru.
39. Flensing.
40. Parthenogenic reproduction.
41. Reasons to go crawling around in a sewer.
42. Observing autopsies.
43. Why yoga is better with Rob Zombie.
44. SyFy Original Movies.
45. The drinking games that accompany same.
46. Why I went to Waverly Place last time I was in Manhattan.
47. Pie.
48. Pi.
49. Structured poetry.
50. People as an available source of protein.

Today is my birthday! Yaaaaaaay! And to celebrate my birthday, I'm going to give stuff away. Because I can. (Also because it's quite frankly easier than thinking of something coherent to say. The cats still haven't forgiven me for leaving, and I didn't get all that much sleep as a consequence. What sleep I did get involved dreams that were basically a cross between Cabin Fever and Parasite Rex, so I'm understandably a little loopy this morning.)

First up, let's give away a copy of Rosemary and Rue, again, because I can. To enter, comment here. I'll do the drawing in five hours, my time, using random numbers and snazzy math to select a winner, and then I'll post a second giveaway. Many will enter, few will win, please ask your parents before calling those suspicious-looking numbers that appear during the Saturday morning cartoons.

Now I nap.

So I'm past the hangovers and sugar-crashes and travel and oddly excessive number of cookies, and it is now time to begin assessing my current status. Beyond "awake," I mean. It's 2010! It's a whole new year! Sadly, the old year did not do all the dishes before it left, but hey.

Books. I have three coming out in 2010: A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] and An Artificial Night as me, and Feed [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] as Mira Grant. I have one currently due in 2010, Blackout (the sequel to Feed).

In addition to the books that are already sold/slated for publication, I have one finished October Daye book, Late Eclipses, and one finished InCryptid book, Discount Armageddon. I am currently working on The Brightest Fell (Toby five), Midnight Blue-Light Special (InCryptid two), and Sit, Stay, I Hate You (Coyote Girls two). In 2010, I'm planning to finish all three of these, start on Deadline (Newsflesh three), start on Ashes of Honor (Toby six), and start on Hunting Grounds (InCryptid three). I am not planning on a particularly large quantity of sleep.

Short Stories. I'm one of the 2010 universe authors for The Edge of Propinquity, which will be running my Sparrow Hill Road series from January through December. The first story, "Good Girls Go To Heaven," has been turned in, and I'm about two-thirds of the way through the second story, "Dead Man's Party," which should be finished by this weekend. After that comes "Tell Laura I Love Her," which should be a lot of fun. This is a series heavily influenced by the mythology of the American highway, and with a very strong soundtrack accompanying every story. There will be playlists! Much fun.

I have various other short stories out on secret missions, including two Fighting Pumpkins adventures ("Dying With Her Cheer Pants On" and "Gimme a 'Z'!"), my first-ever steampunk piece ("Alchemy and Alcohol," which comes complete with cocktail recipes), and an actual Mira Grant short story ("Everglades"). I'm noticing a high level of dead stuff in my recent short story output. Somehow, this is not striking me as terribly surprising.

Non-fiction. My essay in Chicks Dig Time Lords [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] will be available in March, along with, y'know, the rest of the book. So if you've ever wondered why I love math and have trouble with linear time, you should probably pick up a copy of this book. (You should do that anyway, because the book is awesome, but that's beside the point.) My introduction for jennifer_brozek's In A Gilded Light will also be available with the rest of the book, sometime in mid-2010.

Albums. Work on Wicked Girls is proceeding apace, and beginning to pick up speed as we get deeper into the process of mixing and arranging songs. I'm scheduling my various instrumentalists to come into the studio and get their parts recorded, and some of the arrangements are just going to be incredible. I still need to confirm the covers for this album, and start thinking about graphic design, but I'm still really, really pleased. There's no confirmed release date yet, and there's not going to be one until we're a lot closer to done: as I've said a few times, as soon as there's a deadline, this ceases to be fun and relaxing, and right now, we're too far from finished for that to be a good idea.

I'm within a hundred copies of being entirely out of Stars Fall Home (my first studio album), and right now, I couldn't tell you if or when there's going to be another printing. I'm doing a little better for Pretty Little Dead Girl, but at the current rate, I'd estimate that I'll be out (or very close to out) by this time next year. Red Roses and Dead Things, being my most recent release, is also the one with the most remaining stock (paradoxically, it's also my fastest seller, since a lot of folks don't have it yet). In summary, if you're missing any of my first three albums, you may want to consider whether you're going to want them, because when they're gone, they're gone.

Cats. Thanks to Susan's lovely gift of triple-strength catnip mice, I have discovered Alice's response to catnip. Basically, she goes batshit moonmonkey pumpkinfuckers INSANE for about half an hour, before singing arias to the invisible bug-people for the rest of the night. Lilly, on the other hand, takes advantage of Alice's, ahem, "delicate condition," and spends several hours gently shoving her off things.

And that's the local weather report. Back to you, Ken.

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through my mind
Were hitchhiking ghost-girls and struggles unkind,
And fairy tale murders and pandemic flu—
My friends hope my holiday dreams won't come true—

And Tara has finished the graphics so fine
To help and promote that new novel of mine
(The sequel to something you just might have read,
With Toby and Tybalt and new things to dread).

My tickets are purchased, my plans are all set,
I'm wracking my brain to guess what I'll forget,
And Vixy and Tony are waiting with glee
For the holiday gift that I'm giving them—me.

Two thousand and nine is a year nearly through!
Oh, the things that we did, and the things left to do!
I'm still with the agent who signed me last year,
She still knows I'm crazy, and yet she's still here.

The first of the Toby books sits upon shelves,
Full of wise-cracking Cait Sidhe and put-upon elves,
And two more adventures are coming this year,
Which ought to be good for your holiday cheer.

In March, Habitation, in May, you'll get Feed
(My evil twin, Mira, knows just what you need),
While "Sparrow Hill Road" will take twelve months to drive,
And Rose knows that nobody gets out alive.

InCryptid and Velveteen, Babylon Archer,
And so many more are prepared for departure
At seanan_mcguire the updates are steady—
I'm keeping you posted. You'd better get ready.

The year yet to come will bring wonders galore,
And I can't start to guess at the great things in store,
So whatever you celebrate when the world's cold,
Be it secular, modern, or something quite old,

I hope that you're happy, I hope that you're warm,
I hope that you're ready to weather the storm,
And I wish you the joys that a winter provides,
All you Kings of the Summer and sweet Snow Queen brides,

And I can't wait to see what the next year will bring,
The stories we'll tell, and the songs that we'll sing.
The dead and the living will stand and rejoice!
(I beg you to rise while you still have a choice.)

The journey's been fun, and there's much more to see,
So grab your machete and come now with me,
And they'll hear us exclaim as we dash out of sight,
"Scary Christmas to all, and to all a good fright!"

Two awesome shirts enter, but only one can make it to my dresser (because I really don't have that big of a budget for awesome shirts right now). Both come in the girl's-cut extra-large, which is my poison of choice, so without that easy determining factor, it's time to play Barbie and let someone else dress me. I give you...



Vote! I can't promise to abide by the prevailing decision, but hey, I'm amused.

So here I am, in New York. (Technically, as I write this, here I am, in New Jersey. It seems like I always wind up staying in New Jersey while here, and commuting to New York. This is because the East Coast is made entirely of tiny little postage-stamp states. Postage-stamp states. I realize and understand that this is a California thing, but really, I don't feel that I should be able to casually wander over state lines and not really notice.) Since arriving...

...the motor on the fridge has decided to die, filling the apartment with smoke, covering the kitchen floor with water, and triggering an impromptu dinner party, complete with enormous and only semi-expected mob. One member of the mob, upon encountering certain jet-lagged idiosyncrasies of mine, wailed, "But my Seanan List* didn't include what to do about the liver hat!" Sometimes it's nice to be me.

...visited the GINORMOUS Manhattan Apple Store, in which a charming young man at the Genius Bar was kind enough to inform me that my iPod was, in fact, dead beyond all reasonable repair. He offered to zombie it for a short period of time, but made it clear that this manner of resurrection was counter-recommended, and would probably result in an army of undead Apple products shambling around the city. As I have things to accomplish this week, I declined, and will be getting a new iPod.

...visited FAO Schwartz, home of the giant piano, and many, many, many toys. I did not actually buy any toys, largely due to their tragic dearth of dinosaurs. I judged their stock most harshly. I judged their stock most harshly with the powers of my mind. (I did not, however, judge their MUPPET FACTORY with anything beyond delight and glee. Because dude, MUPPET FACTORY.)

...went to Serendipity 3 with The Agent. We consumed frozen hot chocolate, which was amazing, and had lunch, which was less "amazing" and more "faintly horrifying." My chef's salad contained a pond's-worth of watercress, an orange, a cup of fruit salad, steamed asparagus, and avocado. This is what those of here in the real world like to refer to as "overkill." We split a sundae after eating. This, too, was overkill, but in the good way, since we received roughly enough hot fudge to replace all the mucus in the average human body.

...ate an apple cider doughnut. What the hell is wrong with some people?

...went to visit everybody at Orbit (Mira's editor). I'd already met my editor (at World Fantasy) and my contact in the marketing department (far more pleasant than Vel's Marketing Department), but it was a real treat to meet all the other folks involved in making the book a reality, including the art director who did the cover design (which is, I must admit, fucking fantastic). After our meeting, The Editor2 took The Agent and I out for lunch in Grand Central Station. Sadly, this involved cutlery and bread service, rather than hot dogs of questionable origin and things scraped off of crusty bakery trays, which is what I think of when you say "hey, let's go eat in the train station."

...passed out cold from a migraine and lost approximately sixteen hours. Because sometimes, jetlag hates me.

(*She was actually equipped with a Seanan List to assist her in surviving our encounter. Presumably this list came with a box labeled "In Case of Seanan Break Glass." The contents of the box are left to your imagination.)

How's been by all of you?

There has once again been a massive influx of people, due to the fact that Alice is adorable—welcome, massive influx of people; it's nice to meet you, although I realize half of you will leave again as you realize that this isn't the all-kitten-doing-weird-stuff, all-the-time channel, and that's fine—I have decided to once again do the abbreviated "here are ten things you might want to know" version of the periodic welcome post. So here it is. Ta-da! (As a footnote, Alice is aware of your worship, and was puffy all over my face at 2AM last night.)

***

1. My name is Seanan McGuire; I'm an author, musician, poet, cartoonist, and amiable nutcase, presently living in Northern California, planning to relocate to Washington at some point in the next few years. I am a very chatty person, whether you're talking literally "we're in the same place" chattiness, or more abstract "someone has left Seanan alone with a keyboard, run for the hills" chattiness. This does not, paradoxically, make me terribly good about keeping up with email or answering comments in anything that resembles a reasonable fashion. We all have our flaws. Luckily for my agent's sanity, I am very good about making my deadlines.

2. My name is pronounced "SHAWN-in", although a great many people elect to pronounce it "SHAWN-anne" instead. Either is fine with me. I went to an event where we all got name tags once, and the person making the name tags was a "SHAWN-anne" person, who proceeded to label me as "Shawn Anne McGuire". I choose to believe that Shawn Anne is my alter-ego from a universe where, instead of becoming an author, I chose to become a country superstar. She wears a great many rhinestones, because they're sparkly, and she can get away with it. Just don't call me "See-an-an" and we'll be fine.

3. I write: urban fantasy, horror, young adult, supernatural romance, and straight chick-lit romance. I occasionally threaten to write medical thrillers, but everyone knows that's just so I'd have an excuse to take more epidemiology courses. I love me a good plague. I believe that editing is a full-contact sport, complete with penalty boxes, illegal checking, and team pennants. My editing team is the Fighting Pumpkins. We're going all the way to the WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS this year, bay-bee!

4. I find it useful to keep a record of the status of my various projects, both because it warms the little Type-A cockles of my heart, and because it helps people who need to know what's going on know, well, what's going on. So you'll see word counts and editing updates go rolling by if you stick around, as well as more generalized complaining about the behavior of fictional people. I am told this is entertaining. I am also told that this is possibly a sign of madness. I don't know.

5. I currently publish both as myself, and as my own evil twin, Mira Grant. My first book under my own name, Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], came out from DAW in September 2009. The sequel, A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], is coming out in March 2010, also from DAW. Mira's first book, Feed [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], will be out from Orbit in May 2010. I don't get very much sleep.

6. I am a musician! More specifically, I'm a filk musician. If you know filk, this statement makes total sense. If you don't know filk, think "the folk music of the science fiction and fantasy community"—or you can check out the music FAQ on my website. I have three CDs available: Pretty Little Dead Girl, Stars Fall Home, and Red Roses and Dead Things. I'm currently recording a fourth CD, Wicked Girls, which will be out sometime in 2010. I write mostly original material, and don't spend much time in ParodyLand. It just doesn't work out for me.

7. Things I find absolutely enthralling: giant squid. Plush dinosaurs. Siamese and Maine Coon cats. Zombies. The plague. Pandemic flu. Horror movies of all quality levels. Horror television. Science Fictional Channel Original Movies. Shopping for used books. Halloween. Marvel comics. Candy corn. Carnivorous plants. Pumpkin cake. Stephen King. The Black Death. Pandemic disease of all types. Learning how to say horrifying things in American Sign Language. Diet Dr Pepper.

8. Things I find absolutely horrifying: slugs. Big spiders dropping down from the ceiling and landing on me because ew. Bell peppers. Rice. Movies that consist largely of car chases and do not contain a satisfying amount of carnage. Animal cruelty. People who go hiking on mountain trails in Northern California and freak out over a little rattlesnake. Most sitcoms. A large percentage of modern advertising. Diet Chocolate Cherry Dr Pepper.

9. I am owned by two cats: a classic bluepoint Siamese named Lillian Kane Moskowitz Munster McGuire, and a blue classic tabby and white Maine Coon named Alice Price-Healy Little Liddel Abernathy McGuire. Yes, I call them that, usually when they've been naughty. The rest of the time, they're respectively "Lilly" or "Lil," and either "Alice" or "Ally." I'm planning to get a Sphynx, eventually, when the time comes to expand to having a third cat.

10. I frequently claim to be either a Disney Halloweentown princess or Marilyn Munster. These claims are more accurate than most people realize. Although I wasn't animated in Pasadena.

***

Welcome!

...but the bad news is they're dead.

We all have those movies that we saw as kids and were horribly scarred-slash-influenced by. They aren't always good movies. In fact, I'd say a lot of them are bad movies, which we love because hey, when you're a kid, men in rubber suits chasing girls in bikinis after inexplicable beachfront musical numbers are pure gold. These are the movies that make us the people we become as adults. For me, these movies were split just about fifty-fifty between "really bad horror movies" and "candy-colored cartoon wonderlands." This explains a great many things, if you stop and think about it for a moment. Or don't. It might be better for you.

One of my most formative films was a creepy little horror-comedy called The Night of the Creeps [Amazon]. It, along with The Monster Squad, Night of the Comet, and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, informed me on a very deep and meaningful level. And it has been totally unavailable for years now, due to rights issues and the fact that, let's face it, they needed to wait for those of us who remembered loving this movie were old enough to have disposable income.

Guess what came out on DVD today?

There is so much love.

So I recently agreed to autograph and mail back a book that was mailed to me, because hey, it seemed like a cool thing to do, and nobody had ever asked me to do that before (and since the book was being mailed with the cost of postage enclosed, it's not like I was giving up a day's Diet Dr Pepper for the sake of randomly mailing things). I was rewarded by the book's owner—also a Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab fan, albeit one who does not share my adoration of their pumpkin perfumes—enclosing surprise BPAL. Specifically, surprise Pumpkin Patch 2006. SURPRISE!

The 2006 Pumpkin Patch was my Very First BPAL. It was a gift from Kate, who thought I would like it. She was right, as my shelf o' bottles of weird perfume can now attest. I bought the 2007 Pumpkin Patch for myself. And the 2008 Pumpkin Patch. And recently, thanks to a "please help me buy more perfume"-based art sale, the 2009 Pumpkin Patch. Oh, and I have a bottle of Jack, and a bottle of Pumpkin Queen. So, counting my new bottles, and the extra bottle of Pumpkin-with-Pomegranate that I got Just In Case (tm), I have...

...twenty-nine bottles of pumpkin-based perfume. Not counting my assorted imps and decants and suchlike.

I think this is sufficient pumpkin perfume to make my declaration of being Pumpkin Queen of California entirely believable, and actually a bit of an unnecessary statement. Because I am so the Pumpkin Queen. I have the spooky perfume to prove it.

Come and get it while it's hot! The Edge of Propinquity is one of my favorite online magazines, featuring a monthly mix of ongoing, or "universe" stories—sort of like the classic old movie serials of the 1940s and 1950s, only without quite as many Rocketman cameos—and one-off guest stories, showing you the freaky side of the fictional world. I was a guest author for TEoP in 2008, with a gory little story called "Let's Pretend." Feeling the sting of my long absence, I went crawling back to their door, and was rewarded with the chance to be a guest in their home once more.

Ladies and gentlemen, my story for the November 2009 issue of The Edge of Propinquity:

Inspirations.

This is me enjoying the glories of being a horror girl, pure and simple. It's dark, it's squishy, and it makes me very happy to be able to get it out there and share it with the world. Blood stains and all.

Enjoy.

This past Tuesday, a movie called The Thaw was released on DVD. Basically, Val Kilmer and a bunch of photogenic generic horror-movie twenty-somethings fight prehistoric parasites that come out of a really well-preserved mammoth corpse and try to eat everybody. From the trailer, they succeed in eating at least half the cast, which makes this film Highly Relevant To My Interests. Translation: I want it real bad.

Having failed to find the movie at Target—big surprise there, as they're not normally a real hotbed of hard-core direct-to-DVD horror action (unless it's a direct-to-DVD sequel to something that made mega-bucks)—I hied me over to Fry's, where I figured their low standards and massive selection would make me a happy little horror girl.

Issue number one: I couldn't find the damn movie. The horror section contained everything else that's ever been released and titled with something beginning with the letter "T," including The Tingler, which is pointless if you don't have someone standing behind you with a cattle prod (although I suppose you could lick batteries instead). Frustrated by the alphabet, I went looking for an employee.

I should probably have expected a problem when the employee called me "a nice young lady," as in "I'll be with you right after I help this nice young lady." Now, I don't object to any of these words, individually or as a group, and I don't even particularly mind them when applied to me. It's just that when I hear this phrase in a video store, it's almost always coming from someone who's about to try convincing me that I don't want what I want. But I was being hopeful.

"I'm looking for The Thaw. It came out Tuesday."
"Is that the new Sandra Bullock movie?"

Cue staring.

I eventually hammered it into his head that I was looking for a) a horror movie, b) a bad horror movie, and c) yes, I really meant it. He admitted that his computer was showing one copy in stock, and suggested I try the horror section. When I said I'd already looked there, he assigned one of the other clerks to help me find it (I think he didn't want to go himself for fear that they'd never find the body, as I was distinctly into "wishing you to the cornfield" mode). The clerk he sent proceeded to spend the next twenty minutes—as we went through the entire horror section, on the off-chance that it had been shelved wrong—trying to convince me that I wanted something else. Something nicer. From a different part of the store.

(Total aside: they put Ice Spiders out on DVD. ICE SPIDERS. Why the hell would anybody want to do that to an innocent blank disk?)

In the end, we didn't find my movie, I got tired of being looked at funny, and I went grumbling off to do something that didn't make me want to punch people. The utterly unhelpful clerk who'd been trying to shift me to the comedy aisle said I could special-order the movie. I told him that on Amazon, no one knows that I'm a perky-looking blonde.

Sometimes it's hard to be an old-school horror girl. And I still don't get to see Val Kilmer eaten alive by horrible prehistoric parasites.

Hmmph.

First up, some exciting Rosemary and Rue-related news: namely, it's going to be October's book of the month at Genreville. Genreville is an exciting genre-focused blog hosted by Publishers Weekly, moderated by some really awesome folks. I couldn't be happier.

If you've been waiting for an interview with me that dared to ask the really bizarre questions, you should take a look at this fun, flippant interview conducted by Jonathan Fesmire. Jon's a dear friend of mine, and I was his "maiden voyage" into the world of interviewing authors. Let's see if future interviews stay this surreal.

The nice folks over at BSC (a blog with the endearing subtitle of "Because We Said It") posted this charmingly detailed and lengthy review. Quoth the reviewer, "Rosemary and Rue combines mystery and fantasy to very good effect, making this book fast-paced and full of action. It's very nice to see an urban fantasy book that doesn’t include the modern trend towards paranormal romance." Also: "I would definitely recommend this book for fans of urban fantasy, as well as readers who don’t mind well-mixed genres." Yay!

Also in today's review roundup, the Suburban Banshee posted this awesome review, including such delicious quotes as "This is real urban fantasy, in short, and not the McDonald’s equivalent that’s been crowding the shelves for the last few years. Buy it, buy it, buy it, before the last few copies disappear from your bookstore." (If you could make those last few copies disappear, I'd be ever so grateful...)

Finally, I give you the review that made me squeal like I'd just been named Prom Queen at the Geek Prom, where the pig's-blood shower is a perk, not a problem: Rosemary and Rue has been reviewed on IO9. It's a long, detailed, and best of all, fair and balanced review which neither paints me perfect nor positions me for pillory. Charlie Jane is awesome that way, and says—among other things, you should really read it—"After exploring McGuire's fairy city for one dark murder mystery, I'm on board for more, and looking forward to seeing how October's tangled web of allegiances and obligations plays out over the course of the next few books."

I win at geek.

Let's go back in time, to Friday, September 4th. (Feel free to make Wayne and Garth time-travel hands. They're like jazz hands, only awesome.) Rosemary and Rue has been available for purchase for less than a week. My house has been thoroughly invaded by book preparation, and also by Amy, who arrived while I had Martian Death Flu and didn't run screaming. My sanity is at a record ebb, since there's so much that needs to be done.

What a perfect time to have a party.

My first book release party was scheduled to happen at Illusive Comics, a comic book store in Santa Clara, California, owned and operated by my friend Anna. It was nepotism that got me the gig, I make no bones about that, but I really wanted a South Bay appearance, and she really wanted an excuse for a party, so hey, nothing wrong here. (My book release was Anna's first-ever non-comic book event. To say that we were both a little nervous is like saying that millipedes are a little over-equipped in the "legs" department.

While I spent the day at my day job, slogging away and trying not to chew through my fingers, the invasion began. Members of the Traveling Circus and Snake-Handling Show poured in from all over the place. Vixy, Tony, and Betsy came from the Seattle area; Brooke came from Vancouver, Canada; Sooj and K came via car from their ongoing magical musical road trip; Mia and Ryan came from Portland, Oregon. (Mia and Ryan, in fact, came at 5:27 AM. Because driving from Oregon to California is awesome.) They slowly filled my house to capacity, frightening the cats and waiting to pounce.

Amy spent the day at Kristoph's, doing awesome fiddle things, and when I called to ask her for an ETA, said that Kristoph would be delivering her to the house. Score! Everything's better with Kristoph.

Mom collected me from the train station, and we arrived home to find it occupied by a Mia, a Ryan, a Brooke, and an Amy. Hugs happened, followed by rapid-fire gathering of the things we'd need for the evening, and then we were off to the hotel where Vixy, Tony, Sooj, and K were staying, to collect the four of them (plus Betsy, who'd initially gone to the hotel when she arrived) and all their musical instruments. Mom had wisely borrowed a van from a friend for the weekend, and we filled that thing to capacity. More hugs were exchanged, and we took off in three vehicles, after a short stop at the 7-11 for provisions. (This is where I mention that my little sister, Rachel, and her girlfriend, Chris, were also in the van.)

We were off! We were running! We were on fire! We were...lost in very short order, leading to my mother stopping at a gas station for directions, while I went into the bathroom to throw up from sheer panic. I don't handle being late very well.

Still, wrong turns and panic attacks aside, we got there only fifteen minutes after the official start, and were met at the curb by the first of what would be many, many bags of candy corn. Inside, the joint was jumpin', and Anna was doing a brisk business in copies of Rosemary and Rue, as well as a few precious copies of Ravens in the Library. (We rapidly sold out of Rosemary and Rue.) The musicians gathered at the back of the store to tune and prepare; I went behind the counter to start signing things and eating candy corn. Blonde does not live by candy corn alone, and Ryan II was dispatched to bring me back delicious samosas. Mmmmmmm, samosas.

I signed more books. Anna looked increasingly wide-eyed as we packed more and more (and more and more) people into her little store. The Magic: the Gathering players set up between us and the bathroom looked more and more concerned that we were going to eat them. My food arrived. I ate my food. Time for music!

Much of the Traveling Circus and Snake-Handling Show had never actually shared a stage before that night, although all of us had played with some combination of the others. We opened with "Wicked Girls," and more than half the room was singing along. I nearly cried. From there, the music was a selection of offerings from each of our musicians—Vixy and Tony's "Thirteen," Betsy's "Wildlife," Sooj's version of "Tam Lin," Brooke's "Rosemary and Rue," and Amy doing mad reels like she thought the night might actually catch flame. Paul Kwinn even joined us for one number, and we did "This Is My Town" live for the first time in years. "Dorothy" was added to the set at the last minute—it turns out Anna, who used to publish the comic that inspired the song, wanted to hear it! Who knew? (This is by no means a complete set list.)

We closed the night with "Alligator In the House," with hugs, with laughter, and without an unclaimed copy of Rosemary and Rue in sight. The Circus was officially underway—and what a magical beginning! Could it get any better?

Actually, yes. It could. Next up, Saturday, San Francisco, slinky Sphynx, and serious sirens seriously invading one of the Bay Area's best independent bookstores. It's time for the Circus to hit Borderlands like a meteorite hitting a cornfield in a horror movie! Yay!

First off, here's some mixed-media fun stuff that's come up recently:

Behold, for it is the Penguin podcast! Behold also, for they are all talking with me about Toby and making me sing and I was so totally jet-lagged at the time that I really had very little notion of what I was saying. But I was wearing pretty wool pants and a Kelly green jacket (none of which show up on the podcast), so at least I looked good while I was babbling.

I can't get this video at the Penguin sit to play, because I'm crap with this sort of thing sometimes. But I'm in it, and that's probably good enough reason to point you at it. Maybe you can get it to go. I wish you all the luck in the world.

Over on Dreamwidth, Cynthia's posted a short-and-sweet review. It falls into the "don't quote from it, you'll wind up re-posting the whole thing" category, so I recommend clicking over and checking it out.

fireun has posted a lovely review. She says "This is the faery tale I have been waiting to read for most of my life. From Kelpies hunting in the shadows, an Undine dwelling in a park, and the King of Cats holding court, Rosemary and Rue is full of the Faerie Court as it should be- beautiful and deadly." You'll pardon me while I purr, won't you?

starlady38 has posted a review, which was pointed out to me by a mutual friend (I love it when I get reviews from people I don't know). She says "The book is a cracking good read, a real pageturner, and I don't normally care for stories about the Fair Folk (War for the Oaks being a notable, and at least slightly comparable, exception in this regard), but I have to recommend this book. Toby is a fascinating, painfully real character, as are the people who surround her, and McGuire's evocation of San Francisco, as well as of the power dynamics in the Faerie Courts (in which changelings are only a few steps up from dirt), feels very believable." Glee.

Confessions of a Wandering Heart put up a review that's even titled with awesomeness. She opens with "Seanan McGuire's Rosemary and Rue is one of the best urban fantasy novels I've read all year." She also says "The plot moves quickly—the story taking place in the span of about a week, and blends the perfect amount of fantasy and magic with mystery and crime-solving. The clues and steps Toby takes to solve Evening's murder are believable and easy to follow without being predictable. The page-turning suspense had me dying to get to the end and unwilling to put the book down. Fully developed imagery and the descriptions of the elaborate world-building rival the best urban fantasy writers (such as Kim Harrison). I became so immersed in Seanan McGuire's Faerie world that I think there were times I forgot I wasn't actually a part of it." I really could not be more pleased.

But.

I have saved the best for last.

Because today—yes, today—Rosemary and Rue was reviewed by the Onion AV Club. And they gave it an A-. Which is pretty damn close to the best you can get if the book doesn't cause spontaneous orgasm when the cover is opened, give you a back rub, and then buy you chocolates. Today is the day my geek cred increases to unheard of heights. I AM IN THE ONION.

What does the Onion say? The Onion says "Just when it seems that all the possible changes have been rung on the themes of detectives and the supernatural, along comes newcomer Seanan McGuire with Rosemary And Rue, the first in a new series featuring a changeling private eye who lives half in San Francisco, half in the Kingdom Of Faerie that overlaps it, unseen by mortal eyes," and "October Daye is as gritty and damaged a heroine as Kinsey Millhone or Kay Scarpetta." KAY SCARPETTA, PEOPLE.

The review closes with "Changelings, like all faerie folk, live long; may McGuire and these novels do the same." I share the sentiment. And I am just all a-twitter and amazed by this fabulous review.

Wow.

Happy Wednesday! I know I promised party reporting, and I intend to keep my word; I am, however, still too tired to do so with any degree of skill or grace, and am thus providing another review round-up, with some party reports from people with more brain than I tossed in just for spice.

First off, TJ over at Book Love Affair (who you may remember from this incredibly sweet and complimentary review) couldn't make the Borderlands party, and sent her husband in her place, because that's just what you do. He responded to this assignment by taking a really crazy number of pictures, allowing her to post a full report. I'm not a fan of having my picture taken—I know, I know, it's not like I'm shy and retiring and hence avoid cameras, but I make a lot of funny faces, and I always seem to have my mouth open when the flash goes off—but as a record of the evening, this is hammered awesome. I hope you can make the next one, TJ!

My dearly beloved artbeco attended the Friday party at Illusive Comics, and, is her wont, took a lot of really fabulous pictures of the evening. I've known and loved Beckett for more than half my life, so having her document this amazing night was really an honor and a joy. I am so glad she could share this with us.

Brooke came for the whole weekend, and decided to write everything up in one amazingly massive post of pure hammered awesome. For those of you who've missed my mother's wacky antics, Brooke is here to help you fill that gaping hole in your heart, because she took transcription. Quote of the weekend from Brooke: "Who's a mighty huntress who is also slightly moist?"

Sunil also made an amazingly massive post of awesome, complete with lots and lots of pictures of people doing things. He even got pictures of Ripley, the resident Sphinx at Borderlands. Go team Sunil!

Now, on to the reviews!

Thea and Ana are the Book Smugglers, a daring duo of book reviewers who fight the forces of bad literature while stealing gems of awesome from the vast crypts of the literary world. Well, the two of them have worked together to break into the text of Rosemary and Rue and carry out a joint review.

Thea says "There are a lot of female sleuth Urban Fantasy novels out there, and October Daye is another supernatural creature to add to the ever-growing pantheon. Ms. McGuire, however, manages to create a very unique character in a stunningly detailed, harsh world of faerie that coexists with our own. I definitely enjoyed this book and will be back to this eerie version of San Francisco very soon." She also says "In terms of world building and the urban fantasy element, Rosemary and Rue shines. My favorite aspect of this debut novel is the setting itself—Ms. McGuire juxtaposes a world of fae courts and magic, unseen by humans in the city of San Francisco. And the fae aren’t just your usual devilish pixies, winter queens or rowan men, either; Toby’s world is populated by Selkies, Undines, the Daoine Sidhe and Cait Sidhe. There are rose goblins and kelpies, doppelgangers and kitsune—and the variation is a wonderful thing to behold."

Meanwhile, Ana says "Regardless of which genre it belongs to, Rosemary and Rue is simply a good story, with great characters and above all, a fantastically entertaining world in which to submerge myself for a few hours. I can hardly believe that this is Seanan’s McGuire’s debut work and I enjoyed it so much that am ready for more. Like, right now." She also says "I started the review expecting to rate it Very Good, but managed to convince myself whist writing it that this rather, a truly Excellent novel and the series has the potential to be one of the Great Ones. I devoured it, I rooted for the main character and I think this is certainly one of the best debuts I read this year."

I win at being robbed!

maverick_weirdo posted a short, sweet review over at his journal, saying that "Rosemary and Rue is an excellent read." Succinct and charming!

Our final review for today is from SFRevu at the Internet Review of Books. Gayle Surrette wrote their thoughtful and well-balanced review of the book, saying "Having read the first two chapters, there was no way I could put the books down," and "This is an outstanding story and Seanan McGuire is a writer to watch." I'm a writer to watch! Watch me! Maybe I'll do tricks!

And that's our round-up for Wednesday. I will now take a nap.

Dear Great Pumpkin;

With Halloween fast approaching, I felt it important to write and let you know that I have continued to be a very good girl. I have offered advice to people who asked for it, and not offered advice to people who didn't want it. I have allowed others to sample my candy corn without removing their fingers. I have hugged my friends and told my loved ones that I love them. I have not invoked any ancient evils to rise from their graves in the great corn maze and destroy an unsuspecting populace. I have made all my deadlines, even the ones I wanted to miss. And the swine flu still isn't my fault. So you see, I have been a very good girl, especially by my standards.

Today, Great Pumpkin, I am asking for the following gifts:

* Wonderful, easy, successful book release parties during which no one sets anybody else on fire. Please, Great Pumpkin, grant me two glorious nights, filled with wonder and joy and lots and lots and lots of book sales, because it turns out that I'm very nervous about this whole thing. Please let me be a Halloweentown Cinderella at the October Ball, only without the glass slippers, and let it all be wonderful. Also, please let there be lots of cookies. I'm a big fan of cookies.

* An easy, or at least not insanely painful, editing process on The Brightest Fell, which is definitely going to need a lot of editing before I hand it over to The Agent, much less The Editor. My first drafts are always excitingly messy, so I'm not particularly worried—the fact that it's book five, and book one just came out, means I have some breathing room—but I really would like breeze through the rewrites, just this once, so that I can get on to Ashes of Honor, preferably before A Local Habitation hits shelves. I will find it much easier to sleep once books four through six are put safely down, and when I sleep, I'm not destroying the world. You like the world, don't you, Great Pumpkin?

* Once again, I must request continued health for my cats, without whom the entire universe would be at risk from my unstoppable wrath. Alice is growing up gloriously beautiful, Great Pumpkin, although I continue to suspect that you may be her actual father (it's either you or an otter, and I oddly find you substantially more plausible). Lilly is continuing to do well with her new "sibling," and seeing the two of them rampaging through my house, destroying things at random, fills my heart with joy.

* Clean, timely page proofs for A Local Habitation and Feed, since right now, I am a blonde without deadlines. I do remember that I promised you three short stories with the Fighting Pumpkins cheerleading squad, as well as the origin stories for Hailey and Scaredy, in exchange for the trilogy sale. I keep my promises. Watch this space for further developments, Great Pumpkin, and thank you again.

* A beautiful fall season. You like the autumn as much as I do, Great Pumpkin, because it is in the autumn that the world truly honors and appreciates your glory. So please, talk to the weather, and make sure that this autumn is one that we'll remember for years to come. And not because the entire state falls into the ocean, or catches fire, or is invaded by flesh-eating locusts from beyond the veil of time. Make this a beautiful, wonderful season, Great Pumpkin, and make it a treat without any tricks. Please.

* Please help me to finish Discount Armageddon in a satisfying, respectful, ass-kicking way, hopefully involving lots of explosions and snappy one-liners. I really want Verity and her family to find a home (and not just so Alice can finally find Thomas), and that means I need to get past the first chapter of their story. What I have so far is actually pretty solid. Please make it amazing.

I remain your faithful Halloween girl,
Seanan.

PS: You really did amazingly with the house for the Newsflesh trilogy. Thank you so much. You da squash.

(I promise to post about the fact that holy cow, it's my bookday birthday, in a little bit. Right now, I'm just trying to get through the review roundup without my fingers falling off! Holy cow!)

spectralbovine is a good friend of mine, but he's also incredibly media-savvy, and very picky about the things that he likes. So I admit, I was a little nervous when he said he was going to review Rosemary and Rue. At the same time, I knew he'd be fair. Well, his review of the book is up, and he was definitely fair. Quoth Sunil, "Oh yes, I'm going there: this book is like Veronica Mars, Faerie Detective."

I love my friends.

Over at the League of Reluctant Adults, the winner of the "win an ARC and write a review" contest has posted this awesome and erudite review of Rosemary and Rue. Quoth JD, "Rosemary and Rue is a good, solid novel and a fantastic debut. I look forward to reading more about Toby and her world. It really did almost make me believe again in Faeries."

Works for me!

mneme has also posted his review of Rosemary and Rue, calling it "a fun, beautifully written, rewarding urban fantasy that I intend to reread and recommend," while judifilksign's review of the book says "McGuire does a fantastic job of creating an alternate reality that is consistent, believable and not a copy of other writers in the genre." Yay!

Our first Dreamwidth review! It comes from Four-and-Twenty (watch those blackbirds), whose review is posted here. Since I sort of want to quote the whole review, I'll just tell you to go and read it. Don't worry. I can wait.

If you've been around here for more than a few days, you probably already know that vixyish is one of my favorite people in the whole world, part of my Seattle family, and a member of the mighty machete squad, without which there would be a hell of a lot more typographical and logical errors in my books. Well, she is now also one of the reviewers to tackle Rosemary and Rue, which she did with sufficient disclaimers to keep people from looking at her funny. Vixy says "I genuinely and highly recommend Rosemary and Rue to fans of urban fantasy, or murder mysteries, or P.I. novels, or worldbuilding, or complex characters, or folklore, or fairy tales, or Shakespeare, or British folk ballads, or just plain exciting and engrossing stories that are likely to keep you up half the night reading just one more page." I say, again, that I love my friends.

We've had a lot of reviews in the past few weeks, so you might think there's nothing left that can really get me excited. Well, you'd be wrong, because waking up to discover that I'd been reviewed in the MIAMI HERALD OH MY GOD YOU GUYS got me really, really excited. Given how sick I still am, I sounded like a bat being fed into a wood-chipper. Pity poor Amy's eardrums. The MIAMI HERALD OH MY GOD YOU GUYS says "skipping Rosemary and Rue would be a sad mistake" and "first-time novelist McGuire reminds us that even in an overused setting, a well-told story with memorable characters casts magic all on its own." Also, it's the MIAMI HERALD OH MY GOD YOU GUYS.

Wowzers.

In case you're tired of straight reviews, I was lucky enough to get interviewed by Alex for the Book Banter podcast. Here's your chance to hear me, live and (mostly) unedited. (I accidentally swore at one point, and Alex kindly snipped that out, because we appreciate not getting yelled at for profanity.) The interview was recorded in the dining room of Au Couqulet, so you can also hear silverware and dishes, if you listen real close. It was a fun time, and I really recommend giving it a go.

If you enjoy interviews, I also have a fun interview up over at Lurv ala Mode, where Kendra has been just awesome during the whole book release process. Check it out!

If you don't have your copy yet, there's a random giveaway going on over at Fantasy/Sci Fi Lovin'—enter to win, or direct your friends to head on over.

Because a picture is worth a thousand words (and I want breakfast), I leave you with Amy very studiously engaging in literature on a train, and Toby Daye VS. THE VELOCIRAPTORS! Pictures and crazy courtesy of Brooke. Because we didn't have enough crazy on our own.

It's a book!

I have arrived safe and sound in Seattle, Washington, where my beloved vixyish collected me from the airport (with two bottles of Diet Dr Pepper in her hands, Great Pumpkin, I love that woman) and toted me back to the welcoming confines of the Agora, home of the better part of the zoo. There was chatter and cheer and hanging out with her, Tony, and Torrey before everyone went hieing themselves off to bed in their respective soft flat places, and many hours of darkness descended over everyone.

As I type this, I am, once again, the only person even remotely awake in my general vicinity; ah, the perils of being a morning person. I've got The Brightest Fell open in another window, and will sit on the downstairs sofa, contentedly plugging away, until it's time to go to the Farmer's Market and begin a whirlwind Seattle Saturday.

Hope your day looks to be as wonderful and filled with love and light as mine is, and if not, hope you at least get cake. Mmm, cake.

So Kmont, over at Lurva ala Mode has posted her full review of Rosemary and Rue, which was a fantastic way to start my return from WorldCon. Quoting a bit:

"Worldbuilding. Oh, it’s oh so lovely. There are books where this area of fantasy feels effortlessly done and this is one of them. Too, it is infused into the book. It's as if the author planted a beautiful, huge tree, it sprouted and from its branches the rest of the book just flowed. I'm not usually a fan of the faery tales, the ones that deal directly with faeries, courts, and all the mystical qualities that come with them. With some books the worldbuilding feels too wispy, as if a slight breeze could knock it all down. Other times it's so heavy and cumbersome it’s ridiculous. I don't want to feel weighted down by a faery story, but I don't want it to be vague either. I felt that McGuire did an excellent job of turning San Francisco into more than a city, into something otherworldly and real, if not surreal."

...and...

"Another great new series to start the journey with, and I cannot wait for more. Very highly recommended."

Color me delighted. Meanwhile, Dirty Sexy Books was kind enough to provide a totally kick-ass review—I got their coveted top rating!—and I couldn't be happier. Again, to quote:

"I predict that this new series will be an urban fantasy powerhouse. It was beautifully woven and heartbreakingly tragic; I felt tears pricking my eyes after the prologue, and I don’t consider myself a complete softy. I admire Seanan McGuire’s prose for making me feel the magic with all five senses, and whether it was beautiful or terrible, it was always alien and strange. I felt like a trespasser who was given a secret tour of a San Francisco that no human will ever see and live."

I kinda want to get "urban fantasy powerhouse" tattooed on my wrist, where I can just look at it when I'm down. Also, I envy her skill with plot summary. Hers begins "The story begins fourteen years ago, when October Daye was a wife, a mother, and a liar..." That's so perfect. I'm jealous.

Finally, I have a review in the new issue of Romantic Times...and they gave Rosemary and Rue four and a half stars. HOLY CRAP. I mean, just...HOLY CRAP.

Twenty days.

We're almost there.

Thanks to the wonderful people who are wonderful, I have a) a ride from the airport, and b) a place to take a nap.

Thank you thank you thank you, and I will now return to frantically getting ready to go.

See you in Canada!

One of the few black spots on an otherwise shining weekend involved...a shirt. A shirt, and an attitude that went with the shirt in question.

See, there was a lot of stupid pre-con surrounding the fact that OH NOES TEH TWILIGHT FANS ARE INVADING!!!! Never mind that Twilight, whether you like it or not, is speculative fiction, full of My Little Vampires, and has spawned a massively successful movie series. Never mind that this same complaint came up about the Harry Potter people, the urban fantasy people, and lots of other "not our kind" groups, before they became "our kind." TEH TWILIGHT FANS ARE INVADING!!!! IT IS TEH END OF DAYZ!!!! Worse yet, they're girls! Icky icky girls! The mainstream press—which still views the female geek as a charmingly endangered species, one which is potentially a myth—grabbed this and ran with it; if you go digging, you can find some...charming...articles about "the female invasion of Comic-Con" and "girls meeting geeks."

I first "invaded" Comic-Con thirteen years ago. Pretty sure I was a girl at the time. My boyfriend at the time definitely thought so, and as he had more opportunity to perform practical examinations than anybody from the mainstream press, I'm going to place bets that he was right. But anyway.

The Twilight girls, understandably, took offense, since they were being presented as fluff-brained bimbos who wouldn't know a comic book if it bit them on the booty. The general populace of Comic-Con wasn't offended, per se, although some offense started brewing when the Twilight fans started speaking up, since the cycle o' slag went media -> them -> us. But there was still the chance that everybody would be able to just get along. I know that I'm a lot more focused on getting where I'm going, at-con, than I am at playing Sharks vs. Jets in the middle of the Exhibit Hall.

But then came...the shirts.

Shirts on Twilight girls all over the convention. Shirts which read, in large, easy-to-read lettering, "Yes I am a real woman / Yes I am at Comic-Con / Yes I love Twilight." As a "real woman" who's been attending Comic-Con since before she could legally drink, these shirts awakened in my breast the deep and abiding desire to force-feed them to the people wearing them. I did not do so. Be proud of me. Be especially proud of me since large groups of the shirt-wearers—not all of them, by any means; I'm sure there were Twilight fans who were having a fantastic time without trying to piss in anybody's Cheerios—chose to stand around near the Exhibit Hall cafes and out by the Heroes carnival, making snotty comments about the costumes, figures, and overall appearance of the non-Twilight girls who went walking by.

Not cool.

I am a girl who likes the X-Men. I am a girl who likes horror movies. I am a girl whose favorite comics currently in print are Hack/Slash, The Boys, and Creepy. I am a girl who has spent a long damn time fighting for respect in her chosen geeky social circles, because we are still the minority in a lot of places, and it's difficult to convince your average horror geek that the female IQ is not calculated by taking the national average and subtracting her bra size. Twilight aside, there aren't enough of us to start playing this sort of game. Yes! You in the shirt, you're a real woman! And so am I! And so is every other girl at this convention! I did not give up my right to femininity just by deciding that I like to keep my My Little Ponies and my blood-drinking monsters separate, nor did you get a double-dose by combining the two. Women have been fighting for respect in comic and media fandom for a long time. Undermining that fight, even if you're doing it because you were provoked, just undermines us all.

No one has to like what I like. I try not to judge the likes and dislikes of others, and even when I can't avoid it, I try not to wander around in T-shirts that say things like "Every time editorial brings back Jean Grey, Magneto kills a kitten" or "Women Opposing More Bad Adapted Terror: JUST SAY NO TO STEPHEN KING MOVIES." All this could have been avoided if people hadn't been dicks to the Twilight fans in the first place...but I really do wish the Twilight fans hadn't felt compelled to be dicks to the rest of us in return.

I don't take many baths. Oh, I take a lot of showers, but let's get real, here: baths take a lot of time, and I don't usually have a lot of time to spend on just sitting around in hot water, waiting to become clean. I strip, I scrub, I dry, I get on with it.

Tonight, for various reasons (most of them having to do with my inability to get an appointment at the place where I get my legs waxed, and aren't you glad you asked?), I needed to take a bath. So I did what I always do when it's time for a bath: I dumped a crapload of pumpkin pie bubble bath into the water, got out my pumpkin pie sugar scrub, found my pumpkin-scented loofah, and prepared to become a pretty pretty Halloween princess of the bathroom. I am a simple soul. I enjoy simple things.

Enter Alice.

Alice is a Maine Coon, which really means that she's a magical cross between a cat, an otter, and the Great Pumpkin. The sound of Mommy splashing around in the big white water bowl was too much for her to resist, and she very quickly came to see what I was doing. And then she started batting at the bubbles. And then she started attacking the spray when I splashed at her.

And then she got into the bathtub.

I probably should have seen that coming, all things considered.

Now, I've had cats join me in the bathtub before. This is normally followed by the cat in question learning to levitate as it realizes that HOLY CRAP THAT'S WATER YOU'RE SITTING IN WATER. Not Alice. Nope. Once waterlogged, Princess Puffy-Pants decided it was just as well if she hang out a bit. Help me with whatever it was I was doing. You know. Be a good cat. Help the human.

Things that do not help me shave my legs: blue Maine Coon cats with coats containing approximately a gallon and a half of bathwater. Just in case you were wondering about that. I do, however, now have a pleasantly pumpkin-scented cat, which goes quite well with her overall autumnal glory. Lilly is still looking at her like she's lost her tiny puffy mind, for which I really can't blame her.

Cats. They're awesome. And insane.

I went to sleep last night with a puffy blue Maine Coon guarding my doorway and a sleek blue Siamese stretched next to me on the bed. The Siamese was using a plush blue-ringed octopus as a pillow, and back-dropped by Halloween pillowcases. When I woke, the Maine Coon was puddled on the bright pumpkin-fucker orange cat tree.

I have the life I always said I'd have someday.

Oh, it has complications I didn't necessarily bank on when I was plotting it out, since I didn't understand things like "herniated disks" and "actually having too many books" when I was nine, but for the most part? I sleep in a room that looks like the inside of a pumpkin, I have four shelves of My Little Ponies and two shelves loaded with stuffed toys, I own so many books that re-reading steadily for a year wouldn't mean getting through them all, and I have both the cat I've always wanted (Lilly) and the cat I never knew I needed (Alice). And I write books, and people read them, and it's amazing.

For example, kyrielle read Rosemary and Rue.

I was chatting with my friend Adam last night (his books, How to Get Suspended and Influence People [Amazon] and Pirates of the Retail Wasteland [Amazon] are delightfully accurate flashbacks to my own days in the public school honors system), and he said that reviews never cease to be scary, since you don't know until you read them whether they'll be positive, negative, or written by angry mushroom people from Dimension X. But they never cease to be exciting, either.

Life is pretty damn good. How's yours?

So you may be wondering what my schedule is this weekend at DucKon. Or you may not be. Whatever. I'm going to tell you anyway.

FRIDAY.

7:00 PM: Opening Ceremonies. Rumor is now indicating that I may a) wear a corset, b) sing, and c) do the Time Warp. Rumor is seriously leading an interesting life.
8:00 PM: Whose Line Is It Anyway? The classic improv game goes convention crazy! With Tom Smith, Gretchen Roper, and others. Music provided by Toybox.
10:00 PM: Sing A Song of Dead Things. Themed filk with corpses in. I will be your lovely, loony moderator. I will also be half-asleep. Bring a poking stick.

SATURDAY.

10:00 AM: Plagues Past, Present, and Future. LET'S GET READY TO RABIES!
12:00 PM: The Business of Writing. With Diana Fox and Shannon Butcher.
3:00 PM: Vixy & Tony Concert.
5:00 PM: Seanan McGuire, Undead in Concert! Featuring Vixy and Tony, Amy McNally, and probably others. It's going to be awesome.
8:00 PM: Urban Fantasy. With Jim Butcher and Jody Lyn Nye. Because I'm always at my most-coherent post-concert. I should have time to change, at least.

SUNDAY.

11:00 AM: Reading. Reading what? Who knows! Please, please, let me know if I have something you're just dying to hear, or it's likely to be another random assortment of my short fiction.
12:00 PM: The Award-Winners Concert. If you want to hear some real, live Pegasus Award winners and nominees, this is where you should be.
1:00 PM: X-Men Comics. For those of you who aren't aware, Jean Grey is still dead, and I totally approve.
3:00 PM: Closing Ceremonies.

I will have copies of all three of my albums at the convention, available for sale and signing, as well as the complete remaining run of my second limited-edition poetry chapbook. Which will not be re-issued, because dude, Beckett had to hand-sew the entire run of books, and I know when not to press my luck.

See you there!

5:15 AM: Wake up to the shrieking blare of the alarm clock. Reaffirm desire to purchase one of those nifty little iPod-dock alarm clocks after DucKon, so that I can be woken up by something that doesn't make me want to lunge for the nearest blunt object and commit a homicide. I'm a light enough sleeper not to need an alarm clock that could be used to notify the UN of the impending zombie apocalypse, thank you very much. Get dressed, get packed, get out the door.

7:00 AM: Arrive at desk in San Francisco, and settle in for a day of being as productive as I possibly can when I'm leaving the office at one to deal with scary dental things. I am surprisingly productive, largely thanks to my love for the sacred to-do list. If not for the sacred to-do list, I would be a whimpering heap under the bed by now. All hail the sacred to-do list, and all hail Franklin-Covey, the manufacturers of my planner and its various accessories. Seriously. These people save my ass daily.

1:00 PM: Leave the office. Head for the train. Take the train to Borderlands Books, where my usual impeccable timing means a) I miss Jude (rats!), b) the naked cats aren't in the store (double rats!), and c) Cary—in addition to being the only employee present, which reduces the viability of chatting—is in the middle of inventory, and thus borders on negatively social. Purchase several books, because I am me. One of these is a paperback titled Denver Is Missing, by D.F. Jones, who also wrote Earth Has Been Found. Nobody ever gets to call me bad at titles ever ever ever ever again.

4:00 PM: Go to dentist, who prods me repeatedly while going "Does this hurt?" Nothing hurts before it gets prodded. Now...well, pain is annoying but endurable, I suppose.

5:00 PM: Arrive home. Update LJ before preparing for an evening of edits, fuzzy cats, and really lousy horror movies.

Halloween is every day.

My flight from SFO was both exceedingly eventful and completely uneventful, which is always a fun combination (I'll explain in a second). I was flying Northwest—despite having originally thought that I was flying American, which, it turns out, is actually my airline for DucKon; this is why I try to stick with Virgin America whenever possible—out of SFO. "Northwest out of SFO" is another way of saying "Northwest out of the Torture Terminal." Seriously. There is one crappy coffee shop at the end of the terminal, and there are way more passengers than seats. Pretty much everyone who was taking my flight had to stand until they let us on the plane.

I had a Rice Krispie Treat and a Diet Coke for breakfast. This is how dire the terminal was. I did, however, see a woman with an electric orange and green messenger bag while I was going through security, and I was able to catch up with her to go "I covet that, where did you get it?" Turns out she got it from Timbuk2 in San Francisco, which will make you a bag in any color combination you want. They're not cheap, but I now have a total target for the next time I decide to splurge on something.

(Last year, I splurged and bought an iPod. This year, I splurged and bought a kitten. Next year, who knows? I am the worst impulse shopper in the world—I actually schedule my impulse buys a month in advance.)

On the plane, I was seated next to a very tall woman from Canada. I asked where in Canada, which turned out to be the perfect conversation starter, because we chattered for three hours. Want proof that I exist in a reality-warp? She's works in pandemic planning and preparedness. Seriously! (It wasn't until much later that either of us realized that maybe discussing immunodepressant smallpox, the Black Death, pandemic flu, and how many bodies you can fit in a hockey rink could have gotten us reported as international terrorists. I swear we're not, Homeland Security Monitor Guy. We're just weird.)

My hotel is small, cozy, and conveniently close to downtown. Since I woke up at seven this morning—jet lag? What's that?—being able to go and get a salad and a soda before most of the world was awake was a real blessing. I also found Borders store number one, and bought Queen of Babble Gets Hitched and In the Forest of Hands and Teeth for the flight home. (Did I read everything I brought already? Yes, I did. I swear, my reading speed accounts for more frantic bookstore visits than I like to think about.)

I will now go put on my Disney Halloweentown Princess Pants and get ready for my business meetings, which should be interesting (they always are). And then I meet with Jim and fly on home. I'll be trying to finish Late Eclipses on the plane. So...close...

Catch you soon!

Dear Great Pumpkin;

I have continued to be a very good girl in the days since I last wrote to you. I have provided places for tired people to sleep, liquids for thirsty people to drink, and food for hungry people to eat. I have shared my ice cream and my candy corn. I did not spike the liquids for the thirsty people with interesting poisons. I have purchased and erected a cat tree so virulently orange that it sears the eyes of the unbelievers. I have not summoned the elder gods from their eternal dreaming. I have not purchased a chainsaw. Also, the swine flu isn't my fault. So clearly, I have been on my very best behavior for quite some time now.

Today, Great Pumpkin, I am asking for the following gifts:

* Freedom from typos, printing errors, and other plagues of the written word. Please, Great Pumpkin, guide my red pen through my page proofs and allow me to present Rosemary and Rue as the best book that it can possibly be. Please let all the errors be mine, and let them be reasonably small ones, so that I won't be forced to throw myself on my own machete. That would make me sad. Also, that would be messy.

* Wonderful author appearances, following a fantastic convention season. DucKon is approaching fast, Great Pumpkin, and so is the San Diego Comic Convention, which I'm going to be attending in full-on Disney Halloween Princess-mode. After that comes WorldCon in Montreal, and after that...after that, my book comes out, and I'm doing signings and raffles and all sorts of other things, many of them for the first time. Help me represent the orange, black, and green with honor, with dignity, and without overdosing on candy corn.

* Continued health for my cats. I have to admit, Great Pumpkin, you came through big time with that whole "perfect kitten" thing that I asked you for. I was dubious at first, since "Maine Coon" and "Siamese" are not the same thing, but Alice is amazing, and has won Lilly over completely, which is really what matters. (And if you think I don't know you had a hand in this, you're out of your gourd. So to speak. Betsy hasn't had a blue in years, and don't think I missed those smoky orange undertones. You are a very cunning supernatural force. I bow before the sanctity of your patch.)

* The perfect house for Newsflesh, wherein the Mason twins deal with politics, the Internet, blogging, dead stuff, each other, and their completely insane co-workers as efficiently and politely as possible. "Polite" usually means "with bullets and bitching." If you give me this, Great Pumpkin, I promise you at least three more short stories featuring the Fighting Pumpkins cheerleading squad, and another Velveteen adventure involving the denizens of Halloween. If you give me a trilogy sale, I'll actually do the origin stories for Hailey and Scaredy.

* A lack of total meltdown over this swine flu thing. I know it's not the slatewiper pandemic, Great Pumpkin, because you would never do that to me this close to my first book's release date. So clearly, this is just a minor plague, meant to remind the world that we need to wash our hands more often. Please let people remember to wash their hands and cover their mouths and take deep breaths (okay, maybe not that last one), so that we can get through this without anybody setting anybody else on fire.

* My galleys. Please let them come today, Great Pumpkin, as my twitchiness is beginning to bother people. I think some of them are becoming concerned that I may destroy the planet in a fit of pique, and frankly, I share their concern. Please, Great Pumpkin, help me to leave enough of the world's population alive to properly honor you on the next Halloween.

I remain your faithful Halloween girl,
Seanan.

PS: You did an amazing job with the cover thing. Thank you so much.

One hundred twenty-five days. That's all that remains between me, in this moment, as I'm typing this, and me, standing in a book store, holding a copy of Rosemary and Rue in my hands. Which will probably be shaking. I'm intending to creep quietly into a large chain store where nobody knows me, pay retail for the first copy I can find, and then go sit in a bathroom and cry for a good long while. And then I will dry my face and go back to the business of dealing with a release, IE, "being perky and accessible," "signing books and being charming," and "not reading my Amazon reviews." (For serious. I have been forbidden to read my Amazon reviews, and I support this commandment. I'm going to be crazy enough that week without the extra feedback.)

One hundred twenty-five days. I received my page proofs in the mail on Saturday, and have been dilligently crawling through them with a red pen, hunting and killing any errors that I find. If it makes it through the proofs, it's my fault. So I have to hunt and kill like a velociraptor trying to feed her young, aware that any mistakes made in the prehistoric jungle could lead to being eaten by a larger predator. Okay, so maybe it's not that bad. I mean, we're not at "burst into tears during the Hellboy II credits because I just figured out a continuity error" levels of high-strung yet, and we may not get there ever. But it's definitely very brain-and-stress-intensive, as well as being a fascinating exercise in reviewing my own text.

One hundred twenty-five days. My cover flats came in yesterday's mail. Actual, printed covers with my actual, printed cover image and my actual, printed back-cover text. My name and the title of the book are both embossed. After I finished crying, I started to laugh hysterically, because—without my having any actual input or control over the graphic design—I have wound up with a first novel whose title is presented in large, embossed, eye-catching, pumpkin-fucker orange lettering. Did you need proof that I control the universe? Because I actually got proof that I control the universe. And the proof is awesome.

One hundred twenty-five days. My to-do lists are starting to look like an elaborate piece of conditional theoretical math, because, of course, they fall down every time I need to wait for somebody to get back to me. "If X has not happened, Y; if X has happened, Z" is becoming a distressingly common entry. (And if you're wondering why I'm doing lists that far out, you haven't checked my schedule recently.) I'm trying to make things as unconditional as I possibly can, simply for the sake of my own sanity. And Kate's sanity. And Vixy's sanity. And The Agent's sanity. And the sanity of anybody else who has to deal with me between now and the end of September.

One hundred twenty-five days. That's when you get to meet Toby properly and in print for the very first time.

I'm so excited I could scream.

Because understanding what a thing is makes that thing less arcane and mysterious, and I like people understanding what the hell I'm talking about, I'm providing a handy guide to the stages a book goes through as it trudges its way towards publication. (I said this to a friend of mine, who replied with, "Like the life cycle of a butterfly?" After some thought, I have decided that this metaphor doesn't work. It's more like the life cycle of a fricken—half-frog, half-chicken, all abomination of nature. Tadpoles with feathers are just sort of sad.)

You can thank me, beat me, or march on my castle with an army of angry peasants, later.

***

THE LIFE STAGES OF A BOOK: FROM PAGE TO PUBLICATION.

***

Stage I: The Larva (IE, "The Manuscript.")
We're picking up with the assumption that the book has already been written, approved by your agent/primary beta reader, and sold to a publishing house (or, if you prefer, your frickens have already done the nasty in the romantic swamp setting of their choosing, and have laid the fertilized eggs in a suitable pool of semi-stagnant water). Now, your manuscript gets to go into something called "editorial review." Different houses and different editors will have different names for this process; when I'm doing it to myself, I tend to call it things like "why God why" and "getting blood on the ceiling." This is the stage where you'll actually have some input, and can even argue.

Some manuscripts sail the waters of editorial review with nary a ripple. Others will be shredded and stapled back together several times before they're allowed to take the next step forward. Whatever the case happens to be with your manuscript, assume that it's going to take some time, and just keep breathing.

Stage II: The Hatchling (IE, "Copy-editing.")
So you've made all the changes your editor requested and returned an approved manuscript to your publishing house. Awesome. Your beloved baby book has emerged from its gooey amphibian egg and is now thrashing around the puddle, downy feathers all plastered down and making it swim more slowly, thus becoming an easier target for predators. In this case, the predator is someone with a red pen and an eye for typos. Your manuscript will take some time to review, because they're trying to be thorough; a book pushed out of the puddle before it has time to mature is probably going to get punctuation all over the floor.

You may or may not ever see your copy-edited manuscript. I have a clause in my contract that lets me see mine, because I'm neurotic that way. Lilly appreciates this clause, because she likes to sleep on manuscripts. I, also, appreciate it, because every typo that slips past me is a dagger in my soul, and I try to remain as un-stabbed as possible.

Stage III: Adolescence (IE, "Page Proofs and ARCs.")
Once your copy-edits have been made, two things will happen at basically the same time. Think of them as your weird little tadpole starting to sprout legs and flight feathers at the same time. The poor guy is all over the place, and both flying and swimming are out of the question until he figures out which direction is "up."

Your page proofs are basically a bunch of loose pages comprising your entire copy-edited book. As the author, you will generally get the opportunity to go through them and catch any little things that might have been missed earlier in the process. Note the stress on "little." The idea is not to rip out that chapter you've always hated; it's to catch that three-word continuity error on page seventeen, and that slightly out-of-synch tense on page eighty-four. By the time a book reaches proofs, it should be essentially ready to go. The ARCs, on the other hand, are your Advance Review/Reader Copies. These will be bound editions of the manuscript, potentially with covers, probably with any blurbs you've managed to collect, sent out to reviewers, trade publications, and major genre bookstores about four to six months before publication.

Stage IV: Frog (IE, "Publication.")
After your page proofs have been returned and your ARCs have been sent out, your book will go to press, and your weird-ass feathered frog will hop free of the puddle it was born in for the first time. Printing and shipping will take however long your publisher thinks it should; you can make sure there are no delays on your end by turning in your proofs by the deadline. You should have a publication date. Cling to it as best you can.

Watch your feathery amphibian creation fly.

Look! I made a word!

I love anthologies and short story collections, and have loved them for as long as I can remember. I mean that very literally; some of the earliest books that I have a strong memory of reading are the Colored Fairy Books, Grimm's Fairy Tales, Asimov's Young Monsters series of anthologies, and the Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark books. (This list probably says a lot about the formation of my psyche.) I spent most of middle school tracking down the largely out-of-print Noun! series of anthologies—Dogs! and Mermaids! and Unicorns! and the whole super-excited bunch. There were some awesome stories in those things. Awesome, awesome stories.

I was in high school before I realized that some anthologies were write-to-request—it wasn't that twenty people just randomly decided to write stories about magic-using hyper-evolved insects, they were asked. This struck me as the absolute height of human achievement. Imagine being asked to write stories about magic-using hyper-evolved insects. Somebody comes up to you and says "hey, write me a story about a fireball-flinging butterfly," and you do, and then, if it's any good, it gets published.

Ladies and gentlemen, the holy grail.

I always said I'd know I'd made it as a writer when I started getting invited to anthologies. I got an agent. Shrieked a lot. Sold a trilogy. Shrieked even more (as well as crying, hyperventilating, and calling Vixy and making hysterical dolphin noises at her while she tried to work out whether the sounds I was making meant "we sold Toby" or "I have just been bitten by one of those nasty parasite things from Cloverfield and am about to swell up and explode"). And then I got invited to an anthology, and I just sat there and cried.

And then I got invited to another one, and I sat there and cried even more.

I love anthologies. I love the toybox fabulousness of them, the way you don't know what you're going to get, just—vaguely—what it's going to be about. I finished reading Pandora's Closet [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies] yesterday. I picked it up on a lark. I found stories that made me laugh, stories that made me giggle, and a distinct lack of stories that made me want to throw the book across the room. And I thought, "wow." And I thought, "I get to do this now."

I've been smiling for three days.

My love for you is komodo dragon love. It is the kind of love that you can only give when you happen to be an endangered species of fourteen-foot-long predatory lizard whose spit is filled with toxic bacterial soup. That makes it very rare and kind of cool, but not if you happen to be afraid of lizards. Or toxic spit. But because my love for you is komodo dragon love, you are not on my list of things to bite. Be glad.

Komodo dragons are cooperative hunters. That means that when a komodo dragon sees a goat, he bites it with his many, many sharp teeth and fills the bite with toxic spit, and then goes back to doing whatever it was he happened to be doing before the goat came along. Komodo dragon things, like reading, or playing with Photoshop, or watching bad horror movies. Or maybe just basking in the sun and frightening small children by being fourteen feet long and capable of eating people, if you want to be literal about things. I'm good either way. And see, the goat? The goat is now full of spit, which is full of toxic bacterial soup. That doesn't work out too well from his point of view, because eventually he sort of falls over and dies, and does that decaying thing. The bacterial soup helps with the dying. Also with the decaying.

And then another komodo dragon comes along and finds the dead goat, and it's hey, free lunch. And that? That is how I feel about you. I totally spend my days biting goats, because I know that even if I don't eventually get to eat their decaying carcasses, someone that I love will get a meal out of it.

Only they aren't real goats. And nothing really dies. And if you actually eat my metaphorical goats, you're probably going to need to take some multivitamins or something, too, because man cannot live by metaphorical goat alone, and besides, you'd probably get scurvy if you tried. But the basic concept is there. I spend my days biting goats for you.

My love for you is komodo dragon love.

Crunch.

Last night, as I was preparing for bed after a busy evening of edits, website updates, art cards, and catching up on Bones, Chris pinged me.

Chris: "Did you see that the cover for Rosemary and Rue is on Amazon?"
Me: "WHAT?!"
Chris: "Guess not."

(I paraphrase because not even I can quote all the time, but I checked with Chris, and he says this is a fair reflection of our conversation. Which was maybe a little less coherent on my side. Because sometimes, I am a non-linear blonde.)

Because I really like to see things for myself, I went hieing over to the Amazon page for Rosemary and Rue, and lo and behold, my cover is, in fact, there. Right there. On the page. Where people who have absolutely never heard of me before -- people who didn't get there through this journal, or through my website, or through anything but random clicking -- can see it. On the page.

I sure am crying a lot this year. Also, PS?

I'm a real girl.

Bags, packed, ready to go. I'm traveling with the big orange suitcase and the little pink camo bag; the big orange suitcase contains my Little Red Riding Hood bag, so that I can decant my vitals once I actually get to New York and need to start looking presentable. I'm both packed lightly -- I can pick up my suitcase! -- and packed thoroughly enough that I should be able to survive until Sunday. I'm starting to think that I should win an award for traveling. I'm also starting to think that I should set up a 'go bag' with an assortment of travel-size cosmetics and such, just to simplify the packing process. This proves that I've been traveling a lot lately.

Directions to all the places I'm going, researched, printed out, in the planner. I have an...unfortunate...tendency to just assume that I'll be able to find my way places, and to forget silly little things like 'walking maps' or 'exact street addresses.' This has resulted in my becoming lost in some really fascinating locales, and would be fine if I didn't actually feel the need to get where I was intending to be. My time on the road is limited, and my appointments really don't allow for my finding a way to walk from Manhattan to Maine. Even though I'd really, really like it. (I may be one of the only people in the planet who finds the idea of walking from Maine to Denver to be one of the more pleasant side effects of the super-flu.)

Wool trousers, hemmed, picked up from the dry cleaner. This 'having clothing that needs to be tailored if it's going to fit correctly' thing is very new and strange to me, and I'll be doing my best to avoid it as much as possible. That said, having pants that fit is awesome, and having wool pants that fit when I'm about to go to a state that's still having winter is doubly awesome.

Manicure, accomplished. I have Don't Be Koi With Me nails. This delights me.

I have my laptop and all the notes and edits I've been wanting to process, and I'm flying Virgin America, which means in-seat power is my sweet, sweet companion from take-off to touch-down. I'll be in New York from tonight through Sunday; I may or may not be online at all during that time, but the safe assumption is 'not.' I definitely won't have much time to be answering comments or playing around with my email. Please be patient if you need me for anything, and I'll get back to you just as quickly as I can.

Road trip! Don't burn down the Internet while I'm gone.

Chainsaws and killers and creatures that slaughter,
Signs that suggest you stay out of the water.
Killer bees bred to have flesh-eating stings.
These are a few of my favorite things.

Rust colored padlocks and barbed wire fences,
Horrible things tearing down your defenses.
Black bats that fly with the moon on their wings,
These are a few of my favorite things.

Scientists laughing and playing with lightning,
Movies designed to be nasty and frightening.
Martian invaders that swallow prom kings,
These are a few of my favorite things.

When the sun shines,
When the bird sings,
When they've all gone mad,
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so bad!

1. Home from Friday at Wondercon.

2. Friday at Wondercon was every bit as awesome as I'd hoped! I wandered the floor, saw old friends, made new friends, bought cool shit -- I mean, seriously, comic book conventions are where I go to discover cool shit that I didn't know I was incapable of living without -- attended a panel on the future of Marvel's Ultimate Universe (it's not pretty, but it should be awesome), and managed to land on the commission list of an artist I admire. Major wins all around.

3. Alas, some other artists and authors I was really hoping to see didn't make this year's convention, for reasons ranging from 'the economy sucks' to 'twisted his ankle and didn't want to make with the massive lugging of crap through a crowded convention center.' So that's a little bit disappointing. Fortunately, most of them are scheduled to attend San Diego, so I'll get to see them there.

4. As an addendum to the last, I finally got the professional registration information for San Diego, and it's going to be my very first mass-media convention as an actual attending pro. Signing things. Things like, I don't know, maybe things related to Rosemary and Rue. You could actually get your hands on actual text, maybe. If you came looking for it...

5. I do still have art cards, and they will still be distributed first come, first serve throughout the remainder of the con, or until I run out, whichever comes first. Also, since I've been asked, I'll probably wind up selling whatever's left over, thus fueling my eternal need for more art supplies (and more cool crap I only seem to find at comic book conventions).

That's all for now. Now we must rinse.

So when I originally approached the readership of this journal and said 'lo, what should I include in my site FAQ section?', roughly half the people who responded said 'horror movie survival.' So yes, there's an actual section on getting out of a horror movie with your skin and sanity reasonably intact.

Feel proud of yourselves.

So now that the horror FAQ is underway, I ask you...what all should be included? What burning questions do you have about the things out there that want to make you die -- and maybe more important, what questions do you have about staying alive? Remember, only you can defeat the crawling terror from beyond the stars. Unless, y'know, it eats you first.

So I keep meaning to say deep and meaningful things ("I got carnivorous plants for Valentine's Day!" "No, really -- one of my sundews is eating moths already, like a wee sticky Audrey II."), or at least report on the progress that I've been making on The Mourning Edition ("Epileptic miniature bulldogs are the pet everyone's going to be screaming for this season."), but all I really seem to manage is vague grumbling noises, accompanied by the distracted waving of hands. I am wiped out.

Why am I wiped out? Well, let's see. Today, I...

* Carted THREE BOXES OF TRASH out of my house, which entailed, of course, initially generating three boxes of trash. Admittedly, it was made easier by the presence of several water-damaged shipping boxes (one of which originally contained the aforementioned carnivorous plants), since I didn't have to scrounge to generate box-shaped piles of trash, but still.

* Went shopping with Kate, who managed to convince me -- through cunning application of the Weather Channel, which insists that it gets cold on the East Coast -- that I needed some wool trousers. So we went to the mall. For wool trousers. To wear in New York, in March. Well, I have wool trousers now. Also green corduroys, a very nice 'statement piece' blouse, two new bras, and a double-breasted kelly-green coat. Behold, for now I wear the human pants. I hate shopping so hard.

* Did my Richard Simmons workout tape for the first time in months and months. Look: I'm one of those people who starts every day with an energy bar that has somehow been turned up to two hundred percent of safe storage. If I don't walk a mile before breakfast, I get twitchy. For a long time, I was controlling my natural desire to fidget with DDR and Richard Simmons. Only it turns out that I have three severely herniated disks in my lower back, and they're not so hot on all that high-impact stuff. So anyway, after a lot of healing time, a lot of pills, an MRI, and some PT, I'm finally trying to get back into a certain amount of actual exercise. It makes me paradoxically less tired. Only not today, since today, my body is very confused, and hence yelling at me.

So on that seriously more-productive-than-it-looks note, I'm going to close this down and take myself to bed, to sleep the sleep of the good, the just, and the just plain tuckered. I'll be interesting again tomorrow, I promise.

As a kid, I was totally fascinated by numbers. Especially odd numbers (a fascination that would later translate into an obsession with primes, but that's another story, and one that doesn't really factor today -- except to note that 'February 13,' or '2/13' is a pair of primes -- the next prime-numbered year isn't until 2011). And, as I began my lifelong obsession with horror movies, especially the number thirteen.

It's an interesting fact that most people will give their lucky number as two, three, or seven, all of which are primes (and all of which are odd). Nine is also a common lucky number, and while it isn't prime, it's the result of squaring a prime. And yes, I actually sit around thinking about this stuff, which is why I have several books on my 'get around to writing this someday' list that feature mathematicians to one degree or another. Math is hard, but it makes me happy. Anyway, after examining the concept of the lucky number, and the numbers of those around me, I settled on my own lucky number: thirteen. As my horror movie education continued, I decided that Friday the thirteenth was obviously the luckiest day of all for me, because everybody else was creating a good luck void as they sucked up the world's supply of bad luck.

I never claimed that my logic made sense.

I love Friday the thirteenth. I love the doom-crows flocking around crying that we're all going to walk under ladders, break our mothers' backs by stepping on cracks, and have our paths crossed by spontaneously-generated black cats. (I don't love that people with black cats need to keep them indoors or risk losing them -- much like on Halloween -- but that's another issue.) I love the Halloween air that falls over the day, no matter when it comes along. I love that I get Halloween and then Valentine's Day this year, bam-bam, like a double-scoop of awesome.

I love Friday the 13th: The Series, and Friday the 13th the film series, and Thirteen by Vixy and Tony, and writing rondeaus, and Scott Westerfield's Midnighters trilogy. I love Baker's Dozens, and bouquets with thirteen flowers, and watching hotels pretend that they don't have thirteen floors, and everything else about the number thirteen.

What's your position?

My favorite book in the entire world -- the comforting, reassuring book that I return to over and over again, because it makes everything better for as long as I'm reading it -- is IT, by Stephen King. This probably explains a lot about me. I've read IT at least once a year since I was nine, more frequently two or three times a year, because when I'm stressed, I want familiar things around me, and my definition of 'familiar things' includes scary evil clowns. (My grandmother had a clown collection. I lived with her for a while, and it's a miracle I never took a hammer to her curio shelves. When she passed away, all the clowns went into boxes, and I never saw them again. I do not miss them, although I sort of wish I knew where they were, so as to remove 'under my bed with knives' from the available options.)

Because I re-read this book so frequently, I've actually managed to imprint on a specific edition, like a baby duck imprinting on a fire-breathing hellhound as its mother. I must have the 1985 paperback edition, or the words are in the wrong places on the page, and the book feels wrong to me. Yes, I recognize how absolutely bizarre this is. It doesn't change the fact that they re-paginated in later editions, and things just don't look right.

It's been getting increasingly hard to find copies of IT in my preferred edition, maybe because it's a twenty-four year old paperback that wasn't all that well-bound to begin with. I've been hoarding them with increasing desperation, knowing that the well is getting closer and closer to running dry. I had fourteen copies, at last count, after giving one to Vixy for Christmas. Well, I found a cardboard box on my porch this week, sent from Merav in New York. She's pretty good about telling me when things are perishable, so I let it sit for a few days before opening it.

When I did open it, I laughed myself dizzy. Because inside were seven -- yes, seven -- copies of the correct edition of IT, all neatly stacked and waiting to join the pile. Between her and Joey (who did something similar at my 'hooray, we've sold the first three Toby books' party), I may finally have sufficient copies of IT to get me through my lifetime.

My friends are very strange.

Last week, before I left for Conflikt, I stopped in at Flying Colors to pick up my comics for the week. Mmmmm, delicious comic-y goodness. I had a copy of Red Roses and Dead Things in my purse, so I pulled it out to show around, with the accompanying squeals of "My new album came!"

Andy -- one of the counter monkeys -- asked, "Is this for us?"

Being a sensible girl who loves her comic book store, I promptly replied with "Sure!" I left the album, picked up my comics, and went on my merry way home, hence to head for the airport, fly to Seattle, and basically forget the entire thing.

Wednesday, I went to the comic book store again, since, well, Wednesday is new comic day, and I'm basically a fixture. Joe (the owner) told me how much he'd enjoyed my CD, and how pleasantly surprised* he was to discover that it was awesome. I thanked him, and went back to seeking comics...only to have Brian stop me to do the same thing, and Andy, and Jasmine, and basically, the entire staff of Flying Colors. (Andy described it as 'totally cornball and campy, but in the good way.' High praise for a girl who grew up worshipping at the shrines of Marilyn Munster and Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.)

And then Joe asked if I might want him to carry a few for me on consignment.

My comic book store -- the comic book store I've been going to almost my entire life, the comic book store I wish I could put in my pocket and just take with me to Seattle -- is going to carry my CD. In my comic book store. My CD. Later, possibly, my books (Joe's considering it).

I am a real girl.

(*Let's face it -- nothing's more awkward than having someone you like and respect hand you something they've made, and then finding out that the whatever it was sucks rocks. What are you supposed to say to them? 'Gosh, your CD sure was shiny?' 'Gee, there were a lot of words in that book?' It's an awesome surprise when awesome people make awesome things. I'm using the word 'awesome' a lot today. Maybe I should stop watching so many back-to-back episodes of Chuck.)

So let's pause a moment. It's January 20th. I'm about to be the Guest of Honor at a truly awesome convention. My first novel comes out this year. I have stories appearing in two upcoming anthologies, one of which is going to help a dear friend in her time of need, the other of which involves wiping out the bulk of mankind. Researchers have sequenced the 1918 flu, because we know that never ends badly. Multiple awesome horror movies are slated for release. I have already been part of a mad-awesome concert. I spent New Year's Eve watching Freakylinks on the Chiller channel. This should have been sufficient proof that 2009 was, in fact, my year. It has been manufactured entirely for me.

Don't worry. I'll share. And that's a good thing, because here's some more awesome from 2009:

Scientists have discovered what they say is a completely unexpected new giant dinosaur that lived 70 million years ago in Argentina. Meet our new buddy, Austroraptor cabazai. He was the largest raptor ever known. I mean, five meters of raptor? That's a lot of massively predatory dinosaur coming for your tasty flesh, buddy. Thanks, Argentina! Also, as this is a totally new dinosaur -- relatively speaking -- it hasn't been on Primeval, and I'm allowed to have one. Hooray!

Oh, and also? The Black Death has reportedly killed at least forty al-Qaeda operatives in North Africa. Now, they're talking about bubonic plague here, which, as everyone knows by now, I do not believe was the cause of the Black Death. But they're so vague about the details that it could just be something cheerfully making itself look like the bubonic plague. PS: if this is actually the Black Death, and is actually a virus, rather than something bacterial, we're all going to die. So 2009 might also be the end of the human race.

I am okay with that, because this is awesome.

A clip of me speaking during my BayCon 2006 concert (the year I was Toastmistress) just came on my iTunes, which is eternally set to shuffle:

"To say that we're eclectic is a little bit of an over-statement...understatement...it's a statement. I'm wearing three-inch heels and I just ran through the whole hotel in them, so really, I get to make any statement I want."

Sometimes it's good to be a Halloweentown Disney Princess. In other news, word of my publication date is spreading like wildfire, and the response has been incredibly awesome. If book sales are anything near as healthy and enthusiastic as congratulations, I'm going to be writing book nine before I know it!

Glee.

I've spent the past year idly working on a calendar of 'Pretty Little Dead Ghouls' -- twelve months, twelve pin-ups, twelve implications of horrific violence either just past or just around the corner. All accompanied with chipper quatrains. Because I am just marginally odd that way.

This post contains twelve fairly good-sized images, each of which links to an even larger image. If your connection doesn't deal well with such things, here's a link to the gallery:

http://pics.livejournal.com/seanan_mcguire/gallery/0000qt1b

Let's take a peek, shall we?

( Because nothing says the new year like a lovely calendar, here's a lovely calendar for you to enjoy. And be a little bit afraid of.Collapse )

I wish to note that I have made a vast and important discovery, key to the survival of mankind:

Typing is much funner post-vodka.

Like, seriously. If you haven't had vodka, the act of spelling 'vodka' correctly is nowhere near as impressive. Also, I can spell 'impressive' after the vodka. And also I can spell 'antidisestablishmentarianism' after the vodka. Even if the spellchecker doesn't think I can spell it correctly. This is because the LJ spellchecker is stupid.

Vixy has just discovered my biohazard baggies. She is not properly concerned with their missing contents. This will be funny later.

More vodka now.

Since I fly to Seattle tomorrow -- because, of course, every good California girl who gets cold when someone says the words 'wind-chill factor' should absolutely fly from her nice, temperate state into an ongoing blizzard for the holidays -- I've been spending a great deal of my time and attention getting ready for this exciting holiday adventure. It's always a holiday adventure when you combine me, Vixy, Tony, access to art supplies, access to Rock Band, and a lot of free time. And that doesn't even go into our actual plans for the ten days that I'm going to be up in their neck of the woods. Highlights include...

* A trip to Powell's, the City of Books! Where I will once again demonstrate that I have absolutely no common sense when it comes to judging the number of books I actually need vs. the number of books my house can actually hold. I swear, I need a dedicated library. Which means I need to move out of earthquake country, since otherwise, there's a tragic Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction-related death in my future.

* A trip to Voodoo Doughnut, the pastry shop of doom, destruction, and a nice vanilla glaze! Seriously, I've never been to this place, but the descriptions (and photographs) on their website are scaaaaaary. They have Captain Crunch doughnuts. They have literal voodoo doll doughnuts. They do not currently have the NyQuil doughnuts, and that's probably a good thing, because I would totally feel compelled to eat one, and then I'd sleep until New Years.

* Musical rehearsal with the Garcias! Alisa and Luis Garcia are two of the sweetest, most incredibly awesome people I know. They're also crazy-good musicians with three fantastic kids and a really cute dog. Honestly, only their lack of broadband Internet keeps their lives from resembling a glimpse into Geek Heaven. Tony, Vixy, and I are going to pile into their guest house and get our musical badassitude on. (I have, once again, designed a concert set of almost entirely new material. My friends will kill me one of these days.)

* A meet-up with Team Seattle! I have no real clue what this means, beyond 'I finally get to meet Mark 'oh, what's this, I seem to have written a supernatural romance starring a zombie before you could, how did that happen, ha ha' Henry in the presumably living flesh,' but I'm anticipating a lot of wacky antics, and maybe a repeatable anecdote or two. (Given that I can find repeatable anecdotes in making toast, my odds are good.)

...and, of course, the house concert on January 3rd, wherein Vixy, Tony, and I will be bringing down the house and raising the roof at the same time. We're like magicians. Magicians of rock. There may also be a little roll in there. Rock, roll, all that good stuff. I may even be able to convince Tony that he wants to perform 'Sycamore Tree' in public.

So anyway, preparations have been ongoing for the past few weeks, gathering speed like a snowball running down a hill in a Warner Brothers cartoon. I've managed to mostly finish packing, assuming Lilly didn't slaughter my suitcase last night while I was at Kate's, and the total cleansing of my room* has helped to confirm the divide between 'what I need' vs. 'what I have.' Today's to-do list is all little things, like 'buy Luna bars,' 'pick up comics,' and 'print your tickets.' This is in contrast to last week's to-do lists, which still included items like 'where the hell is the bedroom floor?' and 'enslave the Martians.'

The inclusion of a house concert in the holiday plans meant the inclusion of dress-up clothes in my traveling wardrobe, since Vixy and I both tend to wear pretty dresses when we perform. The inclusion of dress-up clothes meant a sudden up-tick in my personal grooming. And that's why last night, prior to having tasty Indian food and watching The Usual Suspects with Kate, I went to the Harmony Beauty Salon -- our torture chamber of choice -- and had my legs waxed. Ever had your legs waxed? It's exciting new adventure in the realms of pain and exfoliation, since the wax also removes several layers of dead skin from whatever it touches. Also, the wax is green, and looks suspiciously like the mutagent from the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. Mutation could be just around the corner! Which makes me feel better about the whole process.

Pain. Because without it, how would we really know that it's the holiday season?

(*Seriously. It's totally clean. I took pictures as soon as I was finished, because otherwise, nobody would ever believe me that I had managed to get it to that state. A photo tour of my bedroom, coming soon to a theater near you.)

* I'm still taking pre-orders for the new album, Red Roses and Dead Things (the album details and track list are here, and will shortly include a cover graphic; you can order there, or by going directly to the order form). The tracks went to my mastering engineer, so we'll be closing the pre-orders shortly. If you wanted to sponsor the album (and thus be named in the liner notes), now's the time to do it. In other news, Jeff Bohnhoff is a golden god, Chris Mangum is a golden god, and I am a tired bunny.

* The finished manuscript for Late Eclipses of the Sun (Toby Daye, book four) has been turned in to my agent for review. I call this 'making sure she doesn't have any spare time over the holidays,' because I'm just considerate like that. I'm about a hundred and eighty pages into book five at this point, so I guess misery just loves company. (Actually, I'm not miserable at all. I'm ecstatic. But that's also because I'm insane.)

* Updates to my website are continuing; they just slowed down a little bit because My Web Dude is also My Album Liner Notes Design Dude, and even all his awesome can't do eighteen things at the same time (and I am not his day job). Watch for FAQs and the 'Thoughts On Writing' landing page, coming soon.

* The part of my brain that never really believes I'm doing enough wants me to do a lengthy, illustrated essay on being a good convention guest. I think my brain is out to get me, I really, really do.

* I'm prepping for my holiday trip to Seattle by making packing lists, mailing presents, and searching in vain for a better method of mailing comic strips. I may have actually found one. It just requires...testing.

* I am wearing socks covered in grinning jack-o-lanterns. Halloween is every day.

That's all for now in the world of me. What's up and new in the world of you?

Ever listened to some of the things that come out of my mouth and wondered just what the heck I was actually trying to say? Well, wonder no more: here is a handy-dandy Dictionary of Seanan, containing words, terms, and phrases that have oozed their way into my somewhat uncommon parlance and have shown no signs of oozing out again. I think all people have their own private languages, and that life would be a lot simpler if we became fluent in each other. I can't promise actual dictionary format, because I'm lazy, but I can promise alphabetical order, because I'm also a twitchy little OCD girl. So.

( Ducks. DDP. Romanian au pairs. Purple hair problems. Penny. Street pennies. Go away, Kim Delaney. Dinosaurs eat people. Mandibles of loooove. What the heck is Seanan saying? Find out here. Dun-dun-DUUUUUUUN.Collapse )

So there's my dictionary, 2008 edition. Somehow, I'm not sure it makes me any easier to understand. But hey. It was fun to write, so really, who cares about its functionality?

What's in your dictionary?