The announcement:

After three days of wandering Wondercon, I actually still have art cards -- partially because there were three instances where I totally forgot that the deal was 'you say the magic phrase, I give you an art card of your very own.' I remembered later, and in all three cases, I was able to find the people later to give them an art card anyway...but my guilt motivated me to do three totally new cards to hand out, thus leaving me with several of the originals still in my possession.

Since I'd already mentally filed this particular cards as 'gone,' given that whole 'taking them to a convention to give away' thing, I've decided to make the cards go away through a different mechanism. So I'm going to sell them. I also don't feel like scanning what I have left, because I am an essentially lazy creature who doesn't have that sort of technical skill left in me. So here's how that's going to work:

1. You think 'I want ____ art card.'
2. You send me an email (this account is paid, and you can email it) -- not an LJ comment, please -- and say 'is ____ available?'
3. I say either yes or no. If yes, I follow that with 'you can have it for ten dollars.'
4. If you still want it, we arrange for you to give me ten dollars.
5. I mail you an art card of your very own.

For the most part, I won't be selling things through this journal, because I'm selling, y'know, books through this journal. If this works, however, I'll probably put post-convention art cards up whenever I have them, just because it's a good way to make them leave.

The moment of geekitude:

Frank Beddor was totally thrilled to hear that I'd sold Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies], and we geeked books for a while, and it was awesome. Frank is the author of The Looking Glass Wars [Amazon]. He's also a really sweet guy, and it was great that he got so excited for me.

The request:

So I'm doing a truly epic number of tweaks and updates to my website as we get everything launched and up to speed. Some sub-pages are still missing, some sub-pages are a mess, but on the whole, it's coming together fast. The page for the Toby books in general and Rosemary and Rue are sort of comic in their sparseness. It's going to improve, I promise.

One of the existing pages most in need of a major revamp is the album reviews page, which is just a mess right now. So please, if you have one of my albums and you have a moment, can you either link me to your existing review, write a full review, or toss me a comment mini-review? That way I can get some new options and fresh text as I clean everything else up.

Whee!

Am home from day two of Wondercon, subtitled 'Seanan wanders around a lot, misses her panels, delivers some CDs, goes to the movies with Jeanne, and acquires a bunch of free stuff.' It's a long subtitle, but it's still fairly concise for everything that it needs to cover.

One nice thing about the convention being a straightforward train ride from my home: when I finish this entry and find the strength to move, I'm going to bed. In my bed. Not a hotel bed. Mine. Where I will sleep with my plush toys, and my pointy blue cat. Not those hotel plush toys and hotel pointy blue cats.

I appreciate this convenience.

In other news, yes, I'll be back at the con tomorrow; yes, I still have art cards, although the number is dropping; yes, I would be happy to answer any questions that you might have about Rosemary and Rue, including my new favorite, 'what's rue?' (How people surrounded by mad scientists can avoid knowing even one meaning of the word 'rue' is something I hope to never know...)

I'm attending a bunch of panels tomorrow, and my head hurts. So, y'know. Bed now.

Since tomorrow is the official beginning of Wondercon, this seemed like a good time to go ahead and post the remaining four cards. (In addition to forcing myself to be strong and not do 'one little replacement card,' I had to keep reminding myself that ten was a nice, round number of cards, even if it didn't give me a nice, even number in the two scans. Sometimes living inside my brain can be a real merry-go-round of mathematical fun.)

As always, clicking the image will take you to a bigger version. I give you the final four cards:



Just to restate the rules, cards will be available for the first ten people who find me at the convention and ask about Rosemary and Rue [Amazon][Mysterious Galaxies]. I'm intending to be at-con for at least part of all three days. And yes, after you ask me about the book, you do actually have to stand there and listen to me talk about it before I'll let you have your card. No reservations for specific cards are being taken.

Let the games begin!

Point the first: Yes, I am intending to count down, like a small child anticipating Christmas. No, I am not intending to post the numbers every day, because that would be crazy-making for everyone involved. Yes, I am probably going to post whenever we get a number that really interests me. Like...

Point the second: 192 is the sum of ten consecutive primes (5 + 7 + 11 + 13 + 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37). It's also the smallest number with exactly 14 divisors. Oh, and also? That's how many member states are currently in the United Nations. I love you, number theory books and Wikipedia.

Point the third: If you're really aching for a first look at Rosemary and Rue, there will be an excerpt included in the DAW Books Summer Sampler, which is being handed out at the San Diego Comic Convention. It'll probably be available other places, too -- I found copies in several genre-oriented bookstores last year -- but I can guarantee its presence at Comicon. As an added bonus, I can guarantee my presence at Comicon, which means you can not only snag a copy of the sampler, you can get it signed.

Point the fourth: We're working on getting the website fully up to speed, and yes, this is eventually going to mean that we'll have landing pages for each of the Toby Daye books. A sample of the text will probably be going up after the Summer Sampler has been officially released; we'll probably be able to get the cover up there about the same time. I promise not to taunt you forever.

This is such a big adventure. There are no words.

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.

Since I'm feeling better* today, I'm taking care of all those things which were permitted to slip over the past several days. Specifically...

* I've gone through and checked checks against orders in my ordering database, so that I could correctly mark off those people I don't need to harass into paying me. I'm a very polite harasser, really, but the major down-side of doing CDs the way I do -- IE, 'the pre-orders pay for the production costs' -- is that when people don't pay me, I have real trouble making the albums actually exist. In other news, I now have 212 pre-orders in the system. I feel special.

* I've reviewed the final mastered tracks for Red Roses and Dead Things, confirming that they are MADE OF AWESOME. I am, of course, hyper-critical of my own performances, but that's my nature, and everything I can be objective about on the album is fantastic. Michelle Dockrey, Maya Bohnhoff, and Tom Smith are all super-cool in their appearances, and Tony Fabris just blows me out of the water with his mournful Dave Davenport. I'm so glad this album is about to exist.

* I've also written the back page for the liner notes, which is sort of like the acknowledgments page in a book, only with a lot more references to James Gunn and his pressing need to call me. And yes, I will be sending him a copy of the album. He's on the extremely short 'freebie' list. (It consists of James Gunn, Stephen King, and Eric Kripke, for this album. Because I am a good little horror girl.)

* Since I like not being clubbed to death by The Agent for getting nothing done**, I've also been plugging away on The Brightest Fell. The goal du jour is hitting three hundred pages, and then breaking to hammer on The Mourning Edition for a little while. I find it hysterical -- and also annoying -- that I have, like, two books in my entire 'write this' list that start with the word 'the,' and I'm working on them both at once. Bah.

* Also, I keep stopping to poke at Facebook, and its addictive little clicky-clicky vampire game. You know you're hooked when you consider soliciting total strangers to join your clan. Again, bah.

More to come, after I find my desk under this pile o' crap.

(*Local values of 'better' include 'capable of moving around under own power without feeling the intense need to stop and yark up everything consumed in the past hour' and 'capable of stringing six coherent words together in a line.' We've lowered our standards, now up yours.)

(**My definition of 'getting nothing done' is a very specialized one. I know this thing.)

Step one: Get off work. Go to Target. Buy microwave lunches for the next week, because Target is the only damn store in the damn Bay Area that reliably carries the kinds that I'll actually eat. Is it so hard for Safeway to keep Chicken Mirabella, Shrimp Marinara, and Tuna Casserole on their shelves? Apparently, yes. Yes, it is. (I'm only willing to eat like four kinds of microwave meal, and even I eventually get tired of spaghetti.)

Step two: Go to the comic book store. Engage an annoying patron in a vigorous discussion of why, perhaps, declaring "Fuck the Gemworld!" in a store containing, well, me, is not the world's very best idea. Amuse the counter monkeys immensely. The counter monkeys like me, as I am reliable, polite, and very, very addicted to comics. The counter monkeys have no such fondness for annoying patron, hereby referred to as 'the cat-toy.' The cat-toy survived our encounter, but did not linger.

Step three: Go home. Set the kitchen on fire making cranberry sauce.

Step four: Put out the fire.

Step five: Read Hack/Slash while eating dinner. After the dinner part of the program is done, ink and watch two episodes of Big Bang Theory (season one). Mr. Memory and The Human Labyrinth are now fully inked, as is the masthead. Most of the Ragnaroctopus still needs to be finished. But I found my zip-a-tone, so all will be well.

Step six: Process the final edits for my Grants Pass story, which is pleasant and nice and not at all disturbing.

Step seven: Muck around with my clicky Vampire Wars game on Facebook. Damn you, Jennifer, damn you.

Step eight: Make this entry.

Step nine: Retreat to the back room for Leverage and more comic books.

I was comfortably seated in my cotton-candy wonderland of zombie ponies, global pandemics, and not enough Diet Dr Pepper when I received a ping from my dearest darling Deborah, and the following conversation came to pass:

Deborah: "Have you seen you're on Colleen Mondor's blog?"
Me: "No. Who's Colleen Mondor?"

Enlightenment followed, as did a link to the post in question. Here go:

http://www.chasingray.com/archives/2008/12/8th_day_holiday_recs_for_all_t.html

(Oh, and in case you're also wondering who Colleen Mondor is, here's the brief blurb: "Colleen Mondor is a reviewer for Booklist, Bookslut, Eclectica Magazine and the Voices of New Orleans. I also write fiction and listen to great music." I am assured that her linking to me is awesome, because she is awesome. The world needs more awesome, so hey! Go team awesome!)

I'm not sure I've ever actually directly linked to the lyrics for 'Wicked Girls.' They're in my online songbook, but that doesn't necessarily help. So here's a hook-up:

'Wicked Girls' song lyrics.

Oh, and in case you want to do all your clicking in one place, here is the post containing the only existing recording of 'Wicked Girls.' It's a very rough recording, but it's good enough to let you hear what's going on.

I am amused.

...I learned from Marilyn Munster.

There is nothing wrong with being a little bit unusual. * It doesn't matter what other people think about what you love; it's what you think that really matters. * It's okay to be the blonde one sometimes. * Monsters are people, too. * Being black and white doesn't mean you can't be pink inside. * Loyalty counts. * The people who really care about you will continue to care, no matter how much of a freak you are. * Start every day with a smile. * There is magic in the petulant head-tilt. * Always run towards the explosions. * If everyone is screaming, things are probably about to get interesting. * You can hide lots of knives in a ruffled gown. * No one gets to define what's normal for you. * Stereotypes are funny. * Life is good, so enjoy it while you can. * Other people's prejudices are not actually your problem. * Some people only see appearances. It's best to feel sorry for them. * When someone leads an angry mob to your doorstep, it's okay to scold them for carrying lit torches in a residential area. * Be comfortable with your surroundings. * It is perfectly possible to be a horror movie girl while wearing pastels. * White pancake makeup is totally optional. * Blood is actually good for hair; it strengthens the follicles. * Never underestimate the power of big blue eyes. * Or having a seven foot tall uncle who looks like he was raised from the dead. That doesn't hurt either. * Family counts for everything. * Running in high heels is a life skill. * Hydrogen peroxide gets blood out of almost anything but taffeta and white cotton. * A good wardrobe is key. * Be yourself. In the end, that's what actually matters.

What important lessons did you learn from your personal media icons?

Today is World Virus Appreciation Day, the day when we give our most dearly beloved pathogens just that extra little bit of love that they so richly deserve. In honor of this infectuously awesome holiday, I'm offering my favorite entries in the fields of horrible diseases. Namely, some lists. How I adore lists. Especially lists of ten things.

( Click for Seanan's ten favorite movies about disease, books about disease, and, well, diseases. Because sharing is super-fun.Collapse )

Happy World Virus Appreciation Day! What's your favorite virus?

So I was asked today how I could possibly watch as much television as I claim, given how much I write. The implication was, of course, that I'm exercising hyperbole in my description of my television-viewing habits. So, in the interests of full disclosure, here are the shows that I currently watch:

* America's Next Top Model. Not only do I have no shame, I enjoy watching -- and mocking -- Tyra's slow descent into madness. I seriously think she's been eating lead paint for the last five years, or something. It's soothing reality madness. Kate and I get together once a week to mock it.

* Bones. Hot actors, snappy dialog, and dead stuff. Really, I am a simple creature, easily brought over to the cause of darkness by offers of dead stuff.

* Dexter. I loved the first two seasons, I loved the first two books. I hated the third book, so now I'm praying that the show's departure from the text continues in a big, big way. I want to stay in love with my show. I really, really do.

* Eureka. Mad science? I am so there.

* Fringe. I haven't actually seen the first episode yet -- that's happening tomorrow -- but I'm planning on watching at least the first month, just to figure out whether or not I want to make a commitment.

* Heroes. I'm still catching up on the end of season two, but I'm primed and ready for season three. No spoilers, please!

* NCIS. Nothing says 'love' like perky goth forensic technicians who can kill you and leave behind absolutely no evidence to indicate that they did it. I love this show. It has guns.

* Numb3rs. Math and hot mathematicians and more guns and it's basically just the happiest hour on television that doesn't feature dinosaurs.

* Primeval. The happiest hour on television that does feature dinosaurs.

* Supernatural. This show was actually designed especially for me. It's fantastic that they're somehow prying it out of my dreams and putting it on cable for everyone else to see, but really, they made this show just to make me happy. Which it does, reliably.

* True Blood. Only one episode so far, but man, am I digging what I'm getting. I hope it maintains or improves on this quality level; if it does, it's going to be just amazing.

Shows I love, and watch religiously, but which are neither currently on the air or starting a season in the next month: Doctor Who, Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures, The Middleman. Shows which I love, and watch religiously, but which are finishing their seasons: Monk, Psych. So yes, I watch a lot of television.

How about you?

I have just finished my first post-editorial pass through Rosemary and Rue, book one in the Chronicles of October Daye. All changes suggested by a) my proofreaders, b) my own neurosis, and c) my editor have been incorporated into the text, which continues to get cleaner and crisper and more all-around happy-making with every smack of the machete.

I've also updated the continuity guide (yes, again) to reflect the new canon. I honestly can't wait for publication, not just because, dude, PUBLICATION, but because I so very much want to have official and formal and unchanging canon. I'm really looking forward to being forced to live with my decisions. It seems like it's going to be a pretty awesome thing to complain about.

Chris is setting up a Wiki for me to transition my continuity guide into, because that's going to be so much easier to work with than my current enormously massive .doc file that it isn't even funny. Infinite links! Category pages! Related pages! Truly, my geeky little heart swoons with the anticipation of making my already-obsessive database even larger, and more obsessive. And I found another month this morning, bringing the total of months represented in the series up to six. Behold!

Now I am going to turn in my manuscript, get dressed, and go to Starbucks. Because that's just the way we roll.