Hollywood the Write Way has posted a review of Rosemary and Rue. This is our first review for the month of July, aka, "that month where suddenly, we're counting down from sixty days oh dear gods I need more Diet Dr Pepper." I'm so excited!

In honor of this lovely review, I've done a roundup of our reviews so far, in case you missed one:

jennifer_brozek wrote a lovely review for Apex Books.

The Book Zombie wrote this incredibly sweet and thoughtful review, and even linked to one of my art cards!

kyrielle wrote a thoughtful and balanced review in her journal; k_crow did the same, because they are awesome.

Becky, of Village Books, wrote my very first bookseller review! I'm so chuffed!

s00j turned her wordsmithing to a lovely review tagged "that which does not suck." Most complimentary statement ever!

ladyqkat wrote another lovely LJ review, and canadianevil did the same thing.

And, of course, my beloved Rae wrote my very first posted review, thus earning herself an eternal place in my heart.

Yay reviews!

Earlier this week, I pointed you at a teaser for an upcoming review by the Book Zombie (still the best name ever). Well, her full review has been posted, and it was just as awesome as the teaser implied that it was going to be. I realize that I'm still in the rosy glow of "all my reviews have been positive ones," and that this doesn't last forever, but that doesn't change the part where this review is just absolutely gorgeous, and warms me down to the tips of my tippy-toes.

jennifer_brozek has also posted her review of Rosemary and Rue over on the Apex Books blog. This, too, is a splendid review, and I'm struck once again by how many people love such different things about the story. I've been in love with Toby for so long that it's a little odd to watch other people meeting and loving her, too. Although Jennifer's right; if I ever met Toby on the street, she'd totally break my nose. She wouldn't even hesitate.

In other exciting news, A Local Habitation is now available for pre-order from Amazon.com. I just found this out this morning, and I am over the moon about it. Look! Book two! Right there, on the screen, with an ISBN!!!!! Maybe I'm just a total nerd, but having an ISBN is so exciting to me, in so many ways, that it's difficult to express in words. The cover art hasn't been posted yet, but it should be coming along in due course.

We're getting closer every day.

In two months (sixty-one days, one thousand four hundred sixty-four hours), Rosemary and Rue will officially Become Available In Stores. If you've pre-ordered a copy, it will be waiting for you behind the counter, or possibly already in the mail. I will be doing my best not to live entirely on candy corn and pumpkin cake (and I will also be failing, because that is just a resolution I cannot keep).

Two months.

This is so little time that it's seriously blowing my mind, because I just can't wrap my head around the idea. Two months. This time last year, I hadn't finished the rewrites on A Local Habitation, and my editor hadn't even seen An Artificial Night...and this time next year, I'll have three books on store shelves, patiently waiting for you to pick them up and take them home with you.

Two months.

Sixty-one is a prime number, the twin prime of fifty-nine.

Two months.

This really doesn't seem real right now.

...and we have our winner. Will poelaramont please pick up the white courtesy telephone, and tell me where to mail an ARC of Rosemary and Rue? If I don't hear from you in seventy-two hours, I will draw another number.

Thanks to everyone who commented. It's good to know that the lure of free stuff remains strong!

Item the first: remember that tomorrow is going to be the drawing for the final ARC giveaway for the month of June. All you have to do to enter is go to the entry and leave a comment. That's it. Nothing more complex than that. Tomorrow, I'll be flicking on the random number generator and letting it tell me who our lucky winner will be. So take a chance! All it'll cost you is thirty seconds and a couple of clicks!

Item the second: the Book Zombie—and isn't that just about the best name ever? It makes me want to adopt her and cover her in puffy blue cats—is working on her review of Rosemary and Rue. You can see a little sneak peek of what's coming over at her blog. I'm all excited and jumpy and stuff. I love seeing new reviews come out. (This probably won't last, once we get into wider reviews and I become totally overwhelmed and start hiding under my desk. But right now, I love them like I love pumpkin pie. Sweet, sweet pumpkin pie.)

Item the third: I'm currently updating and finalizing my appearances for the next several months. As a reminder, you can always see which conventions I'm planning to attend by hitting my website, and I try to update the information with panel times and details on readings just as soon as I possibly can. I'll be in Seattle on August 22nd for the Grants Pass release party (and yes, some discussion of a house concert has occurred, but there's nothing concrete). There are currently three official Rosemary and Rue release parties scheduled for early September, all of them in the San Francisco Bay Area; I'll keep you posted if we wind up scheduling appearances anywhere else.

(There will be a release party at OVFF, in Columbus, Ohio, in late October. You'll need to be a member of the convention to attend. But there will be cake.)

More to come later, but those are the memos for the morning. In other news, I have sufficient Diet Dr Pepper. You may all live.

Whee.

Look! More reviews!

From k_crow, we have a lengthy review that's been cross-posted nigh unto everywhere. This makes me happy, as the review is made of win.

From Becky, owner of Village Books, we have an awesome bookseller review, complete with being written by someone I've never met.

Finally (for now), from s00j, we have a long, sweet, poetic review that says many nice things. She used the LJ tag "that which does not suck." The review falls into the same category.

Given that it's June and the book comes out September 1st, I think reviews are starting to arrive at a very good pace.

Life is awesome.

It is now sixty-seven days to the release of Rosemary and Rue. According to Wikipedia (source of a great deal of numerological wisdom that I don't actually have to type up from scratch), sixty-seven...

...is the nineteenth prime number. (The next up is seventy-one, the next down is sixty-one.)

...an irregular prime. (Don't ask.)

...a lucky prime. (Again, don't ask.)

...the sum of five consecutive primes (7 + 11 + 13 + 17 + 19).

...a discriminant to the Heegner number -67. (I don't even know what this means, but it's cool.)

...since 18! + 1 is divisible by 67 but 67 is not one more than a multiple of 18, 67 is a Pillai prime. (This, I do know, but it would take an hour to explain, and I'd need puppets or something.)

Also, apparently, "In a Voronoi diagram created using points from the prime spiral, no prime less than 10242 will have a rounder Voronoi cell than 67." Cool, huh? There is no Highway 67, making it the highest two-digit number not currently designating any highway in the Interstate Highway System of the United States. Oh, and in the Prisoner game I was in once, my ex-boyfriend was "67."

Pardon me. I'll just be over here with my ravens and my writing desks, going cheerfully mad.

How better to conclude the month of June—and start the real countdown to publication—than with one last ARC giveaway? (Note: this doesn't mean "last ever," it means "last in June," because my paperwork would get out of control if I tried to run more than one between now and July.) Now, you've all been expending a lot of effort in your attempts to win a copy of Rosemary and Rue, which I appreciate greatly. I appreciate it so much, in fact, that this time, you get to be lazy. How do you enter this particular drawing?

Simple: comment here.

No, really. This giveaway is going to be a RANDOM DRAW, just like the first one. Comment on this post going "oooh, me, me," and I'll put you into a spreadsheet. At the end of the month (so Tuesday, June 30th), I will roll the random number generator, and we'll have a winner. (Although, as a footnote, the winner will have seventy-two hours to claim their prize. So if I post going "Yay, Kermit, you win!" and Kermit doesn't say "Yay, send it here!" within three days, I'll be rolling the random number generator again. That's how we roll.) Please only comment once. Please do not comment if you already have an ARC, as that isn't nice.

There will almost certainly be other giveaways after this, through this LJ, and maybe even through my website and/or Twitter. Because I like giving stuff away. It's fun.

Game on!

ladyqkat has posted a bubbly and enthusiastic review of Rosemary and Rue, which is something that pretty much always makes me happy.

canadianevil has posted a slightly longer and more detailed review, which is something else that pretty much always makes me happy, and hopes we'll be seeing more of the less-central fae races in the books to come. O people of the world, you so have no idea...

These things are pleasing unto me, and a good way to begin a morning. Also pleasing unto me: this Diet Dr Pepper.

It's good to be easy to please.

1st place, and an ARC of Rosemary and Rue, goes to mpoetess. mpoetess, please get me your mailing address as soon as you can.

2nd place, and choice of either a cover flat or a set of my albums, goes to jjloa. Same request applies.

3rd place, and whichever prize remains, goes to ink_books_punk. Same request.

Everyone, thank you for playing!

We are now seventy-five days out from the release of Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies]. We're thirty-five days out from the San Diego International Comic Convention, aka "Geek Prom," aka "Seanan makes her first appearance in a public place as a professional author, rather than as a musician who occasionally writes things and says flaily stuff about a book that's coming out sometime in the far, misty future." If I had a penny for every day between now and my book hitting shelves, I couldn't even buy a cup of coffee.

Who has a ticket on the crazy train? Is it me? Why, yes, I do believe that it is. (Although my crazy is somewhat alleviated by the fact that a new Mersenne prime has been discovered. It's thirteen million digits long. I would post it here, but the text file is seventeen MB, which means it's roughly 3,500 pages of single-spaced twelve-point text. I'm not that crazy. Yet.)

We had a brief question-and-answer session at the end of my reading at DucKon, and people asked how they could make their book purchases count the most. I love these people. I love them like burning. That said...

* If you have a brick-and-mortar store, buy there. Buying a physical book from a physical store forces the store to restock, which gets more copies into circulation. Book sales are calculated using a bizarre algorithm of "copies shipped" and "copies returned." We want the first number to be enormous, and the second number to be nonexistent.

* Online orders definitely count as sales, and if you don't have a brick-and-mortar store, that's an awesome route. (Also, if you've already pre-ordered, canceling your order is probably not very nice.) Even if you don't place your order online, remember that a lot of people do, and that reviews and rankings help to inform decisions.

...which brings me to a note on reviews: please review the book honestly, and don't worry that I'll be coming for you in the night with a bucket full of bloodworms. I won't be reading Amazon reviews, remember? But please do review the book. Reviews will help get people who have no idea who I am to take a chance on me, which increases my numbers, which increases the odds of the trilogy doing well enough that we can sell the next three. Which increases the odds of my being entertainingly crazy forever.

Seventy-five days.

Great Pumpkin preserve us.

Welcome to the first Toby LOLtest voting post! I've selected ten entries, through a magical mixture of "oh, I really liked that one" and "random selection." (The order in which they are presented is not the order in which they were chosen. It's mostly the order in which they appeared, for ease of browsing.) I've included links to the entries themselves below the voting poll, so that you can make an informed decision.

Game on!



1. "I'm not working..."
2. Solvin' ur murders.
3. No harm.
4. "Hard werk raisin hooman..."
5. "Tybalt? R u there?"
6. "Iz faerie now."
7. Normal life.
8. "Whatchu mean, 'no'?"
9. Cursin' u.
10. Not all Tinker Belle.

Voting will close Friday morning.

I'm off for DucKon bright and early tomorrow (Thursday, June 11th), so please consider this your last reminder that the first-ever Toby Daye LOLtest is still open for entries. To recap...

1. Entries must be graphic. There are no restrictions on type of graphic, providing they follow the LOL___ format popularized by the LOLcats movement. LOLcats, LOLold fairy tale illustrations, LOLmy cover art, LOLhome photography, whatever. Dress yourself, a friend, or a really tolerant squirrel up as Toby and knock yourself out. Whatever makes you happy.

2. Entries must be related to Rosemary and Rue in some way.

3. Entries must be posted on the original contest announcement.

We're getting some great submissions. In the interest of preserving my sanity (and recognizing the fact that hey, I'm about to go away to a weekend-long convention), we'll keep taking entries until I open the floor for voting on Tuesday, June 16th. Since we're getting such awesome submissions, I'm going to do first, second, and third prizes, namely:

FIRST: an ARC of Rosemary and Rue.
SECOND: a set of my CDs or a cover flat, if you already have the CDs.
THIRD: whichever prize second didn't take.

Good luck!

If you didn't enter or didn't win yesterday's trivia contest, all is not lost! Remember, the first-ever Toby Daye LOLtest is still going! To recap...

1. Entries must be graphic. There are no restrictions on type of graphic, providing they follow the LOL___ format popularized by the LOLcats movement. LOLcats, LOLold fairy tale illustrations, LOLmy cover art, LOLhome photography, whatever. Dress yourself, a friend, or a really tolerant squirrel up as Toby and knock yourself out. Whatever makes you happy.

2. Entries must be related to Rosemary and Rue in some way.

3. Entries must be posted on the original contest announcement.

Again, I'll be taking entries until Friday, June 12th, and then opening the floor for voting. There's definitely an ARC in it for the winner, and depending on number and variety of entries, I may also be supplying a few runner-up prizes.

Good luck!

I have had a battered and beaten ARC returned to me by my housemate (he read it, he enjoyed it, but these poor babies aren't meant to last forever). Since I can't exactly send it out to a review site, I've decided that it's POP QUIZ TIME! The first person to answer all twenty questions correctly will win the ARC. (If you already have one, you can still win, and tell me where it should be sent.) If no one has answered all twenty questions correctly by tonight, I will pick the person with the highest number of right answers. In case of a tie, it still goes to first.

People who have known me for more than ten years are respectfully asked not to play, as that just wouldn't be fair to the rest of the planet.

Game on!

( We're a town full of losers, baby, but somebody's going to win! Trivia contest this way!Collapse )

Today is June 1st. According to my big list of holidays, it's Dare Day. Fitting, I suppose. It's also three months, exactly, to the release of Rosemary and Rue, which means it's probably two months to the actual physical production of Rosemary and Rue, and time to start the giant "When will Seanan have her first nervous collapse of the year?" betting pool. (Much as I'm complaining about convention season, it's actually a very, very good thing. Convention season keeps me focused. True, what I'm focused on is primarily "get in and out of the next convention alive and without being brought up on murder charges," but any focus is better than no focus. I flail a lot when I have no focus. I flail a lot regardless of focus; it's just that focused flailing is less destructive and more amusing for the people around me.)

I keep looking at the numbers on my "countdown to book release" and thinking "that can't be right..."

In case you were curious, the date on the short story that marks the first-ever appearance, in any form, of October Daye, is...Friday, June 27th, 1997. So if I seem a little flipped-out about Rosemary and Rue coming out, just remember that from where I'm sitting, it's been a long, long journey. A long, long journey that is, in a very real way, just getting started.

Three months. Good ye gods.

I need some candy corn.

It's time for another ARC giveaway! Because you were starting to think I didn't love you anymore. Now, you may remember that I hinted at this giveaway being a little more "graphic" in nature. I give you...

The LOLtest. Yes, if you hate LOLcats, you probably want to shoot me right about now, but that's okay, because I love the freaky little guys, and I'm not asking people to invade your blog with countless graphics of the things. So what do you have to do to enter? Simple. You have to make a LOL___ and post it here. What do I mean by LOL___?

LOLcats. LOLold fairy tale illustrations. LOLmy cover art. LOLhome photography—if you want to take a tip from A Softer World and take your own pictures, be my guest. (Toby is brunette, fairly pale, and tends to wear sensible clothing. You want to slap a leather jacket on your girlfriend/best friend/self and take pictures solely for captioning purposes, I'm down with that.) For examples of the inimitable LOLcat in its natural habitat, see I Can Has Cheezburger, along with countless other sites in the same vein...and then knock yourself out.

Post your contest submissions on this entry. Because this is a project that could require a bit more effort, I'm going to be taking entries until Friday, June 12th, and then opening the floor for voting. I'll definitely be giving away one ARC through this contest; depending on the number and variety of entries received, I may well increase that to two, as well as putting together a few runner-up prizes (who wants a CD?). This contest is open to everyone, including my mother, my agent, God, and people who have already won ARCs. Bring out your LOLcats, and rock the world.

Game on!

EDIT: To be clear, all LOL___ must be Toby-related to be considered actual entries. Although all LOL___ are cute and make me smile.

Hooray, hooray, the...um, well, the end of May. But we're celebrating the glorious end of a glorious month with something truly glorious beyond all measure:

The first officially published review of Rosemary and Rue!

Look at it. Isn't it preeeeeeetty? I just sort of want to cuddle it and love it and call it "George." Or maybe "Dave." Or maybe "to come over for drinks," although that could just be my inner Jane speaking. Big, big thanks to Rae for both reviewing the book, and for admitting to her biases right up front, thus making her a responsible reviewer who can be believed. Because nothing says "love" like being up-front about the things that could potentially

sway your hand.

(To be quite clear, I actually do trust Rae to be objective, because I've seen her savage things by creators she loves. She's like a cuddly wombat, totally harmless until she transforms herself into a WHIRLING BLENDER OF TOOTHY DEATH. I appear to have missed the "frappe" setting, and for this, I am truly glad.)

Book reviews. They, like milk, make a body glad.

I, Seanan McGuire, am a first-time novelist. (I refuse to say "first-time author," because that wouldn't be just disingenuous, it would be silly, and nobody wants to see what people would dredge out of their closets if dared to do so by such foolish comments.) My first book comes out on September 1st of this year. Naturally, I'm petrified. And so, in an effort to save some sanity—not mine, as that's basically a lost cause—I am making the following promises. To myself, if to no one else.

I. I will not read Amazon reviews. I keep saying this, and reminding myself that Kate will beat me if I so much as twitch toward the page, but that doesn't matter, because obviously, I need the reminder. I. Will not. Read. Amazon. Reviews.

II. If people insist on forwarding me Amazon reviews, notifications that my book is on eBay, or other things that are either guaranteed to upset me, things I've promised not to look at, or both, I will give one warning, and then I will start deleting their mail. Because dude, I don't need an extra dose of crazy pie to go with the crazy pie I already have over here.

III. I will not call my publisher unless I have a reason to call my publisher.

IV. Wanting to talk about the new season of Supernatural does not count as a reason to call my publisher. Neither does that cute thing my cat just did.

V. My agent probably doesn't want to hear about the cute thing my cat just did either, and even if she does, I should maybe not call to tell her about it after midnight.

VI. No matter how much I think the populace is going to march on the house with torches because they don't like my book, the odds are very low, and I probably don't need to triple the fire insurance protection. I will not call the fire department every time I think I smell smoke.

VII. I will not allow my mother to post reviews without clearly identifying herself as my mother. Actually, if at all possible, I will not allow my mother to post reviews, as this rarely ends well.

VIII. I will continue to breathe. Holding my breath has been clinically proven not to make my publication date come faster.

IX. I will not spend the entire month of September hiding under my bed. For one thing, there are probably spiders down there. For another, the cats would insist on hiding under the bed with me, and the bed isn't big enough for that to be even remotely comfortable. Also, as there is no television in my bedroom, I would probably go into withdrawal or something.

X. I will not start a new series in an effort to distract myself.

XI. Okay, so maybe I will. But I won't start anything more than three books long.

XII. While I am aware that no amount of saying "I will not take negative reviews personally" will change a damn thing, I will discuss negative reviews with people I trust, remember that nothing is universally adored, and refrain from eating more than three bags of candy corn. Sugar doesn't fix everything. It just makes me care less.

XIII. I will occasionally stop running.

And the winner is...

canadianevil!

Congratulations! Your ARC will not be mailed until Tuesday, as I'm leaving for BayCon in just a few hours. This means you have until Monday to get me your mailing address, either via email or LJ message. If I don't have a mailing address by Monday at 12noon PST, I will be declaring your forfeit and punting to our second place winner. I'm mean like that. Also, trying to minimize long-term paperwork (ha ha).

A big, big thanks to everyone who participated, because this contest was awesome. I'll be announcing our next ARC contest sometime after the convention. I'll give you a hint: you're going to need to start thinking visually, and then maybe, yes, you can haz Rosemary and Rue.

Whee.

So here's the basic skinny: recently, an ARC for Rosemary and Rue (which is, y'know, not available until September) showed up on eBay. I stomped around, I glared, I made hissy noises, and I got on with my life, because that's what I do. (Behold the Irish temper in action! On the plus side, you can distract me from world-destroying fury with something shiny. On the minus side, that something shiny may well be a death ray.) My dear friend trektone had a question. Namely:

"I'd be interested to know (in your spare time, of course) your opinion of the buying/selling/trading/etc. of ARCs & book proofs. If they are by favorite authors, I love them. ... Regarding your stated urge in #6 above, is it because the official book has yet to hit the shelves? Or because you're not getting your nickel or whatever from the sale? Both? Something else?"

Now, in my spare time, I'm going to provide an answer. Because I can.

The buying/selling/trading/rendering into art installations of ARCs actually makes me happy...after the official book has hit shelves. Beforehand, it both seems like a rather pointed way of taking advantage of people with poor impulse control—look! You don't have to wait, if you're just willing to pay three times the cover price!—and sort of counter to what ARCs are for. I guess I see the "R" as standing primarily for "review" where ARCs are concerned. (While I'm not going to say "oh, sure, re-sell that ARC when you're done with it" to every reviewer on the planet, I'm also not silly enough to think that every person who receives an ARC is going to love it and treasure it and call it George. Lo, I am a slightly smarter blonde than that.)

The giving away of ARCs, or the re-selling of ARCs after they have been read, strikes me as a totally natural part of the book's life cycle. I mean, I don't "get my nickel" from used bookstore sales, and I believe that used bookstores are quite possibly proof of the divine. I don't "get my nickel" from the reviewers and bookstores and con goers and contest winners who receive ARCs through normal channels. Instead, I get reviews, early readers, and people talking about the book...which, if the book is worth talking about, is a good thing. (Presumably, a book could be bad enough that the author would want to collect and burn all the available ARCs. I'm trying to avoid becoming so neurotic that I worry about this particular issue, and I'm worrying about sensible things, instead. Like the idea of Godzilla eating New York, and hence, my publisher, before book two can come out.)

I guess I'm just not all that sanguine with the idea of ARCs showing up on sites like eBay, totally unread and unreviewed, because a) my publisher isn't getting paid for it, b) my publisher, in fact, paid to have it printed, and is hence losing money if the person who buys the ARC doesn't proceed to buy the official version, and c) it didn't get the chance to do its job before it was ripped from the nest and thrown to the wolves.

trektone also says:

"I'm aware "Not for Sale" is typically printed/stamped on the ARC cover. I've obtained ARCs in many ways: free from authors/book folks, purchased from used book stores, winning bidder in charity auctions. For most of the many ARCs I own I have purchased multiple copies of the official version(s)."

And see, as far as I'm concerned, all these are totally understandable and legitimate ways to obtain ARCs. As I've said before, they have a limited but vital shelf-life: until the official versions of the book comes out, they're worth their weight in kittens (mew), but after the "real" books are available, they're interesting paperweights, collector's items, and things for the cats to sleep on.

In the end, I suppose my feelings on ARCs are very convoluted things, I should go find something shiny to distract me, because now my brain hurts. Hope that helps.

Item the first: at least four—yes, four, which is a number higher than two, so yay—reviewers/bookstores have received their ARCs of Rosemary and Rue, along with the snazzy watercolor cards that Alice so helpfully "helped" me finish. Thank you, Alice. Thank you so very, very much. (As an Alice-related sub-item, my puffy Halloween ball of trouble turned twenty weeks old yesterday, and celebrated her failure to get sucked into the vacuum cleaner by falling off the cat tree. Again. Maine Coons, unlike boa constrictors, have gravity.)

Item the second: Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon will not be attending BayCon this year, due to being really, really sick. Nobody's dying, I don't have all the details, and also, I didn't do it. If I were going to start the pandemic, there are other people I'd target first, and I'd have published my cackling manifesto by now. "Yay, swine flu!" does not count as a cackling manifesto, it counts as a really weird idea of what constitutes entertainment.

Item the third: speaking of entertainment, Kate and I watched the season finales for two of our season-pass shows last night—America's Next Top Model and Fringe. (Never let it be said that I am ashamed of my taste in anything.) One of the girls on this season of ANTM was totally a Toby-universe Daoine Sidhe, I swear. Real people aren't supposed to have ElfQuest eyes, but she somehow managed to pull it off. I will miss you, freaky alien-elf-eyed girl! Although I won't miss the nightmares you gave me about Toby tracking me down with a pair of pliers and a smile!

Item the fourth: So You Think You Can Dance returns to television tomorrow night. In supposedly unrelated news, I'm getting ready to get back to work on Discount Armageddon. Hmmmm...

Item the fifth: Dawn Metcalf to the white courtesy phone, dawn_metcalf to the white courtesy phone. It has now been forty-eight hours, and I still don't have a mailing address for you. If I don't hear from you within the next twenty-four hours, I will be choosing a new winner for the signed cover flat of Rosemary and Rue. In actually related news, the poetry contest to win an ARC of Rosemary and Rue is still going. Please drop by and vote, if you haven't already.

Item the sixth: I am still the Rain King.

We're no longer taking entries for the first-ever poetry contest ARC give-away. Instead, ten poems have been selected (through an arcane mix of "random number generation" and "oh, I like that one"), and are included below for your voting pleasure. The winner will be selected this Friday, and will receive an ARC of Rosemary and Rue for their very own. Vote for your favorite

Game on!



( Click here to read the full text of the entries.Collapse )

And the winner (selected through random number drawing) of a signed cover flat is...

...dawn_metcalf!

Dawn, please drop me an email with your address, and I'll get this in the mail for you. Whee!

Hey, folks, this is your friendly neighborhood Halloweentown princess reminding you that you can still enter a poem to win a copy of Rosemary and Rue. I'll be posting one more reminder, on Sunday; then, Monday morning, I will be making a voting post consisting of my seven favorites and three selected by random draw. (No, I will not identify which is which.) I'll also be performing a random draw of entries to determine who wins a signed cover flat of Rosemary and Rue. (Yes, it is possible to win both. No, I don't consider it to be terribly likely. But hell, the echidna exists, and that's really all the universe needs to prove that logic is not always king.)

As a side note, no, you don't have to be an amazing poet to enter; you just have to make an effort of some sort. So have fun with it! I'm really enjoying the things people have been coming up with before, and this is definitely an awesome contest as far as I'm concerned.

Voting opens Monday, May 18th, and will continue through Friday, May 22nd. The winner will be announced promptly at the close of voting, but the ARC won't be mailed until Tuesday, May 26th, due to my being away at BayCon all weekend.

Game on!

Hey, folks, remember that you can still enter a poem to win a copy of Rosemary and Rue! The entries we have so far range from the seriously silly to the seriously sublime, and I can't wait to see what else people will come up with.

Entries will close Sunday evening, and I'll be putting up a voting post with my favorites, plus a few random selections, on Monday. After that, you'll have all week to vote for your chosen winner, and see where the latest free-range ARC goes! (Also remember that everyone who enters is entered into a random-number drawing for a cover flat. So there are lots of ways to win!)

Hooray!

One year ago today, I got up, got dressed, and went to work. I put on jeans, a bright yellow tank top, and my pink-and-yellow Chimera Fancies pendant that reads "fairy changeling this is all a dream." This sentiment would become very, very easy to believe, very, very soon.

One year ago today, The Agent was out beating the streets as she looked for the right house for my Toby Daye books. Actually, we knew what The Right House was: it was DAW Books, the very first publisher we'd been in contact with, after being referred there by one of their existing authors. They had exactly the right sort of atmosphere, and they'd published a lot of books I've really loved. I wanted to work with these people. I just had to hope that they wanted to work with me.

One year ago today, my phone rang. My display informed me that it was The Agent (which is actually what her number is saved under in my phone, because I am occasionally bizarre like that), so I excused myself to take the call.

One year ago today, The Agent said these words to me: "We got DAW."

This was followed by a lot of other information about contracts and money and publishing schedules and blah blah blah fishcakes, because I had really checked out completely. Out of the conversation, out of body, out to lunch, buh-bye. I made all the appropriate noises of assent, and managed to sound like I wasn't crying, because years of fake-it-til-you-make-it has made me really, really good at that sort of thing. (Severe back injury plus chronic pain issues plus "suck it up" equals I can sound perky and happy about my situation while being consumed from the toes up by a giant snake. It's awesome. Also sort of bad, because my automatic response to trauma is frequently "gosh, what fun.")

Eventually, the call ended. I went outside. I called Vixy. I made horrible shrieky bat-noises, causing dogs all around San Francisco to bark themselves hoarse, run in circles, and slam into trees. Pigeons lost the ability to fly, and splattered down on the pavement like really disturbing rain. Vixy, upon determining that I was shrieky with joy, not distress, made suitable noises until I calmed down enough to tell her what was going on. Then she started shrieking, too. It was a shrieky day.

One year ago, I sold my first trilogy. Today, I have three framed cover illustrations on my living room walls, I have cover blanks on my dresser, and I have stacks of ARCs on my bedroom floor.

One year ago today.

Wow.

...who wants to win a copy of Rosemary and Rue? This time, we're raising the stakes a little bit, and requiring a bit more effort on your part. So here's the game:

You all know that I adore structured poetry, from the haiku to the virelai. (Actually, that's a lie; I abhor the virelai. But I respect people who actually enjoy writing them.) You also know that you're a pretty creative lot. So here: the gates are thrown open! Write me a structured poem about Rosemary and Rue. Since you haven't read the book, it can be about anything from what you think it's going to be about to pre-ordering to how much you want a copy—whatever makes you happy. Any structured form is allowed, as long as you can tell me what it is when asked.

Entries will be taken through the end of the week. Then, next Monday, I'll put up a voting post, and let people vote for their favorites. The winner will receive, naturally, a copy of Rosemary and Rue. Just in case that's not sufficient incentive, there will also be a prize for participation—just entering a poem will enter you in a random number drawing for a signed cover flat. I don't have very many of these, so this is something pretty spiffy for you to stick on your wall.

Game on!

ladyqkat, please pick up the white courtesy telephone (IE, send me an email, either via my LJ address or by using the "contact" link on my website) at your earliest possible convenience. You have won an ARC of Rosemary and Rue. You have seventy-two hours, starting now, to tell me where it needs to be sent.

For everyone else, thank you so much for entering, and I'll be starting another, slightly more effort-based, contest shortly.

1. The Rosemary and Rue ARC giveaway is still running, from now through Whenever I Happen To Get Up Tomorrow Morning. So assume that I'll be announcing the winner sometime between five and eight AM PST (which is when I'll be coherent enough to deal with complex things like "the random number generator" and "counting").

2. Because I'm doing the drawing so early in the day, if you win, and you're able to get me your mailing address with reasonable alacrity, your ARC may actually go out in tomorrow's mail. I'm just saying.

3. Late Eclipses continues to be finished, which has me rather at lost ends. I figure I'll finish this zombie short story that I'm working on, and then crack open Discount Armageddon, see what Verity and the gang have been up to while I was away. Nothing says "relaxation" like "getting straight to work on a different book."

4. I am officially sick. Thank you, coughing people on my plane and annoying small child whose parents refused to make you stop kicking the back of my seat. Thank you so much.

5. My play list consisting of nothing but versions of the song "Rain King" by the Counting Crows is now two hours long, and incredibly soothing. If you've ever wondered why that song was my current music so much of the time, well...this is why.

6. Zombies are still love.

Okay, follow the timeline with me here for a moment. On July 2nd, 2008, I started a major revision of Late Eclipses of the Sun, aka, "Toby Daye, book four." On December 15th, 2008, I gave it to my agent for review...and on January 15th of this year I started a second major revision, because the book had some issues, and those issues could only be solved through the application of more machete. Much, much more machete.

Last night, on the plane somewhere between Michigan and California, I typed "the end" once more, closed the file, and called it good. The current book stats:

Pages, 389.
Words, 107,089.
Chapters, thirty-five.
Cans of DDP, beyond counting.

Please compare these to the book stats before I started my revision:

Pages, 417.
Words, 115,310.
Chapters, thirty-six.

Oh, and did I mention that—at one point during the revision process—the book managed to swell to a high-water mark of approximately 118k? Yeah. This was a book in need of some serious surgery, and now that the surgery has been performed, I can look at the manuscript and not feel like a match would improve it immensely. (I have a real love/hate relationship with my work. I love it while I'm creating it. I love it six months after it's finished. Immediately after it's finished, I would really love to set it on fire.) At some point during the revision, even the book's name got tighter, becoming Late Eclipses and skipping that whole "sun" thing entirely.

So now I'm tossing my innocent manuscript into the wolverine pit with my hungrily slavering initial readers, who will gut it and play hackysack with its kidneys for a little while; then I'll send it off to The Agent, and resume prodding at The Brightest Fell, aka, "Toby Daye, book five," aka, "Seanan, honey, can we please wait for Rosemary and Rue to come out before you finish the second set of three?"

In conclusion...

...DINO DANCE PARTY!

I have Rosemary and Rue galleys. You want Rosemary and Rue galleys. We're like the peanut butter cup of pre-release reading material. So how can you get what you want?

Simple: comment here.

No, really. The first giveaway is going to be a RANDOM DRAW. Comment on this post going "oooh, me, me," and I'll put you into a spreadsheet. At the end of the week (so Friday, May 8th), I will roll the random number generator, and we'll have a winner. (Although, as a footnote, the winner will have seventy-two hours to claim their prize. So if I post going "Yay, Kermit, you win!" and Kermit doesn't say "Yay, send it here!" within three days, I'll be rolling the random number generator again. That's how we roll.) Please only comment once. There will be other giveaways, some of which will be much more participatory and require actual effort to enter, but this week, I'm lazy.

Game on!

One of the downsides to being a somewhat type-A math geek girl is having a constant awareness of the various numerical milestones unfolding all around me. It's the first of May! And quite aside from the various religious (Happy Beltane!) and humorous (Happy Jonathan Coulton Says You Have Permission To Do That, But Please, Not On My Lawn Day!) implications of the date, today marks the point at which we drop from "more than four months to Rosemary and Rue" to "less than four months to Rosemary and Rue." Yes, this is a big deal, if you're me. Also if you're going slowly crazy from trying to keep track of everything that needs to be accomplished in the next one hundred and twenty-two days.

Pardon me while I flail.

Also pardon me while I open the floor to questions. See, I want to give away a few galleys (and I'll have a longer post about why I have so many, and what's being done with most of them, a little later), and that means I need contests. Suggest things! What do you think would make a good contest? "One that I can win" is not a good answer, by the by.

I leave you with Sonnet 122, because I find structured poetry deeply soothing:

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Full character'd with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain,
Beyond all date; even to eternity:
Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to raz'd oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be miss'd.
That poor retention could not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
To trust those tables that receive thee more:
To keep an adjunct to remember thee
Were to import forgetfulness in me.

—William Shakespeare.

Whew.

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.

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.

So we're once again hard at work on the website -- aren't we always hard at work on the website? -- and I thought it might be a good idea to let people know what there was to experience, see, and enjoy. This is what we call 'making all that work not have been in vain.' I'm really big on work not being in vain. So...

* The Toby Daye landing page is fully functional. This is where you can go to link to any of the existing books, get a series overview, and take a quick peek at any new developments. More specific news relating to any particular book will naturally be on that book's own unique landing page. Speaking of which...

* The Rosemary and Rue landing page is fully up-to-date and shiny, with the book's back cover text, some really exciting blurbs from names you may well recognize, a basic plot summary, and more. And, of course, the pretty, pretty cover art. Nothing makes me happier than the pretty, pretty cover art. Well, except for maybe...

* The art card gallery! (You would normally access this through the 'Extras' drop-down menu.) We've got sixty cards uploaded and annotated so far. Because I have no hobbies. Also proving I have no hobbies...

* The 'With Friends Like These' archive is starting up. 'With Friends Like These' is my comic strip, which I draw because I bore easily. There are only ten strips up so far, but more are coming. (Again, under the 'Extras' menu.)

Big, big thanks to porpentine, who did truly yeoman labors over the weekend to get the gallery code up and working. There are other surprises to find and see, but these are the big ones. I'm thrilled.

The fabulous raelee decided that we needed a few more icons to fling around the place. Check out the shiny!

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

All icons are totally free for use (naturally); remember that credit is a good thing to give to the icon-makers of the world, as it keeps them being awesome and iconic for the rest of us.

In other news, WHEE!

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!

So I'm still waking up, still shell-shocked from yesterday, when I get a message from a friend of mine going 'hey, guess what I found?' So I go and look at what he found.

And then, because I'm crying really easily today, I start to cry. Why?

Because of this. Click here to see the Rosemary and Rue page on Amazon.com. With the September 1st, 2009 release date and everything. Really posted, for really real and very true.

Holy cats.

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.

Lots of things have happened on September 1st. That's the day the last passenger pigeon died. That's the day Juno (great big space rock) was discovered. That's the day Alberta and Saskatchewan (also full of rocks) joined the Canadian confederation. In America, it's Emma M. Nutt Day -- she was the first female telephone operator, back when the phones were mostly manned by young men. In New Zealand, it's Random Acts of Kindness Day, which really seems to me like the sort of holiday that we could stand to celebrate with a little more frequency.

And it's the projected release date for Rosemary and Rue, the first of the October Daye books. Let me repeat that, in case my tendency to ramble has obscured today's big announcement:

Rosemary and Rue will be coming out on SEPTEMBER 1ST, 2009!!!

That's a hundred and ninety-three days from now. That's really no time at all. And now, some fun with the number '193,' since I love math geeking and Ryan prodded me into doing it:

193 is a prime number -- always lucky for me. It's also the only currently known odd prime for which 2 is not a primitive root of 4p2 + 1. So that's pretty awesome. It's a cuban prime, a happy prime, and a lucky prime. I feel lucky! It's the twin prime of 191 (a twin prime is a prime that differs from another prime by two). And it can be written as the difference between the product and the sum of the first four primes. In conclusion?

193 is awesome.

September 1st is awesome.

And September 1st, 2009 is quadruple extra-special awesome, because that's the day you can walk into your local bookstore, take Rosemary and Rue down from the shelf, and dare the bookstore clerk to pronounce my name.

Today is made of win and pie.

One of the wonderful services provided by my graphic designer, taraoshea, is the production of promotional art for my books. The icons in this post were designed to go with Rosemary and Rue (October Daye book one, coming from DAW Books in September 2009). Matching wallpapers will be available soon on my website. But for right now...icons.

All icons are free for use, although I do ask that you credit Tara and link people back to my website, since the point is to start driving up interest. All icons will also be posted to my website. I'll let you know when.

***

01. 02. 03.
04. 05. 06.

***

It gets a little closer to real every day.

Well, let's see. So far today, I've...

...processed buckets of edits for Discount Armageddon, which I'm planning to get back to work on real soon now. I spent a few hours last night picking stealthcello's brain about competition-level ballroom and tango dancing (hint: it's complicated stuff), and I now feel much more equipped to write the next chapter, which involves an Argentine tango competition, Verity in a very skimpy dress, and, yes, knives. Almost any chapter that involves Verity involves knives. She's comfortably predictable that way.

...received a new blurb for Rosemary and Rue, resulting in squealing and jubilation. I am so seriously stoked about the blurbs I've managed to collect so far, all of which are wonderful and perfect and totally different. It's like kittens. No two kittens are alike, but as soon as they're your kittens, they become the most magical, wonderful things ever to wander across the face of the planet. I like kittens.

...also received the second icon and first wallpaper for the Rosemary and Rue promo set. All icons and wallpapers in this set are being designed by the ineffable taraoshea, who is really a goddess of graphic design. I am totally ecstatic, and can't wait to make them public for your enjoyment and (hopeful) use. Remember, nothing says 'love' like a blood-drenched San Francisco skyline!

...packed all pending pre-orders through 190, and signed and numbered through 200. So there's a max of 100 CDs left to go (I'm still taking increasingly mis-named 'pre-orders' via the website, because it's all about paying my engineer). If I finish the list before hitting 300, we'll just close out the pre-order run early, thus making the numbers even more surreal in future years. (Also creating the opportunity for funny, funny hoaxes on the part of inventive people with pens and copies of my CD.)

...watched two more episodes of my crazy Australian mermaid show.

What's up with you?

Since I taunted everybody with the idea of art cards earlier today, here; have a scan of the first six. (This is the smaller version, since nobody loves a graphic the size of Kansas. If you click on it, you'll go to the fully-sized graphic. It's not massive, but it's not tiny, either. Because, y'know, that's a really exacting set of measurements.)



From top to bottom, left to right, you have my first Ravens in the Library art card, my first Grants Pass art card, a random drawing of my pretty little dead girl, my first Velveteen vs. art card, my second Ravens in the Library art card, and my first Rosemary and Rue art card.

I have no real idea yet what I'm planning to do with these, other than, well, apparently 'draw a lot.' I've got another Velveteen card to ink and color, another Toby card, another Grants Pass card, and two Discount Armageddon cards. Three, technically, if you want to count portraits of Antimony as a part of Verity's book.

Because all those buckets of spare time had to go somewhere...