They hold my trial in absentia; an empty gesture intended only to placate the screaming public. The growing silence outside the courthouse walls only serves to illustrate the pointlessness of the proceedings. It takes three days to present the evidence: the charts, the lab results, the videos. It would take longer, but after the fourth prosecutor fails to return from recess, the court decides to pass judgment on the case as it stands. There is enough—more than enough—to convict.

—from "The Tolling of Pavlov's Bells," available to read now at Apex Magazine.

The January issue of Apex is now available for all to read! (Prior to this, you had to actually buy the issue. A worthy investment. Seriously.) And in the spirit of this availability, have a few reviews of my story:

Carl at The Portal says "Alternating between moments before and after the key event in her story, McGuire tells a tale of biological terrorism and cold, calculating vengeance that is frightening in its reality." Also: "'The Tolling of Pavlov's Bells' brought to mind films like 28 Days Later and the various incarnations of Resident Evil, stripped of all their implausibilities so that all that remains is the sheer horror of a very real threat to mankind." Dude. I win at creepy.

Terry at Fantasy Literature says, "Those who have read Seanan McGuire’s tasty urban fantasies starring October Daye will be surprised at the dark science fiction she serves up in 'The Tolling of Pavlov’s Bells.'" That was the goal! She goes on to say that she didn't realize I was Mira Grant, and will now be reading Feed.

If you haven't heard the bells, this is your chance.

You've been warned.

Welcome to the second, and hopefully final, portion of my not-a-con-report for Arisia. I really did have a wonderful time in Boston, snow and all, and I'm definitely going to be going back. Eventually. After I've had the opportunity to take a nice nap, and maybe watch a whole lot of really, really dumb television. Anyway, here are the summarized highlights (and lowlights), for your amusement and edification.

My candy corn hat! The Agent knows me too, too well, it seems, and when the time came to give me the last piece of my holiday gift, she led me to the dealer's hall and purchased me a felt candy corn hat from one of the local vendors. Yes. I now have a hat that looks like a piece of candy corn. TREMBLE WITH FEAR, MERE MORTALS. I wore this hat to almost every serious panel I had during the weekend, and proclaimed proudly that wearing it provided that I was a professional. I never said what kind of professional.

The Mad Science song circle! I didn't make it to very many filk events this year, sadly, because I was busy with other programming and also wound up spending most of Sunday vilely ill (more on this in a moment). But the Mad Science circle was awesome, and Ben Newman sprung a positively wicked new science parody on me. It was a very cool circle, and I'm so very glad I got to go.

Alice and Josh! My life is better when it contains large quantities of Alice, and since I had to leave my beloved Maine Coon in California, I supplemented diet of Alice with a local fan and acquaintance of mine from this blog. She and her husband took me to dinner, where I ate, unsurprisingly, shepherd's pie, and then she and I sat and talked for like an hour and a half while he ran off to a panel. It was a really nice, relaxing way to spend an evening, and I had a wonderful time. Since they didn't run screaming, I assume they did, too.

Meeting Toni! My friend Toni lives near Boston, and was able to come out to the convention on Saturday, transforming herself from "my Internet-only friend Toni" to "my friend Toni, whom I have met in real life." She brought her husband, who was witty and fun to talk to, and I brought Diana, who was witty and fun to talk to and bought me chicken fingers. There were exchanges of books and hugs, and life was very good. It's nice to have people transform from words on a screen into actual humans. It makes me happy.

The Guest Breakfast! Arisia had a special breakfast event on Sunday, where people could buy tickets to have a special, intimate breakfast with the Guests of Honor and Special Guests. Each of us had a table of our very own. Sadly for me, someone at the next table over was wearing a mango-based perfume, and the breakfast went rapidly from "yum yum, free fruit" to "quietly excusing myself, walking to the bathroom, vomiting copiously, and walking back to my table to resume being entertaining." I would become progressively sicker for most of the day. It was so much fun. My poor roommates had to deal with my basically being a creepy dead girl from a horror movie. How I try their patience.

Cat and Seanan strike back! Cat and I are getting pretty good at our urban fantasy girl version of "An Evening With Kevin Smith." Every time it happens, the crowd gets a little bigger, the questions get a little smoother, and our comfort levels get a little higher, which leads to, you know, more swearing, more craziness, and more references to Lord Byron's penis. It's a victory for everybody! This installment of the Cat-and-Seanan Show was pure hammered awesome, and we only had to decline one question, which is possibly a record. More impressively, I wasn't even able to walk without throwing up an hour before the panel. So this is what I do for love.

Better Off Ted! Diana and Cat introduced me to this show, and Cat's Netflicks account allowed us to wallow in it each night before bed. I now require the box sets. And maybe a meat blob.

Post-antibiotic science fiction gone wild! My final panel was on Monday morning, and was all about post-antibiotic science fiction. It turned into "Seanan defends her thesis on causative agents for the Black Death" for about twenty minutes, which seemed to be fun for everyone, if a little more mentally rigorous than I had wanted to be that early in the morning on the last day of a convention. I recommended not licking things as a way to avoid infection. You're welcome.

Flying home! Actually, the flight was pretty lousy. But my cats made up for it.

See you next time!

It's my birthday! Today, I am thirty-three years old. In fun math facts, thirty-three is the atomic number of arsenic, the recorded number of miracles performed by Jesus Christ (I wonder if that includes exploding the snakes?), and the largest positive integer that cannot be expressed as a sum of different triangular numbers. It's also the number of vertebrae in the human spine. So it's creepy, miraculous, and poisonously delicious. What a great number!

I've always liked my birthday in terms of time of year (winter) and numbers involved (1/5/78). I have always disliked my birthday in terms of where it falls on the modern calendar, since being born right after Christmas is a really good way to wind up annually rooked for parties and presents. This was a big issue for me when I was a kid. All the other kids got to bring in cupcakes and goody bags! I got to bring...the end of Winter Vacation. Um. Sorry about that, guys. I didn't mean to be the school year's personal seasonal monarch.

As I've gotten older, this has mattered less, largely because I am no longer forced to look longingly at the cupcake heaps of others. Now, I can buy my own damn cupcakes, and I don't have to share them with the rest of the class. I usually wind up sharing them anyway, because who needs to eat that many cupcakes, but still.

Today, I'm going to finish packing for GaFilk (I fly to Georgia tomorrow), do my normal Wednesday errands, go out for Indian food with my mother, my sister, and Kate, and attempt to reassure my cats that I'm coming back, honest, really, I swear. At some point, I may find a way to obtain some cupcakes.

Happy birthday, me! I've survived another trip 'round the sun.

Bring on the next one.

The links are beginning to haunt my dreams. So here: let's get a few of them out of the way.

First up, Tim Pratt's fabulous Locus review has been posted online, and says, "While there's plenty of zombie mayhem, political snark, and pointedly funny observations here, the heart of this book is about human relationships, which are still the most important thing in the world...even in a world where you might have to shoot the person you love most in the head, just to stop them from biting off your face. While Feed is the first volume of the Newsflesh trilogy, it stands alone perfectly well—but if you like smart zombie action with a heart, you’ll be eager for the sequel, Deadline." Locus Magazine: where the awesome is.

KT Grant has posted her review of Feed, including some very sweet commentary on having met me at New York City Comicon. She says, "Mira's world building in Feed is bar none, one of the best I've ever read." Also, "The best possible compliment I can give this book and the writing talents of Mira Grant, is that if Edward R, Murrow, one of the greatest American broadcast journalists was still alive, he would embrace Feed for its message. George Romero, the godfather of the zombie apocalypse, would stand up and cheer. Feed is, hands down, one of the best zombie stories I’ve ever read, behind George Matheson's I Am Legend."

This is where I pause a moment (something I rarely do in these review roundups) and note that this, right here, is why I am Mira Grant. KT is a lovely person, with taste in books that does not, unfortunately, include my Toby series. She really, really disliked Rosemary and Rue, and has not, so far as I know, read the sequels. She was going to pass on Feed solely because she knew it was me. Reviews changed her mind. But for all those people who picked up Feed not knowing it was me, and not liking my work under my own name...this is why I'm Mira Grant. Because they are so different.

Carrying on...

Vampifan has posted a great review of Feed, and says, "This is a novel that can be read as a political thriller with zombies, which is how I described it to my parents. They both read it and both enjoyed it as much as me, which is high praise as neither of them has ever read a zombie novel before." I have crossover appeal!

karenhealey (best name ever) has posted her spoiler-tagged Feed review, and it's hysterical. Seriously, if you've read Feed, click through.

Persephone Magazine has posted a lovely critical review of Feed (and has some harsh things to say about the book's print quality). No good pull quotes this time, but give it a read; it's quite solid.

That's all for now. I will triumph over this link list! Maybe...

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through my brain
Were bunny girls bitching, and men not quite sane,
And fairy tale murders and pandemic flu—
My friends hope my holiday dreams won't come true—

And Tara is working on graphics so fine
To help and promote that new novel of mine
(The fourth in a series that you may 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 ten is a year nearly spent!
Oh, the things that we did, and the places we went!
I'm still with the agent—now more than two years!
She still knows I'm crazy, and yet she's still here.

Toby's first three adventures are there on the 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, Late Eclipses, and Deadline in May
(My evil twin, Mira, says you should obey),
And then in September, there's just One Salt Sea,
To close out the year and tell us what's to be.

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!"

Hello, everybody, and welcome to my journal. I'm pretty sure you know who I am, my name being in the URL and all, but just in case, I'm Seanan McGuire (also known as Mira Grant), and you're probably not on Candid Camera. This post exists to answer a few of the questions I get asked on a semi-hemi-demi-regular basis. It may look familiar; that's because it gets updated and re-posted roughly every two months, to let folks who've just wandered in know how things work around here. Also, sometimes I change the questions. Because I can.

If you've read this before, feel free to skip, although there may be interesting new things to discover and know beyond the cut.

Anyway, here you go:

( This way lies a lot of information you may or may not need about the person whose LJ you may or may not be reading right at this moment. Also, I may or may not be the King of Rain, which may or may not explain why it's drizzling right now. Essentially, this is Schrodinger's cut-tag.Collapse )

(Yes, part of me is still in Australia. Specifically, the part of me that's responsible for writing up this trip report. This entry is going to take us through Sunday, right up until the end of the pre-Hugo Cocktail Party. Not because I'm trying to be a tease. Because the Hugos themselves need a whole entry, just so I can explain, in depth, what was going through my messed-up little head.)

Sunday dawned bright and early, again, with an extra dose of sheer blind "oh sweet Great Pumpkin the Hugos are TONIGHT, they're giving out the Campbell Award TONIGHT, why am I not drinking heavily RIGHT NOW?!" panic. I love my psyche sometimes. Anyway, blah blah, showers, blah blah, straightening my hair into a shiny, manageable state. Fun for the whole family.

Once we were ready to leave our hotel room, Jeanne and I packed up everything we were going to need for Hugo prep in the smaller of my two pink-camo suitcases. That may sound like overkill, but once you factor in dresses, underclothes, makeup, brushes, small appliances, shoes, makeup, and other items needed by the two of us, well...if either of us had been wearing a more fabric-heavy dress, we would have needed a larger suitcase.

The suitcase accompanied us to breakfast, and from breakfast, to Cat's hotel, where we checked it with the concierge. All hail good hotels! With this accomplished, it was time for the second order of business: confirming that I had been removed from my five o'clock panel. I hate to do that sort of thing, but I really needed to be getting ready for the Hugos by then, since the pre-Hugo reception started at six. (Basically, it was "drop the panel" or "attend the Hugos naked.")

After dropping the panel, we swung by the Green Room, where I had one of my few unpleasant at-con experiences as a woman informed me, with great good cheer, that the Hugos were on Sunday night because they wanted to see how many of the nominees would actually break down and cry. Thanks, lady. Jeanne didn't hit her. I was very proud of Jeanne, and not just because "get thrown out of the Green Room" wasn't on my list of things to do that day.

We wandered the convention for a while before proceeding to my one remaining panel of the day, "YA Urban Fantasy." I was happy to be on the panel, if only because it provided a window into that beautiful future where I've sold the Clady books and can legitimately call myself a YA author. Plus, it meant I got to hang out with Karen Healey (best last name ever). I brought her a My Little Pony from my stable, because she'd expressed a fondness for Ponies, and I like to share. She was properly appreciative of the Pony, thus securing herself an eternal place in my heart. Yay!

The panel was cool, too.

After the panel, Jeanne and I made our way back to Cat's hotel to start getting ready. Cue increasing terror. Cat met us at the door in her bathrobe. "Close your eyes," she commanded.

I am an obedient blonde. I closed my eyes, and let her lead me into the room...where an entire bed was covered in tiaras. Big tiaras, little tiaras, fancy tiaras, less fancy tiaras (because all tiaras are inherently fancy, at least to some degree), tiaras.

"We wanted to make sure that no matter what, you went home with a tiara," she said.

I laughed because it was that or start crying, and I knew that if I started, I was never going to stop, ever. The tiaras were beautiful, and just made moreso by the sentiment behind them. You guys. Thank you so much.

Cat's friend Gretchen was also there, and the four of us started our respective "getting ready" cycles. Four fairy tale girls, no waiting. Gretchen looked like a punk-rock Red Riding Hood. I could easily have believed Jeanne spinning straw into gold. Cat, as always, was my sweet and stained Snow White, and I was a Grecian Lily Fair, with ice on my eyelids and a prayer pressed to my heart. Cat didn't have any good luck charms on her; I gave her my silver sixpence, and taped it to her foot with a Band-Aid. I put on earrings made by Beckett and tucked the two-dollar coin I found in San Francisco into the front of my strapless bra.

After checking Twitter, Cat announced that the Night Kitchen in Seattle was having a Hugo party. All those people, staying up just to find out what happened. It was amazing. So much love from across the world. I can't describe what it meant to me to learn that. No matter what, we were nowhere near alone.

Gretchen and Jeanne did a very good job of juggling their high-strung pumpkin princesses until Susan arrived to do our hair, and put on her Sooj playlist to provide background music. We all sang along with "Ship Full of Monsters" as Susan got me pinned into place, and "Pixie Can't Sleep" while she worked on Cat (who looked amazing, by the way, in her gown of royal oceanic blue). It took forever to get us all ready to go. It took no time at all. It was like we blinked, and we had to go, because the pre-Hugo reception was getting ready to start. After days and weeks and months of wondering, the hour was finally nigh.

Dude.

Aussiecon 4's pre-Hugo reception was sponsored by Orbit, which meant that the owner of my publishing house was there, and also that there was a lot of free champagne. I mean a lot of free champagne. It's a measure of my Irish heritage (and unwillingness to force myself to visit the restroom in my floor-length dress) that I did not wind up roaring drunk, given my tendency to drink cold liquids really, really fast, and the way people kept trying to hand me fresh glasses.

We milled around, admiring people's outfits, posing for pictures, and generally being sociable, until it was time to do the photo ops for the various trade publications. Unfortunately, the microphone really didn't work well enough for a room that size, and, well...let's just say that those of us who have served as SCA Heralds in the past rapidly came out of the medieval closet, yelling our heads off as we herded nominees into place. I got to have my picture taken with my Campbell class. It was amazing.

And then it was time to go. Time for the Hugos. Jeanne and I struck out at the head of the party, so that we could grab a sufficient number of seats.

Wow, was I nowhere near ready. And wow, did that not matter anymore.

...to bring the harvest home.

Today is the first of October, the last month of the year (as reckoned by some calendars, including the one I elect to keep). The leaves are turning; the heat is fading; the migratory birds are moving on. The monarch butterflies have already left for their long trek down the California coast to Mexico, where they'll spend the winter on sunny beaches, dreaming of Santa Cruz. In the fields, the corn and pumpkins are coming in, along with the late-season tomatoes and the sweetest apples. The cats are putting their warmest coats on, preparing themselves for frozen nights ahead. Fall is finally here.

I am delighted beyond all measure.

I've always been an autumn girl. I love the smell of fallen leaves, the smell of rain either coming or just barely past, the smell of bonfires burning in the near distance. I love the cries of the crows as they call each other to treasure, and the mournful wail of the coyotes in the hills, singing summer to its rest. Persephone has taken off her summer dresses and hung up the apron she wears when she works her summer job—I always assume she works at an ice cream parlor, I don't know exactly why—and is making her way back to Hades, back to her husband, back to her home. The seasons are turning, and for a little while, I get to go as Persephone goes, because this time of the year...this time of the year is my home.

Many of my friends are summer girls. They like the heat and the green and the flowers everywhere. I like a lot of things about the summer—I like strawberries and lizards and the ability to walk for miles without carrying an umbrella—but summer's not my home. A few of my friends are winter girls. They like the cold and the white and the taste of frost. I like a lot of things about the winter—I like cocoa and warm blankets and the taste of peppermint in everything—but winter's not my home, either.

The first of October is always wonderful, because it's like opening a book I've read before that still manages to be different every single time. Welcome back, October. I couldn't be happier to see you.

Welcome to the fall.

1. My website is currently down. Thanks to everyone who's pointed that out thus far today (and that's a sincere thanks—I needed to know, and better multiple people tell me than no one tells me). My webmaster is still asleep, because he's a lucky bastard, so I'll check in with him when he gets up. For now, site fall down, go boom. No clue why.

2. Oddly, this has come up lately, so...I try to answer all comments on this journal. Because my LJ inbox goes newest-to-oldest, when I get behind, newer comments wind up getting answered first, just so I don't miss any. I swear I'm not ignoring you if I haven't answered you yet, I just haven't answered you yet. It's all very recursive.

3. Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts. Yet another thing that I eat so that you don't have to. (I mean, they taste like pumpkin pie. Sort of. If it were being made by a robot who'd never tasted real pumpkin pie, but was really, really trying, really, really hard, and is now rusted from the shame of failure.)

4. The robot has never known love.

5. Things that are surprisingly classy: K-Mart's Halloween shirt selection for this year. I mean, who knew, right? But they have some lovely fall-themed stuff that manages to be seasonal, yet tasteful, and doesn't make me look like a house. Everybody wins! Especially me, as I enjoy bedecking my breasts with appliqued candy corn.

6. Places that currently have signed copies of my books, and will do mail-order: Borderlands Books in San Francisco. Other Change of Hobbit in Berkeley. Places that currently do not have signed copies of my books: pretty much everywhere else.

7. I'm attempting to finalize the liner notes source file for Wicked Girls, which means lots of cross-referencing and looking things up. Like many things in life, making an album is infinitely more complicated than it seems at first glance.

8. I fly to New York one week from today. This means I'm going to be scrambling to catch up with everything before I go, and then probably not posting much for about a week. I promise I will not be eaten by a grue.

9. Summer is spewing its last gasps all over the Bay Area, resulting in my wearing less clothing in September than I did in August. There is something very wrong here.

10. I feel a rant about holidays coming on. But not until I've had more caffeine.

How's by you?

When last I left this incredibly delayed trip report, Jeanne and I had managed (finally) to touch down in Melbourne, following an unplanned jaunt to Sydney (during which we were not permitted to leave the plane). After fleeing the airport, we caught a bus to a bus terminal, where we caught another bus to our initial destination, the Hotel Promenade. We were going to be staying there for the first few days, before transferring to the WorldCon hotel block to join our fannish compatriots.

Since neither of us really wanted to be jet lag's bitch for the duration of our vacation, we basically went to the hotel, dropped everything off, and left, heading out into the wonderful world of Australia. Goal: stay awake until a reasonable bedtime. Jeanne, being foolish, allowed me to pick our activity...and that, o best beloveds, is how we wound up spending the better part of an hour walking pointedly toward the distant glories of Victoria Market. Jeanne has gone walking with me before, and understands that a) I think of anything under five miles as "a little ways," and b) I will always know how to get back to where I started. So she felt just fine following me around Melbourne, which is probably for the best.

Wonderful discovery the first: 7-11 has come to Australia. And while a chain store may not be your idea of a wonderful discovery, I consider anything that gives me cold fizzy caffeine to be an absolute miracle. There is no Diet Dr Pepper in Australia, but Coke Zero is an acceptable substitute. Luckily for everyone's survival.

Wonderful discovery the second: on the way to Victoria Market, we found a little alley that contained a) an Indian place that fed me delicious goat curry, and b) a chocolate place that made insanely decadent and delicious drinking chocolate. These calories would see us through the rest of our journey.

On! To Victoria Market! Where we looked at things ranging from the standard "rook a tourist, win a prize" assortments known to markets the world over all the way to Australian opals and wonderful handmade children's toys. I bought a mobile with pirates on it for Brooke's upcoming spawn. Jeanne bought some opals. Both of us agreed that the local seagulls were awesome, and that it was time to walk back to the hotel.

On leaving, we found a pet store with a large reptile selection, and Jeanne tolerantly allowed me to go in and coo at all the adorable snakes and lizards. Because that's just how we roll.

Walking back down Elizabeth St. allowed us to stop at multiple shops that had interested us on the way to the Market, including Minotaur, a science fiction specialty shop that felt sort of like the Australian answer to Forbidden Planet. They didn't have any Toby books, but they did have several copies of Feed, which I gleefully signed. Yay for signings! They seemed rather stunned to have a genuine American author in the store scribbling on things, but didn't ask for ID, which is good, as I don't have any ID for Mira.

We returned to the hotel, ate in the restaurant (decent, not great, but definitely filling), and went to bed early, only to awaken equally early. Like, "before six o'clock." Oops. We got up, found breakfast, and started our day of killer attack tourism. Destination one: the Melbourne Aquarium.

Now, I could say lots of things about the natural beauty of Australia's natural wildlife, or the cheekiness of eels, or the fact that holy crap, manta rays can apparently be as big as minivans. I could mention the giant lionfish, and go on at great length about the penguins. But I won't. Why? Because HOLY CRAP BEST OCTOPUS EVER. Seriously, their Giant Pacific Octopus renewed my faith in the universe. Poor Jeanne had to keep coming back and hauling me away from the tank, and my octopus communion. He was a rockin' and a rollin', and I wanted nothing more than to stay with him all day.

Alas, it was not to be. Farewell, sweet octopus. We lunched on pumpkin and potato pizza (not kidding), and went in search of the local Lush, since Jeanne needed conditioner. I know, I know, tourism, we're doin' it wrong. Still, when we found the store, we discovered that Australia got exclusive shower gel, and I claimed a bottle of Black Pearl in the name of AWESOME. Between that and the octopus, I was a happy, happy girl. Jeanne also got a local phone, since she's smart that way.

We returned to the hotel to drop off our things before we went looking for dinner, which was really the capper on our awesome day, because we discovered—quite by accident—An Alley of Wonders. Lots of little restaurants, all of them competing for the right to feed us dinner. We settled on a place that gave us free sodas and served me kangaroo steak, since I had to eat it at least once. It tasted sort of like a cross between goat and rabbit.

Australia: awesome so far.

You guys.

This is so hard to write. I've literally started this post eight times, and deleted it every time, and started over, trying to find the words I want. Words are usually something that I find pretty easy—sometimes too easy, as my tendency to never shut the hell up can testify. Not right now. Right now, the words are very hard. So very hard.

I spent most of this year's WorldCon in a cheerful fugue state, throwing myself into things as hard as I could in order to keep from thinking about the Hugo Awards. Jeanne, Cat, Rob, Liz, Paul, Mondy, Jay, Shannon, John, seriously, thank you so much, because if you hadn't been there, I would probably have spontaneously combusted. As it was, it was occasionally difficult not to ask how people could be so damn calm when the votes were in and there was nothing we could do and why couldn't we just know already?

Sunday, Jeanne, Gretchen, and I descended on Cat's hotel room to get ready for the Hugos. Cat met us at the door, and ordered me to close my eyes. I am a trusting blonde; I closed my eyes. She led me into the main room, and let me open my eyes, to find myself facing a bed covered in tiaras. Covered in tiaras. "Because," she said, "your friends wanted to be sure that no matter what, you went home with a tiara."

You guys.

I love you so much.

Susan came to do our hair. We put on dresses and makeup and nail polish and smiles, like nothing about the night mattered...and to a degree, right then, it didn't. We sang along to "Firebird's Child" and "Ship Full of Monsters," and the Night Kitchen in Seattle filled with people watching the live feed and sending all their love across the sea. We were together, and the world was full of magic, and we went to the reception and drank free champagne and had people tell us how amazing we looked, and it was amazing. (Cat and I managed, totally accidentally, to acquire dresses in basically the same colors. I felt like I should have brought her a corsage.)

Then we went to the actual award ceremony. Cat and I sat in the second row; Gretchen and Jeanne sat right behind us. The order of the evening was "opening speech, video presentation, First Fandom Award, Big Heart Award, Campbell Award." Jay Lake and John Scalzi presented the Campbell. They took the stage together, and explained the tiara, and read the nominees, and I clutched Cat's hand like the audience was an ocean and I was going to go under. Kathryn Daugherty came out, holding the award, name turned toward her so no one could see it. John opened the envelope.

"And the winner of this year's John W. Campbell Award for best new writer is..."

And they said my name.

And I sat there, because the room was spinning and I could taste sounds and they couldn't mean me. And Cat pushed me to my feet, and everyone was clapping, and I walked to the stage while the Buffy: the Vampire Slayer theme played and the room spun and tears made everything blurry, and I just said "Oh my God" over and over again, because there was nothing else in the whole world that I could say. And Kathryn gave me the plaque, and John and Jay gave me hugs, and they put the tiara on my head, and you guys...oh, you guys...

I am the Princess of the Kingdom of Poison and Flame. I am the 2010 Campbell Award winner. I am the first urban fantasist to win the Campbell Award. Because they said my name.

I will be more coherent soon. I will write about my acceptance speech soon. I will stop gasping a little every time I see the tiara soon. But oh, you guys.

I won.

I am going to Australia.

I am going to Australia, and I have been nominated for the Campbell Award.

Because I am going to Australia, and I have been nominated for the Campbell Award, I am attending the Hugos.

Because I am attending the Hugos, I needed a dress.

Originally, I was having a dress made, but time got away from us, and now this year's fabulous pumpkin patch of a dress will be next year's fabulous pumpkin patch of a dress (which gives me something to look forward to in Reno). I wound up in the unexpected, somewhat awkward position of needing to find a formal dress at basically the last minute. Oh, and did I mention that I have a wacky build and wear a size 16-18 right now? SUPER-FUN.

Thanks to a fantastic crew (Kate, HappyCat, Jeanne) and a fantastic saleswoman at the Walnut Creek Nordstrom's, we found me a dress. Floor-length, one-shoulder, teal and peacock, Grecian-cut...seriously, I put this thing on, and I am suddenly both thirty pounds lighter and thirteen feet tall. It is A DRESS OF MAGIC.

Because I have a dress, I needed shoes and jewelry.

Due to the cut of the dress, a bracelet was mandated; no necklace, which eliminates most of my jewelry collection (I'm planning to carry a Chimera Fancies pendant in my strapless bra, because I am a superstitious bunny). I found a lovely blue and silver swirl bracelet, and ordered a pair of beautiful blue glass earrings from Beckett's Etsy store. My shoes are two-inch tarnished silver heels with a sling-back.

Because I have shoes, I need a pedicure. Because I have a formal dress, I need a haircut.

Being a girl is difficult, yo. But it's all going to be worth it. My little sister (#2, the gothic Betty Page) spent yesterday working out my makeup, and Cat and I are going to have our hair done before the Hugos. I will look like a princess. A weird blue princess who may have a chainsaw somewhere under there, but still, they don't depose you for that.

I am going to Australia, where I will wear my dress. To the Hugos, where my name is on the printed material.

Wow.

That is all.

When I was a very small Seanan, I wore blue jeans and frilly pink dresses and liked to have my hair cut so short that I looked like I was auditioning to be one of the Midwich Cuckoos. (That impression was helped by the fact that I was a cornsilk blonde who spent all her time in the sun.) I caught lizards and snakes and crawdads and frogs; I collected buckets of garden snails and jars of rolly-polly bugs. I skinned my elbows and knees and stubbed my toes and once gave myself carpet-burn all the way across my face by goofing off on the stairs. I collected My Little Ponies and loved to read just about anything I could get my hands on. I watched He-Man and She-Ra and the Muppets and reruns of Doctor Who, and I never really gave any thought to whether or not I was acting like a girl.

When I was a slightly larger Seanan, I wore blue jeans and flowered jumpers and kept my hair in ponytails so it wouldn't get in my eyes while I was running around the creek or sliding down Cardboard Hill. I drew crazy pictures and read until my eyes ached and spent my Saturday nights watching horror movies and rooting for the monsters. I filled the bathtub with bullfrogs and tried to teach them to follow simple English commands (it didn't work). I still collected My Little Ponies, and my favorite author in the world was Stephen King. When asked what I was going to grow up to be, I usually answered either "a writer" or "a horror movie host, like Elvira," and I was totally planning to marry Vincent Price, because we could honeymoon in any one of his many, many haunted castles. And I still never really gave any thought to whether or not I was acting like a girl.

Somewhere around age eleven, things started changing. Suddenly, about half the things I liked, and had liked my whole life, were "boy things." My love of horror movies was a problem, not because it was going to give me nightmares or warp me into a serial killer, but because it was "worrisome" to other mothers, who thought I might lead their daughters into "bad behavior." This "bad behavior" would apparently involve, I don't know, being able to name the current lineup of the X-Men and explain the mechanics of spaceflight. I was naughty. Again, I was doing exactly what I'd always done, but the world around me was shifting, and I wasn't shifting fast enough to keep up with it. Now, some of this was my fault; I wasn't a very socially aware kid—there was always something more important to do!—and I didn't keep up with the cultural norms. But a lot of it was mystifying to me then, and is mystifying to me now. I'm fortunate to be cisgendered. I have always been a girl, felt like a girl, known I was a girl. I'm just a girl who likes horror movies and musicals, spiders and kittens, Stephen King and My Little Pony. So what the heck is the problem?

Apparently, that is the problem. If I'd been more of a tomboy, people would have had a convenient box into which I could be placed. My sisters, faced with the same issue, grew up to be James Dean and a goth Betty Page. I kept trucking along as Marilyn Munster, frustrating people who wanted me to be easy to categorize. That was okay, because they frustrated me, too. I always just assumed it would eventually go away, and we'd all get to be people, and the girls would do things like girls because girls were doing them, not because of some innate "girliness" of the things, and the boys would do things like boys for the same reason. Better still, maybe we'd all just do things like people.

It didn't go away. If anything, it's gotten worse, since now it's "cute" when I know horror movie trivia, and "totally predictable" when a spider scares the ever-loving crap out of me by dropping on my head while I'm trying to work. It's "strange and interesting" when a girl writes horror, even though the majority of people in your average horror movie audience are female. (Mind you, the gender ratio inverts for written horror, I think largely because there is so much rape in modern horror fiction. Every other chapter, the rape returns. I can skip it when reading, but I have real trouble writing it, current genre standard or not. Maybe I'm weird? But when I write a book, I want to enjoy it, and I don't really enjoy writing about rape.) I'm expected to be nicer, better-dressed, and work harder than the men of my acquaintance, just to stay on the same footing—because otherwise, I'm trying to get by on being a girl.

I am a girl. That's not changing. I am a snake-loving frog-catching horror-watching virus-studying skirt-wearing Midwich Cuckoo Marilyn Munster girl. I'm not getting by on anything. I'm not making comments on gender politics when I combine my Bedazzler with my chainsaw. I'm just being me. It's about the only thing I'm any good at.

Everything I do, I do like a girl. And that's okay.

So there's this publisher, Leisure Horror, that prints, well, horror. Lots of it. At least one new paperback release a month (probably substantially more, given the size of their catalog), spanning everything from the classic movie monsters to the modern splatterpunk. I love them. They're my literary popcorn, and I devour them the way my grandmother used to devour category Harlequin romances. It gets me funny looks on the train, since if you run down the line of afternoon commuters-with-books, you'll usually get "woman with romance, woman with romance, man with science fiction with big guns on the cover, me," and Leisure's graphic designers don't believe in being stingy with the arterial spray.

Last weekend at Spocon, in the dealer's hall, I was lucky enough to find a man with an entire box of Leisure Horror that I hadn't read yet. Yes, that's right: a box. I went through it to pick out duplicates, squealing as I did about how unrelentingly, gloriously terrible some of the books looked. Brooke, who was with me, initially thought I was rating them. Then she realized I was buying them, and made the best "Oh God why have you allowed this to happen?" face I've ever seen her make. I got twenty-one brand new horror novels for twenty bucks, and he threw in the box. Total win.

(My total win only increased later in the weekend, when trektone expressed delight over my horror novel haul. Now I have someplace to dump all the ones I don't want to keep! FUCK YEAH, SEAKING!)

I have since devoured three and a half books from the haul. The first one, Snow, was an incredible reminder of why I'm not actually a very good straight horror author. See, these things come out of the snow, and they kill people. They stick their creepy snow-creature arms into peoples' backs, and drive them around like disturbing meat-suit zombies. And then they eat you. Unless you can kill them first, in which case, hey, points to you. That's it. That's all. No science, no justification, no "oh my stars and garters, the Wendigo myth was based on reality"—there are snow monsters, and they want to make you die. I loved this book. If I'd written it, it would have been twice as long, involved a lot more why-porn, and probably lost a few entrails in favor of a) the scene at the top-secret government lab where we learn about the aliens, or b) the scene at the top-secret monster-hunters' library where we learn about the folklore behind the snow-creatures. It always makes me happy when I get a reminder of why I'm not the kind of horror author I sometimes secretly wish I were.

The second book, Dwellers, was the first thing I've ever picked up from Leisure Horror that could actually be adapted into a Disney movie. It would be a sad Disney movie, sure, and it would lose a lot of, again, entrails, but it would work. Dwellers is like Harry and the Hendersons crossed with The Thing. It's sad and poignant and tragic and funny and altogether wonderful, and I really didn't expect it. Again, there's very little "why" in the book. Horror doesn't need "why." Horror needs entrails, and horror gets them, but oh, wow, is this a fabulous book.

The two I've read since then haven't been even remotely as good, which is why I'm not identifying them by name. Altogether, it's been a fantastic reminder of why I read horror, and why I'm not so good at writing it in any format longer than a short story. Why is there a monster in the closet?

Because.

* Locate my little glass pumpkin full of Australian currency, and figure out exactly how much of it I have. This will be the start of my WorldCon budget, and no matter how much I enjoy sticking my fingers in my ears and going "LA LA LA LA LA," I really need to stop doing that and start coping with the fact that it's almost time to fly.

* Revise and process the editorial notes on the next twenty pages of Deadline. I'm currently through the end of chapter four, and I'd really like to get through the end of chapter five before it's time for bed. I also need to finalize my dedication, and start thinking about my acknowledgments, which is always fun like sticking needles in my eyes. Oh, how I love this part of the process. Not.

* Attempt to unearth my dresser from beneath the epic pile of crap that has accompanied me home from San Diego and Spocane. This may or may not be something I can accomplish without the use of a flamethrower.

* Fish the cat toys out from under the bed.

* Brush the cats.

* Attempt to integrate the epic pile of crap that accompanied me home from San Diego and Spocane into my bedroom without causing some sort of avalanche or otherwise hitting critical mass and opening a black hole into another dimension. Of course, if the objects responsible for opening the black hole influence the dimension on the other side, it will be a dimension filled with flesh-eating My Little Ponies and telepathic velociraptors. So that might be a nice place to have a vacation home.

* Trade the July pages in my planner for the shiny, new, relatively unmarked September pages. Immediately start filling the September pages with to-do lists, deadlines, goals, and the other unavoidable roadmaps of being me. I actually find this process quite soothing, in a nit-picky, obsessive sort of a way. Here is my month. I have scheduled panic attacks, showers, and laundry. Go me.

* Pick up my mats from the Aaron Brothers, allowing me to frame the latest batch of art. This batch includes the cover to Late Eclipses, two original Skin Horse strips, and the original artwork for Amy Mebberson's amazing Sarah Zellaby sketch. I need more walls. I seriously need to move into a house designed by Escher, just to give me sufficient walls.

* Laundry.

* Go to the comic book store and collect my latest dose of four-color sanity check. I also need to update my pull list, as it's time to (once again) winnow my monthlies down to trades. It saves space, money, and staples, as Lilly really likes to eat comic books. No, I don't know why. I've asked her, but she just meowed and wandered off to chew on the shower curtain.

* Fish the cat toys out from under the bed.

* Inform Alice that I am not going to fish the cat toys out from under the bed a third time.

* Fish the cat toys out from under the bed.

* Finish composing my first blog entry for the Babel Clash I'm doing with Jesse in September. Since we're both going to be traveling when the blogs go up, they have to be pre-written, and since I've been traveling so damn much recently, I haven't had a chance to pre-write anything. This would be funny, if it weren't verging on becoming an emergency.

* Continue my quest for a dress for WorldCon, since the dress I was having made isn't going to be ready for this year, due to bad time management on my part coupled with a really silly comedy of dropped clauses and missed connections. I keep thinking I've found a dress, only to discover that no, it's not going to work out. I'm considering hysteria.

* Ignore the Maine Coon telling me that her toys have disappeared under the bed.

* Watch Warehouse 13.

* Sleep.

Um. Um. Um. Okay. Look:

The NPR List of 100 Killer Thrillers has been released.

HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS LOOK LOOK AT #74 LOOK AT IT LOOK THAT'S MY BOOK THAT I WROTE THAT'S FEED ON A LIST PUBLISHED BY NPR HOLY CRAP.

...okay, I'm better now. Sorry about that. Except that I'm neither better nor sorry, but I am fairly convinced that I've been asleep for the last two years. If I wake up and this has all been a really detailed linear dream, I'm taking my brain out behind the woodshed. I'm just saying.

I mean, this isn't the first awesome Feed-related thing that's happened. Consider, if you will, io9's top picks for summer reading. Sure, the summer's almost over, but there's still a little warm weather left in which to enjoy a good zombie apoca—WHO AM I KIDDING WITH THE CALM RATIONALITY?! MY BOOK THAT I WROTE IS ON A LIST PUBLISHED BY NPR HOLY CRAP.

I love this book so much, and I love that my weird science fiction dystopian political thriller full of zombies is actually getting out there and infecting the world with its, well, weirdness and its virology and I am so excited I could just about scream right now. Because HOLY CRAP. That's going to be my refrain today, I swear. HOLY CRAP.

I leave you with the meme your meme could smell like, an awesome Old Spice Man-inspired "everybody is awesome" feedback meme, and I go off to gibber and giggle in a corner until I can calm down a little.

HOLY CRAP.

So before we get too far from the convention, a few high (and low) points of San Diego 2010. Because otherwise, y'all will beat me with bricks in a dark alley somewhere, and I just don't have time for that.

This year, I was able to import Tara and Amy (webmistress and fiddler, respectively), and the three of us shared a room with Sunil (media madman) at the Gaslamp Marriott. Not only were we less than a five minute walk from the convention center, allowing us to easily drop things off in our room, but the hotel gave us free candy. Right there at the front desk, free candy. Amy and I decided that we were having the convention experience we would have designed for ourselves at age seven. Except for the drinking, this was probably true for the entire weekend.

Rebecca and Ryan were kind enough to pick me up from the airport; after they dropped me off, Amy and I went to get our badges while the car went back for Tara and Sunil (landing two hours later than I did). Hilarity and admission followed. Tara went off to hang with her friends, while Sunil, Amy, and I went to see an improv performance by Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em. They were decent, and the show was fun (especially since Amy got me a Long Island Iced Tea). The only real downside was Sunil accidentally ditching us while we were in the bathroom, but we went and met Rebecca and Ryan for Wendy's, so there was really no bad there.

Thursday was my first panel, The Power of Myth, which was a lot of fun, as was the signing which followed. I gave Amber Benson a copy of An Artificial Night, which she thanked me for, as now she would not be required to steal it. Tara, Amy, and I had lunch with Tanya Huff at the Cafe Diem, because the Cafe Diem is awesome. I also shopped. A lot. I enjoy shopping. I got a White Phoenix Jean Gray doll for my cover designer at Orbit, because I believe in bribery, yo. It was fun!

Thursday evening, Tanya, Tara, and I attended the Brilliance Audio author dinner, which I spent drinking Mai Tais, eating interesting things, and chatting with Phil and Kaja Foglio. My life, so hard.

Friday was my booth signing at Orbit, during which I signed a hundred copies of Feed. In the process, I drew ninety-nine tiny chainsaws, and one tiny Godzilla destroying a city. Again, my life, so hard. I had to miss the X-Men panel to do the signing (wah!), but I was able to attend the panel on James Gunn's Super (he needs to call me), which looks totally awesome. I had a second signing at the SFX booth later in the afternoon, and we gave away another fifty copies of Feed, one to the creator of Being Human. Totally awesome.

Friday evening, Tanya, Amy, and I attended the Penguin FangFest, which I spent drinking pineapple mojitos, eating cupcakes, and chatting with awesome authors. I finally met Charlaine Harris in the flesh, and it was hysterical. Exchange as follows:

Me: "Hi, it's great to finally meet you. I'm Seanan."
Charlaine: *politely blank look*
Me: *displays name tag*
Charlaine: "SHAWN-ANNE!"

*hugging*

I love having a weird name. After that, we went to the Boom! party, where I met Paul Cornell and his lovely wife, Caroline. Paul is one of my favorite humans, as he shares my love of the Black Death and giant flesh-eating lizards. I'm just saying.

Saturday was my second panel, The Rise of Zombie Fiction, which was a) mad fun, and b) reinforced my desire to write up a handbook for people doing panels at this sort of thing. Priscille from Books for Boobs came to the signing in a perfect Delirium costume, and I tried to eat her plush bear. Amy and I managed to catch the Warehouse 13 panel (Allison Scagliotti for Georgia Mason, anybody?), and then went off to dinner with John Grace at a very nice steak house. They served me port. MY LIFE, SO HARD.

Sunday, it was goodbyes and final shopping runs, and Tara and I had breakfast with Paul and Caroline before Amanda and Michael came to carry me away.

It was a good con. This writeup does not include hiding behind Anton, getting awesome swag and buttons from Rae, lots of hugging, accidental soda-based encounters, the dissolution of the Sacred Order of the Deli, ice cream, Gini Koch, late-night sammiches with Tanya, awesome dealer's room finds, free books, cheap books, expensive books, cookies, the art show, or repeat encounters with Felicia Day. But it does include a lot of awesome.

Also, if anyone came away from the con with a spare Sanctuary T-shirt, I am open to trades. Just saying.

I am home from the San Diego International Comic Convention, where a fantastic, if exhausting, time was had by all. I'm still doing my post-con administrative cleanup (rendered more exciting by the fact that I have another convention this weekend, which makes the cycles for certain things much tighter than is the norm). This batch of cleanup is about awards and suchlike.

First up, as a quick reminder, voting for the Hugo and Campbell Awards closes at midnight, Pacific Time, on July 31st. So that means you have, effectively, until midnight on Saturday to vote. Details are here:

http://www.aussiecon4.org.au/index.php?page=66

This includes a full list of the nominees in their various categories. Remember that you must be either a supporting or attending member of AussieCon 4 to vote; supporting memberships are still available. Details on how to purchase a supporting membership are at the convention's website; they cost $50 a person.

It really is an honor to be nominated, and I'm still a little stunned over here. I also really want to receive a tiara in the Kingdom of Poison and Flame, for then I will truly be a Halloweentown Princess.

In a related, if not identical, vein, I will now quote NPR:

"Last month when we asked the NPR audience to submit nominations for a list of the 100 most pulse-quickening, suspenseful novels ever written, you came through with some 600 titles. It was a fascinating, if unwieldy, collection.

"Now, with your input, a panel of thriller writers and critics has whittled that list down to a manageable 182 novels. That roster, which we now offer for final voting, draws from every known thriller sub-genre—techno, espionage, crime, medical, psychological, horror, legal, supernatural and more."

Here is a link to the full story, including the list of 182 novels being considered for the top 100.

Winners will be announced August 2nd. Please spread the word? In conclusion, I leave you with this delightful message from autographedcat...which, if I make the list, I will arrange to have recorded in MP3 form for your enjoyment:

"Hello, readers. Look at your book. Now back to me. Now back at your book. Now back to me. Sadly, you aren't me, but if you stopped reading trashy airport novels and switched to Feed by Mira Grant, you could be well-read like me.

"Look down, back up, where are you? You're on the beach with the person you could be as well read as. What's in your hand? Back to me. I have it; it's an epidemiology textbook with an explanation of the science behind the Kellis-Amberlee virus. Look again, the textbook is now a DVD of the future Rosemary and Rue movie. Anything is possible when you read Feed by Mira Grant.

"I'm on a velociraptor."

The first person to answer all questions correctly will win a signed ARC of An Artificial Night! I will notify you via LJ, but you must send me your address via my website by noon PST tomorrow to receive your prize.

You can use both my websites in researching your answers.

( Let the games begin!Collapse )

Hello, and welcome to my journal! I'm pretty sure you know who I am, my name being in the URL and all, but just in case, I'm Seanan McGuire (also known as Mira Grant), and you're probably not on Candid Camera. This post exists to answer a few of the questions I get asked on a semi-hemi-demi-regular basis. It may look familiar; that's because it gets updated and re-posted roughly every two months, to let folks who've just wandered in know how things work around here. Also, sometimes I change the questions. Because I can.

If you've read this before, feel free to skip, although there may be interesting new things to discover and know beyond the cut.

Anyway, here you go:

( This way lies a lot of information you may or may not need about the person whose LJ you may or may not be reading right at this moment. Also, I may or may not be the King of Rain, which may or may not explain why it's drizzling right now. Essentially, this is Schrodinger's cut-tag.Collapse )

The other day, I was in Safeway—buying Diet Dr Pepper, naturally—when I heard the guy up ahead of me say something to his friends that I was positive I must have misheard. Specifically, what I heard him say was "and there's this really awesome parasitic wasp that drives its victims like cars." Now, I like parasitic wasps. I am, one might say, unduly fascinated by parasitic wasps. So I tend to assume that when I hear other people bring them up in conversation, I'm hearing them wrong.

I began shamelessly eavesdropping...and wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, he was talking about insect parasitism! Yay! As the conversation swung toward blood flukes, I interjected to note that blood flukes were probably largely responsible for the evolution of gendered reproduction. He looked, in a word, delighted.

What followed was the largest, rowdiest, happiest discussion of parasite behavior I have ever been involved with outside of a group of my friends. All five of the people involved had read Parasite Rex, and parthenogentic reproduction came up, gleefully.

I think I may have met my male equivalent from a nearby parallel dimension.

I'm just saying.

Item the first: I have run the random number generator against the latest ARC contest, and saladofdoom is our winner. saladofdoom, you have until Sunday, July 4th, to contact me with your mailing information. (This is longer than I usually give, but I'm about to head for Westercon, so I'm not going to be checking mail reliably for a few days.) I can also just bring your book with me when I come up to Seattle next weekend. Let me know your preference, and it shall be done.

Item the second: Yesterday morning, I saw a single crow sitting on the telephone pole next to the bus stop, watching me. "One for sorrow," I thought, and followed it up with, "But where's the sorrow?" Immediately, a car drove through a puddle that shouldn't have been there, it being, you know, July, and spattered me with lukewarm water. The message is clear: do not taunt the crow oracle, yo. You will not enjoy the results one little bit.

Item the third: The editorial revisions of Late Eclipses are barreling merrily along, and reminding me once again that there's a reason we do multiple passes on these things. So far, I've found an appearing/disappearing jacket, an appearing/disappearing car, a totally misnamed architectural feature, and a chunk of dialog that seriously read like it had been pasted in from another book. Thank the Great Pumpkin for the editorial process.

Item the fourth: My mother came by last night with my sister and her wife in tow. They have once again absconded with a very large sack of books, because I am the family lending library. I treated them to the hysterical spectacle that is Alice trying to get me to give her wet food, because I am a cruel, heartless lending library. (Their favorite part was when I picked her up, and she tried to swim through the air to the bowl.) It was nice to see them, even if it did mean I had to save the second half of this week's Leverage for tonight.

Item the fifth: I am watching the second half of this week's Leverage tonight.

Item the sixth: I should have some very concrete information about Wicked Girls super-soon, and it's really shaping up to be amazing. I love working with Kristoph, and I love all the material on this album. Both of my cover songs have been approved ("Tanglewood Tree" and "Writing Again"), and since I wrote the other fourteen, I'm not particularly concerned. I'm so pleased with this whole process. Life is good.

Item the seventh: My dreams last night featured a tank of lionfish that wanted snuggles, two connected houses in a suburb of San Francisco that managed to look exactly like Concord, buying new luggage, trying to fly to Australia while balancing on a bathroom railing, taking a nap, and a visit to the tiara store. I'm reasonably sure this was a big ol' anxiety dream about Australia and the Campbell Award, but I woke up going "awwwwwwwww, cutest lionfishes ever." This proves that not even my own brain is very good at upsetting me.

What's new with you?

So here's the thing:

Sometimes I have bitchy days. Sometimes I've been woken up repeatedly during the night to arbitrate disagreements between the cats, or it was too hot to sleep, or I have lots of deadlines I need to take care of, or I just have a really painful zit in my ear. Whatever. I am a person, I have a right to the ball, and that ball includes the occasional bitchy day. Sometimes, I am not a happy little bundle of sunshine and zombie puppies, ready to spread my pathogenic joy across the world.

On those days, I tend to stay mostly in my room (or the nearest available equivalent), working industriously on whatever pisses me off the least, and interacting only with people whose response to my being snappy is "Yes, yes, dear, aren't you cute when you try to bite me, here, have a rawhide chew." I don't answer email unless I have to, because it's never nice to take somebody's face off just for asking when the next book is coming out (An Artificial Night, 9/10; Late Eclipses, 3/11; Deadline, 5/11, by the way). At that point, if you pursue me into my hole, well...

The reason I bring this up is that I've seen a tendency to write off female characters who aren't always sweetness, light, and the joy at the end of the sunshine tunnel. Jean Gray may destroy planets, but she does it while baking cookies, while Emma Frost saves the world and sneers. Jean is thus clearly the better heroine, more deserving of love and compassion and all that other wacky stuff. Wolverine, on the other hand, is an unremitting bastard, and that makes him cool. That makes him edgy. Because he's bad, see? He's bad.

I once had a proofreader return a scene from one of the Toby books with the note that Toby was being a real unbearable bitch. I wrote back, and suggested that for every instance of "October Daye," they substitute the male protagonist of their choice (they went with Harry Dresden) before looking at the scene again. The complaint was summarily withdrawn. To which I can only say, seriously, what the hell? Why is it tough and cool and all that other stuff from a male protagonist, but incredibly bitchy and hateful and awful from a female protagonist? Why do we all have to be Pollyanna, all the time?

Now, I am a natural Marilyn Munster, which means that ninety percent of the time, I'm happy and bubbly and ready to slather you in plague-carrying bats. But that doesn't mean that the Wednesday Addams girls are somehow less valid, or less deserving of their own stories. And it doesn't mean I'm not allowed to have a grumpy day once in a while. I'm just not allowed to use my grumpy day as an excuse for immuno-depressant smallpox.

Hmmph.

So this Saturday is going to be my very first SF in SF (Science Fiction in San Francisco), and I am both elated and terrified. This is a combination that only remains fun for short periods of time, so I'm calling on all local people to please, please come and help. How can you help? By attending.

I'll be appearing with the fantastic Deborah Grabien. There's going to be a reading, followed by a question and answer session/interview moderated by Terry Bisson. So that should be a lot of fun. The doors open at six, and there will be book sales (courtesy of Borderlands Books), as well as refreshment sales (because boozy authors are more fun than the sober kind).

The event is going to take place at The Variety Preview Room, at 582 Market Street, in the first floor of The Hobart Building. It's literally right next to the Montgomery Street BART Station, so it's totally accessible and awesome. There will be audience participation for the Q&A, and time for hanging out and signing books in the lounge before the event ends at nine-thirty.

Proceeds from the events go to the Variety Children’s Charity.

And while we're on the topic...what do you think I should read? Seanan-style writings only, please; anything by Mira Grant is off the table for this specific event.

Hope to see you there!

Hey, folks—the summer convention season is kicking off, and that means it's time to return to our fannish roots and celebrate with geeky bling. I mean, of course, BADGE RIBBONS. Because nothing says "love" like pieces of fabric that you can stick to yourself. (Some people say that badge ribbons are totally over. I say that these are people who never played Halloweentown fairy princess when they were kids. We shall love our accessories until we die.)

So what do you think I should put on ribbons for this year? Suggest anything you like, from the silly to the sublime, and we'll see where things wind up going. Suggest a ribbon that I actually make, and I'll send you one, even if you're not attending the convention (first person to suggest the ribbon only, please). Keep in mind that we're trying to drum up interest and attract attention, but should still make a vague amount of sense while we're doing it.

Game on!

The other day, I needed to go to the mall to acquire a new bra. This happens periodically. It's a normal thing. I go to the mall for my bras because that's where the Lane Bryant is, and they make the best bras for my particular body type. What's more, I already know which of their bras will work for me and which won't, which takes a lot of the sting out of shopping. I've worked very hard to get to a place in my life where I could say "I need a new bra" and follow it up with "Let's go to the mall," rather than "Let's repair the old one with some safety pins and maybe a strip of duct tape, and I can buy the new one next month." This doesn't mean that I want to spend an hour digging through the racks, looking for the one that's Just Right. I want to know my options, I want to know what I'm buying, and I want to just do it already.

"Isn't this the store that made that ad?" Mom asked.

"Which ad?"

"The one they wouldn't show on TV."

"Oh. Yeah."

For those of you who managed to miss this whole thing, Fox and ABC refused to air a Lane Bryant commercial, saying that it was inappropriate, despite the fact that both networks air commercials for Victoria's Secret. Now, I've seen both commercials, and if you want to talk comparative nudity, well. The new line from Victoria's Secret is actually called "Naked." The Lane Bryant lingerie, on the other hand, covers a lot more, while committing the dual sins of a) being made for plus-sized women, and b) being reasonably attractive. That's obscene! We can't show that to our children, especially not during Dancing With the Stars, a show that features women wearing costumes that are closer to rumor than reality! That would be wrong! That would be...that would...

Wait, what?

Of course, the networks insist that this isn't a comment about Lane Bryant's lingerie being worn by plus-size models, even though, well, it's either that, or a comment on the immorality of wearing bras that come in colors. Rainbow Brite should be ashamed of herself. Meanwhile, over in Victoria's Secret-land, all the models are modestly wearing undies the exact color of their skins, making them look totally nude if you're not paying close attention. Much more modest.

"Why?"

"Because the models were fat, Mom."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"But that doesn't make sense."

"Tell me about it."

The current culture of fat shaming isn't just depressing; it's outright scary. It's dehumanizing. Fat women are "whales" and "cows," not just, I don't know, fat women. Women come in all shapes and sizes! Women are healthy at all shapes and sizes! My youngest sister weighs about fifty pounds more than I do, and she is smoking hot, like a plus-sized Betty Page gone tattoo model. She dresses like she's hot, she walks like she's hot, and you know what? She's hot! She's also healthy, active, smart, and all those other things that some people think "fatties" aren't allowed to be. She looks better at her current weight than I ever would, because she's built that way.

This may be a bit of a shock to some of the folks out there deciding what is and isn't "decent," but not all bodies were created from the same template. If Kate and I were to eat identical things and do identical amounts of exercise for a week, we would not lose identical amounts of weight. If Vixy and I were to each gain ten pounds, they would not distribute themselves in identical places on our bodies. I know people who can gain weight on nothing but broccoli and lean meat, and people who can lose weight on a diet of chocolate bonbons. Fat shaming solves nothing. It doesn't make the world's plus-sized population disappear in a puff of Twinkie-scented smoke; it just makes teenage girls develop eating disorders, grown women lie about their weight, and small children tell their mothers they don't want dinner because they're scared of getting fat.

"That's just stupid."

"I know."

"Those people should cut that out."

Also, on the practical side of things...women are more likely to go out in public, and exercise voluntarily, when they're wearing good bras. This goes double for plus-sized women, who are (surprise, surprise) more likely to have large breasts, and thus need the support and stabilization of a good bra. So if the goal is really making all the fat women into thin women, they should be getting government bra service as an incentive to get out and move around more. Not that exercise is the absolute answer for everyone—that's another can of worms, and goes back to my "not all bodies were created from the same template" point—but hell, it would be a start. Saying "ew, that's indecent" doesn't do anybody any good. Except maybe the viewing public that gets spared the sight of all those "fatties," and well. I'm not so concerned about them in this particular situation.

"I wish they would, Mom."

"Tell them that."

"Okay."

The mail at my house tends to arrive in the late afternoon. Once I judged that the mailman would have had sufficient time to navigate the horrifying suburban wasteland in which I live, I opened the door...and stopped.

Even around here, it's not every day that a big blue biohazard bag hits my porch. I'm just saying.

I picked up the bag, checking the tags in the vague hope that it had been mis-delivered to my house, and was actually intended for the mad scientist down the way. Nope; there was my name and address, along with the ominous routing tag for Sweden. Yes, Sweden, land of chocolates and, quite possibly, human organs and anthrax. I mean, why else would it have been secured with two heavy plastic zip-ties?

Lacking anything better to do with the bag, I took it inside, cleared the cutting board, and put it down. Then, after a quick check of my time zone-based options, I called Cat. "I have a big international biohazard shipping bag in my kitchen," I informed her, without preamble.

"What?" She was laughing. This is because humor is the best defense against me sometimes.

"Big international biohazard bag. I need you to call the CDC if I start screaming and drop the phone."

"Um...okay."

It took several minutes with the industrial-grade scissors to work my way into the bag, which kept producing more and more ominous routing stickers as I ripped my way inside. Finally, I ripped away the last layer, and shrieked happily.

Cat did not hang up and call the CDC. All those of you not currently trapped in the blasted quarantine zone that used to be California, you can thank her.

"It's the British edition of Feed!" I told her exultantly.

"Oh, good."

I have the UK copies of Feed! They're so pretty! They're only subtly different from the American edition—redder blood, because presumably the Rising is still fresher in England's memory; the word "bloggers" is actually on the back cover; no number "one" on the spine; a quote from Publishers Weekly on the front—but having them fills me with deep, atavistic satisfaction. This is the first British edition of one of my books. I am PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED KINGDOM, yo. The cast of Doctor Who could wander into a Waterstone's and just pick up one of my books, without worrying about the import sticker. I'm global. And stuff.

This is even better than illegal human organ trafficking. I'm just saying.

Last week was a big, big week for me, at least if you categorize "Seanan is running around in circles screaming like an idiot" as "big week." How big? Well, for starters, The Onion A.V. Club reviewed Feed. YES. I AM IN THE ONION. FUCK YEAH, SEAKING. Ahem. The reviewer says:

"Set more than two decades after an uprising of the living dead, Feed uses meticulous world-building to shape a narrative that's believable, thrilling, and instantly clear. From examining the political consequences of a world constantly under siege to detailing how blogging and Internet news feeds would develop in the face of the threat, Grant's creativity and thoroughness give her narrative an unshakable credibility."

...if you'll excuse me a minute, I'll be in my bunk.

Not that I'll be staying there for long, because io9 also posted a review of Feed. Holy cats. They call Feed "perfect summer apocalypse reading," and say "This fast-paced undead thriller will be great for people who enjoy their zombie slaughtering with a hearty slice of social commentary." The whole review is worth reading, but those were the quotes that really buttered my biscuits. (io9 also did a fun and awesome post on the book website. Check it out.)

The Book Smugglers are frequent reviewers of my material, and I was thrilled when Thea gave Feed a review. She says "More than anything else, I loved the amount of thought Ms. Grant put into writing this book. Feed is INCREDIBLY detailed; George's world is fleshed out, from the genesis of the deadly pathogen to the constant vigilance required living with this airborne virus. Ms. Grant's vision of a future American ravaged by KA is grimly complete." Yay!

I also did what's called an "Inspirations and Influences" post for the Book Smugglers, talking about what inspires me, what drives me to write, and where the Newsflesh trilogy came from. The giveaway is over, but the interview remains.

Jenn Brozek has posted a combined review and interview at the Apex blog, and says "Feed is the best zombie book I have ever read. It is smart, fast paced, and intriguing. What could have been a run-of-the-mill zombie farce is, instead, a near future political thriller with twists and turns that you can see coming but only in retrospect." Glee.

Anna has entered Feed in her book log, and says "I’m not sure what impressed me more, and there’s a lot to impress here: the backstory of the Kellis-Amberlee virus; the various complex social and political changes that happen in America as a result of the Rising; the fact that in this world, George Romero is considered a national hero; or the upsurge of bloggers as a source of organized journalism. Either way, it makes me very much want to up the ante on my own writing efforts. Take note, my fellow writers. This is how worldbuilding is done."

Victory is mine, victory is mine, joy in the morning, victory is mine. I have drunk deep from the keg of glory.

Glee.

(A note: This was supposed to go up on the 9th, but I got distracted by banana slugs, Canadians, roadkill, and my mother. We'll be resuming the normal posting dates after today's interjection. Sorry for the confusion)

Hello, and welcome to my journal! I'm pretty sure you know who I am, my name being in the URL and all, but just in case, I'm Seanan McGuire (also known as Mira Grant), and you're probably not on Candid Camera. This post exists to answer a few of the questions I get asked on a semi-hemi-demi-regular basis. It may look familiar; that's because it gets updated and re-posted roughly every two months, to let folks who've just wandered in know how things work around here. Also, sometimes I change the questions. Because I can.

If you've read this before, feel free to skip, although there may be interesting new things to discover and know beyond the cut.

Anyway, here you go:

( This way lies a lot of information you may or may not need about the person whose LJ you may or may not be reading right at this moment. Also, I may or may not be the King of Rain, which may or may not explain why it's drizzling right now. Essentially, this is Schrodinger's cut-tag.Collapse )

Two years ago today, I got out of bed (way too early), put on clothes (because nudity is frowned upon on public transit), and went to work. I don't usually remember what I was wearing on any given day, but this one, I do: jeans, bright yellow tank top, pink-and-yellow Chimera Fancies pendant that reads "fairy changeling this is all a dream." It was an ordinary start to what seemed likely to be an ordinary day.

Two years ago today, The Agent was shopping the Toby Daye books, trying to find just the right house for my debut series. I mean, really, we knew what Just The Right House was: DAW Books. It was 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. All I could do was hope that they wanted to work with me.

Two years ago today, my phone rang. Caller ID said that it was The Agent—that's actually what her number is saved as in my phone book, because I am sometimes a little bit bizarre about such things—so I excused myself to take the call.

The Agent said three 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.

Two years ago today, I sold the first three Toby books. Today, I have three framed cover illustrations on my living room walls, and five framed covers hanging scattered through the rest of my house. I have books on the shelf with my name on them, and published reviews in places like Locus and the Onion A.V. Club. I have a contract for two more Toby books after those first three, and my fingers crossed for more after that.

Two years ago today.

Wow.

Saturday was my book launch party for Feed, kindly hosted by the wonderful crew at Borderlands Books. They're very tolerant of my particular brand of crazy, and I appreciate that, since I've been working with this brand for so long that I don't think I could make the switch to generic crazy even if I wanted to.

Brooke arrived Friday from Vancouver, and the plan was that my mother would pick up her, me, and Amy from my house sometime around ten, so that we would have time for a stop in Berkeley before heading into San Francisco. Mom actually arrived around eleven, as she had needed to go pick up the van that we were using to haul everyone around for the day; I allowed that this was, perhaps, an acceptable delay. We encountered more delays, in the form of "picking up Mom's friend Sydney" and "stopping so Brooke could sit on the curb until she stopped feeling like she was going to throw up," and then we were on our way.

First stop: Berkeley, where we visited the Bone Room (lots of exciting dead things for Brooke to coo over!) and collected Kate, who was going to be accompanying us for the rest of the day. Kate, being exceptionally clever, brought her iPad, complete with pre-loaded Plants vs. Zombies. So I played Plants vs. Zombies all the way to San Francisco, and PS, now I want an iPad. All hail Kate.

Second stop: Ghirardelli Square, one of those San Francisco institutions and tourist flytraps that everybody needs to visit at least once, if only to see the fountain with the copper mermaids force-feeding frogs to their horrified babies (no, really). Amy, Kate, and I wound up being the ones to place our order, which meant that we got to choose all the flavors of ice cream for our Earthquake. FEAR OUR POWER. Expert table-sharking netted us a nice table near an epically loud cluster of Girl Scouts, and we settled to await our ice cream.

The thing about the Earthquake is that it's one of those sundaes that comes with eight spoons and really means it. It takes two people to bring it to your table. When the Earthquake arrived, a moment of hushed silence fell, all of us just staring at the enormous mound of dairy goodness in front of us. And then we attacked, like starving hyenas at the waterhole. Only whipped cream and memories remained by the time our spoons dropped from our sugar-numbed fingers, because that is how you start a book release party.

Third stop: Cups and Cakes, to pick up the eight dozen mini cupcakes ordered for the event. The brain cupcakes looked amazing. So amazing, in fact, that I forgot I was supposed to be getting cotton candy cupcakes in the variety pack—whoops. It turned out not to matter, as the cupcakes I did get were utterly destroyed over the course of the evening. All hail sugar, all mourn for my fallen diet.

Fourth stop: Borderlands at last. We got there literally four minutes before we were supposed to arrive, which was cutting it pretty darn close, to find the store teeming with excited party-goers. All attempts to keep people out of the cupcakes failed, as they kept opening the boxes and snitching out cupcakes every time I turned my back, so we eventually just gave up and let the hordes descend. Rae brought RYMAN FOR PRESIDENT buttons, which were even more awesome than the cupcakes, and passed them out to the crowd.

After milling, I read the first chapter of Feed, and we had a fun, fast-paced discussion/Q&A session before another milling-and-cupcakes break. This was followed by my reading "Gimme a 'Z'!", since I didn't want to read chapter two, and we needed something else to amuse the crowd. Jude hadn't realized that I was serious when I said she was the new Squad Leader. Much amusement abounded. After that came another Q&A, and then we broke for the evening, leaving the bookstore in the same condition that we found it in.

Fifth stop: The Phoenix for dinner, before somebody got killed and eaten. I had lamb stew. My diet, so shot for the night.

Sixth stop: The airport, to send Amy back to Wisconsin.

Seventh stop: Kate's house, to return her to GP.

Eighth stop: Home, and bed.

I love book release night. Go Pumpkins!

Friday, I was wearing my trench coat, running the space heater, and shivering a lot. Saturday, I walked to the store in my trench coat, and damn near overheated. Yesterday, I wandered around without a coat for the majority of the day, and even ran the air conditioner a bit in the evening. This morning, I put on my denim jacket.

We have had the changing of the coats. Spring has officially sprung.

I find that perfume is also a good indicator of the spring, as all the women on my morning commute begin competing with the newly-blooming flowers by attempting to smother me to death with their artificially floral scents. I like perfume as much as the next girl—my ungodly-large collection of bottles of BPAL testifies to that—but there's a difference between "wearing perfume" and "committing an act of chemical warfare." When I'm breathing through my mouth and turning green, you have crossed that line.

(My latest scent from the BPAL collection, by the way: Giant Squid. The description says it's "cannabis blossom, tonka bean, tobacco, frankincense, galangal, juniper berry, lantana, spiky aloe, green and white teas, and salty sea spray." I just like being able to answer "what's that perfume you're wearing?" with "RELEASE THE KRAKEN!" Sometimes I am a simple soul.)

The cats are responding to the spring by attempting to lose their winter coats in one fell swoop, resulting in hairballs of epic proportions springing up on my bedroom rug. Seriously, I brush Alice every day, and I still scraped an entire third cat's-worth of hair off the rug Saturday morning. I dread to think what may happen when I go to Australia for two weeks, since Alice is less willing to let Mom use the feline seam-ripper (ie, "the mat-catching brush") on her flanks and hindquarters. I'm going to come home to a house consisting of nothing but hair.

Amy arrived from Wisconsin yesterday, and brought a cheese hat for my sister-in-law. The world is occasionally very strange, as my mother's insistence on prancing about San Francisco International Airport with a giant wedge of cheese on her head clearly illustrates.

Happy spring!

Point the first: If you're on Twitter, and either don't watch my Twitter feed or haven't checked in yet this morning, do a search for the #FEEDFriday hashtag. Seriously, this is hammered awesome, in addition to being your opportunity to win some free copies of Feed. Which is pretty cool. They make great gifts! Also great doorstops.

Point the second: While you're enjoying your zombie adventure, maybe you should stop off and take a look at http://www.thefeedbook.com/. Don't worry. I'll wait here for your shrieks of ecstatic glee at how insanely awesome that website is. I'm doing the flaily Muppet arms again. Now with an undead flair. Which...is a little disturbing, really.

Point the third: Yes, I have seen today's XKCD. Sometimes I think the cartoonist is peeking through the windows of me and my friends. And then I realize that no, we're just a type. Scared yet?

Point the fourth: I am almost done with my mind-numbingly massive full-sheet comic page explaining the Campbell Awards and expanding on my eligibility. Vixy and Cat Valente play the part of my lovely assistants, thus sparking the statement "The hardest thing I have left to draw is Cat Valente being eaten by zombies." My life, occasionally so difficult.

Point the fifth: I was in the car with my mother yesterday, and commented that I had purchased my tickets to Australia. The following conversation ensued:

Mom: "And you're coming back with a tiara."
Me: "Well, yes, I hope so, but..."
Mom: "You are."
Me: "Okay."
Mom: "I've been praying every night to the tiara gods."
Me: "...there are tiara gods?"
Mom: "There are now."
Me: "What do those even look like?"
Mom: "I don't know. But they're wearing tiaras."

So apparently I have the backing of the tiara gods in the upcoming race for the Campbell. Thanks to my mother for letting me know about this endorsement. Also, and perhaps more importantly, my mother is insane.

I've been writing structured poetry for most of my life. For the past several years, I've participated in a writing exercise I call "Iron Poet," wherein I request three words and a poetic form, and then write a poem to match the suggestion. (I don't have a round going right now, because I am out of hours in the day. I miss it. But I'm not quite that insane.)

I am honored and delighted to have a vilanelle in the latest issue of Goblin Fruit, an online magazine of speculative poetry. It's titled "Ever After Variations," and you can read it for free by following the link above.

Cabinet des Fees is an online journal of fairy tales. They publish fiction and poetry, essays and interviews, and I am totally over the moon to be interviewed in the latest issue. Another of my poems is reproduced alongside the article, titled "Baba Yaga Said." It's free verse, rather than a strict structure, and I'm quite fond of it. The interview was a joy, and the article is fantastic. Plus, check out this awesome description of me:

"A folklore maven and woman of the beautiful weird, Seanan burst onto the urban fantasy scene last year with Rosemary and Rue, the first book in her October Daye series. As her first series proliferates (Rosemary and Rue was recently joined by A Local Habitation, with An Artificial Night forthcoming in September), Seanan is also writing a year-long American folkpunk piece entitled Sparrow Hill Road at The Edge of Propinquity and has just published Feed, the first part of a zombie politico-thriller trilogy, under the pseudonym Mira Grant. Most of us are quite sure that Seanan never actually sleeps."

I'm folkpunk! Also a woman of the beautiful weird!

Halloweentown princess is go.

Yesterday, I was sitting on BART reading the absolutely fantastic new book, I am Not a Serial Killer [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] by Dan Wells. It has blood splatter all over the cover. That's how you know it's quality.

Anyway, I was happily reading away when the train pulled into Embarcadero Station and a fairly generic-looking white male of approximately my age got on and took the seat beside me. He was very...standard issue, really. Brown hair, no visible blemishes, not handsome, not ugly, just normal. He was wearing an equally generic-looking gray suit, the kind that doesn't make you go "Wow, that guy's sharp" or "Wow, that guy needs to have a talk with his tailor." He was just normal.

We rode "together" (as in, crammed into the same two-person seater) to the Downtown Berkeley stop, where he got up, smiled pleasantly at me, nodded toward my book, and said, "I am."

And then he got off the train.

Had that been my stop, I think there's a very good chance I would have decided to ride to Colma, rather than disembarking. But the book is excellent, and I bet that, for most people, it doesn't come bundled with a maybe-joking-maybe-I-should-lock-the-doors stranger. Brrr.

The finished copies of Feed landed on my doorstep yesterday afternoon, where they were promptly rescued from the rain by my mother, who was over at the house doing basic kitchen maintenance (oh, how the cats hate her and her sloshy, sloshy mop). They are...I mean, they're even prettier than the ARC, which I didn't think was possible. The covers are done in this amazing combination of matte and semi-gloss that makes the blood really pop, and they're eye-catching and utterly bleak at the same time. Orbit did a really incredible job with them. I am awed.

Time between opening the box and my mother stealing a copy: Under five minutes. At least she's consistent...

In honor of the arrival of the finished copies, and the oncoming release of the book itself (the light at the end of the tunnel isn't a train, it's a flamethrower), I've been making updates to MiraGrant.com. In addition to moving the Horror Movie FAQ to its new home (it was replaced on my main site by the Fairy Tale Survival FAQ), I've added some very important facts about Mira Grant that you should know. Not convinced of the raw danger that you face when you taunt my evil alter-ego? Take a gander at the full list of warnings. These were taken from your suggestions, and they should hopefully do a little to prepare the public for the danger that's to come.

In slightly less silly news, the first batch of icons and desktop wallpapers has been added to the site for you to use and enjoy! Tara really knocked herself out on these, and was aided by Lauren at Orbit, who was awesome enough to let her work from the original cover graphic source. I couldn't be more pleased. Check it out—I bet you'll be pretty pleased, too.

When will you rise?

I am delighted (and still sort of staggered and awed) to announce that I have been nominated for the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. You can view the full ballot for this year's awards by following this link to the Aussiecon 4 website.

I. Uh.

Oh my sweet Great Pumpkin and pie, you guys, I made the ballot.

I literally started screaming when I got the email—like, high-pitched, sonic screaming—followed by crying hysterically for a good half an hour. Because I made the ballot. I'm an urban fantasist! Urban fantasists don't make the Campbell ballot! (I checked the last several years, because I am insane like that.) Urban fantasists don't get to buy pretty dresses and go to Australia and maybe win a tiara!

But this one does.

Wow.

I've updated my website to reflect recent changes, I've done the Internet equivalent of making the house look nice for all the new guests that are likely to come over and check me out, and I've managed, mostly, to stop crying. I'm on the 2010 Campbell ballot. I just...

There are no words. Just wow.

"When I was a kid, I always imagined I'd be normal by now." —Hannelore, Questionable Content.

I had a phone interview the other day in which I was asked about my writing process. I explained it—the checklists, the word counts, the editorial process—and the interviewer laughed and said, "So it's almost like an OCD thing, right?"

"Not almost," I said. "I have OCD."

He stopped laughing.

On most weekday mornings, I get out of bed at 5:13 AM. I write this in my planner. On Wednesdays, I get out of bed at 5:30 AM. I write this in my planner, too. On the weekends, I sleep later; last Sunday, I slept until 8:23 AM. I know this, because I wrote it in my planner.

After I get up, I dress, ablute, and check in online. This is done by visiting Gmail, personal mail, Twitter, LiveJournal, and FaceBook, in that order. Always in that order. I pack my lunch. On weekdays (except for Wednesdays) I leave the house at 5:34 AM, to catch the first bus. I know this, because all these things, too, are written in my planner. So is everything else. What exercises I will do, what my assigned word counts will be, what to remember to say to my roommates, whether it's time to brush the cat...everything.

I have been a member of Weight Watchers since late 2004. I like Weight Watchers. It gives me an excuse to write down everything I eat, and turn every activity into a number to be added to a little column. In the times where I can't attend meetings and get new "official" trackers, those same counts wind up going into my planner, along with a record of what time I took my multivitamin and how much water I've had to drink. What shows I watched that day. What books I read.

Tiny columns of numbers march along the sides of the calendar—how many days to book release, how many days since book release, how many days since I did something that I'm waiting to hear more information on. I record the return dates of shows that I watch, the release dates of movies, the official dates of conventions. Birthdays and ages. I celebrate friendship anniversaries and remember strange holidays that, having made it into my calendar once, are now a permanent part of my personal year.

When I see street numbers or phone numbers or the like, I will automatically start picking them apart to determine whether they are either a multiple of nine or a prime number. Either of these is deeply comforting to me. Numbers that are one digit off in either direction can be distracting, if I've been having a bad enough day. I would be perfectly happy eating the same things for every meal, every day, for the rest of my life.

People sometimes ask me how I can bear it; how I can break my life down into schedules and checklists and tasks without going crazy. But the thing is, that's how my brain works. I look at other people's lives and wonder how they can bear it—having to agonize over menus, not knowing where to sit, not remembering the order of the primes, not knowing when all their favorite TV shows come back on the air. I find the framework of my life to be freeing, not confining, and I don't really comprehend living any other way.

And yes, sometimes I have to make concessions in order to remain stable. I arrive at the airport two hours before my flights, period. I don't care if I have to miss things to do it; the rules say "two hours before," and I arrive two hours before. I become uncomfortable and have difficulty focusing if someone takes my chair in a setting where I have defined patterns. Some things have to be done in a certain order, and if I try to do them in a different order, I am likely to become very difficult to deal with. Failure to complete a to-do list is upsetting to me on a deep, profound level that I have difficulty explaining in verbal terms; it's just wrong. My friends learn that if you're going on a social outing with me, you need to arrive on time or deal with me having a meltdown, that I do not want to have adventurous food, and that I will throw you out of the house if your arrival interferes with standing scheduled events. And the beat goes on.

Because I am very functional, and because the standard image of "someone with OCD" is Adrian Monk or Hannelore, I do occasionally have to deal with people assuming I'm exaggerating. I don't compulsively wash my hands or clean my kitchen, I'm definitely not a germaphore, and if I re-type books completely between drafts, well, that's just a quirk. But obsession and compulsion both take many forms, and while I have found peace with mine, and consider them a vital part of who I am, that doesn't mean they don't exist. (Why I would joke about having something that is considered a mental illness, I don't know.)

Remember that just because someone is a functional, relatively normal-seeming human being, that doesn't mean they're wired the way that you are. I have to remind myself that not everybody wants their day broken down into fifteen-minute increments, because for me, that is the norm. The human mind is an amazing thing, full of possibilities, and each of us expresses them differently. I am a cybernetic space princess from Mars, and that's not a choice I made; that's the way I was made. I can get an address on Earth, but Mars will always be my home.

Whatever planet you're from, that's okay. Just try not to assume that everyone you know is from the same place. I'd be willing to bet you that they're not.

I was talking to a friend of mine—who shall remain nameless, unless she chooses to name herself, because I don't throw anyone out of the closet unwillingly—who said "I am glad I know you, for I can admit to a person on Earth that I still secretly love My Little Ponies." This, coming less than a week after someone reacted in horrified confusion when I admitted to sharing my bedroom with more than two hundred of the plastic darlings, made me decide that it was time to stand up in bold defense of Ponyland. Because sometimes, a girl's gotta do what the talking horses tell her to do, goddammit.

(Please note that I am not defending Ponyville, home of the current My Little Pony line. The denizens of Ponyland would have beat down these little pink pretenders all the way to the glue factory, where they would doubtless be rendered into cheap, glittery paste that didn't actually hold anything together for very long. No. I'm talking about the originals, the Ponies that started with Megan and Firefly and expanded to encompass Spike and Wind Whistler, and oh, it was one hell of a time...)

Girl's toys tend to be pink, and pastel, and visible from space. Girl's toys tend to be anthropomorphic, and look more like cartoons than human beings. Girl's toys tend to be short on projectile weapons and high on castles and the trappings of a romantic fairy tale past that never really existed. These aren't things that most girls get a say in; that's just the way the toys come. And yes, that's what some little girls want, while other little girls would be a lot happier if they were allowed to play with the He-Man guys once in a while. I was fairly equal-opportunity as a kid—I'd play with anything—but my true passion was reserved for the infinitely expanding stable that contained the My Little Pony world.

My first Ponies were Cotton Candy, a pink horse with white speckles on her rear and pink hair, and Minty, a green horse with clover markings and white hair. Minty wound up getting her tail braided by my grandmother (something I allowed almost no one to do, ever), and became the My Little Pony housekeeping service, because she could use her tail to sweep the floors. The herd sort of exploded from there, growing to overflow shelves, fill a large trunk, and generally make me the darling girl of Hasbro's Marketing Department. If they made it, I wanted it. My room was a sea of pink. And yet...

See, during the 1980s, people were so worried about violence in cartoons aimed at boys that they kept all the censors busy watching GI Joe and Masters of the Universe. No one was paying attention to what was happening over on My Little Pony and Friends. Let's start with the special, wherein a pink pegasus named Firefly crossed the rainbow to kidnap a farmgirl named Megan in order to save the rest of the Ponies. Save them from what?

THE DEVIL.

Because, you see, THE DEVIL was harassing the Ponies, largely by kidnapping them and turning them into GIANT FUCKING EVIL DRAGONS. Once they were GIANT FUCKING EVIL DRAGONS, they would go kidnap more Ponies, so that THE DEVIL could turn them into GIANT FUCKING EVIL DRAGONS. His plan, once he had enough GIANT FUCKING EVIL DRAGONS, was to unleash his sack o' dark shit that, y'know, was bad-ass enough to turn magical teleporting unicorns into GFEDs, and bring about eternal midnight. Also, evil. Also, did we mention that the sparkly pink horses were fighting THE DEVIL?

After the My Little Ponies made their entrance by kicking the ass of THE DEVIL, they went on to fight against the evil witches who lived in the Mountain of Gloom. They, like many people, only saw the fact that the Ponies were pink, and never bothered to ask themselves how insanely badass something would have to be to have that little natural camouflage and yet still survive to procreate. My Little Ponies, like poison arrow tree frogs, are brightly colored for a reason, and that reason is to provide an immediate and easily visible warning of the fact that if you mess with them, they will FUCK YOUR SHIT UP.

The witches unleash the Smooze. The Smooze is like "Yo, I am coming to FUCK EVERYONE UP." The Smooze makes its case by eating the Rainbow of Light, which was previously used to defeat, as you may recall, THE DEVIL. So the Smooze is also pretty badass, and messes solidly with the normal "frolic, nap, frolic" schedule in Ponyland. The surviving Ponies travel to Flutter Valley, where they meet up with the Flutter Ponies, who look like they should be easy to kill with a fly-swatter (and are thus, naturally, the baddest badasses in the world). The following occurs:

MEGAN: Rosedust, Queen of the Flutter Ponies, the Smooze fucked everyone up.
ROSEDUST: Sucks to be you.
MEGAN: Please come fuck the Smooze up.
ROSEDUST: No.
MEGAN: Guess we'll just live here, then.
ROSEDUST: Let's fuck up some Smooze!

Then here's a musical number, and then? Smooze-fucking. Big fun.

The cartoon went on from there, and taught an entire generation of girls that it was okay to be pink and pretty and also FUCK SHIT UP. My Little Pony was like Gormenghast with frills. The boys got bloodless battles and exploding helicopters and moral lessons, and bad guys who never went away. My Little Pony got THE FUCKING DEVIL. And anybody they beat down? Stayed beat down.

My Little Pony is FUCKING METAL, yo.

(Also, for a laugh, check out My Little Demon. I have way too many of these hanging in my house.)

The Fourth Annual BSC Review Tournament is off and running! This brutal tourney pits a year's-worth of book releases against one another in bloody single combat, and only one can emerge victorious.

Rosemary and Rue has already defeated Jim Butcher's Turn Coat in round one, and has entered round two, against Peter V. Brett's The Warded Man. I didn't think Toby could face down Harry Dresden, so let's see how far she can go!

(catvalente's Palimpsest is also in the running. I'm not saying that if the tourney comes to the two of us facing off, we'll put on swimsuits and wrestle in a swimming pool filled with whipped cream and pumpkin pie filling. Honestly. I don't know where you'd get that idea...)

Now go vote!

Mindy Klasky has been talking about "author branding" lately. Is it a bad thing that my brand is "slightly maniacal but easily distracted Disney Halloweentown Princess on a never-ending quest to dominate your puny planet"? I mean, it doesn't fit very easily on a T-shirt...

Anyway, today is a day for awesome news that is awesome. Those of you who follow dianafox will have already seen the first part of this: the Newsflesh trilogy (Feed, Deadline, Blackout) has sold to Egmont in Germany. Egmont is also the German publisher of the Toby Daye books. Because of this (and some questionable black marks on Mira's legal record, but that's beside the point), they'll be publishing the Newsflesh trilogy under the name "Seanan McGuire." I like being confusing!

Meanwhile, rights to the first three Toby books (Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation, and An Artificial Night) have sold to Azbooka in Russia. Vixy is very excited, because she actually speaks Russian, and will thus be able to read my books in a whole new language. I'm very excited because dude, Russia.

Soon, my conquest of your world will be complete, and my collection of foreign language editions will require its own shelf.

Yay!

Behold! My first ever starred review! I clipped one sentence for spoilers, but it's otherwise completely intact, as printed by Publisher's Weekly. Look:

Feed, Mira Grant. Orbit, $9.99 (608p) ISBN 978-0-316-08105-4

Urban fantasist Seanan McGuire (Rosemary and Rue) picks up a new pen name for this gripping, thrilling, and brutal depiction of a postapocalyptic 2039. Twin bloggers Georgia and Shaun Mason and their colleague Buffy are thrilled when Senator Peter Ryman, the first presidential candidate to come of age since social media saved the world from a virus that reanimates the dead, invites them to cover his campaign. ... As the bloggers wield the newfound power of new media, they tangle with the CDC, a scheming vice presidential candidate, and mysterious conspirators who want more than the Oval Office. Shunning misogynistic horror tropes in favor of genuine drama and pure creepiness, McGuire has crafted a masterpiece of suspense with engaging, appealing characters who conduct a soul-shredding examination of what’s true and what’s reported. (May)

I just want to go around telling people "I shun misogynistic horror tropes in favor of genuine drama and pure creepiness." Hell, I want that on a shirt.

Win. Win and dinosaurs and pandemics and pie.

You may have heard me raving about an anthology called The Living Dead [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], a collection of some of the finest zombie fiction I've ever seen. I read it, I loved it, I told everyone I know who likes zombies that they should join me in buying, reading, and loving it.

Skip to the present, where John Joseph Adams—the original anthologist—has been putting together a sequel, The Living Dead 2, featuring still more of the finest zombie fiction around. The official announcement of the book's table of contents is here, along with the book's truly awesome cover art. The preliminary cover copy:

"Two years ago, readers eagerly devoured The Living Dead. Publisher's Weekly named it one of the Best Books of the Year, and Barnes & Noble.com called it 'The best zombie fiction collection ever.' Now acclaimed editor John Joseph Adams is back for another bite at the apple—the Adam's apple, that is—with forty-three more of the best, most chilling, most thrilling zombie stories anywhere, including virtuoso performances by zombie fiction legends Max Brooks (World War Z, The Zombie Survival Guide), Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead), and David Wellington (Monster Island)."

Pretty exciting, huh? But maybe my excitement seems a little odd. After all, I love David Wellington ("Good People" in this volume), Robert Kirkman ("Alone, Together"), and Jonathan Maberry ("Zero Tolerance"). And yes, there's a new Kelley Armstrong story in this book ("Last Stand"). So why am I so thrilled?

Because Mira Grant's new short story, "Everglades," will be making its debut in this volume. Oh, yeah. Not only am I going to be in the sequel to the best zombie anthology ever, I'm going to do it on a table of contents with Kelley Armstrong.

I win at universe.

The Living Dead 2 will be out in September, or you can pre-order your copy now.

Zombies!

Hello, and welcome to my journal! I'm pretty sure you know who I am, my name being in the URL and all, but just in case, I'm Seanan McGuire (also known as Mira Grant), and you're probably not on Candid Camera. This post exists to answer a few of the questions that I get asked on a semi-hemi-demi-regular basis. It may look familiar; that's because it gets updated and re-posted roughly every two months, to let folks who've just wandered in know how things work around here. Also, sometimes I change the questions. Because I can.

If you've read this before, feel free to skip, although there may be interesting new things to discover and know beyond the cut.

Anyway, here you go:

( This way lies a lot of information you may or may not need about the person whose LJ you may or may not be reading right at this moment. Also, I may or may not be the King of Rain, which may or may not explain why it's drizzling right now. Essentially, this is Schrodinger's cut-tag.Collapse )

I originally made this list a while back, after reading Maxim's list of "200 Movies Everyone Should See" and discovering that their horror movies seem to have been chosen through purely arbitrary measures, largely having to do with how much gore could be splattered on the screen. That doesn't work for me all that well, being as I am not a fan of the "gore porn" sub-genre of horror. Since it's been a year and a half since then, and since that year and a half has included a lot of horror movies, I've decided to update my better, more carefully considered list. IE, "the horror movies I say everyone should see."

( We cut because we care. Also because failure to cut results in a much higher bodycount, and nobody wants that. Well. I want that. But I'll be merciful, just this once.Collapse )

***

What did I miss?

Okay, so here's the thing: I qualify for the Campbell Award this year (and next year). You can view the rules by clicking this link, and they basically come down to a) when you made your first professional sale, and b) how long ago that was. The John W. Campbell Award uses the same nomination and voting mechanism as the Hugo, even though the Campbell Award is not a Hugo. To be able to nominate a writer for the 2010 award, you must have either been an attending member of Anticipation (the 67th World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal) or be a supporting or attending member of Aussiecon Four (the 68th World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne) before Jan. 31, 2010. (So it's too late to become a member of the convention this year, but again, I still qualify next year, as do many other awesome people.)

I would, I think naturally, like to win this award. I mean, who doesn't want to win an award? Especially an award that will be presented in Australia, THE LAND OF POISON AND FLAME? That's like, the delicious whipped cream on top of the sundae of venomous awesome that is an entire continent full of cuddly things forged in the very flames of hell. But Australia isn't my main inspiration here.

No.

Did you know that the Campbell Award comes with a tiara?!

I mean...



...just sayin'.

Our countdown to book release has reached lucky number seven, which means we're exactly one week out, and that it's sort of a miracle I'm sleeping at all. Ah, the glorious crazy of an author getting ready for their drop-date. How did I live before I knew this feeling?! Oh, right. With a lot less flailing. Anyway, here's today's countdown entry:

7 Things You Should Know.

7. A Local Habitation is the second book in the series, following Rosemary and Rue. You don't necessarily need to read Rosemary and Rue first, but I think that it helps. Possibly quite a lot. Remember that there's only so much recapping that can go into a book before it turns boring.

6. The word "series," not "trilogy," applies to the October Daye books. A trilogy is a closed, three-volume unit. While I am currently contracted only for the first three books in the series, there's a lot more story after that. Which means I'd really like A Local Habitation to sell super-well, so that I can get a contract for the next set of books. Take two, they're small.

5. A Local Habitation is the first of the three books I have coming out this year. The second is Feed in May (as Mira Grant), and the third is An Artificial Night, in September. I currently have only one book scheduled for 2011, Deadline, again in May (and again, as Mira Grant). This seems likely to change.

4. Remember, every time you buy a copy of Rosemary and Rue, a pixie gets its wings. (Contrarywise, every time you buy a copy of Rosemary and Rue, you can elect to have the Luidaeg part a pixie from its wings in a violent and thoroughly unpleasant fashion. She'd like that. She'd like that quite a lot.)

3. Thankfully, I finished Deadline just in time, and am now spending my evenings watching Disney Channel sitcoms, drawing comic strips, and drinking port. I appreciate this small break in my borderline-hysteria.

2. I really and truly appreciate every one of you for being here, for commenting, for participating in giveaways, for discussion, for dissension, for buying my books, for reviewing my books, for recommending your own books, and generally just for existing. It does a lot to keep me getting out of bed in the morning. Which may be faintly pathetic, but I have a book coming out in a week, I'm allowed to be faintly pathetic. It's actually in my contract.

1. I am possibly the luckiest Halloweentown Disney Princess in the world, and I know it.

A friend of mine once started talking to me about God talking to Moses on the mountain, and handing down the commandments, and everything. Which led to the point that my patron deity doesn't really do commandments.

"Well, why not?" was asked.

"Um. Can you see Coyote giving commandments?" I replied.

...but of course, the damage was done, and I had to think about this now. Because that would be the way that my brain works, whether I want it to or not. Stupid brain. And now, after several days of thinking about it, I give you...

The Commandments of Coyote.

I. Thou shalt have as many Gods and Spirits and Personal Trainers and Gurus as you like before Me, but you shalt not let them block the exits, for this is considered a fire hazard. More importantly, thou shalt not permit them to take the last beer, for that beer is Mine. Seriously. Don't.

II. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, but thou art totally welcome to admire her ass when she walks by, and if it happens to come out that they are in an open relationship, dude, tap that ass as much as all parties involved are willing to allow. Same goes for thy neighbor's husband. Coveting is sort of stupid, but sex is just plain fun, unless thou art doing it entirely wrong.

III. If thy neighbor says "Hands off my wife, dude," thou shalt listen and back off. If thou dost not listen and back off, thy neighbor will be totally justified in hitting you about the head and shoulders with gardening tools, and don't think that I'm going to step in there and stop him.

IV. Adultery is actually pretty fun. Commit it all you like. Just make sure everyone is cool with it, or I will not help you out once the hitting gets started.

V. Thou shalt not eat poisoned bait. If you do, don't come whining to Me about it, because I am very unlikely to care. Once it is in your mouth, it is your problem, not mine.

VI. Of course thou shalt kill. Carnivores do that. Also, swatting mosquitoes, sort of instinctive. But all creatures are alive before you kill them, and so thou shalt respect them in their lives and in their deaths. Thou shalt not kill without reason. Thy neighbor tapping thy wife's ass? Is not a reason. Don't make Me set a plague upon thee. Thou wouldst not enjoy it, I promise.

VII. Thou shalt not hoard. Seriously, here. If you have enough, share. Only asshats bogart life.

VIII. Thou shalt not be a martyr. If you have one beer, drink it. Do not give it to Me and then expect adoration. Dude, that was your beer, I did not break your arm to get it. Give what you can give, and expect neither praise nor worship. You are not being morally superior, you are being a decent human being. There is a difference.

VIV. Assume this is it. Maybe there is an afterlife; maybe not. Maybe there is reincarnation; maybe not. Not only am I not saying one way or the other, please consider the fact that I probably get a say in whether you come back, and if you are the sort of person who doesn't do anything with one life, why should I waste My time giving you another one? Live like you get no second chances. You'll have more fun.

X. Are you going to eat that?

I have all these things I want to talk about. Like, my little running junk file contains about three dozen links, and a long list of blog topics (written in my customary all-caps shorthand, so the word "fuck" is pretty heavily represented—sometimes I'm a Kevin Smith movie). Instead, I spent much of my morning mastering the phrase "working for our robot overlords—did I say 'overlords'? I meant 'protectors,'" in American Sign Language. This is a highly useful phrase, and one which I am currently using quite a lot. Sure, I'm using it quite a lot because I just learned how to say it, but the theory is sound.

Other things I can say in ASL:

* The turtle couldn't/can't help you/me/us.
* I will kill you with a chainsaw now.
* I have a parasite inside my brain.
* Ninja!
* Giant metal Santa Claus.
* The salad of infinite despair.
* Moose lobotomy time. Call the moose lobotomist.
* Die in a fire.
* The Black Death.
* Octopus fellatio.
* Science/mad science.
* I want to eat your brain.
* ZOMBIE.

Naturally, I have learned these specific phrases because they are extremely useful in my daily life, and not because I enjoy signing "the salad of infinite despair" at people when they annoy me. Honest.

My current adventures in ASL are strongly fueled by the fact that I have essentially managed to freezer burn my brain as I race through Deadline like I'm being pursued by a pack of rabid weasels. The book is about 15,000 words from over, and I have a very solid idea of what all those words need to be; it's just a matter of getting them onto the page. I alternate between wanting to snarl at anything that keeps me from writing, and wanting to keep myself from writing, since soon, I won't have a book anymore. There will be other books. There will be edits and revisions on this book. But it won't be the same, and it will never be the same again, and after this, I only get to spend one more book in this universe. That's going to hurt. In the course of three volumes, I'll have essentially written four and a half Toby books-worth of story (these are big-ass books), and that makes the Masons and their companions really well-established denizens of my head. I'm going to wind up writing the parasite trilogy just to get myself through the grieving stage. This is, by the way, why I am drowning in series.

(I have friends who only write in single volumes. Bam bam bam, book book book, done. They view my addiction to series with horrified confusion, and some of them have commented that they wish they could do that. In the spirit of the seaweed always being greener in somebody else's lake, I envy the people who can write a book and be done. The closest I get to writing a book and being done is plotting to give certain characters only one POV volume in the InCryptid series. My brain is wired oddly.)

One of my "waiting in the wings" protagonists is a woman named Alice Price-Healy (Verity's grandmother), whose tastes run to camouflage pants, fabrics that can be easily treated for bloodstains, and lots and lots of weapons. She's a hopeless romantic, having spent the last thirty or so years spelunking through the various dimensions surrounding her own as she tries to find her missing husband. Who is probably getting punched in the face if and when she finally finds him, since she's been scared to death for decades now. Anyway, my darling fireriven pointed me to something on Etsy, and in browsing the seller's other items, I found a red glass heart pendant with an old-fashioned six-shooter charm dangling from it. I stared. My inner Alice announced her covetousness.

I bought the necklace. It arrived in yesterday's mail, and it is awesome. Best of all, when someone asked me where I found it and what made me buy it (since I don't buy much jewelry that isn't from chimera_fancies), I was able to honestly reply "Oh, the one of the people who lives inside my head told me to." Sowing confusion is fun!

Seriously, though, I think my brain is bruised. I'm going to go home tonight and knock out another 3,000 words or so before watching Leverage, and tomorrow night, I'll go home and knock out 5,000 to 8,000, since I have no bedtime on Fridays. And after I do this a few more times, the book will be over, and I'll need to start occupying my time with something else. Like The Brightest Fell, and starting Blackout, and petting the cats. Oh, and learning how to say "behold, for now I wear the human pants" in ASL.

You know. The important things.

Dear Great Pumpkin;

In the days since I last wrote to you, I have continued to be reasonably well-behaved, within the limits of my circumstances. I have comforted those who needed comfort, and refrained from feeding those who caused them to need comfort into any wood-chippers that happened to be sitting around. I have listened to the troubles of others. I have shared my ice cream, willingly, without being blackmailed. I have not summoned the slumbering Old Ones from their beds beneath the Pacific, or commanded them to destroy all humans. I have continued to make all my deadlines, even the ones I most wanted to avoid. I have not talked about pandemics at the dinner table. Much. So obviously, I have been quite well-behaved, especially considering my nature.

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

* A smooth and successful release for A Local Habitation, with books shipping when they're meant to ship, stores putting them out when they're supposed to put them out, and reviews that are accurate, insightful, and capable of steering people who will enjoy my book to read it. Please, Great Pumpkin, show mercy on your loving Pumpkin Princess of the West, and let it all be wonderful. I'm not asking you to make it easy, Great Pumpkin, but I'm asking you to make it good.

* Please help me finish Deadline in a satisfying, explosive, timely way, hopefully including lots of zombies and horrible perversions of medical science. I'm about twenty thousand words from the end of this book, which is both not nearly enough, and way too many for me to be happy about it. I want to bring this book to a close, so I can get back to work on the fifth Toby book and start working on the third Newsflesh book. What I have is good. Please let the rest be amazing.

* While I'm asking for miracles, please let the rest of The Brightest Fell suddenly come clear to me, so that I can begin working at my usual disturbingly rapid speed. I was hoping to have this book finished before A Local Habitation hits shelves. That's obviously not going to happen, which means I've already been punished for my hubris, and deserve to have things start moving again. Right, Great Pumpkin? The more time I have to spend stressing out over this book, the less time I spend preaching your gospel to the unenlightened, or lurking in corn mazes scaring the living crap out of tourists. You like it when I scare the crap out of tourists, don't you, Great Pumpkin?

* My cats are fantastic, Great Pumpkin, and I'm so very grateful. Alice is huge now, and has truly grown into her birthright as your spiritual, if not literal, daughter. When she runs through the house, it's like watching a burning cornfield through thick smoke. Lilly is smug and satisfied, as is only right and proper for a Siamese, and watches her sister with easy disdain. Please let them stay healthy, Great Pumpkin, and please let them stay exactly as they are. I couldn't be more appreciative of their glory.

* Well-staggered and easily-managed deadlines for my various anthology and short story projects through the next six months—and while I'm making requests, please let me keep getting anthology invitations, as they are sort of the ultimate literary trick-or-treat adventure. I have written you two of the three short stories with the Fighting Pumpkins cheerleading squad that I originally promised, and I'm planning the origin stories for Hailey and Scaredy for this Halloween. I keep my promises. Now please keep giving me reason to promise you things.

* A successful launch for Mira Grant, my evil twin, Lady of the Haunted Cornfield, Halloween Trick to my Halloween Treat. The books I will be publishing under her name are incredibly dear to me, and I hope and pray that they become equally dear to the rest of the world. I am an old-school horror girl, Great Pumpkin, and these are my offerings to the holy genre. Let others love them as I do, and let Mira be welcomed by the readers with open, eager arms. I want to conquer the world in your name, and this is a very important step.

I remain your faithful Halloween girl,
Seanan.

PS: While you're at it, can you please turn your graces on InCryptid? I really love these books. I want to be able to write more of them.