I have arrived safely in New York.

I have arrived safely in New Jersey.

I have arrived safely at Jon and Merav's house, where I have a bed, and a shower, and Internet access, and Kate.

I will now take a shower, put on clothes, and get ready to head for tonight's reading at the New York Review of Science Fiction. If you're local, you should totally come. It's going to be a blast.

New York!

Okay, like, wow. How is it October? It's not supposed to be October. It's supposed to be, I don't know, somewhere comfortably in the middle of August (only then I suppose the Hugos wouldn't have happened yet, and I'd still be a neurotic mess, so maybe that's not the best thing for me to be wishing for). I love the fall, it's my favorite time of the year, and I love October, it's my favorite month of the year, and since I both need a three-week-long nap and a finished draft of the fifth Toby book, this whole "welcome to October" thing isn't working out for me as well as it otherwise might.

On the plus side, however, I'm mostly packed for tonight's red-eye to New York. I'll be met on the other end by Jon (of Jon and Merav), who will carry me off to my East Coast home in Jersey City. (Let's face it. Once I understand how to handle your recalcitrant plumbing, I basically live with you.) I will then take a really long nap, because good ye gods, red-eye flight, before a) letting Kate into the flat, b) calling The Agent about lunch, and c) heading into Manhattan for the big adventure.

What big adventure, you may ask? Why, me, reading with Cat "the Crusher" Valente at the New York Review of Science Fiction. TWO AUTHORS ENTER, BOTH AUTHORS PROBABLY LEAVE. I'm so excited! When you put me and Cat on the same stage, and give us a microphone, a good time is basically guaranteed. The doors will open at 6:30 PM, and there's a five dollar suggested donation. I recommend arriving early, for good seating (although I don't think there's going to be a splatter zone). Cat put it really well. She said, "Sometimes I get matched up with another reader with whom I become friends, but being paired with one of my sisters and shipmates just makes everything so fun and relaxed. Plus, we encourage each other dreadfully." So come and see us encourage each other dreadfully! It's going to be a fabulous time.

I'm also going to be at the New York City Comic Con this upcoming weekend, as both myself and my own evil twin. Seanan will be doing the Penguin Panel on Friday night, and a signing at the Penguin booth on Saturday. Mira will be doing the Zombie Panel on Saturday night, and a signing at the Orbit booth (also on Saturday). I'd love to meet you! Please, swing by if you're at the convention! Just, y'know, please don't show up for my Seanan-signing with eight copies of Feed, or my Mira signing with all the Toby books. I try not to antagonize my publishers like that.

I get to see The Agent, and The Editor, and all my New York friends. I get to eat interesting food and ride the PATH train and generally have a wonderful time. All while making word count every night, because a girl has got to eat (or she'll end up on the street). And then I get to fly home, and keep making word count, because word count never rests.

Anyway, if you're in New York, I hope I get to see you, and if you're not, I hope I get to see you some other time. Any pending prizes will be mailed when I get back, as I am a bad blonde, and forgot to buy new book mailers.

Oh, babe, I hate to go.

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.

1. I am in Australia.

1a. I am in Melbourne, Australia.

2. I have found a lovely Indian place that fed me goat, and a place with hot cocoa so good it made Jeanne shaky.

3. We are about to go to the aquarium to see squids.

3a. And penguins.

4. I miss you all, but I am in Australia, so it isn't really bothering me very much.

5. See you soon.

Well, here we go: I am now officially 90% of the way packed for my trip to Australia. My suitcases zip with relative ease. I still need to load up my thumb drive, since The Big Laptop isn't making the journey with me, and I have a few CDs scheduled to be delivered later this week that I'm really hoping to get onto my iPod before I fly, but that's about it. It's all dumping out my purse and finding my spare laptop battery from here.

It's weird to sit here and realize that in forty-eight short hours, I will be on a plane, about to land in Los Angeles, where I'll get on a second plane and begin the long journey to Melbourne. Because it's a night flight, I'll probably sleep for the first five or so hours, then wake up, blink groggily, and start working. That's just what I do on planes. (You think I'm kidding. I point to Exhibit A, Chasing St. Margaret. It's a romantic comedy. About jetlag. I wrote it, primarily, on my flight from San Francisco to London, and finished it on the flight from London to San Francisco. Because I am bitchin' productive when I'm several thousand feet up in the air.)

I have wanted to visit Australia since I knew there was an Australia to visit. To be quite honest, for a long time, I wanted to move there, until I realized a) my friends would miss me, b) quarantine would be hell on the cats, and c) Australia's immigration laws mean I couldn't move anyway. So visiting will have to be enough. I'm a little scared and a little excited and a little totally ready to be on my way, because seriously, I have no attention span and no brain left. It's sad, except for the part where it's funny for people who aren't me.

I will come back with wonderful stories and probably a sunburn, souvenirs, memories, and the strong desire to sleep for a week. Hey, who knows—maybe I'll even come back with a tiara. That'd sure make my mother happy.

Two days to Australia. That's too soon; that's nowhere near soon enough.

Having barely returned home (the cats are still in a state of high dudgeon; Lilly evicted the contents of my daily carry-bag last night and inserted herself in their place, assuming I wouldn't notice that a Siamese is not a dayplanner), it is now time for me to depart again, this time for the wilds of Washington. Will I be visiting my Vixy? I will not. Will I be visiting the Tinneys? I will not. Will I be picking blackberries? Great Pumpkin willing, yes, I will.

But what I'll mainly be doing is attending Spocon as their Music Guest of Honor! Along with Author Guest of Honor Tanya Huff and Artist Guest of Honor Michael Whelan, I am coming to rock your socks off through the powers of song, story, and, um...interpretive dance. I am assured that my Muppet-like flailing is very much like interpretive dance of the Cthulhu mythos, so that works.

But seriously, I fly out later this afternoon. I still need to pack, since laundry didn't happen until last night, and I need to figure out whether I'm checking a bag or not, since I need to bring The Big Computer to handle editorial revisions. But these are small things compared to "I am getting on another plane." Whee!

Brooke is going to be rooming with me at the convention, and she and Char MacKay have been drafted to provide stunt musical accompaniment (yay). Brooke is incubating a parasite right now, which is relevant to my interests, as it means that she now goes to bed as early as I do. Also, to quote Brooke's blog:

"Seanan AND Tanya will be guests there, which I've heard means they will combine in to some kind of 12-foot tall DAW super-robot with lasers! Publishing is a dangerous business. For innocent bystanders."

Come see the super-robot! We are less likely to crush you or incinerate your home if you say hello and buy our books.

I'm just saying.

Now is the time on Sprockets where I take my suitcase, my passport, my train tickets, and my mother, and head to the San Francisco International Airport. From there, we will fly to Los Angeles, and I will spend the weekend as ConChord's Guest of Honor/Westercon's Music Guest of Honor. Yay!

Since I'm about to leave you to your own devices for the entire weekend, I thought I should bribe you to play nicely with, well, the world. Here's Lilly, being...dignified:



The Siamese, ladies and gentlemen. Nature's most dignified feline.

Yeah. Right. Have fun!

I am weirdly superstitious. I say "weirdly" because the things about which I am superstitious tend to be, well, weird. I think black cats and the number thirteen are lucky, but I won't walk under a ladder (at least in part because I don't want anyone dropping paint on me). Finding a penny on the street is cause for celebration and declarations that all day long, I will have good luck. (Finding a nickle, dime, or quarter is cause for a ticker-tape parade, as people tend to be more careful about their silver.)

I count crows, I count cherry pits, I hunt for prime numbers and multiples of nine. I use my slide show screensaver as a funky sort of personal oracle. Get the concept? Superstitious and weird, that's me. So...

Yesterday, I found out that Hugo voting (and hence Campbell voting) is open to Supporting Members of AussieCon, and that voting is open until July 31st (along with registration for Supporting Members). Details are here, in case you're curious. That was pretty cool, as people have been asking me about it for a while now, and I like having answers.

Yesterday, I went to Borderlands Books to pick up the three most recent Repairman Jack books (I had a craving). As I was walking down 4th Street to the BART, I saw a coin on the sidewalk. I'm always on the lookout for coins; they might be pennies. So I stopped and picked it up.

It was an Australian two-dollar piece.

I'm weirdly superstitious, and found money is always a cause for making guesses about the intent of the universe. Last night, I dreamt about Australia. Who's surprised? Not me. And not the pony-sized huntsman spider I was riding around Sydney, either.

I get off work at four in the afternoon; my flight last night didn't leave the airport until nine. This left me with a five-hour gap and, since there was nothing I was really dying to go to the movies for, I decided to just head for the airport, get through security, and settle on the concourse to get some serious writing done. (I would have stopped at Borderlands to get the new issue of Locus, but their shipment hadn't arrived yet when I had to leave the office. That's what Monday is for.) I was flying Virgin America, and since BART runs literally into the SFO International Departures Terminal, getting there was a piece of cake. I like cake!

After dropping off my luggage and confirming that my flight hadn't been canceled or anything stupid like that, I started for security. Airport security encounter one: a security guard was walking by with a kind of dog I'd never seen before hauling him along as it happily sniffed its way through the airport. I stopped.

"Oh, wow! Is that the contraband dog?"
"Yes, she is."
"What kind of dog is she?"
"She's a Dutch Shepherd."
"Oh, wow. Can she check my things for contraband?"

The security guard looked surprised, but allowed as how the dog could check my things for contraband if I really wanted her to. She did so, with much tail wagging and adoration. So here's a big thanks to Susie the contraband dog, who made my travel experience safer.

From there, I went to the actual security line, where my large laptop was pulled out for an explosives swab. Cool by me. The woman doing it swabbed down the outside, and then asked if she could open it and swab inside. (Like I was going to say no? To the TSA?) I said sure, but warned her that she would encounter a lot of cat hair. She opened the laptop.

"That is a lot of cat hair."
"I have a Siamese and a Maine Coon."
"Really? I have a brown mackerel tabby!"
"Mine's a blue classic tabby and white!"

...so if you got stuck in an inexplicable delay at the SFO International Terminal security checkpoint last night, sorry about that. I was talking Maine Coons with the TSA lady.

And after all that? My flight landed forty-one minutes early. Yes, early. The pilot actually apologized for the fact that we had reached Seattle almost an hour ahead of schedule, and I got to call Vixy to tell her that I was already there. This wasn't easy, since I think she thought I was calling about a delay, not to say "come get me."

Best travel experience ever.

January.
It's 2010! That's incredibly freaky! And to make things freakier, the month is already super-busy, because nothing says "love" like keeping me busy. On January 20th, I'll be appearing at the Clayton Books Book Club in Clayton, California. It's a book discussion, rather than a reading or anything silly like that, which really means "this is your opportunity to grill me mercilessly on the Toby books, along with basically everything else. I'm planning to bring cupcakes, because I am possibly certifiably insane. I'm also planning to bring prizes of some sort, because people like prizes, and I try to do things that people like.

I'm also flying to Seattle at the end of the month—yes, again—to attend Conflikt III, the Pacific Northwest's very own filk convention. Tom Smith is this year's Guest of Honor, which is going to be awesome. I love Tom, and I'm really looking forward to performing with him in May. Plus, this gives me the vital opportunity to hug me some Vixy.

February.
In February, I'm planning to write, write, write, and, oh, right, write. I'm nowhere near that dark and troubled country known as the Land of Missed Deadlines, but I fear that country's borders so much that I've set aside essentially all my spare time in February for staying as far from there as possible. Watch for flailing, and send care packages of Diet Dr Pepper and candy corn.

Toward the end of February, the fabulous stealthcello will be showing up (along with awesome bonus Katie) to stay with me pre-Consonance and check out the Bay Area a bit. Because doubling your awesome doubles your fun, Sooj and K will also be showing up, and a good time will be had by all. (There may be some extra awesome during this time period. Watch this space for details.)

March.
Oh, nothing major. Just, I don't know, THE RELEASE OF THE SECOND TOBY BOOK. A Local Habitation will be coming out in the first week of March. Expect flailing, hysterical, and awesome stuff. How awesome? "I've done this before and know what I'm doing now" awesome. Be there. (Just to make things more exciting, the release of A Local Habitation coincides with Consonance, the Bay Area's own filk convention, where Tricky Pixie will be appearing as Guests of Honor. Because I needed my head to explode if at all possible.)

On March 9th, we'll be having a reunion of the Traveling Circus and Snake-Handling Show, as we invade Borderlands Books to celebrate the release of A Local Habitation. The Borderlands Cafe is now open, and it's going to be twenty flavors of fantastic, including live music, readings, a raffle, and more. There's always, always more.

April.
April kicks off with the glory that is Wondercon, the San Francisco Bay Area comic and cool media convention. Last year at Wondercon, I didn't have any books in print. This year, I'll have two. What a difference a year makes. I intend to wander the dealer's hall with prizes in my pocket, making myself a target for treasure hunters, just like last year. Only this year, I'm bringing a real celebrity with me: my MOM. So here's your chance to meet her while she's too confused to try to drive you somewhere!

May.
In May, the first of the Mira Grant books, Feed, will be hitting shelves. I cannot express how excited I am by this book. I love the world, I love the characters, and sort of like the softer side of Sears, this is a whole different side of my work. Only for "softer," substitute "gory, merciless, scientific, political, and horrific." I really can't wait. I'm trying to pretend that I won't explode.

Also in May, I'll be attending Marcon in Columbus, Ohio as their Music Guest of Honor. The theme is "Necropolis," and the timing couldn't be better (nor the theme closer to my heart). Watch for thrills, chills, and possibly 1940s couture made from horrible zombie-print Halloween fabrics. Also, this is your chance to get up to three of my books signed. WHOA!

June.
June is currently totally free, and that's a damn good thing, because wow, am I going to need the break. Pressing on...

July.
Here's where things get crazy. In July, I have not one, not two, but three conventions to attend, starting with the very first weekend of the month: Westercon, which is combined with ConChord this year. I'm the Guest of Honor at ConChord, which means, y'know, I'm planning to attend, and more, planning to blow the roof off. Paul Kwinn, my frequent partner in crime, is their Toastmaster, and between the two of us, there's going to be a whole lot of hoot and a whole lot of nanny. Plus it's in Pasadena, land of Disney, where a good time can easily be had by all.

I'll barely have time to return to the Bay Area before it's back to Southern California for the San Diego International Comic Convention, where again, last year I didn't have any books in print, and this year I'll have three, as well as probably having ARCs for the fourth. I may hyperventilate and die. Only not, because at the end of the month, I have Spocon! In Spokane, Washington, where I'll be the Filk Guest, along with Author Guest Tanya Huff! Ladies of DAW, unite!

August.
Australia awaits.

The year is filling up fast, and more things are bound to appear as the months draw closer—look at how detailed the next few months are compared to the later ones. If you want me, book early, book often, and bribe.

Whee!

My flight back from Seattle to San Francisco touched down about twenty minutes before eight last night. We were actually early, which was a trifle annoying, as it meant that all the post-landing announcements interrupted the episode of The Wizards of Waverly Place that I'd been watching (yes, I am a total dork). Oh, well. At least it was one I'd seen before. I collected my suitcase from the baggage claim, met Mom at the escalator, and was promptly toted across the Bay Area to home, where I was greeted by a stack of mail and two incredibly irritated blue cats.

People who haven't met my cats often fail to understand exactly how good they are at making their annoyance known. These people need to be shut in a room with Lilly, Alice, and an empty food dish for half an hour. At the end of this time, they will understand a) that my cats are perfectly capable of explaining, in the detail, their displeasure, and b) I should get hazard pay for entering the house without feather toys and treats.

Thankfully, my girls aren't good at being mad for long. After a night of cuddling and a morning spent watching Boa vs. Python (with the pair vying for dominion over my lap), I seem to have been essentially forgiven. They still aren't letting me out of their sight, but that isn't all that unusual.

Over the course of my time in Seattle, I ate cupcakes, baked a turkey, made insane numbers of cookies, saw Die Hard for the first time, went to several bookstores, gave a concert, embarked on a successful quest for cranberries, reached 90,000 words on Blackout, formally turned in the first Sparrow Hill Road story, watched all of season one of Glee, played with kittens, rewrote about half my website, and hugged many people I love.

It was a good holiday break. I hope yours was just as lovely.

Pretty much every culture I'm aware of has some sort of winter celebration, whether it's religious, secular, or somewhere in-between (since killing a dude to bring back the sun doesn't necessarily imply a particular faith, but definitely implies a belief that something out there takes requests). The depths of winter are the time when we most need to have faith in something, because in the days before cheap insulation, imported food, and really good central air, failure to have faith meant that you were prepared to have the sun go away forever. That's my favorite thing about this time of year. Everybody gets something they can celebrate. Even if all you're celebrating is not being the dude who finds the bean in his bread.

I celebrate my family, both blood and chosen. I woke up beneath a veil of purring blue cats. I spent the morning at the International House of Pancakes with my mother, my little sister, and my little sister's girlfriend. And now I'm on my way to Seattle to spend a week with Vixy, who might as well be my sister for as much as I love her, and Tony, and Jennifer, and all the other members of my extended family that I can cram into my days. I won't see everyone this week; not everyone is there to see. But I celebrate them all.

I celebrate reconstruction. We all burn bridges in our lives, either accidentally or on purpose, and while we may be sorry that we did it, it's hard as hell to shape the ashes back into something useful. In the last year, I have been fortunate enough to rebuild some bridges that provided essential access to the highways of my heart. Just as importantly, I've finally admitted that some bridges needed to be condemned, and ordered them quietly, respectfully torn down. I am happy with the choices I have made, and with the bridges I have built.

I celebrate my writing career. I've been a writer for as long as I can remember. I was explaining the plot of a short story to my mother the other day, and she said "You always have to be writing something, don't you?" I'm not sure even she realizes how true that is. It took me a long time, and a lot of effort, to get to where I could say that my work was of publishable quality, and there are days when I wake up and go "Wait, what? Was there some sort of mistake?" The sight of my book on store shelves has made me cry more than once. It's just amazing.

I celebrate the fact that we are living in the future. I'm writing this entry from 36,212 feet; I know that because the Virgin America trip display tells me so. I can send new stories to my beta readers without the words ever having touched paper—in fact, at least one story managed to make it to print without ever, so far as I know, being printed in any form prior to the page proofs. I can post this entry, and you can read it no matter where in the world you are. We are accessible to each other in ways we have never been before, and for all that it's a double-edged sword, I can't imagine living any other way.

I celebrate you. I celebrate the fact that you have things in your lives to celebrate, and those things are not the same as mine, and that's amazing. I celebrate the fact that we have all shared another season (although not necessarily the same one, since it's summer in Australia), and the world has continued to turn.

Have a wonderful winter. I promise that if I get any say about it, the sun will be coming back again.

It's once again time to prepare to fly. My bags are packed (mostly); I'm ready to go (mostly); I don't have a taxi waiting down below, but since my ride to the airport is asleep in the room basically directly beneath me, I'm going to call it close enough for government work. (I like cars-of-friends better than I like taxis, anyway. They don't charge me as much when I suddenly demand we stop for soda.)

It's been a good trip. I didn't get to see nearly as many people as I hoped, on a social basis, but I got a lot of work done, and had a lot of business meetings, and it was good. A distressing number of these business meetings involved feeding me. I will now return to California and live on salad, peas, and carrot sticks for two weeks, while I wait for my body to issue a writ of forgiveness. But! I'm not sorry, because I have eaten cake-and-shake, frozen hot chocolate, some of the weirdest salads ever seen, pepper-encrusted Maine scallops, garlic fries (seriously, these were some high-class garlic fries), baked heirloom apples with homemade apple ice cream, and some of the best chicken and pea curry I've ever had. I have walked and I have wandered, I have pillaged and I've pondered, and I'm happy with the results.

New York is a fascinating place. I really do understand why some people view the concept of leaving as a sort of sacrilege, even as I understand that I'd go crazy and become a bridge troll in Central Park if I ever tried to live here. I like my yearly visits, and I enjoy the chance to see my publishers in their natural habitat, but I also like my world to be a bit greener. (Now, the Jersey Pine Barrens are another matter. I could totally live there. And then the Jersey Devil would eat me.)

It's been a good trip.

I am ready to be home.

I have landed safely in New York. scifantasy was kind enough to collect me from the airport, and explained many interesting things about fair use during the trip. I am in Jersey City, and we are about to leave for the Apple Store, which is why this post is neither lengthy nor terribly informative.

Back later, please do not burn down the Internet. (Quoth scifantasy, "And if you let Missus O'Grady's cow kick over that lantern again...")

Point the first: I have drawn the winner for the first A Local Habitation giveaway! I literally do this by feeding the number of comments into a random number generator, and then counting (this is very laborious, but worth it). So our first winner is...

asthecrowfly!

Please email me—DO NOT use the LJ messenger function—with your mailing address. I will be mailing the ARC out after I get home from New York (so next week).

Point the second: I am about to shut down my computer, get into the car, go to the airport, and fly to New York City. I'll be online in the evenings, and may even be online from the plane, since I'm going to need distractions while in the air. I have a lot of writing planned for the actual transit portion of the trip, and a lot of business meetings planned while in New York. I'm going to be Seanan and Mira this time. Fun for the whole family. Plus, The Agent is taking me to Serendipity 3. Mmmmmm, frozen hot chocolate.

Point the third: Coyote has decided that I depend too much on modern technology, and my iPod has died. Hard. Like, I spent half an hour on the phone with Apple technical support, and finally got told "I think it's your hardware." No shit, Sherlock. Anyway, I'm going to go to an Apple Store in Manhattan, where hopefully they'll say something like "gee, this is still under warranty, have a new one." If not, I'm going to sell one of Brooke's kidneys (again) or something, because my mental health really hinges on having portable music, and I no longer have my faithful old Sony Discman (it died quite some time ago). My housemate has loaned me his iPod for the duration of my trip, largely, I think, because he was afraid I might eat him if he didn't.

And that's the news from California. There will be more contests and ARC giveaways in the months to come, including the first contest proposed by The Agent, and I'll let you know when I reach New York alive.

Well, I'm off to board a giant metal sky-bird and wing my way across the country to Columbus, Ohio, with a stop in the middle to switch planes in Chicago. I'll be in Ohio (and hence on limited Internet access) until Monday, when I come back to California. If you're in the Columbus area, feel free to swing by OVFF to say hello, hear some awesome music, and maybe get a book or two signed.

See you when I get back!

Vixy and Fishy delivered me to the Seattle/Tacoma International Airport approximately ninety minutes before my flight today. There was no line at the Virgin America counter, and effectively no line at security, allowing me to sail straight on through to the concourse. Once there, I checked the airport Borders for Rosemary and Rue (no luck) and checked the airport Wendy's for a vanilla Frosty (lots of luck). Boarding happened on time and in an orderly manner. I got my standard window seat, complete with my standard Grumpy Tall Guy Who Didn't Book Early Enough and Got Stuck in the Middle, and Sullen Girl on the Aisle Who Doesn't Understand Why We Need to Pee. Good times were had by all.

The in-flight entertainment allowed me to watch Eureka returns while I worked on The Brightest Fell (now through chapter twelve). I adore my Netbook, it allows me to actually work on planes, rather than pretending to work until I want to stab the person reclining their seat onto my laptop with a plastic swizzle stick, then sleeping bitterly. Sure, I'm a lot more tired when I reach my destination, but wow, do I get a lot of work done.

Seeing the reports of where Rosemary has been seen continues to absolutely delight me; thank you so much for the pictures and for sharing. And now I shall bow to the demands of my cats and go to bed, before they decide to take matters into their own paws and force the issue.

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

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

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

A brief primer for those who don't live in the San Francisco Bay Area:

The Bay Area is actually very large. Yes, there is life outside San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland. I realize you may never have heard of any cities or towns outside these major population centers, but I promise you, it exists. Thousands of people live in places with names like "Albany," "Pleasant Hill," "Los Gatos," and "Hercules." I, myself, live in a city called "Concord," which used to be called, at various points in its history, "Canterbury," "Todo Santos," and "The Ass-End of Nowhere." The Bay Area contains mountains, small forests, inconveniently-placed hills, and lots of other quirky geography. Because of this, our roads and bridges are occasionally very odd, and do things that make little to no actual sense.

There are a multitude of ways to get around the Bay Area. If you're in the South Bay, you have CalTrain, a swift series of, well, trains that can get you to San Francisco. If you're in San Francisco, the odds are good that you never actually leave San Francisco, so your transit options are "car," "bus," "taxi," "foot," and "magic carpet." If you're in the East Bay, there's a good chance that you work in San Francisco or the Oakland/Berkeley area, and there is hence also a good chance that you depend on a magical thing called "BART" to get you to work each day.

BART stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit. It's the train system that covers most of San Francisco and the East Bay. It's also a contributing factor to Bay Area residents paying more per mile for public transit than almost anyone else in the world. I pay, quite literally, ten dollars a day for the privilege of leaving my house and going to work. (This assumes I'm not taking any buses, something that isn't always true during the rainy season.) And oh, right, they increased fares and cut back on service earlier this year—something most of us took with grumbling but no real complaint, because the economic realities of California are what they are. The system needs money to keep running. The money has to come from somewhere. Happy? No. Resigned? Yes.

Except now the union is threatening to strike Sunday at midnight. Happy? No. Resigned? No. Royally pissed off?

Oh, yeah.

The union isn't striking for fair working conditions, human rights, or the other things that unions tend to justifiably strike for. The union is, near as I can tell, striking for the right to pretend that we're not in a recession while the system continues to reduce services and hike costs in order to pay for the concessions the union is demanding. I'm a union girl. About two-thirds of my family has or has had union jobs. Unions are amazing things, and without them, the conditions under which the average worker has to labor would be a hell of a lot worse. Even if you're in a non-union job, the odds are good that you've benefited from the unions of the past. If nothing else, unions are at least part of the reason you get things like "breaks" and "bathrooms." All that being said?

Screw you, BART union. I've read all the documentation I could, trying to find a way in which this wasn't an insane thing to do, and I haven't found it. Even my cousin who works for BART has no clue what the hell this is supposed to accomplish, beyond possibly getting a few station agents lynched by their neighbors. Because there is genuinely no way for people who live where I live and don't have access to a car to get to San Francisco without the train. The closest bus route I can put together would take four and a half hours just to get me to the point of being able to transfer to the Transbay Bus to fight the traffic caused by dumping the 350,000 daily BART commuters onto our already over-taxed bridges.

I'm lucky. I probably won't lose my job, even if the BART strike prevents me from getting to work for a few days. But the people who are temping? Working minimum wage janitorial jobs in the city, because they can't afford to live closer, and can't find work anywhere else? Flipping burgers, making smoothies, and doing the things people who can afford to live in San Francisco can also afford not to do? Those people are going to get fired if they can't reach the office because the trains aren't running.

Strikes are good. Strikes are necessary. But maybe striking during a recession when you're already making a living wage and aren't being actively abused in some way is a dick thing to do. And maybe doing it when you know it's going to cripple local transit and lose a lot of people their jobs is a double-dick thing to do. Just in case you were wondering.

Beware. For today I wear the cranky pants.

My flight from Montreal (technically from Boston, since it was a two-stage trip home) touched down in San Francisco last night at approximately nine-thirty, safely reuniting me with the state of my birth. Hooray! My mother collected me from the baggage claim area, shortly before we collected my suitcase from the baggage carousel, and we took off for the East Bay.

The trip itself was somewhat more...exciting...than I tend to prefer, involving as it did a twenty-minute connection that required me to sprint most of the way across Boston Airport. I was crying and hyperventilating by the time I hit the security gate for United Airlines, which, thankfully, caused security to be very nice to me, and got me to my plane on time. (Also, it exhausted me enough to spend most of the six-hour trip to California totally unaware of the world around me.)

Mom and I stopped for dinner at Denny's, since the particular structure of my trip home had denied me the option to eat. I miss the days of bad airplane meals that at least contained calories...

WorldCon was fabulous, and I'll post about it later, when I leave the "fire bad, tree pretty" stage of cognition. Big thanks to my fabulous roommates, Merav, Jon, and Susan; to John, for picking me up from the airport; to Deanne, for giving me a place to crash for a few hours before the fun really got started; and to the entire DAW Mafia, without which I would have been entirely lost.

Next year...AUSTRALIA.

In twenty-six days, Rosemary and Rue will be available on shelves all across the country. Anyone who's pre-ordered from Amazon will be receiving their copy. This includes, I know, a great many people outside my home country. So in twenty-six days, Toby will be on her way around the world.

I fully expect to be finished with my first editorial pass-through on Feed by the end of the weekend. The book has become tighter, faster, slicker, and yes, even better than it was when I started. I should need another week or so to get edits back from the early-reader pool and do my serious editorial rewrites (some of which have been tabled for now, to preserve momentum), and then I'll be ready to turn it in. Which is good, because that leaves me free to go crazy over Rosemary.

In six months, twenty-seven days, A Local Habitation will be following Rosemary and Rue onto store shelves. You'll be able to walk into a bookstore and say "I want Seanan McGuire's book," and the response will be "which one?"

In two and a half weeks, I'll be flying to Seattle to appear with a whole bunch of awesome authors in the official Grants Pass book launch extravaganza. I will sign books. Books that were available in stores. I will eat cake. I will not cry.

In a few minutes, I'll zip my suitcase, load it into my mother's station wagon, and take off for Canada, where I'll be attending WorldCon not as a fan, not as a convention organizer, but as an honest-to-the-Great-Pumpkin professional writer. I'm allowed to have professional opinions now! I'm going to be on panels where I get to talk about them, even, and I get to wear my pumpkin-orange LA Confidential dress again, and hug my editor, and generally be a Halloweentown Princess to the stars.

Here I go again.

See you soon.

I have just been informed that my ride from the Montreal airport won't actually be available until about eight hours after I arrive.

Neither will my hotel room.

1) Can anyone fetch one dizzy, jetlagged blonde from the Montreal airport at 7:15 AM on Thursday morning?
2) Can anyone give me a space to nap?!

Oh, God, I'm gonna die.

I staggered into my house at about half-past eight last night, where I was promptly accosted by angry blue cats who wished me to understand that I Had Sinned, and Must Be Punished. (My punishment consisted primarily of petting the cats, petting the cats some more, and giving Alice a good brushing. Mom had been brushing her in my absence, but Alice wasn't entirely willing to let Mom near her nethers, and as a consequence, there was need for some serious Maine Coon repair before she could really be said to be at her best.) I even managed to partially empty both my suitcases before toppling into the bed like a felled dragon toppling on a poorly-placed knight errant.

The trip home from the convention was reasonably painless. Amanda and Michael delivered Jeanne and I to the airport with plenty of time to spare, and we meandered our way through security and onto the airplane (after a considerable delay, since we were two hours early). I spent most of the flight either dozing fitfully or watching Hannah Montana on the in-flight entertainment system. I should probably have been working on my copy-edits for Feed, but let's face it: there is an event horizon past which all work becomes crap, and I had passed that horizon quite some time previously. Shaun and Georgia should never have a crossover with the cast of Babylon Archer and the Caverns of Ice. I'm just saying.

My mother met me at the airport, and despite horrific traffic on the roads between San Francisco and home, we did not die in a horrible fiery crash. We had dinner at the Wendy's, because we were frankly both too far gone to deal with anything else. (Proof that I was tired: for about half the drive, I was convinced I'd managed to lose my phone. After finding my phone, I lost my credit card. I still can't find my keys.)

Tonight's plan involves taking Toby promo bookmarks to Borderlands Books, along with a stack of the DAW summer samplers, and then going home and getting to work on the heaps and heaps and heaps of stuff that's managed to pile up over the last week. Oh, and another twenty pages of copy-edits for Feed.

My next scheduled nap is in November.

I love travel.

Oh, I stress and I flail and I wave my hands around and I wail about how much time it's going to kill, but at the end of the day, I love travel. I love that moment of weightlessness when the plane leaves the ground, when you realizes you're no longer strictly under gravity's command. I love knowing that when I land, I'll be breathing different air, in a different city, where the rules are different. Plus, it doesn't hurt that I tend to be crazy-productive on planes.

(I am, however, seriously considering bringing CASH-MONEY BRIBES on my flight to Montreal. "Hi. I'm a working author, and I have deadlines. I will give you twenty dollars to not recline your seat on my laptop for the first three hours of this trip.")

My bags are packed for San Diego. I'm not sure whether I'll have Internet, but if I do, I'll keep you posted as to what's going on. If you're going to be there, you need to come to Saturday night's panel. Trust me on this one. You'll be sorry if you don't. If you're not going to be there, I'll miss you, I'll see you when I'm back, and I'll be awesome.

Because I can. Because that's what it means to be a Disney Halloweentown Princess.

Watch me.

10. I will be on a plane for San Diego in a little over twenty-four hours, on my way to the San Diego International Comic Convention. The SDCC is one of my favorite conventions, because it is, for all the chaos, really remarkably relaxing. I go, I smile, I speak, I shop. And shop, and shop, and oh, yes, shop. I love flea markets, and the SDCC dealer's hall is like the world's best combination of "the comic book store" and "the indoor flea market." Only this flea market has an artist's alley. Life is good.

9. As part of my preparation for San Diego, I took my mother for a pedicure last night. (There's logic here, I swear. The logic is largely "I didn't want to walk home after getting my nails done.") Neither of us is much of a pedicure girl, but sometimes it's nice to just let somebody attack your heels with a pumice stone. Besides, I have super-cute shoes for the parties in San Diego—kitten-heeled green Italian leather—and they require having super-cute toenails to go with them.

8. Alice woke me up five minutes before my alarm by kneading the hell out of my hip, and then throwing herself down across me like a fuzzy blue blanket possessed of most imposing puffiness. This was far, far more pleasant than being woken by the actual alarm could possibly have been, and made hauling my carcass out of bed much easier. After the Blue Team decided to let me get up, that is. Between the two of them, I really don't get to do much that my cats don't approve of.

7. Next up in my reread of the collected works of Stephen King: The Stand. This is one of my five favorite books of all time. Just having it in my purse makes me happy. (Not as happy as IT, which is why IT is slated for rereading at the end of August/beginning of September, but surprisingly close.)

6. According to this week's new releases list, the next volume of the collected hardcover Creepy comes out tomorrow. (Ironically, I won't be able to pick it up until next week, since, well, San Diego, but just knowing that it's on the trucks makes me happy.) These books are basically my childhood in handy, easy-to-shelve form, and their very existence enhances the universe incredibly. I am a happy girl.

5. Rosemary and Rue comes out in forty-one days. Forty-one is the thirteenth smallest prime number. (The next is forty-three, with which it comprises a twin prime.) It is also the sum of the first six prime numbers (2 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 11 + 13), and the sum of three primes (11 + 13 + 17). I love forty-one for being prime, and I love Wikipedia for knowing all this crap.

4. I have a hula hoop! And when I get home tonight, I get to use my hula hoop! I get to stand in the front yard and hula like I've never hula'd before. Well, actually, just like I hula'd last night, only maybe a little bit better, because I've had more practice. I can't take my hula hoop to San Diego, so I have to get my hula in now, while I still can.

3. Rebecca has BPAL waiting for me in San Diego. Specifically, Rebecca has a fresh bottle of Bad Luck Woman Blues (basically my signature aromatherapy calm down Seanan, you can't unleash the pandemic perfume) and a bottle of the new Zombie Apocalypse scent. I am a lucky girl.

2. I have season one of Leverage on DVD. Tonight, I will sit on my couch, ink art cards, and watch con men, thieves, and grifters as they do their con man, thief, and grifter things, and my cats will purr, and the DDP will be cold, and the tomato sandwiches will be incredibly drippy and get all over the damn place, probably causing at least one incident with my art supplies, and life will be good.

...and finally...

1. I am healthy, I have a cute haircut, I have orange toenails, I have a book coming out in less than a month and a half, I have wonderful friends, I have beautiful cats, and I'm about to take off for the world's biggest comic book convention. Life doesn't suck.

How's by you?

I'm almost finished packing for DucKon; sometime in the next hour, my mother will be showing up to whisk me away to the San Francisco International Airport, where I will board a shiny silver skybird and soar across the country to Illinois, hence to have exciting adventures. The cats know something is up, but aren't entirely clear as to what it is. I expect them to get seriously pissed in a few hours, when I go away and don't come back. And that's okay.

My schedule is posted both here and on my website. I will have ARCs of Rosemary and Rue with me all weekend, so you can see them in all their glory. I'll also have copies of all three albums, and the complete remaining run of the new chapbook. So, y'know, you can take a little piece of me home with you, if you really want to.

I'll be back and back to normal on Tuesday. I may or may not be around much this weekend, depending on Internet availability and how much sleep I manage to get. Amy is bringing pumpkin vodka to the convention; The Agent is already in the air; I'm really having a pretty damn fabulous day, all things considered. And Jean Grey is still dead.


Sometimes I love my life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catch you soon!

Well, I'm about to get going; I've got a few last non-computer things to do around the house, and then I'll be off to catch the bus to get to the train station to take the train to get to the airport to board the big metal sky-bird and fly to Michigan. I'll be in Ann Arbor for the next two days for business reasons, getting back to California late Wednesday night.

(If I'm very, very lucky, I'll make it to my hotel in time for Fringe tonight. But I'm not counting on it.)

Entries will be taken for the random draw Rosemary and Rue giveaway through Friday morning, when I'll be selecting the winner. Remember, if your number comes up, you'll have seventy-two hours to claim your prize before I give it to somebody else, so it's a good idea to keep an eye on what's going on over here. There will absolutely be other giveaways over the next several months, since it's a great way to get copies out there into the world. Also, if you're attending the San Diego Comic Convention, word is we'll have a stack of the lovely things for handing out. A stack. How cool is that?

There have been a few alterations to the Appearances Page over at my website. The lovely folks from DucKon will be getting me my panel schedule in the next week or so, so you'll have plenty of time to plan our awesome adventures in discussing _________. I'm hoping for a nice plague, and maybe something that's dead, but still moving around.

I'm going to miss my cats, but I get to meet jimhines in the flesh for the first time. In all things there are balance.

See you when I land.

After a completely uneventful flight -- my in-flight entertainment deck was busted, so I put on my iPod, cued up my "all 'Rain King,' all the time" playlist, which is ninety-plus minutes of versions of the same song, put my head down, and passed out -- I landed safely in Seattle at a little past eleven o'clock last night. I was promptly met by Satyr and Sandi, the editors of Ravens in the Library, as well as good friends of mine, who bore me boldly off to Chez Tinney, hence to be united with my new giant feline companion.

(Alice is, in fact, giant. She's more than doubled in size since the last time I saw her, and may actually be bigger than my mother's new puppy, Smudge. She's also fluffy as hell, and possessed of the world's plumiest tail. I'm afraid there may be truth to my mother's accusation of my desire for a Maine Coon being born partially out of tail withdrawal.)

Today, my plans include "finishing the new Vel story" and "dealing with kitten contracts," as well as a healthy, happy dose of "work on art cards." Life is pretty good. I'll be here in the Pacific Northwest through Sunday, when I'll fly home to begin the laborious process of introducing Lilly and Alice to one another. Since they're both pretty mellow cats with vast amounts of fur, I'm not anticipating much trouble, although you should be anticipating kitten pictures sometime early in the next week.

Oh, and since I seem to have forgotten to announce it -- my mother got a puppy! Her name is Smudge, after jim_hines's fabulous fire spider, and she's gorgeous. She's half Malamute, half Rottweiler, and has those amazing crystal blue Malamute eyes. She was taken from her mother too young, but I've hand-raised kittens, and was able to bully my mother into going to the pet store for puppy formula. (I try not to bully my mother. But when the puppy's too young, we buy it the formula. This is how the game works.) Smudge is doing fabulously, and she's getting bigger by the day. We're introducing her to Lilly a little at a time, since she's likely to accompany my mother when Mom comes over to clean at my place.

So I'm safe, alive, and doing just fine, thanks to the wonderful people at Virgin America and their wonderful flying machines. How's everybody else, out there in the world? I lack deep thoughts today. Give me yours.

April.
April will be kicking off with a flight to Seattle, where I will sign many copies of Ravens in the Library -- still available for purchase, at least for right now, although I can't guarantee how long that's going to be the case -- and attend a fabulous Kitten Sundae show. Kitten Sundae is Vixy and Tony (Vixy is the topic of my song 'Oh, Michelle,' as well as being the reason for the Alice verse in 'Wicked Girls Saving Ourselves'), SJ Tucker, and Betsy Tinney, and I'm very excited to have the opportunity to see them live and awesome.

While I'm in Seattle, I'm going to be picking up the latest addition to my feline family from the Pinecoon Maine Coon Cattery. Her name is Alice, she's a blue tabby, and she's incredibly gorgeous. I'm very, very excited. And not just because having somebody else to play with may cause Lilly to start allowing me to sleep through the night again.

May.
May will find me attending BayCon -- my second-ever BayCon as an actual working novelist. I intend to wander around giggling hysterically and looking starry-eyed. It's fun! Also, my friend Jennifer Brozek is the Toastmistress, so there's some exciting wackiness basically guaranteed.

June.
June is Duckon! The convention where you can see me and Jim Butcher duke it out over...well, whatever the programming division tells us to duke it out over. The convention where you can catch me, Vixy, and Tony all on stage at the same time! The convention where you can watch me perplex my handlers by demanding to walk to 7-11 every morning! This is going to be such a blast. The blast radius is just made bigger by the addition of a huge percentage of my posse: The Agent will be in attendance, as the convention's Agent Guest of Honor, and so will Tara O'Shea, my incredibly talented graphic designer and webgrrl. I'm always at my Halloweentown Disney Princess Best when I have my support staff to distract me with shiny things. We're going to rock Illinois so hard.

July.
Oh sweet, sweet San Diego ComiCon, how I've missed you. How I've longed for you. And how happy I am that I get to come back to you this year. I promise I'll never leave you again. There are rumors of some exciting Rosemary and Rue-related happenings at the convention -- happenings which may rock you all the way down to the tips of your toes. I recommend stopping by the Penguin Books booth to learn the whole story...where again, you can see me in Halloweentown Disney Princess mode. Always scary, always amusing. Plus, I'm almost certainly going to have convention-exclusive art cards again, because That's Just What I Do.

July will also see the release of Grants Pass, a post-apocalyptic anthology from Morrigan Books. It includes my short story, 'Animal Husbandry,' written specifically for the project and never seen anywhere else. This was my first anthology sale. Words can't begin to express how thrilled I am.

August.
It's blonde vs. Canada as I make my way to the Montreal WorldCon. Who will win? Probably the fries with gravy.

September.
Nothing major. Just, I don't know, the OFFICIAL RELEASE of MY VERY FIRST FULL-LENGTH NOVEL, Rosemary and Rue. I've been living with October 'Toby' Daye as an invisible roommate for so long that I barely remember life without her, and now the whole world gets to be properly introduced. I'm excited beyond words. I've actually been crying, I'm so happy. I think you're gonna like her. We're starting to confirm the dates for my various Bay Area signings and events; trust me when I say that you absolutely, positively, CANNOT MISS my book release party at Borderlands Books. How awesome is it going to be? So awesome that the Earth may shake.

Trust me.

October.
The Ohio Valley Filk Festival! Unfortunately for my haunted corn maze aspirations, World Fantasy 2009 has been shifted to Halloween weekend, so I'm going to be flying back to California immediately after the convention to spend a weekend in San Jose, making friends and influencing people. Or at least staying upright.

There are no signings or book-related events confirmed for my October visit to the magical Midwest, but I wouldn't be surprised if a few of them decided to materialize. Just saying.

November.
I like sleep. I understand people do it sometimes. Also, I understand that cats appreciate it when their owners sit still. So I'm going to try these things, and see if they keep me alive a little longer.

December.
Prepare for 2010. How did we get here already?

The year is filling up fast, and more things are bound to appear as the months draw closer -- look at how detailed the first few months are compared to the later ones. If you want me, book early, book often, and bribe.

Whee!

1. I'm not dead! Since it wasn't widely advertised before I went away, I'm in New York for Business Purposes (tm) this week, hanging out with the wonderful crew at DAW, meeting other fabulous people (hi, Colleen!), and generally being A Good Little Author. This has resulted in some truly fantastic things, many of which I'll be sharing when I'm not so tired that I just want to fall down and sleep for a month or more.

2. No, I haven't had a chance to try data recovery tricks yet -- I haven't had a chance to sleep. My flight landed at 7:05 AM on Wednesday, and I've basically been running since then (witness this being my first opportunity to get to the Internet). I'll be at Jon and Merav's on Saturday, and Will will be there; between Geek Thing One and Geek Thing Two, if it can be fixed, it will be fixed. I'll keep everyone posted.

3. On a similar note, while I try to answer every comment made on this journal, I'm not even going to pretend to bother with the data loss post. There's lots more of you than there is (are?) of me, and I'm tired enough that I'd start quoting nursery rhymes and giggling a great deal. Not actually attractive or entertaining. Well, potentially entertaining for you guys, but...

4. There's news on the Ravens in the Library front: while there have been printing delays, the editors are expecting books Real Soon Now. So if you were planning to order a copy before you missed the first wave, now's the time. Remember, I'll smile pretty and even sign it for you if ask me to.

5. Tomorrow, Sheila (my editor) and I are going to go to the New Jersey Pine Barrens, land of cranberries, blueberries, and cut-rate horror movies. I'm very excited about this, because I'm, well, still me.

That's all for right now; the good stuff gets to wait until I'm awake. I miss everybody. Be home soon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Please note that the things in my subject header will not necessarily be presented in the order in which they were, um, presented. Don't mind me, I'm very blonde today.)

Travel plans, take one: As many people have been able to put together from my vague rumblings, I'm heading for New York a week from, um, yesterday. Yeep. This is almost purely a business trip, as I'm going out to see my publisher, have lunch with my agent, and generally behave like a grown-up member of human society. (Kate even managed to get me into wool pants. Everybody say 'thank you, Kate.') I'm taking a red-eye flight from San Francisco on Tuesday night, and I'm going to be gone until the Ides of March. Internet access will almost certainly be limited during this time, because dude, I'll be in New York. Also, this is going to be Yet Another Trip to the East Coast during which I don't get to go to Maine. Given the estimated temperature in Maine at this time of year, that's probably for the best.

Travel plans, take two: I'm taking a much shorter trip at the beginning of April, flying up to Seattle to see my dearest darlingest Vixy and Tony, catch the pure hammered awesome that is Sooj in concert, and, oh, right, pick up my brand new kitten from Pinecoon Maine Coon Cattery. Pinecoon is run by Betsy Tinney, who's also serving as one of my subject matter experts for Discount Armageddon. It's weird to think that I'm about to have a cat that isn't a Classic Siamese, but I wasn't able to find any local catteries with kittens -- and I'll be honest, I fell in love with Betsy's cats the minute I walked in. I'm not happy about leaving Lilly alone while I go to New York, but at least I know her only cat status isn't going to last for long. Plus, my kitten? Is awesome.

Number geekery: According to today's count, Rosemary and Rue comes out in 180 days. This is a good number, but I liked yesterday's number better, because 181 is a strobogrammatic prime. A strobogrammatic prime is a prime number that, given a base and given a set of glyphs, appears the same whether viewed normally or upside down. It's one of the only primes that can't be defined with a simple algebraic equation. Also, depending on the way a given language writes its numbers, certain primes change from strobogrammatic to not strobogrammatic. And this is so cool. There just aren't words for the awesome. (I am a total number geek.)

And now, behind the cut, the cool.

( We cut because this graphic is not small, and breaking your browser is rude.Collapse )

1. If you wander on over to my website -- which is getting shinier and more functional every day as the back-end code comes online, all hail porpentine, who has slaved over a hot keyboard for our delight -- you may find a few truly awesome things waiting for you. Specifically, we now have icons and wallpapers, designed by the splendid taraoshea. All icons and wallpapers are free for use! Print them out, stick them to things, do whatever makes you happy. Well, except for posting them to your Deviant Art account and claiming that you made them. That would make the Tara sad, and she knows where I keep the chainsaws.

2. As you explore the site, you may see that there is now a landing page for the 'Velveteen vs.' stories. Yes, the link currently takes you to the big COMING SOON graphic, but its very existence means that, before too terribly much longer, there will be an online archive of the adventures of Velma 'Velveteen' Martinez as she struggles to survive the foul mechanations of the Marketing Department without giving in to the urge to just kill somebody already. Because the best way to show you care is with random semi-comic superhero stories, you know. My comic book store tells me so.

3. Speaking of my comic book store, the new best thing ever is walking into the place where I go for my weekly fix (I am such an X-junkie) and being greeted by Joe (the owner) with a cheery "Do you have CDs for me?" That moment, right there, was enough to validate my entire musical career.

4. Oh, and as an FYI for those who share my comic book habit -- Monday was a holiday, but it wasn't a shipping holiday. So today is still new comic book day, day of comic book-y goodness. Although according to the release lists, very little has come in that holds any actual interest for me. That's probably for the best, what with Wondercon right around the corner. Ah, sweet Wondercon. I wonder how I've lived so long without you.

5. I spent several hours last night at Borderlands Books, hanging out with Ripley, the freaky demon suede alien kitty-face (aka, 'the elder of the store's two resident hairless cats'). The more time I spend with her, the more I start to think that maybe life with a Sphinx wouldn't be so bad. Sure, they're naked and weird-looking, but they're also smart, friendly, and incredibly soothing to hang out with. This is probably a sign that I need some sort of 'cats are not like Pokemon, you do not need to collect them all' intervention.

6. While I was at Borderlands, I chanced to notice their list of top sellers for January, and jimhines grabbed the #10 slot with The Stepsister Scheme! Way to go Jim! The weird naked cats were very impressed.

7. For those of you who missed the (admittedly rather quietly delivered) memo, I will be leaving California for a short time in March, as I hop on a plane and fly out to New York for more fun with my friends at DAW. I love visiting my publisher, largely because it gives me an excuse to say 'my publisher' a lot, and that's still a sort of shiny-and-new thing for me. I am assured that by the time An Artificial Night (the third Toby book) hits the shelves, I won't find it all quite so exciting, but I really hope not. We all need things that make us irrationally happy. Anyway, my schedule is pretty packed while I'm there, so I'm not going to be looking to host a meet-and-greet or anything, but it's definitely going to represent a break in my standard routine.

8. Zombies are still love.

9. I have now managed to go three months without starting a new novel. For some people, this may seem like an unremarkable 'I just went three months without bursting into flame' or 'I just went three months without unleashing a global pandemic'-type statement, but for me, it's the result of Herculean efforts in the arenas of focus and restraint. I love starting books. The freedom and the scope of it all is just a wonderful thing. But I can be strong. I can be controlled. I can keep myself from getting beaten by my editing pool.

10. This coming Sunday is the official release date for Ravens In the Library, a benefit anthology assembled to help with SJ Tucker's unexpected medical bills. It's got an awesome list of authors, and, on a more personal note, it's got my first official this-is-in-print anthology appearance: my short story, 'Lost,' will be the final piece in the book. I'm very excited.

That's my wending for Wednesday. What's yours?

I appreciate my privileges, really I do, but right about now, the idea of expressing myself in an entirely coherent and cohesive manner is pretty much entirely beyond me. Conflikt was wonderful, magical, and completely exhausting, in the way that a good working convention essentially always is. There was music, there was laughter, there was passing out in the con suite and complicating the judging of the songwriting contest...the usual things.

(Having now been a Guest of Honor, as well as a Toastmistress -- which is a much more common gig for me -- I have to say that I was right all along; Toastmistress is a far more tiring position. Although all those laps around the hotel probably contributed a lot to my end condition.)

Last night was a post-convention gathering for fire-spinning, fondue, cuddling with kittens, and generally existing as happy people in a happy people world. I was prompted to tell the story of my crazy uncle and his ravens, since Batya and Merav went and wrote them into a parody; Sooj and Betsy did their version of 'Tam Lin' for a deeply appreciative audience; we broke out 'Wicked Girls' and rocked the house. The usual assortment of wonders. And then I spent essentially the entire day in transit, resulting in me hauling my broken, battered carcass over the threshold to be mugged by Siamese cats.

All but one of the pre-orders designated for at-con delivery actually got delivered (I'm going to mail the last one). Only about half the chapbooks were complete by the con, due to unexpected issues with chickenpox, and they sold out with astonishing speed; the rest will be made available when they're finished (thus actually allowing people who got the first chapbook, but weren't there this weekend, to have a shot). I have bunches of new art cards in need of coloring; right now, I doubt I could stay inside the lines if you paid me.

Bed now. Coherence later.

My plane flight was uneventful, in that exciting 'I got on the plane, sat down, took my pills, closed my eyes, and we were on the ground in Seattle, with the nice flight attendant shaking my shoulder and asking whether I was dead. As I was not dead, I deplaned and met Vixy at the baggage claim. (Can I just say, any entry that includes 'and met Vixy at the baggage claim' is basically made of wonderful and win? Because it is.)

Back at the Brainpan*, we relaxed for a bit before Sooj and K came back, accompanied by Tony and Torrey. Everybody else went down into the basement to chatter, while I passed out cold on the living room couch. I'm a big fan of passing out cold. Especially when I know I'm going to wake up before eight the next morning (which I did). I had a parade of lovely people all morning long, as first Vixy, then Tony and Torrey, and finally Sooj and K rose from their slumbers and ambled off into the day.

I got some time to just hang out and talk with Sooj and K, which was wonderful. We all see each other at conventions, but there's so rather time to really just hang about and talk. They're good people. They're really, really good people. Which just makes me happier that Ravens in the Library is coming up to help with the medical bills.

I am now alone in the house, since Vixy, Tony, and Torrey are all at work, and Sooj and K have been carried off by Betsy. I'm going to finish the next chapter in Late Eclipses of the Sun, and do a bit of hammering on some other projects, before I allow myself to take advantage of Tony's fantastic cable television.

Hi, Seattle. Miss me?

(*Casa de Tony, which is also Vixy's current place of residence.)

I have packed my suitcase, checked my carry-on, spoken to my editor, and answered all my major pending email (as in, I still have what is most politely referred to as 'a fuck-ton' of email to answer, but none of it is actively on fire at this specific moment in time). I have verified the location of my photo ID, verified the airline and the airport I'm destined for -- I have a nasty tendency to remember when I fly, but not remember where I'm flying from -- and picked up my comics from the comic book store.

I have given Joe Fields, the owner of my comic book store, a copy of Red Roses and Dead Things, because it made him laugh, and I think anybody who's lucky enough to have a comic store guy like Joe should make him happy whenever it's possible. He's just awesome. I have packed food for the journey, since I have to leave my house at four to catch a seven-thirty plane to get to Seattle by nine-thirty, and that's a bit long to depend on airport food and Tootsie Pops.

I have packed emergency Tootsie Pops.

This is my first convention of 2009; the beginning of what currently promises to be a terrifyingly exciting, action-packed adventure of a year. As I was discussing with Vixy the other day, the Everything You Ever Wanted Fairy doesn't just show up with a few of the things you've casually wished for over the years, she shows up with everything, and you'd better be ready to cope. Perhaps I should have requested the attention of the Some Of The Things You've Ever Wanted Fairy. But I think that, in the end, I'm genuinely happy with the one I have.

All right, 2009; I'm going to leave the house real soon now. And in the interests of being a proper Halloweentown Disney princess coyote girl, I say...

...bring it on.

And now, my third set of art cards. The thing about art cards is that they're small. So going end-to-end on one of them is a matter of an hour, tops, and that assumes I can't find the colors that I want in the big bucket of markers, or that something got screwed up somewhere, or that my TV show got really interesting all of a sudden. So I just keep doing more of these. (In the meanwhile, I've also totally rewritten Discount Armageddon. Let's see if anyone notices.) Anyway, here's the next set of six art cards. Again, clicking the graphic will take you to the larger version.



From top to bottom, left to right, you have my second Grants Pass art card, featuring my protagonist, Mercy Neely; a random picture of me (as drawn for my ongoing comic strip) with a pumpkin; a set of three cards modeled around Jim Hines's The Stepsister Scheme (my mother asked me to, and I tend to try to keep her happy), and my third Discount Armageddon/InCryptid art card, introducing another of our major cryptid races.

My next set of six art cards is finished, and will be scanned tomorrow, or possibly Wednesday in-between 'getting home from work' and 'running for the airport.' Either way, I'm busting ass to get things done around here before it's off into the wild blue yonder, and back to Seattle.

Excelsior!

10. I appear to have started doing art cards. (Because, as Brooke said, I need something to do with all that spare time that I had just lying around.) For those of you who are unfamiliar with the art card 'concept,' they're little pieces of original artwork, done on 2.5"x3.5" cards. Mine are Micron and Prismacolor on bristol paper. I've done three so far, one to go with Grants Pass, one to go with Ravens in the Library, and one of Velveteen and Sparkle Bright during their first year with the JSP. I figure I'll use them as book giveaways. Right now, they're just being colorful and soothing; two things that I need more of in my life.

9. My reboot on Late Eclipses of the Sun appears to have done exactly what I was hoping it would do; the new first chapter is about ten times stronger, faster, better, and generally bionic in all possible regards. Now I'm working on the revisions to chapter two, just to really lock down the changes to the continuity, and once that's done, I can start processing my editor's notes on An Artificial Night. I'm spending so much time with Toby these days that we should really start charging her rent, I swear.

8. I write more poetry than is strictly healthy, sometimes in batches of two to five hundred poems at a time. (These batches are called 'Iron Poet' rounds, and are a variation on a standard writer's workshop exercise. They make me happy. I may be crazy.) I managed to write five poems yesterday, including a counted devan (although I skipped the internal rhymes on the zipper, because I didn't feel like giving myself a migraine) and a counted technical terza rima. Take that, everyone who said there was no use for structured poetry in the modern world!

7. My story in Ravens In the Library is getting an accompanying illustration. This is...this is amazing. Not just because the illustration itself is amazing -- I saw the sketch, and it is -- but because I didn't expect an illustration at all. It made me cry. More and more, I begin to believe that 2009 is the universe giving me one big incredible birthday present.

6. It's not entirely visible to the naked eye, but my website continues to creep closer and closer to being entirely done. We should be getting the first few essays up there soon, and Chris is working on the functionality that will allow me to update and edit the front page all on my lonesome. Meanwhile, Tara works secretly behind the scenes on Wonderful Surprises that only a golden graphics girl could possibly provide. Prepare to be amazed.

5. I get to spend the weekend working on Discount Armageddon! (Quoth Dan: "I don't know anybody who gets as excited about being told what to work on as you do.") I love deadlines, I love directions, and I love Verity. She's so happy to see you. And so happy to kick you in the head. Pleasantly, I just put together my Verity playlist last night, consisting almost entirely of dance music and things with a BPM of over 120. Because Verity just looooooves the beat, yo.

4. It's new comic book day! Always the most wonderful day of the week. At least in theory -- other days are sometimes surprisingly awesome.

3. All my television is coming back on the air. I'm a huge TV freak. It's what lets me decompress after a hard day of working and writing and worrying about working and writing; it's also what I do with the other half of my concentration when I'm inking. (Most of the shows I watch are more verbal than visual, and have clear cues when I actually need to be paying attention to the screen.) I really appreciate the fact that the things I watch are staggered enough to make sure I almost always have something new.

2. This time next week, I will be heading for the airport, heading for the sky, and heading for Seattle, baby.

...and the number one good thing about today...

1. Oasis just called me, and THE CDS ARE DONE!!!!! They're mailing them out from the Oasis warehouse today, and they should supposedly hit my doorstep on Friday. This gives me time to actually arrange for CDs to reach Seattle, prep the first batch of pre-orders to mail out (probably the first twenty or so, more if I can possibly swing it), and generally get my hysteria out of the way. It also gives me time to use the CD boxes to build myself a little fort and crawl inside it to hide from the universe.

What's new and awesome in the world of you?

Hey, folks. So...

1. I am still in Seattle, land of weather that is entirely alien to me.

2. I'm not dead. I'm just experiencing some rather awesome technical difficulties when it comes to accessing Livejournal. Seriously, it's like my data is being delivered by carrier pigeon. I can post -- barely -- but answering comments is a task akin to stumping the Sphinx at Trivial Pursuit. So posting will remain infrequent until a) this problem is resolved, or b) I go home.

3. The house concert on the 3rd is still on, for all you local folks. The set list is smoking, and we're going to be doing a variety of songs that most of you won't have heard before. Including, terrifyingly enough, 'Dear Gina.' (I love this song like burning, it's creepy as hell, and it's always creepier live. That's just how this stuff works.) Be there or be, I don't know, elsewhere.

4. Voodoo Doughnut is quite possibly the place where good pastry gets to go when it dies. I mean, I ate a Captain Crunch doughnut. How often do you get to say things like that, in this world or in any other?

5. I've finished the latest 'Velveteen vs.' story, which will be going up here soon, and have mapped out the next six or so. My poor little superhero, she never gets any breaks. But she does occasionally get broken. Coming soon, 'Velveteen vs. the Eternal Halloween.'

6. I've also finished doing the base inks for the Conflikt II program book cover, and I'll be doing the zip-a-tone over the next few days. It's essentially made of awesome. Awesome, and tentacles. Which are essentially the same thing, so hey.

7. I've finished through chapter twenty of The Brightest Fell, also known as 'Toby Daye, book five.' My 'write far enough ahead that even if you get hit by a bus, the series can continue for years' plan is definitely working. Memo to self: avoid the bus.

8. Interpretive dance of the bacon on John Scalzi's cat = totally fun, and totally funny.

9. I do, however, miss my own cat, and expect her to start trying to destroy Oregon in her maddened rampage any day now. Which, well, would be amusing, if nothing else.

10. I don't really have a tenth thing. The list just looked incomplete and a little bit lonely when I tried to leave it off at nine, so I figured I'd come up with something. What I have come up with is, apparently, the fact that I got nothin'.

How's with all of you?

My bags are packed; my carry-on is filled with books, electronics, plush dinosaurs, and things to eat on the plane (since when you combine 'picky eater' with 'allergies,' feeding me becomes a heroic quest in and of itself). My Siamese is in a tizzy as she tries to figure out what's going on, and how she can stop it from happening.

The house still smells like the turkey and cranberry sauce that I made last night for dinner; I smell predominantly like Bath and Bodyworks Pumpkin Pie shower gel and Bad Luck Woman Blues BPAL perfume. My bedroom has managed to actually remain clean throughout the packing process, unless you count the unmade bed, which I don't. Never take a trip after making everything absolutely perfect. It's bad luck. Encourages the world to think 'oh, this space has already been prepared for the funeral.'

My iTunes has been running on random shuffle all morning long, and every other song is by the Counting Crows. The soundtrack of my life, for most of my life, and (in that little thirteen-year-old corner of my heart where everything gets to be absolute and undebated) the most perfect band that's ever been. (This is also the corner of my heart where there's never going to be another book as good as IT, or another movie as perfect as Slither. I have a very stubborn heart sometimes.)

In a little under an hour, I'll head for the airport; in a little over four hours, I'll be on a big silver sky-bird, taking off for parts well-known and adventures unknowable. I have my new camera, I have directions to Voodoo Doughnut, and I have my flash drive (since it's well-known that the best way to drive me to distraction is to take it away from me). I have my writing goals and my rehearsing goals and my personal goals and my turkey and cranberry sauce sandwiches, and I'm ready for a winter wonderland.

I hope today is wonderful for all of you, whether it's something you celebrate or just a day where all the stores are closed and you can't find a parking place at the movie theater. Go gladly today. Let the world be filled with magic.

And if you want to spare a few good wishes for my flight, well, I'm sure it couldn't hurt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Six months ago today, my agent called me while I was at work to tell me that I was getting everything I wanted for Christmas, because we'd just sold the first three October Daye books to DAW. This was right after we finished putting book one, Rosemary and Rue, through a really torturous revision process -- seriously, it was like taking a machete and a staple gun to a classroom full of kindergartners -- and started the revisions on book two.

A month later, book two, A Local Habitation, was ready to be turned in to my publisher, and a month after that, in July, I went to New York to turn myself in to my publisher. It was the most surreal summer of my life. It hasn't really gotten less surreal since then.

In September, I turned in my final author-draft (distinct from the final 'my editor has had time to review and request rewrites' draft) of book three, An Artificial Night, to DAW, and started working seriously on book four, Late Eclipses of the Sun. (No, it's not under contract. Yes, I believe in being prepared.) And during that time period, I finished Newsflesh and Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues, and started on The Mourning Edition and Discount Armageddon.

It's been a busy six months.

We don't have a publication date for Rosemary and Rue yet (obviously); my new website has yet to launch; all the frantic writing and revision has done a number on my social life and my recording schedule; we haven't even started shopping the next few books. There's going to be a lot of work that has to get done before I can actually start saying 'go buy my book' and praying for an audience. I know that. And it doesn't matter, because six months ago today, we sold my first novel.

I am still the happiest blonde there is.

I'm currently marooned in the Denver International Airport, due to fun wackiness with my flight back to the Bay Area. (Apparently, the gods of travel thought that Chris and I had too many dinner plans for tonight. Ah, well.) Since I am relatively self-amusing -- I'm the authorial equivalent of Tom Sawyer, I can almost always find a dead rat and a string to swing it with -- I settled down on a power outlet, and have just finished the first chapter of The Brightest Fell, also known as 'Toby Daye, book five.'

(I swear, there really is a method to my madness. A lot of that method centers on the fact that I'm going to be a lot more curtailed in my writing once Rosemary and Rue comes out and book promotion eats my life. So this is sort of a 'start walking early because you know it's the only way to get yourself even remotely close to your destination before the army of frogs attacks.)

(And yes, Jennifer, I've also been working on my GP story this trip. I just hit the point where all the talk of plague was making my neck itch, and since I have a mild cold, that was not a good thing. Work will resume after medication.)

I'm not done with Late Eclipses of the Sun -- there are more edits to be received and crunched through, and I haven't even reached the 'give it to your agent and see if it inspires projectile vomiting stage of things -- but I'm sufficiently finished that working on the next book is the logical thing to do. At least if you're me.

Whee.

(For purposes of this post, 'post-weekend' means 'Thursday night to now.')

Well, things continue to be hectic around here, which is exactly how I like them, so I really can't complain. Since Thursday, I have...

* Finished the initial revisions on Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues. This was draft one-and-a-half, to let me fix all the continuity glitches and authorial stupid that had managed to creep in around the edges; now I'm ready to kick off draft two, during which I'll lose 10% of my hard-earned word count and hit all my characters repeatedly with a hammer. Because that's social. I'm feeling super-good about this book, and I love, love, love the fact that it's finally, blessedly finished.

* Purchased tickets to head for Seattle for my first pre-Conflikt rehearsal. Conflikt is the Pacific Northwest's own filk convention, and I'm going to be their Guest of Honor in 2009 (it's a January convention). I'm super-excited, but I'm also super-nervous. Rehearsal will make the nervousness become less while the excitement becomes more. It's a match made in heaven. Plus I get to hang out with all my awesome Seattle area friends, and that never fails to make me happy.

* Processed a bucketload of edits on Late Eclipses of the Sun, aka, 'Toby Daye book four,' aka, 'Seanan, if you just sold the first three, what the hell is wrong with you that you're working on the fourth one already?!' OCD cat is working marginally ahead of the curve, yo. OCD cat is also endlessly amazed by the editing process, because, well...I'm a pretty good author. I think I can say that without bragging, since, y'know, sold the trilogy and all. But give me a bunch of good proofreaders with machetes, and things become amazing. I'm watching this book just get better and better, and it's incredible.

* Finished the third chapter of The Mourning Edition, bringing me one step closer to world domination through zombies. I like world domination through zombies. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

* Entered about ten pages of data into my Toby Continuity Wiki, where it gleams in hyperlinked, clickable glory, thrilling my OCD heart to no end. It's gorgeous. I'm trying not to think about the part where it's the beginning of several hundred cumulative hours of work, because it really is going to make my life infinitely easier, and just dwell on the part where it's gorgeous.

* Started Discount Armageddon, book one of the Price series. Because I know you're gonna say it anyway, say it with me now: CHEESE! AND! CAKE! Also, ballroom dancing, snarky chameleon girls in fancy hotels, apartments sublet from Yeti, and La Parkour. It's good at be this kind of crazy.

My weekend was awesome. How was yours?