Just last week, I announced that I would have a story in the YA anthology Wicked Pretty Things. I was extremely excited; this was going to be my first young adult publication, and I really, really want to start publishing some of my YA (werewolves and movie stars and sociological experiments, oh my). It seemed like a great opportunity.

Then I heard that one of the authors, Jessica Verday, had pulled out of the anthology. Which seemed a little odd, given how late we were in the process.

And then I found out her reason. To quote her blog post on the subject (originally posted at http://jessicaverday.blogspot.com/):

"I've received a lot of questions and comments about why I'm no longer a part of the Wicked Pretty Things anthology (US: Running Press, UK: Constable & Robinson) and I've debated the best way to explain why I pulled out of this anthology. The simple reason? I was told that the story I'd wrote, which features Wesley (a boy) and Cameron (a boy), who were both in love with each other, would have to be published as a male/female story because a male/male story would not be acceptable to the publishers."

...uh, what? That's not okay. I mean, really, that's not okay. I began, in my slow, overly careful way, to get angry. Then I saw a statement from the editor, saying that the decision had been entirely hers, and had been in no way a reflection of the publisher's views. I sat back. I thought very, very hard. And I decided that, barring any additional developments, I would stay in the anthology, rather than hurting the other authors involved with the project by pulling out.

Naturally, there were additional developments. In light of the ongoing situation, my own discomfort with this whole thing, and the fact that discriminating on basis of sexual orientation is never okay, I have withdrawn my story from the collection.

And here's the thing. There is absolutely no reason to censor a story that was written to the guidelines (which dictated how much profanity, sexuality, etc. was acceptable, as good guidelines should). If Jessica had written hard-core erotica, then rejecting it would have made perfect sense. Not that kind of book. But she didn't. She wrote a romance, just like the rest of us, only her romance didn't include any girls. And she didn't get a rejection; she got her story accepted, just like the rest of us. Only while we got the usual editorial comments, she got "One of your characters needs to be turned into something he's not." And that's not okay.

Books do not determine a person's sexual orientation. I was not somehow destined to be straight, and led astray by Annie On My Mind and the Valdemar books. I was born with universal wiring. I have had boyfriends and I have had girlfriends and I have had both at the same time, and none of that—NONE OF THAT—is because I read a book where a girl was in love with a girl and I decided that being bisexual would be a fun way to kill a weekend.

But those books did tell me I didn't have to hate myself, and they did tell me that there was nothing wrong with me, and they did make it easier on everyone involved, because here was something I could hand to Mom and go "See? It's not just me, and it's not the end of the world, and it's not the only thing that defines me." Supposedly, ten percent of people are gay or bi with a tropism toward their own gender. It stands to reason that there should be positive non-hetero relationships in at least ten percent of YA literature. And they're not there. And things like this are why.

I am not withdrawing from this book because I'm not straight. I am withdrawing because of my little sister and her wife, and because of my girlfriend, and because of my best friend, and because of all the other people who deserve better than bullying through exclusion. Thanks to Jessica for bringing this to our attention, and thank you to everyone who has been supportive of my decision to withdraw.

I am sorry this had to be done. I am not sorry that I did it.

1. If you want to reach me, please, email. Not Facebook messenger; not LJ messenger; email. If you don't have my email address, the "contact" form on my website is extremely easy to find, I promise. I get those messages.

2. That being said, I am not the world's fastest email correspondent. I do my best, I really do, but I have a) email from my day job, b) my personal mail, c) my business mail, d) Mira Grant's mail, and e) all my other mail to deal with. Expect at least a seventy-two hour delay on anything that's not urgent.

3. Unless you're my agent, my publisher, or my boss, I decide what's urgent when it's in my inbox.

I'm as slow as I am because, in addition to all the things above, I'm trying to write three books, keep up with the comments on this blog, make new entries on this blog, update my website, and two or three dozen other things at any given time. The only way I could answer every email I receive in a swift and satisfying way is if I stopped doing anything else. My publishers would not be okay with this decision. Honestly, neither would I, as I think my head would explode.

So please, if I am not swift in answering your email, be patient. I understand wanting a reply now now now—I do it too; I'm doing it right now, waiting for answers on some really cool website graphic possibilities—but I just can't. Not if you want me to stay on top of everything else.

Thanks for understanding.

1. I have done mailing! Very nearly all the mailing, in point of fact; the only things that are a) paid for/contest prizes, and b) still in my possession are Lu's posters (trying to make sure I didn't double-pack them) and seawench's ARC (returned by the post office, only just got confirmation that it was safe to ship a second time). So there is no mail waiting for me to do something with it! I dance the dance of joy.

2. Since this weekend is the Traveling Circus and Snake-Handling Show's fourth appearance at Borderlands, my mother's been cleaning my house from stem to stern, to get it ready for company. This, naturally, upsets the cats. Thomas has been expressing his displeasure by sulking in the kitchen and knocking over the trash can. He doesn't seem to understand that neither of these behaviors is going to do anything beyond getting him scooped and scolded.

3. Having assessed my current stress levels and their effect on my ability to get things done, I have taken a major step toward reducing them. Namely, I have set aside the to-be-read pile, turning my back on all those beguiling new stories and unfamiliar authors, and have picked up my dearest, most faithful literary companion: I am re-reading Stephen King's IT for the first time in well over a year. This is seriously the longest I have gone without reading this book since I was nine. So yes, it will be sweet balm for my stressed-out soul.

4. Safeway has two-liters of Diet Dr Pepper on sale for eighty-eight cents this week. This, too, is sweet balm for my stressed-out soul, but in a different way. A more hyperactive, I CAN SEE THROUGH TIME, kind of a way.

5. Still on the New York Times bestseller list. I check every day, just to see if I'm still there. Call it part of my monitoring routine against dimensional slide, and let it go. I feel like I should do something to celebrate, like another round of book giveaways or something, but that's going to have to wait until my capacity to cope catches up with the rest of me. Say around next Tuesday, at the current rate.

6. I am the Rain King.

7. Last night's episode of Glee made me happy the way the show used to make me happy in season one, and that was a wonderful thing. I'm glad I bought the soundtrack before the episode actually aired; it let me get used to the original songs the way I am to the covers, and assess the performance on the show based on the actual performance, not on "WAIT WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY SINGING." It's a thing.

8. Last night I dreamt a detailed remake of Nightmare on Elm Street, updated for the modern era, without sucking righteously. It was scary and strange and really awesome, and it says something about my psyche that I still don't think it was a nightmare. Sadly, I woke up before the end. Stupid alarm clock.

9. The bigger my cats get, the more I realize that I need a bigger bed. Which means I need a bigger bedroom. Which means I need a bigger house. Anyone know where I can find Dr. Wayne Szalinski's shrinking/enlarging ray?

10. Zombies are love, be excellent to one another, and party on, dudes.

I cannot brain today. I have the tired, and the office cold has decided to hang out in my head, making me slow and lurgy and reluctant to commit to anything more strenuous than sitting around my bedroom, not putting on pants.

So here is a picture of Thomas cuddling with Amberlee the velociraptor, intended to signal that this post is an open thread. Tell me things! Any sort of things you want. Also, I am declaring amnesty from my normal "answer all comments" policy. So I may answer comments on this thread, and I may not. Either way, my psychotically cute kitten will be snuggling with a dinosaur, and that proves that life is AWESOME.

Enjoy!

So wow. February is more than halfway over, and I'm trying to clean everything up on my end of things, in the hopes that doing so will enable me to, you know, accomplish something for a change. Because I've just been sitting around doing nothing up until now. So...

1. All the damaged Wicked Girls CDs have been claimed, although some are still pending payment. It's highly unlikely that any more damaged CDs will show up; Mom and I have checked the boxes thoroughly at this point, and it looks like the unpleasant surprises are over. Thank the Great Pumpkin.

2. I am mailing the last of the paid-for "Wicked Girls" posters tomorrow. This means that, if you are waiting for a poster, you should have it in approximately a week (all the posters being mailed are going to US addresses). If you have requested a poster but not yet paid for it, you have ten days before I delete your name from the list, and release any held numbers back into the wild. If you're not sure whether you've paid or not, you can always contact me.

3. I'm going to be setting up my final pre-release giveaways over the next week or so. Finances are forcing me to restrict them to US addresses/international addresses only if you're willing to pay for postage. I'm really sorry about that. It's just that it costs me approximately three dollars to mail a book inside the US, and outside gets very spendy, very fast. Specific rules to come.

4. I'll doubtless be saying more about this later, but as we're getting into the period where people start getting excited about Deadline: I do not have ARCs. I am not going to have ARCs. Please don't ask me for them, please don't comment on other giveaway posts saying you'd take an ARC of Deadline instead of the stated prize, just please, please, don't. There are no ARCs of this book. I'm not holding out on you, I just don't got the goods.

...and that's our administrative junk for the night. Join me next week, when "administrative junk" will probably include port and drunkenly yelling at my rambunctious kitten.

Things people have said to me recently:

"You look tired."
"You should take some time, you know. Some time to rest."
"You should sleep more."
"You have to take care of yourself."

At the end of the day, I do look tired. Why shouldn't I look tired? I am, after all, working two essentially full-time jobs: I get up at 5am every day to travel from my suburban home into San Francisco, where I put in an eight-hour day before repeating the commute in reverse, and spending the evening writing, editing, and trying to stay on top of my frankly horrifying inbox. When all my must-do items are checked off the list, I collapse on the couch with my cats, and watch mindless television to power down my brain. And then the next day, I do it all over again. On the weekends, I either write like my shoes are on fire, or go to conventions, where I have a lovely time, as long as I don't think too hard about how much catching up I'm going to have to do later.

Why do I do this? Why am I working two jobs, with a massive commute in the middle? It's not because I particularly need the money. I know how to make a pound of hamburger last for a week; it's not pretty, but I can do it. I may like to buy books and toys when the cash is coming in, but I do pretty well with amusing myself on what I have then the cash isn't there. So what's the big deal here?

The big deal is medical insurance. The big deal is what can happen to you when you don't have it. The big deal is that not everyone has friends who can put together an anthology of massively awesome authors to save them from bankruptcy* when they get sick, as people have a natural tendency to do.

Melissa Mia Hall didn't have the same option. She died last week of a treatable medical condition, because she couldn't afford to go to the doctor. She died alone in the night, of something modern medical technology could easily have fixed. And yes, they would have treated her if she'd gone to the emergency room, but she didn't go, because she knew—as the uninsured always learn, as I learned, when I didn't have insurance—that it would be expensive, and she couldn't afford to risk losing everything.

My mother doesn't have medical insurance. Neither does my youngest sister. I work two jobs because I need to have medical insurance, and because I live in honest fear of the day Rachel calls to tell me that Mom was having pain and didn't say anything, because she knew it would be expensive. And if that sounds overly dramatic, well. Take a look at either of the examples listed above. One woman who sought medical care and would have lost everything without her friends stepping in; one woman who chose to die rather than gamble with the loss of everything she'd worked for.

And that's why I look tired, and why I wish people would stop telling me how tired I look. I know how tired I look. I just don't see where I have any other choice.

(*If you missed this: Ravens in the Library was an anthology project organized to pay the medical bills of SJ "Sooj" Tucker when she got hit out of the blue by an illness that required serious hospital care. You can see my original post on the matter here. Without that book, Sooj would have been in a lot of financial trouble. I think that book saved her life as lived, even as the hospital saved her life as living.)

There's something magical about airport departure lounges. They're these strange, impossible liminal spaces, where the world is infinite just because it's so limited. I spend a lot of time in them these days, what with the conventions and the work and everything else. The TSA at San Francisco is starting to know me by name.

I am heading home from Boston, where I just spent a wonderful, terrible, magical, mundane, perfect, flawed, absolutely incredible weekend as a Special Guest of Arisia 2010. The convention was warm and welcoming and filled with people who hugged me and were happy I was there. I had a terrible allergic reaction Sunday morning and spent most of the day sick even unto death. I sat on a stage with Cat and talked about gulper eels and Lord Byron's penis. I tried to make the hotel internet work, to mixed results. I curled up in a warm bed with two of my favorite people sitting nearby, and watched great television. I wandered around unfed and confused.

I had a fantastic convention. I am glad to know that someday, I will go back there. I am so very glad to be going home. And that, really, is the convention experience. You go to a strange place, you enter the airport departure lounge of your soul, and you do your best to fall in love with the people you meet there. And then you all get on planes and go home to your separate places, and you wonder whether you'll ever fly that route again.

My bags are packed. I'm ready to go. The city streets are filled with snow. I hate to wake you up to say goodbye...

But I will. And soon, Great Pumpkin willing, I'll say hello.

Thank you for everything.

The "Best of 2010" lists have continued to come in, and I'm totally amazed and delighted to find that I keep appearing on them. Who'd have thought, right? First, the big one:

FEED won the 2010 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Science Fiction Book!

Oh my sweet pumpkin and pie, you guys, I won! I mean...holy cats!!! This is totally exciting, and totally amazing, and I am so overjoyed. I'm going to see about getting some new wallpapers up, to celebrate.

Moving on to the next item on my list, I actually wrote two of Bookbanter's top fifteen books of 2010, with Feed coming in at #1, and An Artificial Night coming in at #9. Where's the love? There's the love. Oooooh, yeah.

Oh, and also? Both Feed and An Artificial Night appear in the 2010 Powell's Books Staff Picks, which is pretty much entirely bad-ass and amazing and I am so totally over-the-moon.

Is this a mostly content-free post? Yes, this is, although, you know, lots of squealing and delight on my part. But I am so jet-lagged from my attempts to escape from the snowy wilds of Georgia (not a sentence I have many occasions to use) that this is about all I'm capable of. More actual substance later. For now, please accept this sizzle in place of steak.

At least it's pretty sizzle, right? So pretty...

Best of!

Okay, bits and pieces, because I am a crispy, crispy cookie right now. Seriously, I wrote ALL THE THINGS last night, AND indexed half a box of My Little Ponies, AND updated my spreadsheets, AND cleaned up after Thomas, who had inexplicably decided to make a horrible mess in the bathtub (I'm sure I'll be dealing with this more in the days to come, and will spare you any further details; at least he did it on an easy-clean surface). Then, this morning, I got up to discover that my transit card had vanished in the night, leading to a pre-6:00 AM shredding of my bedroom. So I am not the bubbliest bunny in the burrow.

So first, Orbit is giving away poster prints of the covers to Deadline and Feed as part of the Epic Loot holiday series. Details are available at the link above, and they're selecting their winner tomorrow, so you should head over there and sign up if you're interested. They're gorgeous pieces. They'd look amazing on your wall.

The best thing about the people that I love is the way that they make me lizard-happy. I'm just saying. Find something (or someone) that makes you lizard-happy, and hug it a whole bunch. Assuming this won't get you slapped with a restraining order, injected with neurotoxic venom, or just plain slapped.

It's no secret that I'm a My Little Pony nut; see also, "regular references to cleaning and sorting and indexing the collection, so that I can figure out which Ponies I still need to either upgrade or acquire." (Hint: The answer is "quite a few.") Well, I'm also a big My Little Demon fan, and wanted to be sure you'd seen these ultimate expressions of my 1980s horror girl heart. I have Sparkle Plague framed and hanging in my bathroom, and I'm looking wistfully at Toxic Popsicle and Voodoo Vixen. It's possible that my home decor is a trifle unnerving.

(I will be working industriously at making it more unnerving in the weeks to come, as I should be receiving my cover flats for Deadline, have received my art prints for Bill Mudron, unearthed a few old commission and art pieces in a drawer, and have a companion piece to my Princess Alice in production. So eventually, people will walk into my house, look at the walls, and run screaming before something eats them. This is a goal.)

I'm trying to get all caught up with the world, but things are slipping a bit just now. So I beg you, be patient with me, and do not force me to devour your soul to demonstrate the foolishness of prodding tired blondes with sticks.

Happy Tuesday!

So my "little cold" turned quickly into "my big cold," and from there turned into my "oh sweet Great Pumpkin, let me die" cold. Isn't the human body awesome? I have treated it, thus far, with chicken soup and television, including a multi-hour House marathon. No matter what I've got, they've got something worse!

The cats, self-centered beasts that they are, love-love-love it when I have a cold that requires me to stay at home, crumbled under fluffy blankets and yearning for death. Why? Because it means I don't move much, and am, instead, available for endless petting of the cats. This is exactly how the world is meant to be...at least if you're asking the cats. I do love my cats. That's why they are not yet mittens.

(I'm getting my revenge, actually. I'm making them eat their Science Diet. They hate Science Diet. Mwahahahahahaha.)

The nice thing about a cold, for me, is that I get to spend the night sleeping the deep sleep of the Q-dosed heart, with its attendant, incredibly vivid dreams. I went to the premiere of the Feed movie last night in my sleep, you guys, and it was totally awesome. So hey, there's something to be said for viral amplification, right? Right?

Okay, writing this has exhausted me. I'm going to go watch more House.

My last day in Australia dawned bright and disgustingly early, as I needed to be at the airport while the birds were still trying to figure out what the fuck was up with that big shiny "sun" thing. Jeanne and Mal drove me to the airport, where they dumped* me summarily on the curb and sped off into the sunrise. Jerks.

In I went, to check into my flight. I had made a point of arriving hours and hours early, since I needed an aisle seat. Bad back + seventeen hour flight + middle seat = removed from the plan by the EMTs, because I would no longer have been capable of moving my legs. As it was, by requesting an aisle seat at the absolute rear of the plane, I was able to get what I needed, and nobody had to get hurt. On I went, to security!

Security lines are so much faster, nicer, and less like being trapped in a really fucked-up post-cyberpunk horror movie when they're not controlled by Homeland Security. I'm just saying.

I wandered around the airport for a little while, buying breakfast, soda, and cheesy souvenirs for the people who would mug me at home if I didn't bring them anything, and managed to use up the last of my Australian currency. Then apologetic airport employees chased us all away from our gate, as Homeland Security requirements forced them to comply to American security standards...which, apparently, meant "make everybody mill and get frightened because you won't tell them what's going on." Yay! But eventually, there was a plane.

The actual plane ride was fine. I slept, I read the new Terry Pratchett (I Shall Wear Midnight), I watched a lot of movies, I finished the September Sparrow Hill Road story, I drank more Diet Coke than was strictly good for me. Because this flight was heading for America, land of the free, we were not allowed to congregate near the restrooms or be out of our seat for any "unnecessary" reasons. Like, you know, not becoming one gigantic muscle cramp due to sitting down for seventeen hours. I'm in favor of safety, America, but did it ever occur to you that crippling tourists hurts the economy? I'm just saying.

The plane landed. Ker-thump. And the fun part began.

See, in order to get to my flight from LA to SF, I needed to clear Customs. In order to clear Customs, I needed to clear Immigration. I was on a very tight transfer, so I was very grateful for the existence of citizen and non-citizen lines...until I got there and no one was respecting the damn signs, making all the lines a mixture of people returning, and people coming in. Why was this a problem? This was a problem because all visiting aliens must be photographed and fingerprinted and grilled at length, and this makes processing glacial.

I fidgeted. I squirmed. I tried not to panic. I passed through Immigration, trusting that someone on the other side would know what was going on, since I was exhausted, jet-lagged, and barely staying on my feet. I picked up my suitcases, asked several people where to go, and was pretty much shoved out of the terminal to sink or swim on my own, as was everybody else. A sign outside said to go right; I went right, because I obey signs when exhausted.

Sadly, the sign led to a large and very confusing airport terminal, with lots of lines and contradictory signs and people. I asked a pilot how to get to Gate 31. He pointed. I went. I went, and...there was no Gate 31. So I, exhausted and jet-lagged and not sure where my feet were anymore, started crying.

To the airport security employee whose name I didn't get, who helped a crying blonde girl with pink camo luggage by getting her to the correct security line, to the front of the line, and to her gate five minutes before her plane was supposed to take off: thank you so so very much. I hope you get many good things in this world, because you are all that stopped me from having a massive panic attack in the middle of LAX.

And after all that, of course, my plane was delayed. I sat down at the gate, plugged things in, and called people to let them know I was home, with periodic calls to Mom to update my projected arrival time in San Francisco. Eventually, they let us board.

I do not remember the flight from LA to SF. I passed out as soon as I sat down.

Mom met me at Baggage Claim in San Francisco, and answered the question of whether she'd heard about the Campbell by bringing me balloons and crying all over me. I gave away most of the balloons to small children at the carousel, with Mom's blessing, and then we finally, finally went home.

With a stop at the comic book store on the way. A girl's gotta have her priorities, after all. And that, oh best beloveds, was Australia.

I can't wait to go back.

(*By "dumped" I mean "respectfully off-loaded, and hugged me a great deal, before tearfully leaving." Isn't precise vocabulary fun?)

I added two more fixed dates to my rough-and-ready 2011 calendar* this morning. In the process, I forced myself to acknowledge that 2011 is closer than not at this point; in just a few short months, I'm going to blink, and it's going to be a whole new decade. What the hell, chronology? I was just getting used to 2010! Years are like shoes: as soon as you have them broken in, there's a hole in the heel, and you have to get a replacement.

Right now, looking at my projected calendar is sort of like taking a pick into the Looney Toons version of Hell, since all that I've really bothered to list are conventions (either guest slots or "can't miss it" situations), release dates (which provide some very odd entries), and due dates for various projects (somehow managing to be odder still). There's nothing on there about birthdays, or leisure activities, or, you know, sleep. It's all just work.

I have a lot of work coming up.

Please consider this a blanket reminder that, especially right now, as I strive to be Christopher Walken, my weekends and free time fill up literally months in advance. Barring last-minute cancellations (which do happen), the general answer to "are you free this _____?" is going to be "no, I am not," possibly accompanied by hysterical laughter.

This isn't because I don't love you.
This isn't because I'm trying to avoid you.
This isn't because I've decided that I have better uses for my time.

What this is is me trying to keep all my balls in the air, in part, by being very draconian about scheduling. So if you want my attention, ask early, ask often, and ask via email, not through IM, Facebook invite, or comments on my journal. Email gets remembered; all the rest of those get forgotten.

Hell, maybe I'll get truly ambitious, and carve out time to take a nap.

...it could happen.

(*My Franklin-Covey planner refills used to come with single-page sheets for each of the months in the following year, thus allowing for basic planning before the next year's planner refill became available. That wasn't the case in 2010, which is why I'm now using the one-page-per-year 2011 from my 2009 planner refill. Yes, this is a little thing to be whining about, but dammit, I'd grown accustomed to the ease of having a whole second year slumbering at the back of the planner.)

So my "take four days to recover from jet lag" plan appears to have been a good one, except for the part where it wasn't actually long enough, and I am still passing out at inopportune moments. In the kitchen while making lunch. In my desk chair while writing. In the theater while watching Resident Evil: Afterlife (because the T-virus is apparently soothing unto me).

I need to take a shower. I'm afraid I'm going to drown.

So here: have an open thread. Talk about whatever, post whatever, do whatever (although it would be nice if you could keep the Campbell congrats on the "I won the Campbell" post, just to make them easier to answer). Do not expect prompt replies, as I may be asleep. If you do not see activity from me for twenty-four hours, I have drowned in the shower, and the cats have eaten me. I expect it will take them a week or so to figure out the LJ interface and begin posting.

Game on!

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

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

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

* Fish the cat toys out from under the bed.

* Brush the cats.

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

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

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

* Laundry.

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

* Fish the cat toys out from under the bed.

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

* Fish the cat toys out from under the bed.

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

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

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

* Watch Warehouse 13.

* Sleep.

I am home from Spokane, Washington, where I had a fabulous time as Spocon 2010's Music Guest of Honor. I'll actually post about it later, when I'm fully awake and capable of thoughts beyond "shower good, port pretty." For right now, have a roundup of the review links that came in while I was offline.

quippe has posted a review of Rosemary and Rue on Livejournal's own Urban Fantasy Fan community, and says "Seanan McGuire's novel, the first in a series, is an entertaining introduction to a carefully constructed urban fantasy world where Fae and humans live an awkward side-by-side existence." Also, "An interesting urban fantasy whose central character is very different to the type usually found in this type of fiction and a carefully constructed world with a huge amount of potential, this is an entertaining novel and I will be reading more of this series."

quippe has also posted a review of Feed, and says "Mira Grant has created a world where zombies and technology exist simultaneously and her carefully thought through society was a joy to read. Although the mystery element was a little too perfunctory and played second string to the world-building, the book ends with a set-up for the mystery to be developed in the sequel and I shall definitely be reading it."

Over at Book Addicts, a review of Feed has been posted, and says "The night I finished Feed, slept with my living room lights on because I couldn't handle sleeping in a completely dark apartment. I knew the dangers going into this when I picked up a book about Zombies, but I plunged in anyways. Yes, the size of the book is a little intimidating, but...just read it. The hooks go in and you’re dragged through this book like being dragged behind a boat on nothing more substantial than a piece of cardboard. It's terrifying and thrilling and we won't talk about the boat-and-cardboard-incident."

Yay! There's also a fun new interview with me-as-Mira, where some totally new questions were asked. It's well-worth checking out. Plus, it comes with an awesome contest. Take a look!

...okay, back to Toby. There's a new review of Rosemary and Rue up at All Things Urban Fantasy, which says "Rosemary and Rue, which gets its title from Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale, is a gritty and glorious true urban fantasy. I defy you to put this book down after the first chapter." Wow! Also, "Overall, Rosemary and Rue shocked me with how good it was." Double-wow!

Finally (for right now), Miss Geeky has reviewed Feed, and she says, "I really enjoyed Feed and I'm now really curious to what else Mira Grant has written (this is her first book as Grant, but she also writes as Seanan McGuire). Feed has a great story, which sucks you completely in. And it's got a fascinating world to discover along the way."

Well, folks, that's the weekend. I will now stagger off to bed. Tomorrow, I'll pretend to be coherent.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

I am returned from the wilds of Pasadena, where a fantastic time was had by all! I bought shinies from Springtime Creations and books from Book Universe; I ate tasty food and drank a lot of Diet Dr Pepper; I survived an entire convention with my mother firmly in tow, which may well qualify as one of the tasks of Hercules. Things I have learned: If I want to be two hours early for anything, I need to start saying we're late three and a half hours ahead of time. Also, most people consider my idea of "reasonable walking distance" to be entirely insane. But I sort of knew that part already.

My concert was fantastic, thanks entirely to the sound crew, Paul Kwinn, my handsome (and talented) stunt guitarist, and Maya Bohnhoff, my lovely (and talented) stunt...um, well, stunt Vixy. Gosh, I miss Vixy when I have to do a concert without her, but Maya really helped to make that loss a little less sorely felt. My great, great thanks go out to everyone involved with making it an awesome event. I am so honored to have had the chance to perform for you. Also, big thanks to Rebecca, who picked me and Mom up from the airport, drove us back to the airport, and really spent a distressing amount of the weekend in my company.

I'll post the full set list soon, but I just want to note that I covered Talis Kimberley's "Death Danced at My Party," at Paul's request, and it was awesome. Maya found a totally creepy harmony, and I just sang the shit out of that song. I am so happy to know such talented and amazing people.

I met Tim Powers, Todd McCaffrey, Stephen Blackmoore (newest member of the DAW family!), his lovely blue-haired wife Kari, and Ryan's new kitten, Mouse. I ate way too much challah. I came home to blue cats who hated me for about four minutes before snuggling and reassurances became way, way more important.

It was a good weekend.

So here's the thing: I don't want to be lectured about my reliance on thumb drive technology. I've gone over the pros and cons with a dozen people, and for the most part, my methodology is very safe. I perform frequent backups of the whole drive, as well as doing local file backups and mailing files to off-site readers. I avoid contact with magnets and with other things that seem likely to do me a mischief in the woods. I am a careful person. Internet storage systems don't work for me, for a lot of reasons, and as long as I have a day job, I need to be able to transport my work with me, without being tied to a specific system or reliant on a stable Internet connection.

With all that said, this has been my weekend:

Friday night, I got home, watched an episode of The West Wing, and did my basic household chores. Then I sat down to get some work done. This began with the insertion of my thumb drive into the USB port. "The format of Drive G is not recognized. Format Drive G?"

Uh, no. I removed the drive, blew on it, and tried it in a different port. Same result. I rebooted. Same result. I pulled out my netbook, booted it up, and tried again. Same result. I called Rey in tightly controlled hysterics. He came over, and—after spending about an hour and a half fighting—took my thumb drive away. He's supposed to come back tonight to finish file recovery. I've done basically no work this weekend, but I've only cried myself to sleep once, so that's something, right? Right?!

Oh, Great Pumpkin, I need a drink.

In happier news, there are still pendants created from A Local Habitation available from Chimera Fancies. Not only are these amazing pieces of unique, wearable art, but there are three extra-special pendants currently up for small-scale auction, here:

1. Born to Neverland.
2. Save Faerie.
3. Tybalt's Magic.

These are just incredible. Plus I got to write BPAL-style bumper text for them, which was, like, super-fun, and I will probably be unable to resist doing in the future. I am such a geek. Anyway, pretty shinies to admire and desire and obtain, and you should totally take a look. I love Mia's work so.

More contests next week, more review roundups, and hopefully, more sanity, once I have my files back. I have not had a good weekend.

Last Wednesday, I was feeling lousy, in that annoying, "incipient cold" sort of a way. I spent the evening doing as little as humanly possible, and went to bed early, hoping this would be enough to stave off the inevitable.

It was not enough to stave off the inevitable.

I woke up on Thursday feeling like I'd been beaten up in the night. I couldn't breathe. Possibly because I couldn't breathe, I became dizzy if I stood up for too long, I couldn't focus, and anything more complex than dozing on the couch while watching endless episodes of The West Wing was pretty much beyond me. I literally called my mother to bring me orange juice and soup. Neither of which had any flavor at all. After sleeping through most of the day, I went to bed praying that the worst was over.

The worst was not, in fact, over, as Friday brought with it several exciting new symptoms, including a deep, bone-rattling cough and stomach issues, neither of which had been invited to the party on Thursday. Oh, yay! I got off the couch a bit more often on Friday, since I had to do some running to the bathroom, but it was still a primarily stationary day.

Why is this relevant to your interests, beyond the vague "aww, poor baby, you've been sick" factor? Because I just went literally four days with essentially no computer contact whatsoever. I didn't do any writing until Sunday evening, when I finished the Sparrow Hill story for August. I didn't answer any email at all. I didn't even put on outside clothes until Saturday. So if you're waiting for something from me, or you think that I'm ignoring you, I promise, it's just my mind-boggling nasty summer cold.

I still sound like I have tuberculosis, or at least a cousin of same, but I can walk now, and that's a massive improvement. Things are returning, glacially, to normal.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled babbling.

Today was my signing event at the Pleasant Hill Borders. I woke bright and early (too bright, and too early; after waking up at 6:20 AM, I went back to bed for another hour and a half), walked to the grocery store for a fresh fruit breakfast, and came back to the house to shower and watch The West Wing while I prepared myself for the day ahead. Wonder of wonders, Mom wasn't just on time, she was early, and we got on the road with time to spare.

After stopping at a yard sale en route, we reached the Borders, parked, hit the Farmer's Market for several pounds of cherries, and went into the bookstore, where I had a small table dedicated to my use, thoughtfully outfitted with some Sharpies and a few bottles of water. People showed up. I signed things. We chatted. It was very nice, although the sheer size of the stack of books made me feel rather like I was letting down the team, and should have been sneaking ninja-like around the store, sliding paperbacks into purses and making people pay to avoid shoplifting fines.

(One fascinating facet of being a "visiting author" in a bookstore: no one wants to meet your eye, for fear that they'll be forced by guilt to buy your book. Much like a Venus flytrap, I had to adopt a strategy of "ignore them until they're too close to escape." Also, once the bookstore employees stop looking you in the face, it's time to leave.)

We eventually took a break for lunch and errands, running to the Best Buy for a new camera* and then to the Texas BBQ for tasty, tasty lunch. I had BBQ chicken, and we split a blackberry cobbler, to which I can only say HOLY CRAP NOM. After that, it was back to the bookstore for a pleasant hour of reading all their comic books while not actually signing anything. Oh, well.

And then the fun started.

See, when we left the bookstore, the car wouldn't start. Several people ignored Mom's pleas for a jump, leading her to call a friend to come jump us. The battery was essentially a zombie at this point, obeying our commands only so long as we didn't feed it salt...so it was off to Pep Boys to buy a battery. Um, yay? I was so tired I was yawning the whole time, and read several old Women's World magazines, which taught me that a) desserts are good, but b) I shouldn't eat them ever, or I'll be fat and no one will love me, and c) men like sex, presumably after a good dessert that I'm not allowed to eat. Again, um, yay?

Having purchased a new battery, Mom drove me to the comic book store, and I salved my wounded soul with graphic novels. Which I will now read. So if you're wondering where I am? I'm in the back of my house, reading the new X-Babies.

Snikt.

(*Yes, this means kitty pictures soon. You're welcome.)

Tomorrow, Feed is officially released. That's one. Saturday, Feed is guaranteed to be on sale everywhere. That's five. Numbers, numbers, numbers. I am defined by numbers. Numbers are my bread and my butter, and the things that keep me from going crazy in a bad way.

Both of these are prime. That's something.

I'm a lot mellower about this book release than I expected to be. This may be because I'm getting better at this whole "book release" thing, or it may just be that I'm still completely exhausted following all the crazy surrounding A Local Habitation and finishing Deadline, and simply lack the energy to be insane. I still teared up the first time I saw it on an actual shelf in an actual store (the Borders in Pleasant Hill). Which reminds me, these are the locations where you can buy a signed copy, right now:

* Borders, Pleasant Hill
* Barnes & Noble, San Bruno

Both stores also have signed copies of the Toby Daye books. If you're not local, or want something personalized, remember that I'll be appearing at Borderlands Books on Saturday, May 8th. The store does take requests for personalized books to be mailed basically anywhere on this planet. You can email or call them, and I'd be just tickled to sign a book for you during the event. (Plus, well, if you can't support your local by buying a signed book, be a sport and support my local.)

One day, five days, and my second book release of the year is fully and finally underway, the next grand adventure off and running. I am elated and terrified, and tired.

I need a nap.

When will you rise?

I spend a lot of time trying to explain literary rights to my mother, who is trying very gamely to learn all the weirdness of the world of publishing. It probably doesn't help that my understanding in many arenas remains fuzzy, so my explanations involve a lot of waving my hands and going "blah blah blah fishcakes." She takes this with reasonably good grace. I have a good mom.

Right now, I keep trying to explain foreign rights sales. Because you see, right now—during the conveniently timed volcanic ash cloud, oops—the London Book Fair is going on. This is one of the biggest foreign rights sales events in the world. If I want Toby in the United Kingdom and the Masons in Japan, this is very likely where it's going to happen. I am thus, I think understandably, a little twitchy about foreign rights at the moment.

I've had awesome luck with foreign rights, in part because I have an awesome foreign rights agent, who works very hard to get my stuff out there. Toby has been sold in Germany and Russia; the Newsflesh trilogy has been sold in Germany. I'd really like a UK edition of the Toby books, and a French edition of both, but there's no counting on it; I need to sit back and wait to see how things settle out. But oh, how I wants it, my precious. I wants it bad. There's the artistic reason ("I just want more people to be able to enjoy Toby's adventures!"), and then there's the capitalist reason ("I really, really want to go full-time before I catch fire from lack of sleep").

My actual reasons are somewhere in the middle. I genuinely do want my books to be accessible to the entire world...and I really, really want to get up every morning, write for a while, take a walk, write for a while longer, and not have a commute further than bed-to-chair. Foreign sales aren't likely to change the world completely, but as many authors of my acquaintance can tell you, good worldwide positioning can make a huge difference in your end-of-year bottom line. Maybe even a full-time writer (or part-time day job) level of difference.

And this is why I'm crazy this week.

So let's review, shall we? I started this week a) exhausted from a comic book convention, b) with my back doing its best to murder me in my sleep, c) under deadline, and d) with the announcement that I am on the ballot for the 2010 Campbell Award. The first two have been sorting themselves out—I've had time to sleep, and my back is recovering, since I'm taking things relatively easy—but I'm still under deadline, and I'm still on the ballot.

(This whole thing feels a lot like when I first sold the Toby books. All I wanted to do was go up to strangers and be like "I just sold my first series!" All the strangers wanted me to do was leave them alone. So my friends wind up with a lot of really random-ass interjections. "What do you want for dinner?" "A tiara in Australia!" "Yes, but other than that, what do you want for dinner?" "I'm on the ballot!" "So we're having Baja Fresh again?" I try to keep this as non-offensive as possible, but really, it's like a constant GOTO loop at the back of my brain right now.)

Last night, I sat down with the goal of banging out 2,000 words on "Through This House," a Toby short set between Late Eclipses and The Brightest Fell. It's potentially for an anthology, and I wanted to make some definitive progress before I allowed myself to watch this week's episode of Castle. When I came up for air 4,000 words later, the first draft was done, and I felt vaguely as if I'd been hit with a brick. Tonight, I'm going to try to pull the same trick with "Build a Better...," an Alice/Thomas/colony of over-excitable pantheistic demon mice short (being written as the other option for the same anthology). Then, this weekend, I'll try to get three out of three by whipping through "Last Dance With Mary Jane," the Sparrow Hill Road story for June.

Sleep is for the weak and sickly.

In the cracks between the rushing, I've been dealing with taxes, trying to clean my room whilst entirely incapable of bending (it's a good thing I have flexible toes), and revamping both my websites, since the whole "on an internationally-published ballot" has been shoving a lot of traffic in my direction. It's fun like hysteria! And to be honest, I really am loving every minute of it. I am a sad, sad bunny-girl sometimes. So sad.

Next up, a webcomic endorsement, a Feed giveaway, some weird monkey noises, and a funky little dance. Whee!

Ah, Spring in California. When the grass is green, the sky is blue, the birds sing outside your bedroom window at five o'clock in the morning like little feathered assholes, and a young author's mind turns to thoughts of copyedits. And rewrites. And word counts. And deadlines. And did I mention that I'm mildly insane, like, all the time right now?

Right now, I have open on my desktop two short stories ("Through This House," starring Toby and the gang, and "Build A Better..." starring Alice and Thomas and the mice), the current manuscript for Deadline, and the sixth of the Sparrow Hill Road stories ("Last Dance With Mary Jane"). I don't have The Brightest Fell open, but that's because this is a Deadline day. The two alternate, to try to preserve the last thin slivers of my sanity. In addition, I'm working on essays, interviews, other short pieces...

Someone asked me recently why I'm obsessing about Internet cage matches and art cards and bad zombie movies. The answer is simple: because they're silly and harmless and don't actually care whether I have pants on. And I need the break.

I'm about three days out from going into overdrive on Feed, which will consume my life until the page proofs for An Artificial Night arrive. Those will consume my life for a while, and then go away just in time for my editorial revisions on Deadline. And so it goes, and so it goes. So if you're wondering why I seem a little bit, well, shallow right now, it's because the deep end of the pool is filled with sea serpents and other toothy things, and I am enjoying the remainder of my toes.

Some days, you think about politics, philosophy, and art. Some days, Pliny and Socrates are the defining stars of your existence. Some days, the question of which came first—the chicken or the egg—is all-consuming, worthy of endless contemplation and consideration. Some days, just the movement of the heavens is enough to take your breath away, leaving you locked in endless awe of the cosmos and all its wonders.

Some days, you're just not that deep.

Guess what kind of day I'm having?

I spend a lot of time locked in intellectual pursuits. Maybe "figuring out strategic survival tactics and social innovations following the zombie apocalypse" and "building a better pandemic" aren't your standard thought experiments, but they're time-consuming and they take a lot of mental processing power. I guess it's only natural that I'd occasionally get exhausted and want to spend a few hours gazing off into space, counting air molecules while Food Network amuses the cats. (Seriously, they love Iron Chef, although Alice has been known to attack the screen when Bobby Flay comes on.) This also accounts for my love of movies like Dinoshark*, one more gem from the SyFy mines.

Tonight, everything will change. Tonight, I have edits to process on two short stories, a battle plan to write for tomorrow's official opening of the San Diego International Comic Convention hotel block, and at least eight pages of The Brightest Fell to get through. Tonight, I need to sit down and seriously outline two potential urban fantasy shorts, one Toby-based, one InCryptid-based. Tonight, I must brush the cat. But all of that is tonight, and right now, it's daylight, and I'm just not that deep.

Thinking is hard. Let's have strawberry ice cream.

(*Over the course of a two-hour movie, Dinoshark eats a kayak, several swimmers, an expedition boat, a crocodile, and a helicopter. Dinoshark is totally metal, yo.)

And now we reach the end of our countdown to the release of A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]; it comes out tomorrow, and I don't feel like going into negative numbers. ("Reason -6 why I am getting really tired of this game...") One more day. One more day before the sky falls on my head and I suddenly have to admit that book two is actually out.

Aigh.

On the plus side, this means that as of tomorrow, I can start going crazy over different things. You know, things like "do people like the book?", "will people like book three?", and "will I be the top-selling paperback at Borderlands for the month of March?" (Hint on that last one: they do mail order, they'll have signed copies, and I would really appreciate it if you could order from them if you wanted a signed and personalized book but can't get to any of my signing events.) I can also resume going crazy over the process of writing book five, The Brightest Fell, which is kicking my ass in the most delightful of ways. Seriously, this book is like "no, you don't know what's going on, now shut up and sit down." If I don't wear my seat belt, I may go through the front windshield of the book the next time it hits the brakes. It's very odd, but sort of awesome.

Amy the Fiddler arrives tonight, fresh from the wilds of Alabama, where she's been staying with my Halloween Family for a week. I envy her immensely, but I'll forgive her instantly, because it means I get an Amy, and I really need an Amy right now.

In other news, I have uploaded a bunch of new strips to the "With Friends Like These..." strip gallery, and will continue updating it as I get them re-sized for easy viewing. We're actually moving into the ones where the art isn't quite so primitive. Yay!

And now we must rinse.

Okay. So this article appeared in the New York Times, explaining, in brief, how authors are greedy bastards trying to screw the e-book reader. (I'm sorry, are my prejudices showing there? Oh, wait. Yes, they are. Because I like being able to feed my cats.) To quote one of the more charming bits:

"This book has been on the shelves for three weeks and is already in the remainder bins," wrote Wayne Fogel of The Villages, Fla., when he left a one-star review of Catherine Coulter's book KnockOut on Amazon. "$14.82 for the Kindle version is unbelievable. Some listings Amazon should refuse when the authors are trying to rip off Amazon's customers."

So let me see if I've got this straight, shall I?

1) The author sets the price, not the publisher.
2) The author is, apparently, getting a huge percentage of the cover price.
3) The right way to object to this is to make people think the book sucks.
4) It doesn't matter if this means the author can't sell another book; they shouldn't have been greedy.

Um, what?

There is this incredible, eye-burning, heart-shattering impression that all authors are rich; that we sign that first contract, receive that first check, and spend the rest of our days lounging on the beach in Bura-Bura while dictating our works of creative genius to a scantily-clad cabana boy named Chad. If this is true, something's wrong with my authorial contract. I've sold six books—by the standards of any beginning author, I'm doing pretty well—but Chad has yet to put in an appearance, and I'm still not sure where Bura-Bura is. Instead, I get up every morning at 5AM to travel an hour and a half to get to work, spend my evenings hammering away at my keyboard and praying for another sale, and all my grocery purchases are heavily influenced by what's currently on sale. I make a weekly trip to Target to stock up on frozen dinners and kitty litter, because I can't actually afford to let my cats crap on silken beds of cedar shavings hand-milled for them on a little organic farm in Minnesota. I buy sweaters at Goodwill, and consider myself blessed by the Great Pumpkin when I find an Ann Taylor top for five dollars, because it saves me a trip to the mall that I really shouldn't be making. And I'm doing well.

The fantastic rolanni has posted a very realistic view at a working author's finances. This is someone who's been publishing for years, and has actually reached the stage of getting royalty payments (not every book will reach the royalty stage; many books never actually earn back their advances). If anybody deserves their ticket to Bura-Bura, it's her. And she ain't on a plane right now.

Look: the $15 price point that some publishers are proposing is for the hardcover edition. The Kindle edition of Rosemary and Rue costs $6.39, which is 20% less than the price of the physical item. Because the physical books are published, at least currently, in bulk, 20% is a fairly valid reflection of the cost of paper and distribution. 80% of the cost of the book goes to the author, the editor, the copyeditor, the layout artist, the cover artist, the marketing department, and the magical mystery adventure we like to call "keeping the lights on at the publisher's office." Saying that an electronic copy of the book costs the publisher "nothing" is like saying that an MP3 of one of my songs costs me "nothing." So wait, I don't have to pay my recording engineer anything if I'm only selling virtual music? It's all free money? Score! Sure, Kristoph won't be able to make his mortgage payments or upgrade his equipment, but what do I care? Free money!

If publishers aren't allowed to charge more for the electronic editions of expensive books, they'll refuse to offer the electronic editions until the mass-market paperbacks come out. Hardcovers cost more for a variety of reasons—including the fact that often, hardcover authors are getting slightly larger advances. So that is, I suppose, a bit of authorial greed, because we're putting our desire to feed the cats (and ourselves) ahead of the consumer's desire to pay six dollars for something we spent two years writing. Sorry.

Also, these reactions are, well, hurtful. By saying that authors are "greedy" for wanting to make a living, people are saying that our time has no value. These are often the same people who will willingly pay ten dollars for a movie ticket (and ten more for popcorn and a soda), knowing that the actors were paid thousands, if not millions, of dollars to speak lines that somebody wrote. Every cool quip you've ever heard in a movie or on TV? Yeah, somebody wrote that. If somebody had been flipping burgers to keep the lights on, maybe somebody wouldn't have had the time to come up with that awesome line. Authors need to eat, and if we can't do that through our art, we'll find another way to do it...and things won't get written. I mean, look:

Time to write a book, six months to three years.
Time to sell a book, six days to eternity.
Time to edit a book, six months.
Time between publication and print, one to three years.

How much money do you make during that time? (Don't actually answer that, I don't want to know. I'm just making a point.) Unless you're Stephen King, writing is never going to make you rich, and saying you'd like to eat doesn't make you greedy, it makes you sane.

I am not saying that publishers should be charging whatever they want for everything—just that e-books cost money, too, and that not all the costs of creating a book are in the physical artifact you can point to and shout "book" about. My publisher wants to make money. My publisher wants me to make money, because when I'm making money, so are they, and more, when I'm making enough money, I can actually get that cabana boy and spend a lot more time writing. Right now, I'm literally working myself sick, spending three days in bed, and then doing it again, because that's the only way to stay on top of all the things I need to do.

Authors, as a class, aren't greedy. We're just tired.

Now where's my damn cabana boy?

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.

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.

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

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

I appreciate this convenience.

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

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

1. Home from Friday at Wondercon.

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

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

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

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

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

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.