Tara, who is my good and loving and tolerant friend, and who does all the graphics for my website, is also a Barbie customizer. She takes normal, every day dolls and turns them into geek icons, like NCIS's Abby Sciuto, or damn near EVERY CHARACTER EVER to appear in an episode of Star Trek. I? Think this is awesome. And that, friends and neighbors, is why I asked Tara to make me a Barbie.

An Alice Price-Healy Barbie. Behold:



Alice! She has the head of an Aquamarine Birthstone Beauty, the right arm of a Hard Rock Barbie, and the body of a Harley-Davidson Barbie. Her shirt is an old, old piece of Ken's wardrobe; her tank top is Barbie Basics; and her hot camouflage pants are proof that she's more awesome than your Barbie. Oh, and did we mention the weapons? She has a shotgun, pistols, grenades, knives, smoke bombs, and a 1:6 scale machete. Yes. BARBIE WITH A MACHETE.



Alice knows what you're thinking. Alice doesn't approve.

My dolls rule!

Last night I dreamt that I had somehow become involved with a television show based on the old Gammarauders RPG, and that jimhines had been hired to write the novelizations of said show. He wrote a whole book focusing on one of the characters I'd introduced to the show, a sort of candy-cane punk rock girl who drove a giant air-breathing octopus (it made sense in context). I, of course, read the whole book, because I am me.

I was having a discussion with Alan at Borderlands about how I felt about the whole thing after I finished it. "Did you like it?" he asked.

"I did," I said. "I hope it sells lots and lots of copies and makes lots and lots of money."

"Is she really supposed to be the missing princess of Thatllbetheday?"

"Actually, yes. See, there's this note at the crypt of Buddy Holly, and..."

...and then I woke up, before I found out what the note said. But wow, is my subconscious weird sometimes.

I recently volunteered to make five detailed blog posts on things people wanted to know about the Toby universe, and provided a dedicated thread for them to make their suggestions. While these posts will not be specifically spoiler-y for published books, they will provide background material on the universe, and can be viewed as part of my functional canon. This is the second such post, and is taken from multiple related questions.

faithfulcynic asked, "Can you break down Court hierarchy for us and talk a little about title inheritance? I know that the King of Cats has to be won but is that the same with other courts? Would a changeling ever have a shot at ruling a court? Could Sylvester ever rule them all? Does relationship to the Big Three play a part?"

hanabishirecca said, "Toby's universe has a complex system of fiefdoms and courts that have been seen to be caught in a supernatural version of real world politics. Sovereignty seems to be shaky in many cases...I don't necessarily want an entire political history lesson, but I'm fascinated with the division of territory. I'd love to know what it takes to be appointed your own title and piece of land, to what lies at the very top of the feudalistic rankings. Really, anything on this would make me happy."

And drakos_inferno said, "I'll echo a few other people—can we get a who's in charge flow chart of some sort?"

Let's talk politics! Yaaaaay!

So first off: who's in charge? Oberon. Dude doesn't even need a title. He's just, you know, Oberon. He's also missing, and has been for several hundred years, along with both Maeve and Titania, who are also in charge. When the three of them fight, watch out. They're collectively known as the King and Queens of Faerie; that's their territory, that's their fiefdom, and that's where their word is law. Again, however, missing, and even before they went missing, they needed the equivalent of local governments to save them from spending all their time telling their kids to stop hitting each other. Enter the fae system of governance. Now, the main thing to remember here is that all these people essentially serve at the pleasure of the President. If Oberon says you lose your throne, you lose your throne. If Titania says you're finished, you're finished. So fae monarchs are always, always aware that they could be deposed just for wearing shoes that Maeve doesn't like. For the most part, they muddle through anyway, because power is neat.

At the top of the non-Three fae government food chain, you have the High Kings and Queens. There's usually one of them to a region, with "region" being determined by a combination of population density, amount of time the fae have been living in the region, and whether anyone's gone to war to schism off a new High Demesne. (Note: This is a dangerous proposition. If you don't have the buy-in from the majority of the current reigning High Kings and Queens, no one's going to help you do it, and you're going to get your ass kicked.) There are currently quite a few High Demesnes, but the one we're primarily concerned with is North America, the royal seat of which is located in Toronto.

The original High Kings and Queens were chosen by Oberon, Maeve, and Titania, and were a fairly broad representation of the races and ideals of Faerie. In the modern era, most of them are Daoine Sidhe. Make of this what you will (and hint, "we like assassinating people for their thrones, it's fun" is a perfectly reasonable line of thought). At this point, the title is hereditary, unless you manage to get yourself deposed. High Kings and Queens have absolute authority over those Kingdoms contained in their High Demesne, unless contradicted by one of the Three, which hasn't happened recently (for obvious reasons). They mostly don't mess with things, unless those things are threatening to mess with them.

Once the original High Kings and Queens were chosen, they proceeded to choose Regional Kings and Queens. Think of it as sort of like the relationship between the President of the United States and the Governor of Oregon. Yes, the President is technically the boss of him, but odds are good that he can do almost anything he wants, short of killing his constituents, before the President gets involved. Again, these positions started as a good racial and idealistic mix, and have managed to maintain a bit more of their diversity, largely because a sitting monarch can only be deposed by a) the Three or b) actual warfare—taking a throne away from someone without a good reason is one of the only things the High Kings and Queens can't do. So once the Daoine Sidhe started deposing the High Kings and Queens, the Regional Kings and Queens got a lot more passionate about maintaining large armies. It's fun! Again, once given a throne, the throne is hereditary, and will remain with a family until that family is wiped out, deposed, or manages to piss off the Three.

Now we hit the tricky part. See, not all parts of a High Demesne will be part of a Regional Kingdom. In North America, for example, the High King and Queen maintain Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador as their own private holdings; the first Regional Kingdoms are Frozen Sun (Manitoba and Minnesota, roughly) to the west, and Lakes to the south. That means that all crimes committed in the private holdings of the High King and Queen go straight to them, with no intermediate monarch. Sort of like going to the Supreme Court over a traffic ticket. Oddly, this doesn't make their populace any better-behaved.

Let's keep things getting trickier. Dukes/Duchesses, Marquis/Marquessas, Counts/Countesses, Viscounts/Viscountesses, Barons/Baronesses, Earls, Lords/Ladies, Knights, and a variety of other lesser nobles fall under the Kings and Queens. Most of the time, it'll follow the ranking of the list above. But not always. In some areas, a Marquis may be considered to outrank a Duke (not many, however). This is basically the local ruler's to decide. There are quite a few unlanded nobles at this point, thanks to Faerie's many, many wars, and an unlanded noble will always be outranked by a landed noble of the same title. So...Sylvester, a Duke, outranks Evening, a Countess. Simon, an unlanded Baron, outranks Toby, a knight, but would be outranked by a landed Baron. Again, all these titles tend to be hereditary...

Unless, of course, your children are changelings. Changelings cannot inherit lands or titles from their fae parents. They can be granted by the crown, but that is the only way for them to rise in fae governance, and even then, it's going to be very local. Toby was knighted by Sylvester. Most people in the Mists will respect that, if only to avoid pissing off Shadowed Hills. If Toby were to travel to the Kingdom of Angels, who knows what would happen? A changeling can, of course, take a title by force of arms, but any changeling who chose to do that would need to be prepared to have a lot of people gunning for them. A lot of people.

Titles are passed either when the title-holder dies, as in the case of King Gilad Windermere, the former regent of the Mists, or when the title-holder chooses to step down and cede all right to their place. This prevents assassinations, at least most of the time. The only way a forsaken title can be reclaimed is if the current holder dies with no named heir, and the former title-holder is judged entirely without blame in their death. This doesn't happen very often. There are some "lost" titles, connected to objects, family lines, missing knowes, or ancient mysteries. It's doubtful whether those claims could be proven if they were brought forth, but wouldn't it be fun to try?

You'll note that the Kings and Queens of Cats are not covered here. This is because they are considered, by Oberon's edict, to essentially have diplomatic immunity in any of the "noble" Courts, so long as they don't go interfering. They settle their succession in completely different, and usually quite bloody, ways.

So that's the quick and dirty version of politics in Toby's world. If you have any follow-up questions, feel free to ask them here.

Let's go in reverse order, shall we? Because sometimes linearity just doesn't cut it. Anyway, the annual Locus Magazine poll for the best speculative fiction has been posted, covering those items published during 2010. Many excellent things are on the list already, and there are write-in slots for excellent things which you feel should have been included there, but weren't. The poll is open until April 15th, and everyone can vote, although votes cast by actual subscribers count for double. (This is one reason, among many, that it is awesome to have a Locus subscription.) Go, take a look, and help paint an accurate picture of what people loved about the speculative fiction of 2010!

I recently did an interview with the charming Katie Babs, who has posted our conversation for everyone to see. Being more sophisticated about these things than l'il ol' me, she even included graphics and other such awesome bells and whistles. It was a fun interview, with good questions, and I highly recommend taking a peek, if only so she'll feel that her site traffic justifies having me back someday!

Why, no. I do not have any pride. Why do you ask?

The cats continue healthy. Alice is a bit heavier than I want her to be, since recovering from her illness included a lot of gooshy food and spoiling, so we're trying to feed lightly for the moment. This might work better if a) Thomas weren't a growing boy, b) Lilly were more willing to be pushy about her food, and c) Alice didn't flop in the middle of the floor wailing about how she's starving to death and I am the WORST MONKEY EVER. Although, to be fair, Alice's flopping would be more believable if she didn't shake the floor when she did it. Yes, yes, you're starving, my little tauntaun. And next time there's a cold snap, I am going to crawl inside you to keep myself warm.

Thomas is growing at a truly staggering rate; it's like he's taken Alice's size as a personal challenge, and is determined to beat her before the next time he sees Betsy (I always assume my cats are trying to impress their breeder with their spectacular awesomeness). He's still the sweetest thing on four feet, which is good, since otherwise, I would be in trouble. He's very smart, and very curious. He's also stubborn as hell. Last night, he was on my lap, trying to play with the popcorn I was eating, so every time he reached for a piece, I would flick his paw. A normal cat would have grown annoyed and stalked off, furious at such callous treatment. Thomas started flicking me back. I love my Maine Coons.

I also love my Siamese. Lilly remains the lickingest cat in the entire known universe, as the patch of skin she licked off the inside my elbow last night while I slept will cheerfully attest. She's a little daunted by suddenly being the smallest cat in the house, but she's dignified enough (in all regards except for the licking) to hold her own against the fluffy tide.

And now...toys. As you may know, I love toys. My bedroom is like a terrifying cross between a set built for the Halloweentown movies and a toy store. I have well over a hundred My Little Ponies (and am collecting more every day), the entire current Monster High toy line, and a bunch of random assorted dolls, action figures, and weird things, including an anime-style Emma Frost, a hungry flesh-eating wasp-woman, and the Impala from Supernatural. It's a fun room to sleep in sometimes.

Anyway, yesterday, I got home to find a box on my porch. And inside that box...PONIES. Lots and lots of lovely Ponies, including Baby Racer (a yellow Baby Brother Pony with blue hair and a race car on his rump) and Applejack and some beautifully ringletted Candy Cane Ponies...

And Oakly. The My Little Pony Moose. Who has been on my Top 10 Wish List for ages. And now? NOW SHE IS MINE.

It's a good week to be a Pony geek.

Tara is making me a Barbie version of Alice Price-Healy, which has given me an excuse to go shopping for lots and lots of 1/6th scale weapons on eBay. This is incredibly soothing. It's shopping with purpose, and that purpose will result in my having the best. Barbie. EVER. The other Barbie she made for me, Lt. Anis Bihari of the USS Rutan, is currently off-site having her uniform tailored. I expect much joy when she returns. Oh, and they just announced the second wave of the Monster High Dawn of the Dance line, which will include two of my favorite dolls (Draculaura and Ghoulia).

It's a good week to be a toy geek, period. I am a happy blonde.

I am not going to write an Arisia con report. I'm not good at them under the best of circumstances—they either wind up obscenely long and take six months to finish, turn into a series of comic strips, or make no sense—and these are not the best of circumstances, what with the "two conventions in two weekends" and "under a whole lot of deadlines" parts of our program. So these are the summarized highlights, for your amusement and edification.

Arriving in Boston! Persis picked me up from the airport, because a) Persis loves me, and b) I had made it quite clear that fuck you people, I am not going outside in the snow unless it's to enter a private car. No, I am not a prima donna; I simply refuse to take the bus or other forms of public transit when you have A FOOT OF SNOW on the ground. My sunny California upbringing can't handle the reality shift. I did, in fact, remain entirely inside the hotel until Monday afternoon, when I went outside in the snow, entered a private car, and returned to the airport. So screw you, New England winter; I am not your chew toy.

Hanging out with Rene! My room wasn't ready yet when we got to the hotel, so I wound up sitting with Rene, the Fan Guest of Honor, in the lobby Starbucks for about an hour. Rene was conchair for the Montreal WorldCon, and is a really neat guy. Plus he helped me get my luggage up to my room. Class act, yo.

Cat and Diana! My roommates for the weekend were the lovely Cat "The Crusher" Valente, and the equally lovely Diana "The Destroyer" Fox. They both arrived Friday afternoon, and seriously, it was like spending the entire weekend having an awesome slumber party with awesome people and our own private bathroom. Our hotel room looked like it had been hit by a localized tornado. A tornado of RAW AWESOME. I couldn't have asked for a better time. Plus? They brought me presents. (I also brought them presents. I like to share.)

The Paranormal Romance Weather Report! My first panel of the weekend was on the appeal of paranormal romance and the flirtation with the mainstream. The only panelist I'd met prior to sitting down at the table was Kelley Armstrong, which was sort of neat. We talked for an hour, and it was a lively and engaged discussion, but didn't come with as many book recommendations as people expected...so I used my closing comments to provide a cable-news style weather report on offerings in the urban fantasy and paranormal romance genres. Yes, complete with a "and next, here's John with sports!" closer. It was more fun than it should have been. Seriously.

Shawn! My good friend Shawn lives in Massachusetts, and swears he actually likes New England winters. This is because Shawn is insane. He actually came to the convention to see me! It was awesome. He is a good Shawn, and shall be renowned in song and story.

Shaenon Garrity, big-time star! Shaenon was the Webcomics Guest of Honor, which meant that her adorable mad science illustrations were all over the program book (awesome), and that she had the big box of Skin Horse strips available for people to paw through and purchase. I got one of my favorite strips. And also? A hug.

Ellen and Delia! Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman are a) mad awesome, b) very sweet, and c) just plain cool. They're also involved with the Bordertown revival, about which I will blog more very, very soon. And Ellen? Ellen gave me an ARC of the new Bordertown book, about which I will also blog more very, very soon. So who has an ARC of the new Bordertown book? THAT WOULD BE ME. Dude, the trip was worth it for that alone, I swear.

Having an Irish pub attached to the hotel! One of the two hotel restaurants was an actual Irish pub, with actual Irish pub food. I basically ate shepherd's pie for every "real meal" I had during the weekend, and while that may not have been awesome from a Weight Watchers standpoint, it was pretty damn cool from a "don't flip out and kill everyone in a ten-mile radius" standpoint. You may now thank the Irish pub for saving mankind.

...okay, so even when I'm doing the quick-and-dirty highlights version of a con report, I can't condense it very well. Tune in next time, for more things that were awesome, or at least interesting, since "Seanan has an allergic reaction to some lady's perfume and spends the bulk of Sunday yearning for death" is totally making the list.

Since it's a "talking about birthdays" kind of a day, here's my own (belated) birthday report:

Last Wednesday was my birthday, and it was, quite frankly, pretty miserable. I had gone home from work early on Tuesday, suffering from a nasty cold. It had mostly cleared up by Wednesday morning, which was awesome, although there was still some, well, let's call it "blockage." The "blockage" continued to reduce over the course of the day, until somewhere around noon, when I sneezed, knocking the last of it free...

...and unleashing the GALLONS OF BLOOD I had apparently been storing in my sinuses, courtesy of an unnoticed six-hour-long nosebleed. I managed to burst a blood vessel deep inside my head with all the sneezing and misery of Tuesday, and then, well. Bleeding! Like it was an Olympic sport! Accompanied by dizziness from, you know, LOSS OF BLOOD. I managed to make it to the bathroom (barely), where I passed out on the floor, and was later found by a co-worker unconscious in a pool of my own blood. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME.

(Yes, I have seen my doctor; no, it was not an aneurysm; it was really and truly just a burst blood vessel, and I am now fine. There have been no repeats of the "massive bleeding followed by passing out" party-time fun.)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I was sent home from work after turning the bathroom into my own private horror movie, and—after medical what-not and transit—met up with my mother and youngest sister for our usual Wednesday errands. We actually put off going to the comic book store in order to drive to Berkeley and eat Indian food for dinner, because it made sense from a traffic perspective. I complained a few times about the lack of cake, but not with any real passion, as I was a) tired, and b) still a little out of it. We ate. We drove back to Concord. We went to the comic book store.

Upon entry, I declared happily, "It's my BIRTHDAY!", since it's awesome when your birthday corresponds to new comic book day. The staff looked theatrically shocked...probably because that was about when Libby (the owner's wife) emerged from the office with a cake.

Yes. A cake.

MY COMIC STORE GOT ME A BIRTHDAY CAKE.

Did you ever need proof that I was an enormous nerd? Because if you did, here it is: my comic book store GOT ME A BIRTHDAY CAKE. That is how much time I spend there. BUYING ME A CAKE amounts of time.

I love my life. Medical emergencies and all.

I am utterly obsessed with a show called Doctor Who, and have been since I was somewhere in the neighborhood of three years old. (This is not an exaggeration. You can ask my mother.) I contributed an essay to Chicks Dig Time Lords [Amazon], a book of critical essays on being a fan of the show while also being a girl (not always easy).

So naturally, when Tor.com contacted me and asked if I wanted to be a contributor for their mad awesome "12 Doctors of Christmas" blog event, I said yes so fast it left a few heads spinning, including my own. Here, then, is the official announcement:

Tor.com's 12 Doctors of Christmas: A Holiday Extravaganza!

...okay, so many the extravaganza part was me, but seriously, how cool is this? They've got at least one person for each Doctor, and the lineup is gorgeous. To whit:

First Doctor (William Hartnell), George Mann. "Susan, history is a gift. Do not break it."
Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton), Nick Abadzis. "Be Scottish at it, Jamie. Perhaps it will go away."
Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee), Paul Cornell. "And don't wander off!"
Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker), Nicholas Whyte. "Care for a jelly baby?"
Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison), Pia Guerra. "Celery is good for you."
Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker), Josiah Rowe. "You wicked, wicked little thing."
Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy), Seanan McGuire. "Come on, Ace. We've got work to do."
Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann), Steve Mollmann. "I didn't mean to."
Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston), Graham Sleight. "Brilliant!"
Tenth Doctor (David Tennant), Nasty Canasta. "The last. The very last."
Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith), Lynne Thomas and Tara O’Shea/Mark Waid. "Who's the man?...right, never saying that again."
Twelfth Doctor(s), Jason Henninger. "RESULT!"

That's going to be twelve days of pure, unadulterated awesome. None of which will make any sense at all if you don't have at least a little familiarity with the show, for which I apologize. But not too much.

I love Doctor Who. Squee!

Tonight is a double-bill of Tower Prep episodes, with "Phone Home" at eight and "Trust" at nine. I'm trying very, very hard to convince myself that the doubling up is because Cartoon Network wants to finish the season before the end of the year, not because the ratings have been bad and they're burning back episodes to complete their commitment. (And if it's the latter, at least they're letting us see how it ends.)

Tower Prep has been one of the most consistently gratifying, well-constructed shows of 2010; I rank it just after Fringe in my current personal rankings. The plots and themes are less mature than they are on Fringe, but the show is also aimed at kids, and bearing that in mind, I just wish we'd had stuff like this when I was thirteen. As it stands, I'm enjoying it plenty right now.

The final two episodes will air next Tuesday, again from eight to ten, and I'd say the odds are good that Cartoon Network will have a marathon somewhere in the middle there. You should catch up, if you get the chance.

It's awesome.

A little while ago, Lauren (who designed the fantastic covers for Feed and Deadline) emailed to ask if I might have a parody of "The Night Before Christmas" that related to dead things just, you know. Lying around. I did not. But I did have a history in filk, and access to the original poem. So fifteen or so minutes later, "I do not" became "sure!" and I was able to send Lauren a nice, zombie-filled bit of Christmas fear.

Because Lauren is insanely awesome, she promptly turned it into a poster. And because Orbit is insanely awesome, you can now download this gruesome collaboration in a variety of exciting formats. It's suitable for use as an e-card, a computer wallpaper, or even a printed holiday letter.

So from all of us to all of you, have yourself a scary little Christmas now.

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!

Bill Mudron, who is an incredible, amazing artist, and has done quite a lot of commission work for me over the years, has put up some absolutely drop-dead gorgeous prints for sale. Specifically, he's put up a pair of incredible Doctor Who prints themed after the world of Alphonse Mucha, showing Amy Pond and River Song in a whole new light.

You can view and order the prints here, should the desire strike you. I've already ordered mine, and I intend to have them framed and hang them in a place of honor. Assuming a place of honor can still be located on my increasingly-cluttered walls...

Anyway: Beautiful art! Supporting small artists! Absolutely unique gifts! And, you know.

Stuff.

As a pop-culture junkie who treats monster movies as something barely this side of a religion, it was inevitable that I would wind up falling in love with a certain California blonde girl when she funky chickened her way into my life ("How loose is your goose? My goose is totally loose..."). My love for her impacted my view on life, my video collection, and even my speech patterns—you can tell when I've been watching old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer by changes in my cadence and intonation. It's a little freaky.

So it was also inevitable that when I was invited to be a contributor to Whedonistas: A Celebration of the Worlds of Joss Whedon by the Women Who Love Them, I would jump at the chance.

This star-studded essay collection is the second in the female-centric essay series from Mad Norwegian Press, and was edited by Lynne Thomas and Deborah Stanish. I haven't read the whole thing yet, but just the list of contributors feels me with geeky glee. I'm in a book with Emma Bull! My fourteen year old self can finally die happy! I mean, except for the part where then, I wouldn't remember why being in a book with Emma Bull is cool, so let's skip that.

One of the other contributors, Teresa Jusino, has written a lovely post explaining the book and why it's awesome at Tor.com. Just to further convince you that the book is made of win, the editors and Tor.com have conspired to let you get an early look at my essay, "The Girls Next Door: Learning to Live with the Living Dead and Never Even Break a Nail." (If you can come up with a more me-esque title, I'm not sure I want to know about it.)

Go forth! Read! Maybe improve your holiday season and chances of surviving when the Hellmouth finally opens by ordering yourself a copy! It's going to be fun for the whole family.

Grr. Argh.

Today is Thursday, and things are awesome! Like, seriously, seriously awesome. Why are they awesome? Because they are. I will explain.

First awesome: Conjure Oils is doing a line of perfumes inspired by the Toby Daye books. They debuted at OryCon, and they are amazing. Seriously, I squealed, more than a little. There are seven scents in the initial line, and more coming, some of which I am, like, crazy excited about (the idea of January O'Leary perfume makes me giggle way more than is strictly sane). If you're a BPAL fan, or know someone who is, you could do a lot worse than Toby Daye perfumes for the holidays.



Ahem: squee.

Second awesome: My darling Mia, over at Chimera Fancies, is getting ready for her incredibly massively huge holiday sale, and has put up a preview post of pendants. It seems like every batch is better than the batch before, which is probably part of why my pendant collection is beginning to rival my Pony collection for sheer number of pieces. I mean, damn.

The latest sale begins Friday, November 19th, at noon Pacific time, and if you check out her post, you can find out how to get yourself entered in a drawing for possible free awesomeness. I mean, how much better can it get than free awesomeness?

Third awesome: My mailing tubes arrived last night, and I estimated correctly, meaning that the mailing of the new "Wicked Girls" posters has officially begun. Specifically, I've mailed posters to Tara and to our cover model, but that means I now know exactly what I'm dealing with, rather than just making a highly educated guess. Hooray for math!

For details on the posters, and on how you can currently order them, please see yesterday's post on the subject. I'm planning to package and mail all paid orders from this week on Saturday morning, which means you'd have them by the end of the week in the United States, and by the end of the month in Canada. I also now know what it would cost to mail internationally, so please contact me via my website if you'd like to discuss other mailing options.

Tara bet me five dollars and a cupcake that we'd sell fifty in the first twenty-four hours. There's three hours left, and we're at thirty-eight. Free cupcake!

And those are the things which are awesome. What's awesome in the world of you?

I have just finished watching the fourth episode of Tower Prep, thanks to an awesome unexpected screener from the doubly-awesome folks at Cartoon Network. For those who missed my last enthusiastic blog post, Tower Prep is Cartoon Network's second live-action mystery drama, following the kick-ass Unnatural History. It was created by Paul Dini, and is a true delight. Every week intensifies and expands the central mysteries, without losing sight of the core premise:

What is Tower Prep? How did we get here? And how in the hell are we going to get out?!

Episode four, "Buffer," is flat-out awesome in all the right ways. It's definitely Ian and CJ-centric, but Suki and Gabe are both given plenty of room to show off and shine. Once again, the show neatly dodges gender stereotyping—all the characters are given things to do that make sense for them, not for "generic hero-type" or "generic love-interest/heroine." It's incredibly rare to find a show that does this at all, much less one that's ostensibly aimed at teens.

With "Buffer," the mystery surrounding the Gnomes—Tower Prep's mysterious security force—deepens, and we finally get to see more of the Buffer Team, those sporty guys who harassed Ian back in episode one. If I have any complaints about the episode, it's that they didn't have time to spend, you know, a week teaching the rest of us the rules of Buffer. That sport looks wild.

Tower Prep is just getting more awesome with every week that passes, and I can't encourage you enough to hop on while it's still early enough in the ride for you to come with us to the end. Seriously, I don't think I've been this passionately in love with a show from day one since Supernatural.

The mystery continues!

So first off, because I couldn't say this earlier, and also, HOLY CATS, here go: I was asked, by Charlaine Harris and Toni Kelner, to submit a story for one of their totally insanely awesome urban fantasy theme collections. You know, the ones like Wolfsbane and Mistletoe and Death's Excellent Vacation. The ones I have sometimes DREAMED about being asked to write for.

THEY ASKED ME TO WRITE THEM A STORY AND I SAID YES AND OH MY GOD YOU GUYS, LOOK:



The story, titled "Through This House," takes place between Late Eclipses and One Salt Sea. It involves Toby, Quentin, May, Danny, and some giant spiders, and while it was intentionally written to be non-essential—you don't have to get the book to understand what's going on in book five—I really like it.

But mostly, right now, I'm just REALLY EXCITED. Like, super-duper grasshopper pie and a magic unicorn pogo stick excited. My first appearance in an actual hardcover! Ohmygawd!

Happy Saturday!

So I watch a lot of television. I know people who look at my schedule and word counts and laugh at this claim, like "Ha ha, Seanan is being droll and pretending to do things other than slave away like a weird robot-alien-pod plant," but the fact of the matter is, I probably under-report my television-watching, because it's nobody's business but mine a lot of the time. I use television as a way to wind down once my word counts are achieved.

This doesn't mean I don't consider television an intellectual exercise. I mean, witness the fact that I have essays in multiple books of critical analysis of television programs. I think TV is hugely important in our culture, and that a lot of the time, it does more to influence the way people think about story than anybody else.

I am a television omnivore. I watch dramas, I watch science fiction, I watch comedies, and I watch things that are supposedly aimed at children. I can explain the social structure from Wizards of Waverly Place, identify more than fifty Pokemon on sight, and am eagerly awaiting Unnatural History on DVD. Shows for kids are actually more devoted to plot arcs and character development than anything else currently on the air...except, maybe, for some of the high-concept science-fiction dramas.

Which brings us to the point of this entry: I am head over heels in love with a show called Tower Prep. It airs on the Cartoon Network. Here's the Wikipedia page. You've only missed three episodes. But you should really start from the beginning if you can, because Tower Prep is a mystery series. Not a procedural; not a mystery of the week, although there are weekly plots and challenges; a mystery series.

We begin when our POV character, Ian, passes out at home and wakes up in a strange boarding school called Tower Prep, one that's designed to "nurture and develop" his special abilities. No one knows where the school is, or how they got there. No one knows why they have their abilities, or what they're honing them for. But Ian, and the friends he quickly finds, know that they're afraid.

The writing is sharp. The mysteries are engaging. The plots are complex enough to hold an adult, simple enough to be viewed as "kid friendly" by the network, and just scary enough to have that enthralling edge. The dialog is snappy, the characterization is consistent. And really, that's why Tower Prep is awesome. The characters.

There are four main characters in Tower Prep: Ian, our protagonist, whose ability allows him to see certain things before they happen; Gabe, whose ability allows him to talk anyone into anything; CJ, whose power lets her act as a "human lie detector" and borderline psychic by reading all the minute changes in people; and Suki, whose ability lets her mimic the voice of absolutely anyone.

Two girls, two guys. While Ian's ability could be viewed as stereotypically "masculine," especially since he uses it in fights, he comes to the attention of the school for stopping a bully for beating up a weaker kid. And while CJ is sort of the "team psychic," which is often a female role, most people would reverse Gabe and Suki's abilities, since "persuasive" is often viewed as feminine, and "mimicry" is often viewed as masculine.

All four of them are smart, but Suki is the computer genius, and Gabe is the social butterfly. CJ is perfect, but not cookie-cutter pretty. They are, in short, actually people, rather than being "the hero," "the heroine," "the sidekick," and "the best friend," as they would be in so many other settings. Of the four main characters, only Suki is distinctly non-Caucasian, which is about the only criticism I have...but there are a great many non-Caucasian students and teachers on the campus, providing a slightly better balance to the show as a whole.

Tower Prep is a show I want to watch over and over again. I want to have a viewing party of the whole first season when it's done, and pick the mysteries apart. And I want to give it to every kid I know, because it says, without saying, that gender doesn't have to matter when it comes to solving mysteries and being smart and having superpowers. Also? Neither CJ nor Suki wears a bikini and calls it a uniform.

It's made of raw awesome. If you haven't checked it out yet, you totally should.

The Pegasus Awards for Excellence in Filking are given out each year at the Ohio Valley Filk Festival. This the biggest award in the filk world; when trying to explain them to non-filkers (or even new filkers), it's often said that the Pegasus Awards are "the Hugos of filk." This is not inaccurate. It's a major award in the filk world, with a ballot nominated and voted on by the community.

Every year, there are four "standard" categories—Best Song, Best Classic (for songs more than ten years old), Best Performer, and Best Writer/Composer—and two "floating" categories, which change from ballot to ballot. Floating categories can range from general, like "Best Parody" or "Best Love Song," to extremely specific...like this year's floating categories, "Best Magic Song" and "Best Mad Science Song."

I was at the Skin Horse volume two release party when Amy and Vixy both sent me text messages to inform me that "What A Woman's For," my song about the virtues of being Dr. Frankie's little helper when the world just has to be destroyed, had won the Pegasus Award for Mad Science. Yes. I got an award for Mad Science, at least in song form.

TREMBLE, PUNY MORTALS! TREMBLE, FOR SOON I AND MY GENETICALLY-ALTERED ARMY OF FLESH-RENDING PEGASI WILL COME FOR YOU IN THE NIGHT! THOSE FOOLS LAUGHED AT ME AT THE ACADEMY, BUT THEY'LL PAY! THEY'LL PAY! OH, HOW THEY'LL PAY!

...ahem. And also, thank you to everyone who voted, and squee! Pegasus! Congratulations to all the 2010 ballot winners, especially my frequent musical partner in crime, Paul Kwinn, who won the Pegasus for Best Magic Song. Life is good.

I'm so happy.

The first time I remember seeing The Rocky Horror Picture Show, I was twelve years old. We had successfully managed to beg, whine, cajole, and generally be annoying little brats, and Lucy's mom had agreed to rent it for us—a movie that had already taken on truly cult status in the hearts and minds of middle school girls everywhere. We'd heard older teens talk about it, and now, at long last, we were going to see it.

If you ever want to make absolutely sure a movie lives up to the hype, make sure you show it to a group of twelve-year-olds after they've spent the entire afternoon gorging themselves on pizza and sugar. Seriously. Every line was poetry, every song was the music of the spheres, and every fishnet-covered body part was a revelation (I hadn't even known you could put fishnets on some of those body parts). I walked away obsessed with all things Rocky. I acquired the photo "novelization" of the movie, a book on the history of Rocky Horror, and a copy of the score. I begged until my grandmother bought me the soundtrack from the stage show. I developed a real fondness for fishnets.

As the years stacked up and I plummeted into my teens, I began going to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show almost every Saturday night at the UC Theater in Berkeley, where Indecent Exposure was the standing cast. I dutifully learned all the call-backs and dance routines. I bought cast T-shirts and learned to put on pancake makeup. I even started making my own sequined applique patterns, and designed my own Transylvanian costume* from scratch. I pan-handled for quarters to pay my admission. I dragged my friends. I sat up all night in IHOP, talking about this movie which was a shared experience and a shared community for all of us.

If you've never been a Rocky fan, it was sort of like being a Browncoat, only sluttier and with more sing-alongs.

I'm older now than I was then; I no longer have the time to devote three nights a week to being part of a specific fandom. But I miss it. I really do. I miss the feeling of community, the in-jokes that we were happy to explain to anyone who said they wanted to join, the ticket stubs and the smell of damp velvet and the after-movie donuts at the cheapo donut stand down the block. I miss sewing canvas backing into my lingerie and calling it "outerwear." But most of all, I miss the moment when the whole theater would be chanting "LIPS! LIPS! LIPS! LIPS!" and the lights would go down, and for two sweet hours, the world would start making sense.

Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change ready. This moment of nostalgia brought to you by tonight's Rocky-themed episode of Glee, which will be watched by twelve-year-olds, and which brings my world full-circle.

Let's do the Time Warp again.

(*My hand-sequined tuxedo coat was one of the things I lost when we lost our entire storage unit the year I turned seventeen. I scoured yard sales and flea markets for years, hoping it would show up. It had a sequined applique of a teddy bear dressed as a Transylvanian on one sleeve, and one of a doll whose hair matched the way I always styled mine on the other, and it was battered and odd and I loved it. I still miss that jacket, even if I don't do Rocky anymore.)

Check out this incredible piece of Toby/Tybalt fan art by irrel:

Follow the clicky link to the pretty!

I am delighted beyond words.

Gosh and golly.

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.

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

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

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

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

I'm just saying.

Okay. So. If you made me make a list of my favorite movies of all time, the movies that make me stop when I flip past them on basic cable, the movies that I saw in the theater more than three times, both Resident Evil and Resident Evil: Apocalypse would be in the top ten. My cube at work is decorated in RE movie posters. I carry an Umbrella Corporation umbrella. For years, I basically lived in my zip-up S.T.A.R.S. sweatshirts, and only stopped because a) they died horrible, gruesome deaths and b) Hot Topic no longer carries them. At the same time, if you made me make a list of my most hated movies of all time, the movies I have tried to delete from my memory, Resident Evil: Extinction would also make the top ten. There are a lot of reasons for this. They comprise a rant that takes about twenty minutes to fully deliver. Suffice to say, in my world, it didn't happen. So...

Sunday, my housemate and I went to see Jonah Hex (I had promised him Toy Story 3, I couldn't deliver, he got to pick the replacement movie). I found it decent. It wasn't a waste of two hours of my life, and sometimes that and air conditioning are all I can ask from a summer movie. Anyway, as we settled into the all-encompassing seats of Barney-colored love with our popcorn and our drinks, the trailers started to roll. I love trailers. I am a simple soul in some regards.

Establishing shot: a dark intersection full of people. Very film noir, very black and white. Zoom in on a woman's high heeled shoes. Her blue and red piped high heeled shoes.

Her Umbrella Corporation-colored high heeled shoes.

I was sitting up in my seat, practically panting, even before the voice over started telling us exactly how the infection began. As the trailer went on, I got more and more excited, despite the fact that my brain was chanting "no no no no no" very, very loudly. The brain was not under consultation. The brain was not invited. By the end of the trailer, I was ready to run out, buy my tickets, and invest in a whole new assortment of Umbrella co-branded merchandise.

I have been subliminally conditioned into brand loyalty to the Umbrella Corporation.

Does anybody else see a problem with this?

The links are once again threatening to completely take over my rolling file*, which is sub-optimal, since I keep other things in that file which I need to be able to locate. So it's time for a mixed review roundup! Yay! Fun for the whole family, or at least, fun for me, since I enjoy review roundups. I'm weird like that. Anyway...

To begin with today, Larissa at Aphelion has posted a review of Feed. She opens with the now-ritual "You got your zombies in my politics!" chant, which makes me giggle, and goes on to say "If you want a simple, standard zombie story where you know who’s going to live and who’s going to die, and why, then this is not the book for you. If you want a political potboiler without humor or surprises, this is not the book for you." So who is it for? "If you want a vividly written science-fiction novel in a painstakingly detailed dystopian world about strong, snarky characters who will make you care desperately about them and keep you from putting the damn book down when your lunch break is over, well, then I can tell you from experience that this is the book for you."

Awesome!

Jawas Read, Too has posted a guest review of Feed, written by Pete, who says "I love zombies, but rarely see them executed well. Feed makes every attempt to buck the tropes of bad horror and says 'What-if' on a scale that will make nerds quiver with joy. What if humanity wasn’t full of idiots that run upstairs and remove their ability to safely egress the house? What if people were armed to protect themselves? What if loved ones were a secondary concern over self preservation? All of these scenarios and more come together to paint a world where humanity has survived the global epidemic of zombie infestation, and it bleeds into every corner of the book." I like making nerds quiver with joy. It's fun!

Tina Matanguihan at The Philippine Online Chronicles has posted a lengthy review of Feed, and says "Feed was actually quite...well, awesome. It's a political thriller written over a horror backdrop, where the presence of the zombies was used to compare how the living can still do more damage than the undead. There were only a handful of zombie encounters in the entire novel, but each of the situations felt so real, that it gave the impression that the zombies were everywhere. Mira Grant allows the readers to think that everything is going fine...and then throws a huge curve ball that changes the game. It's a thrill ride in 600 pages: I was intrigued, elated, shocked, horrified and most of all heartbroken all throughout the story, and...for me, that's what makes a story awesome."

Kain, at Zombies Are Coming, has posted a very long, well-considered review of Feed, and says "Feed is one of the few book, as of late, which I have picked up and gotten truly excited about once I started reading it. Not only is it a story that is immersive and captivating, but it is written by an author that is not afraid to take risks to tell the story." I got two out of two stumps! That's...disgustingly delightful.

Professor Beej does pop culture commentary with an academic slant, and has posted a review of Feed. The academic slant says "If there are two things I love, they’re blogging and zombies. And although I thought that my life would be nearly incomplete without the combination of these two relatively unrelated things, I am pleased to announce that because of reading Mira Grant's Feed, I can die a happy man." Victory! And...um...more seriously: "Feed does something with a topic that many seen worn out and trite that few authors can do. It creates a world that is based solidly in our own and tries to answer a few fundamental questions. Not about zombies or about how we would survive (Romero already taught us that, anyway), but about where we, as a people, act and react in the face of a truly unthinkable catastrophe, and just what part will this newfangled piece of technology we call the Internet play in it?"

Jen over at My Book Addiction has posted a review of A Local Habitation, and says "I loved pretty much everything about this book. It had another freaky mystery for Toby to solve. We get to see even more Fae (I wish I could get Elliot to make a bi-weekly visit to my house)." Also, "We get more of Toby's wonderful sense of humor, especially when she interacts with Quentin, her knight-in-training assistant Boy Wonder." I love that people love Quentin. It really makes my day, because I love him so, and this way I don't feel so bad about the fact that I keep including him in things. Victory is mine!

Kyle Brady has posted a review of A Local Habitation, and says "It's too early to yet tell whether the series will be one of the rare instances in the genre of fantasy where the main character learns, adapts, and matures throughout the various episodes, but it is easy to imagine October Daye becoming more powerful, more prominent, and ultimately more sinister in the coming years." Sinister Toby! That would be awesome! And...uh...sort of terrifying. I'll be over here...

An at A Writer's Block has included her thoughts on both Toby books to date in an awesome thumbnail review batch. Take a look!

The Book Pushers had me back for an interview, because they are wonderful people. I got to answer a question with "Look, a bunny," which always makes me a happy girl. I like bunnies. Bunnies are good.

Look! A zombie bunny with a chainsaw!

Glee.

(*My rolling file contains, among other things, notes on The Brightest Fell, pendant prompts, essay topics, blog post outlines for things I keep meaning to write, notes on the Jan stories, my set list for Westercon, and the outlines of the next "Thoughts On Writing" entry. So I really do need it to continue making something vaguely resembling linear sense, lest my head should explode.)

My friend Mia makes jewelry. She turns recycled books of fairy tales, myths, and legends into incredible transformative jewelry, unlocking stories from the confetti bones of the stories that came before. I own more of her pendants than I care to really admit to, having acquired at least one or two from just about every sale she's done. You've heard all this before. So why am I saying it again?

Because she's posting a new sale tomorrow on chimera_fancies, her jewelry blog...and once again, it's not just any sale. Because after the success of her pendants based off an ARC of Rosemary and Rue, she decided to repeat her glorious experiment, and created pendants from an ARC of A Local Habitation. ARCs are not intended for resale; they're transitory things, unable to stand up to the stress of multiple re-readings. So Mia, mindful of the ARC's tragically short lifespan, took and transformed it into more than sixty gorgeous pieces of wearable art. I'm very serious. These pendants are some of the best work I've ever seen from her. She's growing as an artist with every piece she does, and for this set, she really busted out all the stops.

All pendants have been signed by me, in either black or silver Sharpie, depending on the base color. They'll be going up in three batches, starting tomorrow. You'll be able to request up to two pendants on Friday or Saturday, and then as many as you like of those remaining come Sunday (see her journal for details). All pendants will be $24, which includes postage.

These really are incredible. I couldn't be happier, or feel more honored, to be working with someone who does such amazing things. The announcement post, complete with previews, is here:

Come for the shiny, stay for the spectacular.

Every year, as July approaches, someone says to me "Gosh, I've never been to the San Diego International Comic Convention before. I really don't believe it's as big as everybody tries to make me think it is." So every year, I smack myself in the head and update this guide and pray for their survival. Since I've been known to post obsessively-detailed Guides to Comicon on a yearly basis for some time now, I strongly suspect that these people are being aimed at me. But since I love you all (those of you I know, anyway; I am well-inclined by mildly indifferent towards those of you who just came in out of the cold), and want you to have the best convention experience that you possibly can, I've prepared an update to my Handy-Dandy Comicon Survival Guide. See? It's both handy and dandy, and that means it must be good! This guide includes tips on:

* Reaching the convention alive.
* Getting a hotel room.
* Enjoying/surviving the con.
* Things to do at the con.
* Eating food.
* Staying healthy and sane.
* Not getting killed by your friends.
* Budgeting.
* Bathing.

It is also heavily biased toward my own opinions on all these things, because hello, so totally me. But I'm honest about my biases, and I'll be factual whenever it's fact, rather than opinion. (In short, don't expect me to falsify hotel room rates to suit my own ideas of "fair," but don't expect me to recommend a good Thai place, either.)

Ready? Okay!

( Click here for Seanan's handy-dandy Comicon survival guide! Read and be enlightened in all the ways that matter, which is to say, all the ways that Seanan actually thought of. Freshly updated for 2010.Collapse )

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

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

Game on!

Remember when I posted all glowingly about a web comic called Skin Horse, and kept saying everybody should read it?

Remember how one of my big selling points was the first year of strips was now available in convenient dead tree format that you can take anywhere?

Good.

Shaenon and Jeff are now funding volume two through Kickstarter, which is a sort of crowd-funding aggregation service. You say how much you need by what date, and then people kick in what they can to make your project happen. The Skin Horse fund opened yesterday, with a $3,000 goal and an end date of, well, July.

It hit $3,000 last night. See what can happen when people believe that you're real?

Anyway: The volume two Kickstarter sponsorship fund is still open, and comes with some really awesome bonuses for sponsorship, including character sketches, side-stories, and more. The $20 sponsorship level gets you a signed copy of the book, for what would have been the book's cover price anyway—it's basically pre-ordering with a guaranteed signature, which is pretty neat.

If you like Skin Horse, consider sponsoring volume two. If you can't figure out what the hell I'm talking about, go read the comic, and then consider sponsoring volume two.

We're the shadow government.

We're here to help.

It seems like there are books that everybody hears about. I don't mean books like Pride and Prejudice or The Great Gatsby, where you would have to be either dead or completely unfamiliar with English literature to have missed them; I mean books like World War Z, which even my non-zombie lovin' friends have heard of, or Twilight, which, God, you couldn't miss without stranding yourself on a desert island for the foreseeable future.

Because every group is essentially a sociological tide pool, shifting slightly whenever the tide comes in but still cross-contaminating itself at a remarkable rate, we also tend to have a somewhat distorted view of "everybody." I bet if you polled a sample size of, say, the readership of this journal, you'd discover that Rosemary and Rue was one of the best-known books of 2009. Why? Because I wrote it, and talk about it constantly, and you read this journal, hence exposing you to it on a constant basis. I'm a literary pathogen!

On a more localized scale, we loan books to our friends, talk books up to our friends, and constantly infect each other with our literary passions. In the last year, I have caused my friends to read I Am Not a Serial Killer, Mr. Shivers, A Madness of Angels, the complete works of Kelley Armstrong, The Mermaid's Madness, The Enchantment Emporium, and Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded. These aren't the only good books I've read in the last year; they're just the ones new enough to still be available, and to have excited me with their sudden existence.

So here is today's challenge: Infect us with books we may not have heard of, but which are so damn AWESOME that it verges on a crime that more people don't know about them. Go for out-of-print things (that's why libraries and used bookstores exist), or the first books in series that started eight years ago. Bring enlightenment to the heathen, in the form of literary smallpox.

I'll start with five of my favorites, books I honestly think everyone should read (whether you enjoy them is up to you):

Hellspark, by Janet Kagen.
Mermaid's Song, by Alida Van Gorres.
Emergence, by David Palmer.
The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, by Tim Pratt.
Paper Moon, by Joe David Brown.

Authors, feel free to pimp your own work here; just get the word out, and let's see what we're not reading!

Kelley Armstrong is one of my favorite urban fantasy authors, and yet more proof that All Good Things Come From Canada.* She was the second person to officially blurb Rosemary and Rue, for which I will love her forever. (The first person was Tanya Huff, and for this, I potentially owe her a kidney.) I mean, really, the only thing that could make Kelley better would be for her to suddenly become local.

OH WAIT WHAT'S THIS? Kelley Armstrong will be appearing at San Francisco's own Borderlands Books tonight at seven? The best bookstore in the world has one of my favorite authors ever? Also one of my mother's favorite authors** ever? Is there anything about this which is not TOTAL WIN?

No. There is not. I hope to see you there, and remember, you can always contact the store to request signed/personalized books, because they are JUST THAT AWESOME.

Whee!

(*Okay, maybe not all good things, but since Canada gives me Brooke, Tanya, Urban Tapestry, Coffee Crisp bars, and ReGenesis, as well as the production of ninety percent of the television I love, I'm willing to give them some extra credit for awesome.)

(**Mom goes Jim Hines, Kelley Armstrong, me. When I eventually slay Jim and Kelley*** on the field of battle, this will be why.)

(***Accidental portmanteaus of Jim and Kelley include "Kim" and "Jelley." I now want to write a series of YA stories about Kim and Jelly, UNDERWORLD EXPLORERS. They would have wild adventures and wear silly hats. Kim is from a secret steampunk under-society built beneath the sewers of San Francisco, using the 1906 earthquake as cover. Jelly is a clone-construct originally intended as an organ farm for his creator. They probably fight crime.)

I arrived home last night, essentially dead on my feet, to find a book mailer waiting for me on the front porch. Huh, I thought, and picked it up. It was from Maine. I like Maine. It was from Sharon Lee (of Lee and Miller). I like Sharon Lee. I took the book mailer inside, opened it, and shrieked, startling both the cats and my mother.

I have a signed copy of Mouse and Dragon [Amazon]. The new Liadin Universe book. The direct sequel to Scout's Progress, the book that hooked me on Lee and Miller in the first place (while sitting in Rika's living room in Peterborough, England, thus proving that good things come from travel). Daav and Aelliana! Possibly my favorite space opera romantic couple, like, ever!

Did I mention that it's signed? To me? Because oh, right, I gave them a cover blurb, which is right there on the back cover. My very first published cover blurb, and it's on a Liadin novel by Lee and Miller.

As my beloved Deborah recently said to me, FUCK YEAH, SEAKING. (It's a Pokemon joke. Don't worry about it. On second thought, maybe you should worry about me making Pokemon jokes.)

If you're not familiar with Lee and Miller's work, you should be. They do space opera the way it's meant to be done, sort of Jane Austen meets rip-roaring adventure and also, starships. There's a compilation of three of the "origin stories" coming out soon, titled Dragon Variations, and the rest of the series is reasonably easy to track down.

I love these books enough to write cover blurbs for them. Also, I have a signed copy of Mouse and Dragon, which proves, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it's awesome.

FUCK YEAH, SEAKING.

Glee.

I feel like having a contest. A contest wherein people who feel creative get to make things. And snowishness just posted a huge, amazing batch of icons based on my song lyrics, which made me think. So...

Here is my first ever ICON CONTEST. You enter by making ICONS (100x100 images intended for use on sites such as this one). By entering an icon in the contest, you grant other people the right of use, with credit. You can enter icons which you have previously posted, either here or on your own journal. All icons must be based on something I have created, from Toby to song lyrics to Feed to the Velveteen or Sparrow Hill stories.

Post your entries here, as comments on this post. Please make all entries their own thread, so that I can find them for voting purposes. You can enter multiple times. Please indicate what prize you are entering to win. Prizes available:

1) Signed copy of Rosemary and Rue.
2) Signed copy of A Local Habitation.
3) Signed ARC of Feed.
4) Set of my CDs.

Please make your entries by including your entry in the BODY of the comment. Be sure to specify which prize you want. Lack of specification means I decide you're just showing off, and do not want to win.

There will be between one and four winners, depending on the number of entries received (I'll make this determination later). Entries will be taken for one week, starting now. If you are taking one of the contest entries for personal use, please comment to let the creator know. Don't post icons that other people made.

Game on!

Uh-oh, look out—Borderlands Books in San Francisco, California is being awesome again. As many of you know, Borderlands is basically my "home" bookstore; I spend way too much time there, enjoying their awesome, annoying their cats, and feeding cupcakes to the staff. They've recently opened the Borderlands Cafe, a friendly, comfortable, welcoming place to sit, have a cup of coffee, read a magazine, and experience general awesomeness. Because of this, they're updating some things about the bookstore, and—best of all—they're having some sales.

First up is the OMG AMAZING gift certificate sale, which I wanted to highlight because it's not geographically restricted. Here's a quote from the store newsletter:

"We're going to offer one hundred special gift certificates. Each one will cost $100. Unlike a normal gift certificate, it won't give you $100 of purchasing power at the store...it'll give you $120. But also unlike a normal gift certificate, you won't be able to use it until the 1st of August this year. In other words, you buy the certificate this month and in five months or so you gain $20.

If you do the math, it seems like a crazy deal since, if it were a loan, it works out to more than 40% interest over a year term. But, from my standpoint, it's not bad at all. First off, you'll be spending the certificate on inventory at the store, which I get at a discount. Second, it is much simpler for me and has a much surer result than jumping through all the hoops necessary to get a loan for the business. For you it's a great deal since the return (if it were an investment, which is isn't—the people in charge of looking at securities and investments wouldn't like that at all) is much better than you could expect from almost anything else that you could do with a hundred bucks.

The certificates are transferable if you want to buy one for someone else and they're good for anything in the store, including special orders. But you might want to act fast. I'm only going to issue 100 of them and when we're out, we're out and it's not an offer that I'm likely to repeat.

If you live outside of San Francisco or even outside of the United States, you can participate in this as well and I hope that you do. We are happy to sell these certificates by mail and, since we'll be tracking the purchaser names, certificate numbers, and balances, you can buy one and then use it for mail orders to your heart's content. Plus there's an added bonus—the person in the United States who orders one of these certificates and who is located the farthest from San Francisco (based on the billing address of their credit card) will get an added certificate good for $10 and usable immediately after the 100th certificate is sold. And, not to leave our international customers out, we'll do the same thing for the international customer who's the farthest from San Francisco (and that is going be be based on their mailing address). Just give a call or drop us an email and we'll be happy to set you up."

So a) contact the store, b) buy a gift certificate, c) in five months, get $120 worth of books for $100 in actual money. Um, wow? Also, please note that the certificates "mature" at the start of August, and I have a book coming out at the start of September...

There are also bunches of awesome physical sales running through the month of March; you can read about them in the store newsletter. Finally, remember that Borderlands is happy to take orders for signed books. To quote their event policy:

"All events are free of charge. You are welcome to bring copies of an author's books purchased elsewhere to be autographed (but we do appreciate it if you purchase something while at the event). For most events you are welcome to bring as many books as you wish for autographs. If you are unable to attend the event we will be happy to have a copy of any of the author's available books signed or inscribed for you. We can then either hold it until you can come in to pick it up or we can ship it to you. Just give us a call or drop us an email. If you live out of town, you can also ship us books from your collection to be signed. Call or email for details."

Awesome! Enjoy the awesome, exploit the awesome, turn the awesome to your own gain, and help support my favorite local bookstore.

I am not a Triskaidekaphobe; if anything, I'm more of a Triskaidekaphile. I love the number thirteen. I spent the entire year that I was thirteen wandering around feeling lucky (and even extended it into my fourteenth year by quite a bit, insisting that I needed to get thirteen months, weeks, days, and hours of being thirteen). I've always considered Friday the 13th to be "my lucky day," and I love years like 2009, where the stars align just right and we get three Friday the 13ths in a single calendar year. (This year, 2010, the stars have not aligned just right, and we're only getting one, in August. I hope to spend it in Australia, where I will use its potent payload of sheer good luck to not die horribly.)

But why is Friday the 13th unlucky? One could argue that it has become unlucky because so many people believe it is, and there's value in that position, but what started it? Here's the fun part: no one really seems to know for sure. It's a combination of unlucky thirteen and unlucky Friday, and it just bumbles around being baleful at all the other days on the calendar.

So why is thirteen unlucky? Some people claim that Judas was the thirteenth person to join the table during the Last Supper (which doesn't explain why "thirty" isn't unlucky, too, that being the number of pieces of silver he's supposed to have received). Others think it came from the Norse, where alternately, Loki was regarded as the thirteenth god of the pantheon, or just the thirteenth person to show up at Baldr's funeral, having also arranged Baldr's death. (So you know, if you arrange my death, you're not invited to my funeral.) There's an old superstition that says that when thirteen people gather, one of them will be dead within the year, which is statistically viable in certain cases, and not so much in others.

There are also a lot of cultures that hold thirteen to be lucky, one way or another. The Torah describes the thirteen attributes of mercy, and boys become men on their thirteenth birthdays. Italy considers thirteen to be a lucky number, as does Colgate University. Thirteen is when kids can see PG-13 movies unaccompanied, and believe me, that is incredibly lucky when it happens. Also, thirteen is a prime number, which always leaves me well-disposed.

So maybe it's all Friday's baggage. Sure, we tend to regard Friday as lucky in the modern era—it's the last day of the work or school week, it's the day when all the new movies open, and it's the day when bedtime is suspended—but for a long time, Friday was viewed as unlucky. Maritime folklore holds that it's a bad idea to start a long voyage on a Friday. Jesus may or may not have been crucified on a Friday, and "Black Friday" either means "day of horrible disaster" or "the day after Thanksgiving, when we create horrible disasters in the mall parking lot." Who knows?

The theories on why we've decided Friday the 13th is singularly unlucky range from the ancient (Frigga is pissed off about Christianity) to the political (the early Christians made thirteen unlucky because the pagans considered it lucky) to the osmosis of popular culture (Thomas W. Lawson's 1907 novel, Friday, the Thirteenth). Regardless of why it happened, it's unlikely to unhappen any time soon, especially not if Jason and his machete have anything to say about it.

Happy Wednesday the thirteenth! Try not to walk under any ladders.

Having been politely poked to remind me that Hugo and Campbell Award nominations are now open, I wanted to let folks know what I published in 2009 that qualifies for these award categories. Specifically...

Novel-length work:

Rosemary and Rue, DAW Books, September 2009.

Short Stories:

"Lost," appearing in Ravens in the Library. It also appears in both audio and print forms at Wily Writers.
"A Citizen in Childhood's Country," appearing at The Book View Cafe.
"Indexing," appearing at The Book View Cafe.
"Knives," appearing at The Book View Cafe.
"Julie Broise and the Devil," appearing in both audio and print forms at Wily Writers.

The works are eligible for the Hugo; I, as a human, am eligible for the Campbell. To be able to nominate a writer or work for the 2010 awards, you must have either been an attending member of Anticipation (the 67th World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal) or be a supporting or attending member of Aussiecon Four (the 68th World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne) before Jan. 31, 2010.

The Hugos: http://www.thehugoawards.org/
The Campbell Award: http://www.writertopia.com/awards/campbell

If you need copies of or pointers to any of my short material for consideration purposes, please let me know.

I will now go hide under my bed.

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through my mind
Were hitchhiking ghost-girls and struggles unkind,
And fairy tale murders and pandemic flu—
My friends hope my holiday dreams won't come true—

And Tara has finished the graphics so fine
To help and promote that new novel of mine
(The sequel to something you just might have read,
With Toby and Tybalt and new things to dread).

My tickets are purchased, my plans are all set,
I'm wracking my brain to guess what I'll forget,
And Vixy and Tony are waiting with glee
For the holiday gift that I'm giving them—me.

Two thousand and nine is a year nearly through!
Oh, the things that we did, and the things left to do!
I'm still with the agent who signed me last year,
She still knows I'm crazy, and yet she's still here.

The first of the Toby books sits upon shelves,
Full of wise-cracking Cait Sidhe and put-upon elves,
And two more adventures are coming this year,
Which ought to be good for your holiday cheer.

In March, Habitation, in May, you'll get Feed
(My evil twin, Mira, knows just what you need),
While "Sparrow Hill Road" will take twelve months to drive,
And Rose knows that nobody gets out alive.

InCryptid and Velveteen, Babylon Archer,
And so many more are prepared for departure
At seanan_mcguire the updates are steady—
I'm keeping you posted. You'd better get ready.

The year yet to come will bring wonders galore,
And I can't start to guess at the great things in store,
So whatever you celebrate when the world's cold,
Be it secular, modern, or something quite old,

I hope that you're happy, I hope that you're warm,
I hope that you're ready to weather the storm,
And I wish you the joys that a winter provides,
All you Kings of the Summer and sweet Snow Queen brides,

And I can't wait to see what the next year will bring,
The stories we'll tell, and the songs that we'll sing.
The dead and the living will stand and rejoice!
(I beg you to rise while you still have a choice.)

The journey's been fun, and there's much more to see,
So grab your machete and come now with me,
And they'll hear us exclaim as we dash out of sight,
"Scary Christmas to all, and to all a good fright!"

Once again, we can celebrate the awesome-ness of the geekery of the world through a spectacular book release counter! Yes, from now through the release of A Local Habitation, we'll be counting down the days to the ultimate awesome, with this totally bad-ass treat.

( Cut because we care. Also to spare your screen from going wicker-kapow.Collapse )

Borderlands Books in San Francisco, California, is getting ready for the opening of their brand-new Cafe! More, they're celebrating the event and the season in one fell swoop by throwing their first-ever ass-kicking potluck, tonight, from six to eight. There's gonna be a whole lot of hoot, and a whole lot of nanny, and they're going to combine them in a delicious swirl of goodness, like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup designed of geeky awesome.

With food, folks, fun, and one of the best science-fiction and fantasy bookstores on the West Coast right next door, it's basically guaranteed to be a blast. I can't be there, due to more dental work (boo), but you should totally swing by if it's an option, and have a fantastic time.

Herein endith the public service announcement.

Hey, y'all, I'm the guest blogger for Penguin USA this week. Wander by the site to learn about my approach to holidays, discover why I think Santa Claus is the son of Persephone and Hades, and convince the nice folks at Penguin that having me blog for them is a worthwhile exercise.

Pretty please?

I am a total comic geek, and I'm not ashamed. I'm also a Marvel girl, and—as seems to be increasingly unusual in some circles—I'm a superhero fan. I like my flying men in tights and my women in impractical shoes. No matter how insane the storylines become, at the end of the day, it's pretty easy to make me happy.

We start, of course, with comics. For the X-geek in your life, or for the geek who just wants people to understand your love of all things X-Man, the Grant Morrison run on New X-Men is a fantastic place to start. It has enough backstory to "fill in the gaps" for people just joining, while being an incredible, world-spanning story that it's hard as heck not to love. The Grant Morrison run has been collected into three massive volumes. New X-Men: Collection I [Amazon] kicks things off with the bombing of Genosha, the world's only all-mutant country. New X-Men: Collection II [Amazon] ups the ante in a dozen different ways, and New X-Men: Collection III [Amazon] brings things to a screaming, ass-kicking conclusion. I highly recommend these books, and not just because Emma Frost features heavily.

If you're looking for something a little outside the mainstream of the superhero world, Robert Kirkman's Invincible is an amazing title from Image, one that dares to show superheroes as a little more human than most publishers will dare. It's a painful, beautiful story, and since it's relatively new (IE, "this century"), catching up isn't all that hard. Invincible: The Ultimate Collection, Volume I [Amazon] is a big, beautifully sturdy hardback introduction to Mark Grayson and his world. If that's a bit too big for your budget, Invincible book one: Family Matters [Amazon] and Invincible book two: Eight Is Enough [Amazon] include the first issues of the series, and are more than awesome enough to get you hooked.

My current favorite superhero title is a lot darker. Garth Ennis—the man who brought us Preacher, which really tells you something about how dark we're talking here—has turned his attention the superhero world, and the resulting title is...disturbing, to say the least. Start with The Boys, volume one: The Name of the Game [Amazon]. Proceed from there to The Boys volume two: Get Some [Amazon]. With fantastic art, a gritty storyline, and an all-too-plausible superhero community, The Boys is a great antidote to all that four-color brightness. (If you need still more dark-but-awesome superheroics, look up Incognito [Amazon] and Wanted [Amazon], which really has nothing to do with the movie. But don't say I didn't warn you about the dark.)

Important note: All of the above are graphic novels, and can be obtained from your local comic book store. The Amazon links are for reference, and for people who don't have a local comic book store. Buy local. It's awesome.

Soon I Will Be Invincible [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] by Austin Grossman is a brilliant piece of superhero fiction that looks at the heroic and the villainous at the same time. I can't recommend it highly enough. I also can't say much about it without spoiling the surprise. Check it out, it's awesome.

If you enjoy the "Velveteen vs." series, you absolutely have to take a look at Black and White [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] by Jackie Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge. This is the start of a bad-ass series about a world where superheroes are under corporate control, and stepping outside the lines costs you more than you could possibly imagine. It's an awesome treatment of a superhero world, and the contrast between good and evil has never been more blurred.

Sometimes you want your superheroes to be fluffy and fun, and those are the times when you should reach for the Bigtime books by Jennifer Estep. Karma Girl [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], Hot Mama [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], and Jinx [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] are superhero romance cotton candy with a sharply sweet bite, like cocktails that look completely innocent until they knock you on your ass. They're more fun than a barrel of radioactive monkeys, and I hugely recommend them.

I've tried to avoid movies in today's gift suggestions, but I can't resist slipping one in here: Krrish [Amazon]. It's sort of the Bollywood answer to the big-budget Hollywood superhero movie, with a dash of Tarzan and several large dance numbers. It's incredibly fun, and incredibly weird, and really, really worthwhile. For seriously.

Got any heroes or villains to recommend? Tell me about it!

So the fabulous Mia, of chimera_fancies, is one of the most talented fairy tale jewelry makers I know. Her pieces are unique works of art, made from recycled books and magically transformed into something far greater than the sum of its parts. I own more than a few of her pendants. I'm going to wind up owning more than a few more. You've heard all this before. So why am I saying it again?

Because she has a pendant sale coming up, probably starting on or around November 18th (I'll post the exact date as soon as I have it, and so will she). Not just any pendant sale, incredible as her work is. An extra-special, extra-collectible pendant sale. Because, you see, she got her hands on an ARC of Rosemary and Rue. ARCs are not intended for resale; they're transitory things, unable to stand up to the stress of multiple re-readings. So Mia, mindful of the ARC's tragically short lifespan, took and transformed it into more than fifty gorgeous pieces of wearable art. I'm very serious. These pendants are some of the best work I've ever seen from her. She's growing as an artist with every piece she does, and for this set, she really busted out all the stops.

All pendants have been signed by me, in either black or silver Sharpie, depending on the base color. The exact method of pendant sale will be determined by Mia; it may be the random pick method she used for the Halloween sale, it may be something else, but either way, it'll be posted on her journal before the actual sale begins. All pendants will be $22, which includes postage.

These really are incredible. I couldn't be happier, or feel more honored, to be working with someone who does such amazing things.

Hey, guys. Sorry to have been so incredibly scarce recently. Between the Ohio Valley Filk Festival, going through the page proofs for Feed (which killed no fewer than four pads of Post-It notes), getting ready for World Fantasy, and trying to finish a variety of projects before deadline, it's been hectic squared around my place, resulting in a lot of things slipping. (Ironically, my viewing of America's Next Top Model and conquest of "Plants vs. Zombies" are not among the things which have slipped. This is because skinny crazy girls and plant-eating undead don't require all that much thought, while composing a coherent blog entry does.)

So what's been going on? Well, for starters, I have my Advance Review Copies of A Local Habitation, and they're flat-out gorgeous. I'd take a picture of Alice with the books, so you could get an idea of how big she's gotten, but unfortunately, she killed the camera a while ago, and it has yet to be replaced. Seriously, I love these books. I also blush a lot when I look at them, because the back cover and inside page are covered with quotes about Rosemary and Rue being awesome. I always sort of envied authors who got that much good press, and now I am that author. It's weirdly quantum. The Great Pumpkin loves me so.

(Before y'all ask, yes, we will be having a few ARC giveaways. Watch this space for further developments.)

The cats have greatly enjoyed my week off from work. This will not make them any more forgiving when I disappear for the entire weekend, but at least I don't feel quite so neglectful. Alice has been thoroughly brushed, and Lilly "helped" me kill zombies for about an hour last night, by sitting on my lap and occasionally attacking the mouse.

Hope y'all are having a fabulous Halloween season, and that all your bonfires are smoky, your jack-o-lanterns spooky, and your black cats sleek and strange.

...but the bad news is they're dead.

We all have those movies that we saw as kids and were horribly scarred-slash-influenced by. They aren't always good movies. In fact, I'd say a lot of them are bad movies, which we love because hey, when you're a kid, men in rubber suits chasing girls in bikinis after inexplicable beachfront musical numbers are pure gold. These are the movies that make us the people we become as adults. For me, these movies were split just about fifty-fifty between "really bad horror movies" and "candy-colored cartoon wonderlands." This explains a great many things, if you stop and think about it for a moment. Or don't. It might be better for you.

One of my most formative films was a creepy little horror-comedy called The Night of the Creeps [Amazon]. It, along with The Monster Squad, Night of the Comet, and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, informed me on a very deep and meaningful level. And it has been totally unavailable for years now, due to rights issues and the fact that, let's face it, they needed to wait for those of us who remembered loving this movie were old enough to have disposable income.

Guess what came out on DVD today?

There is so much love.

Things I do not have: a magical talking zombie pony that takes me on wonderful adventures.

Things I do have: functioning website forums.

...so I guess that while I'm not the girl who has everything—that's Ariel's job—I am the girl finally in possession of a fully operational website. Yaaaaaaay! The forums are now open for registration, and while they're understandably quite slow, they're a good place to get news, find discussions, and generally do stuff. Jump high, yell loud, look pretty, whatever. I'll be announcing contests and giveaways on the forums periodically, which is as good a reason as any to pay attention to their existence.

Yay forums!

October 3rd is World Virus Appreciation Day, the holiday where we celebrate the wonders of the virological world. If it wants to kill you, today's the day to rejoice in its existence...or at least to be glad that you don't have it. Yet.

I love the existence of this holiday, and—after considerable consideration—have decided that this year, once again, I'm going to celebrate my favorite virus of them all. No, not the Black Death, although it holds a truly special place in my heart. I mean Kellis-Amberlee, the hybrid virus created when the Kellis Flu met up with Marburg Amberlee, fell in love, and started having little zombie-making babies.

Yes, it's a fake virus. No, I don't care, because not only have I spent the last several years working on the virology behind Kellis-Amberlee, but it's been responsible for my learning more about real-world viruses than anyone outside the fields of epidemiology or virology ever needed to know. Seriously! Kellis-Amberlee was created sloppily and in about five minutes; it was refined over the course of almost two years, and involved auditing epidemiology and virology courses, talking to doctors from the CDC, and reading most of a library on infectious diseases.

Because of Kellis-Amberlee, I've learned about cholera (nasty), pandemic flu (actually nastier), Ebola (scary), and yellow fever (scariest bitch on the block). Before I started work on Feed, all I knew about smallpox was that we were missing a bunch of it, and that was probably bad; now I know exactly why that's bad. Miraculously, I sleep pretty well at night despite this knowledge.

I love viruses and diseases. I love Kellis-Amberlee. And today, I love World Virus Appreciation Day. Remember, if I sneeze, it's only because a droplet-based transmission is another way of saying "I love you."

(I promise to post about the fact that holy cow, it's my bookday birthday, in a little bit. Right now, I'm just trying to get through the review roundup without my fingers falling off! Holy cow!)

spectralbovine is a good friend of mine, but he's also incredibly media-savvy, and very picky about the things that he likes. So I admit, I was a little nervous when he said he was going to review Rosemary and Rue. At the same time, I knew he'd be fair. Well, his review of the book is up, and he was definitely fair. Quoth Sunil, "Oh yes, I'm going there: this book is like Veronica Mars, Faerie Detective."

I love my friends.

Over at the League of Reluctant Adults, the winner of the "win an ARC and write a review" contest has posted this awesome and erudite review of Rosemary and Rue. Quoth JD, "Rosemary and Rue is a good, solid novel and a fantastic debut. I look forward to reading more about Toby and her world. It really did almost make me believe again in Faeries."

Works for me!

mneme has also posted his review of Rosemary and Rue, calling it "a fun, beautifully written, rewarding urban fantasy that I intend to reread and recommend," while judifilksign's review of the book says "McGuire does a fantastic job of creating an alternate reality that is consistent, believable and not a copy of other writers in the genre." Yay!

Our first Dreamwidth review! It comes from Four-and-Twenty (watch those blackbirds), whose review is posted here. Since I sort of want to quote the whole review, I'll just tell you to go and read it. Don't worry. I can wait.

If you've been around here for more than a few days, you probably already know that vixyish is one of my favorite people in the whole world, part of my Seattle family, and a member of the mighty machete squad, without which there would be a hell of a lot more typographical and logical errors in my books. Well, she is now also one of the reviewers to tackle Rosemary and Rue, which she did with sufficient disclaimers to keep people from looking at her funny. Vixy says "I genuinely and highly recommend Rosemary and Rue to fans of urban fantasy, or murder mysteries, or P.I. novels, or worldbuilding, or complex characters, or folklore, or fairy tales, or Shakespeare, or British folk ballads, or just plain exciting and engrossing stories that are likely to keep you up half the night reading just one more page." I say, again, that I love my friends.

We've had a lot of reviews in the past few weeks, so you might think there's nothing left that can really get me excited. Well, you'd be wrong, because waking up to discover that I'd been reviewed in the MIAMI HERALD OH MY GOD YOU GUYS got me really, really excited. Given how sick I still am, I sounded like a bat being fed into a wood-chipper. Pity poor Amy's eardrums. The MIAMI HERALD OH MY GOD YOU GUYS says "skipping Rosemary and Rue would be a sad mistake" and "first-time novelist McGuire reminds us that even in an overused setting, a well-told story with memorable characters casts magic all on its own." Also, it's the MIAMI HERALD OH MY GOD YOU GUYS.

Wowzers.

In case you're tired of straight reviews, I was lucky enough to get interviewed by Alex for the Book Banter podcast. Here's your chance to hear me, live and (mostly) unedited. (I accidentally swore at one point, and Alex kindly snipped that out, because we appreciate not getting yelled at for profanity.) The interview was recorded in the dining room of Au Couqulet, so you can also hear silverware and dishes, if you listen real close. It was a fun time, and I really recommend giving it a go.

If you enjoy interviews, I also have a fun interview up over at Lurv ala Mode, where Kendra has been just awesome during the whole book release process. Check it out!

If you don't have your copy yet, there's a random giveaway going on over at Fantasy/Sci Fi Lovin'—enter to win, or direct your friends to head on over.

Because a picture is worth a thousand words (and I want breakfast), I leave you with Amy very studiously engaging in literature on a train, and Toby Daye VS. THE VELOCIRAPTORS! Pictures and crazy courtesy of Brooke. Because we didn't have enough crazy on our own.

It's a book!

One of the few black spots on an otherwise shining weekend involved...a shirt. A shirt, and an attitude that went with the shirt in question.

See, there was a lot of stupid pre-con surrounding the fact that OH NOES TEH TWILIGHT FANS ARE INVADING!!!! Never mind that Twilight, whether you like it or not, is speculative fiction, full of My Little Vampires, and has spawned a massively successful movie series. Never mind that this same complaint came up about the Harry Potter people, the urban fantasy people, and lots of other "not our kind" groups, before they became "our kind." TEH TWILIGHT FANS ARE INVADING!!!! IT IS TEH END OF DAYZ!!!! Worse yet, they're girls! Icky icky girls! The mainstream press—which still views the female geek as a charmingly endangered species, one which is potentially a myth—grabbed this and ran with it; if you go digging, you can find some...charming...articles about "the female invasion of Comic-Con" and "girls meeting geeks."

I first "invaded" Comic-Con thirteen years ago. Pretty sure I was a girl at the time. My boyfriend at the time definitely thought so, and as he had more opportunity to perform practical examinations than anybody from the mainstream press, I'm going to place bets that he was right. But anyway.

The Twilight girls, understandably, took offense, since they were being presented as fluff-brained bimbos who wouldn't know a comic book if it bit them on the booty. The general populace of Comic-Con wasn't offended, per se, although some offense started brewing when the Twilight fans started speaking up, since the cycle o' slag went media -> them -> us. But there was still the chance that everybody would be able to just get along. I know that I'm a lot more focused on getting where I'm going, at-con, than I am at playing Sharks vs. Jets in the middle of the Exhibit Hall.

But then came...the shirts.

Shirts on Twilight girls all over the convention. Shirts which read, in large, easy-to-read lettering, "Yes I am a real woman / Yes I am at Comic-Con / Yes I love Twilight." As a "real woman" who's been attending Comic-Con since before she could legally drink, these shirts awakened in my breast the deep and abiding desire to force-feed them to the people wearing them. I did not do so. Be proud of me. Be especially proud of me since large groups of the shirt-wearers—not all of them, by any means; I'm sure there were Twilight fans who were having a fantastic time without trying to piss in anybody's Cheerios—chose to stand around near the Exhibit Hall cafes and out by the Heroes carnival, making snotty comments about the costumes, figures, and overall appearance of the non-Twilight girls who went walking by.

Not cool.

I am a girl who likes the X-Men. I am a girl who likes horror movies. I am a girl whose favorite comics currently in print are Hack/Slash, The Boys, and Creepy. I am a girl who has spent a long damn time fighting for respect in her chosen geeky social circles, because we are still the minority in a lot of places, and it's difficult to convince your average horror geek that the female IQ is not calculated by taking the national average and subtracting her bra size. Twilight aside, there aren't enough of us to start playing this sort of game. Yes! You in the shirt, you're a real woman! And so am I! And so is every other girl at this convention! I did not give up my right to femininity just by deciding that I like to keep my My Little Ponies and my blood-drinking monsters separate, nor did you get a double-dose by combining the two. Women have been fighting for respect in comic and media fandom for a long time. Undermining that fight, even if you're doing it because you were provoked, just undermines us all.

No one has to like what I like. I try not to judge the likes and dislikes of others, and even when I can't avoid it, I try not to wander around in T-shirts that say things like "Every time editorial brings back Jean Grey, Magneto kills a kitten" or "Women Opposing More Bad Adapted Terror: JUST SAY NO TO STEPHEN KING MOVIES." All this could have been avoided if people hadn't been dicks to the Twilight fans in the first place...but I really do wish the Twilight fans hadn't felt compelled to be dicks to the rest of us in return.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We're now solidly into convention season—hooray!—and it has come to my attention that there are quite a few people reading this journal and planning to attend the San Diego International Comic Convention for the first time this year. There are also quite a few people who don't regularly read this journal, but have been pointed in my direction, since I have been known to post obsessively-detailed Guides to Comicon in the past. Hello, and welcome, one and all. Since I love you all (those of you I know, anyway; I am well-inclined by mildly indifferent towards those of you who just came in out of the cold), and want you to have the best convention experience that you possibly can, I've prepared this handy-dandy Comicon survival guide. See? It's both handy and dandy, and that means it must be good! This guide will include tips on:

• Reaching the convention alive.


• Getting a hotel room.


• Enjoying/surviving the con.


• Things to do at the con.


• Eating food.


• Staying healthy and sane.


• Not getting killed by your friends.


• Budgeting.


• Bathing.

It will also be heavily biased towards my own opinions on all these things, because hello, so totally me. But I'm honest about my biases, and I'll be factual whenever it's fact, rather than opinion. (In short, don't expect me to falsify hotel room rates to suit my own ideas of "fair," but don't expect me to recommend a good Thai place, either.)

Ready? Okay!

( Click here for Seanan's handy-dandy Comicon survival guide! Read and be enlightened in all the ways that matter, which is to say, all the ways that Seanan actually thought of. Freshly updated for 2009.Collapse )

...may I present the virelai. This is one of the most sadistic little poem forms I've ever encountered, and my passion for structured poetry means that I've encountered quite a few. Because I am a masochist, I here present three of the damn things, titled, respectively, "A Warning To Certain Princes," "Wicked Girls III," and "Wolves, Woods, and Whispers."

These are technically all virelai anciens, with patterns of four twelve-line verses, wrapping first to last and back again. That's because I am so totally not writing an example of each type of virelai. Not unless I'm getting paid.

( A Warning To Certain Princes...Collapse )

( Wicked Girls III...Collapse )

( Wolves, Woods, and Whispers...Collapse )

10. Betsy -- aka "the breeder from whom I am purchasing my new Maine Coon" -- emailed me last night to get the last of the information she needs to fill out Alice's health certificate. (The airlines require you to have a health certificate for any animal you wish to carry onto a plane; something about not really wanting to deal with a rabies outbreak at thirty thousand feet. This just shows that they don't want me to have any fun.) So it's officially official, and I'll be bringing home my new baby girl this weekend. Perhaps then Lilly will allow me to sleep through the night. Unlikely, but a girl can dream, right?

9. The word counts have been missing lately because I've been continuing to hammer on the reboot to Late Eclipses, trying to yank the book into alignment with the awesome I know it truly has the potential to be. I'm about a quarter of the way through the text at this point, and things really are becoming visibly more and more awesome. We haven't reached the point in the revisions process where I can no longer make fair and measured assessments of quality, and that's good.

8. People everywhere are getting their copies of Ravens In the Library, and while I haven't seen any full-length critical reviews, I'm generally seeing positive reactions to the book itself. (I am, of course, primarily interested in seeing the book do well, because it's for an excellent cause, and in being my usual neurotic little blonde self about reactions to my story. But at least I'm up-front about it, which makes it a little less crazy-making.) Remember, the book will only be available until Sooj's medical bills are fully covered.

7. I have registered for World Fantasy, booked my hotel room for San Diego, applied for professional membership to San Diego, and arranged for hotel space in Montreal. I am, in short, basically done with my convention arrangements between now and August. (BayCon is local enough to require little pre-planning on my part, while Duckon is taking care of all the arrangements for me, on account of I'm one of their guests. It's nice.) I'm always happier when I know that things have been set up as far in advance as humanly possible.

6. Zombies are still love.

5. In the last several weeks, my website has gone from "idle" to "awesome," with almost all our functionality now up and online. The only things still pending are the forums and the mailing list, and both these are being held up by issues on the server side, which we're working to resolve. (Getting the forums up and functional now gives my mods time to try to break them before I'm banned from that part of the site nigh-completely. Planning ahead. It's what's for dinner.)

4. While I'm still not sleeping nearly enough, thank you Lilly, I feel somewhat less like a corpse today than I did yesterday, probably at least in part because I forced myself to go to bed immediately after Big Bang Theory last night. Nothing says "a good night's sleep" like adorable physics geeks and inking before turning in. Although losing my pencil for half the episode really didn't help.

3. I have seriously not read a book that was anything short of awesome in the past week. They were YA and adult, mainstream, fantasy, horror, and science fiction, and all made of pure, unadulterated awesome. If all books were as good as the ones I've been reading, the bar would be set so high we'd need a telescope to see it. I couldn't be happier with my recent reading choices. I really couldn't.

2. In two days, I go to Seattle. In three days, I see my Vixy. In four days, I see Kitten Sundae live and in concert. And in five days, I get to take Alice home with me, thus ruining everything, in the nicest way. (Obligatory Jonathan Coulton reference for the quarter!)

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

1. My life is so wonderful right now. I'm tired, I'm grumpy, and I'm inclined to smack anyone who pokes me with a stick, but at the end of the day, even I can't pretend that my life isn't amazing. Rosemary and Rue is well on its way to publication, and according to Amazon, 90% of the people who visit the page are buying the book. Lilly and Alice are both healthy. My back is behaving itself remarkably well, and spring is springing up all around me, making my normal walking habits much less crazy. I have the best friends in the world -- everyone should have the best friends in the world, because it makes everything better -- and I own more bad horror movies than I could watch in a lifetime. The world is wonderful.

I think we're gonna be all right. So what's new and awesome in the world of you?