Seven years ago today, my beloved Maine Coon girl, Alice, came into the world. We met ten days later. It was love at first sight, for me; for her, I was another large, lumbering thumb-beast to trouble her.

Things remain much the same today.

As I type this, Alice is nearby, being vast and content and absolutely at ease with her world. She is Best Cat, and as I often tell her, my very favorite thing.

Here's to seven more, baby girl.

Thomas met us at the door last night, tail puffed out, already singing the song of his people. Alice shunned me for about an hour, skittering from room to room, refusing to let me look her in the eye. When she settled, she announced it by crawling on top of me and purring for an hour solid, making it impossible to sleep.

Home.

I always think, when I'm traveling, that I'll come in the door and be stunned by how much stuff I have amassed. "I'm finally going to see the mess for what it is, and be able to get rid of half of it with no regrets," I think, and then I get into my room, and crawl into the mass of plush toys that is my bed, like a Pokemon into long grass, and I remember that this is why I have so much stuff: because it defines the borders of my space. It claims the space in a way that is very precious to me. It's not careless clutter. It's careful assertion of my right to exist, safely, in this space.

Home.

I am so tired that I can feel my bones, and I'm working my way through a dozen slow to-do lists, some of them time-sensitive, others that just need to be accomplished. I am where I belong, at least for a little while, at least until I have to leave again.

Home.

There's no place I'd rather be.

Today is Alice Price-Healy Little Liddel Abernathy McGuire's sixth birthday.

Alice is a blue classic tabby and white Maine Coon, bred by Betsy Tinney of Pinecoon Maine Coons in Seattle. She was my first Maine Coon (although not my only for very long), and I'm not kidding when I say that it was love at first sight. It still is.

Alice is stubborn, sweet, intractable, opinionated, devoted, loving, my little angel, my little devil, and often threatened with becoming mittens. Like a toddler, she never wants love more than when I get on the phone. She's sassy and awful and sometimes takes showers with me, and she's probably the best cat I've ever had. A year with Alice is worth five with any other cat, and I've had six of them.

Happy birthday, my terrible girl. Let's have at least ten more.

Slasher Chicks shirts.

I have opened a new Slasher Chicks tank top sales post right over here. While I won't say with 100% certainty that there's not a shirt mistakenly shoved into a different box, so far as I am aware, the currently posted numbers represent all the remaining stock of this design. Once they're gone they're gone, unless I find a really good reason to reprint, and even if I do, that won't be happening for a year or more (probably more). So check it out! They're great, soft, fitted tanks, stretchy and comfy and cool.

But wait, there's more.

If you do decide to buy a tank top for yourself or as a Hogswatch gift, I will tell you to PayPal an email address, and ask you to send your mailing info via my contact form. What this means is that I need you to PayPal an email address, and send your mailing info via my contact form. My PayPal is connected to a very old email account that doesn't include a graphic mail client, and extracting shipping info from PayPal notifications is borderline impossible. Meaning I won't mail your shirt until I receive an email with your contact info.

More old ARCs!

I have some leftover ARCs of The Winter Long for the crafters and creative people of the world to claim and enjoy. Because they're heavy, I would prefer to only mail them domestically, as I will have to charge postage; basically, it would be cheaper to buy a new paperback and cut that up if you're in a country other than the US. (I say "prefer" because sometimes you really need an ARC for a specific craft. Like the friend in England who turned one of my ARCs into paper roses for her wedding bouquet.)

As I said above, I do need to charge postage this time, so it'll be $5 for an ARC to a US address, and postage to be determined for an ARC to anywhere else. I won't sign them; these are intended for craft use, not collectable use. Comment with your location if you want one.

Shirt status.

Still not on my doorstep.

Monster High status.

Looking for the entire Haunted Line, looking for all Gloom and Bloom except for Jane Boolittle, looking for Freaky Field Trip, not looking for Geek Shriek because fuck that line.

Cat status.

Puffy.

What's new and cool in the land of you?

Well, here I am updating again to say that I'm leaving. This is becoming something of a habit. (I know exactly why. I didn't travel much for like, four years, so this year has become a whirlwind of going everywhere and seeing everything and trying to do it all without losing my grip on things like deadlines and word counts and TV schedules. It'll settle down soon enough. But right now, it seems like I only update this blog when I'm about to hit the ground running.)

And what a run it's going to be! I'm Guest of Honor at Norwescon next weekend, and will be spending the next week in Seattle rehearsing, writing up, and getting ready. This is a working trip, not a pleasure trip, so if I don't reach out to you going "hey let's hang," please don't take it personally; I need to get my balance before I have to be awesome for a paying audience. But I promise lots of awesome on the other end, even if I'll be wracked with guilt over leaving my cats for this long.

(Alice and Thomas continue well, and exceedingly fluffy. Lilly is getting a bad case of the Olds, and is not doing as great, but she endures, transitioning into that stage of life known as "fueled by hate" among Siamese lovers everywhere.)

I have not been seriously ill since leaving my day job, even though I have seriously exhausted myself several times. I'm not saying that correlation is causation in this case, but I think I can make a good case for the two being connected. Hooray for being out of the plague pit!

More to come.

...although I suppose that since these days my hair is dyed in a lovely "sunset over the cornfield" ombre, I should probably consider changing that title, huh? Nah. Shan't. I am who I am, and even if I dye my hair black and start being Mira full-time, I'll always be a blonde girl. So! Statuses and such.

Shipping.

I am in the process of packing prizes and purchases and presents to go into the mail. I had a rough couple of weeks, and didn't do the mail when I was supposed to, which means I have a truly daunting amount of mailing to do. I shall persevere, have no worries on that front! It helps that I just got a brand new Ikea shelf for the front room, to act as a shipping supplies/office supplies storage area. I am much more likely to actually cram things into envelopes and send them out in a timely manner if I have easy access to envelopes, rather than needing to rummage through half the back room to find the damn things. (This is part of the overall "declutter the house and make it more easily livable" plan that has been in process for the last month or two.)

Post-Hogswatch cleanup.

So quite a few people who are not regulars around here added me to their LJ friend lists during the Hogswatch festivities, which makes total sense, since who doesn't love a daily giveaway? And now they're subtracting me, sometimes with apologetic little notes, because the giveaways have ended. I just want to remind y'all that doing this is totally cool. I am a voluntary follow zone! Please un-friend me at will, and don't worry that you're going to hurt my feelings. Unless you belong to a very short list of people, all of whom are dear friends who have known me for ages, I will not be upset. I'd be more upset if I learned that you had forced yourself to stick around out of obligation, and consequentially become sad.

Prepping for Boskone!

My first official appearance of the new year will be at Boskone, a Boston-based science fiction convention where I will be appearing as the author Guest of Honor, and more, where my first ever collection of essays and poetry, Letters to the Pumpkin King, will be released. I haven't seen the cover yet, but I'm sure it's going to be gorgeous. More, it's an opportunity to own the contents of my first two (severely out of print) chapbooks. So that's cool. Boskone will be held over Valentine's Day weekend in Boston, Massachusetts, and I hugely recommend swinging by if you're in the area and want to hear me blather about whatever the con winds up telling me to blather on about.

My icon.

Something new is coming in 2014. Step right up and try your luck; a dollar and a quarter buys an all-night pass. Details to come: watch this space for news (but don't bother asking me now, for I won't answer, no, not at all).

Cats.

Mom ran the shop vac on Saturday, to prep for the new Ikea cabinet I mentioned before, and the cats flipped their shit as only cats can do. Two days later, we still feel the echoes of the epic shit-flip. Thomas has been doing sock slides in the hall, Alice is a ball of bale, and Lilly keeps getting confused by the way things have moved, sitting down in the middle of the floor, and keening.

Cats are complicated, and I can't find the reset switch, is what I'm saying here.

Do you wanna build a snowman?

Or ride our bikes around the hall?

Today is Alice Price-Healy Little Liddel Abernathy McGuire's fifth birthday. We did not meet until she was ten days old, but this is the day when she began. I am still so very grateful to her for deciding to do that.

As a kitten, Alice's name was "Ado Annie," and she was a prissy, prissy princess who didn't really care for any of the human suitors who came to visit her litter. Until she met me, and went to sleep on my arm, and I asked in a strangled voice if her breeder (my friend Betsy Tinney) took checks.

It took a good deal more time and conversation before Alice was ready to come home with me, as a sixteen week old fuzzball with firm ideas about the world, her place in it, and my place under her. She was my first Maine Coon, and after the learning curve was behind us, she quickly became one of my best friends.

She is pushy; loud; arrogant; prissy; very stinting with her love, and very particular about who deserves it. She gives affection when she wants to, not when people demand it. She won't eat human food, but she begs for it all the same, only to disdain it with a sniff if allowed to get a closer look. She sits like a human, and likes to hug the remote. She is, as I often tell her, my favorite thing.

Happy birthday, Alice. Let's celebrate a dozen more.

10. For some reason, people have been sending me Livejournal messages a lot recently. You are totally welcome to do this, but please be aware that I may take months to answer, even years, as they are a lower priority than messages which come in through my website contact form. If you want to contact me for any reason, your best channel is my website, which has a lovely and easy-to-use contact form. These emails go to my PA, who answers some questions herself and forwards the rest on to me. Where they appear in my inbox, impossible to ignore. Where they get answered.

9. Seriously, just use the contact form. I don't really answer messages received through any other channel in any sort of a reasonable time (and I don't answer Facebook messages at all).

8. I am making cioppino tomorrow night! I am so excited about that! Except...

7. ...I'm making it for me and Olivia to eat while we watch "The Quarterback" and cry. I know Glee is a frequently terrible show, but I am genuinely saddened by Cory's death, and this is going to be emotionally devastating.

6. The tip jar is remaining open until tomorrow morning, largely because I forgot to post this reminder yesterday. Thanks to everyone who's chipped in so far, and to everyone who hasn't, too, because sometimes life says "not this time." Y'all are awesome.

5. So awesome, in fact, that I am compelled to make sure you've seen the incredible videos on SymboGen.net. Seriously, this is some of the best marketing ever, and it's for my book. I am overcome with squee.

4. The field of Alice's fucks lies fallow, and I support this.

3. Carrie: The Musical is really fantastic. If you're in the Bay Area, I recommend the Ray of Light production, now playing in San Francisco. If you're not, look around; there are a lot of productions going right now, due to the rights opening up.

2. Zombies are love.

1. HAPPY OCTOBER HALLOWEEN IS COMING.

Four years ago today, Betsy and Dave Tinney welcomed their Wild West litter at Pinecoon Maine Coons. There were five kittens in the litter, two boys and three girls. One of the three girls was a blue classic tabby and white, whom they called "Ado Annie" as a baby-name.

Fast-forward a few weeks. I didn't go to Washington looking for a Maine Coon. I didn't want a Maine Coon. I was deeply embroiled in the search for a classic Siamese cattery that would fill my needs. Instead, I got handed a puddle of irritated blue and white fluff, and fell instantly, irrevocably in love.

Things were arranged. Discussions were had. And when Ado Annie was sixteen weeks old, her name officially became Alice, and she officially became mine.

Alice is one of the best cats I have ever had, if not the best cat I have ever had. She's sweet, loving, and affectionate, while being sassy and determined to do her own thing, regardless of my opinions on the matter. She's talkative and friendly to my guests, while retaining her natural feline arrogance. She's beautiful and healthy and I adore her beyond words.

So happy fourth birthday to Pinecoon's Alice Price-Healy Little Liddel Abernathy McGuire, the best cat I could ever hope to have.

I love my puffy girl.

ME: *asleep*
ALICE: *asleep*
LILLY: *asleep*
THOMAS: "Bluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurgh hack hack hack blurgh bleah puke puke puke."
ALICE AND LILLY: "MONKEY MAKE HIM STOP."
ME: "Huh wha' is it time for school yet?"
CLOCK: *1:45 AM*
ME: "...oh I am going to make slippers."

So that happened. Poor Thomas decided to celebrate my birthday by throwing up all over the hallway shortly after midnight, resulting in my first birthday activity being "mop up all the cat puke." Also, ew. He seems fine, just unhappy, and got snuggles before I went back to bed and dreamt* about being eaten by a giant gar.**

ME: *asleep*
ALICE: *asleep*
LILLY: *asleep*
THOMAS: *sulking*
ALARM: "Good morning good morning good morning GOOD MOOOOOOORNING!"
CATS: "MONKEY MAKE IT STOP."
ME: "I hate everything."
FACEBOOK: "HAPPY BIRTHDAY FROM THE POPULATION OF HALLOWEENTOWN! LIKE, REALLY, THE WHOLE POPULATION!!!!!!"
ME: "...okay, maybe not everything."

Today is my thirty-fourth birthday! Which is pretty awesome, since I, like most nihilistic teenagers, never really expected to live past the age of twenty. I definitely didn't expect to be writing books and snuggling cats and going to Disney World and having amazing friends and basically getting a pretty good score at the game of Life. Even if my little car lacks other pegs (which I never really wanted anyway). Mom is checking up on Thomas throughout the day, but he really does seem to have just eaten a bug that didn't agree with him.

Tonight, there will be writing, and maybe cupcakes, if I'm feeling ambitious and like walking down to the bakery before I go home. And this weekend, there will be blessedly nothing. I will rest, and it will be glorious.

Happy birthday to me.

(*Dear spellcheck: screw you, that is the correct past tense of the word "dream.")
(**It's a kind of fish. With bonus teeth.)

Things are insane around here (which is ironic, given that I'm finally between conventions), so here are the updates and events du jour, presented in convenient bite-sized fashion.

Science Crawl.
Tomorrow night (Friday, November 4th) the Bay Area Science Crawl will be at Borderlands Books from 7:15 until 8:15 PM. Quote: "The Bay Area Science Festival is proud to present the first ever Sci-Crawl, a coordinated takeover of venues throughout San Francisco’s Mission District, showcasing the science inherent in the neighborhood." I'll be appearing as Mira on a panel discussing the Science of Science Fiction, along with Jeff Carlson and Scott Sigler, and moderated by Brian Malow. The event is free, and should be super-fun. Come and join the geek!

Dental horrors.
Yesterday, I had dental surgery. Yes, again. This time, I managed to somehow break a titanium post inside my mouth. SUPER FUN. Without going into details, largely because they would freak me out, I shall simply say that I am rarely given that many pharmaceuticals during a twenty-four hour period, and I can still taste colors. No fun at all. I basically lost a day and a half to a great gray pit.

T-shirt mailing.
According to my spreadsheet, there are still over a hundred shirts that have not been introduced to envelopes. Over a hundred means that one in three, roughly, has not been mailed. Unless you have reason to think that gnomes have stolen the contents of your mailbox, please don't email yet asking where, specifically, your shirt is located. I'm packing and mailing them just as fast as I possibly can, and this being such a manual process means that it's very hard to track specific list items. Also, because there is such a variance of colors and styles, sometimes the only way to find a shirt is to remove all the shirts around it, which makes it impossible to go "oh, you mean this one? Yeah, it's right here." So I plead for patience. All you do by poking without good cause is make me, and Deborah, sad and grumpy.

Cats.
We're coming up on the one-year anniversary of Alice getting so very, very sick, and she has realized that this means she can basically get away with anything, just by doing while Not Being Sick. This morning, she hit my abdomen like a fuzzy bowling ball, shoved her wet feet up my nose, and trilled happily, only to receive hugs and love, because She Wasn't Sick. Am I setting a bad precedent? Yeah, probably. Do I care? Not one damn bit. Alice isn't sick, and that's really what I need out of life.

Television.
All the shows are coming back on the air. ALL THE SHOWS. Bones starts up again tonight, and I'm gamely plugging through season two of Criminal Minds, which means I may be catching up to watching it live before too much longer. It may seem counter-productive to watch this much TV while also trying to get writing done, but it actually speeds me up, by giving me something to finish for. Speaking of which...

Writing.
Ashes of Honor is done, and I'm getting ready to go into draft two. Midnight Blue-Light Special is finally moving at what I'd call a reasonable pace, and I'm about a quarter of the way through the projected text. And there are various other projects kicking around, including the second installment of the latest Vel story, which will take us to four for the year I can so make my goal. Hah.

Zombies.
Are love.

Thomas can open doors.

Thomas has been able to open doors for a while now.

Thomas has never previously opened the front door. So this was new.

I got up to get ready for bed and discovered the front door of the house standing open, and an utter absence of cats. This, naturally, triggered INSTANT HYSTERIA, and lots of frenzied cat-calling, which probably frightened the neighbors.

Lilly came immediately, looking faintly ashamed of herself, and limping slightly. Thomas was in the yard, sniffing things, and came when called. I closed the door and turned to inspect Lilly's paw...during which pause Thomas OPENED THE DOOR again and let himself back outside.

I retrieved Thomas, called my mother, put on trousers, went outside, locked the door, and began searching the neighborhood for Alice. I found her halfway down the block, investigating someone's garden. I got her to come by clanging a can of wet food with a fork. She's mad now because she didn't get treats. I'm mad because, well. ESCAPING ISN'T COOL. Poor Vixy got me calling her in hysterics, wailing about how they got out.

All three cats are fine and uninjured. I cannot sleep. I have notified work that I'm going to be in late tomorrow, because there's no way I'm sleeping in the next hour. And from now on, the front door is locked even when I'm in the house.

Stupid cats.

My part of Northern California is currently experiencing its first really serious heat wave of 2011. I know better than to whine about this too much; by this point in the year, in a normal year, we'd be on heat wave three or four, and temperatures would be trending substantially higher than they are.

That being said, Thomas is only eleven months old, and this is actually the first really serious heat wave of his life. My house has air conditioning, but it doesn't run twenty-four hours a day, which means that it can get warm inside during the gaps. (Never dangerously warm. I am a good cat owner who does not bake her babies. But there's a big difference between "springtime cool" and "what is this shit?", especially when you've been genetically designed to go tromping around in heavy snow, mocking Jack Frost for his inability to nip at your nose.) Alice and Lilly are quietly miserable, but Thomas? Thomas is distressed.

Monday night, I got home from a hot, sweaty day at work, and promptly jumped into the shower, because sometimes, that's the only solution available to you. The Maine Coons thought so, too. In short order, I was joined in the shower by both Alice and Thomas, who splashed around in the water, got thoroughly drenched, and then took turns sitting on the plug so as to create a puddle for the other to swim in. Yes. My cats cooperatively filled the bathtub in order to have swampy funtimes.

After our shower, they squelched around the house like extras from Sigrid and the Sea Monsters until I chased them down and toweled them off. I think they're still annoyed about that. Sadly, their inability to understand "don't walk on keyboards while wet" is why they can't have a wading pool.

Heat wave with cats. It's going to be a long July.

I am, to a degree, a public figure. I know that. I am also a low-level enough public figure that I am accessible, unlike, say, anyone who's actually famous. That means that some of the things I do and say will be judged in ways that will seem unfair to me. I know that, too. I've basically come to grips with the fact that if I want to be an author, and if I want to make my living doing this, I'm going to have to deal with people judging me. That being said...

Don't you ever, ever insult my cats. Don't you ever, ever imply that I own them because they're "status symbols," or because I am in some way taking pleasure in the knowledge that other cats are being put to sleep right now. Lilly, Alice, and Thomas are my companions. They are my friends. They are the closest I intend to come to having children, and while I may be up for judgment, they are off limits. Leave my cats the fuck alone.

Why do I get my cats from reputable breeders, rather than from the local shelter? A whole bunch of reasons.

I do it for the health of the cat. When I visit a reputable breeder, I can not only meet the kitten I'm hoping to take home with me, I can meet their parents and grandparents. In the case of Alice and Thomas, I met their great-grandfather. I want to know that my cats have a good genetic shot at a long, happy life.

I do it for the temperament of the cat. I have had incredibly sweet, loving shelter cats in my life. I have also had bitter, terrified, xenophobic shelter cats who couldn't be integrated into a household, because they were too damn scared. I want a kitten that has been socialized and loved, and that has been bred to have a good personality to go with those good genes. I want a Lilly, an Alice, a Thomas, a Ripley, a Toby, an Alligator.

And yes, I do insist on kittens whenever possible. At best, I'm bringing home a new cat to an adult who isn't sure about the situation; at worst, I'm bringing home a new cat to two adults who already think there's no room at the inn. I am loud. I move quickly. I go away for long periods of time. I do things the way I do things, and a lot of adult cats can't adjust to me, no matter how hard we both try.

There are cats in shelters. There are cats in rescues. There are cats in need of homes. But I am not in the market for an adult rescue, and the kittens don't need me to be the one that saves them; kittens stand a much better chance than adults. Why do I know this? I know because I have volunteered at shelters and rescues and free clinics since I was twelve years old. Just like I know that I want as complete of a genetic profile as possible on my cats, because I buried so damn many of them when I was bringing them home from the pound.

My cats are not a zero-sum game. Bringing Thomas home from Betsy's didn't kill a kitten somewhere in the world that was waiting for my love; if it hadn't been Thomas, it would have been no new cat at all. Do I wish that there were no cats anywhere in the world waiting for their forever homes? Yes, I do. But that doesn't mean we shut down the breeders, abolish the breeds, and become a Domestic Shorthair and Domestic Longhair-only world. It means we breed responsibly. It means we support the shelters. It means we spay and neuter our pets.

And it means that my cats are not fucking status symbols. They are not somehow less worthy of love and comfort and a place to sleep than cats who have been abused or abandoned. They are exactly as worthy of all those things. And they are getting them from me, as will all the cats in my future.

If you can't be nice to my cats, you leave them the fuck alone.

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

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

Anyway, here you go:

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

Hello, world! It's the Thursday before Wondercon, and I'm trying to take care of all the little rags and tags of reality that build up over the course of a week like cat hair on velvet pants. So anyway...

1. The fight is still raging in the BSC Review tournament! This round closes Sunday morning, at which point, eight books will be reduced to four, and those four will duke it out for the right to do to the bracket semi-finals. Cat and I both still have horses in this race, so please, help keep Toby swinging!

2. Speaking of Cat, her new book, Deathless, came out this week. Hooray for book release! There's a lot of neat free stuff to have and enjoy and be amazed by; my darling talkstowolves has made a big post collecting it all into one place. I even drew a Pretty Little Dead Ghoul for the occasion. Feel the love!

3. My new phone is lovely, and allows me to do exciting things like "take pictures of my cats" and "access Twitter from the train." It also allows me to answer email when I'm not at home, which is going to be a huge, huge relief as time goes on. It's already taken some of the weight off, since I've been able to respond to things while in transit.

4. Thomas and Alice have started working against me. Thomas jumped onto the back of my knees at four o'clock this morning, jarring me INSTANTLY AWAKE, at which point Alice began pushing their ceramic food dishes back and forth in the feeding tray. Scrape. Scrape. Scraaaaaape. So yes, I got up, and I fed the cats. I am so doomed.

5. The full-length trailer for the new season of Doctor Who has been released, and is so intensely awesome as to cause me to sit, weak-kneed and gaping at my monitor, for several minutes before hitting "play" again. I remain overjoyed and giggly over the fact that this show, my show, is back.

6. Also, there's a new My Little Pony cartoon that doesn't suck. I clearly control the universe. You can place your requests with Kate, who will only allow me to fulfill the ones that don't involve diseases or amphibians.

7. I'm getting ready to do a massive post office run, so I am once again taking orders for "Wicked Girls" posters. According to my files, if it's been paid for, it's been sent out; please email me if you don't have yours. Comment either here or on the original post if you'd like to request a poster, and we'll coordinate.

8. I will be mostly offline this weekend, as I will be attending Wondercon. I'll have my awesome new phone with me, but let's face it, when given a choice between answering email and staring raptly at James Gunn, James Gunn wins without a contest. I'll definitely Tweet my location at various points throughout the weekend, and if you find me, you could win a prize. Or not. I may be out of prizes.

9. Zombies are still love.

10. I get to see Amy this weekend (Mebberson, not McNally)! And Kaja! And Phil! And there will be cupcakes, and hugging, and artwork, and Mom will probably wear her chicken hat, and I'm so excited!!!!!

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

This is a rare thing which I am sharing with you; a moment of peace and tranquility the likes of which happens only for a few seconds at a time, and even then, only when the moon is right, and the tide is low, and the world holds its breath.

Behold:



That's Alice closest to camera, with Thomas in the middle, and Lilly on the end. As is always the case with me, the picture is a few weeks old at this point; Thomas is almost twice as big now as he was when this picture was taken (I think shortly after Arisia).

I hope that all is well in your world, and that something makes you as happy as these three balls of vicious blue fluff make me.

Ah, Saturday. A day for sweet relaxation. A day when the working author can at least pretend to get caught up on all her word counts. And, well. A day that marks Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] being exactly three days from release. (Yes, I know, some stores have it out early. This doesn't make me a happy bunny, so please stop telling me about it. OCD means never coping well when people change your math.)

Some people have asked me why, exactly, they should spend their hard-earned dollars on my books, rather than on all the other lovely things they could be spending their dollars on. So I am here to present you with three excellent reasons why you should buy my books. Take two. They're small.

Reason #1:



Reason #2:



Reason #3:



Buy my books so I can continue to feed the furry monsters that sleep with their many, many sharp kitten-teeth only inches from my tender flesh. (That's Lilly, Alice, and Thomas, in order. It's actually an older picture of Alice, but she was so damn cute that I couldn't resist.)

Three days!

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.

Words: 3,478.
Total words: 7,117.
Reason for stopping: chapter two is done, and it's time for bed.
Music: totally random shuffle.
The cats: Lilly, cat bed; Thomas, sleeping in my laundry; Alice, unknown.

And now, with the completion of chapter two, the good ship Ashes of Honor is ready to set sail for the proofing mines. Oh, the dangers it will face, the flashing machetes, the chomping alligators...but it will sail out the other side divine, filled with properly-placed commas and cars that don't inexplicably disappear in the middle of a chapter. I love the proofing mines so. And I fear them even more.

This has been a crazy-productive week, which is good, since my initial figures for 2011 basically say "write 2,000 words every day OR DIE IN THE PIT OF SNAKES." So every day where I can write more than 2,000 words buys me a little time to myself. Or, you know, time to write something that wasn't on the original list. You know, the usual craziness that goes on around here.

Alice has just wandered into the room and informed me, loudly, that it is time for bed. I'm going to take the cat's word on things.

Goodnight, world.

Today is Alice Price-Healy Little Liddel Abernathy McGuire's second birthday. As of today, she can't be considered a kitten by even the most generous of standards, and must, at last, be afforded the sacred title of "cat." This does not prevent her sleeping on her back for hours with her soft white belly exposed. Nor does it cause her to develop an ounce of dignity. But it does make her wonderful.

I love all three of my cats, and I try not to play favorites. Right now, however, Alice is definitely my favorite, simply by virtue of not being dead. It's hard to express in words just how badly she frightened me when she got sick. Now, finally, she's shiny and grooming herself and talking to me in audible registers, rather than just making this heart-breaking rasping sound. She's better. I'm still going to keep a close eye on her throughout the winter, because this isn't sort of thing you forget quickly, but she's better. And right now, that makes her my favorite.

To celebrate Alice's birthday, she's getting a thorough grooming, possibly including claw-clipping if I can find where she's most recently hidden the clippers, and then I'm going to sit still for several hours while she gets love. There is no better gift one can give a cat.

Happy birthday, Alice. This is only the beginning.

Some things are beautiful because they are timeless and universal. A mountain at sunset. A baby rattlesnake coiled on a smooth rock. Pigeons. Other things are beautiful because they're specific and familiar. Like, say, two fluffy, enormous blue cats relaxing in a bed with orange sheets, surrounded by Halloween pillows and weird stuffed toys. (Appearing in this picture, we have Amberlee the Velociraptor and Oleander the Blue-Ringed Octopus.) I think that's pretty specific, don't you?

So do they.



This picture is a few weeks old now, which is why Alice looks so annoyed, and why Thomas is so damn small (he's already expanded by about 1/3, and may be bigger in the morning). But behold their green and orange eyes!

Happy holidays, no matter what holiday you choose to surround yourself with while you sleep.

Item the first: kirylyn, you have won a copy of An Artificial Night in the fourth of my random holiday drawings. Please email me within the next twenty-four hours, using the contact form on my website, to be mailing your book. If I don't hear from you inside this time, I will have to draw a new winner. So I surely do hope I hear from you!

Item the second: I spent most of the day in San Francisco, as The Editor was flying in through SFO, and needed to be picked up and toted to her final destination (for the moment). With a stop at Borderlands Books, naturally, to meet the hairless cats. Sadly, the hairless cats were not in when we swung by, but we got to hang out with Jude, and I convinced a nice lady to buy Carousel Tides for her wife. So life, pretty good, really.

Item the third: Alice is continuing to get better, and has now improved enough to be pushy and imperious when she doesn't get what she wants. Given that at her worst, she was barely interactive, this is wonderful, and I relish being bullied by my big fuzzy baby. She knows it, too, and is taking shameless advantage of me. Oddly, I'm okay with that.

Item the fourth: My bedroom may actually be a black hole. I'm trying to clean up and rearrange in here, and it's dauntingly horrific. I keep finding things I didn't know existed, like a long box half-full of Stars Fall Home. In other news, I now have ten more copies of Stars Fall Home.

Item the fifth: As part of my cleaning efforts, I'm sorting, indexing, and purging my collection of My Little Ponies. When I'm done, I'll actually be able to make a coherent wish list. This is...maybe not such a good thing, really, since I have access to eBay. But hey. Everything has its downside.

How's by you?

Dear Great Pumpkin;

Another harvest season has come and gone, rich with tricks, treats, and unexplained disappearances in the haunted cornfield. I hope you have been well. Since my last letter to you, I have not wiped out mankind with a genetically engineered pandemic, or challenged any major religious figures to duels to the death in the public square. I have loved my friends and refrained from destroying my enemies. I have given out hugs, cupcakes, and cuddles with kittens freely and without hesitation. I have offered support when I could, and comfort when it was needed. I have not unleashed my scarecrow army to devastate North America. I have continued to make all my deadlines, even the ones I most wanted to avoid. I have not "accidentally" put tapeworm eggs in anyone's food. So as you can see, I've pretty much been a saint, by our somewhat lax local standards.

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

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

* Please let me make the revisions to One Salt Sea and Discount Armageddon smoothly, satisfyingly, and in a timely fashion, hopefully including a minimum of typographical and factual errors, plus a maximum level of awesome and win. If this request seems familiar, Great Pumpkin, it's because I make it just about every time I have a new book on the table, and this time is doubly important. One Salt Sea concludes a major arc in Toby's story, and Discount Armageddon kicks off a whole new series. I want them both to be amazing. Pretty please with candy corn on top?

* While I'm at it, please let the next books in their respective series be up to my admittedly nearly-impossible standards for myself. Let Ashes of Honor be exciting and worth the commitment, let Midnight Blue-Light Special be peppy and perfect in its insanity, and let Blackout seal the deal on the Newsflesh universe. It's wonderful to be working on three totally new books. It's also terrifying. There's a period at the start of a novel, where I'm trying to chip the shape of the story out of nothing, that's just scary as hell, and I'm there times three right now. Please show mercy, and let this work.

* I thank you for Alice's return to health, Great Pumpkin, and ask for your blessings as she continues her recovery. I thought I was going to lose her. I'm still shaky when I think about it. Please let her keep getting better, and please let her be exactly the same goofy, graceless cat that she's always been. While you're at it, please make sure Lilly and Thomas stay healthy, and that Thomas continues his incredible, faintly frightening growth. I think he doubles in size once a week. It's awesome. Look out for my cats, Great Pumpkin. They mean the world to me.

* As I approach the 2011 convention season, I ask for your blessings. Let things be smooth when they can, and let me take that which is not smooth with good humor, good grace, and a good sense of restraint. Let me be clever when I need to be, calm when I need to be, and a good guest for everyone who has been kind enough to invite me to their convention. Let me be the kind of guest that is remembered with joy, not the kind who is remembered with glum "and then there was the year of the great tragedy" stories.

* Thank you, thank you, thank you again for shining your holy candle upon the Campbell Award, Great Pumpkin. I hope only that I did you proud with my acceptance speech, and that you are pleased with my endeavors. It may be a little forward of me to point this out, but Feed is eligible for both the Nebula and Hugo Awards this year, and, well...any assistance you wanted to throw my way would be very much appreciated. I think my mother would catch fire if I came home with either award, and that would be fun to watch.

I remain your faithful Halloween girl,
Seanan.

PS: While you're at it, can you please make Oasis get back to me? I'd really like to be done with Wicked Girls before I'm done with 2010.

I hope you had a wonderful Thursday, whether you're in the United States and celebrated with turkey, or are elsewhere in the world, and celebrated by ending your work week. As a reward from me to all of you for surviving the majority of November, I give you a Saturday morning dose of adorable: Alice and Thomas, all snuggled up and being puffy as hell. I love my kitties all the more because they integrated so smoothly, meaning I've been able to sleep (when they let me use the bed).



That's Alice in the background and Thomas in the front. He's only eighteen weeks old in this picture. My boycat is eventually going to eat Rhode Island.

Have a great weekend!

I try to answer all comments on this journal, because it just seems polite. But after spending the night worrying about my sick cat, and spending the morning medicating her (which she hates), I honestly can't bring myself to answer individual comments on my post about her illness. It's just going to make me start crying again. So...

Thank you all, so very much, for your kind wishes and concern. Alice is still sick, but seems to be on the mend—she felt well enough to glare at me this morning when I hauled her out from under the couch and pumped her full of sticky pink antibiotic goo. Thomas and Lilly are confused and clingy, since they don't understand what's going on, and everyone is thrilled by the sudden wide availability of tuna.

Medicating Alice is easier than it could be, because she is seriously one of the world's most civilized cats; she mostly just squirms and scowls at me, like her infection is my fault, and not the fault of rapidly-replicating bacteria. I cannot explain epidemiology to my cat. I know. I've tried.

I'll keep you posted, and thank you again. I really appreciate it.

Friday evening, Alice started looking a little ill. She was listless, unresponsive, and not interested in treats, although she did drink the juice from my can of tuna willingly enough (one of her favorite things). I consulted with a few people whose opinions I trust, and decided to monitor her condition before taking her to the vet, as no one wants to deal with the emergency vet when they don't have to. Saturday, she seemed better, although still droopy, and I thought she was recovering.

Sunday evening she took a turn for the worse, dramatic enough that I called my vet the second they opened this morning and made her an appointment. My mother, thankfully, agreed to take her in, since I had to go to work, and my vet agreed to treat the cat but allow me to pay over the phone via credit card. Thank the Great Pumpkin for reasonable people. At this point, Alice was having breathing difficulties, throwing up, licking her lips constantly, was extremely lethargic, and had visibly lost weight. (No, I am not a totally irresponsible cat owner. This all happened very fast, and Alice felt bad enough that she kept hiding under things, making it difficult to monitor her condition.)

After spending the morning in borderline-hysterics, I finally got the call from Mom: Alice has pneumonia, which she got the same way humans get it—bad luck, fluid in the lungs, and an opportunistic infection. She's been given an antibiotic shot and some fluids, and I have liquid antibiotics to pump into her for the next few weeks. I also have strict instructions to give her anything she wants, providing it won't hurt her, until she gets her weight back up. So I guess it's the all-wet food, all-the-time diet around my place for a week or two. Let's just hope she doesn't get any ideas about illness equating to better chow, shall we?

It's easy to be calmer now, to make jokes now, to talk about giving her an entire turkey for Thanksgiving, if that's what she wants. But the fact of the matter is, I've been terrified since last night, when it became apparent just how sick she was getting. I am so relieved that she's okay. She's only two. You're not supposed to have to worry about these things when they're only two. But you do.

Hug your kids for me, regardless of their species. I know I'm going to spend the evening hugging mine.

As I've discussed before on this blog, I have OCD, which manifests itself most specifically in pattern-formation and obsessive tracking. Oddly, you can use my tracking as a bellwether for my overall mental health: If I'm tracking, I'm good, and if I'm not, I'm probably getting pretty alarmingly de-stable, and should be encouraged to start counting crows and writing down my results as quickly as humanly possible. (I saw six crows yesterday, indicating gold, in case you wondered.) I am at peace with my diagnosis, and have learned to live with my idiosyncrasies just as much as "normal" people live with theirs.

Of course, part of managing my flavor of OCD involves keeping my tracking detailed, dependable, and most of all, consistent. Which is why I depend on Franklin-Covey's planner refills to keep me from snapping and killing everyone in an unformatted rage. Only there's one small problem:

Since they unexpectedly redesigned the "Blooms" planner pages in 2005, I've insisted on going to the Franklin-Covey store in person, to be sure that what I'm getting is something I can actually use. And both California stores have been closed in the last year, resulting in great dismay and sorrow on my part.

Enter salvation, in the form of Washington, and Ryan. Because there is still one store—one beautiful, wonderful store—in Redmond. It opens at ten on Saturday mornings. Which is why, at nine-fifteen, Ryan picked me up and drove me to that glorious wonderland I often refer to as "the OCD porn store."

On the way, we saw a bald eagle. Just sitting there. Being the stone-dumb symbol of our country. DUDE WHAT THE FUCK. I mean, seriously.

Finding the store was easy, and we were the first ones there, probably because we were actually there before they opened. The manager on duty was a friendly, well-groomed blonde woman, originally from California, who said we were lucky to have come when we did, as the store will probably be closing in January. My heart broke a little. While I can understand that high-end planner products are probably more economically sold online, I always spend more in the physical stores, because I can put my hands on things, and really understand why I might need them.

Case in point: a deeply discounted orange leather purse. I opened it. I peered inside. I commented on all the pockets.

"I can put my planner in here," I said.
"Yes," said Ryan.
"I can put my Netbook in here," I said.
"Yes," said Ryan.
"I can put Alice in here," I said.
"Maybe," said Ryan.
"What's an Alice?" asked the manager.
"My cat," I said.

Ryan produced his iPhone, and produced a picture, which we showed to the manager.

"Holy crap," said the manager.

I bought the purse.

It was a glorious morning, filled with victory (and later, with pancakes). We even saw the eagle again, flying over the water, looking for breakfast. I mourn for the loss of the OCD porn store, where I never feel odd at all, just really, really efficient. And Alice does, in fact, fit inside my purse.

So, as many of you have ascertained from this month's welcome post, I have a new member of my feline family: Thomas, a blue classic tabby and white Maine Coon. Like Alice, he hails from Seattle's fantastic Pinecoon Cattery, courtesy of Betsy Tinney. He and Alice actually share a mother, the sweet-natured and endlessly tolerant Arial (yes, like the font), although they have different fathers. Thomas joined the family on Sunday afternoon, heralded by a rather epic amount of hissing from my pre-existing cats, Lilly and Alice.

Thomas, it should be noted, has really not participated in the hissing. He's a goofy, sweet little blue boy, and he starts purring when I get within three feet of him. That is, when he's not racing through the house like a kitten possessed, sinuous blue tail flying out behind him like a flag, losing traction on the hardwood floor, and slamming into the nearest available wall. Yes. He does this a lot.

Lilly and Alice remain dubious of our new family member, but they're starting to warm to him. Lilly was grooming him yesterday (she is the lickingest cat alive), and he and Alice slept on my chest last night, together. Given that he's likely to weigh more than she does when he grows up, this may become a lot less endearing really, really soon. Then again, they eliminate the need for a space heater, so hey. All three of them spent last night's episode of Glee hanging out, purring loudly, and being cute. I have the cutest cats in the entire world. And all my cats are blue.

This brings me to two Maine Coons and one classic Siamese, which strikes me as a good place to stop, since going any further takes me into crazy cat lady territory. Besides, I'm already pretty sure that, if they wanted to, they could take me.

Kitten!

(No, there are not yet kitten pictures available. Yes, there will be kitten pictures...eventually. Making pictures uploadable is a long, manual process, and I'm getting ready for this weekend's Orycon Guest of Honor slot, integrating a new cat into my household, and trying to finish a book. Asking me for kitten pictures only reduces my desire to deal with formatting them. So please show mercy, and don't ask?)

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

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

Anyway, here you go:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Lilly and Alice;

I love you more than I love just about anything else in the world, including candy corn and my My Little Pony collection, but seriously, if you wake me up at two in the morning to ask me to open the window one more time, you're going to be mittens. I can get new cats. Better cats. Cats that won't do that kind of shit.

Annoyed,
Your human.

*

Dear My Little Pony collection;

You're made of plastic. Please stop reproducing when you think I'm not looking. I am rapidly running out of shelf space. Last night, cleaning out the random accessory bin, I found complete sets of Pony Wear from 1982. This is becoming creepy. Cut it out.

Spooked,
Your collector.

*

Dear retail outlets of the world;

Halloween is my favorite holiday, and I really appreciate that you've noticed how stressed I am and are trying to take steps to reduce my unhappiness, but the fact that you're already putting out the Halloween decorations is a little bit disturbing. It's August. Since you're not selling Halloween-themed school supplies (which you totally should be), this seems a little unfair to the people heading back to class and just trying to find a cheap number two pencil.

I would really appreciate it if you'd go back to putting out the Halloween decorations in mid- to late-September, and then leave them up until, I don't know, Halloween. That way, the stores wouldn't suddenly be set for Thanksgiving while last-minute shoppers are trying to get their candy for trick-or-treat, and we might not have time for the Christmas music to make us actively homicidal before the end of the season.

Just a thought.

Respectfully,
Your customer.

*

Dear candy corn;

Om nom nom nom nom.

Nom,
Your consumer.

*

Dear Great Pumpkin;

O He who is in the patch down the street where they give hayrides in that sort of rickety-looking tractor, hallowed be thy name. May you be adored and adorned with candles, spooky faces, and, when the time is come for your death and resurrection, with graham cracker crust and sweet whipped cream. May you rise to walk the haunted corn mazes and the suburban streets, delighting the faithful and frightening the unbeliever with your fixed and luminous grin.

Great Pumpkin, I will write you more thoroughly later, but I just wanted to say, you da squash, thank you for the candy corn, and I hope to have an incredible, amazing time in Australia, where they have weird blue zombie pumpkins, which just reinforces my belief that it is, in fact, the promised land. Thank you for everything, Great Pumpkin.

Trick or treat,
Seanan.

So recently, I had an unwelcome house guest: an elderly black cat spent about a week and a half in the laundry room, waiting to be removed to its new home. There were a lot of very good reasons for the cat's presence, most of which I don't really want to go into. Lilly and Alice were fascinated by the interloper; Lilly wanted to kill it, while Alice wanted to PLAY PLAY PLAY. Behold the difference between "manic" and "temperamental," ladies and gentlemen. The cat was eventually removed, returning the house to its normal state...but a host's gift was kindly left behind.

We have fleas again.

This was discovered when I took Alice to the groomer on Saturday (she'd managed to develop belly mats, thanks to all my recent traveling, and I just wanted them gone so we could return to non-painful grooming). "Did you know you have fleas? Oh, the poor baby, she's just crawling with them."

As I'm sure you can imagine, I was...displeased. I fought a long, hard battle to get rid of the fleas last time this happened. Since Alice is a longhair and Lilly has a very dense, plush coat, it's possible for them to have fleas without my actually being able to see the signs. And since I brush both of them really regularly, they don't get as itchy as they might otherwise, so I don't get as much visible scratching. I went straight out and got flea medication, along with carpet powder and bedding spray. Then I came home and checked the calendar.

See, most flea treatments are given at one-month intervals, and I needed to be sure the second dose would come due after I got back from Australia. Today turned out to be the magical day. The day I poured poison on the cats.

Alice took it with good grace, because Alice sweats sedatives. Lilly was substantially more offended, and slunk off to glare at me for about twenty minutes. I don't care. THE FLEAS WILL DIE. Thus I swear.

Stupid fleas.

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

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

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

* Fish the cat toys out from under the bed.

* Brush the cats.

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

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

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

* Laundry.

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

* Fish the cat toys out from under the bed.

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

* Fish the cat toys out from under the bed.

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

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

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

* Watch Warehouse 13.

* Sleep.

Dear Great Pumpkin;

It has been some time since I last wrote to you, but you have never been far from my thoughts. I just figured you could use a break. Since our last correspondence, I have refrained from starting any riots or overthrowing any governments. I have been kind to my friends, and relatively merciful to my enemies. I have offered friendship and support to those around me. I have given people cupcakes. I have not brought forth the end of days, nor capered gleefully by the bloody light of an apocalypse moon. I have continued to make all my deadlines, even the ones I most wanted to avoid. I have not talked about parasites at the dinner table. Much. So obviously, I have been quite well-behaved, especially considering my nature.

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

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

* Please help me finish the revisions to Late Eclipses in a smooth, satisfying, timely way, hopefully including a minimum number of typographical and factual errors, plus a maximum level of awesome and win. I'm about halfway through, which is wonderful—I'm almost done!—and terrifying—soon I won't be able to make changes anymore!—at the same time. I want to bring this book to a close, so I can get back to work on the fifth Toby book and the third Newsflesh book. What I have is good. Please let the rest be amazing.

* Since I'm being a Greedy Greta today, please let me swing back into The Brightest Fell with speed and elan, overcoming all challenges in my pursuit of the perfect ending. Thanks to changes in the book's overall plot, I no longer know for sure whether book six will be Ashes of Honor or One Salt Sea, and I'd really like to figure that one out. Please let the book be good, and please let the book be easy on my sanity. The more time I have to spend stressing out over this book, the less time I spend preaching your gospel to the unenlightened, or lurking in corn mazes scaring the living crap out of tourists. You like it when I scare the crap out of tourists, don't you, Great Pumpkin?

* I thank you once again for my cats, Great Pumpkin, who are wonderful and beautiful and a comfort beyond all measure. Alice is huge, puffy, and utterly without dignity. Lilly is sleek, smug, and satisfied with herself. Both are glorious representatives of their breed, and now, as I look to adding a third member to the family, I turn to you. Please make sure I find the right kitten, Great Pumpkin, the one which will enrich and benefit my feline family in ways that I haven't even thought of yet. Keep them healthy, keep them happy, and keep them exactly as they are.

* Please help me write a successful, smooth, and most of all, correct conclusion for the "Sparrow Hill Road" series of stories. It's been exciting and educational, and I've enjoyed the process of delving into Rose's world, but as I start moving toward the end of this particular journey, I start worrying about my ability to stick the landing. Please help me stick the landing, Great Pumpkin. Rose has waited a long time for her story to be told in a truthful, respectful manner, and she deserves a narrative that gets her all the way to the last exit on the ghostroads.

* I haven't said anything up to now about what I really want this year, Great Pumpkin, but...you know I've been nominated for the Campbell Award. You know that if I win, I'll be given a tiara, in Australia. You know that this is essentially what I've wanted my whole life. Some little girls want to be Prom Queen; I wanted to be Princess of the Kingdom of Poison and Flame. Please shine your holy candle upon the Campbell, Great Pumpkin, and, if you see fit, I will thank you in any speeches I have to give (which might be worth it right there).

I remain your faithful Halloween girl,
Seanan.

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

People ask periodically "so, just how big is your cat now?", like they think I exaggerate Alice's size for some insane reason. I mean, Maine Coon, guys, these are the cats they designed to star in SyFy Original Pictures.

I give you Alice, with a copy of Rosemary and Rue for scale, taken inside the last few weeks:



And she's still growing.

Happy Sunday!

1. Only four hours remain to enter my random drawing for an ARC of An Artificial Night! It's probably the simplest contest I'm going to have, so what have you got to lose, right? Besides, they're pretty. I like pretty things. I am a simple soul.

2. Speaking of pretty things, remember that the ALH pendant sale will be starting today at Chimera Fancies. I cannot possibly overstate how much I love Mia's pendants. If I were a wealthy woman, I'd just pay her to sit around and make them all day, and keep the bulk of her output for myself. Again, simple soul. Also, occasional magpie.

3. Leverage comes back this weekend! So You Think You Can Dance is back on the air! Cartoon Network has Unnatural History and Total Drama World Tour! Oh, I love you, summertime television. I love you so much, forever.

4. Tomorrow is my last pre-Westercon rehearsal with the fabulous Paul Kwinn, renowned in song and story, master of the meaningful look while wearing a gaudily-patterned shirt, husband of Beckett, whom I love beyond all reason. I'm very excited, despite the fact that I'm still occasionally coughing like I'm on the verge of actual death. It's gonna be awesome.

5. I have my editorial notes for Late Eclipses, and I'm busily incorporating them into the finished manuscript...while, possibly, fixing a few little language issues at the same time. It's been long enough since I touched this book that it appears to have been written by an alien, which is the best time for doing editorial. It's still my baby. It's just my weird alien baby, and that makes it more fun to autopsy.

6. Zombies are still love.

7. It's June already. That means we're getting closer and closer every day to my departure for Australia, LAND OF POISON AND FLAME, which I have only been dreaming about for most of my life. I'm so excited it's scary, and not just because I'm on the ballot for the Campbell (although that remains a constant GOTO loop at the back of my brain). I get to go to Australia! I get to breathe Australian air! My life is awesome sometimes.

8. We've entered the final stages of recording Wicked Girls, and it should, I hope, I pray, be able to make the October release date that I so optimistically set for myself. I'll be announcing the pre-orders soon, since that's how I finance mixing and mastering, and I'm really, really happy with this album, as a whole. It's just...it's what I wanted. And that's incredible.

9. I think the cats are stealing my will to leave the house. I just want to sleep.

10. I need more ARC contests! Suggest something. Be silly, be serious, request that I do your favorite all over again, whatever. I need ideas, and so I turn to you, the glorious Internet, to give them to me.

It's Friday!

First up, for those of you who've wondered what it's like to live with my cats, here's a video link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2P0QVvqHys

Now don't say I never gave you anything.

Second up, I have just actually mapped out the remainder of my year, so as to see where the holes are. The holes are...nowhere. I'm booked. Like, until December. And that doesn't count the various things I need to be working on, since they're not so much "events" as they are "endemic conditions." You know, like mono, rather than strep throat. So if I turn down an invitation to come out and be social, it's nothing personal, it's just that I can't afford to catch anything else until I've received some mental medical care, and maybe a nice, long nap.

Third up, I should have the ARCs for An Artificial Night any day now, at which point it will once again be time for our summer giveaways. Get your thinking caps on; I want to have truly awesome contests this time, earth-shaking, world-shattering contests. Or, y'know, at least contests that don't bore me. You know, whichever way turns out to work for folks. Let me know if you have suggestions.

Fourth up, I am most of the way through the Sparrow Hill Road story for August, which may need a different title, since it's turned out to be rather more...antic...than was originally expected (it's currently called "Dead Man's Curve"). This seems to be the obligate humorous episode before things get really, really unpleasant, moving up to the December season finale, "Last Kiss," wherein everything becomes, well. Unpleasant for Rose and company. I've got a little time to work it out before things get really urgent.

Fifth up, today I get to go to my favorite bakery with a camera and a Flip video, where I will thoroughly document the process of Jennifer (the owner) making awesome, awesome brain cupcakes. I then get to walk away with the cupcakes. My life is awesome sometimes.

Sixth up, a request: if you speak any language other than English fluently enough to translate, please reply to this post with the following sentences in whatever languages you can, identifying them clearly:

"The dead are rising/walking! Run for your life!"
"I have been infected. Please shoot me."
"I am not infected. Please do not shoot me."

Thank you!

YOU: Sent me a copy of A Local Habitation, along with return postage and copies of your own books. Said books have since vanished into my bedroom, victim of very large, very irritated blue cats.

ME: Confused urban fantasy author baffled by the lack of a return address on the envelope containing said return postage, and really hoping that you'll see this and email me with your information, so that I can send your book away before one of the cats eats it.

EVERYONE ELSE: When sending me a book to be signed (which you should never do without asking me first, as I am sometimes really, really bad about getting to the post office, and I refuse to be yelled at if I didn't commit to a timeline), please be sure to include a piece of paper including the proper spelling of your name and your full mailing address, along with any return postage we may have agreed upon. This will really speed up the process of getting your book back to you. Unless, of course, you're just sending me spare copies of my own books, in which case, gee, thanks! I can always use more books.

ALICE: Lurks in wait, hungry for your envelopes.

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

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

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

Anyway, here you go:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy spring!

One year ago today, I flew home from Seattle with a tiny, traumatized, rather pissed-off bundle of fuzzy blue and white puff stuffed into a bright pink soft-sided cat carrier.

One year ago today, I released the piece of puff into my bedroom, where it looked around, jumped onto the bed, curled itself into a comfortable ball of puffiness, and essentially said "This will do, monkey."

One year ago today, Alice Price-Healy Little Liddel Abernathy McGuire officially joined my family. And it seems like she's been with us forever, and it seems like she's been with us for five minutes, tops. I remember when her name was longer than she was! Now she's the length of Amy's leg, and making great strides toward being the length of my leg. She's like one of those magical grow-critters—the ones that swell to a hundred times their original size when submerged in water (and maybe this explains her passionate love for hanging out in the bathtub, water bowl, and toilet). She's immensely puffy, and sweet, and cuddly, and funny, and wonderful.

She's just wonderful.

I remain so grateful to Betsy for letting me have her, because she is one of the best cats I have ever owned. She and Lilly are a joy both together and apart, and Alice is a constant ball of playful, prim, perfect delight.

The Maine Coon. Because sometimes, you just need more to love.

Point the first: There has been an epic influx of new people around here in the past few days. Like, epic. The kind of influx which causes me to start doing careful web checks to see if someone has been claiming that I regularly give away chocolate, kittens, and live Suicide Girls. (Hint: I do not do any of these things.) In the end, I have to admit that I'm stumped. I don't know where y'all are coming from, and while I'm happy as heck to have you, I'd love to know where you're coming from. And yes, I get the part where I have a book coming out in three days and this might—might—potentially be influencing the sudden flood of new names and faces. Still.

Point the second: If you enter a CVS Drugs in search of the tiny, addictive balls of malted goodness called "Robin's Eggs" by the makers of Easter candy, you may find that there are no Robin's Eggs on the shelves. There are, instead, extremely similar-looking candies called "Speckled Malted Milk Mini Eggs." Now, this is basically what Robin's Eggs are, so you could be forgiven for saying "fuck it, buy generic" and picking up a bag. You would not be the first. Once you had purchased this cruel temptation, it would be understandable if you then opened the bag, and placed one of the little balls of sugar in your mouth. But I have walked this path for you, and I have come to tell you the truth:

Speckled Malted Milk Mini Eggs are NOT fucking Robin's Eggs, and whoever decided to market these things as if they were should be forced to drown in their horrific, slime-like pseudo-chocolate coating.

I suffer so you don't have to.

Point the third: My house is currently in the throes of a full-scale invasion. To be specific, it is currently inhabited by Betsy Tinney, her daughter Katie, SJ Tucker, Kevin Wiley, Alexander James Adams, and the people who normally live here. Plus my opinionated monster cats, who can fill a house all by themselves. On Monday night, the fabulous Amy McNally arrives. If we run out of coffee at any point, cannibalism cannot be far behind. You have been warned. Also, if fandom did reality show filming, we would so be prime time right now.

Point the fourth: Since A Local Habitation comes out in three days, and one of them is mostly over now, I have to warn you that I may go basically batshit at any moment, and need to be removed from the ceiling fixtures by men with tranquilizer darts filled with Diet Dr Pepper. On the plus side, again, Amy gets here Monday, and she will sacrifice herself upon my dark altar that you may all be saved. Be kind to her. She suffers for your protection.

Point the fifth: Here. Have a picture of Lilly and Alice, sitting together, without injuring each other.

So I'm existing on a diet of Diet Dr Pepper, canned peas, and plain-baked chicken breasts with way too many mushrooms, and I'm waking up earlier every morning (new record: 5:02 AM). I thus figure it's time to give the general status updates, before I'm too fried to think straight.

Books. I have three coming out in 2010: A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] and An Artificial Night as me, and Feed [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] as Mira Grant. I have one currently due in 2010, Deadline (the sequel to Feed).

In addition to the books that are already sold/slated for publication, I have one finished October Daye book, Late Eclipses, and one finished InCryptid book, Discount Armageddon. I am currently working on The Brightest Fell (Toby five), Midnight Blue-Light Special (InCryptid two), and Sit, Stay, I Hate You (Coyote Girls two). In 2010, I'm planning to finish all three of these, start on Blackout (Newsflesh three), start on Ashes of Honor (Toby six), and start on Hunting Grounds (InCryptid three). I am not planning on a particularly large quantity of sleep.

There's currently a contest running to win an ARC of A Local Habitation. Drop by and give it a shot!

Short Stories. I'm one of the 2010 universe authors for The Edge of Propinquity, which is running my Sparrow Hill Road series for the rest of the year. The second story, "Dead Man's Party," went live earlier this week, and I'm working on the fifth story, "El Viento Del Diablo," which should be finished in a week or so. After that comes "Last Dance With Mary Jane," which will answer a lot of questions people have been asking for a very long time. This is a series heavily influenced by the mythology of the American highway, and with a very strong soundtrack accompanying every story. There will be playlists! Much fun.

I have various other short stories out on secret missions, including two Fighting Pumpkins adventures ("Dying With Her Cheer Pants On" and "Gimme a 'Z'!"), my first-ever steampunk piece ("Alchemy and Alcohol," which comes complete with cocktail recipes), and an actual Mira Grant short story ("Everglades"). I'm noticing a high level of dead stuff in my recent short story output. Somehow, this is not striking me as terribly surprising.

Non-fiction. My essay in Chicks Dig Time Lords [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] will be available later this month, along with, y'know, the rest of the book, which includes an essay from my beloved Tara O'Shea. So if you've ever wondered why I love math and have trouble with linear time, you should probably pick up a copy of this book. (You should do that anyway, because the book is awesome, but that's beside the point.)

My introduction for jennifer_brozek's In A Gilded Light will also be available with the rest of the book, sometime in mid-2010. I plan to finish the "On Writing" series by the end of 2010.

Albums. Work on Wicked Girls is proceeding apace, and beginning to pick up speed as we get deeper into the process of mixing and arranging songs. I'm scheduling my various instrumentalists to come into the studio and get their parts recorded, and some of the arrangements are just going to be incredible. I still need to confirm the covers for this album, and start thinking about graphic design, but I'm still really, really pleased. There's no confirmed release date yet, and there's not going to be one until we're a lot closer to done: as I've said a few times, as soon as there's a deadline, this ceases to be fun and relaxing, and right now, we're too far from finished for that to be a good idea.

I'm within a hundred copies of being entirely out of Stars Fall Home (my first studio album), and right now, I couldn't tell you if or when there's going to be another printing. I'm doing a little better for Pretty Little Dead Girl, but at the current rate, I'd estimate that I'll be out (or very close to out) by this time next year. Red Roses and Dead Things, being my most recent release, is also the one with the most remaining stock (paradoxically, it's also my fastest seller, since a lot of folks don't have it yet). In summary, if you're missing any of my first three albums, you may want to consider whether you're going to want them, because when they're gone, they're gone.

Cats. Alice continues to steal mass from the very center of the sun, growing at a rate usually seen only in big green dudes who have been exposed to Gamma radiation. She's pissed at Cat Valente, who keeps showing pictures of a very enticing kitten, and then not sending the kitten through the screen. Lilly, meanwhile, has taken to jangling her bell right next to my ear in the middle of the night to express her displeasure with the state of the food supply. Lilly wants to be mittens.

And that's the local weather report. Back to you, Ken.

Dear Great Pumpkin;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I remain your faithful Halloween girl,
Seanan.

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

Sunday afternoon, Alice* decided that I was stressing out too much about making my word count for the weekend, and brought me a present to take my mind off my troubles. More specifically, she brought me a live alligator lizard approximately eight inches in length, which is super-villain territory if you happy to be, I don't know, my toes.

I like lizards. The sight of lizards isn't one of those things that makes me scream and scramble onto my chair. I was also barefoot when the lizard arrived, barefoot when the lizard was helpfully released under my desk, and barefoot when the lizard decided to take its reptilian fury out on the nearest available target, IE, my toes. That made me scream and scramble onto my chair, at least until I could get some damn shoes on.

I glared at the lizard. The lizard glared at me. Alice looked pleased with herself, as I was clearly now distracted from my horrible horrible work. Attempts to get Alice to retrieve the lizard caused her to begin grooming herself. Attempts to retrieve the lizard myself caused the lizard to begin attempting to eat my thumbs. I like my thumbs. I decided the lizard could stay.

At several points during the evening, the lizard attempted to make a break for the door. Every time, Alice calmly picked it up and deposited it back under the desk. I put Lilly under the desk, thinking that perhaps my second cat would be more sensible. The lizard hissed at the cat. The cat ran away. Great Pumpkin preserve me from the bravery of the Siamese.

When I got up yesterday morning, the lizard was still there. When I got home from work yesterday afternoon, the lizard was still there. Around six o'clock last night, Alice walked under the desk, picked up the lizard, and walked away.

I did not pursue.

As I did not find lizard bits strewn around the house this morning, I think Alice put the lizard back where she found it, perhaps congratulating it for a job well done in the "distracting the human" category. That, or the lizard got away, and is even now lurking under a piece of furniture somewhere in my house, waiting for me to take off my shoes.

Visitors, beware, and guard your toes. There very well might be an alligator in my house.

(*Alice Price-Healy Little Liddel Abernathy McGuire, my blue classic tabby and white Maine Coon. Yes, I call her by her full name, normally when she pulls stunts like the one described above.)

"You talk about your cats a lot."
"You talk about your kids a lot."
"It's not the same thing."
"My Maine Coon flushed a seven inch long alligator lizard down the front hall toilet."
"..."
"It's exactly the same thing."

As most people know, I live with cats. One Siamese and one Maine Coon, to be precise. They are blazingly intelligent, easily bored, and utterly spoiled in the way that only blazingly intelligent cats with indulgent owners can ever get (since dumb cats never realize how much they can actually get away with). This means that my life is never boring, although I do occasionally have to tell people I can't go out, the cats are requiring me to stay in. This is not an ironic statement. The cats are fully capable of hiding my keys, my glasses, and—on one impressive occasion—the contents of my underwear drawer. Contrary to popular belief, I am not going to walk to Safeway without a bra, socks, or panties. Just no. Also, the cats like to unplug my alarm clock when they feel that I've been out of the house too much. They dislike the alarm, they like me sleeping in, problem solved!

Smart cats are their own problem. Smart cats with extremely clever paws are occasionally a circle of hell.

Yesterday morning, I was in such a hurry to get out of the house that I forgot to check the level of food in the cat bowls. Now, my girls each have their own bowl, although they're fed side-by-side, to prevent Lilly eating Alice's food to show dominance. (They still occasionally trade food, but it's just that: a trade. It's like watching kids swap pudding cups.) Alice gets Royal Canin Maine Coon blend; Lilly gets Royal Canin Picky Bitch, which is technically named something like "sensitive feline," but let's get real. When you have to feed this stuff to your cat, your cat is picky. Very, very picky. Royal Canin makes Siamese blend, but Lilly doesn't like it. When given Royal Canin Siamese, Lilly eats all of Alice's food, and since Alice prefers Royal Canin Maine Coon, Alice proceeds to harass me until I feed her the right stuff...which Lilly then proceeds to eat. So it's Maine Coon and Picky Bitch blends for my girls.

Anyway, upon arriving home yesterday evening, I was met at the door by two very angry cats who wanted to lecture me on my failure to feed them. They told me I was a bad pet owner. They told me I had Done Them Wrong. They kept telling me as I filled their dishes...and they then did not eat, as they were too busy telling me what a horrible person I was. Seriously. Alice even took some kibble from the dish and dropped it on my foot to illustrate the point that I Had Failed Them, and I Needed To Apologize. I apologized. I stroked them. I made soothing noises. I brushed Alice. I let Lilly have my purse (which she promptly began to chew on). I hung my head in shame. Satisfied, they finally ate.

I woke up this morning with kibble on my pillow. I am not yet forgiven.

"Alice, why don't you let me use the remote?"
"Mrrrrrrr."

Last night, while watching Bones, I got a lapful of Lilly. This is normal. Lilly proceeded to flop onto her back, stretch out, and cross her ankles, looking like a coney prepped for roasting. Also normal. Alice, meanwhile, hopped up onto the empty couch cushion, sat on her rump with her tail sticking out to one side, and started grooming. Still normal. Then she leaned over, took the remote off the couch, and cuddled it like a teddy bear. And refused to give it back to me. No matter how nicely I asked her.

Tragically, this is still normal. The only way to get the remote back was to give her the DVD remote instead...and that's why the DVD tray was sliding in and out and in and out for the next twenty minutes, as the cat happily played with the "eject" button.

There is a reason I talk about my cats as much as I do. Because if I didn't, none of you would have any warning on the day when they finally decided to conquer your puny planet.

Run while you can.

I called jimhines the other night to talk about some writing stuff and reviewing stuff and other such fun things we have in common. As is pretty normal when a parent is on the phone, his kids found multiple reasons to interject themselves on his side. As is pretty normal around my house, my cats found multiple reasons to interject themselves on my side—more, in fact, than his kids did. They came up to "tell" me things, either in a Siamese bray or in that odd Maine Coon half-trill half-gasp. They brought me toys and demanded I throw them or wave them in the air for cats to bat at. They were, in short, damn nuisances, and they're lucky they didn't get drop-kicked across the house. (To be very clear: I would never do that. Not unless one of them had contracted a zombie virus and was going for the other, and even then, zombie cats is probably the fastest way to take me out during the inevitable zombie apocalypse.)

I apologized, because that is what you do, and the conversation continued. A bit later Jim said, quite reasonably, "I've noticed you take your cats very seriously."

You know what? I do. My cats are cossetted and cared for, cuddled and cursed at, spoiled and sheltered, and I'm proud of that fact. Lilly and Alice are some of the sweetest, friendliest, most social cats you could ever hope to meet. When you come to my house, the cats are there, ready to greet you, ask you about yourself, and demand as much attention as they feel they can get away with. They're the WalMart greeters of the cat world. Anyone who thinks cats don't care about their people only needs to spend a little time with my cats to learn that this doesn't have to be true, and part of why they are the way they are is how seriously I take them. They are some of the most important people in my life, and it's not their fault that they don't have thumbs or speak English.

I periodically get flack over the fact that my cats are pedigreed, rather than being shelter rescues. I've actually learned to recognize that particular lecture as it gets started, since it always seems to begin with one of three or four mostly-harmless statements. My answer stays the same from lecture to lecture: I donate to the SPCA, I do shelter outreach and volunteer work when I can, and I give to private no-kill shelters. I do my part. But I lost a lot of cats when I was a kid to health conditions that are genetic, are passed through family lines, and can be anticipated if you know the cat's family history. In short, I get pedigreed cats so I can meet their grandparents and ask their breeders about the possible health problems within the line. I take my cats too seriously to deal with losing them more than once a decade. Lilly is six. With her health, and her breed profile, she'll probably be around for another ten to fifteen years. Still not enough time, but at least it's long enough that I'll probably be over Nyssa when she goes.

Mostly.

(Not everyone has had my bad luck with cats. I also grew up way below the poverty line, which made veterinary care difficult as hell to afford. That doesn't change the degree of comfort I take from saying "This is Alice, and this big puffy guy here? That's her great-grandfather, who is fat and healthy and happy and beautiful and could probably bench-press Godzilla if he had to.")

My cats are intelligent and friendly; well-behaved because it never really occurs to them that they shouldn't be; stand-offish on occasion, but far more inclined to be right up in your business, checking out whatever it is you think you're doing. Alice will follow you around the house, tail down and eyes wild, watching you for signs of mischief. Lilly will stay between you and me whenever possible, waiting for you to do something she doesn't approve. In short, my cats are individuals, and I take them as seriously as they take me.

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

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

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

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

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

Some of you may remember how last year I took my crazy little bluepoint princess, Lilly, to enjoy a memorable meeting with Santa Claus. (She was the first cat this particular pet store Santa had ever encountered "on the job." Interestingly, he declined to return to the store this year, forcing us to go elsewhere for our Yuletide cheer. I can't swear that this is because of my pointy little princess, but when the red velvet hat fits...)

Because I am an equal-opportunity torturer of my cats, I decided that this year, it was Alice's turn to go out and meet the big man. So I called my mother, slapped a temporary harness on my normally collar-free cat, and went haring off for a date with destiny...or at least, a date with the local pet store Santa who hadn't retired due to cat.

The proof is in the picture:



Alice was very well-behaved. She didn't claw, hiss, spit, bite, or try to get away, although she did sing opera to express her displeasure with the time spent in the carrier. (Much like Lilly, she calmed immediately once I got her out of the box and just held her.) This Santa was definitely happier about having a cat in his lap, and admired her at great length.

It occurs to me that last year, I took Lilly to see Santa, said jokingly that I hoped she hadn't wished for a pony, and wound up bringing home a Maine Coon.

I'm scared now.