Shirt update.

Mailing continues! I would estimate that I have three trips to the post office left to go, one domestic, two international (since I am only allowed to bring so many international shirts to the post office at one time). This has taken so very, very long, and for that I am genuinely sorry. This batch was more than twice the size of the last, with the associated administrative headaches (people asking for color/size/cut combinations that didn't exist, shirts not included in the batch from the printer, people not paying when prompted, which meant that we couldn't send the order to the printer in the first place, etc.), and as a consequence, it ran headlong into my convention season, which slowed me down like whoa.

There are a lot of reasons we're never going to do this again—this batch was the last, or at least the last "bespoke"—but the biggest is the scale. When I did the first T-shirt run, I was still a relatively new author, and so there were fewer people who cared enough to want to wear me on their chests, so to speak. The number of interested parties has increased with each run, and it's just become unmanageable. Thank you all for your patience. For the most part, you have all been incredibly kind.

The missing shirts have finally arrived, and are in their nicely sealed box, waiting for me to finish getting the first batch out the door. I will not open this box until I have cleared the space for immediate packing and shipping, to prevent excessive cat hair (or possibly a cat) from accompanying the shirts to their final destination.

Shirts!

The point of apparently vital clarification.

This past week, someone who knows me well enough to know my overall living situation, asked if something could be sent priority. I said that wasn't going to be possible, as I wasn't going to be able to get to the post office immediately, and would be putting stamps on the item and shoving it in my mailbox. My friend responded with, essentially, "Have your PA do it."

Y'all, there is no PA for this sort of thing. There is only me.

I have two functional PAs: Kate and Vixy. On a day to day level, this means they go through my website email before I see it, so that we don't have to deal with me going into a tailspin the next time someone decides to tell me that they're going to kill my cats. (A real thing, that people have really emailed me about, because humans are sometimes awful.) Vixy has a good grasp of my schedule, and while she cannot accept convention invitations for me, she can usually say whether or not a thing is likely. Kate knows when I am over-committing myself, and will smack me with a rolled-up newspaper. Kate is local enough that I see her about once a week (roughly). Vixy lives two states away from me.

When I talk about mailing things, I am talking about me, just me, going to the small, rural post office near my house, and mailing them. When I talk about doing inventory, or packing things, or sending CD reships, I am saying "these are all things I do personally, after I have finished making my word count for the day." And this is why sometimes CDs go out of stock, or it takes a long time for me to carry a large shipping batch, ten or twenty items at once, down to the post office.

I don't want sympathy, and I don't mind doing what I do; I wouldn't volunteer if I minded. But I would like people to keep in mind, when their giveaway prizes take a while or their customs forms are filled out sort of sloppily, or when I say "this is not open to international winners, I am so sorry, I just can't handle the customs forms right now," that it's just me, and I am just one person, with two hands, trying to climb an avalanche.

Thank you.

Hello, everyone, 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, everyone, 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, 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 hello! Good morning, and welcome to the many people who have shown up over the weekend. Here are a few things you might want to know, as you're deciding whether or not to stick around.

1. This is not a social issues blog. Mostly, it's about writing, my cats, and me doing stupid things in the interest of not being bored out of my skull. Because I have very strong feelings about a lot of social issues, they do crop up from time to time, but they're not my focus. Rage is exhausting. I try to focus on happier things, like that new rabies/Ebola virus that's started melting people while being inexplicable and impossible to cure. It's the little things in life.

2. I write urban fantasy under my own name, and science fiction medical thrillers under the name Mira Grant. The first books in my urban fantasy series are Rosemary and Rue (for the October Daye series), and Discount Armageddon (for my InCryptid series). There's also a lot of free fiction on my website, mostly in the Velveteen vs. superhero universe and the InCryptid universe, so you can try things if you want to see whether you like them.

3. I have OCD, in the literal, medically diagnosed sense, not in the joking "that was a little OCD of me" sense. This translates to a love of lists, both to do and to generate (hence this entry). I will occasionally do things that don't make much sense, like my insistence on answering every top-level comment I receive. Don't worry about it. I do my best not to make my problems anyone else's concern, and will let you know if there's a problem.

4. I do not ban people, but I do ask them to play nicely. Because I have a full-time day job, sometimes I can't clean up the comments as quickly as I want to. Please don't take a comment appearing as a sign of authorial approval. If it's inappropriate, rude, or over the line, I'll speak up as soon as I get the chance.

5. Cumulatively, my three cats weigh as much as a small golden retriever, and none of them are overweight. Jim Hines once said that I took my cats very seriously. This is because they can eat me. This is also why I tend to respond to "I just bought your book" with "thank you for feeding my cats." I do not wish to be eaten.

Again, welcome. You are all welcome to stay, and while I hope you will, I will not be hurt if you choose to go. It's a big internet, and we'd all explode if we tried to pay attention to absolutely everything.

Happy Monday!

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, 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 )

In wandering aimlessly down the primrose paths of the internet, I recently encountered a comment from someone* who found my online persona "grating." Now, no one really likes to be called grating, unless they're in the middle of preparing cheese for the pizza, but they weren't calling me grating, they were calling my online persona grating. Except, of course, for the assumption built into that statement, that the online persona is inherently different from the person behind it.

I think everyone online has an aspect of "persona" to them, if only because ideally, on the internet, you have the opportunity to think before you press "submit." Not everyone does, but the option is still there, for all of us. We filter out certain aspects of ourselves: the faces we present to the world are not exactly one-to-one identical to the faces we present in private. I'm a little wittier on the internet, because I never have to deal with l'esprit d'escalier. On the internet, it doesn't matter that I can't pronounce l'esprit d'escalier (my French pronunciation is so bad it's comical).

I swear a little less on the internet, because I have to think about the process of typing out the word. "Shut your fucking face, you fucking fucker" rolls trippingly off the tongue, but it doesn't fall quite so easy from the fingers. I don't usually document how many times I need to pee. And yeah, since I come from the "do not air your dirty laundry in public" school of thought, I can come off as a bit of a perpetual Marilyn Munster when I really tend to flux between being a Marilyn and being a Wednesday. I let my cynicism off the leash sometimes, but I've found that it's more effective when I don't live and breathe in a haze of grumpy.

Also, I really am inappropriately enthusiastic about everything. Soda. Movies. Commercials that I really like. Street pennies. Peeing. I love peeing! I mean, I don't pee on trees or anything, but I really like it when I go into the bathroom feeling uncomfortable, and come out feeling a-okay. Plus it's an excuse to sit and read, and who doesn't love that? People who are around me in the real world are likely to get treated to a constant stream of alternatingly perky and snarlingly homicidal sound bytes. "Gosh, trees are nice, I like trees I WILL DESTROY ALL WHO THWART ME do you think maybe we should go back to Disneyland in October SOMEONE ON THE INTERNET IS WRONG RARRRRRHGHGHGHGH oh hey juice." Most of these things never make it online, because they're fleeting impulses, or because I don't feel like providing an ocean of context to make them make sense.

I guess that's really where internet persona comes in, at least for me: I make more sense online. I have less visible downtime, I'm a little less random, and I'm a little more measured with my swearing. I'm just as perky, and just as cranky, it's just not a twenty-four/seven thing. It's really important to me that I not be artificial online, because I spend so much time interacting with people offline, and I don't want to be reading from a script every time I do a public appearance. (Although that would be hysterical. I should write a "being Seanan at a book signing script," and start tapping people to stand in for me while I go to get myself another soda.) Filtered doesn't mean shallow, and thoughtful doesn't mean fake.

On the balance of things, I think you can tell whether or not you'd like me in person from listening to me online, as long as you remember that there's a whole third dimension offline, and that I can sometimes use that third dimension to run into traffic after red balloons, or produce seemingly random frogs. And I find that pretty cool.

Thoughts?

(*Who will not be named here, you know the drill, and everyone has the right to an opinion.)

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, 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 a few days ago, I posted a relative rarity—a song about a Toby book—and stated that I don't write or post many of these, on account of the inevitability of spoilers. A lot of people commented on how much they enjoyed the lyrics, which was lovely. Several of them then told me either a) that the song wasn't what they would consider a spoiler, b) that the statute of limitations was up, or c) that they liked spoilers. These are all absolutely valid perspectives, and I was glad to hear them.

And yet, as is always the danger, they got me thinking.

My position on spoilers for my own work is that, as the author, I have to be scrupulously careful, both because it's not fair of me to take the experience of reading something for the first time away from someone, and because sometimes, I can spoil things which haven't happened yet, which means that sometimes, my spoilers can change. Merav was one of my first Machete Squad members. She and I have talked through at least three different iterations of the timeline, including characters who wound up never existing, and excluding characters who wound up being very important. So there are times when she'll say "but you can't do _____, it contradicts _____," and _____ is something that not only hasn't happened yet, it's never going to happen. I didn't mean to confuse her, it just happened.

There's also the question of authorial deceit. A few years ago, people in the fandom of a TV show I watched—and I honestly don't remember which show it was, that's sort of beside the point—were furious because, at the end of the season, what happened didn't match the spoilers they'd received from the showrunner at the start of the season. He had lied to them. He had intentionally deceived them. And oh, were they pissed. But as a writer, I can see where maybe he didn't lie. Stories twist and change. Characters I thought would be totally essential disappear, and new characters wander onto the scene. When I told Jennifer how Sparrow Hill Road was going to play out, I wasn't lying, even though things didn't end that way. The story changed in my hands. I don't ever want my readers to feel like I lied to them because of spoilers. I try to play fair, and that's important to me.

Some people find that spoilers enhance their enjoyment of the work. I know that sometimes, when I'm really excited about something, or really anxious about it, I'll seek out spoilers just to brace myself better. I'm currently looking for anything that can confirm certain upcoming X-Men storylines. There's a key phrase there: "seek out spoilers."

When I get accidentally spoiled for something, I am pissed, and depending on the magnitude of the spoiler, I may cross the work off my list of things to do. I've never seen The Sixth Sense because of a careless spoiler. I decided not to see Serenity when every major event and plot twist of the movie was spoiled by enthusiastic fans. I think you should absolutely have the freedom to choose to be spoiled, but I don't think I should be spoiling people without warning them, or without their consent.

Sometimes knowing a thing is coming really does enhance the story, or at least change it. Writing stories about Jonathan and Frances Healy is oddly bittersweet for me, because I know how they both die—and that isn't a spoiler, since they're Verity's great-grandparents, and cryptozoology isn't a career that comes with a guarantee of a long life. It's not a spoiler to say that Alice and Thomas will eventually get married, that Rose dies alone by the side of the road, or that science accidentally makes zombies. These are background statements, and even if I later go back and write stories set before those things happened, they don't turn into spoilers.

I wish I loved John and Fran a little less. It would make what's coming a lot less hard.

I guess what it comes down to is that I don't want to spoil the experience of the person who doesn't like spoilers, and that means maintaining a strict policy of self-censorship outside of venues where I've posted thorough spoiler warnings. It also means that occasionally, if something is very new or the spoiler is very large, I may screen or remove comments containing spoilers from posts that aren't marked "spoilers here." That way, everyone gets a little closer to what they want, and life is good.

Make sense?

So there's been a huge influx of people over the course of the past few days—hello, people!—and while I expect that the majority will leave again when it becomes clear that discussion of sweeping social issues is less common around here than discussion of that cute thing my cats did, some of the new folks will probably stick around. Welcome! A few things you ought to know...

1. My name is Seanan; I'm an urban fantasy author. My name is also Mira Grant; I'm a science fiction author. Both of my personas write other things, but those are mostly what we're known for. As Seanan, I won the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. As Mira, my first book, Feed, was nominated for a Hugo Award in 2011. I put out three books a year. I don't sleep.

2. I have cats. I'm not currently blogging about them much, because there was some unpleasant mail that I'm still calming down from, but they are a huge part of my life, and my word count posts include a note about where the cats are. All my cats came from reputable breeders. I believe in supporting both animal rescue and healthy, responsible breeding.

3. I watch a lot of television. Like, a lot of television. However much you're thinking, it's probably not enough. During the fall, my DVR is a sad, overworked little monkey that deserves lots and lots of treats. Given a choice between sleeping and watching television, the TV wins. Thankfully, writing is like TV for my brain, so I manage to meet my deadlines.

4. I collect toys. Specifically, I collect classic 1980s My Little Ponies, Monster High, interesting plush, the occasional totally awesome vinyl figure, and dolls from Wilde Imagination (Evangeline Ghastly and Ellowyne Wilde). As I type this, a Beautiful Nightmare Evangeline and a Blithe Spirit Ellowyne are sitting on my desk. It is very difficult to hang out in my room if you have issues with creepy dolls watching everything that you do.

5. I try to answer every comment posted on one of my entries, although not necessarily every comment posted on a thread. This can take a while. Please have patience with me.

I have a free friending policy, and a permanent unfriending amnesty. You don't need to tell me, either way. :) Again, welcome, and I'm glad you're here.

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, 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 )

And now, ladies and gentlemen...Late Eclipses [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] is officially six days from release. That's less than a week! How am I supposed to get all my freaking out finished in less than a week? Since flailing around screaming that the sky is falling doesn't help with my countdown, here are six things you may not know about me.

6. I love snakes and spiders, have no fear of sharks, and tend to giggle hysterically when I'm on a plane and it hits a patch of turbulence that makes it feel like we're going to fall out of the sky. I am, however, morbidly terrified of pudding. This translates into a fear of any type of slug that isn't so ludicrously colored as to seem like a special effect.

5. I will not go into brackish water, because of the potential for leeches. Even if I am assured that there are no leeches in the entire country, I will not go into brackish water, because of the potential for leeches. Leeches are just not okay. Thank you, Stand By Me. In an attempt to conquer my fear, I kept a jar of leeches in my kitchen for a whole year. Those leeches were okay, because they were behind glass.

4. My collection of My Little Ponies is epic and vast, and contains almost all of the larger buildings from the original 1980s run of the toy line. Yes, including the Paradise Estate, which is roughly the size of a large card table. In that misty, far-off future where I actually have an office of my very own, it's going to wind up evenly divided between research material and plastic horses. Because that's just how I roll.

3. I grew up really, really, really poor, and I read really, really, really fast. These things combined mean that I grew up a dedicated re-reader, and will read books that I enjoy five, ten, or even twenty times. My count on The Stand is somewhere in the mid-fifties. The weirdest thing about my current bounty of available reading material is the lack of re-reading. I haven't read any of my favorites in over a year, and it's making me twitchy.

2. I have these long, elaborate, lucid dreams that seem entirely real when they're going on, even down to my needing to eat and use the bathroom in my sleep. They always end when someone tells me that I'm dreaming, and while they tend to be very realistic and grounded, they also tend to involve elements of "in a perfect world," like, you know, being published. Part of me spends every day afraid someone's going to tell me I'm dreaming.

1. My childhood idols were Vincent Price, Marilyn Munster, and Doctor Who. Considering that, and considering the way my life has turned out, I don't think I'm doing so bad. And I think they'd be proud of me.

I was bored, I remembered catvalente's list of things to do before she died, and so I decided to write my own list of things to do before I died. Because that's just the way we roll around here. Also, a bored blonde is a dangerous blonde.

25 Things I Want Deeply Enough to Put Them On a List of Things to Do Before I Die, Assuming My Life Doesn't End With Cackling, a Flaming Biosphere, and Joyous Shouts of "I Showed You, You Fools! I Showed You All!":

1. Tour a Level-4 biohazard safety area

Look, I never claimed that I was going to be reasonable, safe, or sane in the things I wanted to accomplish before shuffling off this mortal coil, and at the end of the day, if said shuffling occurs because I was exposed to smallpox while touring a CDC lab, I can't say anyone's going to be overly surprised. I want to actually experience the moon-suit and the tugging from negative-pressure airflow. It's something that part of me really feels I need to do.

Necessary objects not currently owned: access to a Level-4 biohazard lab, understanding lab technicians who don't mind civilians in their workspace, possibly some sort of government clearance.

2. Have a display area suitable for my dolls and Ponies

This is one of those wishes that's sort of wrapped up in a bunch of other wishes, since having a display area suitable for my toy collection basically means having a larger house. The place I live right now doesn't have any room left for a series of proper glass-fronted cabinets, and that's what it would take to really set my My Little Pony collection up properly, to say nothing of my Monster High dolls and assorted other toys. Am I a massive nerd? Yes. Yes, I am. I embrace my nerdhood, and dream of proper shelving.

Necessary objects not currently owned: several nice glass-fronted display cabinets, a room where they would fit without my needing to sleep on an inflatable mattress or something.

3. Visit Maine

Maine is something akin to Fairyland in my heart: this strange, impossible place where mysterious things happen, like ice falling from the sky, or killer clowns dragging your little brother down into the sewer to eat his heart. I've been dreaming of Maine since I was seven years old. There's no possible way for the state to live up to everything that I hope it's going to be, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to go there and see it for myself.

Necessary objects not currently owned: a block of vacation time without any other commitments. Ha. Ha. Ha.

4. Become functionally fluent in American Sign Language

I've been learning ASL out of books and off of webpages and from friends for the last few years, and I've reached the point where I can sign along with Journey songs without really dropping words. My finger-spelling is still terrible, but it's getting better. I think it's just shy of magic that we can have a language that doesn't require spoken words, but exists somewhere between the realm of the written and the spoken. Besides which...I go through life expecting that since I live in a country where the dominant language is English, everyone will understand me. I'd like to be able to assist in making that true for other people. And the sign for "science" is just plain fun.

Necessary objects not currently owned: a good ASL class. I'm going to be looking into one during the upcoming semester.

5. Take a ludicrously long walk to nowhere of any specific use to anyone else

I love taking long walks. Like, really, really, REALLY long walks. We are talking "bring a tent"-length long walks. And I love stories about people who walked to Mordor, or Oregon, or just about anyplace that is, like, crazy far away and means sleeping on the ground or at weird slightly creepy motels with broken neon signs out front. I want to take an epic walk. I want to take a "bring a tent" walk. I'd really like to take it either alone or with a large dog, which probably means having someone who follows me in a car about ten miles back, just in case I run into issues with being female and alone by the side of the road. But this is something I really, really want to do.

Necessary objects not currently owned: a destination, time to get there, a large dog, an escort.

( Twenty more odd wishes after the break.Collapse )

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

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

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

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

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

Bring on the next one.

5. I love country music. Mostly modern country, Christian Kane and Little Big Town and Taylor Swift, but I also love that sappy old dead dogs and pickup trucks country that you find on AM radio at six in the morning. I inherited my love of the genre from my grandmother, who was respectable and stoic and could bellow along with "Fancy" like nobody's business.

4. When I'm having a bad day and want comfort food, I go home and curl up with a big bowl of frozen peas that have been heated in the microwave. All I put on them is a) salt, and b) pepper. This stems from a childhood misinterpretation of what chickpeas were, when the characters in a book I loved ate "fresh hot buttered chickpeas."

3. My family was very, very poor when I was younger. As a consequence, I think that butter tastes horrible, because we always got a brick of government butter in our "please don't starve to death" box. Margarine, on the other hand, is the taste of luxury. I had a bad margarine habit for a while after getting my first job, and bought a tub every time I went to the store.

2. I am very superstitious, and very picky about my superstitions. I count crows, pick up pennies, and occasionally look for auguries in bags of M&Ms. I do not, however, freak out when I see a funeral procession, or insist on touching my collar and asking magpies how their wives are. This helps me strike a good balance. Just never get between me and a street penny.

1. I have a paralyzing phobia of pudding, which extends to all "pudding-type" substances, including custard and overly-warm milkshakes. Suddenly biting into an unexpected cream filling has been known to make me throw up on the spot. Luckily, this does not extend to the unnatural white goo inside Twinkies.

So that's five things you may or may not know about me. What do you think I may or may not know about you?

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, 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, 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 )

(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 )

At the risk of sounding sappy, here are things that make me happy.

I think that everyone has certain things that make them unconditionally happy. Because it is a stressful and dismal day, I'm updating my list of some of the things that work for me. It's good to be happy.

( What makes Seanan happy? Well, among other things, people using cut-tags for long entries makes Seanan happy. If you want to know what else works for her, click here.Collapse )

So that's my list. What's yours?

Hello, and welcome to my journal! I'm pretty sure you know who I am, my name being in the URL and all, but just in case, I'm Seanan McGuire (also known as Mira Grant), and you're probably not on Candid Camera. This post exists to answer a few of the questions that I get asked on a semi-hemi-demi-regular basis. It may look familiar; that's because it gets 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 )

There has once again been a massive influx of people, due to the fact that Alice is adorable—welcome, massive influx of people; it's nice to meet you, although I realize half of you will leave again as you realize that this isn't the all-kitten-doing-weird-stuff, all-the-time channel, and that's fine—I have decided to once again do the abbreviated "here are ten things you might want to know" version of the periodic welcome post. So here it is. Ta-da! (As a footnote, Alice is aware of your worship, and was puffy all over my face at 2AM last night.)

***

1. My name is Seanan McGuire; I'm an author, musician, poet, cartoonist, and amiable nutcase, presently living in Northern California, planning to relocate to Washington at some point in the next few years. I am a very chatty person, whether you're talking literally "we're in the same place" chattiness, or more abstract "someone has left Seanan alone with a keyboard, run for the hills" chattiness. This does not, paradoxically, make me terribly good about keeping up with email or answering comments in anything that resembles a reasonable fashion. We all have our flaws. Luckily for my agent's sanity, I am very good about making my deadlines.

2. My name is pronounced "SHAWN-in", although a great many people elect to pronounce it "SHAWN-anne" instead. Either is fine with me. I went to an event where we all got name tags once, and the person making the name tags was a "SHAWN-anne" person, who proceeded to label me as "Shawn Anne McGuire". I choose to believe that Shawn Anne is my alter-ego from a universe where, instead of becoming an author, I chose to become a country superstar. She wears a great many rhinestones, because they're sparkly, and she can get away with it. Just don't call me "See-an-an" and we'll be fine.

3. I write: urban fantasy, horror, young adult, supernatural romance, and straight chick-lit romance. I occasionally threaten to write medical thrillers, but everyone knows that's just so I'd have an excuse to take more epidemiology courses. I love me a good plague. I believe that editing is a full-contact sport, complete with penalty boxes, illegal checking, and team pennants. My editing team is the Fighting Pumpkins. We're going all the way to the WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS this year, bay-bee!

4. I find it useful to keep a record of the status of my various projects, both because it warms the little Type-A cockles of my heart, and because it helps people who need to know what's going on know, well, what's going on. So you'll see word counts and editing updates go rolling by if you stick around, as well as more generalized complaining about the behavior of fictional people. I am told this is entertaining. I am also told that this is possibly a sign of madness. I don't know.

5. I currently publish both as myself, and as my own evil twin, Mira Grant. My first book under my own name, Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], came out from DAW in September 2009. The sequel, A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], is coming out in March 2010, also from DAW. Mira's first book, Feed [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], will be out from Orbit in May 2010. I don't get very much sleep.

6. I am a musician! More specifically, I'm a filk musician. If you know filk, this statement makes total sense. If you don't know filk, think "the folk music of the science fiction and fantasy community"—or you can check out the music FAQ on my website. I have three CDs available: Pretty Little Dead Girl, Stars Fall Home, and Red Roses and Dead Things. I'm currently recording a fourth CD, Wicked Girls, which will be out sometime in 2010. I write mostly original material, and don't spend much time in ParodyLand. It just doesn't work out for me.

7. Things I find absolutely enthralling: giant squid. Plush dinosaurs. Siamese and Maine Coon cats. Zombies. The plague. Pandemic flu. Horror movies of all quality levels. Horror television. Science Fictional Channel Original Movies. Shopping for used books. Halloween. Marvel comics. Candy corn. Carnivorous plants. Pumpkin cake. Stephen King. The Black Death. Pandemic disease of all types. Learning how to say horrifying things in American Sign Language. Diet Dr Pepper.

8. Things I find absolutely horrifying: slugs. Big spiders dropping down from the ceiling and landing on me because ew. Bell peppers. Rice. Movies that consist largely of car chases and do not contain a satisfying amount of carnage. Animal cruelty. People who go hiking on mountain trails in Northern California and freak out over a little rattlesnake. Most sitcoms. A large percentage of modern advertising. Diet Chocolate Cherry Dr Pepper.

9. I am owned by two cats: a classic bluepoint Siamese named Lillian Kane Moskowitz Munster McGuire, and a blue classic tabby and white Maine Coon named Alice Price-Healy Little Liddel Abernathy McGuire. Yes, I call them that, usually when they've been naughty. The rest of the time, they're respectively "Lilly" or "Lil," and either "Alice" or "Ally." I'm planning to get a Sphynx, eventually, when the time comes to expand to having a third cat.

10. I frequently claim to be either a Disney Halloweentown princess or Marilyn Munster. These claims are more accurate than most people realize. Although I wasn't animated in Pasadena.

***

Welcome!

I have had a battered and beaten ARC returned to me by my housemate (he read it, he enjoyed it, but these poor babies aren't meant to last forever). Since I can't exactly send it out to a review site, I've decided that it's POP QUIZ TIME! The first person to answer all twenty questions correctly will win the ARC. (If you already have one, you can still win, and tell me where it should be sent.) If no one has answered all twenty questions correctly by tonight, I will pick the person with the highest number of right answers. In case of a tie, it still goes to first.

People who have known me for more than ten years are respectfully asked not to play, as that just wouldn't be fair to the rest of the planet.

Game on!

( We're a town full of losers, baby, but somebody's going to win! Trivia contest this way!Collapse )

Since there's been a massive influx of people over the past two days, due to the fact that Alice is adorable—welcome, massive influx of people; it's nice to meet you, although I realize half of you will leave again as you realize that this isn't the all-kitten-doing-weird-stuff, all-the-time channel, and that's fine—I thought it would be a good idea to do the abbreviated "here are ten things" version of the periodic welcome post. So here it is. Ta-da!

***

1. My name is Seanan McGuire; I'm an author, musician, poet and amiable nutcase, presently living in Northern California, planning to relocate to Washington at some point in the next few years. I am a very chatty person, whether you're talking literally "we're in the same place" chattiness, or more abstract "someone has left Seanan alone with a keyboard, run for the hills" chattiness. This does not, paradoxically, make me terribly good about keeping up with email or answering comments in anything that resembles a reasonable fashion. We all have our flaws.

2. My name is pronounced "SHAWN-in", although a great many people elect to pronounce it "SHAWN-anne" instead. Either is fine with me. I went to an event where we all got name tags once, and the person making the name tags was a "SHAWN-anne" person, who proceeded to label me as "Shawn Anne McGuire". I choose to believe that Shawn Anne is my alter-ego from a universe where, instead of becoming an author, I chose to become a country superstar. She wears a great many rhinestones, because they're sparkly, and she can get away with it. Just don't call me "See-an-an" and we'll be fine.

3. I believe that editing is a full-contact sport, complete with penalty boxes, illegal checking, and team pennants. My editing team is the Fighting Pumpkins. We're going all the way to the WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS this year, bay-bee!

4. I find it useful to keep a record of the status of my various projects, both because it warms the little Type-A cockles of my heart, and because it helps people who need to know what's going on know, well, what's going on. So you'll see word counts and editing updates go rolling by if you stick around, as well as more generalized complaining about the behavior of fictional people. I am told this is entertaining. I am also told that this is possibly a sign of madness. I don't know.

5. I am a musician! More specifically, I'm a filk musician. If you know filk, this statement makes total sense. If you don't know filk, think "the folk music of the science fiction and fantasy community"—or you can check out the music FAQ on my website. I have three CDs available: Pretty Little Dead Girl, Stars Fall Home, and Red Roses and Dead Things. I write mostly original material, and don't spend much time in ParodyLand. It just doesn't work out for me.

6. Things I find absolutely enthralling: giant squid. Plush dinosaurs. Siamese and Maine Coon cats. Zombies. The plague. Pandemic flu. Horror movies of all quality levels. Horror television. Science Fictional Channel Original Movies. My window garden of carnivorous plants, and the spiders that have colonized them. Shopping for used books. Halloween. Marvel comics. Candy corn. Pumpkin cake. The Black Death.

7. Things I find absolutely horrifying: slugs. Big spiders dropping down from the ceiling and landing on me because ew. Bell peppers. Rice. Movies that consist largely of car chases and do not contain a satisfying amount of carnage. Animal cruelty. People who go hiking on mountain trails in Northern California and freak out over a little rattlesnake. Most sitcoms. A large percentage of modern advertising. Diet Chocolate Cherry Dr Pepper.

8. I am owned by two cats: a classic bluepoint Siamese named Lillian Kane Moskowitz Munster McGuire, and a blue classic tabby and white Maine Coon named Alice Price-Healy Little Liddel Abernathy McGuire. Yes, I call them that, usually when they've been naughty. The rest of the time, they're respectively "Lilly" or "Lil," and either "Alice" or "Ally."

9. I frequently claim to be either a Disney Halloweentown princess or Marilyn Munster. These claims are more accurate than most people realize. Although I wasn't animated in Pasadena.

10. I write: urban fantasy, horror, young adult, supernatural romance, and straight chick-lit romance. I occasionally threaten to write medical thrillers, but everyone knows that's just so I'd have an excuse to take more epidemiology courses. I love me a good plague.

***

Welcome!

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, and you're probably not on Candid Camera. This post exists to answer a few of the questions that I get asked on a semi-hemi-demi-regular basis. It may look familiar; that's because it gets reposted roughly every two months, to let new people know how we roll around here. (I will make no more Clueless references in this post, I promise.) 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 )

Well, I'm over on Facebook now, for a variety of reasons, not least of which was -- let's be honest here -- I have a first novel coming out before too terribly much longer*, and it's a good idea to find anybody who might know me but not read this journal if I want them to be aware of that fact. In the current economy, skipping anything that increases potential readership is a little bit silly. Which doesn't mean I'm going to be standing naked on a highway overpass with a big sign reading 'BUY MY BOOK SO I CAN BUY SOME PANTS,' but when I hear about another small bookstore going under, well...the temptation is there.

So anyway, you can look me up as 'Seanan McGuire,' and get live pithy one-liners about the fact that I write a lot, watch a lot of television, and cook an awesome turkey. Thus far, mostly the former, the latter, and a lot of mentions of a) being too sick to die, and b) playing Rock Band 2. Did I mention that it was my Martian death flu that made Facebook look appealing? 'Cause yeah.

I have already found or been found by several people from high school, which I find somewhat daunting. But one of them may well be My Favorite Teacher Ever, so that's pretty awesome (I'm waiting for him to confirm or deny). It really is a fascinating networking model, one which honestly assumes that you'd love to get back in touch with your best friend from first grade. (I would. Natasha, call me.)

It's all very odd around here. And I have no DDP in the damn house at all.

(*Sadly, 'not terribly much longer' isn't a clever way of saying that I have a release date, 'cause I don't. It's a clever way of saying 'I had six hours of sleep, and am thus talking myself in pretty circles.' Well. Typing myself in pretty circles, anyway.)

At the risk of sounding sappy, here are things that make me happy.

I think that everyone has certain things that make them unconditionally happy. Because it is a gray and dismal day, I'm listing some of the things that work for me. It's good to be happy.

( What makes Seanan happy? Well, among other things, people using cut-tags for long entries makes Seanan happy. If you want to know what else works for her, click here.Collapse )

So that's my list. What's yours?

Ever listened to some of the things that come out of my mouth and wondered just what the heck I was actually trying to say? Well, wonder no more: here is a handy-dandy Dictionary of Seanan, containing words, terms, and phrases that have oozed their way into my somewhat uncommon parlance and have shown no signs of oozing out again. I think all people have their own private languages, and that life would be a lot simpler if we became fluent in each other. I can't promise actual dictionary format, because I'm lazy, but I can promise alphabetical order, because I'm also a twitchy little OCD girl. So.

( Ducks. DDP. Romanian au pairs. Purple hair problems. Penny. Street pennies. Go away, Kim Delaney. Dinosaurs eat people. Mandibles of loooove. What the heck is Seanan saying? Find out here. Dun-dun-DUUUUUUUN.Collapse )

So there's my dictionary, 2008 edition. Somehow, I'm not sure it makes me any easier to understand. But hey. It was fun to write, so really, who cares about its functionality?

What's in your dictionary?

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, and you're probably not on Candid Camera. This post exists to answer a few of the questions that I get asked on a semi-hemi-demi-regular basis. It may look familiar; that's because it gets reposted roughly every two months, to let new people know how we roll around here. (I will make no more Clueless references in this post, I promise.) 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 )

Look! A meme. Be afraid, and blame dawn_metcalf, who thought it was funny to infect me with a memetic thought-virus. As I usually find infection funny, I am refusing the vaccine, and spreading the disease instead. The stated rules:

A) People who have been tagged must write their answers on their blogs and replace any question that they dislike with a new question formulated by themselves.

B) Tag 8 people to do this quiz. These people must state who they were tagged by and cannot tag the person whom they were tagged by. Continue this game by sending it to other people.

Because I believe that pandemics are a choice, not a requirement, I'm not actually tagging anyone. If you want to join the party, join the party. If you don't, stay home and watch television. Whatever makes you happy. Feel free to say I tagged you. I'm a vector.

And now...fun with the meme!

( We cut because we care, and because a great many people are heavily armed. I dislike being dismembered for scrolling screens.Collapse )

Hello, and welcome to my journal! I'm pretty sure you know who I am, my name being in the URL and all, but just in case, I'm Seanan McGuire, and you're probably not on Candid Camera. This post exists to answer a few of the questions that I get asked on a semi-hemi-demi-regular basis (currently, approximately every two months). It may look familiar; that's because it gets reposted every time the answers change, and to let new people know how we roll around here. (I will make no more Clueless references in this post, I promise.) 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 )

1. Yes, I really am as organized as I appear, largely because I live my life in a constant whirl of checklists, to do lists, and lists detailing my lists. I am, sad to say, really the kind of person who makes lists of her pending lists so as to avoid accidental dropping of important things. This would be less bothersome to the world around me if I didn't forget things anyway. Ah, well.

2. Part of my list-making obsession stems from the fact that I have one of the worst short-term memories in the universe. It's actually borderline impressive. I am fully capable of looking at someone I was talking to an hour ago, smiling brightly, and introducing myself. Consequentially, I write everything down to avoid embarrassing situations in public places.

3. I really do read as much as the book review posts imply. Actually, I read substantially more than that. It's not just my 'only review books you like' policy; it's the fact that if I reviewed every book I read and enjoy, this really would become the all-reviews, all-the-time channel. Since it's regularly in danger of becoming the all-word count, all-the-time channel, I'm avoiding that.

4. At present, I am actively writing two books (The Mourning Edition and Discount Armageddon), rewriting two books (Late Eclipses of the Sun and Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues), and waiting for final edits on two books (An Artificial Night and Newsflesh). There isn't an intentional tropism towards twos around here, it just happens.

5. Like many authors, I am a cat person. More specifically, however, I am a Siamese cat person. Siamese cats are not like normal cats. Siamese cats are the megalomaniacal mad scientists of the cat world. It's entirely possible that Lilly will one day be spotted atop a national monument, cackling and calling down bolts of lightning. I'm basically okay with that.

6. I watch a lot of television. I mean I watch a lot of television. During the summer, it's mostly bad horror movies on the Science-Fiction Channel and random reality shows. During the regular TV season, it's all over the map. Since I process edits and ink my comic strip while watching television, I don't feel the time is entirely wasted, but it's fun to watch people cringe when I say I follow America's Next Top Model.

7. Besides, it's all research. Verity 'Very' Price (the main character of Discount Armageddon and Midnight Blue-Light Special) was a contestant on Dance Your Pants Off, the reality show where they search for America's most favorite dance person. Yes. She's a demon hunter who fights through the awesome power of ballroom dance. Fear her.

8. I am basically incapable of writing books that don't have sequels. I've managed a couple of duologies, but at the end of the day, I'm a trilogy-or-more kind of a girl, even when I try not to be. This gets faintly annoying at times. At least I enjoy them, which is a good thing.

9. As far as I know, I'm the only person to ever write super-peppy Schoolhouse Rock about the epidemiology of the Black Death in Europe. As 'only person ever to...' labels go, this one strikes me as being needlessly weird.

10. I have personified my muse, because that gives me someone to get mad at. Her name is Jane.

I love ten things lists.

Quoth gardnerhill:

"Seanan is brilliant, hilarious, a great filksinger, and an amazing writer. And she cartoons.

Yes, I'm planning to go Salieri on her Mozart ass one of these days."

Just so y'all know, if I show up in a powdered wig with an orchestra and a grin? I was dared. Also, hee.

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, and you're probably not on Candid Camera. This post exists to answer a few of the questions that I get asked on a semi-hemi-demi-regular basis. It may look familiar; that's because it gets reposted every time the answers change, and to let new people know how we roll around here. (I will make no more Clueless references in this post, I promise.) Also, sometimes I change the questions. Because I can.

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 )

Recently, Entertainment Weekly decided to rank 'the new classics,' and made lists of the '100 Most Influential' bits of various media in the last few decades. They had a list of movies, a list of books, a list of TV series, and so on. This, naturally, made me think, because their list looked absolutely nothing like mine would.

You know what comes next.

Books on this list aren't necessarily high literature; they're not necessarily classics; they're not even necessarily particularly good, although I think the bulk of them are. They're just the books that combined to construct a me. They are, in short, not the books I was supposed to fall in love with; just the ones that I did.

Your list will probably be drastically different. You may still want to take a look at mine. You might just find a few things that will surprise you.

( Click here for Seanan's list of 100 books that have influenced and rocked her world, and which may have influenced and rocked yours. Complete, in some cases, with commentary. Because she can, that's why.Collapse )

I have a corkboard on my desk. I periodically take it down and reorganize the weird scrapbook I have going on, because it helps me think. (Having the scrapbook also helps me think. It's a thing. A weird brain thing that I don't really understand.) After yesterday's re-org, the corkboard now displays:

* A print of a vintage Halloween image. (It's a postcard from BPAL.)
* A postcard for The Nocturnals, showing Halloween girl looking creepy.
* A postcard of some lovely women with lots of guns. I assume they're supposed to be freedom-fighters. I just consider them Healys.
* A picture of Leela.
* A card signed by the lead singer of the Counting Crows.
* A lovely card I received with a hand-drawn chainsaw on it. A My Little Chainsaw.
* Two Polaroids of Lilly the day I paid for her. So small!
* A postcard for the current X-Men story arc.
* A picture of my mother.
* A monkey postcard from Amy.
* A lovely card from Wes and Mary.
* A Supernatural promo postcard from the Comicon where the show premiered.
* A Belle sticker that reads 'Kiss my Tiara!'.
* Set lists for my last four concerts.
* Adorable mini-portraits by the fabulous Katie Curtis of Clady (the lead character in Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues) and the Mason twins (the lead characters in Newsflesh).
* Another mini-portrait by Katie, showing Godzilla in love with a skyscraper.
* The ticket stubs from seeing Stephen King live, sitting in the splatter zone at Evil Dead, and attending Little Shop of Horrors.

Looking at this list, there's only one thing I can say:

I am very odd.

So I've actually started getting my own set of 'frequently asked questions' from people who hear that I've sold a trilogy. They don't include a lot of the classic writer's questions, as yet -- I figure I'll start getting really sick of 'where do you get your ideas?' and 'can you introduce me to your agent?' sometime after book two comes out -- but they're fascinating all the same. Here's a selection, with exposition.

Why do you write about ______?
People who know me through horror and are thus aware of my undying passion for dead stuff and diseases tend to blink at me and ask 'why do you write about faeries?' like it was some sort of unhealthy personal grooming choice. (One acquaintance picked up the opening chapter of Rosemary and Rue, read about ten pages, and then said, clearly perplexed, "This has faeries in it." Perhaps he assumed I wouldn't have noticed.) People who know me through fantasy and are thus aware of my lifelong obsession with folklore and fairy tales tend to ask the reverse question, looking puzzled as they say 'why do you write about zombies?' I sometimes want to arm both camps with boffer weapons, get popcorn, and watch them try to beat each other into submission. Because it would be funny.

Why haven't you quit your day job yet?
Well, beyond the fact that I don't actually have any books published at this particular moment in time, I like paying my mortgage. I like eating things other than canned tuna (although, I must admit, not often). I like being able to buy comic books. Do I eventually want to quit my day job? Oh, hell yes. I'm a fast, disciplined writer, but there are only so many hours in the day, and the idea of being able to get up in the morning and just start writing is heavenly. I'm just not quite there yet.

When is Rosemary and Rue coming out?
I like this question, because people who ask it tend to want to buy my book. Unfortunately, I don't have anything resembling a functional answer to this one yet, because it's still early days. I have a whole lot of editorial to look forward to before I can even take guesses at the date.

Will you be at WorldCon?
2008, no. 2009, yes. 2010, if I have to sell one of Brooke's kidneys to do it. (She's Canadian, she has good kidneys.) I want to go to THE LAND OF POISON AND FLAME. That's what I call Australia. THE LAND OF POISON AND FLAME. The idea of an entire continent devoted to destroying human life is sort of like the idea of Willy Wonka's factory: too good to be true, but oh, if only it were...

Do you sleep?
No.

I can't wait to see what gets asked next...

So I was asked recently, after making reference to one of the books I use as reference for the Toby Daye series, exactly what was on my reference shelf. Now, the term 'my reference shelf' is a bit inaccurate -- I have reference books scattered throughout the house -- but I do have a primary pair of shelves over my usual workspace that include the bulk of my 'frequently referenced' volumes.

I will now expound upon my reference shelves. Or, at least, the top shelf, because I'm too lazy to do them both right now. Also, authors are given only when I don't have to move crap to see their names.

( We cut because there are people who will find this absolutely enthralling, while others will find this the strangest entry I have ever even considered making. I believe in mercy when possible.Collapse )

So recently, I bought an issue of Maxim, only to discover that they had included their list of '200 movies everyone should see.' Naturally, I disagreed with a great many of their selections, especially the part where their horror movies seem to have been chosen through purely arbitrary measures, largely having to do with how much gore could be splattered on the screen. That doesn't work for me all that well, and so I have decided to present a better, more carefully considered list. IE, 'the horror movies I say everyone should see.'

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

***

What did I miss?

So I'm watching as, very slowly, the news that 'OMG SEANAN SOLD THE BOOKS!' spreads through my various social circles. People friend this journal (hello, people!). People I haven't spoken to for years drop me a line to say that they're proud of me (which is totally made of awesome). My cats look deeply perplexed at all the phone calls, and demand that I feed them more to make up for the disruption to their routines (totally fair, if one happens to be a cat).

BayCon was awesome, because for the first time, I got to tell people to their faces, and see their reactions. Lots of squealing. And sometimes, I am six, because I'm watching as 'toby daye' begins to spread as an LJ Interest, and I'm just giggling like a lunatic.

(Seriously, it went from three people to nine people, and I scared the cat.)

(Now I'm just waiting for 'newsflesh' to do the same thing.)

I've created weird LJ Interests before, but this isn't a weird interest, it's a legitimate one. I mean, this is people saying they're interested in my books. Mine. The ones I write, by sitting at this keyboard and whacking on the little letters until words fall out. While the cats may be entirely unimpressed by the awesomeness of this entire situation, I am fully impressed, and I can't pretend otherwise. I'm an LJ Interest! Everybody dance!

1. My name is Seanan McGuire; I'm an author, musician, poet and crazy person, presently living in Northern California. I am a very chatty person, whether you're talking literally 'we are in the same place' chattiness, or more abstract 'someone has left Seanan alone with a keyboard, run for the hills' chattiness. This does not, paradoxically, make me terribly good about keeping up with email or answering comments in anything that resembles a reasonable fashion. We all have our flaws.

2. My name is pronounced 'SHAWN-in', although a great many people elect to pronounce it 'SHAWN-anne' instead. Either is fine with me. I went to an event where we all got name tags once, and the person making the name tags was a 'SHAWN-anne' person, who proceeded to label me as 'Shawn Anne McGuire'. I choose to believe that Shawn Anne is my alter-ego from a universe where, instead of becoming an author, I chose to become a country superstar. I believe she wears a great many rhinestones, because they're sparkly, and she can get away with it. Just don't call me 'See-an-an' and we'll be fine.

3. I believe that editing is a full-contact sport, complete with penalty boxes, illegal checking, and team pennants. My editing team is the Fighting Pumpkins. We're going all the way to the WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS this year, bay-bee!

4. I find it useful to keep a record of the status of my various projects, both because it warms the little Type-A cockles of my heart, and because it helps people who need to know what's going on know, well, what's going on. So you'll probably see word counts and editing updates go rolling by, as well as more generalized complaining about the behavior of fictional people. I am told this is entertaining. I am also told that this is possibly a sign of madness. I don't know.

5. I am a musician! More specifically, I'm a filk musician. If you know filk, this statement makes total sense. If you don't know filk, think 'the folk music of the science fiction and fantasy community'. I have two CDs currently available, Pretty Little Dead Girl: Seanan McGuire and Friends Live at OVFF 2005, and Stars Fall Home. I'm in the process of recording a third CD, Red Roses and Dead Things. I write mostly original material, and don't spend much time in ParodyLand. It just doesn't work out for me.

6. Things I find absolutely enthralling: giant squid. Plush dinosaurs. Siamese cats. Zombies. The plague. Pandemic flus. Horror movies of all quality levels. Horror television. Science Fictional Channel Original Movies. The large colony of infant preying mantises currently living next to my front door, where they wave their tiny alien arms in menacing fashion at all that comes to challenge them. Halloween. Candy corn. Pumpkin cake.

7. Things I find absolutely horrifying: slugs. Big spiders dropping down from the ceiling and landing on me because ew. Bell peppers. Rice. Movies that consist largely of car chases and do not contain a satisfying amount of carnage. Animal cruelty. People who go hiking on mountain trails in Northern California and freak out over a little rattlesnake. Most sitcoms. A large percentage of modern advertising. Diet Chocolate Cherry Dr Pepper.

8. I am owned by a classic bluepoint Siamese named Lillian Kane Moskowitz Munster McGuire. Yes, I call her that, usually when she's been naughty. The rest of the time, she's either 'Lilly' or 'Lil'. She shares me, grudgingly, with my elderly chocolate-point, Nyssa.

9. I'm still trying to sort out exactly what I want to post here, beyond general updates and my approach to the madness that is the writing process, and I'm open to suggestions.

10. I write: urban fantasy, horror, young adult, supernatural romance, and straight chick-lit romance. I occasionally threaten to write medical thrillers, but everyone knows that's just so I'd have an excuse to take more epidemiology courses. I love me a good plague.

Welcome!