I have a move date now. Actually, I have a stacked succession of move dates, all of them coming one right after the other, like evil demon ducklings on their way to nibble me to death. And to make things SO MUCH MORE FUN, literally all but one of them happen while I am traveling for work. Seriously. Truck arrives in the Bay Area to get all my stuff loaded into it? New York. Cats are transferred to Kate's so they don't escape during the packing process? New York. Truck leaves for the Pacific Northwest? New York.

I get home, I go to where my cats are, I surrender my keys to the California house (my housemate, who is staying in the area, will be handling the sale with the help of a realtor we both trust), and then Kate drives me to my new home.

The day the truck arrives to be unloaded, I am, in order, heading for the airport, on a plane, and flying to San Diego to launch my combo book tour with Sarah Kuhn and Amber Benson. BECAUSE THIS ISN'T STRESSFUL AT ALL. (I am lying. I am lying through my teeth. This whole process feels like a huge psych test to see how much pressure I, as a person with OCD, can take before I snap and hide under my bed for the duration of, oh, forever.) All the unloading, all the checking that things aren't broken, is going to happen before I get home.

Vixy is organizing the helpers on the Seattle end of things, and if you're someone I know well enough to be all "hi, want to come and empty a truck that contains all my earthly belongings while I'm, you know, not there, also there will be pizza," you'll probably be receiving an email from me soonish.

I do have a short-term Patreon set up to help with moving costs, located here: https://www.patreon.com/seananmcguire?ty=h

I'll be honest: I would feel guilty about reminding people that the Patreon exists, given how high pledges already are (thank you, thank you, thank you), but moving turns out to be really, really, really, horrifyingly expensive, and all figures are actually 1/3rd lower, due to taxes. So every little bit helps (and our June story, "Stage of Fools," will be a return to the Londinium-era Tybalt--one of my favorite subjects!).

Please expect me to be scattered and a little twitchy for the next few months, while I survive this process. Thank you all so much for being here.

I am cleaning, packing, and purging my house, and I am finding things! So many things. Today's finds:

1. I have found three copies of my second chapbook. These are hand-stitched books of poetry, and were originally limited to a run of one hundred. I have my file copy, so I don't need three extra. If you would like to purchase one, please email me through my website contact form and make what you consider to be a reasonable offer, given their rarity and the fact that after this, there aren't any more. Or, you know, offer to bake me a million cookies. I am can often be bribed with baked goods.

I won't decide instantly who gets them, so it's not "first come first served"; I'm about to head for a book event, and Kate doesn't always forward things to me in exactly the order in which they were received. Please be patient with me.

2. I have found two sealed envelopes, presumably from the most recent T-shirt run, both marked "return to sender." I have not opened them, so I don't know exactly what's inside. One of the people has already contacted me, so Sarah Hubbard, if you see this, I think I have something that belongs to you. Please email me through my website contact form to arrange for delivery.

Yay getting things out of my house!

I have been living in the same house for over fifteen years. Understandably, this has led to a lot of stuff building up in closets and in corners. Sometimes I know it's there. Other times, it just sort of...happened, and I am constantly surprised by turning around and finding it looking at me.

As referenced in the BPAL post, I'm about to start selling stuff, both because I need to declutter and because I need the money. I'm not selling stuff that is a daily part of my life: I am not so desperate for cash that I'm even looking at my Pokemon, for example. I just need to have less stuff that I don't care about, and more liquid funds.

(Some of you know why this is. For the rest of you, please don't ask: I assure you, all will be made clear in the very near future. It's just one of those things where the foundation work is visible in advance, whether I want it to be or not, and as I am not a subtle beast, I'm admitting it up front. It's not major medical or Disney related. Yay on one, sad on the other.)

Figuring out how to sell my stuff is a fascinating exercise in chaos, convenience, and laziness. I'm actively bad at mailing things, as many of you know; selling in any way that requires mailing is just not a good plan until I'm desperate. I don't have enough for a yard sale, and I'd rather avoid going Craigslist for right now. So at least for a little while, I'm just going to be popping up with "make me an offer and either pick it up or be somewhere I'm already planning to be" things on various sites.

(It's working out okay so far. I sold a pair of bongos.)

So...

If you'd like to make me an offer on the 2011 San Diego Exclusive My Little Pony, mint in box, or on either the Teen Titans Go! or Gotham vinyl bags from San Diego Comic-Con 2015, drop me a line. Must be able to either pick up from me directly, or be planning to be somewhere I'm already going to be.

Basically what it says on the tin.

I am about to embark on a huge and terrifying purge of my belongings, in part because I need to have less stuff (because reasons), in part because I need to have more money (because related reasons). One of the things I have a startling supply of is BPAL (Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab) perfume.

Does anyone know, from "I have done it and here's how" experience, how to mail perfume/essential oil within the US? I've found both "it's a hazardous material and you can't" and "it's possible, just hard." Well, I need to know how.

Help?

Time is broken.

If an apologetic Hermione Granger appeared to me right now and told me that she had been using her Time Turner on my house for the past two days, I would be more relieved than annoyed, because it would explain why I constantly feel like it's an hour later than it is. I have been incredibly productive--good--because I keep looking at the clock, going "wait, what? That can't be right," and then working for another hour, all because I can't believe it's actually that early.

This is a recipe for a fussy, fussy day. Today I made word count on both novel and short fiction projects; exceeded word count on both novel and short fiction projects; answered email; answered Tumblr Asks; processed three chapters of edits on the next Toby book (as opposed to the original target of one chapter); and still had time to watch three episodes of Elementary and take a nap.

I know part of this is my brain going "YES YES GLORIOUS WORD COUNT OH MY GOSH TV YES I HAVE MISSED YOU TV" in celebration on getting home from New York, but honestly, it's weird and I will be happy when I drop back down to my normal levels of restless productivity.

On the plus side, I am home until January. Yay, home.

I also cleaned my desk today! Since I re-calibrated the over-desk "brag shelves" on Friday, this means that my work space is remarkably unmessy for a change. It's cluttered, but that's intentional; I like being able to look up and stare at a bunch of different things. It knocks stuff loose. I need to take some of the things off of my inspiration board, which is getting too cluttered to really inspire the way it needs to, but apart from that? I am tidy.

(Because someone asked me recently: when my desk and brag shelves are "tidy," they contain eleven dolls if you're counting things that are articulated to one degree or another, and eighteen total toys with eyes. Lots of things watch me work. None of them are my cats. They would rather watch me nap.)

I hope you're all having as pleasant a winter season as is possible, and that your own workspaces are as clean, or unclean, as you need them to be in order to get shit done.

Okay: I just had cause to go through my bins of author's copies, and it's getting scary in there. Very, deeply scary. So! It's time for a hardship giveaway.

What is a hardship giveaway? It's where I give away older books (not ARCs or just-released) to people who couldn't afford to buy them when they came out, and/or can't afford them now. It's an honor system: I believe that you will honor my intent, and only enter if you have a genuine need. Because T-shirt mailing is ongoing, this particular giveaway is only open to people with US addresses. I am so sorry about that, I really am, but a) I can't afford international postage (which is sort of contradictory to the whole "hardship" angle), and b) my postal workers will kill me if I add more international shipping right now.

To enter...

1) Comment on this post, indicating that you have a US address.
2) Tell me what book you are hoping to win. Anything I've written.
2a) Hell, feel free to list anthologies.
3) If you have a second choice, list that.

I cannot guarantee that I have any specific book "in stock," as it were, but I can sure look. (I can tell you for sure that I don't have Rosemary and Rue or Feed right now.)

I will choose five winners on Wednesday, February 4th. They will have twenty-four hours to contact me to claim their prizes.

Shoot for the moon!

...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?

As of about fifteen minutes ago, the last of the first run of Wicked Girls shirts has been packed for mailing. As of this afternoon, the last fifty or so have gone out into the wild. They should be received over the next three to thirteen days or so, allowing for international postage. On Monday, when I get back from Texas, last ten will go into the mail. And then I will be done, except for the inevitable cleanup and sorting out of the last few issues.

At the moment, there are five shirts, belonging to three people, that haven't been packed. This is because three of those shirts appear to either a) be missing, or b) not exist. We're not sure which it is. Mom will be cleaning the entire shirt staging area over the weekend to figure out which is the case; considering that it was a total print run of almost three hundred shirts, three misprints is actually really good...unless one of those misprints was yours. On Monday, I'll be emailing anyone whose shirt still hasn't shown up to see how they want us to proceed.

(The options, if you're morbidly curious: refund, replacement with one of the shirts we still have, or replacement shirt printed in the next batch. Which yes, we are going to do. Now that we know where the pain points and delays are, we should be able to achieve the whole thing much more quickly, from initial order to final receipt.)

I have not, thus far, heard from anyone who received the wrong shirt, and I'm hopeful that this means nothing was mispacked at any stage during the entirely manual shipping process. "Hopeful" doesn't mean "certain." If you receive the wrong shirt, please let me know ASAP, as we only printed what was requested, and we'll need to figure something out.

Thanks again to everyone for your patience during this long, slow experiment. You've been awesome, and I really hope you like your shirts.

1. It's Saturday! Which means no day job for me, and twice the word count! DON'T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT. I got up at 8AM (for me, that's sleeping in), watched Criminal Minds while I ate breakfast, wrote and edited for a few hours, watched Criminal Minds while I ate lunch, took a shower, did 5 Things A Room, and now I'm getting ready to head for Borderlands. By arriving several hours before the event, I'll have time to, you guessed it, work.

2. "5 Things A Room" is where I go through the four rooms that contain the majority of my stuff and de-clutter five things, by either putting them away, throwing them away, or shifting them to another room. (Sometimes shifted things can't be put away immediately, due to other things being in the way. This is the issue with having a very, very cluttered house.)

3. Mom and I will be packing the next huge wave of shirts to mail tomorrow; the goal is to get them all packaged for mailing. Before you get too excited: our most recent pack wave revealed that there was at least one size/color/style combination which I didn't receive when I was supposed to, and was unaware was missing. The shirt shop is printing them now, but it means that not all shirts will be mailing, and that I may still be missing some combination I haven't tripped over yet. I'll keep you posted.

4. Remember that "six Velveteen stories in 2011" thing that I promised, and then had people tell me I couldn't do? Well, five of the six are now finished, and the last one will be in the bag before New Year's. So yes, I can so do six crazy superhero romps in a year. They just didn't balance out the way I thought they would.

5. If you're planning to go Black Friday shopping, can you drop me a line and let me know? I'm not going to be shopping that day, but there are supposed to be some new Monster High dolls releasing for the holiday, and I'd really appreciate if you could look for them for me.

6. Zombies are love.

7. There's a lot of shifting and shaking going on at Marvel Comics. The fabulous X-23 has been canceled, which just plain breaks my heart, and I'm not sure what I think of some of the narrative choices being made. I'll stick it out—I'm me—but I'm a little sad all the same.

8. Wilde Imagination is supposed to be announcing a new resin Evangeline Ghastly at IDEX in January. I know, this is relevant to like, three of you, but it's relevant to me. I really want a resin Evangeline, and the last several have been totally unappealing to me. Here's hoping the new one will be as awesome as Cemetery Wedding, which I have thus far been unable to obtain.

9. I'm getting ready to head into the city for the Narbonic Perfect Collection launch party. If you're local, I really do hope to see you there, and if you're not, remember, the bookstore ships.

10. The cats are possessed by demons today, and are following me through the house trilling and fluffing their tails (except for Lilly, who just squawks like she has a duck stuck in her throat). So if I'm never heard from again, it's because they ate me.

I am currently trying to transform my place of residence from a welter of stuff* into something halfway functional. I have a lot of motivation. I not only want to have a viable idea of what I have, thus telling me what I need to acquire if I want to finish various collections, I want to get rid of things that I don't really want. That way, I can pack with more assurance. Every move is focused on that sweet eventual goal: Seattle. I want to get out of the Bay Area, and after co-habitation with The Housemate for over a decade, my extraction has to be slow and careful, lest we wind up going to war over who owns that battered old paperback book.**

Some of the de-cluttering efforts are obvious. For example, I am putting books in boxes, indexing their contents, and putting the boxes in a big stack of boxes (also filled with books). I am putting things I have no emotional attachment to/desire to keep in other boxes, and sending them away on a regular basis. I am freely giving things to strangers. Other efforts are less obvious. I bought two new cat trees, because cats knock stuff over, thus creating more mess than they will when given places of their own. I've been saving boxes, which makes more mess, at least until the boxes are filled and put away. And so on.

My brain is no tidier. In trying to clean up my link list, I found things that have literally been waiting for their shining moment for up to two years. Will I ever really get around to some of these? No. No, I will not. That makes me sad, but I'd like to see the floor in my rotating "to do" file someday, just like I'd like to see it in my kitchen, and so away they go. Farewell, sweet links. I hardly knew ye.

Still. Once, Feed was a best-selling title in an Australian bookstore. I was nominated for a Romantic Times award. Apex put out an anthology with my wacky Fighting Pumpkins alien invasion story in it. And I needed to take a nap.

I will probably do some really random review posts in the next few days, just to clear out some links that have waited long past their best-by date. This has never been a judgment on those reviews in specific; it's just how out of control the file has gotten. I need a maid to go with that nap, I swear.

Anybody want to come over and help me index stuff?

(*Let's be clear here: most of it is good stuff. That's why it's there. But not all of it is good stuff. Some of it is bad stuff. Some of it is the kind of stuff that seemed like good stuff six years ago, when I was a different person, or when I really thought that someday I, too, would be a world-class guitarist. And some of it, sad to say, is crap.)

(**If you don't think this is something worth going to war over, you're either not a bibliophile or have never had someone try to take one of your best-beloved books away from you. Not being in the mood to start global thermonuclear destruction, I am doing my best to avoid this.)

1. I am basically over The Death Plague From Hell at this point, but I remain exhausted and behind on damn near everything. I'm catching up as fast as I can, but with 500+ LJ comments and nearly as many emails to go through, I'm having to do a lot more "is this actually urgent?" triage than I like. Please be patient, and don't yell at me if two whole days go by without my getting back to you.

2. While I'm asking for favors...please don't link me to Goodreads or Amazon reviews. I really and truly try to avoid reviews on those sites, because they just make me sad and twitchy. (Yes, there are excellent, erudite, well-composed reviews in both places. But the number of mean or thoughtless reviews is very high, and frankly, I don't have the energy to filter through them looking for the good stuff.)

3. If you missed the Deadline book release, or if Toby is more your cup of tea, remember that I will be back at Borderlands Books this coming Saturday, appearing alongside the fabulous Ben Macallan (aka Chaz Brenchley). He's asked me to join him so he'll have a partner for cards if no one shows up. Let's surprise him by having EVERYONE show up. I'll be reading from my new Tybalt prequel story, and there may be some awesome unexpected giveaways...

4. Everyone on the Wicked Girls shirt spreadsheet should have received their initial emails at this point. If you don't have one, please check your spam filter, as the email from Deborah (coming from a Gmail.com address) is somehow not getting to you. If you think I may have the wrong address for you, please let me know ASAP.

5. My house is an absolute disaster zone, and I'm going to need help cleaning out the closets soon. If you're local, not allergic to cats, and think spending a day going through the things I have shoved into my shelves would be fun, drop me a line. This is less "cleaning" and more "de-cluttering, purging, and organizing," which means it's less physical labor, more Tetris for the live-action set.

...so in short, please be patient, and I will try to deal with all emergencies in the order in which they were received.

1. It is now twenty-one days to Deadline. I am scrambling to catch up on "Countdown" (the series of little in-universe snapshots has a name!), and writing ahead so as not to get caught flat-footed by my next convention adventure. I'm not certain I'll have internet while at Wiscon, so the last few pieces may be posted a little late, but they will be posted.

2. The cats responded to my going to Leprecon by magically acquiring giant felted mats which should have taken them well over a week to create. Last night's brushing adventure was a lot of fun for everyone involved, let me tell you what. Also, ow. Also, I am so saying "screw this noise" when I get home from BEA/Wiscon, and just taking the pair of them straight to the professional groomer for trimming and mat removal. I am not going through that again if I don't have to.

3. My whole house is clean! Why is my whole house clean? Because my mother is awesome! Why is my mother awesome? Because she cleaned my house! The first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club.

4. I get a Cat this weekend! Cat Valente is using my house as her base of operations during the San Francisco Bay Area branch of her tour for The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. She'll be at our best-beloved Borderlands Books this Saturday; there will be cupcakes, and carousing, and all the usual wonderful things. You should totally come.

5. There will be another, probably photo-heavy post about this later, but...I got an Evangeline Ghastly doll! More precisely, I got two; the one I bought, and one that mysteriously appeared on my doorstep in a big-ass box from Wilde Imagination. My squealing, it was vast. Of course, now I have entered the dark realm of the ball-jointed doll, from which there is no returning. Which leads us to...

6. I am allowed to do one fiscally silly thing every time I do certain things, career-wise. As I have done a certain thing (more on this later), I get to be silly, and I've decided that this time, for silly, I want a resin Evangeline doll. They fit more of the clothes, and can wear all the shoes. Specifically, I want the Cemetery Wedding Evangeline, since she has the best face. If you know anyone who might be selling part of a doll collection, please let me know?

7. The new season of Doctor Who continues to delight me.

8. I have finished the Tybalt short! "Rat-Catcher" is 10,000 words long, and has been officially submitted to the market it was written for. If they buy it, I'll announce when and where it will be appearing. If they don't, I'll start looking for something else to do with a story full of Cait Sidhe. Whatever I do, it will probably need to involve gooshy food.

9. Zombies are love.

10. I am hammered enough right now that my response time is slow, and the amnesty on replying to comments on the "Countdown" posts endures. I'll still answer comments on all other posts; it may just take me a little while. Thank you for being understanding.

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

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

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

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

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

6. I am the Rain King.

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

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

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

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

First up, here is a message from my darling spectralbovine, who is, by the way, questionably insane, as well as being one of my favorite hotel roomies:

"Wow! A great many thanks to everyone who has already donated to 826 Valencia, helping me raise nearly $5,000! Our team has raised nearly $12,000, making us the most successful fund-raising spelling bee team in the history of 826. If you would like to be a part of this tremendous achievement, there's still time!

http://tiny.cc/sunilspellingbee

If you would like to see me put all this cheating money to good use against Michael Chabon, Lemony Snicket, Adam Savage, John Vanderslice, Tracy Chapman, and others (including a former National Spelling Bee competitor), I invite you to attend the Spelling Bee for Cheaters on Thursday, February 17 at 7:30 PM at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco.

http://www.cityboxoffice.com/ordertickets.asp?p=5324

Use the discount code 826VLNTR to get general seating for $15 and premium seating for $40! Bring giant foam letters to give me hints."

Now, his team is currently in grave danger from the various celebrity teams; Adam Savage, especially, has endangered their status as Most Successful Fund-Raisers Ever. So if you were considering helping this good cause, here's your chance!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (or back in my living room, depending on your point of view), Mom and I were shipping Wicked Girls CDs the other day, and discovered that one of the boxes had been partially damaged in shipping. So I have three CDs with cracked jewel cases and slightly damaged liner notes, but no damage to the CDs themselves. I'm selling these for $5 plus postage; please comment here if you're interested.

And that's the news.

1. I'm still taking entries in my "ask a question, win an ARC" drawing. Remember that two prizes will be awarded, one by our old friend, Random Number Generator (oh, Genny, you're so capricious), and once by me choosing the best question of the bunch. Please, please don't ask for spoilers. Ask questions that would potentially be found in an FAQ, even one as profoundly silly as mine.

2. I'm a Barbie girl! Well. Sometimes. The brilliant Tara O'Shea (who does my website graphics, and isn't she amazing?) does Barbie customs, because she is marginally insane, and is now making me my very own Alice Price-Healy, because I am marginally insane. Tracking down 1/6th scale weapons and camping gear is surprisingly soothing. As is the part where, when I'm done, I get to ship it all off to Tara, and not deal with it until it comes back as a real, live Barbie of one of my characters. My life is so hard sometimes. (This will not be my first custom Barbie. That honor goes to Lt. Anis Bihari of the USS Rutan. She has spots!)

3. According to DAW, finished copies of Late Eclipses now exist, and I should have mine in a week or so. So you can look forward to pictures of Thomas putting the now-traditional toothmarks in the cover of my file copy, right before I start hyperventilating.

4. Yesterday, I went to two flea markets with my mother and youngest sister, both of whom acquired Immense Amounts of Crap. Despite bringing my naked Gloom Beach Draculaura along so that I could try clothes on her (Monster High dolls can wear many Bratz and Moxie Girl fashions), I managed not to buy anything except for a bottle of water. I compensated for this by swinging through the Berkeley Half-Price Books and acquiring yet another sack of books I won't get around to reading for a month or more. I need help.

5. And by "help," I mean "I need someone to come over and shelve things with me for about seven hours solid." Even that may not conquer the leaning piles of literature and restore my capacity to see the floor, but I am occasionally a crazy idealist where such things are concerned.

6. In an effort to not be a total wreck today, I spent about two hours last night sitting on the couch, watching telly. Specifically, the post-Superbowl episode of Glee, which I loved, and the first episode of the North American Being Human, which I loved. So it was a night full of love. That's even before you take into account the seven-month-old Maine Coon draped across my lap, loving me so loudly that I had to turn up the volume on the TV (kid has a purr like a lawnmower).

7. CD Baby has sent me their restock request, and so I'll be mailing them restock of Wicked Girls, Red Roses and Dead Things, and Pretty Little Dead Girl tomorrow. If you're looking for Stars Fall Home, I really am sold out, but Southern Fried Filk has several, as do many other filk dealers I know.

That's my Monday. What's new in the world of you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Tuesday!

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?

* 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.

1. I am almost ready for Marcon! If by "almost" you mean "a packing list has been made, although no actual packing has been done, and hey, look, I have a set list." I'll pack tonight when I get home; tomorrow, I'll decamp to Kate's, since we need to get up at four o'clock Thursday morning if we want to catch our flight. Oh, the things I do for the love of conventions.

2. Last night was one of those "sleep so hard you wake up feeling hung-over" nights. I appreciate this. I don't get many of those nights anymore, and after I get over hating the universe, I tend to be refreshed and peppy. This sometimes creeps people out, as they aren't accustomed to seeing me peppy. Full of pep! There is nothing more dangerous than a truly cheerful blonde.

3. I'm currently cleaning and indexing my room, as part of an ongoing attempt to get my possessions under something resembling control. In the process of so doing, I found three copies of my 2009 chapbook. Now, I was under the impression that I had sold all the copies of my 2009 chapbook, which means either a) I can't count, or b) three people didn't get their chapbooks. If you requested a chapbook and never got it, please let me know, so that we can sort out what happened (and you can finally get your poetry).

4. I've finally updated my Upcoming Appearances page to include appearances through June, as well as the two stops on the Murder and Mayhem Tour that I'm doing with jennifer_brozek. I'll be adding more information to the June/July appearances, but at least now people will basically know where I'm going to be.

5. An Artificial Night is now on Amazon! What's more, it's on Amazon with a release date (September 7th), and actually relevant-to-the-book information (rather than the carry-over description of A Local Habitation that appeared there initially). The cover isn't up yet, but I'll totally scream when it appears, because every time one of my books is actually fully on Amazon, an angel gets its wings. I want my own CELESTIAL HOST, dammit.

6. I've rewritten the first six chapters of The Brightest Fell, and suddenly, without warning, this book has started to actually WORK. It's not uncommon for me to spend a hundred pages or so wandering lost in the wilderness, but The Brightest Fell is a particularly hard book. It's the last of the Toby books that was started pre-publication, which means it's been shelved several times while I worked on more urgent projects. To make matters worse, it's complicated, and changes a lot of things about Toby's world. So it's been kicking my ass, and I have finally started kicking back.

7. Who found a copy of Kelley Armstrong's out-of-print Eve novella, Angelic, while she was at Dark Carnival in Berkeley? Would that be me? Why, yes, I do believe it would be. I'll be doing more book gloating later, but I needed to offer this little snippet now. Because dude.

8. The cats come running when they hear the opening theme from The West Wing, because they know it means I'll be sitting still for at least forty-five minutes. Possibly longer, if the power of their purring is enough to make me start a second episode. Yes, I have managed to train my cats into taking an interest in the democratic process. When Lilly takes the state to court for the right to vote, you have permission to blame me.

9. It's cherry season. You do not want to know how many pounds of cherries I've consumed in the last week and a half...but as a hint, I could probably reforest Utah with my cherry pips, and I am now capable of telling fortunes for the whole of Oregon.

10. Zombies are love.

* Pick up Canadian currency from my bank, where hopefully, no one will say "Canadians have money?" Once was funny. Twice may well be grounds for punching somebody in the nose. I like my bank. I don't want to get thrown out for assaulting a teller.

* Revise and process the editorial notes on the next thirty pages of Feed. I'm currently on page 251 of 544 (this includes the dedication page, but does not yet include the acknowledgment page); I need to hit page 281 before I can go to bed tonight. I like sleep. Sleep is my cuddly friend. I like zombies. The fact that zombies are a prerequisite for sleep around here probably says something about my psyche.

* Attempt to unearth my dresser from beneath the epic pile of crap that accompanied me home from San Diego. 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.

* Attempt to integrate the epic pile of crap that accompanied me home from San Diego 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.

* Finish chapter four of The Brightest Fell, aka "the fifth Toby book," aka "well, at least she won't be done with the entire second trilogy before the first book comes out." (The Toby books aren't really trilogies. It's just that I tend to outline them three at a time, because it's an easy number to deal with, and people are less frightened by "oh, I'm working on the second trilogy." Apparently, math and logic are not always our friends.)

* 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.

* Pull my towering stacks of trade paperbacks into one mega-stack and put the damn things away before I lose a cat beneath a pile of Hack/Slash. Since Lilly eats comic books, this would be a fitting end, but it would make me sad, and I don't have time for that right now.

* Update three entries in the Toby continuity wiki. I'm getting close to being done with the data-entry from the original continuity guide, and that means soon, I'll be able to start updating things to match current continuity, as well as adding extra information on characters whose profiles are still just skeletons. If there's ever a fan wiki, we can have a race.

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

* Go to Dairy Queen.

* Sleep.

So I keep meaning to say deep and meaningful things ("I got carnivorous plants for Valentine's Day!" "No, really -- one of my sundews is eating moths already, like a wee sticky Audrey II."), or at least report on the progress that I've been making on The Mourning Edition ("Epileptic miniature bulldogs are the pet everyone's going to be screaming for this season."), but all I really seem to manage is vague grumbling noises, accompanied by the distracted waving of hands. I am wiped out.

Why am I wiped out? Well, let's see. Today, I...

* Carted THREE BOXES OF TRASH out of my house, which entailed, of course, initially generating three boxes of trash. Admittedly, it was made easier by the presence of several water-damaged shipping boxes (one of which originally contained the aforementioned carnivorous plants), since I didn't have to scrounge to generate box-shaped piles of trash, but still.

* Went shopping with Kate, who managed to convince me -- through cunning application of the Weather Channel, which insists that it gets cold on the East Coast -- that I needed some wool trousers. So we went to the mall. For wool trousers. To wear in New York, in March. Well, I have wool trousers now. Also green corduroys, a very nice 'statement piece' blouse, two new bras, and a double-breasted kelly-green coat. Behold, for now I wear the human pants. I hate shopping so hard.

* Did my Richard Simmons workout tape for the first time in months and months. Look: I'm one of those people who starts every day with an energy bar that has somehow been turned up to two hundred percent of safe storage. If I don't walk a mile before breakfast, I get twitchy. For a long time, I was controlling my natural desire to fidget with DDR and Richard Simmons. Only it turns out that I have three severely herniated disks in my lower back, and they're not so hot on all that high-impact stuff. So anyway, after a lot of healing time, a lot of pills, an MRI, and some PT, I'm finally trying to get back into a certain amount of actual exercise. It makes me paradoxically less tired. Only not today, since today, my body is very confused, and hence yelling at me.

So on that seriously more-productive-than-it-looks note, I'm going to close this down and take myself to bed, to sleep the sleep of the good, the just, and the just plain tuckered. I'll be interesting again tomorrow, I promise.

I am a magpie by nature and a flea market aficionado by nurture; I have a finely-honed nose for yard sales, second-hand stores, unexpected caches of used books, and little hole-in-the-wall junk shops on the verge of going out of business. I come by it honestly -- my mother and my grandmother both amassed collections that put mine to shame. In my mother's case, several times, since she keeps rebooting her stash and starting over from scratch. I sometimes suspect that we may be descended from dragons, except for the part where I don't really care much for spicy food.

I have spent the last two days locked in unending battle with my bedroom, where the phrase 'well, it still closes...' has been uttered more than once, and never in jest. I've toted out boxes and bags of debris, given my mother two large boxes of toys to take to my suddenly acquired* collection of nieces and nephews, mailed a bunch of holiday and birthday gifts -- some even for this year -- and taken out three bags of recycling.

It still looks vaguely as though an atomic bomb has gone off in here. Perhaps more worryingly, I'm still missing things. Where's the second volume of X-Men: The Complete Onslaught Saga? Where's my soundtrack to The Slipper and the Rose? Where, for the love of all that's holy, is the cat?

Actually, that's easy. The cat's in my suitcase, hoping to sneak to Seattle with me. Sorry, Lilly. I'm not quite that unobservant.

I don't think anyone can deny that this is an improvement -- all my dresser drawers are closed, you can see most of the rug, both my dressers are totally cleaned off, and my desk is only under about six inches of crap -- but really, I've just managed to get the place to the point where it looks like someone might be getting ready to clean. And I still haven't addressed the question of what I'm going to do with the big CD rack (homeless since the removal of the snake cage), or where the leftover penguins are supposed to go (I'm beginning to consider the garbage disposal).

Dear Great Pumpkin: if you see that Santa Claus guy heading for my place this year, please punch him in the nose and send over a maid service instead. They may need flamethrowers, machetes, and holy water. Oh, and Kevlar, because the cats are pointy and I suspect Nyssa may be undead.

Love, me.

(*It turns out that when your baby sister marries a woman who already has kids, and who has a sister of her own who also has kids, you become an aunt. Who knew?)

After a great deal of pointing and clicking, I have managed to reduce my LJ inbox to fifteen items, my Gmail inbox to nothing pending, and my shell mail inbox to sixty-three (which is crazy-good for this particular inbox, you have no idea). This is fantastic, as it means that I can spend tomorrow actually getting things done, rather than doing housekeeping preparatory to getting things done.

I've also cleaning up my 'Fifty Thoughts On Writing' and presented it to my webmaster for eventual posting in the site's Extras section. The idea is to get lots of neat things on the site for people to click on and stare at in a fixed manner, thus leading to repeat visits, thus justifying the amount of effort that goes into the thing. I love my website. I just wish I could wave a hand and make it exist.

In other news, I turned in the edits for my Grants Pass story tonight, and let me tell you, if the editors gave this level of care and kindliness to every story in the anthology -- and I believe they did, they're very good -- this is going to be one kick-ass book. For serious, you so want a copy. It may be difficult to acquire one in the Bay Area, as my mother plans to corner the market, but you should try.

(My mother is adorable sometimes. She says that people should get this book because it's coming out before Rosemary and Rue, and this way when they get me to sign it for them, they'll be able to legitimately say they met me before I was famous. My mother also thinks that Stephen King is going to call me to say 'congratulations,' so I don't credit her much.)

I will now go eat ice cream and watch Sanctuary.

I love books.

I love the feeling of them, the weight of them, the smell that you only get when you have a sufficient density of books in a room. I love the reality of them. I'm never going to be one of those people who makes the transition to electronic books, because they just aren't real enough for me. I say this as someone who writes books on a computer, and rarely, if ever prints them out before they hit the final draft; I realize it's not a rational way to be. It's just how I'm wired. It doesn't help that I'm an obsessive packrat who collects basically everything you can think of. When Pokemon was big, the core philosophy -- 'gotta catch 'em all' -- made total sense to me. I just chose to apply it to books.

All my life I've wandered through used bookstores, looking at the shelves and wondering how anyone could ever, ever let some of those volumes out of their hands. I've seriously theorized that certain books must have come from estate sales following the tragic deaths of their owners, because otherwise, how could they have wound up on that shelf? There's just no way the parting was voluntary. The knowledge that someday, my books will be on those shelves, books with my name on them, cast into the chilling world of the second-hand tome, just doesn't compute. Once you own a book, it's yours forever, right?

Right?

Recently, the rapidly shrinking floor space in my home has forced me to take a long, hard look at this philosophy, and admit that, perhaps, there are things in life more important than owning every book ever published by Leisure Horror. Like, y'know, being able to find my way to the bathroom. And not being one of those 'human interest' stories about the woman found a week after the big earthquake, smothered under the weight of her own toppled anthology collection. Also, I'm trying to raise money to go to WorldCon in Australia in 2010, and selling some of the books I have no intention of ever reading again seems like a good way to start. And I have books I'm never going to read again. I try to pretend that I don't, but I do. There are books I only get the urge to read every six or seven years, and that's one thing. There are reference books, and that's another thing. But works of fiction whose contents have long since ceased to appeal to me in any meaningful way? Yeah, those can go.

Getting rid of books is at once entirely alien to me and deeply cathartic. This book I didn't like? I'm not obligated to keep it. This book I liked just fine but haven't read since 1992, and wow, the idea of reading it now ceases to appeal after three pages? It can go. This book here that was the literary equivalent of a bad Science-Fiction Channel Original Movie? It was fun once, I'm not buying the DVD, the novelization can go. Suddenly, it's possible that I might be able to put the books I actually want back on the shelves. Suddenly, I can see the floor.

It's all very strange.

But kinda cool.