10. It's December! That is...terrifying and amazing and lots of other things, but mostly, it's a huge relief, because I don't have anywhere to go for the rest of the year. Oh, I have a lot of local commitments, parties and appearances and a doll meet-up, but nothing that requires travel. I get to sleep in my own bed, snuggle my cats, and clean my house for an entire month. I am ridiculously excited about this.

9. A lot of folks are doing their holiday shopping right now, which is swell! I posted the holiday book buying reminder yesterday. You can also contact Mysterious Galaxy, in San Diego, for signed copies of Out of Tune, and for copies of Dead But Not Forgotten signed by Charlaine Harris, Toni Kelner, and a bunch of the authors (myself included). Support independent bookstores this holiday season.

8. Or maybe you're buying stuff from me, posters and T-shirts and the like. If you are, please use the PayPal option for sending money to friends and family. There are a few reasons for this. First off, I am still not a store: I am literally pricing things to cover cost of item + cost of postage. Having huge whacks of money vanish into PayPal fees makes this a loss, and means I have to start charging more to be able to afford to ship things. Secondly, you know how I always say "please send me your shipping info via this other channel"? I have found that people who chose "goods and services" are more likely to ignore that request, because they've already provided a shipping address, and if I were a store, I'd be able to access that data. Not a store. Cannot access easily. Please don't.

7. The new Pokemon game is not making me as happy as I wanted it to. I am sure I will enjoy the post-game, where it's apparently LEGENDARYPALOOZA, but I am not enjoying my Pokemon journey, and that makes me sad.

6. Thomas, who has always been an asshole, has taken his assholing to new heights in his glee that I am home. Lots of purring, lots of cuddling, lots of knocking things off shelves to demonstrate that he is still the boss of all he surveys. Thomas is going to be mittens if he doesn't cut this shit out.

5. I will be doing the Thirteen Days of Hogswatch again this year, beginning on December 12th and continuing until December 24th. The introductory post will go up on December 11th. The prizes, drawing times, response times, and requirements for each day are not negotiable; if I say "I must hear from you by X time for you to win," and you think you might not be able to check your email on, say, Christmas, I am very sorry, but I do mean it. I can't have people claiming prizes weeks after the drawing. I'm just not set up for that. But hey, I am giving away so much stuff.

4. I missed the October tip jar, which means we're running out of prioritized free fiction. I don't want to open a tip jar in December (holidays), but I may go ahead and do it in January. (Or we may have to pay for all the bodywork on Mom's car, in which case, I will not only open the tip jar, I will dance on freeways if that's what it takes.)

3. Oh, yeah: some asshole hit Mom's car on Thanksgiving night. The damage isn't massive, but she was parked at the time, and we didn't see it happen. Now we need to get the bodywork done to fix the dent on the side of her car, before rust sets in and everything gets buckets more expensive. Whee. (Yes, she has insurance, but the deductible is huge, especially if we can't produce another driver.)

2. I'm going to see The Ghost Brothers of Darkland County on Friday! I'm so excited!

1. Jean Grey is not dead right now and it's making me cranky.

That's my list. What's new with you?

At last it is October, the month I spend the rest of the year yearning for. When it's October, everything is wonderful, even when it's not. When it's not October, I'm wishing that it were October again. There's a reason that Marnie Piper and the Cromwell witches are some of my favorite Disney (semi) icons.

After a weird two-day heatwave, we've settled into sweet fall, with foggy skies and color-changing leaves and everything. The Maine Coons are growing their winter coats, and thumping around the house like the tiny yeti that they secretly are. (Okay, local definition of "tiny." Thomas has hit the size where even I can't pretend that he's anything but massive. It's just that he still has kitten-face, and I fear what this says about his next growth spurt. He's going to eat me.)

The season's first treat has already been mentioned: Feed is still $1.99, and will be for the next two weeks. Yay! We're currently hovering in the Kindle 600s, which isn't bad for a book that's been out for two years. More treats will be forthcoming, once I know what they are. And of course, at the end of the month, When Will You Rise comes out from Subterranean, and that's sort of the ultimate treat. I cannot wait to see this book with my own eyes!

I'm hosting the SFWA Pacific Northwest Readings for this month, and I'm going to Disneyland with my fairy tale girls immediately afterward, so it's going to be a busy October, and that's just fine. I have a lot of work to do and a lot of experience at doing it, so I'm going to rock it.

Welcome to the month of my heart!

My friend Michael is a roller derby referee. Women's flat track derby, to be specific (so if you're thinking Whip It right now, you have the wrong form of the right sport). This past weekend was the Bay of Reckoning West Region play-offs, right here in the Bay Area, and he was up from Southern California to cheer his girls (the Angel City Derby Girls) on. After a great deal of polite wheedling on his part, I agreed to come out for part of Saturday, if I could make word count.

I made word count.

The Bay of Reckoning was being held in Richmond, which is a reasonable drive from my house. I put on a green Wicked Girls shirt and a metric ass-ton of spray glitter (YAY SPRAY GLITTER), grabbed my cane, and hitched a ride over with Mom, who elected not to stay for the fun. Then I went hobbling over (ankle still) to the door, to see if they had the wristband that Michael had promised me.

They did not. But they did have a notation that I was supposed to receive one, and as Michael's team was on the track at the time, they got me all signed in, wristbanded, and ready to go. One of the girls at the door actually recognized my name, and got very excited, because she loved the Toby books (this will matter later). With distant cheers and the sound of skates rattling over tile to lure me on, I dove into the cavernous depths of the warehouse-like building.

Michael called as I was reaching the bleachers. The bout had reached halftime, and he was heading for the door to meet me. "I'm under the bleachers."

"Stay there."

He found me, after a bit of comedic misinterpretation, and we made our way to where Rachel from Australia was saving our seats. Yay, Rachel! Rachel had Tim-Tams, and wasn't too dismayed when I informed her that I was the Princess of the Kingdom of Poison and Flame. Rachel is awesome.

It's difficult to describe what makes roller derby so awesome, beyond the fact that it's not only a great community, but it's a real, vibrant, athletic, female-dominated sport. You can't watch derby girls slamming around the track and think that it's faked; they're too obviously working their asses off. Angel City lost their bout, but not until after they'd managed some amazing skating. They were followed by Rat City vs. Sacred City (Seattle vs. Sacramento), which might have been a friendly bout, had one of the Rat City jammers not been knocked down, hard, in the very first jam. She hit her head on the floor, and sat out most of the half. And Rat City was pissed. They handed Sacred City their asses on a plate. It was awesome.

(If you skate for Sacred City, please don't kill me. It was a great match. But bouncing Ohno's head off the floor sort of pissed Rat City off, and anger is fun to watch.)

The headline bout of the night was B.A.D. Girls vs. the Denver Mile-High Club. At the end of the first half, B.A.D. was leading, to the point that people were predicting a B.A.D. Girls/Oly Rollers final. By the end of the second half, a few power jams (mostly by Francie Pants, who used to be an Olympic-level ice hockey player) had put Denver in the winner's circle. There was screaming, there was flailing, there was some incredible skating, and I loved every minute.

Roller derby is a world unto itself. There was a merchandise hall set up, with strange, lovely stalls (I bought a T-shirt) and a few food vendors (I bought a dozen cupcakes for our section of the stands. Favorite moment:

"Do you want a cupcake?"
"I'm gluten-free."
"So are the chocolate ones."

Bliss.)

People in giant felt vagina costumes danced up and down the aisles, as did someone in a giant felt shocker costume (if you don't know what the shocker is, don't Google it at work). There was a pseudo-flash mob of referee dance moves. Skaters were everywhere, and the rules said that if you got a derby girl in your lap, you had to throw her back.

It was awesome.

As Michael and I were heading out, I spotted the girl from the front desk who'd recognized my name, and managed to catch up to her to ask which books she liked best. She confirmed Toby. When Michael took me home, I grabbed and signed a couple of Toby books for her, since he was going back Sunday and I wasn't.* And then I fell into bed, and dreamed of derby.

Women's flat track roller derby is fabulous. If there's a league near you, you should try to catch a match or two. There are definitely worse ways to spend a Saturday night than watching an athlete in her prime make an apex jump during a power jam, after running on roller skates.

Life is good.

(*Yes, she got her books, because Michael is awesome.)

10. If you read yesterday's post about ebook distribution around the world, you may want to go back and read it again; I made some pretty hefty edits after having a contract discussion with The Agent, and I think it's more accurate now.

9. While I will not say that Joss Whedon is my master now—I remain too critical for that, and still haven't forgiven him for several things—he has made my two favorite theatrical releases of this year, Cabin in the Woods and The Avengers.

8. Although if we don't get another female hero in the sequel, I am going to be one cranky kitty. I knew that would be an issue for me going in; I was not wrong.

7. We're down to three girls on this season of America's Next Top Model, and I don't hate any of them. What? How can this be? I think the world has been intrinsically damaged by the inanity of this season's "US v. UK" concept.

6. You know what's awesome? Disneyland, that's what's awesome. You know what's better? I'm going there in two weeks, with Vixy. Are we now planning to hit every Disney park in the world? Yes. Yes, we are. Next up, Disneyland Paris.

5. Eleven days to Blackout! Who's excited? I'm excited!

4. If you somehow get an early copy, please don't tell me. There's nothing I can do about it, and it'll just raise my blood pressure. But feel free to post a review. Reviews are awesome.

3. You know what makes everything better? Poison dart frickens make everything better. Look at their tiny technicolor deadliness!

2. Jean Grey is still dead.

1. I'm seeing The Devil's Carnival tonight! Yay!

Hope you're all having a great Friday, and are looking forward to an even greater weekend.

10. Well, that's that: I am officially out of "skip days" until after March. My friend Debbie rather unexpectedly pinged me Tuesday to say that she would be in San Francisco starting Wednesday and would I have dinner with her? So we had dinner (and I dragged her along on the usual round of Wednesday errands, because there's "taking a skip day" and then there's "committing professional suicide"), and now I have to make word count every day from now to March 15th. Yes, that includes the days when I'm at conventions. I have no regrets.

9. ...okay, I have one regret: I am so far behind on everything I watch that it's not even funny. The only shows I've managed to keep up with are Fringe and Glee, and that's because I prioritize them in bitey, bitey fashion. Because I have to preserve my questionable sanity somehow.

8. I'm pondering a post on the financial realities of the Hugo Awards and the electronic voting packet, but for the moment, if you are eligible to nominate for the 2012 Hugos, and you haven't, why not nominate now? WorldCon isn't getting any further away.

7. Tax time is approaching. This means I need to clean my entire house, so that I can get my receipts into something vaguely approximating order. Oh, goodie. It also means it's time to make my annual pledge to set up a better filing system than "the bottom of my purse is full of receipts and Luna Bar wrappers, look in there." Although my faintly peanut butter-scented receipts are always nice.

6. Ryan is coming to visit! Which is wonderful, and will lead to much hugging and adoration (and also to the dry cleaning of the guest room duvet). Also much doll photography, since Ryan has promised to take some pictures of my unnervingly glossy-eyed collection for the edification of all those who think it can't possibly be that bad trying to sleep in my room.

5. I fly to Seattle tomorrow for Conflikt, where I am doing absolutely nothing official. It's going to be great. I get to spend the weekend hugging my friends, working on the books I have coming due, and going to Barnes and Noble to sign books. Plus the hotel is walking distance from the airport, so no one has to get up at four a.m. to drive me. That'll be nice for everybody. Well, except me. I still have to get up at four a.m.

4. I want to go back to Disney World. I find myself grumbling slightly at my taxes because I know that self-employment income (i.e., "writing") means that I'll be paying more than the cost of a really nice Disney World vacation. I actually like paying taxes, except for the "finding my receipts" part, but sometimes the sheer amount of tax that I have to pay makes me weep for Babylon.

3. Mailing is ongoing! At this point, there are only a few shirts I can't find, and I'm hoping they're buried under the more popular styles/colors. I got a list of inquiries on status from Deborah this morning, and I'll be answering her tonight, but really, patience is king. I'm doing this alone. Any future batches of shirts will be super-limited, because even aside from the part where some people are annoyed (and I'm sorry about that), I just can't process 300+ shirts in 30+ size/color/style combinations in anything resembling a timely manner. Like, it is physically impossible to do that and go to my day job and not miss my deadlines. And sadly, "pays the mortgage" and "makes my publishers happy" beat everything else.

2. I have been playing a little tappy game called "Pocket Frogs" during my admittedly limited free time. I don't think the game's designers intended it to be played quite like this, since I have a very "gotta catch 'em all" approach, but it makes me happy. As does slowly watching the breed counters go to 100% as I breed all 368 possible individuals.

1. Zombies are love.

Saturday night was my belated natal day celebration, wherein several* of us gathered at The Mint in San Francisco to get our karaoke on. Now, if you're going to get your karaoke on, The Mint is the place to do it. They have an incredibly large, diverse catalog of songs, and their resident KJ**, Frank, is a snarky miracle. Plus they have pear cider on tap. It's a perfect storm of karaoke awesome.

Because it was my birthday, Vixy actually flew out from Seattle on Friday night, and we were able to spend a good chunk of Saturday ambling around San Francisco. I showed her Toby's new neighborhood, and we ate lunch at the Phoenix. All was well. Our reservation was for six; we reached The Mint about ten minutes early, and secured our tables. Several people were already there, karaoke-ing away. Some of them were even sober.

The rest of our party trickled in by dibs and dabs; you never knew who was going to show up next. Naamen, for example, spent an hour at the wrong bar before he checked his email and realized he was in the wrong place. Oops.

Successful karaoke requires an odd mix of "taking it totally seriously" and "not taking it seriously at all." You either need to choose songs that sound good in your range, or songs that are utterly ridiculous, like our lengthy run of Disney standards (Kate's "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" was awesome). You need to have a sense of humor, but not clown it up so much that it hurts to watch you. Because we are a group of lunatics, we're very, very good at successful karaoke. Not all of us can sing, but we can all laugh at ourselves while still being PROFOUNDLY SERIOUS about the source of our laughter.

We sang rock. We sang country. We sang "Bohemian Rhapsody" en masse. Morgan claimed not to know Melissa Etheridge, so Kate did "Come to My Window"; Morgan allowed that she knew Melissa Etheridge after all. Morgan sang "The Final Countdown," and we were all kazoos. Vixy sang "Barracuda," and I watched all the drunk sorority girls hate her forever (it was adorable). Victor and Lara did "Istanbul," which was hysterical and amazing. Sunil sang "Dragula," JUST FOR ME. In short, we had a seven-hour karaoke party of karaoke party awesomeocity.

At one point, having already exhausted the songs that other people wanted me to sing ("When You're Good to Mama" for Kate, "Raise Your Glass" for Vixy), I decided to do "Independence Day," by Martina MacBride. Only I don't really know her version. I know Talis's version, which has less spousal abuse, and a lot more alien invasions. So I figured what the heck, if the scansion worked, I'd run with it.

The scansion worked. I ran with it. Turns out I know the whole thing! The drunk people looked confused, since they could tell I wasn't singing what was on the screen. The sober people cracked up. One nice man even came up to me after to tell me that I was his favorite performance of the night.

Kate and Morgan saw us out with a duet of "Don't Stop Believing" that got literally the entire bar singing, and then we all limped, exhausted, home.

And that was my karaoke party. We're going to do it again soon. Frank promised me he'd get the new Taylor Swift***, and I need to get my karaoke on.

(*The Mint is not a massive establishment, so "several" was defined by how much space we could successfully reserve. Another party had already reserved most of the seating area for their loud drunk bridal shower. In the balance of things, I wish we'd reserved first, but we live with what we get.)

(**Karaoke DJ. Basically, he's the guy who decides whether you get the song you asked for, or the obscure Swedish cover that's been pitch-shifted up an octave and shifted to a faster tempo. Be nice to your KJ. Tip your KJ.)

(***"I think her ever-present frown is a little troubling. She thinks I'm psycho 'cause I like to rhyme her name with things.")

Happy Halloween, everybody, and Happy New Year's Eve to those of you who share my particular calendar. May the Great Pumpkin smile upon you tonight, bringing you candles which burn brightly, candy that never goes stale, corn mazes as complicated as the twisting choices of the heart, and costumes that are inventive, interesting, and not solely founded on the idea that "slutty" and "spooky" are one and the same.

(Lo, if you choose to be Sexy Red Riding Hood or Smoking Hot Super Grover on this night, I salute you, because you're wearing a costume, and I don't question how other people want to celebrate this night of nights. But if you're doing it because you don't think you have a choice, or because you can't think of anything else, call upon the Great Pumpkin. He's the Squash. He'll hook you up.)

I spent last night with my mother and sister at the Pirates of Emerson Haunted House Park, where we demonstrated that sometimes money can buy happiness, since it was money that got us through the gates, and money that allowed us to spring for Speed Passes, thus bypassing the huge "night before Halloween, let's party at the haunted houses" lines. I also demonstrated my eerie spatial memory by tearing through the corn maze in less than ten minutes, trailed by a cluster of lost-looking thrill-seekers who had been wandering the maze for over an hour before I came through Walking With Purpose. Had I been one of the Children of the Corn trolling for victims, He Who Walks Behind the Rows would have eaten very, very well.

Today, my back is out, and so I'm wearing my Starfleet bathrobe (in Sciences blue) over slouchy jeans and an athletic shirt, representing the few, the proud, the bored Starfleet Academy graduate students. Give me replicator coffee or give me death.

Enjoy this holiday. The walls of the world are thin today, and whether your personal year turns tomorrow or two months from tomorrow, thank you for spending this year here, with me.

Trick or treat.

The first weekend in October was my fifth Toby-related book event at San Francisco's Borderlands Books, home of naked cats, tolerant employees, and, every six months or so, the Traveling Circus and Snake-Handling Show. We've appeared in other locations, but Borderlands is the one we keep going back to; Borderlands is the home base for this particular flavor of insanity. Why? Because we like them.

Normally, I try to be a little prompter with my write-ups of the parties and their aftermath, but let's face it here: I have been a little busy. Anyway, we started super-early on Saturday, since we all had to rehearse if we wanted to not suck. Rehearsal took place in Kate's basement, and featured the day's entire planned slate of musicians. Many things happened. Many of them were lovely. And then we all piled into a variety of cars and drove to San Francisco, hence to Make Things Go. The bookstore is used to us by this point, and no one batted an eye as we invaded the office, turned it into a green room, and began trashing the place like the good little circus that we are.

Jeff set up the sound system, which is both little and awesome, while Jude got the house in order, Mia set up with the pendants in her corner, and Shawn took over maintenance of the raffle table. I got cupcakes and candy set up (the important things), and we got that party started.

As always, the festivities were divided between music, Q&A, baked goods, and drawing prizes in our raffle. The questions were new and different, the raffle prizes were an awesome mix of standard and surprising (including some special additions by the bookstore, which made things even more spectacular), the cupcakes (from Cups and Cakes Bakery) were delicious, and the music was rocking. The set lists:

SET ONE:

1. "Let's Get the Monkeys to Do It." Paul Kwinn, lead vocals, guitar; Jeff Bohnhoff, guitar; Maya Bohnhoff, Michelle "Vixy" Dockrey, backing vocals; Betsy Tinney, cello; Beckett Gladney, harmonica.
2. "Caledonia." Paul, lead vocals, guitar; Maya, backing vocals.
3. "When I Go." Paul, lead vocals, guitar; Beckett, harmonica.
4. "The Dark Man." Paul, lead vocals, guitar; Jeff, guitar; Maya, backing vocals; Seanan McGuire, backing vocals; Betsy, cello.
5. "Where the Magic is Real." Paul, lead vocals, guitar; Maya, Vixy, backing vocals; Jeff, guitar.
6. "My Story is Not Done." Seanan, lead vocals; Paul, guitar; Betsy, cello; Beckett, harmonica; everyone in the store, backing vocals.

SET TWO:

1. "I Am the Walmart." Maya, lead vocals; Vixy, backing vocals; Jeff, guitar; Betsy, cello.
2. "Dairy Queen." Maya, lead vocals; Vixy, backing vocals; Jeff, guitar.
3. "Dance in the Darkness." Maya, lead vocals; Vixy, backing vocals; Jeff, guitar.
4. "Wil's Song." Maya, lead vocals; Vixy, backing vocals; Jeff, guitar.
5. "Turn the Page." Maya, lead vocals; Vixy, backing vocals; Jeff, guitar; Paul, guitar; Beckett, harmonica.
6. "Get Off Of My Lawn." Maya, lead vocals; Vixy, backing vocals; Jeff, guitar; Betsy, cello.

SET THREE:

1. "Still Catch the Tide." Seanan, lead vocals; Vixy, backing vocals; Tony Fabris, guitar; Betsy, cello.
2. "Eight-Legged Blues." Vixy, vocals; Tony, guitar; Beckett, harmonica; Paul, percussion.
3. "We Can Be Anything." Vixy, vocals; Tony, guitar; Betsy, cello.
4. "Six String Love." Vixy, vocals; Tony, guitar.
5. "Build That Wall/Setting Sail, Coming Home (medley)." Vixy, vocals; Maya, backing vocals; Tony, guitar; Betsy, cello.
6. "The Ocean." Vixy, vocals; Tony, guitar.
7. "Got To Fly." Vixy, vocals; Tony, guitar.
8. "Wicked Girls." Seanan, Vixy, vocals; Tony, guitar; Betsy, cello.

"The Dark Man" and "Where the Magic is Real" are on the first Puzzlebox album, Assembly Required.
"Caledonia" is on Dougie MacLean's album Craigie Dhu.
"When I Go" is on Dave Carter and Tracy Grammar's album, When I Go.
"Six String Love" is on Vixy and Tony's first album, Thirteen.
"Dance in the Darkness" and "Turn the Page" are on Jeff and Maya's second album, Manhattan Sleeps.
"I Am the Walmart" and "Wil's Song" are on Jeff and Maya's fifth album, Grated Hits.
"Build That Wall/Setting Sail, Coming Home (medley)" are on the Bastion Original Soundtrack.
"The Ocean" is on Dar Williams's album, Mortal City.
"Got to Fly" is on Marian Call's second album, Got to Fly.
"Still Catch the Tide" is on Seanan's second album, Stars Fall Home, and on Talis Kimberley's recent live album, By Request at Duckon.
"My Story is Not Done" and "Wicked Girls" are on Seanan's fourth album, Wicked Girls.

A good time was had by all, and the cupcakes lasted almost fifteen minutes this time, because we finally ordered enough. We're already making plans and getting our ducks in row for the next time that the Circus comes to town. And if you're curious, or want to see some pictures, you can check out Beckett's fantastic (and more timely) writeup of the event.

Thanks to everyone who attended, and to everyone who didn't...see you next time!

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you tomorrow's...

PARTY SCHEDULE!

4:00 PM: Setup, sound check, and final details. You can show up, but we may ignore you if you do. Sorry about that.
5:00 PM: Welcome to our party. We're done ignoring you now.
5:15 PM: Would you like some music?
5:55 PM: Perhaps you would like to win things.
6:00 PM: Now there will be cupcakes and autographing.
6:30 PM: More music?
7:10 PM: More prizes?
7:15 PM: Toby Daye Q&A and book discussion.
7:45 PM: Last music of the night.
8:25 PM: Let's raffle some more stuff off.
8:30 PM: Assuming people are not too busy buying books and eating cupcakes, I will read something. No, really.
9:00 PM: Last raffle drawing of the night and we close the evening.

This iteration of the Traveling Circus and Snake-Handling Show will be in the bookstore proper; the cafe will be open throughout the evening, and they've promised to have plenty of bread and delicious pastry this time. Raffle tickets will be available through the two standard methods: show up, or buy something from the bookstore.

All performing musicians will have CDs for sale, because we're predictable like that. Mia will be there with pendants for sale, and they are gorgeous. There will be cupcakes and candy provided as part of the party, and a whole cafe full of delicious things to purchase and enjoy.

It's gonna be a good night. Hope to see you there.

Too busy to brain. Here, have some bits and pieces.

Wicked Girls T-shirts.
My mother is on her way to Carmichael, California to pick these up right now. So assuming that there hasn't been some horrifying and unforeseen printing error (which seems unlikely, as we had very clear graphics, and a very clear work order), I will be starting to mail these out this week. I'll post again once I'm absolutely certain that everything is good. I will also announce when and where hand-delivery will be available, for those of you who don't want to wait for the mail, but will be in the same place as me in the weeks to come.

CD statuses.
When CD Baby runs out of Pretty Little Dead Girl, that's it, it's gone. I have twelve copies left; five are going into my vault, and the other seven will be going to the book release party and my October conventions. I will definitely be reprinting Wicked Girls, but it may need to wait until early 2012, since there's a whole process involved in doing something like this. I am also considering reprinting Stars Fall Home, with certain changes/enhancements (new cover, to match better with Wicked Girls, maybe a new track). I'll keep you posted.

Conclave, October 9th to 11th.
I'll be posting about this at more length once I make it through the weekend alive, but next week, I am the Literary Guest at Conclave, in Romulus, Michigan. It's going to be a big party, with me teaming up with Wild Mercy (including Amy McNally) to set the stage on fire, as well as bunches and bunches of exciting panels, fabulous events, and general good times. If you're in the Michigan area, this should definitely be on your radar.

Mailing things.
If you're expecting me to mail you something, and I haven't mailed you something, and you're wondering if the post office may have eaten your something, it didn't. Everything has been insane, and I am way, way behind on my mailing of things. I am sincerely hoping that the shirts will fix this, since it's going to mean taking van-loads of crap to the post office, and that usually inspires more stuff to go into the mail.

Why aren't you watching this?
Man, the new season of Fringe is so good that I want to take it home to meet my parents. If you're not caught up, or if you dropped the show in season one before it got good (which many people did, I know), you should totally give it a go. I could not love this show more if it was dipped in chocolate and rolled in candy corn.

...okay, maybe that's going a little far. Om nom nom.

Candy corn.
In my belly.

The Pirates of Emerson!
If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, you should be aware that the Pirates of Emerson haunted house park is re-opening tomorrow night for its annual Halloween bash. There are six haunted houses included in general admission, and there's a corn maze, and ghost pirates and and and. It's like someone made a sweet, refreshing oasis for my soul, and then kindly dropped it within easy driving distance. Best of all, general admission is only $20. Not suitable for easily scared children, adults, or house pets. Hugely recommended for everybody else.

Anything else?
Be...excellent to one another.

And PARTY ON, DUDES!

I am slammed, and so you're getting one of those dense little fudge-like blog posts where everything fits easily in your mouth and also, you probably don't want to eat the whole box. You're welcome. And so...

The Return of the Traveling Circus and Snake-Handling Show.

The Traveling Circus and Snake-Handling Show will be coming together again on October 1st, to blow the roof right off of Borderlands Books! It's going to be a party. This time, the lineup includes Vixy and Tony, Betsy Tinney, Katie Tinney, Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff, Paul Kwinn, and the always-awesome Beckett Gladney. Mia Nutick will be on hand, with pendants. Kate Secor will be on hand, with sticks. Come for the music, cupcakes, readings, raffles, and fun; stay to buy books and make the bookstore like me. Hooray, Circus!

Ashes of Honor.

The sixth Toby book is trekking right along, and is currently on-schedule to have a finished first draft by October 26th. I even have a progressive daily word count goal sheet to prove it. Once the book is done, it goes off to the Machete Squad and The Agent for review and severe physical harm, and I can really buckle down on Midnight Blue-Light Special, a few YA projects, and the next Mira Grant book. This is what we call "Seanan rewards herself for working by creating more work." This is also what we call "Seanan has no social life."

Social life.

Except that I do have a social life, honest! I'm flying to Seattle this weekend for a Counting Crows concert (yes I am flying to another state just for a concert DON'T JUDGE ME I LOVE THEM). The Pirates of Emerson are getting ready to re-open their annual haunted house park, and I'm very excited about that. And I'm already making sure to plan dinners and lunches with the friends I'm going to see during...

My fall convention schedule.

The first full weekend of October (7th-9th), I will be the Literary Guest of Honor at Conclave, in Romulus, Michigan. The weekend after, I will be appearing at the LitCrawl!, this time in the Borderlands Cafe. The weekend after that, I will be flying to Ohio for OVFF, where I will sing in the Pegasus Concert, share a room with Brooke, hug Vixy a lot, and wear a pretty dress.

And after that, I nap.

Too much TV.

All my fall shows are coming back on the air. Right now, as of this week, I'm watching Eureka, Warehouse 13, Alphas, Castle, NCIS, Glee, The New Girl, America's Next Top Model, Fringe, Haven, and Doctor Who. Some of these shows are ending for the season very soon. Others are just getting started. Still others have not yet made an appearance on the schedule. Thank the Great Pumpkin for Tivo.

Toys!

The spring line of Monster High dolls has just been announced. I have acquired the Modern Doll Collector's Convention Evangeline ("Soul Sweeping"), but not the centerpiece doll (which I want very much). I have arranged a proxy for the Halloween convention. I am, in short, insane. But wow, do I have lots of toys staring at you while you try to sleep.

Cats.

Insane.

"Wicked Girls" T-shirts.

At the printer now! Soon, I shall have them, and soon, we shall begin sorting out the shipping process. Since some of you did order them as gifts for the holiday season, I may try doing a "priority boarding" post, where I say "let us know if you need yours soon for any reason," and bump those people to the front of the queue. If I do this, however, I need to trust that only people with real need will ask; more than fifty such requests, and we won't be able to handle them, so no one will get out-of-order shipping. And the spreadsheet is really random, the order in which your request was placed has nothing to do with it.

...and that is all, for right now. More to come later.

I need a nap.

...can't trust that day.

Getting out of bed this morning was complicated by the fact that I was so thoroughly covered by cats that I had to practically do sit-ups to recover the use of one arm. This is the true danger of having large cats. When they want to, they win.

Still, the weekend was good, despite back issues which kept me abed a bit longer than I wanted them to on Sunday (as in, "they kept me abed on Sunday"). The new episode of Doctor Who, "The Girl Who Waited," was stellar. The season premiere of iCarly was excellent. I managed to package two-thirds of the pending poster orders for shipping. I made Chris watch War of the Worlds: Live, which was the big concert of selections from the War of the Worlds musical (complete with giant floating Richard Burton head). And Contagion...

...seriously, this movie was designed to be porn for Seanans. It could not have made me happier if it had come with the first theatrical trailer for the upcoming prequel to The Thing.

OH WAIT. IT DID.

Now, I want to note, firmly, that this is not a movie for people who are looking for plot, detailed characterization, clear enemies, happy endings, or absolutely absolute endings. It's a story about a virus. Viruses don't have secondary motivations. They don't have desires. They just have biological imperatives, and when they start exercising those imperatives, it's the job of people like the CDC, EIS, and WHO to step in and try to make them stop. Characters don't get detailed back stories or motivations, because there isn't time.

And yes, lots and lots and lots of people die. That's what happens when this sort of thing occurs. It's a good movie. It's smart, it's solid, and while the science is extremely rushed (and several layers of medical care are missing), it's rushed in the way that says "we needed a two-hour narrative, not a twenty-hour miniseries," rather than being rushed in the way that says "honey badger didn't give a fuck."

If you're not a germaphobe, I recommend this movie hugely. If you are, I recommend you stay home and watch iCarly. Or War of the Worlds: Live.

Ulla!

Monday dawned bright and (very, very) early, since DongWon had asked that I be at Orbit at nine a.m. to do some recording. Now, Orbit is located near Grand Central Station, which is very much Properly In Manhattan. I was staying in Jersey City, which is very much not Properly In Manhattan. It is, in fact, in a different state. As a California girl, this causes me a certain amount of existential confusion every time I need to go from one to the other very quickly, since I know, deep down in my soul, that it takes at least eight hours to go from one state to another. Such is the eternal divide between the East and West Coasts.

Since I needed to get to Orbit by nine, I got up at seven. This means that, on some level, I got up at four. There is a reason I occasionally demand love and caffeine from my editors. I am comfortable enough with Manhattan at this point that I was able to get myself to the office with a minimum of trouble (barring a brief "walking the wrong way up 6th Avenue" incident, and really, that could have happened to anyone), which is good, since I was carrying my laptop. Yes, the big orange one. Yes, the one that weighs as much as one of the cats. Why?

Because I was having dinner with The Agent and a few more of her clients that evening, which meant there was no way I was getting back to Jersey City. And if I was going to be at Orbit all day, I was damn well going to get some serious work done.

I beat DongWon to the office by almost twenty minutes, and was detained by security until he arrived. I am never letting him forget this. Never ever ever never. But! He did eventually show up, and we were able to get into the office, finally, where there were greetings and huggings, and presentations of really fancy chocolate (from me to the office, not from the office to me). I had time to inhale one doughnut and drink a bottle of Diet Dr Pepper, and then it was off to the recording studio, where a very nice engineer explained how a recording booth worked. Thanks, nice engineer! Nobody had bothered to tell him that I have three studio albums out. Sorry, nice engineer.

My first task: recording the audio book edition of "Apocalypse Scenario." Super-fun! I managed not to get too into it, but wow was I glad to have done voice work before. It was nice and smooth and lovely. I followed it with two different podcast recordings, all done in the same wee room. Everything was professional and well-orchestrated, and before I knew it, it was all over, and I was being settled at the only open desk in the office.

Cue working. Type type type. Type type type. I was supposed to have lunch with some friends who were also in New York for BEA; when they didn't answer their phones, I had lunch with DongWon and Devi (another Orbit editor) instead. We went to a seafood restaurant, where I ate mussels and potatoes and hot fudge sundae, om nom. DongWon had to run before we finished eating, leaving Davi and I to talk about him behind his back. Ha ha, DongWon. Ha, ha.

Back to the office; more working; more whining at my computer. I actually had to borrow copies of Feed and Deadline to use as reference material, since otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to verify the continuity of what I was writing. This is why it's good to write at your publisher's. They'll always have copies of the books you need on hand.

Eventually, the day ended. Poof. And I, being the sensible girl that I am, loaded up my tote bag with my laptop and all the books I had managed to collect over the course of the day and went hieing off to downtown to meet up with The Agent for dinner. She had directed me to a library, in an alley, in an unfamiliar part of the city. I assume this is because she wants to see whether I will survive being eaten by a Grue. I found the library, and felt very smug about it, right until I went inside, went down to the floor where the YA author event I was meeting her at was being held, and discovered that I had, in fact, descended to a very unpleasant and specialized CIRCLE OF HELL.

Seriously. What seemed like several hundred people (and may have been just fifty, I don't know, it was a CIRCLE OF HELL) were crammed into an itty-bitty space, creating an immense amount of heat and noise. And somewhere in all that chaos was my agent. I sought. I strove. I gave up.

Spotting a woman with a Diet Dr Pepper, I begged to know where it had come from, and damn near wept when informed that she had brought it with her. Then I discovered, much to my surprise, that she was actually a book blogger I know through her reviews. And then she took me to the secret cluster of book bloggers hiding from the heat near the elevators. Yay! Much joy and chatter and hugging followed, lasting until The Agent appeared, her new client Claire in tow, to whisk me away to a less hellish locale.

Did I attack the first gas station we passed like it was the Promised Land, coming away with a sack of Diet Dr Pepper? Yes. Yes, I did.

We had dinner at a lovely place near Waverly Place (still no wizards), where we ate bread and cheese and I had fish and eventually went downstairs and was horribly sick due to a fish bone sticking in my throat. Since I had not retained dinner, The Agent bought me a cupcake. Happy times. Claire was awesome, but I was tired, and BEA was the next morning, so I returned to New Jersey and slept. FOREVER.

Next: BEA and DAW. It's acronym day!

Once again, we rewind to late May, when I was in New York City enjoying friends, humidity, publishers, and pigeons. Or, more specifically, we're rewinding to Sunday the 22nd, when I was scheduled to a) go into Manhattan to have brunch with The Agent, b) meet up with Will, and c) have dinner with several of my friends, including Batya, Alex, and the lovely Priscille. Everybody wins!

Foolishly, I thought that in New York, "brunch" meant, well, "brunch," and so expected to return to Jersey City during the day. Yes, yes, laugh at my pain. Anyway...

I rose, showered, dressed, and made my way to Manhattan, following the now-familiar path to the PATH train. I enjoy riding the PATH. It's easy and predictable and not really like riding the subway at all. Finding The Agent on the other end was easy, and we had a lovely, leisurely brunch at Cafeteria. I had a waffle with berries and cream. She had green eggs and ham (pesto is a magical thing). We split lemon pancakes with more berries and cream for dessert. Yes, I have now blogged what I had for breakfast. You have my permission to weep for mankind.

After brunch came the ceremonial Wandering Around Manhattan, wherein I actually did the traditional tourist thing and went shopping in New York. Sure, it was at Old Navy, where I bought half a dozen more tank tops in a variety of rainbow hues, but that counts, right? The Agent turns out to be hysterically funny in Old Navy, by the way, and even pickier about her tank top fit than I am. All hail compatible crazy.

We finished shopping and settled at the local Red Mango frozen yogurt, where The Agent ate yogurt and I didn't, because ew. Will came and got me, because he is awesome, and we bid The Agent what would be the first of many fond farewells. Will and I walked a great deal. I got an artisan Popsicle! Life is good. I also got to see Will's apartment, which was very clean and grownup, as befits a new law school graduate. Totally awesome.

After frozen treats and apartment visits, we made our way to the bus stop, hence to ride to the kosher Indian restaurant where we would be having dinner. Priscille wound up on the same bus, which was AWESOME, and much laughter and happiness accompanied us all the way to food, where we were met by Jon and Merav, Batya and Alex, a surprise Constance, and an extra bonus Jessica. Constance couldn't stay, but there was hugging, and then the rest of us went in to do some serious eating. I had goat. Who's surprised?

Dinner was followed by ambling aimlessly around the city, stopping by Dylan's Candy Bar, and finally drinking sugary things at Starbucks. Jon and Merav had actually driven into Manhattan, and so I was able to get a ride back to Jersey City, where I tumbled into bed, full of goat, happy, and ready to face the week ahead.

Which is good, because the week ahead was about to KICK MY ASS.

Okay, gang; I'm off to a wedding, and I won't be back for about eight hours. I will not be answering comments during that time. Please don't burn down the internet while I'm gone, I still need to use it for stuff.

Have a great Sunday!

1. The Roseville event was awesome, and the store now has autographed copies of all five of my currently published books. A Local Habitation is naturally in the shortest supply, so if you'd been planning to swing by the store and pick up a set, you should probably do so soon, before everything goes away. Thanks to Alex, for having me, and to Sunil, for bringing me wonderful goodies from England and giving me hugs.

2. In case you missed the announcement, An Artificial Night is in the BSC Review Book Tournament Finals, and Toby could use your vote. Also, once she has conclusively CRUSHED HER OPPONENT, I can stop posting about this, thus freeing up your valuable display space for other topics, like the ever-popular "complaining about my cats."

3. I really enjoyed the newest Disney Channel Original Movie, Lemonade Mouth. I did not enjoy them presenting the first hour of the movie sans commercials without warning me first, as it meant I had not brought a soda, or a blanket, or the paperwork I needed to finish during the movie, before sitting down on the couch. I am told the book is better than the movie. I must now read the book.

4. Served at yesterday's brunch: potato cake. It's cake, made of potatoes, bacon fat, and bacon. HOW CAN THIS BE? The spirit of sweetmusic_27 hovered over my shoulder and watched me eat it, and I now need the recipe, because I must cook it for her. It is a moral imperative.

5. I visited the Sacramento Shirt Shop, and plans for Wicked Girls shirts are now proceeding apace. I should be posting about it soon. Girl-cut shirts are available up to 2x, and we'll be able to do standard-cut shirts up to 5x, as needed, for no additional cost. Baby shirts are a different setup, and so would be a different order. Details will be forthcoming; I don't have them just yet.

6. I am solidly on target to hit 100,000 words on Blackout by Saturday. This is both incredibly exciting and incredibly stressful, since it means I'm coming closer and closer to the point where I have to stop setting things up in favor of knocking everything down. Considering what I have left to do in this volume, I'm starting to worry that the first draft may need more trimming than I thought. Since I am a perennial trimmer (better a late trim than a panicked plumping), this is okay, it's just surprising.

7. Zombies are love.

8. The Cartoon Network schedule for the rest of 2011 has been released, and Tower Prep is not represented. Here's hoping this is either a glitch, or they're about to announce moving Tower Prep to SyFy, where it could find an enormous audience and live forever.

9. I will probably celebrate hitting 100,000 words on Blackout by cleaning as much of my room as is physically possible and then writing the rest of "Rat-Catcher" in one feverish sprint. Don't judge me, this is how writers party hard.

10. Doctor Who comes back on Saturday. Saturday can't come fast enough.

Last Thursday, I left work and went straight* to the San Francisco Airport, where I hopped on a big red and silver plane and flew to Seattle. Thanks to Virgin America's generous frequent flier plan, I was actually flying First Class, which meant a much bigger seat, no under-seat storage, and all the free booze I wanted to drink. I did not want any free booze. That was okay, though, since the men in front of me were pretty well-dedicated to drinking enough to justify their upgrades. I think they succeeded. I weep for their livers.

Vixy, Torrey, and Tony were waiting for me on the ground in Seattle. We collected my bags and went on a brief, fruitless search for a Wendy's before returning to the house, where Sooj, K, Fishy, and Lauren were waiting. Oh, the hugging we had! Also the presents. Everyone ooh-ed and ahh-ed appropriately over their shiny new copies of Wicked Girls. My presents had a distinctly dinosaur-y theme this year, which is something I will always approve of. Always.

Eventually, people went to bed. I slept like the dead. And slept, and slept, and slept, and was still the first person up in the morning. This is because there is Something Wrong With Me.

Friday, we went to Old Navy (the cats unpacked my suitcase, and I didn't notice, STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT), Borders, and the grocery store, since I was going to be spending Saturday cooking. And then we played Rock Band 3 until we all wanted to die. It was awesome. This being New Year's Eve, there were many parties being thrown, and many enthusiastic plans being made. Vixy had a headache, and I don't like crowds of strangers, so our enthusiastic plans consisted of staying home, watching 2012, and making rosemary shortbread. I rank this among my top ten New Year's Eves. Shortbread! And global disaster! And Vixy!

Okay, so admittedly, the science of 2012 isn't so much "bad" as "Warren Ellis on acid trying to explain Latin grammar, somehow getting used to fuel a sanity-destroying laser aimed straight at your cerebral cortex" levels of "insane," but hey, there's a GIRAFFE HELICOPTER. No movie with a GIRAFFE HELICOPTER can be all bad, right? Right?

Anyway, life is good, and if you spend the year as you spent the start of it, 2011 is going to make me pretty darn happy. Happy new year!

(*Well, "straight" except for the stops at the post office, Borderlands Books, and Fritz's for mussels and fries. Sadly, "I left work and went crooked" doesn't have quite the right meaning. And this is truly a pity.)

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 )

Back in mid-September, Borderlands Books in San Francisco played host to the third Traveling Circus and Snake-Handling Show, assembled to celebrate the release of the third (yes, already) October Daye book, An Artificial Night. Yay! I love Borderlands, I love the Circus, and I love book release parties, so this was like a whole casserole baked entirely out of pixie dust and joy. PIXIE DUST AND JOY.

We began with me, Amy, Brooke, Ryan, and Mia at my house, getting ready for the day ahead of us. This largely consisted of "putting on clothes" and "packing the event kit," a large orange plastic box that carries all the non-perishables needed for a big book party (raffle tickets, raffle prizes, bookmarks, paper plates, pens for signing stuff, occasionally one or more of the cats if we don't seal it fast enough). Ryan and Mia drove off with Amy. Mom picked the rest of us up, along with my youngest sister* and her girlfriend, and we drove to San Francisco, only stopping off to buy classy, classy cake from the warehouse store.

We got to the bookstore hours early, and stowed our stuff in the bookstore before scattering to find food. Amy, Brooke, and I would up going to a tacqueria down the street, which fed us delicious Mexican food, and kept Brooke from killing and eating us all. I ate a chicken burrito, nom, and we walked back to the bookstore to find a Kate sitting outside, reading a book, and the rest of the descending Circus waiting inside. Hooray! CIRCUS TIME! The entire Circus was wearing orange and black and green. ORANGE GIRLS OF THE WORLD, UNITE. Seriously, it was MAD AWESOME.

The night was divided into five distinct activities: music; raffle drawings; cake; reading; Q&A. We had breaks between activities, so people could mill, visit, use the bathroom, and shop (being as we were in a very large, enticing bookstore and all).

MUSIC: Musicians from everywhere! Alphabetically by instrument, we had Brooke Lunderville on banjo, Betsy Tinney on cello, Amy McNally on fiddle, SJ Tucker on guitar and vocals, Michelle "Vixy" Dockrey on vocals, and me on occasional "flustered author is flustered" vocals. (We did close with "Wicked Girls," so that's all right.)

RAFFLE: You got one ticket for showing up, one ticket for a purchase from the cafe, and one ticket for a purchase at the bookstore, for a maximum of three tickets per person. The drawing included everything from books to pendants to toys, and was fun, as always, with the usual amount of fuss and cheering for the winners. Buckets of fun.

CAKE: We had two cakes, and no cake cutting device. So Alan, glorious Alan, cut the cake with a gladius. I love having events at Borderlands. I love it SO DAMN HARD.

READING: Because I didn't want to read from the third Toby book, I read "Lost" from Ravens in the Library. When I started the story, the store had three copies left in stock. When I finished it, they had...zero. Literally, I started to say "I think this may be the last one," and Jude signaled that no, it had been sold while I was reading. Super-fun! Also, I made Vixy cry. Flawless victory.

Q&A: The Q&A was, as always, insane. You should come to one sometime.

During the milling sections, people talked, bought books, bought pendants, and bought copies of Sooj's new album, Mischief. (We wound up selling out of that, too.) Many books were sold, many hugs were given, and at the end of the night, we bid the bookstore a fond farewell and went down the street to Fritz, where we ate fries and mussels and crepes, and were joyful.

Everybody loves a night at the circus. Don't you?

(*The one who looks like a zaftig gothic Betty Page.)c

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

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

I have a lot of work coming up.

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

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

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

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

...it could happen.

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

So before we get too far from the convention, a few high (and low) points of San Diego 2010. Because otherwise, y'all will beat me with bricks in a dark alley somewhere, and I just don't have time for that.

This year, I was able to import Tara and Amy (webmistress and fiddler, respectively), and the three of us shared a room with Sunil (media madman) at the Gaslamp Marriott. Not only were we less than a five minute walk from the convention center, allowing us to easily drop things off in our room, but the hotel gave us free candy. Right there at the front desk, free candy. Amy and I decided that we were having the convention experience we would have designed for ourselves at age seven. Except for the drinking, this was probably true for the entire weekend.

Rebecca and Ryan were kind enough to pick me up from the airport; after they dropped me off, Amy and I went to get our badges while the car went back for Tara and Sunil (landing two hours later than I did). Hilarity and admission followed. Tara went off to hang with her friends, while Sunil, Amy, and I went to see an improv performance by Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em. They were decent, and the show was fun (especially since Amy got me a Long Island Iced Tea). The only real downside was Sunil accidentally ditching us while we were in the bathroom, but we went and met Rebecca and Ryan for Wendy's, so there was really no bad there.

Thursday was my first panel, The Power of Myth, which was a lot of fun, as was the signing which followed. I gave Amber Benson a copy of An Artificial Night, which she thanked me for, as now she would not be required to steal it. Tara, Amy, and I had lunch with Tanya Huff at the Cafe Diem, because the Cafe Diem is awesome. I also shopped. A lot. I enjoy shopping. I got a White Phoenix Jean Gray doll for my cover designer at Orbit, because I believe in bribery, yo. It was fun!

Thursday evening, Tanya, Tara, and I attended the Brilliance Audio author dinner, which I spent drinking Mai Tais, eating interesting things, and chatting with Phil and Kaja Foglio. My life, so hard.

Friday was my booth signing at Orbit, during which I signed a hundred copies of Feed. In the process, I drew ninety-nine tiny chainsaws, and one tiny Godzilla destroying a city. Again, my life, so hard. I had to miss the X-Men panel to do the signing (wah!), but I was able to attend the panel on James Gunn's Super (he needs to call me), which looks totally awesome. I had a second signing at the SFX booth later in the afternoon, and we gave away another fifty copies of Feed, one to the creator of Being Human. Totally awesome.

Friday evening, Tanya, Amy, and I attended the Penguin FangFest, which I spent drinking pineapple mojitos, eating cupcakes, and chatting with awesome authors. I finally met Charlaine Harris in the flesh, and it was hysterical. Exchange as follows:

Me: "Hi, it's great to finally meet you. I'm Seanan."
Charlaine: *politely blank look*
Me: *displays name tag*
Charlaine: "SHAWN-ANNE!"

*hugging*

I love having a weird name. After that, we went to the Boom! party, where I met Paul Cornell and his lovely wife, Caroline. Paul is one of my favorite humans, as he shares my love of the Black Death and giant flesh-eating lizards. I'm just saying.

Saturday was my second panel, The Rise of Zombie Fiction, which was a) mad fun, and b) reinforced my desire to write up a handbook for people doing panels at this sort of thing. Priscille from Books for Boobs came to the signing in a perfect Delirium costume, and I tried to eat her plush bear. Amy and I managed to catch the Warehouse 13 panel (Allison Scagliotti for Georgia Mason, anybody?), and then went off to dinner with John Grace at a very nice steak house. They served me port. MY LIFE, SO HARD.

Sunday, it was goodbyes and final shopping runs, and Tara and I had breakfast with Paul and Caroline before Amanda and Michael came to carry me away.

It was a good con. This writeup does not include hiding behind Anton, getting awesome swag and buttons from Rae, lots of hugging, accidental soda-based encounters, the dissolution of the Sacred Order of the Deli, ice cream, Gini Koch, late-night sammiches with Tanya, awesome dealer's room finds, free books, cheap books, expensive books, cookies, the art show, or repeat encounters with Felicia Day. But it does include a lot of awesome.

Also, if anyone came away from the con with a spare Sanctuary T-shirt, I am open to trades. Just saying.

(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 )

One of my favorite things about Brooke is the way she gets excited about a lot of the same horrible things that I get excited about. I love all my friends, but very few of them respond to "Hey! I found a horrific multi-segmented exoskeletal thing under this rock!" with "Oooh, neat, let me see!" the way that Brooke will. Brooke is awesome.

Since the book release party was Saturday, and Brooke was going to be staying with me all day Sunday, we started talking about California Things We Could Do. Somehow, this led to my announcing that we have foot-long electric yellow slugs available for viewing in Muir Woods. INSTANT RELEVANCE TO BROOKE'S INTERESTS. And this is how my long-suffering mother found herself roped into spending Mother's Day driving out to Muir Woods so that we could go hunting for monopods in the damp redwood forests of Northern California.

Once again, the apple really didn't fall all that far from the tree.

Muir Woods is about a ninety minute drive from my house, and we used the excursion as an opportunity to educate my mother about Canadian music, blasting Moxy Fruvous and Great Big Sea (she was tolerant). She did ask me at one point whether I'd called the park to be sure they were open. I confirmed that I had. Then...

"Well, did you ask if the banana slugs were out?"
"It's not like the park rangers were going to go and check."

There is no banana slug time clock.

Muir Woods was surprisingly crowded when we arrived; apparently, I wasn't the only person who thought celebrating Mother's Day with giant yellow slugs was a good idea. Brooke and I were ready to be thrilled by nature; I started with being thrilled by the chipmunk in the parking lot. SO CUTE. After that, we were thrilled by a Banana Slug Crossing sign, a First Amendment Zone, and the bathroom. Did I mention that we're excitable?

It was misting lightly as we entered Muir Woods: perfect weather for casual hiking and banana slug-hunting. We had barely been inside for five minutes when the first banana slug sighting occurred, with a three-inch yellow guy* waving his eyestalks saucily at us from the clover next to the walkway. Brooke took his picture. Two minutes later, banana slug sighting number two occurred. So here we are, wandering through this cathedral of redwoods, the tallest trees in the world standing sentinel all around us...looking at the ground. I love my friends.

We did stop to gape at redwoods, and Brooke took many, many pictures. Eventually, we turned onto a side trail, where we proceeded to hit the banana slug jackpot, finding a four-inch Pacific banana slug and two seven-inch California banana slugs in quick succession. Yay!

Now, there's an old tradition that, if you disturb a banana slug while in the woods, you have to kiss it before you put it back. I was watching the Pacific banana slug industriously ooze around on my coat sleeve when a family with three little boys walked up, irresistibly drawn to my slimy friend. Not wanting to be responsible for the squishing of every slug in Muir Woods, I told them about kissing slugs, and that I'd have to kiss the slug before I put it back.

They looked at me expectantly.

I kissed the slug. (I admit this only because Brooke was carrying a camera, and hence has proof.) The eldest of the boys also kissed the slug. His mother made sure to get it on camera, and will thus be able to horrify his prom date in a decade or so. That's me, making the future harder since 1978.

We stopped at the park gift shop when we finished slug hunting, and Brooke acquired a glow-in-the-dark Slug Patrol T-shirt, which she chortled over with great glee. Then it was off to the car, and onto what Brooke termed "the roadkill buffet." A deer came bounding in front of our car, causing Mom to shout and point it out to Brooke (because they don't have deer in Canada, apparently). She was so busy shouting and pointing out the deer that she totally missed the fawn that was following its mother across the road. I screamed. Brooke screamed. Mom hit the brakes, missing Bambi by inches. I swear, if she had hit that damn deer, we'd still be up in Muir Woods. Mourning.

We started moving again after the fawn cleared the road. A wild turkey came strutting across the roadway, unconcerned by the large motor vehicle hurtling toward it. Mom stopped for the turkey.

"You have turkeys here, just wandering around," said Brooke, nonplussed. "That's a thing."

Also featured on the roadkill buffet: joggers! Suicidal joggers! Some people really don't want to live to breed. We managed to not kill any of them, and went rolling merrily back toward home, Mom and I bellowing along to the radio, Brooke slowly passing out in the backseat.

Happy Mother's Day!

(*Technically, banana slugs are hermaphroditic. Really, I don't think they care.)

This Saturday, May 8th 2010, I will be appearing at San Francisco's own Borderlands Books in my guise as Mira Grant to celebrate the release of Mira's first novel, Feed [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy]. Feed is a science fiction dystopian novel of political zombie terror, best described as "Night of the Living Dead meets The West Wing and Transmetropolitan." If that sounds a little weird, well...it is. But if it sounds a little awesome, you should totally swing by.

This is going to be a more traditional event than most of my parties, because Mira's a traditional kind of girl...especially if by "traditional" you mean "fond of machetes, the undead, and things that go bump in the night." We'll be in the bookstore starting at five, and we'll be staying there until nine, providing plenty of time for undead awesomeness. There will be readings, discussion, time for wandering around the bookstore, and, yes, the world's best cupcakes. Some of my best friends from out of town will be attending, so this is your chance to finally check off "Rae" on your Seanan bingo card.

I really hope you can make it, and if you can't, remember that you can contact Borderlands to request a signed/personalized book be set aside for you.

Whee!

ETA: Festivities will begin at 5:00 PM, and continue until 9:00.

My mother survived her first day at a comic book convention! Well, mostly: she had to leave early because her back was bothering her (although I suspect the real culprit was my little sister's legs, since my little sister doesn't walk, and none of them believed me about the sheer scope of even a small comic con). She bought a chicken hat and wore it with pride. And people wonder why she admits that I'm her daughter.

I lined up for the Esplanade early enough to get really awesome seats for the sneak preview of next week's Fringe (although this did require sitting through an episode of V, and dude, what the hell?). Sunil came and joined me after he finished shopping, and since I had nothing better to do, I stayed and watched Kevin Smith's Q&A with him. Gotta love any man whose response to "How are you?" is "I'm so glad you asked! I had the best fucking sex of my life last night!" followed by a lengthy explanation of how a fleshlight works. Ah, Kevin Smith, if you weren't real, we'd have to invent you.

Now I'm up, packed, and going back for another day.

We're almost done with the current round of the Fourth Annual BSC Review Tournament. So far, Rosemary and Rue has managed to defeat Heart's Blood, The Warded Man, and Turn Coat, but Toby's having a contested battle against catvalente's Palimpsest. Please consider casting your vote to keep Toby in the tournament. It's fun!

One thing I didn't say before, and will say now (because it hadn't come up before): Please play nicely, whether you vote for me or for Cat, and don't say things that will make the other author feel bad. "It took me a while to get into this" or "It just wasn't my thing" are cool. "This author sucks" or "If I wanted to read _______, I would just go read _______" are not cool. Thankfully, no one who's voted for me has said anything like that, but some of the people playing tourney are starting to get personal, and that makes this a hell of a lot less fun. Someone's always sad when there has to be a winner and a loser, but there's being a loser, and then there's being a loser who's been told they suck at the same time.

Girl fight tonight!

I'll post a writeup of last night's party...later. When I'm actually awake, and not simply faking it really, really well. (Right now, y'all are lucky I'm writing in English, and not in some sublime language of my own creation, which would involve neither capitalization nor punctuation.) For right now, if you missed the Circus coming to town, there are still a few places where you can catch me. Namely...

I'll be appearing at the San Bruno Barnes and Noble on Friday, March 12th, from 7 to 9 PM. I'll be reading, answering questions, and signing books, which you can even buy right there. Total convenience! I'll also be essentially jetlagged, which could make me really, really entertaining. The bookstore is located at...

1150 El Camino Real
Space 227
San Bruno, Ca 94066

My dear friend Chaz Brenchley will be appearing at Borderlands Books on Saturday, March 13th, at 3:00 PM. I'm planning to attend, to show my support. This means that if you had wanted to order a book inscribed (not just signed), you can contact Borderlands now, and I'll be able to personalize the book for you on Saturday. (Please also remember that, for signed books through the mail, Borderlands remains your absolute best of all possible options. Largely because there aren't any other options.)

Rounding out a weekend during which sleep is not an option, I'll be appearing at the Belmont Library in Belmont, California (near San Francisco) on Sunday, March 14th, at 2:00 PM. There will be a reading and a Q&A session. I will also be signing things, although I won't be selling things myself, so if you want something signed, please bring it with you. I will not sign checks, binding contracts, or children that don't belong to you. This is my first library appearance, and I'd really love to see you there.

And that's my weekend. It's like I'm a professional author or something...

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

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

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

I suffer so you don't have to.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My recent radio silence has been the result, not of traumatic head injury or watching all of The West Wing in one huge gluttonous marathon, but of having a lovely time in Seattle with some of my favorite people in the world. (Seriously, I sometimes think my definition of "absolutely perfect" would include a guest list of about eight people, bribing Betsy to let us come have a kitchen party at her place, and "accidentally" cutting the phone lines.) Also, everyone here tends to sleep until noon when not actively poked with sticks, and I get up at seven-thirty, so I've been doing a lot of catch-up work, very little of which sparks my brain to post.

I shall say interesting and insightful things later; for right now, this is a random time for random things, because I need to clean up my tabs again.

rivkat has tossed a short review of Rosemary and Rue into the fray, and says "It's a good debut, giving information at the right pace and creating an engaging urban fantasy world." I approve.

There's also a short review over on Just Finished, which says "McGuire, a local author who is also a must see feature on the local SF convention scene due to her off the cuff witty remarks, does a good job with the first book of this planned series." (Also, the complaint that I sometimes get overly wrapped up in things that won't happen for eight books is fair. I've gotten much better about it, promise.)

Vixen's Daily Reads posted a review, and says "I read this a few weeks ago, but wasn't sure how I would write a review that would do this justice. I honestly still don't think I will do the book justice, but I want to write the review before the new year. This is one of my favorite books of the year. This is an amazing, intelligent, action packed story that I could not put down once I started it. Well, I had to put it down to sleep at some point, but I didn't want to." I'm in your library, stealin' your sleep!

2009 is officially used up, and I've made jennifer_brozek's (who edits The Edge of Propinquity) Best Reads of 2009 list! Yay! In related news, the first Sparrow Hill Road story is turned in, and should be going live on the 15th of this month. Watch for it!

Finally, for the good of all, here are Ten Words You Need to Stop Misspelling. Thanks to The Oatmeal for educating us all.

And therein endith the random. For now.

1. Remember that voting is still open for the second A Local Habitation ARC giveaway, and while there are a few clear favorites, it's still anybody's game. I'll announce the third giveaway as soon as I figure out exactly what it's going to be.

2. A Local Habitation gets a little closer every day, as this page on the Penguin Group website can attest. It's still weird and wonderful and a little terrifying to look at websites and go "wait, that's my book, I wrote that, oh whoa, that's Toby." I am assured this feeling will eventually pass. I'm...not sure I want it to.

3. If you want to see me compared to an Emma Frost-esque diamond golem, click here and join the giggling. I don't object to being a golem, or being made out of diamond, and I admit it, my productivity is occasionally terrifying even to me. I am also assured that this phase in my life will eventually pass. That idea scares me.

4. Things about this weekend that I'm really excited about: the first holiday party of the season. Getting more time to work on Blackout. The premiere of the Alice miniseries on Syfy. It's by the people who did Tin Man last year, and while it doesn't star Zooey Deschanel (a definite minus if you ask me), it looks absolutely incredible. Plus it has Connor from Primeval, and he is mad hot.

5. Matt Fraction has declared that Emma Frost is the love of Scott Summers's life. Matt Fraction is my new favorite person, at least for right now.

Tonight, I'm going out with my cousins to do something mysterious which required me to buy two rolls of quarters from the bank. I am wary but interested to learn what lies in store on the misty streets of San Francisco. Here's hoping you're planning for a wonderful weekend of your own, and feel free to let me know what you have going on!

So here I am, in New York. (Technically, as I write this, here I am, in New Jersey. It seems like I always wind up staying in New Jersey while here, and commuting to New York. This is because the East Coast is made entirely of tiny little postage-stamp states. Postage-stamp states. I realize and understand that this is a California thing, but really, I don't feel that I should be able to casually wander over state lines and not really notice.) Since arriving...

...the motor on the fridge has decided to die, filling the apartment with smoke, covering the kitchen floor with water, and triggering an impromptu dinner party, complete with enormous and only semi-expected mob. One member of the mob, upon encountering certain jet-lagged idiosyncrasies of mine, wailed, "But my Seanan List* didn't include what to do about the liver hat!" Sometimes it's nice to be me.

...visited the GINORMOUS Manhattan Apple Store, in which a charming young man at the Genius Bar was kind enough to inform me that my iPod was, in fact, dead beyond all reasonable repair. He offered to zombie it for a short period of time, but made it clear that this manner of resurrection was counter-recommended, and would probably result in an army of undead Apple products shambling around the city. As I have things to accomplish this week, I declined, and will be getting a new iPod.

...visited FAO Schwartz, home of the giant piano, and many, many, many toys. I did not actually buy any toys, largely due to their tragic dearth of dinosaurs. I judged their stock most harshly. I judged their stock most harshly with the powers of my mind. (I did not, however, judge their MUPPET FACTORY with anything beyond delight and glee. Because dude, MUPPET FACTORY.)

...went to Serendipity 3 with The Agent. We consumed frozen hot chocolate, which was amazing, and had lunch, which was less "amazing" and more "faintly horrifying." My chef's salad contained a pond's-worth of watercress, an orange, a cup of fruit salad, steamed asparagus, and avocado. This is what those of here in the real world like to refer to as "overkill." We split a sundae after eating. This, too, was overkill, but in the good way, since we received roughly enough hot fudge to replace all the mucus in the average human body.

...ate an apple cider doughnut. What the hell is wrong with some people?

...went to visit everybody at Orbit (Mira's editor). I'd already met my editor (at World Fantasy) and my contact in the marketing department (far more pleasant than Vel's Marketing Department), but it was a real treat to meet all the other folks involved in making the book a reality, including the art director who did the cover design (which is, I must admit, fucking fantastic). After our meeting, The Editor2 took The Agent and I out for lunch in Grand Central Station. Sadly, this involved cutlery and bread service, rather than hot dogs of questionable origin and things scraped off of crusty bakery trays, which is what I think of when you say "hey, let's go eat in the train station."

...passed out cold from a migraine and lost approximately sixteen hours. Because sometimes, jetlag hates me.

(*She was actually equipped with a Seanan List to assist her in surviving our encounter. Presumably this list came with a box labeled "In Case of Seanan Break Glass." The contents of the box are left to your imagination.)

How's been by all of you?

I have landed safely in New York. scifantasy was kind enough to collect me from the airport, and explained many interesting things about fair use during the trip. I am in Jersey City, and we are about to leave for the Apple Store, which is why this post is neither lengthy nor terribly informative.

Back later, please do not burn down the Internet. (Quoth scifantasy, "And if you let Missus O'Grady's cow kick over that lantern again...")

Happy Wednesday! I know I promised party reporting, and I intend to keep my word; I am, however, still too tired to do so with any degree of skill or grace, and am thus providing another review round-up, with some party reports from people with more brain than I tossed in just for spice.

First off, TJ over at Book Love Affair (who you may remember from this incredibly sweet and complimentary review) couldn't make the Borderlands party, and sent her husband in her place, because that's just what you do. He responded to this assignment by taking a really crazy number of pictures, allowing her to post a full report. I'm not a fan of having my picture taken—I know, I know, it's not like I'm shy and retiring and hence avoid cameras, but I make a lot of funny faces, and I always seem to have my mouth open when the flash goes off—but as a record of the evening, this is hammered awesome. I hope you can make the next one, TJ!

My dearly beloved artbeco attended the Friday party at Illusive Comics, and, is her wont, took a lot of really fabulous pictures of the evening. I've known and loved Beckett for more than half my life, so having her document this amazing night was really an honor and a joy. I am so glad she could share this with us.

Brooke came for the whole weekend, and decided to write everything up in one amazingly massive post of pure hammered awesome. For those of you who've missed my mother's wacky antics, Brooke is here to help you fill that gaping hole in your heart, because she took transcription. Quote of the weekend from Brooke: "Who's a mighty huntress who is also slightly moist?"

Sunil also made an amazingly massive post of awesome, complete with lots and lots of pictures of people doing things. He even got pictures of Ripley, the resident Sphinx at Borderlands. Go team Sunil!

Now, on to the reviews!

Thea and Ana are the Book Smugglers, a daring duo of book reviewers who fight the forces of bad literature while stealing gems of awesome from the vast crypts of the literary world. Well, the two of them have worked together to break into the text of Rosemary and Rue and carry out a joint review.

Thea says "There are a lot of female sleuth Urban Fantasy novels out there, and October Daye is another supernatural creature to add to the ever-growing pantheon. Ms. McGuire, however, manages to create a very unique character in a stunningly detailed, harsh world of faerie that coexists with our own. I definitely enjoyed this book and will be back to this eerie version of San Francisco very soon." She also says "In terms of world building and the urban fantasy element, Rosemary and Rue shines. My favorite aspect of this debut novel is the setting itself—Ms. McGuire juxtaposes a world of fae courts and magic, unseen by humans in the city of San Francisco. And the fae aren’t just your usual devilish pixies, winter queens or rowan men, either; Toby’s world is populated by Selkies, Undines, the Daoine Sidhe and Cait Sidhe. There are rose goblins and kelpies, doppelgangers and kitsune—and the variation is a wonderful thing to behold."

Meanwhile, Ana says "Regardless of which genre it belongs to, Rosemary and Rue is simply a good story, with great characters and above all, a fantastically entertaining world in which to submerge myself for a few hours. I can hardly believe that this is Seanan’s McGuire’s debut work and I enjoyed it so much that am ready for more. Like, right now." She also says "I started the review expecting to rate it Very Good, but managed to convince myself whist writing it that this rather, a truly Excellent novel and the series has the potential to be one of the Great Ones. I devoured it, I rooted for the main character and I think this is certainly one of the best debuts I read this year."

I win at being robbed!

maverick_weirdo posted a short, sweet review over at his journal, saying that "Rosemary and Rue is an excellent read." Succinct and charming!

Our final review for today is from SFRevu at the Internet Review of Books. Gayle Surrette wrote their thoughtful and well-balanced review of the book, saying "Having read the first two chapters, there was no way I could put the books down," and "This is an outstanding story and Seanan McGuire is a writer to watch." I'm a writer to watch! Watch me! Maybe I'll do tricks!

And that's our round-up for Wednesday. I will now take a nap.

Several people have asked me if, now that I'm past my official launch weekend, I'm planning to take a nap. I have done my best not to point and laugh, because it's an honest question (and also because I would probably just dissolve into hysterical giggles if I did so). So...

Before the end of September, I'll be receiving my page proofs for A Local Habitation (the sequel to Rosemary and Rue, and the second Toby Daye book). I'll also be preparing for the rest of the fall, since things will be hectic for a while before they settle down. See, in October, I'm traveling to Ohio for the Ohio Valley Filk Festival, and will be going straight from there into November and the World Fantasy Convention in San Jose. After that, I'm flying to New York to hang out with my publishers and be underfoot for a little while. (I also have a short story, "Inspirations," appearing at The Edge of Propinquity in November. So that'll be fun.)

In December, I'm going to Seattle to spend the holidays with my Pacific Northwest family, and to pull my now-traditional "work on a Mason book at Tony's kitchen table for eleven hours straight" holiday stunt. I'll probably also be doing my best to arrange some book events, possibly including Powell's. January will see me sleeping (a lot), as well as returning to Seattle for Conflikt, before heading to England, Germany, and the UK filk convention in February.

And then it will be March, and A Local Habitation will be hitting shelves, along with Chicks Dig Time Lords. I don't currently have anything scheduled for April—I don't trust this to last—but in May, Feed comes out. So sleep? No, not so much.

It's just one big kitchen party over here.

Well, I survived the weekend, with the assistance of the Traveling Circus and Snake-Handling Show that descended upon my house and made my book release parties extra awesome. I'll be posting detailed recaps of the parties later, after I've finished catching up on all the sleep I didn't get over the course of the weekend. (Seriously, right now, my idea of a recap is something like "and then I ate candy corn, and then I signed some books, and look, a bunny," which leaves out rather a lot of important details.)

My cats also survived the weekend, which was rather more in question, since Lilly doesn't like having large crowds between her and me, and Alice is still young enough to get impressively over-stimulated. Lilly spent the first night of the invasion (when we had Betsy in my room, Mia and Ryan in the spare room, and Amy, Brooke, and I in the back room) sleeping on my chest and growling in the back of her throat, Just In Case someone decided to try slitting my throat in the night. When no one attacked me, she moved on to pissy Siamese stage two, Shunning The Human, and provided a great deal of amusement, since she shuns about as well as I drive (and I don't drive). Alice did me the immense favor of being well-behaved and fluffy in front of Betsy, who bred her, and who needed to see her being happy, healthy, and fluffy.

Today has been pretty cool so far. Everybody seems to be getting home safely (always a concern, if you happen to be me), and my house is gradually returning to normal. Since it's Tuesday, I'll be going to Kate's tonight, to eat tasty Indian food, sleep in the basement, and resume my normal existence. I'm very excited by this fact. I like things that are normal (normal to me, anyway). I'm also going to be swinging through the Other Change of Hobbit to see whether they need any additional stock signed, and to confirm the dates for the rescheduled book release party. More information as it becomes available.

Chicks Dig Time Lords is now available for pre-order! Here's a link to the Amazon page. The brain-child of the lovely taraoshea, Chicks Dig Time Lords is a book of essays about being female in Doctor Who fandom, and what the show has meant to more than a few generations of Gallifrey Girls. It was co-edited by rarelylynne. I really loved being a part of this project, and I'm super-excited about it. Doctor Who has been one of my favorite shows since I was three years old. You can get your own copy of Chicks Dig Time Lords on March 15th, 2010—two weeks after you can get your own copy of A Local Habitation!

I'm exhausted, but I seem to be over the horrible plague that hit me just before book release, which is a wonderful thing (as yes, I did fear a relapse). This weekend, I get to hang out with a huge, merry crew over at the Bohnhoff place, and then head into Berkeley to do the Solano Stroll. And oh, right, it's time to get to work on finishing Blackout.

Welcome to fall. Now the work begins.

Hey, folks! Just a friendly reminder that tonight is the Rosemary and Rue event at San Francisco's very own Borderlands Books! Featuring live music by Kitten Sundae, Brooke Lunderville, and Amy McNally, an awesome raffle of awesomeness, Pollidori Chocolates original truffles, naked cats, and so much more, we're planning to blow the doors off the place.

Tonight's schedule:

5:00 PM: Welcome to our party.
5:40 PM: Perhaps you would like some music.
6:00 PM: Perhaps you would like to win things.
7:00 PM: More music?
7:30 PM: More prizes?
7:45 PM: Assuming people are not too busy eating cookies, Seanan will read something.
8:30 PM: Last music of the night.
8:50 PM: Last chance to give the bookstore money before we say goodnight.
9:00 PM: Last raffle drawing of the night and we close the evening.

You do not have to be present to win, but you do need to have someone holding your ticket and ready to claim a prize for you. Prizes will be on the table, and can be claimed as winners are called.

I hope you can come!

Hey, guys, remember, tonight is the first Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies] book release party. We'll be at Illusive Comics in Santa Clara, California, starting at 7:00 PM Pacific Time.

Illusive Comics is an awesome mix of comic books, games, and genre fiction, run by the intrepid and delightful Anna Warren, who is presently enormously pregnant. We'll have cake, snakes, and a rare California appearance by Kitten Sundae, one of the most kickin'-cool bands to hail from the Pacific Northwest. Come for the book, stay for the live music, the cool company, and the opportunity to walk away with a "no shit, there I was" story of your very own.

Mia of chimera_fancies will also be in attendance, and the shinies she has with her are the sort you have to see to believe. Plus you can meet my mom, and see just how serious I really am (very).

Hope you can be there!

1) A lot of new folks have been wandering in over the past few days, probably because of this wacky thing I did called "releasing a book." Hi, new people! If you're wondering just what the hell you've gone and gotten yourself into, I recommend either hitting the "welcome post" tag, which leads to my semi-regular welcome posts, or wait until next Wednesday, when I'll be putting up the September welcome post. Yes, I really am that organized. The alternative is hysterical flailing, and that thread is useless without pictures.

2) Tangentially related, I have my 2010 Franklin-Covey planner pages! There was very nearly hysteria in the Franklin-Covey store, as the clerk who was helping me responded to my request for the Simplicity 2010 daily pages with "Oh, that's been discontinued." When I started to hyperventilate, he mysteriously located my pages in the stockroom. Perhaps he should consider that when you take a job in the OCD porn store, it's not nice to taunt the people who shop there. We're likely to flip out and beat someone to death with a hole punch.

3) The invasion has begun! Amy has been at my house since last week. Over the next few days, Brooke, Vixy and Tony, Betsy, Sooj and K, Rebecca, and Mia and Ryan will all be arriving. (No, they're not all staying with me. I have insufficient house for that sort of invasion.) Alice and Lilly have handled things well so far, what with the pre-invasion cleaning and the imported fiddler. Alice is especially fond of the imported fiddler, and has abandoned me heartlessly to hang out with Amy.

4) When looking for details on upcoming appearances, please remember that all confirmed appearances are listed in great detail on my website Appearances Page. I don't mind answering questions, but especially right now, there can be a pretty lengthy delay between you saying "hey, are you going to be...?" and my actually getting a chance to answer you. Since appearance questions are innately time-sensitive, please, please check the website first. It may save you missing a really awesome party.

5) Again tangentially related, since it's been asked several times: the raffle is Saturday night, at Borderlands. There isn't a raffle scheduled for Friday night, because it wasn't arranged ahead of time (we weren't aware of how many raffle prizes we'd actually have available to us until very recently). So if you want to participate in the raffle, you need to come to the Saturday book party.

6) If you're planning to come to the Saturday book party, remember that you can get an extra raffle ticket by bringing delicious baked goods to share with the rest of the class! Mmmmm, delicious baked goods.

7) Yes, I'll be at OVFF and World Fantasy. No, I won't be at ConChord or Orycon. I have no conventions in 2009 after World Fantasy, and that's a wonderful thing, because I'm intending to take a nap. I miss sleep. My cats miss me sleeping, since they don't have an electric blanket, and without a warm human, they're forced to rely on sunbeams and each other for warmth. Think of the kitties. (Even if Alice is the feline equivalent of a down comforter, she still likes snuggles.)

8) Here's some fun news for you short story and Velveteen fans. First off, I'll have new pieces appearing at the Book View Cafe soon (I had to take a week off, due to book release crazy), including more horror, and maybe even a look at the little town of Rush's Bend, Minnesota. Secondly, "Velveteen vs. the Blind Date" is finally almost finished, and your regularly scheduled dose of superhero strangeness will be rolling into town any day now. I just need to work the last of the bugs (and bears) out before I release it.

9) The turtle couldn't help us.

10) September is only three days old, and already it's been awesome and exhausting and exhilarating and generally terrifying in ways that I've been dreaming of for my entire life. Thank you all for being here, and for not shooting me for all the flailing I've been doing lately. I promise we'll return to normal levels of flail soon.

Now we must rinse.

I'm thrilled to make sure everybody knows that this weekend is the first-ever Grants Pass signing and event. Yes! Grants Pass, live and in person! The event details:

SATURDAY, AUGUST 22nd
2:00 to 4:00 PM

http://www.soulfoodbooks.com/OldRoot/
Soulfood Books and Cafe
15748 Redmond Way
Redmond, Washington 98052

...so if you're not going to be in Washington, this may not be the most helpful thing ever, but if you are, wow did you just win the jackpot!



Attending authors include me, Jay Lake, Shannon Page, James Sullivan, and the incomparable Jennifer Brozek, our fearless editor, who first said "what if we threw a plague and everybody came?" We'll be signing books (and bookplates), hanging out, and there will be cake. Also, because I am me, and I always travel with at least fifteen ways to distract myself, there will probably also be at least one copy of Rosemary and Rue to fondle and gaze upon with love in your heart.

This is really exciting. Grants Pass is the first anthology I was ever asked to be a part of, and the first anthology I ever successfully sold a story to (not necessarily the same thing, more's the pity). And Jennifer is a dear friend. So seeing both of them succeeding together is just, well...cake. And cake is good. We like cake. The cake is not a lie.

I hope to see you there!

I'm almost finished packing for DucKon; sometime in the next hour, my mother will be showing up to whisk me away to the San Francisco International Airport, where I will board a shiny silver skybird and soar across the country to Illinois, hence to have exciting adventures. The cats know something is up, but aren't entirely clear as to what it is. I expect them to get seriously pissed in a few hours, when I go away and don't come back. And that's okay.

My schedule is posted both here and on my website. I will have ARCs of Rosemary and Rue with me all weekend, so you can see them in all their glory. I'll also have copies of all three albums, and the complete remaining run of the new chapbook. So, y'know, you can take a little piece of me home with you, if you really want to.

I'll be back and back to normal on Tuesday. I may or may not be around much this weekend, depending on Internet availability and how much sleep I manage to get. Amy is bringing pumpkin vodka to the convention; The Agent is already in the air; I'm really having a pretty damn fabulous day, all things considered. And Jean Grey is still dead.


Sometimes I love my life.

So as most people probably noticed, I spent the last several days in Seattle, Washington. Why did I go to Seattle? Well, it let me spend time with my beloved Vixy and Tony, meet Cat Valente for the first time -- an important introduction, given that she's going to be staying with me later in the month -- hang out with SJ Tucker and the fabulous K, do an author photo shoot with Ryan, and talk venison with Dimitri. I even got to join Kitten Sundae for two numbers during their Saturday night concert (Vixy and Tony's "Thirteen," and my own "Evil Laugh"). But none of these things were the point of my trip.

No, the point of my trip was seeing Betsy and Dave Tinney, the owners of Pinecoon Maine Coons. Dave is the Master of the Salad of Doom; Betsy is, in addition to being one of my favorite wicked girls, and a subject-matter expert for the ballroom sequences in Discount Armageddon, the cello player for Tricky Pixie and Kitten Sundae. They're wonderful, enjoyable, delightfully multi-talented people...

...and they had my kitten. Alice -- short for Alice Price-Healy Little Liddel Abernathy McGuire (points if you can source all the names). A blue classic tabby with white, Alice is my first Maine Coon. We flew home this morning, and while she wasn't an angel on the plane, she wasn't a devil, either. She only cried during takeoff and landing, and is now merrily exploring the room, having had a snack, a drink, a nap, and an exciting adventure with the pumpkin-fucker orange cat tree.

I have two cats again.

Because Lilly and Alice are "unusual breeds" for many people, despite being gorgeous representatives of two of the most popular breeds of cat in the country (the most recent rankings put the Maine Coon at number two, and the Siamese at number three), they now have their own page on my website, giving a breed overview as well as a quick overview of the cats themselves.

They've met briefly, and while they weren't immediate soulmates or anything, they also didn't attack each other. So I'm calling it a win for now. We're home, we're safe, and the world is good.

Yay.

After a completely uneventful flight -- my in-flight entertainment deck was busted, so I put on my iPod, cued up my "all 'Rain King,' all the time" playlist, which is ninety-plus minutes of versions of the same song, put my head down, and passed out -- I landed safely in Seattle at a little past eleven o'clock last night. I was promptly met by Satyr and Sandi, the editors of Ravens in the Library, as well as good friends of mine, who bore me boldly off to Chez Tinney, hence to be united with my new giant feline companion.

(Alice is, in fact, giant. She's more than doubled in size since the last time I saw her, and may actually be bigger than my mother's new puppy, Smudge. She's also fluffy as hell, and possessed of the world's plumiest tail. I'm afraid there may be truth to my mother's accusation of my desire for a Maine Coon being born partially out of tail withdrawal.)

Today, my plans include "finishing the new Vel story" and "dealing with kitten contracts," as well as a healthy, happy dose of "work on art cards." Life is pretty good. I'll be here in the Pacific Northwest through Sunday, when I'll fly home to begin the laborious process of introducing Lilly and Alice to one another. Since they're both pretty mellow cats with vast amounts of fur, I'm not anticipating much trouble, although you should be anticipating kitten pictures sometime early in the next week.

Oh, and since I seem to have forgotten to announce it -- my mother got a puppy! Her name is Smudge, after jim_hines's fabulous fire spider, and she's gorgeous. She's half Malamute, half Rottweiler, and has those amazing crystal blue Malamute eyes. She was taken from her mother too young, but I've hand-raised kittens, and was able to bully my mother into going to the pet store for puppy formula. (I try not to bully my mother. But when the puppy's too young, we buy it the formula. This is how the game works.) Smudge is doing fabulously, and she's getting bigger by the day. We're introducing her to Lilly a little at a time, since she's likely to accompany my mother when Mom comes over to clean at my place.

So I'm safe, alive, and doing just fine, thanks to the wonderful people at Virgin America and their wonderful flying machines. How's everybody else, out there in the world? I lack deep thoughts today. Give me yours.

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

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

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

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

6. Zombies are still love.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's time for the twenty-sixth essay in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. We're more than halfway to the end of the series now, since all these essays are based around my fifty thoughts on writing. Thanks to everyone who's been reading, discussing, and generally making this a fascinating process. I've learned a great deal, both from sitting here scratching my head as I look for things to say and from reading the things that people say to me in return. The remaining essays will be touching on a great many more aspects of the art of writing, and will probably double back on themselves more than a few times. That's the business.

Thoughts on Writing #26: Hermitage.

It sounds like a simple notion, doesn't it? But the fact of the matter is, hermitage is a big, complicated thing that we often fail to give sufficient attention or consideration. Bearing that in mind, here's today's expanded topic:

Learn to be a hermit. Learn to say 'I'm sorry, but I can't come to your party, I booked that night for revisions and I don't have any other time to do it this week.' Learn to tell people no. Learn to treat writing as a job -- one that may well be both unpaid and in addition to whatever job pays the bills for a long, long time. If you make excuses to let yourself skip writing, if you choose a social life over that second job, you're not addicted enough. If you want to get better, you'll learn.

As anyone who's ever tried to sit down for a block of scheduled writing -- from the wealthiest novelist to the kid who just needs to finish that book report -- can tell you, most people don't view 'writing' as being the same as 'real work.' Even the people who've heard me explain exactly how many hours I need to complete a novel frequently have trouble understanding that those necessary hours will sometimes conflict with their proposed dinner plans. And here's the thing: nobody tells a doctor not to practice medicine, or tries to talk him out of reading that book on brain surgery because they'd rather be playing checkers. But as a writer, you'll get it all the time.

So how do you cope? How do you strike a balance, and how do you do it without losing all your friends? Let's begin.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on writers and the need to sometimes crawl into your cave.Collapse )

I am safely at Jon and Merav's place in Jersey City, where Jon and Aaron are playing LAN Party with me on the kitchen table, preparatory to my handing them my thumb drive, saying 'I trust you,' and walking away to have quiet hysterics in another room. Hopefully, this means they'll be able to recover my data, and I won't have to cry on the plane.

Also, I have a brand new thumb drive from the Best Buy near where I met Diana for lunch on Wednesday. It is soothingly bright orange, and glows when inserted in the computer. Everything should glow when inserted in the computer. It's like a law or something.

They've discovered nineteen new species in Australia (mostly in Western Australia). These range from a spider-eating wasp to some truly horrific-looking new species of spider, as well as an eyeless crustacean thing and something they call a 'pseudoscorpion' due to its lack of a deadly stinger. This proves once again that Australia is awesome.

My visit to the New Jersey Pine Barrens was totally awesome, although I didn't spot the Jersey Devil. (There's always the possibility that he spotted me...) I also didn't spot any deer ticks, so I'm going to call this trip an overall win.

My mother is picking me up at the airport tomorrow, which should be...interesting, considering that she's never been to SFO before, and never tried to collect anyone from the International Arrivals Terminal of any airport. New experiences are good things for everybody, right? I certainly hope that's right, or there's a possibility that I'm never going to be seen again.

My duties have all been discharged; my visit to New York has gone stunningly well; and now we must rinse.

Well, I'm home from a day spent in Fremont (for those of you who aren't Californians, read 'an hour's train ride away from my small-town home, and a much more urban place than I normally spend my afternoons') stitching chapbooks with Beckett, who is quite possibly the most elegantly artistic person I know. She makes art happen the way I make song lyrics -- with an incredible amount of diligence, practice, and carefully-earned skill that looks entirely effortless from the outside.

In 2005, Beckett graciously helped me make a chapbook, Leaves From the Babylon Wood, for that year's Ohio Valley Filk Festival, at which I was the Toastmistress. This year, she agreed to help me make a followup chapbook, titled Paths Through the Babylon Wood, for Conflikt, where I'm going to be the Guest of Honor.

(Someone asked what it's going to take for me to make a third chapbook, I think because they forgot that it's never a good idea to ask about a new project when the wounds from the current one are still bleeding. I replied that it would almost certainly need to involve a convention with the word 'World' somewhere in the name. Because man.)

When Beckett does chapbooks, she doesn't screw around. Hand-printed, hand-stitched -- these ones have a gorgeous photographic cover, in full color, as well as roughly seventy-five pages of poetry. (And surprisingly few printing errors -- a comment not on Beckett's skill at layout, but on my skill as a proofreader. Seriously, the woman's a goddess.) I spent the day happily folding sections, collating piles, and just talking to her. I love spending time with Beckett. It makes things better. (And it's deeply reassuring to talk to someone who understands what I mean about the quality meter breaking on the sixth, or seventh, or twenty-first revision of the same thing.)

I am home. I am safe. I am overcome by the wonder that is my friends. And I am ecstatic over these chapbooks, because they're gorgeous.

Life is good.

Yesterday, I...

...did a lot of fussing about, did a lot of reasonably important (if not entirely time-sensitive) email inbox cleanup, did some work on The Brightest Fell, and finally, attended a multi-hour rehearsal to get ready for my Guest of Honor concert at Conflikt II, as well as the house concert that I'm going to be performing in tomorrow night. If you're even remotely local, and have been considering attending either event, I highly recommend it. If you've never seen me live before, here's a nice quote from one of the conventions I've been featured at:

"Seanan wraps together deep, poetic lyrics and complex melodies, a soaring voice, and an exhilarating hold-nothing-back performance style."

See? Isn't that sweet? The house concert is actually a Vixy & Tony gig to which I have kindly been invited, and we're going to be doing some awesome stuff. We finally hit 'Tanglewood Tree' (a Dave Carter cover) at exactly the right angle last night. When I have tears in my eyes at the end of a rehearsal, that's when you know that you're doin' it right. And the convention, of course, is going to be one of my usual 'but what if we threw a concert and everybody came extravaganzas. I'm even packing the prom dress. Just in case.

Today, I...

...got out of bed, sat down, and wrote the first song of 2009 ('My Story Is Not Done'). To quote the lyrics:

I was born into a fairy tale,
Cinderella's dust-bin daughter.
Seemed like I was meant to fail,
Turning wine back into water,

Mama's slippers shattered when
She turned around to run,
But I never thought that mattered and
My story is not done.

My brain, ladies and gentlemen. Studies are even now underway. That done, I wrote three poems, updated my 'Velveteen vs.' continuity guide, and processed some edits to The Brightest Fell, which I'll get back to just as soon as I finish this entry. Once Fishy wakes up (allowing me access to my suitcase), I'll be getting dressed and going out for lunch with the wonderful folks from Team Seattle. And tonight, of course, we're rehearsing one more time for tomorrow's concert, in a setting which I have been promised will provide both ice cream and kittens. My life, so hard.

Tomorrow, I...

...will be appearing in the house concert I've been nattering on about so much above. Because love means never having to listen to me talk about one thing for all that long.

Hope everything is awesome in the worlds of you -- what's going on?

My bags are packed; my carry-on is filled with books, electronics, plush dinosaurs, and things to eat on the plane (since when you combine 'picky eater' with 'allergies,' feeding me becomes a heroic quest in and of itself). My Siamese is in a tizzy as she tries to figure out what's going on, and how she can stop it from happening.

The house still smells like the turkey and cranberry sauce that I made last night for dinner; I smell predominantly like Bath and Bodyworks Pumpkin Pie shower gel and Bad Luck Woman Blues BPAL perfume. My bedroom has managed to actually remain clean throughout the packing process, unless you count the unmade bed, which I don't. Never take a trip after making everything absolutely perfect. It's bad luck. Encourages the world to think 'oh, this space has already been prepared for the funeral.'

My iTunes has been running on random shuffle all morning long, and every other song is by the Counting Crows. The soundtrack of my life, for most of my life, and (in that little thirteen-year-old corner of my heart where everything gets to be absolute and undebated) the most perfect band that's ever been. (This is also the corner of my heart where there's never going to be another book as good as IT, or another movie as perfect as Slither. I have a very stubborn heart sometimes.)

In a little under an hour, I'll head for the airport; in a little over four hours, I'll be on a big silver sky-bird, taking off for parts well-known and adventures unknowable. I have my new camera, I have directions to Voodoo Doughnut, and I have my flash drive (since it's well-known that the best way to drive me to distraction is to take it away from me). I have my writing goals and my rehearsing goals and my personal goals and my turkey and cranberry sauce sandwiches, and I'm ready for a winter wonderland.

I hope today is wonderful for all of you, whether it's something you celebrate or just a day where all the stores are closed and you can't find a parking place at the movie theater. Go gladly today. Let the world be filled with magic.

And if you want to spare a few good wishes for my flight, well, I'm sure it couldn't hurt.

Since I fly to Seattle tomorrow -- because, of course, every good California girl who gets cold when someone says the words 'wind-chill factor' should absolutely fly from her nice, temperate state into an ongoing blizzard for the holidays -- I've been spending a great deal of my time and attention getting ready for this exciting holiday adventure. It's always a holiday adventure when you combine me, Vixy, Tony, access to art supplies, access to Rock Band, and a lot of free time. And that doesn't even go into our actual plans for the ten days that I'm going to be up in their neck of the woods. Highlights include...

* A trip to Powell's, the City of Books! Where I will once again demonstrate that I have absolutely no common sense when it comes to judging the number of books I actually need vs. the number of books my house can actually hold. I swear, I need a dedicated library. Which means I need to move out of earthquake country, since otherwise, there's a tragic Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction-related death in my future.

* A trip to Voodoo Doughnut, the pastry shop of doom, destruction, and a nice vanilla glaze! Seriously, I've never been to this place, but the descriptions (and photographs) on their website are scaaaaaary. They have Captain Crunch doughnuts. They have literal voodoo doll doughnuts. They do not currently have the NyQuil doughnuts, and that's probably a good thing, because I would totally feel compelled to eat one, and then I'd sleep until New Years.

* Musical rehearsal with the Garcias! Alisa and Luis Garcia are two of the sweetest, most incredibly awesome people I know. They're also crazy-good musicians with three fantastic kids and a really cute dog. Honestly, only their lack of broadband Internet keeps their lives from resembling a glimpse into Geek Heaven. Tony, Vixy, and I are going to pile into their guest house and get our musical badassitude on. (I have, once again, designed a concert set of almost entirely new material. My friends will kill me one of these days.)

* A meet-up with Team Seattle! I have no real clue what this means, beyond 'I finally get to meet Mark 'oh, what's this, I seem to have written a supernatural romance starring a zombie before you could, how did that happen, ha ha' Henry in the presumably living flesh,' but I'm anticipating a lot of wacky antics, and maybe a repeatable anecdote or two. (Given that I can find repeatable anecdotes in making toast, my odds are good.)

...and, of course, the house concert on January 3rd, wherein Vixy, Tony, and I will be bringing down the house and raising the roof at the same time. We're like magicians. Magicians of rock. There may also be a little roll in there. Rock, roll, all that good stuff. I may even be able to convince Tony that he wants to perform 'Sycamore Tree' in public.

So anyway, preparations have been ongoing for the past few weeks, gathering speed like a snowball running down a hill in a Warner Brothers cartoon. I've managed to mostly finish packing, assuming Lilly didn't slaughter my suitcase last night while I was at Kate's, and the total cleansing of my room* has helped to confirm the divide between 'what I need' vs. 'what I have.' Today's to-do list is all little things, like 'buy Luna bars,' 'pick up comics,' and 'print your tickets.' This is in contrast to last week's to-do lists, which still included items like 'where the hell is the bedroom floor?' and 'enslave the Martians.'

The inclusion of a house concert in the holiday plans meant the inclusion of dress-up clothes in my traveling wardrobe, since Vixy and I both tend to wear pretty dresses when we perform. The inclusion of dress-up clothes meant a sudden up-tick in my personal grooming. And that's why last night, prior to having tasty Indian food and watching The Usual Suspects with Kate, I went to the Harmony Beauty Salon -- our torture chamber of choice -- and had my legs waxed. Ever had your legs waxed? It's exciting new adventure in the realms of pain and exfoliation, since the wax also removes several layers of dead skin from whatever it touches. Also, the wax is green, and looks suspiciously like the mutagent from the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. Mutation could be just around the corner! Which makes me feel better about the whole process.

Pain. Because without it, how would we really know that it's the holiday season?

(*Seriously. It's totally clean. I took pictures as soon as I was finished, because otherwise, nobody would ever believe me that I had managed to get it to that state. A photo tour of my bedroom, coming soon to a theater near you.)

* I'm writing my world description outline for the InCryptid books, which is a lot of fun, since it lets me make statements like 'insect-derived exothermic placental mammals with a decentralized circulatory system' in a completely serious, sincere way. (I love my insect-derived exothermic placental mammals. They're so wonderfully creepy. Also, I would not want them in my house, and neither do you.)

* The Brightest Fell -- also known as 'Toby Daye, book five,' also known us 'uh, Seanan, isn't book one due out next year?' -- is now well underway; I finished chapter seventeen last night, with a great deal of giggling and clapping of my hands. This is also why I haven't been posting many word counts recently, since every time I think 'well, I'll just hop projects now,' The Brightest Fell slaps me upside the head and drags me back in. I think this is because the book really, really wants to be finished. And who am I to argue? I like it when books want to be finished. It makes me feel productive.

* I am seriously considering writing a book about zombie virology. Just because it would give me an excuse to go and hang out at the CDC asking weird questions without getting looked at funny. Also, if you haven't read Zombie CSI by Jonathan Maberry, you totally should. The slowly developing zombie non-fiction genre for the win, yo. (It's true facts about fictional things. This makes it, bizarrely enough, non-fiction. I love the world sometimes.)

* Lilly's best silly parlor trick is once again seasonal: yes, my cat will sing 'Baby, It's Cold Outside' as a duet if you simply start the song and pause at the right places. Behold the beauty of the Siamese. Unfortunately, this means she gets pissed off if you try to sing the duet with another person. The point in Elf where Will Farrel and Zooey Deschanel sing it together drives her into a furious rage. Which is actually really adorable, as long as she's not in your lap when it starts.

* Yes, I am intending to clip her claws before we go to see Santa, in the hopes that this will prevent her from clawing Santa's balls off. Be good to Santa. Let him keep his balls.

* I have decided to use Zip-a-tone on the Conflikt program book cover, to give it that little extra 'zing.' I haven't actually used Zip-a-tone in years, since digital coloring has largely eliminated the need for it, but really, who doesn't love an art supply that requires use of an exacto knife? I'm gonna have me a slice-and-shade party, and it's going to be awesome. The awesome doubles if I don't have to go to the emergency room afterwards. I'm hoping for double awesome.

* The second Hack/Slash omnibus comes out this month, along with a reprint of the first omnibus edition. Hack/Slash is the ongoing story of Cassie Hack, a horror movie final girl who fought back and then kept on fighting. Imagine Buffy if she'd been created by James Gunn and Vincent Price instead of Joss Whedon. And if they'd been doing acid at the same time. This is pretty much my favorite currently on-going comic book, and I highly recommend it. A Christmas gift for the ages!

* Evil Dead: the Musical opens in Martinez, California on January 6th, 2009. Tickets are $25 for cabaret seating, $30 for splatter zone seating. The splatter zone is awesome, but make sure you finish eating (it's a dinner theater) before the song 'Look Who's Evil Now,' as the fake blood tastes terrible. It also smells weird, which could totally kill your appetite.

* The growth of my website continues. It's like an evil alien weed, come to destroy all within its path. The latest addition: you can now access the 'review' page from the discography. Yes, there's a lot of text there right now. I'm going to trim it down to about half that, and increase the font size. We're just getting what exists in place before we start messing with content.

And that's my today. What's yours?