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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Zombies are love.

1. HAPPY OCTOBER HALLOWEEN IS COMING.

So Friday night, I will be appearing at The Booksmith in damp, drizzly San Francisco, California, as part of their Read Until the World Ends Halloween Bookswap. I've never done one of these before, so I turn to their website for details:

"$25 gets you dinner and an open bar, a bookstore all to yourself and forty of your new best friends, discounts and swag, a chance to rub elbows with amazing authors, and tons of surprises. Amy Stephenson hosts."

$25 to share a room with me and an open bar. Oh, the drinks that we'll drink! Oh, the thinks that we'll think! Oh, the giggling as I slowly list gently onto my side and go to sleep! I...okay, that last part wouldn't be very professional of me. So I won't do that. But if you're in the San Francisco Bay Area and looking for a fun way to spend a Friday night, come and spend it it with me in my guise as Mira Grant, and with all the boozimohol the bookstore can provide.

Whee!

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!

The ebook of Feed is on sale for the next two weeks: $1.99 from any major retailer. Orbit says this is to celebrate their fifth anniversary, but I know what it's really about: it's to celebrate HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

I mean, this is like, the best trick-or-treat prize anyone could possibly ask for. "What'd you get?" "Candy corn. You?" "Feed, by Mira Grant." WIN! And also, if you buy it while it's cheap, you can afford more actual candy for the holiest of days, Halloween.

Tell your friends, warn your neighbors, and acquire Feed while it's cheap.

(Yes, this is more blatantly "buy my book" than I tend to be, but c'mon, two bucks? That's like, less than an Egg McMuffin. I want to see us crack the Kindle Top 100 with a book that's been out for over two years, because it would be funny, and I'm perverse like that.)

Happy Halloween!

I have once again contributed Epic Silliness to the Orbit blog to celebrate a holiday.

Annabel Lee, After the Rising.

Go forth and be amused. And remember, once she's dead, she is no longer your girlfriend.

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.

I am still sick, which means that my attendance at this weekend's OVFF may be in question. I'm still planning as if I'll be better in time, and so I have a very important question to put to the floor:

Which of my two otherwise identical dresses should I pack for the Pegasus Banquet? The orange, or the green?

Last night, as the first rain of the season washed the world clean and gray and filled the air with the smell of ozone and damp leaves, I curled up on the couch, flipped through the channels, and settled, wonderfully, on Halloween II: Kalabar's Revenge, which was airing on the Disney Channel. The first two Halloweentown movies are among my favorite of the Disney Channel Originals (DCOMs), and the second is my favorite of the two, since it spends so much of the movie being about Marnie and Luke and their weird witch/goblin love. (I don't care if they went and canonically hooked Marnie up with a traditionally pretty warlock boy in the third movie. She and Luke are my DCOM OTP.)

There are Pumpkin Spice lattes at Starbucks and Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts at Target and pumpkin pancakes at the IHOP. Empty buildings are transformed into sprawling Halloween wonderlands with names like "Spirit" and "Halloween Central." Many of them used to be Borders stores. It's like changing one kind of personal church into another, more transitory, beacon of faith.

I spent the last night of September wandering lost in a vast corn maze, stopping periodically to hug the corn, to bury my face in the leaves and just breath in the sweet green smell of the autumn coming in. If one of the boutique perfume companies could make a perfume that was the exact smell of corn maze at midnight, with the dirt and the green and the ripening corn and the cool night air...I would buy twenty bottles. I would sell my entire current perfume collection if I had to, in order to buy more bottles of that perfect corn maze scent. Because it would be the scent of my soul.

For me, this really is the most wonderful time of the year. This is the time when the air smells right, when the coffee tastes right, and when it's easiest to resist the siren song of things I shouldn't be eating, because those things are everywhere.

October is like coming home.

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!

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 )

Some of you may remember that I did a series of blog posts "counting down" to the release of Deadline, chronicling the days leading up to the Rising of 2014. Some of you may remember asking me whether there would ever be a collected edition. And, well. Some of you may remember getting my standard "I can't say anything right now" reply of "LOOK! A BUNNY!"

Well, look. A bunny. Or more specifically, look, Countdown: A Newsflesh Novella now available for your e-reading pleasure! Countdown retails for $2.99, and is an awesome opportunity to have more Kellis-Amberlee goodness for your very own.

Click here to go to the official Orbit Short Fiction page for Countdown.
Click here to go to Amazon, and the Kindle store.
Click here to go to Barnes and Noble, and the Nook store.
Click here to go to the iBook store.

Now, some people will doubtless ask why they should pay for this when they can (and possibly have) read it for free on my blog. They may not ask me directly, 'cause we're normally more civil than that around here, but I'm going to answer anyway. There are four really good reasons.

1. This is a professionally formatted file, with all thirty days in the same place. No clicking, scrolling, or getting lost in my occasionally quixotic tag system. Basically, it's three dollars for total convenience.

2. I said a few times while writing the original series of posts that errors would creep in because writing live left me no time to go back and revise. Well, the luxury of Countdown becoming something I was paid for allowed me to go back, edit, adjust, and correct a lot of things, some little, some big. It also got a pass through the Machete Squad, making it a much higher-quality work.

3. The novella I want to do next year for Blackout is much larger and more ambitious, and it's really going to need those editorial revisions to be as good as I want it to be. The sales of Countdown will encourage Orbit to buy The Rising 2014: The Last Stand and Final Fall of the California Browncoats.

4. My cats like to eat. My cats like to eat a lot. My cats will, eventually, if unfed, eat me. If the cats eat me, I stop writing. If I stop writing, everyone will be sad. Except for me, as I will have been eaten. Buying Countdown helps me shove gooshy food into the fluffy monsters, and allows me to remain uneaten.

Countdown!

(If you have links to other ebook stores, please kick them over, and I'll add them.)

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 )

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So do they.



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

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

Dear Great Pumpkin;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I remain your faithful Halloween girl,
Seanan.

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

Officially, for the current dominant culture of the country where I live, the new year begins on January 1st. I don't really remember when I started celebrating the new year on November 1st, as dictated by the Wiccan calendar; it's just the time that feels right to me. Harvest is ending. We're sliding into the long winter, time for contemplation, renewal, and preparing to face the spring. I like the idea that we can start the year with a nice, long, blanket-swaddled nap. So happy new year, from my calendar to yours.

This past year has been an absolute roller coaster ride. High points have included my first-ever visit to Australia (and winning the CAMPBELL AWARD OMG), publishing not one, but three books, under two different names, a good half-dozen conventions, ranging from the massive (San Diego forever!) to the small and intimate (Spocon rules!), winning my third Pegasus Award, and finishing three more books. I never said I was all that fond of sleep. Low points have included exhaustion, travel woes, illness, and throwing my back out. On the balance, I'm calling it a win.

Whether today is the beginning of your year, the beginning of your holiday season, or just another Monday, I wish all the best to you and yours. May your days be sweet, your fires be warm, and your skies be filled with stars.

Happy New Year.

Treat: a new interview is up at Papercut Reviews, and there's a chance to win a signed copy of either Rosemary and Rue or An Artificial Night. So whether you're a new reader or a long-time friend of the series, you can maybe win the book that's right for you!

Treat: Cory Doctorow has posted his thoughts on this year's Hugo Awards, and has some really sweet things to say about my acceptance speech. It's nice that other people remember it. I barely do. I was sort of out to lunch that day.

Treat: Katie Babs has posted about the New York Comic Con, and has a picture of a rare public Mira Grant sighting. The lovely Miss Mira is neither covered in gore nor decapitating anyone, which makes this picture doubly rare.

And today's big treat, which comes better late than never, I give you the September 2010 issue of Geek Speak magazine. Why? Because, well, it includes a fantastic interview with me (conducted in Australia, no less), which asks me a lot of fun things I don't get asked very often, a cracking good review of An Artificial Night, and a sweet, passionately lovely review of AussieCon IV, including, yes, my Campbell win. Seriously, I was like, 30% of this issue, it's awesome.

Those are your treats for this lovely Halloween morning. Stay safe tonight, and remember, always check your candy.

...to bring the harvest home.

Today is the first of October, the last month of the year (as reckoned by some calendars, including the one I elect to keep). The leaves are turning; the heat is fading; the migratory birds are moving on. The monarch butterflies have already left for their long trek down the California coast to Mexico, where they'll spend the winter on sunny beaches, dreaming of Santa Cruz. In the fields, the corn and pumpkins are coming in, along with the late-season tomatoes and the sweetest apples. The cats are putting their warmest coats on, preparing themselves for frozen nights ahead. Fall is finally here.

I am delighted beyond all measure.

I've always been an autumn girl. I love the smell of fallen leaves, the smell of rain either coming or just barely past, the smell of bonfires burning in the near distance. I love the cries of the crows as they call each other to treasure, and the mournful wail of the coyotes in the hills, singing summer to its rest. Persephone has taken off her summer dresses and hung up the apron she wears when she works her summer job—I always assume she works at an ice cream parlor, I don't know exactly why—and is making her way back to Hades, back to her husband, back to her home. The seasons are turning, and for a little while, I get to go as Persephone goes, because this time of the year...this time of the year is my home.

Many of my friends are summer girls. They like the heat and the green and the flowers everywhere. I like a lot of things about the summer—I like strawberries and lizards and the ability to walk for miles without carrying an umbrella—but summer's not my home. A few of my friends are winter girls. They like the cold and the white and the taste of frost. I like a lot of things about the winter—I like cocoa and warm blankets and the taste of peppermint in everything—but winter's not my home, either.

The first of October is always wonderful, because it's like opening a book I've read before that still manages to be different every single time. Welcome back, October. I couldn't be happier to see you.

Welcome to the fall.

1. My website is currently down. Thanks to everyone who's pointed that out thus far today (and that's a sincere thanks—I needed to know, and better multiple people tell me than no one tells me). My webmaster is still asleep, because he's a lucky bastard, so I'll check in with him when he gets up. For now, site fall down, go boom. No clue why.

2. Oddly, this has come up lately, so...I try to answer all comments on this journal. Because my LJ inbox goes newest-to-oldest, when I get behind, newer comments wind up getting answered first, just so I don't miss any. I swear I'm not ignoring you if I haven't answered you yet, I just haven't answered you yet. It's all very recursive.

3. Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts. Yet another thing that I eat so that you don't have to. (I mean, they taste like pumpkin pie. Sort of. If it were being made by a robot who'd never tasted real pumpkin pie, but was really, really trying, really, really hard, and is now rusted from the shame of failure.)

4. The robot has never known love.

5. Things that are surprisingly classy: K-Mart's Halloween shirt selection for this year. I mean, who knew, right? But they have some lovely fall-themed stuff that manages to be seasonal, yet tasteful, and doesn't make me look like a house. Everybody wins! Especially me, as I enjoy bedecking my breasts with appliqued candy corn.

6. Places that currently have signed copies of my books, and will do mail-order: Borderlands Books in San Francisco. Other Change of Hobbit in Berkeley. Places that currently do not have signed copies of my books: pretty much everywhere else.

7. I'm attempting to finalize the liner notes source file for Wicked Girls, which means lots of cross-referencing and looking things up. Like many things in life, making an album is infinitely more complicated than it seems at first glance.

8. I fly to New York one week from today. This means I'm going to be scrambling to catch up with everything before I go, and then probably not posting much for about a week. I promise I will not be eaten by a grue.

9. Summer is spewing its last gasps all over the Bay Area, resulting in my wearing less clothing in September than I did in August. There is something very wrong here.

10. I feel a rant about holidays coming on. But not until I've had more caffeine.

How's by you?

10. It's Friday! And that means that tomorrow is Saturday, which further means that it's finally time for me to have a book event at the Other Change of Hobbit! Conveniently located next to Ashby BART, spacious, and full of neat things, this is one of my favorite bookstores. You should totally come.

9. Karen Healey (I know, right?) has a poll for the best moment of WorldCon 2010/Aussiecon IV, and yes, my squeaky acceptance of the Campbell Award is currently in the lead. Which is the sort of thing that makes me blink and cry a little. But in the good way, I promise! Also, John Scalzi licking stuff.

8. After our horrible "oh crap the house is full of fleas" experience this summer, everything seems to have settled down. Alice's belly-fur is growing back, no one's trying to claw their own flesh off, and our strict regimen of flea powdering the carpets and pouring poison on the cats is keeping the blood-suckers away. Thank the Great Pumpkin.

7. SHARKTOPUS! Tomorrow night on SyFy! Because Coyote loves me and wants me to be happy.

6. By the same measure, have you seen Jane Austin's Fight Club? Because seriously, this video is love. (Technically safe for work, if you're allowed to watch videos at work and feel like doing some potentially awkward explaining about why all those girls are smacking the crap out of each other.)

5. Resident Evil: Afterlife actually doesn't suck. I know, I'm as surprised as you are. Sort of tickled, too, but mostly just surprised. It's not as good as Resident Evil: Apocalypse, but then, what is?

4. Jean Grey is still dead.

3. Things that are back on the air: Glee, Fringe, Big Bang Theory, Bones, and America's Next Top Model. Things that have managed to stick the landing in their season finales: Rizzoli and Isles, Leverage, Unnatural History, and Warehouse 13. Things that make me happy: watching too much television.

2. Despite my currently perennially delayed posting schedule (curse you, Australia, and your lack of Internet), the latest iteration of the Traveling Circus and Snake-Handling Show went well, and we all had a fantastic time. Plus, the bookstore now has signed books, and that makes everything wonderful.

...and the best thing about today...

1. Welcome to fall.

What's awesome about your Friday?

Dear Lilly and Alice;

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

Annoyed,
Your human.

*

Dear My Little Pony collection;

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

Spooked,
Your collector.

*

Dear retail outlets of the world;

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

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

Just a thought.

Respectfully,
Your customer.

*

Dear candy corn;

Om nom nom nom nom.

Nom,
Your consumer.

*

Dear Great Pumpkin;

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

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

Trick or treat,
Seanan.

Dear Great Pumpkin;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I remain your faithful Halloween girl,
Seanan.

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

(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 )

Yesterday, I was sitting on BART reading the absolutely fantastic new book, I am Not a Serial Killer [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] by Dan Wells. It has blood splatter all over the cover. That's how you know it's quality.

Anyway, I was happily reading away when the train pulled into Embarcadero Station and a fairly generic-looking white male of approximately my age got on and took the seat beside me. He was very...standard issue, really. Brown hair, no visible blemishes, not handsome, not ugly, just normal. He was wearing an equally generic-looking gray suit, the kind that doesn't make you go "Wow, that guy's sharp" or "Wow, that guy needs to have a talk with his tailor." He was just normal.

We rode "together" (as in, crammed into the same two-person seater) to the Downtown Berkeley stop, where he got up, smiled pleasantly at me, nodded toward my book, and said, "I am."

And then he got off the train.

Had that been my stop, I think there's a very good chance I would have decided to ride to Colma, rather than disembarking. But the book is excellent, and I bet that, for most people, it doesn't come bundled with a maybe-joking-maybe-I-should-lock-the-doors stranger. Brrr.

You may have heard me raving about an anthology called The Living Dead [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], a collection of some of the finest zombie fiction I've ever seen. I read it, I loved it, I told everyone I know who likes zombies that they should join me in buying, reading, and loving it.

Skip to the present, where John Joseph Adams—the original anthologist—has been putting together a sequel, The Living Dead 2, featuring still more of the finest zombie fiction around. The official announcement of the book's table of contents is here, along with the book's truly awesome cover art. The preliminary cover copy:

"Two years ago, readers eagerly devoured The Living Dead. Publisher's Weekly named it one of the Best Books of the Year, and Barnes & Noble.com called it 'The best zombie fiction collection ever.' Now acclaimed editor John Joseph Adams is back for another bite at the apple—the Adam's apple, that is—with forty-three more of the best, most chilling, most thrilling zombie stories anywhere, including virtuoso performances by zombie fiction legends Max Brooks (World War Z, The Zombie Survival Guide), Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead), and David Wellington (Monster Island)."

Pretty exciting, huh? But maybe my excitement seems a little odd. After all, I love David Wellington ("Good People" in this volume), Robert Kirkman ("Alone, Together"), and Jonathan Maberry ("Zero Tolerance"). And yes, there's a new Kelley Armstrong story in this book ("Last Stand"). So why am I so thrilled?

Because Mira Grant's new short story, "Everglades," will be making its debut in this volume. Oh, yeah. Not only am I going to be in the sequel to the best zombie anthology ever, I'm going to do it on a table of contents with Kelley Armstrong.

I win at universe.

The Living Dead 2 will be out in September, or you can pre-order your copy now.

Zombies!

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

Dear Great Pumpkin;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I remain your faithful Halloween girl,
Seanan.

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

I sometimes wonder if horror directors go to bed at night dreaming that someday, one of their movies will become a classic; someday, one of their movies will spawn an iconic monster that people will be screaming over for generations to come. Sadly, most of them won't make it. Even the ones who create a truly iconic villain won't necessarily get an iconic monster, because an iconic monster must be somehow generic enough to be used and abused by others, even as the person who first brought it to the screen is generally credited for its creation. The werewolf, the mummy, the vampire, even the mad scientist...they all had to start somewhere. Sure, most iconic horror movie monsters existed before the movies that gave them a terrifying life, but it's the cinematic realities that we remember. At least until the lights go out.

George Romero set out to make a creepy little movie with a social commentary and a shoestring budget. He succeeded in making history.

The concept of the ghoul or walking corpse has existed for centuries—maybe for as long as mankind has been aware that death exists—but it wasn't until Romero that it shambled into the modern age. Night of the Living Dead opened the doors to a new sub-genre of horror, a shambling, biting, hungry sub-genre that wouldn't rest until it had consumed the world. Zombies don't need sleep. They're already dead.

Without Romero, we wouldn't have Night of the Comet, Slither, Night of the Creeps, the Evil Dead trilogy, a large portion of Rob Zombie's musical catalog, or the Zombie Prom episode of Wizards of Waverly Place. We wouldn't have my own Feed, and that would make me a very sad girl indeed. George Romero changed the world. Maybe he did it on purpose, maybe he did it by accident. In the end, it doesn't really matter. He did it.

Here's to you, George Romero. And when you die, we're feeding your corpse into a wood chipper. Just to be sure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was a contest on Twitter earlier this week, wherein those of us who had nothing better to do with our time tried to compose complete, if very short, stories involving serial killers in order to win a book about a serial killer. I don't think I won, but wow did I have a lovely time, and as exercises in brevity go, this one was awesome. I give you...serial killer party!

"Corn mazes are full of shadows and, at Halloween, full of screams. She moves amongst artificial monsters, natural and sharp."

"Some like the personal touch: razors, throats, the copper taste of blood. Others think larger. Don't drink the water."

"They always blame the men with the axes, not the little girls who inexplicably survive. Beware the ones in the red hoods."

"Every time Jean Grey dies, I kill a redhead and set the body on fire. They just killed Emma Frost. Time for the freezer."

"Tapeworm eggs easily survive the blender. My friends love my protein shakes, and they all die thin and oh-so-pretty."

"Horror movie extras often go missing. Everyone thinks they're lazy or drunk. No one notices the blood on the caterer's hands."

"Who stalked who was open to debate. One had a razor; the other a roll of duct tape. It was either love or killing time."

"Murder is like Chinese food. An hour later you're hungry again. Waitresses in Chinese restaurants often walk home alone."

I am sometimes way, way too easily amused, I swear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guess what came out on DVD today?

There is so much love.

Behold! The totally awesome chimera_fancies is doing a Halloween pendant sale! Thirty-two amazing, unique bits of fairy tale art are available now for your delight and enjoyment.

I would buy them all if I could. Check out the link to see for yourself why.

SHINY!

So I recently agreed to autograph and mail back a book that was mailed to me, because hey, it seemed like a cool thing to do, and nobody had ever asked me to do that before (and since the book was being mailed with the cost of postage enclosed, it's not like I was giving up a day's Diet Dr Pepper for the sake of randomly mailing things). I was rewarded by the book's owner—also a Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab fan, albeit one who does not share my adoration of their pumpkin perfumes—enclosing surprise BPAL. Specifically, surprise Pumpkin Patch 2006. SURPRISE!

The 2006 Pumpkin Patch was my Very First BPAL. It was a gift from Kate, who thought I would like it. She was right, as my shelf o' bottles of weird perfume can now attest. I bought the 2007 Pumpkin Patch for myself. And the 2008 Pumpkin Patch. And recently, thanks to a "please help me buy more perfume"-based art sale, the 2009 Pumpkin Patch. Oh, and I have a bottle of Jack, and a bottle of Pumpkin Queen. So, counting my new bottles, and the extra bottle of Pumpkin-with-Pomegranate that I got Just In Case (tm), I have...

...twenty-nine bottles of pumpkin-based perfume. Not counting my assorted imps and decants and suchlike.

I think this is sufficient pumpkin perfume to make my declaration of being Pumpkin Queen of California entirely believable, and actually a bit of an unnecessary statement. Because I am so the Pumpkin Queen. I have the spooky perfume to prove it.

This past weekend, I went to see my friends Paul and Beckett in Fremont, largely so that Paul and I could make some beautiful music together. (Paul does a lot of the chording for my songs, because Paul is wonderful that way. I love Paul.) While I was hanging out with Beckett, she showed me some of the gorgeous carved foam pumpkins she's been working on. These things are truly amazing. Don't believe me? Check her Etsy store:

artbeco.etsy.com

They're beautiful, they're ornate, they're sturdy, and they're all basically unique, because even when she uses the same pattern on two pumpkins, they'll come out slightly different. Best of all, they're the sort of thing that can survive for years and years, making your Halloween decorations something special and more fun than one more generic jack-o-lantern. She's still taking orders for this season, and I hugely recommend giving her Etsy shop a look. Not just for pumpkins—she has lots of other kick-ass stuff for sale—but I'm a simple girl, I know what I like, and what I like is pumpkins.

Halloween is coming fast!

Here in California, the blackberry brambles are putting out their last, sweetest berries, the ones that taste like an entire summer crammed into less than a single bite of fruit. The season's scant burden of tomatoes is ripe and colored like a thousand bonfires, coming in from the fields a bushel at a time. The butterflies are migrating down the coast, toward warmer climes; the department stores are dressing themselves in orange and black, like a season of mourning for our departing monarchs. Stray cats sun themselves later into the afternoon, because it takes that much longer for the concrete to warm up.

Summer is ending.

I always feel a little wistful this time of year. Autumn is my favorite season; I love the colors of the world, the constant taste of rain and bonfires in the air, and the seasonal ice cream flavors that inevitably cluster in the supermarkets. I love Halloween. I love the buildup and the teardown and everything else that comes with it. But still, the summer's ending. The rains are coming, the snows are coming, the harvest is coming in. Lily Fair only holds her court for a few months at a time, and then it's Snow White's turn for days on days, and then Rose Red again. We have so little time here, it makes me wistful to know that no matter how much I love it, it never lasts.

The orb weaver spiders are building their webs against the winter. The squirrels are squirreling away everything they can. The crows are singing songs of the cold days to come. And I'm watching my temporary country come around again, and I have my passport, and I'm an autumn girl; it's been too long since I've been home.

Dear Great Pumpkin;

With Halloween fast approaching, I felt it important to write and let you know that I have continued to be a very good girl. I have offered advice to people who asked for it, and not offered advice to people who didn't want it. I have allowed others to sample my candy corn without removing their fingers. I have hugged my friends and told my loved ones that I love them. I have not invoked any ancient evils to rise from their graves in the great corn maze and destroy an unsuspecting populace. I have made all my deadlines, even the ones I wanted to miss. And the swine flu still isn't my fault. So you see, I have been a very good girl, especially by my standards.

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

* Wonderful, easy, successful book release parties during which no one sets anybody else on fire. Please, Great Pumpkin, grant me two glorious nights, filled with wonder and joy and lots and lots and lots of book sales, because it turns out that I'm very nervous about this whole thing. Please let me be a Halloweentown Cinderella at the October Ball, only without the glass slippers, and let it all be wonderful. Also, please let there be lots of cookies. I'm a big fan of cookies.

* An easy, or at least not insanely painful, editing process on The Brightest Fell, which is definitely going to need a lot of editing before I hand it over to The Agent, much less The Editor. My first drafts are always excitingly messy, so I'm not particularly worried—the fact that it's book five, and book one just came out, means I have some breathing room—but I really would like breeze through the rewrites, just this once, so that I can get on to Ashes of Honor, preferably before A Local Habitation hits shelves. I will find it much easier to sleep once books four through six are put safely down, and when I sleep, I'm not destroying the world. You like the world, don't you, Great Pumpkin?

* Once again, I must request continued health for my cats, without whom the entire universe would be at risk from my unstoppable wrath. Alice is growing up gloriously beautiful, Great Pumpkin, although I continue to suspect that you may be her actual father (it's either you or an otter, and I oddly find you substantially more plausible). Lilly is continuing to do well with her new "sibling," and seeing the two of them rampaging through my house, destroying things at random, fills my heart with joy.

* Clean, timely page proofs for A Local Habitation and Feed, since right now, I am a blonde without deadlines. I do remember that I promised you three short stories with the Fighting Pumpkins cheerleading squad, as well as the origin stories for Hailey and Scaredy, in exchange for the trilogy sale. I keep my promises. Watch this space for further developments, Great Pumpkin, and thank you again.

* A beautiful fall season. You like the autumn as much as I do, Great Pumpkin, because it is in the autumn that the world truly honors and appreciates your glory. So please, talk to the weather, and make sure that this autumn is one that we'll remember for years to come. And not because the entire state falls into the ocean, or catches fire, or is invaded by flesh-eating locusts from beyond the veil of time. Make this a beautiful, wonderful season, Great Pumpkin, and make it a treat without any tricks. Please.

* Please help me to finish Discount Armageddon in a satisfying, respectful, ass-kicking way, hopefully involving lots of explosions and snappy one-liners. I really want Verity and her family to find a home (and not just so Alice can finally find Thomas), and that means I need to get past the first chapter of their story. What I have so far is actually pretty solid. Please make it amazing.

I remain your faithful Halloween girl,
Seanan.

PS: You really did amazingly with the house for the Newsflesh trilogy. Thank you so much. You da squash.

I went to sleep last night with a puffy blue Maine Coon guarding my doorway and a sleek blue Siamese stretched next to me on the bed. The Siamese was using a plush blue-ringed octopus as a pillow, and back-dropped by Halloween pillowcases. When I woke, the Maine Coon was puddled on the bright pumpkin-fucker orange cat tree.

I have the life I always said I'd have someday.

Oh, it has complications I didn't necessarily bank on when I was plotting it out, since I didn't understand things like "herniated disks" and "actually having too many books" when I was nine, but for the most part? I sleep in a room that looks like the inside of a pumpkin, I have four shelves of My Little Ponies and two shelves loaded with stuffed toys, I own so many books that re-reading steadily for a year wouldn't mean getting through them all, and I have both the cat I've always wanted (Lilly) and the cat I never knew I needed (Alice). And I write books, and people read them, and it's amazing.

For example, kyrielle read Rosemary and Rue.

I was chatting with my friend Adam last night (his books, How to Get Suspended and Influence People [Amazon] and Pirates of the Retail Wasteland [Amazon] are delightfully accurate flashbacks to my own days in the public school honors system), and he said that reviews never cease to be scary, since you don't know until you read them whether they'll be positive, negative, or written by angry mushroom people from Dimension X. But they never cease to be exciting, either.

Life is pretty damn good. How's yours?

1. I have mailed the first three "delivery by post office" chapbooks. They're going to, respectively, California, New Hampshire, and...Australia. Sometimes the distance my work has managed to travel genuinely astonishes me. (I'm still giggling over how fast the chapbooks went away once I posted them. Zoom!)

2. I have mailed a restock of Stars Fall Home off to the nice people at CDBaby. (My first two CDs—Pretty Little Dead Girl and Stars Fall Home—are now distributed entirely by People Who Are Not Me. This is for the sake of my sanity, as well as for the sake of the folks at my local post office. You can still order Red Roses and Dead Things through my website, but that isn't going to last for long.)

3. As part of my "do all your damn mailing already" campaign, I'm going to be mailing any pending CD orders on Monday, when I mail the prizes for the LOLtest (voting is still open through tomorrow, so please vote). I currently have three CDs in "confirmed and good to ship" status. If you've ordered and have never received a "payment confirmed" email, please ping me so we can try to fix it. If you haven't ordered, now is basically the perfect time to do it and be semi-guaranteed quick delivery of your CD. (I say "semi" because I'm the Rain King, not the Mail Queen.)

4. In other news, Piglet mailed me candy corn. Piglet is now my new best friend.

It's good to be the Princess of Halloween.

5:15 AM: Wake up to the shrieking blare of the alarm clock. Reaffirm desire to purchase one of those nifty little iPod-dock alarm clocks after DucKon, so that I can be woken up by something that doesn't make me want to lunge for the nearest blunt object and commit a homicide. I'm a light enough sleeper not to need an alarm clock that could be used to notify the UN of the impending zombie apocalypse, thank you very much. Get dressed, get packed, get out the door.

7:00 AM: Arrive at desk in San Francisco, and settle in for a day of being as productive as I possibly can when I'm leaving the office at one to deal with scary dental things. I am surprisingly productive, largely thanks to my love for the sacred to-do list. If not for the sacred to-do list, I would be a whimpering heap under the bed by now. All hail the sacred to-do list, and all hail Franklin-Covey, the manufacturers of my planner and its various accessories. Seriously. These people save my ass daily.

1:00 PM: Leave the office. Head for the train. Take the train to Borderlands Books, where my usual impeccable timing means a) I miss Jude (rats!), b) the naked cats aren't in the store (double rats!), and c) Cary—in addition to being the only employee present, which reduces the viability of chatting—is in the middle of inventory, and thus borders on negatively social. Purchase several books, because I am me. One of these is a paperback titled Denver Is Missing, by D.F. Jones, who also wrote Earth Has Been Found. Nobody ever gets to call me bad at titles ever ever ever ever again.

4:00 PM: Go to dentist, who prods me repeatedly while going "Does this hurt?" Nothing hurts before it gets prodded. Now...well, pain is annoying but endurable, I suppose.

5:00 PM: Arrive home. Update LJ before preparing for an evening of edits, fuzzy cats, and really lousy horror movies.

Halloween is every day.

* I'm still taking pre-orders for the new album, Red Roses and Dead Things (the album details and track list are here, and will shortly include a cover graphic; you can order there, or by going directly to the order form). The tracks went to my mastering engineer, so we'll be closing the pre-orders shortly. If you wanted to sponsor the album (and thus be named in the liner notes), now's the time to do it. In other news, Jeff Bohnhoff is a golden god, Chris Mangum is a golden god, and I am a tired bunny.

* The finished manuscript for Late Eclipses of the Sun (Toby Daye, book four) has been turned in to my agent for review. I call this 'making sure she doesn't have any spare time over the holidays,' because I'm just considerate like that. I'm about a hundred and eighty pages into book five at this point, so I guess misery just loves company. (Actually, I'm not miserable at all. I'm ecstatic. But that's also because I'm insane.)

* Updates to my website are continuing; they just slowed down a little bit because My Web Dude is also My Album Liner Notes Design Dude, and even all his awesome can't do eighteen things at the same time (and I am not his day job). Watch for FAQs and the 'Thoughts On Writing' landing page, coming soon.

* The part of my brain that never really believes I'm doing enough wants me to do a lengthy, illustrated essay on being a good convention guest. I think my brain is out to get me, I really, really do.

* I'm prepping for my holiday trip to Seattle by making packing lists, mailing presents, and searching in vain for a better method of mailing comic strips. I may have actually found one. It just requires...testing.

* I am wearing socks covered in grinning jack-o-lanterns. Halloween is every day.

That's all for now in the world of me. What's up and new in the world of you?

So Mary and I have found this poem:

Spos'n the witches began to witch,
And you didn't know which witch was witch?
Well, spos'n?

Spos'n a h'ant appeared to you,
An' an old black rooster up and crew?
Well, spos'n?

Spos'n a pump-kin pumped hot flames,
From a place, you know, what nobody names?
Well, spos'n?

Spos'n a great big bug-a-boo
Reached out his long sharp claws for you?
Well, spos'n?

We both believe that we've seen it before, and that it is thus probably traditional, or a very close variant on something that is traditional. Lo, I beg of thee: can you find the source of this poem? We've sought. We've searched. We've...mostly told bad jokes and eaten candy corn.

Help!

Welcome to Halloween! The most wonderful day of the year. I adore Halloween and all of its fixings, and this year, spending the holiday in Alabama (rather than my native California), I've been lucky enough to experience some truly awesome things, like a hay maze, a giant bin of corn, and the spooky scarecrow trail. Tonight, after we hand out candy to all and sundry, we're going to be heading for a haunted corn maze, which I am assured will be spectacularly awesome.

Mary asked me yesterday when my love of Halloween and pumpkins and all such things began, and I replied, after a relatively brief pause for thought, that it started basically at birth. I've always loved Halloween, just as long as I knew there was a Halloween to love. It never occurred to me to be afraid of it. Afraid of Halloween? Might as well be afraid of Christmas, or Easter, or Arbor Day! Only none of those holidays were anywhere near as fantastically amazing as sweet, sweet Halloween.

I'm sitting in a warm kitchen, surrounded by color-changing trees, eating candy corn and doing my administrative catch-up for the day, and I couldn't possibly be happier. Here's hoping that everyone has a fantastic Halloween, however you choose to celebrate the day, and if you hear a funny noise in the cornfield outside, no, it isn't Johnny.

It's me.

My efforts to clear all the built-up comments on my LJ (going through my inbox, responding to the ones that want responding to, making sure things are generally tidy) has just been thwarted by my utter and complete exhaustion. It doesn't help that I'm facing a jam-packed weekend of thrilling goodness, including...

* The first pumpkin patch of the season! More, the first pumpkin patch of the season with a small child! Because nothing says 'it's October now, honey,' like forcing my friend Michelle to wrestle me and Kaia in a field of giant orange squash.

* Trying to pass the 75 page mark in the current end-to-end rewrite of Late Eclipses of the Sun! Because it is absolutely vital that the fourth Toby book be finished before the first one is available in stores, don't you know. Behold my crazy. It's definitely beholding you.

* Making progress on my Grant's Pass story! I swear, if I didn't think the editor would hunt me down with a chainsaw, I'd consider dropping out of this anthology, because my story is cursed. Seriously, seriously cursed. I work on it, I get Martian death plague. Finishing it may unleash the pandemic. If that happens, blame Jennifer.

* My monthly Firefly RPG session! This week, Cherry probably shoots something (or blows something up), Archer makes a snarky comment, Levi is vague and priestly, and Jerrika eats something humans were never meant to put in their faces. Bet you a dollar I'm right.

* A good friend's birthday party at some BBQ joint I've never heard of! Now, I am not a big eater of meat. Or vegetables. Or anything beyond candy corn, tomato sandwiches, and pumpkin products. This is going to be hysterical.

So yeah, I'm going to go and fall over now. I hope you all have jam-packed weekends filled with excitement and fun, and while I may not be around until Monday, I promise not to unleash my obedient dinosaur army without warning you.