The night before New Year's Eve, Thomas stopped eating or drinking. He was listless, and had no interest in being snuggled or engaging in favorite activities, like playing with the water. The morning of New Year's Eve, we called around until we found an open vet who could see him right away. They diagnosed him with constipation and a mild obstruction, gave him laxatives and anti-nausea drugs, and sent him home.

He got worse.

New Year's Day, we went to a vet closer to home, where he received an enema, more anti-nausea medication, and a second examination. By this point, he had lost quite a bit of weight, and was visibly unwell. Still, he rallied after treatment, and was sent home.

He got worse.

Yesterday, we were finally referred to the emergency vet, where an ultrasound revealed a mass obstructing his small intestine. Surgery happened that night. There was no necrosis, and the mass (a congealed, compressed hairball) was successfully removed. He ran a fever for some time afterward, but this responded well to antibiotics, and went down. He was not sent home.

Thomas is currently hospitalized for recovery. His digestive system is not working properly; he has not had any food in four days, although he is able to receive subcutaneous fluids. He is not out of the woods. The woods are dark and deep and full of wolves, and I am so scared, and he is so sick. My baby boy is so sick. I don't have children: I have my cats. They are the world to me, and I am so afraid right now. So please. If I am quiet, if I am slow, if I am a little off from what you expect, be kind to me.

I am waiting for the sky to fall.

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

Home.

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

Home.

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

Home.

There's no place I'd rather be.

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?

Slasher Chicks shirts.

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

But wait, there's more.

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

More old ARCs!

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

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

Shirt status.

Still not on my doorstep.

Monster High status.

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

Cat status.

Puffy.

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

Today is Thomas's fourth birthday. We have celebrated with treats and petting and much indulgence, all of which he has accepted as his absolute due. He doesn't really know what "happy birthday" means, but as it comes with good things, he really doesn't care.

He's enormous now. He has vast, spatulate paws that can work a doorknob, and a high, chirpy voice, like he's gargling songbirds. He likes to be held while I'm at the computer, just so he can prove that he is more important than the tappy box. He enjoys watching videos of birds, and will sometimes sing to them, because he is a bird too. He is my best boy, and I can't imagine life without him.

Happy birthday, Thomas.

We're gonna enjoy a whole lot more.

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

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

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

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

More to come.

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

Shipping.

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

Post-Hogswatch cleanup.

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

Prepping for Boskone!

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

My icon.

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

Cats.

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

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

Do you wanna build a snowman?

Or ride our bikes around the hall?

Today is Thomas's third birthday, making him irrevocably, and in even the eyes of the most generous vet, a cat. He does not believe this. He thinks he's still the world's most super-sized kitten, as evidenced by the way he draped across my shoulder and attacked my braid this morning. He is goofy, insouciant, and utterly shameless, willing to flop and trill in the most undignified manner if it means he gets a little extra attention.

He is perfect.

When I first brought him home, he was all legs and tail and mischief, and could easily fit in my backpack. Now he is legs and tail and mischief and mass, heavy enough that picking him up is something to be considered carefully before it is done. The small orange stripes on his muzzle give him a permanent Cheshire grin, a smile with a cat attached. I can't imagine life without him.

So happy birthday to my puffy boy, to the first boy-cat I've had since my beloved Seymour died when I was fourteen. You are the best of brats, and I shall love you always, and all I ask is that you live forever. Okay?

Okay.

T-shirt update.

Shirts are being mailed! But in the interests of not being stoned to death by the other people who use my small local post office, they're being mailed in batches of twenty to thirty at a time. What does this mean? It means that if you have not yet received your shirt, it probably hasn't been mailed, but is instead sitting in a large sack in my living room. If you ordered three or more shirts, there is a good chance that your order is coming in more than one envelope. Breathe deeply, and it will be with you soon.

CDs and stuff.

I have sent a restock of both Wicked Girls and Red Roses and Dead Things to CD Baby. I estimate that I have roughly a hundred copies of Red Roses left, after which the CD will be out of print. I'm not currently planning a reprint, so, y'know, get it while it's available.

My cats are weird.

This morning, Thomas decided that he was going to accompany me to work, and attempted to accomplish this by stuffing himself into my backpack. It astonishes and terrifies me that he can fit inside my backpack; he's a lot of cat, and there are other things inside that bag. But he did it! And if he'd remembered to pull his tail inside, he might have made my day a lot more exciting than I ever wanted it to be.

The Pirates of Emerson.

Just a reminder to my Bay Area friends: the Pirates of Emerson have opened their annual haunted theme park at the Alameda County Fairgrounds. Five awesome haunted houses, two mazes, the Bumpkin Patch, live entertainment, games, and more, all presented by spooky-ass pirates who leer and go "arrrrrrr" whenever provoked. It's a lot of fun, it's super reasonably priced for what you get, and I highly recommend it.

(I do not, however, recommend it for kids under twelve, or even for easily frightened kids under thirteen. You can still take them if you want, but you can't blame me for the night terrors and bedwetting that may follow.)

Best shirt ever.

My friend Craig sent me an official CDC Zombie Preparedness Task Force shirt, and it is the best shirt ever. I am the happiest disease/zombie fangirl in the whole wide world right now.

One con more...

I have only one convention left in 2012: WindyCon in Chicago, this coming November. After that, I am blissfully home free for the (admittedly short) remainder of the year. Which means a) if you wanted to catch me at a con, Windy is your last chance this year, and b) I might actually take a nap.

Although that's unlikely.

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!

Well, it's official: as of this past Sunday (when I was a bad monkey, and had abandoned my beloved cats for the dubious comforts of Comic-Con), Thomas Price Lynn Rhymer Taylor McGuire, my blue classic tabby and white male Maine Coon, is two years old. This means he has ceased to be a kitten, and has become an official cat. Not that he seems to have noticed. Most of his time is still spent racing around the house like a loon, collapsing in my arms and purring loudly, and demanding to be fed. With any luck, this is his adult personality, and I have finally fulfilled my childhood dream of having a twenty-pound kitten.

The cats, all three, are still very clingy and unsettled about my recent trip to San Diego, which went on rather longer than any of them wanted it to, and has resulted in my spending my nights beneath roughly eighty pounds of fluff. This is why I am going to be slaughtered in my sleep Sunday night, since I'm leaving work early today and flying straight to Portland. Alas. On the plus side, I intend to have a good time while I'm there, and I'm only gone for three nights this time. Maybe they won't notice.

...no, that's silly. They're going to eat me.

(Portland is not a public event, by the way, which is why it's not listed on my Appearances page. Always check there if you want to know if I'm going somewhere for social and sharable reasons.)

Naturally, I am totally exhausted, which has led to things like poor Vixy getting told all about the Tyrannosaurus leech. (She took it better than Shawn did when I told him about the axolotl.) I've managed to shower, do laundry, and pack a suitcase that's actually cleared for flight, containing no weapons of any kind. This is an accomplishment in my current condition, and I want you all to be very, very proud of me.

San Diego was lovely, and I'm going to keep promising to write a con report right up until too much time has passed and I forget about it. (This fate has claimed so very many trips in recent years. Disney World anyone?) Right now, I'm going to take a few deep breaths and prepare to plunge back into the fray. Because it never, never ends.

See you when I get home!

Thomas has something he'd like to show you, and since I try to go along with my cats when they have strong desires (I don't want them to chew my face off in the night), I'm going to let him be the one to display the pretty this time. The pretty, pretty, pretty.

Pretty!



He's very attached to that copy, but I have several more, and this is your opportunity to win one. Because seriously, the ARCs of Ashes of Honor are flat-out gorgeous, and would grace the very finest of homes. So...

To enter today's drawing, post a comment on this entry. The entry itself, not as a reply to someone else. I will give it through the weekend, and will select a winner via random number generator on Sunday night. Now, the important part: you really will have 24 hours to get me your info if you win, because then I'm leaving for San Diego, and will not be shipping anything until I get back. So if you want an ARC, watch this space Sunday night!

Open to international winners, but please identify your country of origin in the comment if non-US, so I'll know I need to pick up customs forms while I wait for your address.

Game on!

Thomas says that it's time for an open thread, because I have used up all of my erudite and coherent, and have been staring at my screen, not actually doing anything, for hours. This time would be better spent petting the cat, ergo, it needs to stop. So here is a picture of Thomas cuddling his beloved plush Perry the Platypus to get you started. Nothing starts a conversation like a Maine Coon hugging a secret animal agent.

But anyway. Open thread! Say anything! Woo! Thomas says so.



Comment amnesty is on for this post, but I will be reading, and may reply anyway, because I'm wacky like that.

Peace out, y'all.

How I want to be right now:

"OH YEAH I AM GOING TO SEATTLE I AM GOING TO ROCK SOME HOUSES AND MELT SOME FACES AND MAYBE IGNITE THE BIOSPHERE WOO!"

How I am right now:

"I need a nap. Or maybe some more caffeine...yeah. Caffeine would probably help. You know. If there are no naps to be had. Can I have that nap instead? Wait, I have to get on a plane? What? Is this optional? Can't I teleport? How about the Jaunt? Is that up and running yet? I promise to let you sedate me..."

So yeah. I am bound for Conflikt, where a) I will have a wonderful time, even as b) I will work my little blonde butt off, toting my laptop from room to room like the Ghost of Deadlines Past. There may be a certain amount of grumbling darkly and threatening to ignite the biosphere. Good times.

The cats did not approve of the reappearance of The Dread Suitcase; Thomas even tried to barricade me in my room this morning. He failed, on account of he may be a bonsai yeti, but I am a human, and hence much larger than he is. But hey, good show him for trying. Lilly just looked despondent, like she had been waiting for this day ever since I returned from Disney World. Sometimes I think Lilly is the smartest of the cats.

I don't know how much internet, if any, I'll have over the weekend; please don't burn down the internet while I'm gone, I'm still using it.

See you in Seattle!

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

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

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

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

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

Happy birthday to me.

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

Today is Thomas's first birthday! Yes. One year ago precisely, Thomas Price Lynn Rhymer Taylor McGuire was unleashed upon the world by Betsy Tinney at Pinecoon Maine Coons, who was kind enough to then let him come and live with me. In honor of his birthday, Thomas has been brushed, cooed over, given treats, and didn't get yelled at for sleeping on the counter.

And now...pictures.

( We cut because we care. Also because large graphics are never a good surprise, not even when they're pictures of beautiful kitties.Collapse )

Thomas can open doors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stupid cats.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, here you go:

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

1. I have been blazingly ill since Sunday afternoon, and spent most of yesterday and Monday in a cold medication haze. I am thus behind on LJ comments, email, snail mail, passenger pigeon mail, Facebook mail (well, I'm always behind on Facebook mail), sending out the mail, opening the mail, and anything else that required actual effort on my part. If you're waiting for a response from me, please, be patient. If your request is urgent, please, mail again. If I do not consider your request to be actually urgent, like you're asking for kitten pictures or something, I reserve the right to delete your email and scowl in your general direction.

2. Despite being blazingly ill, I managed to make my word counts on Blackout both days, and am on track to hit 100,000 words on April 23rd. This is good, since it means I may actually finish the book, you know, on time. I love finishing things on time. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and slightly less completely deranged.

3. Saturday night was GP's birthday party! I did not come home that night, as it was late and we were all exhausted and sort of drunk (and yes, this may have dealt my immune system the fatal blow). Thomas showed his disapproval by climbing onto my computer desk, gently nudging aside the dolls on the second shelf, pulling down the jar in which I store my earplugs, opening the jar, dumping out the earplugs, and eating half of them. I do not know why he is so obsessed with eating the damn things, but he's why I bought that jar in the first place. Now he shits little pink bullets, and looks smug.

4. My vet has confirmed that this won't hurt him, but is also sub-optimal. I have moved my earplugs.

5. The first draft of "Crystal Halloway, Girl Wonder, and the Terror of the Truth Fairy" is finished and being hacked at by the Machete Squad. This is seriously the most depressing, nihilistic story I think I've ever written. Which makes it appropriate that I wrote it while I was sick even unto death. This thing reads like the prologue to a Vertigo comic series.

6. I am not writing a Vertigo comic series. Unless, of course, DC asks me to.

7. I also got started on the first draft of "Rat-Catcher," a Tobyverse story set in London, in 1662 (yes, only a few years before the Great Fire, and the Great Plague). In it, a young Prince of Cats named Rand must stop playing theater cat at the Duke's Theater long enough to find a way to deal with his father, keep his sister from doing something monumentally stupid, and oh, right, maybe save the Cait Sidhe of London from a fate worse than death. Is this Tybalt's origin story? Why yes. Yes, it is.

8. Things already pulled from my research shelf in service of "Rat-Catcher": The Writer's Digest Guide to Character Naming (second edition), London: A Biography, Sex and Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, and The Wordsworth Dictionary of Shakespeare. Make of this what you will.

9. Being sick did allow me to catch up on some of my cache of SyFy Original Movies, including the second half of Meteor with Marla Sokoloff. This was a disturbingly good, surprisingly high-budget feature, especially for a SyFy Saturday. Also, not only were women competent and realistic characters, they didn't all die. Well done, SyFy. Keep up the good work.

10. Zombies are still love.

What's up with you?

LJ appears to be vaguely stable again, which is a nice change. I missed you, LJ! I know that blogging is dead, and it's the age of Farmville or the Tweet or whatever, and I'm on Facebook (technically) and Twitter (avidly), but my heart's true home is here, in Blogland, where I can write full sentences and punctuate them properly without worrying about the number of commas I use. I LOVE YOU, OXFORD COMMA.

Ahem. Anyway...

We're in a vague lull right now, which is nice, since it's letting me catch up on my word counts. I knocked out 2,000 words of Blackout last night, and then turned around and wrote almost as much on "Crystal Halloway, Girl Wonder, and the Truth Fairy's Curse," which sounds like a fluffy cross between Nancy Drew and every Harry Potter knock-off ever, but is, no shit, the most depressingly nihilistic thing I've written in years. Possibly ever. I made a giant spider cry. I have no regrets.

I do have a book event at the Borders in Roseville, California scheduled for next Saturday, and if you're local, it would be awesome if you could drop by. Borders events are much more low-key than the Traveling Circus, and sometimes it winds up just me, sitting at my little "in-store author" table, working on art cards and pretending that I'm not lonely. Help me not be lonely!

Speaking of being lonely, there's been, like, a hugenormous influx of people recently, and I honestly can't tell why. There was a little bump last week, when I posted about my decision to withdraw from Wicked Pretty Things, but since then, it's just been like, WHOA HOLY CRAP I DON'T HAVE THIS MANY PLATES. So if you're new here, hello! Welcome! Can you please tell me who you are and how you got here? I'm totally thrilled to have you, I just like to have some vague idea of what's going on. (Yeah, right. Like that's ever going to happen.)

In other news, water is wet, zombies are love, Jean Grey is still dead, and Thomas is rapidly approaching an improbable size.

What's new with you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9. Zombies are still love.

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

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

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

Behold:



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

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

I cannot brain today. I have the tired, and the office cold has decided to hang out in my head, making me slow and lurgy and reluctant to commit to anything more strenuous than sitting around my bedroom, not putting on pants.

So here is a picture of Thomas cuddling with Amberlee the velociraptor, intended to signal that this post is an open thread. Tell me things! Any sort of things you want. Also, I am declaring amnesty from my normal "answer all comments" policy. So I may answer comments on this thread, and I may not. Either way, my psychotically cute kitten will be snuggling with a dinosaur, and that proves that life is AWESOME.

Enjoy!

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

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

Reason #1:



Reason #2:



Reason #3:



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

Three days!

Item the first:

lilysea was one of our winners in the random book drawing, but had forgotten that she had already ordered a copy of Late Eclipses. So, because she is a glorious and generous soul, she has allowed me to draw a new winner! calico_reaction, you have won a copy of Late Eclipses of your very own. Please email me with your contact information, so that I can get your book into the mail. As always, you have twenty-four hours (although I may not pick again if you don't claim your prize, as I want to do my mailing this week).

Item the second:

All my cats share the same favorite toy, a fuzzy red squid on a stick from the Animal Planet line of cat toys. They made cat toys for like, six weeks, and then discontinued them, which is terrible, because their toys were AWESOME. The squid is the last survivor of the original batch, and is put carefully away when not in use, since otherwise the fur squad would turn it into so much cotton calimari.

Last night, Thomas and I had a good squid-swing, and I put the squid away, not noticing as I did that he was watching, intently, to see where it went. On a shelf. Six feet above the ground. Fifteen minutes later, I heard a loud clatter, and got up to see what was going on. Nothing appeared to have been knocked over; I shrugged and went back to watching Glee.

Clatter clatter clatter. Clatter. The hell? I got up again, and discovered that the clattering noise was the stick, banging against things, as Thomas proudly toted the squid around the house. I took it away. I put it away. Ten minutes later...

CLATTER.

Sigh.

So yeah. Maine Coons are a) capable of logic, and b) big enough that they can jump really bloody high when they want something. You have been warned.

So wow. February is more than halfway over, and I'm trying to clean everything up on my end of things, in the hopes that doing so will enable me to, you know, accomplish something for a change. Because I've just been sitting around doing nothing up until now. So...

1. All the damaged Wicked Girls CDs have been claimed, although some are still pending payment. It's highly unlikely that any more damaged CDs will show up; Mom and I have checked the boxes thoroughly at this point, and it looks like the unpleasant surprises are over. Thank the Great Pumpkin.

2. I am mailing the last of the paid-for "Wicked Girls" posters tomorrow. This means that, if you are waiting for a poster, you should have it in approximately a week (all the posters being mailed are going to US addresses). If you have requested a poster but not yet paid for it, you have ten days before I delete your name from the list, and release any held numbers back into the wild. If you're not sure whether you've paid or not, you can always contact me.

3. I'm going to be setting up my final pre-release giveaways over the next week or so. Finances are forcing me to restrict them to US addresses/international addresses only if you're willing to pay for postage. I'm really sorry about that. It's just that it costs me approximately three dollars to mail a book inside the US, and outside gets very spendy, very fast. Specific rules to come.

4. I'll doubtless be saying more about this later, but as we're getting into the period where people start getting excited about Deadline: I do not have ARCs. I am not going to have ARCs. Please don't ask me for them, please don't comment on other giveaway posts saying you'd take an ARC of Deadline instead of the stated prize, just please, please, don't. There are no ARCs of this book. I'm not holding out on you, I just don't got the goods.

...and that's our administrative junk for the night. Join me next week, when "administrative junk" will probably include port and drunkenly yelling at my rambunctious kitten.

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.

...the chewing.

I woke up this morning to find my iPod on the floor, still tethered to the computer. Okay, whatever. Things on the floor don't necessarily mean there's been feline intervention; last night I, personally, was responsible for my alarm clock, three pillows, a duvet, a stack of books, and three My Little Ponies hitting the floor. (Myopic author attempts to navigate to the bathroom in dark house without donning glasses, film at eleven.) So I didn't think much of it until I was walking to the bus stop, and discovered that I had no volume.

I smacked the iPod. I re-set my settings, which usually results in temporary deafness. I smacked the iPod again. And then, my sleep-addled brain finally reached the conclusion that maybe, just maybe, it would be a good idea to check the headphones. The just-bought-last-week headphones, which had no reason to be malfunctioning.

Well. No reason except for the part where they'd been chewed clean through in three different spots. Which is really a pretty good reason for them not to be transmitting sound, if you really think about it.

I muttered. I swore. I rode to San Francisco in silence, which was vexing, and proceeded straight into the nearest CVS, where twelve dollars united me with a brand-new pair of headphones that had not been eaten by a Maine Coon, and were thus happy to transmit sound if I wanted them to. I am now wrapped in the warm embrace of the new Christian Kane album, and thus less inclined to make mittens.

So let this be a reminder: Kittens chew on things. I always forget this in the long gaps between kittens, and then the kittens come into my life, and things get chewed all over again.

It's a damn good thing they're cute.

Dear Great Pumpkin;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I remain your faithful Halloween girl,
Seanan.

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

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



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

Have a great weekend!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kitten!

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

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

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

Anyway, here you go:

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