The brand-new, all-shiny MiraGrant.com is now live! Check it out, and be amazed by the shiny!

I am delighted with my site redesign, and hope you'll all like it just as much as I do.

So.

Apparently, something is wrong with the contact form, in that somewhere along the line (between it and my PA and me), some email is getting eaten. We don't know how, we don't know why, and most importantly, we don't know how much. We only know this is happening at all because I was able to confirm two instances of "I tried to contact you and it didn't go through." (One was resolved by resending with a different return email address. The other, we're not sure.)

Chris is working on a way to make sure this doesn't happen anymore. For right now, giveaways are going to have to be handled in a two-step authentication process, for which I am sorry: specifically, rather than saying "email me," I'm going to be saying "comment here and then email me immediately, so I can tell you if your email is not received." Inconvenient? Yes. Annoying? Yes. The only way I can continue to do giveaways until this problem is resolved? Sadly, yes.

I am deeply sorry for any inconvenience this has caused, especially if you were someone who didn't get a prize because your email was eaten. (Please do not contact me saying "this happened to me a year ago, give me a book." I will believe you. I just don't have the books, or the postage budget, to do anything about it.)

Whee.

I admit it: I messed up.

The initial assets from Tara (who is amazing in all ways) were missing the .GIF files that allow for previews, and I didn't tell her, because I was stressed out. And then I told her, and she got them to me, and I still didn't post, because I was still stressed out. And now, almost a year later, here they are:

The Midnight Blue-Light Special wallpapers.

Enjoy! Adorn! And eagerly anticipate the coming flood of awesome graphics for Half-Off Ragnarok and Sparrow Hill Road.

Fun for the whole family.

One thing I've tried to make very clear about InCryptid is that it's not the story of Verity Price and how she did lots of neat stuff and maybe saved the world a few times. It's the story of the Price family, and the Healy family, and how they did lots of neat stuff and maybe saved the world a few times. There are lots of stories, many of which happened before the books begin.

Never let it be said that I missed the chance to tell a story.

The InCryptid short fiction page is now live, and features the brand new Jonathan and Frances adventure, "One Hell of a Ride." The story is available for free download in three formats. I'll add information on "The Flower of Arizona" as soon as we have a finalized cover (and will include purchase data for that one, since it's in an anthology).

Welcome to the family tree, and I hope this helps to keep you excited for the upcoming release of Discount Armageddon!

So, as you may have noticed, I am currently stretched...well, pretty thin. I am thus bringing on some help here in the salt mines, to make sure things keep running smoothly. Yaaaay!

The lovely Deborah (talkstowolves) has been handling the "Wicked Girls" T-shirt orders, which are almost ready to go to the printer, and will now be stepping in to help with basic website administration work. She'll be updating the news and appearances, fixing typos, and making adjustments to pages as needed. This will free me up to actually get some of the major things done in a more timely manner.

Also! While I will continue trying to answer all comments on this journal in a vaguely timely fashion, it...isn't always so possible. To help prevent confusion, I thought I'd give you the names of the folks who are Fully Authorized (tm) to answer direct questions on my behalf.

porpentine does my website code, and can answer any and all questions about how it works.
talkstowolves and vixyish do a lot of administrative duties for me, and can answer practically all questions about what the hell I think I'm doing.
aiglet has the best grasp of my schedule of anyone who isn't me, and can usually answer questions about where I am and when I'll be back.

In short, if you ask a question, and one of these four people answers it, you can take their answer as coming from me. (I realize there will always be less general questions, like "where did you get that icon?" and "hey, didn't I see you last Tuesday at the Gwar concert?" But there's been some confusion lately, stemming from people asking questions and then getting them answered eight ways, by eight different folks. I'm just trying to make it all a little less bewildering. As if that's possible.)

Thank my brave volunteer staffers, and do not throw things at them. They bite.

So here's the deal. I have two websites, and I maintain them both myself, manually. That means nothing changes unless I go in and change it. The sites are here:

http://www.seananmcguire.com/
http://miragrant.com/

Parts of these sites are quite out of date, because I have been a busy little bee. We are thus going to play a little game.

Step 1: Go to my website. Either one.
Step 2: Poke around until you see something that could use improvement. A typo, a missing link, an unclear question on the FAQ, even a missing question on the FAQ. (Pages that aren't linked at all, like the Field Guide, or don't exist, don't count. Those are future improvements, not current issues.
Step 3: Post here, suggesting a correction/update.
Step 4: Step away from the website.

I will be making updates and corrections, partially based on this post, for the next week. On Friday, I will use our friend, random number generator, to choose a winner of an ARC of One Salt Sea (US-only, unless you can help with postage). No matter what, everybody benefits, since the end result should be an easier-to-use website.

Game on!

1. I don't know why this needs to be repeated, but here you go: If you friend this journal, I will friend your journal in return, so that you can see any friend-locked contests or giveaways (they're rare, but they happen). I will not necessarily read your journal, as I am very, very outnumbered, and I need to sleep occasionally. Assume I don't see anything you post unless you point it out to me explicitly. If you unfriend this journal, I will unfriend your journal in return. This is not a personal thing. This is just mirror-image reciprocity.

2. If you're looking for book release dates, or want to know when/where a story will be appearing, check my bibliography page. I update it regularly, and while not all recently-sold stories will be present (since I don't add things until they have a firm release date), this will answer ninety percent of the "when can I get...?" questions.

3. If you want to know where I'm going to be and when I'm going to be there, check my appearances page. It, too, is updated frequently (although I'm not as good about editing past appearances to put them in the correct tense as I would like to be). I'll usually post about an upcoming appearance here, but long-range planning is rendered easier by the actual appearances page.

4. If I was supposed to mail you something—a poster, a CD, a book you won in a contest, a severed human head—and you haven't received it, the appropriate channel for letting me know is via email. My website contact link is easy to find and easy to use, and if I don't know you don't have something, I can't look into it. I don't use mail confirmation when I send things; the additional postage cost is simply not an option. So please, please, if you don't have something you think you should have, email me!

5. Zombies are love.

It's the holiday season, and nice things are vital to our continued equilibrium. Equilibrium is nice! And so I present you with some nice things, to maintain this blessed state.

First of all, The Toby Wallpapers and Icons page has been updated over on my website. You can now download some basic wallpapers and icons for Late Eclipses, as well as wallpapers and icons for Nebelbann (the German edition of A Local Habitation). Plus there's a fantastic new wallpaper/icon set for An Artificial Night, showing dear Katie, all toned in beautiful blues and whites.

Second of all, the cover for Late Eclipses has been nominated as one of the Beautiful Book Covers of 2011. While I'd love it if you'd go and vote for me, this counts as a nice thing because some of these covers are truly gorgeous, and I hadn't seen the majority of them before. I'm really excited about the books coming out in 2011! It's going to be a banner year for reading.

Third of all, because I am me and I truly do regard this as "a nice thing," here is a list of really cute animals that will seriously fuck you up if given the opportunity to do so. Hooray! Some of these animals are really cute. And all of them are really included to make you wish that you'd never been born. I tend to regard this as awesome.

Happy Wednesday!

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?

Point the first: If you're on Twitter, and either don't watch my Twitter feed or haven't checked in yet this morning, do a search for the #FEEDFriday hashtag. Seriously, this is hammered awesome, in addition to being your opportunity to win some free copies of Feed. Which is pretty cool. They make great gifts! Also great doorstops.

Point the second: While you're enjoying your zombie adventure, maybe you should stop off and take a look at http://www.thefeedbook.com/. Don't worry. I'll wait here for your shrieks of ecstatic glee at how insanely awesome that website is. I'm doing the flaily Muppet arms again. Now with an undead flair. Which...is a little disturbing, really.

Point the third: Yes, I have seen today's XKCD. Sometimes I think the cartoonist is peeking through the windows of me and my friends. And then I realize that no, we're just a type. Scared yet?

Point the fourth: I am almost done with my mind-numbingly massive full-sheet comic page explaining the Campbell Awards and expanding on my eligibility. Vixy and Cat Valente play the part of my lovely assistants, thus sparking the statement "The hardest thing I have left to draw is Cat Valente being eaten by zombies." My life, occasionally so difficult.

Point the fifth: I was in the car with my mother yesterday, and commented that I had purchased my tickets to Australia. The following conversation ensued:

Mom: "And you're coming back with a tiara."
Me: "Well, yes, I hope so, but..."
Mom: "You are."
Me: "Okay."
Mom: "I've been praying every night to the tiara gods."
Me: "...there are tiara gods?"
Mom: "There are now."
Me: "What do those even look like?"
Mom: "I don't know. But they're wearing tiaras."

So apparently I have the backing of the tiara gods in the upcoming race for the Campbell. Thanks to my mother for letting me know about this endorsement. Also, and perhaps more importantly, my mother is insane.

The finished copies of Feed landed on my doorstep yesterday afternoon, where they were promptly rescued from the rain by my mother, who was over at the house doing basic kitchen maintenance (oh, how the cats hate her and her sloshy, sloshy mop). They are...I mean, they're even prettier than the ARC, which I didn't think was possible. The covers are done in this amazing combination of matte and semi-gloss that makes the blood really pop, and they're eye-catching and utterly bleak at the same time. Orbit did a really incredible job with them. I am awed.

Time between opening the box and my mother stealing a copy: Under five minutes. At least she's consistent...

In honor of the arrival of the finished copies, and the oncoming release of the book itself (the light at the end of the tunnel isn't a train, it's a flamethrower), I've been making updates to MiraGrant.com. In addition to moving the Horror Movie FAQ to its new home (it was replaced on my main site by the Fairy Tale Survival FAQ), I've added some very important facts about Mira Grant that you should know. Not convinced of the raw danger that you face when you taunt my evil alter-ego? Take a gander at the full list of warnings. These were taken from your suggestions, and they should hopefully do a little to prepare the public for the danger that's to come.

In slightly less silly news, the first batch of icons and desktop wallpapers has been added to the site for you to use and enjoy! Tara really knocked herself out on these, and was aided by Lauren at Orbit, who was awesome enough to let her work from the original cover graphic source. I couldn't be more pleased. Check it out—I bet you'll be pretty pleased, too.

When will you rise?

This one comes in two parts. Part the first: The Toby Daye FAQ is looking a little thin on the ground, with very few questions directly relating to the books themselves. Please give the FAQ a glance, if you get the chance, and propose new questions? I want to get things cleaned up and updated. In, y'know, my copious spare time.

Part the second: The Horror Movie Survival FAQ is going to be moving to MiraGrant.com with the launch of the new site. I know, I know, it's a sad day. But it'll fit in better there, and I'll have a lot of really awesome opportunities to update and expand.

This means I need a new "silly" FAQ for my main site...and that's where today comes in. I'm going to do a Fairy Tale and Ballad Survival FAQ. Please propose questions, offer survival tips, whatever comes to mind, and I'll get started from there! Help protect a new generation of children from evil stepmothers, wicked witches, inexplicable beanstalks, and the dangers of gingerbread houses.

Sometimes my life is awesome.

It's time for today's TOTALLY SILLY CONTEST!

So I'm doing the web content for MiraGrant.com. Those of you familiar with my main website may have noticed that I have multiple bios, some of them deeply, deeply silly in nature, posted on the site. Since Mira doesn't have quite the history I do, and I haven't had the chance to solicit bios for her from my friends, I need something to guarantee the depth of content to which my readers have become accustomed (OCD cat is OCD). So!

You know Chuck Norris?

That.

I'm looking for UTTERLY INSANE statements about Mira Grant. Things like "Mira Grant isn't afraid of the thing under your bed. Mira Grant is the thing under your bed." Or "Mira Grant goes down to the quarry any time she damn well wants to."

Leave your suggestions as comments on this post. I will collect the best (and weirdest) for posting on Mira's website, because I have no hobbies that don't involve utter insanity. There will be prizes! I don't know what those prizes will be, but they, too, will probably be a little odd. (Sadly, I can't promise a copy of Feed until I've done some local accounting, but there will be something.)

Come on. You know you want to.

So currently, I am...

...working on The Agent's revisions to Deadline, all of which have been totally awesome, erudite, and coherent (at least so far; for all I know, I'm going to hit page 200 and suddenly she'll be demanding I insert evil clowns and flying monkeys). I'm addressing the manuscript 10% (IE, fifty pages) at a time, so that I can imagine a little progress bar guiding me sweetly toward the conclusion of draft two. Currently, the status bar stands at 20%. Since I started work yesterday, I am not yet freaking out over this.

...hammering away on The Brightest Fell (Toby Daye, book five), which, like, woke up one morning and just decided that it wasn't going to suck anymore. Seriously. This book has been a petulant brat for ages, and then bam, all of a sudden, it was all "La la la, I am ready to play nicely with the other children." So now I'm burning pages, the stakes are getting higher, the action's getting tighter, and Toby's having one of her Worst Weeks Ever. I'm always happy when Toby is having one of her Worst Weeks Ever. This is why Toby will eventually find a way to kill me in my sleep.

...getting content up on MiraGrant.com. If you go there right now, you'll still get the splash page, but I promise you, Behind The Scenes, Things Are Brewing. We'll be ready to launch super-soon, and when we do, look out world! Tara has done an incredible job with the site design, and Chris has done an equally incredible job with the coding. And of course, there's things afoot over on the Orbit side of things, and soon the whole world will be asking the question that's been gnawing at me for a while now: When will you rise?

...writing two short stories for the same anthology, since that's the only way to have a proper cage match between the two (thus letting me determine which one works better). In this corner, Toby, Danny, and Quentin do stuff involving poking things with sticks and following the basic rules of horror movie survival (IE, "When the house tells you to get out, you leave"). In this corner, Alice, Thomas, and the mice go wandering around the woods looking for fricken nests, and face the usual dangers inherent in doing what a tribe of talking pantheistic mice tells you to do. Fun!

...finishing the sixth Sparrow Hill Road story, "Last Dance With Mary Jane," in which we finally find out what actually happened on the night Rose Marshall died. This is sort of where the series turns, and where everything else that happens becomes inevitable. I'm really excited.

...really in need of a nap.

I will have a silly, silly contest starting later today, and remember, the various cage matches are still going on. Help Toby deliver the ULTIMATE SMACKDOWN, thus earning her a pretty tiara that she won't wear and a Starbucks gift card that she will use up in an afternoon.

Since we're counting down to the release of A Local Habitation—seventy-one* days, but really, who's counting? Beyond, I don't know, me—it seemed like a good time to get some awesome new graphics out into the world, courtesy of the always-spectacular taraoshea. And so, without further ado, I direct you to take a look at the Icons and Wallpapers Page of my website. Go ahead. I can wait.

Now, aren't those amazing? The icon and wallpaper sets at the top are totally new, designed to go with A Local Habitation; we'll be adding a few more in January, but this was just a mind-blowingly awesome start. If you scroll to the bottom (or make use of the handy new navigation bar, of which I am justly proud), you'll find the wallpaper and icon sets for Winterfluch, the German edition of Rosemary and Rue which comes out this January. Tara did a remarkable job of recreating the feel and emotion of the cover without using any part of it in her graphics: that's all stock photography and CGI magic. She also relabeled several of the original Rosemary and Rue icons with the new title, so as to create a wider range of choices (this is going to be standard with non-U.S. releases).

I am beginning to get excited and scared and all that other good stuff. But the new graphics are gorgeous, and I totally recommend taking a peek.

(*Seventy-one is the twentieth prime number, and is the twin prime of seventy-three. It's also the permutable prime of seventeen. This has been your moment of prime number math geekery for the day. Sadly, I feel better now.)

1. I have done the mailing! Specifically, I've mailed a paperback to Australia, an ARC of A Local Habitation to our first ALH ARC contest winner, and a comic book to my web designer. (Said comic book has been failing to get mailed since July, which gives you an idea of how behind I am in certain aspects of my daily maintenance.) I probably have more mailing to do—including at least two CD sets—but this is mailing to discover, not mailing to feel guilty about not doing. Victory is mine!

2. Since the first ARC has been mailed out, I'm getting ready to open the second ARC contest. I'll be taking entries for a week or so, and then opening voting for a similar length of time. This is going to be a photography challenge (much like the LOLtest for Rosemary and Rue, but without the captions). Details will be posted later this week.

3. The redesign and relaunch of my website is just about done, which is a huge relief (for my webmaster and web designer, as well as for me, since they get constantly prodded at when I get twitchy). The new look of the site is awesome. We're going from drop-down menus to side menus, the graphics are even slicker and more incredibly cool, and soon, I'll be posting the first batch of icons and wallpapers for A Local Habitation. Also, once my main site is relaunched, we'll be able to focus on getting Mira's site off the ground. Evil twins need websites, too!

4. The Rosemary and Rue pendant sale from chimera_fancies is going to be launching later this week, and these pendants really are Mia's best work yet. I mean, they're just incredible pieces of wearable artwork, and the fact that I was partially responsible for this batch being created is just amazing to me. This is transformative art. From oral tradition folklore to urban fantasy novel to jewelry. Who could ask for a more remarkable series of connections? I'll post some previews of the sale before Mia opens it to the general public, but I'm not administrating it; all questions should go to chimera_fancies.

5. I know my Current Projects posts can seem huge and daunting and a little unreal, but I really have made amazing strides in Blackout, The Brightest Fell, and Discount Armageddon over the past month, and I'm over-the-moon excited with where they're each going. Working on all three at once is like a delicious block of television consisting of Glee, Supernatural, Wonderfalls, and Veronica Mars. So good, so snarky, and so refreshing for the soul. I know I love what I do, because it makes me less tired, rather than exhausting me.

6. My schedule for 2010 is taking shape and becoming visibly more awesome by the day. At least in part because, well, the more coherent it is, the easier it becomes for me to plan around things like conventions, book releases, and fits of hysterical giggling. My planner pages are also filling up, with a combination of major events and minor, "survive the day, week, month, year, and inevitable zombie apocalypse" items. The more regimented my time appears, the more work I'll get done. According to the planner so far, 2010 is the year I conquer the planet.

7. The first promo comic for A Local Habitation is underway, and looks awesome. I'll post it as soon as it's finished.

What's new in the world of you?

Things I do not have: a magical talking zombie pony that takes me on wonderful adventures.

Things I do have: functioning website forums.

...so I guess that while I'm not the girl who has everything—that's Ariel's job—I am the girl finally in possession of a fully operational website. Yaaaaaaay! The forums are now open for registration, and while they're understandably quite slow, they're a good place to get news, find discussions, and generally do stuff. Jump high, yell loud, look pretty, whatever. I'll be announcing contests and giveaways on the forums periodically, which is as good a reason as any to pay attention to their existence.

Yay forums!

Because "done" is a misnomer around here, the ever-fabulous team of taraoshea (graphic design) and porpentine (back-end code) are hard at work preparing a redesign for SeananMcGuire.com, aka, "my website." We're not getting rid of the current content—we're not insane—but we are trying to make it a little easier to access and navigate, by doing things like shifting the majority of the menus to be down the side of the page, rather than at the top, and by making the drop-downs a little less likely to snap back up while you're trying to browse.

Among other things, I'll be revamping the FAQs, since I really do prefer keeping them as current as possible. I live in a magical cotton candy wonderland where someday, my email volume will be kept under control by the existence of clear, coherent, comprehensive FAQs. So here's the question for the floor:

What isn't currently answered in the FAQs that you want answered?
What answers do you want to see expanded?
What additional questions do you have?
Are there any sections missing? What are they?

I'll be soliciting for questions for a separate Toby Daye FAQ later this month, so please don't suggest Toby-specific questions as yet, unless they're the very general "what's the release date" or "who does your interior dingbat design"-style questions. Right now, I'm just trying to get base data.

As an aside, if you think there's a page missing that's not part of the FAQs, what is it? You never get what you want if you don't tell me what it is!

Thanks, y'all.

The DAW Summer Samplers were distributed this past weekend at San Diego. Because I am a loving blonde who wants you to be happy, I have posted the Rosemary and Rue sample which they included on my website. Here you go:

Two chapters of Rosemary and Rue for your enjoyment and love.

With only thirty-four days between us and publication, excitement is high, sleep is low, and I need a nap.

So I'm in the process of (once again) revamping and updating my FAQs, partially because I'm getting more writing questions (yay!), and partially because I need to be prepared to split the Toby questions off into their own FAQ somewhere around October 15th. Bearing this in mind, what do folks think I should add to my FAQ section? The current categories are...

...writing.
...general.
...music.
...horror movie survival.

The horror survival FAQ may wind up moved over to Mira Grant's site once it gets up and running, just so we'll have content there; I don't know yet. I'm not taking questions for a Toby FAQ yet, because so few people have been able to read it, and any questions beyond the very simple ones already on the site would be spoilery.

What should I be answering? Ask away!

Well, I'm about to get going; I've got a few last non-computer things to do around the house, and then I'll be off to catch the bus to get to the train station to take the train to get to the airport to board the big metal sky-bird and fly to Michigan. I'll be in Ann Arbor for the next two days for business reasons, getting back to California late Wednesday night.

(If I'm very, very lucky, I'll make it to my hotel in time for Fringe tonight. But I'm not counting on it.)

Entries will be taken for the random draw Rosemary and Rue giveaway through Friday morning, when I'll be selecting the winner. Remember, if your number comes up, you'll have seventy-two hours to claim your prize before I give it to somebody else, so it's a good idea to keep an eye on what's going on over here. There will absolutely be other giveaways over the next several months, since it's a great way to get copies out there into the world. Also, if you're attending the San Diego Comic Convention, word is we'll have a stack of the lovely things for handing out. A stack. How cool is that?

There have been a few alterations to the Appearances Page over at my website. The lovely folks from DucKon will be getting me my panel schedule in the next week or so, so you'll have plenty of time to plan our awesome adventures in discussing _________. I'm hoping for a nice plague, and maybe something that's dead, but still moving around.

I'm going to miss my cats, but I get to meet jimhines in the flesh for the first time. In all things there are balance.

See you when I land.

So my website improvements and updates are rocking right along—you can now visit the site for everything from news about the Toby books to the Velveteen stories, an assortment of FAQs, and stuff about my cats. The songbook and album information is all still there; so is the art card gallery, and the first of my Thoughts On Writing essays (along with the thoughts themselves). It is, in short, expanding at a truly epic rate...and that's where you come in.

What's missing? What needs more detail? What are you waiting to see? We currently have plans in the works for...

...forums. Chris is working on getting these functional. Once we have the code in place, we'll probably be in "closed beta" for a few weeks as the forum moderators sort out what they want to do with the space, and then we'll go open. I'll solicit suggestions for specific forums when we get closer, but once the forums open, I'm essentially going to be hands-off.

...a mailing list. People keep asking me to sign them up, and I have to look politely baffled. So again, Chris is crunching the code for it, and then we'll be opening one up. I'll probably have to do a quarterly newsletter to justify having a mailing list. Woe. Because getting me to chatter about what I'm doing is so hard.

So what else do we need? Speak, and be joyfully heard!

I have spent my week being very, very productive, especially when you consider the fact that a) I just got a new kitten, b) Lilly didn't allow me to sleep for over a month during her "kitty go crazy" period, and c) the lack of sleep, followed by sleep's sudden return, has left me slightly sick and very definitely jet-lagged in my own body. It's exciting! But this week, I have...

...turned in an essay for one of those exciting "smart people try to sound smart while talking about television" essay books. I'm excited! This is the first time I've been asked to participate in something like this, but I've always been a little envious of authors who get to go and sound smart while they talk about, say, Supernatural or Buffy. Hopefully I've managed to sound super-smart, because I'd love to do this again. I have a list of shows I'm just dying to sound totally smart about. Like Fringe and Cupid. Oh, and if there's ever a "smart people try to sound smart while talking about shows that were canceled before their time" book, I can corner the market on Freakylinks.

...revised nine chapters of Late Eclipses, only to discover that one of those chapters needed to be combined with another to form a sort of, I don't know, "super-chapter," while another chapter needed to be cut entirely. On the positive side, I made these discoveries entirely on my own, without any outside assistance. Also on the positive side, this will help with my goal of getting the book down between 105,000 and 110,000 words. On the negative side, dammit, I already revised this part of the book. Damn plot. It's getting complications and fingerprints all over my stuff.

...set up the landing page for the Velveteen vs. series, including a brief description of what the series is about, a listing for the stories in order-as-written, and a listing for the stories in chronological order (which will matter more as the JSP-era stuff starts getting posted). All the Vel stories are being cleaned up and revised before they're posted, which slows it down a bit, but also lets me take care of all those pesky typos and logic problems that people have been so very kindly pointing out to me. Behold! For now I wear the continuity pants!

...submitted all my receipts, agreed to an estimate on my taxes, and confirmed that I'm ready to receive my extension forms, hence to turn my taxes in. Self-employment tax blows. The next time someone asks why I haven't quit my day job yet, I may pull out my tax receipts and a conveniently labeled graph. SCREWING A WRITER IN FIVE EASY STEPS. Step one: self-employment tax.

...introduced Lilly and Alice to one another without bloodshed (either feline or human), and without any major emergencies, unless you want to count Lilly forcing her way into the bedroom during what was technically the isolation period. I rarely, if ever, close my bedroom door all the way -- the cats like to be able to come and go, and the litter box in my room is a relatively recent development -- so I had totally forgotten that Lilly knows how to work the latch, and will work the latch if given sufficient motivation. Like, say, being locked out of the room. But all's well that ends well, and this has ended well.

What's everybody else's productive looking like?

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

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

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

I have two cats again.

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

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

Yay.

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

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

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

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

6. Zombies are still love.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Last night, as I was preparing for bed after a busy evening of edits, website updates, art cards, and catching up on Bones, Chris pinged me.

Chris: "Did you see that the cover for Rosemary and Rue is on Amazon?"
Me: "WHAT?!"
Chris: "Guess not."

(I paraphrase because not even I can quote all the time, but I checked with Chris, and he says this is a fair reflection of our conversation. Which was maybe a little less coherent on my side. Because sometimes, I am a non-linear blonde.)

Because I really like to see things for myself, I went hieing over to the Amazon page for Rosemary and Rue, and lo and behold, my cover is, in fact, there. Right there. On the page. Where people who have absolutely never heard of me before -- people who didn't get there through this journal, or through my website, or through anything but random clicking -- can see it. On the page.

I sure am crying a lot this year. Also, PS?

I'm a real girl.

So we're once again hard at work on the website -- aren't we always hard at work on the website? -- and I thought it might be a good idea to let people know what there was to experience, see, and enjoy. This is what we call 'making all that work not have been in vain.' I'm really big on work not being in vain. So...

* The Toby Daye landing page is fully functional. This is where you can go to link to any of the existing books, get a series overview, and take a quick peek at any new developments. More specific news relating to any particular book will naturally be on that book's own unique landing page. Speaking of which...

* The Rosemary and Rue landing page is fully up-to-date and shiny, with the book's back cover text, some really exciting blurbs from names you may well recognize, a basic plot summary, and more. And, of course, the pretty, pretty cover art. Nothing makes me happier than the pretty, pretty cover art. Well, except for maybe...

* The art card gallery! (You would normally access this through the 'Extras' drop-down menu.) We've got sixty cards uploaded and annotated so far. Because I have no hobbies. Also proving I have no hobbies...

* The 'With Friends Like These' archive is starting up. 'With Friends Like These' is my comic strip, which I draw because I bore easily. There are only ten strips up so far, but more are coming. (Again, under the 'Extras' menu.)

Big, big thanks to porpentine, who did truly yeoman labors over the weekend to get the gallery code up and working. There are other surprises to find and see, but these are the big ones. I'm thrilled.

The announcement:

After three days of wandering Wondercon, I actually still have art cards -- partially because there were three instances where I totally forgot that the deal was 'you say the magic phrase, I give you an art card of your very own.' I remembered later, and in all three cases, I was able to find the people later to give them an art card anyway...but my guilt motivated me to do three totally new cards to hand out, thus leaving me with several of the originals still in my possession.

Since I'd already mentally filed this particular cards as 'gone,' given that whole 'taking them to a convention to give away' thing, I've decided to make the cards go away through a different mechanism. So I'm going to sell them. I also don't feel like scanning what I have left, because I am an essentially lazy creature who doesn't have that sort of technical skill left in me. So here's how that's going to work:

1. You think 'I want ____ art card.'
2. You send me an email (this account is paid, and you can email it) -- not an LJ comment, please -- and say 'is ____ available?'
3. I say either yes or no. If yes, I follow that with 'you can have it for ten dollars.'
4. If you still want it, we arrange for you to give me ten dollars.
5. I mail you an art card of your very own.

For the most part, I won't be selling things through this journal, because I'm selling, y'know, books through this journal. If this works, however, I'll probably put post-convention art cards up whenever I have them, just because it's a good way to make them leave.

The moment of geekitude:

Frank Beddor was totally thrilled to hear that I'd sold Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies], and we geeked books for a while, and it was awesome. Frank is the author of The Looking Glass Wars [Amazon]. He's also a really sweet guy, and it was great that he got so excited for me.

The request:

So I'm doing a truly epic number of tweaks and updates to my website as we get everything launched and up to speed. Some sub-pages are still missing, some sub-pages are a mess, but on the whole, it's coming together fast. The page for the Toby books in general and Rosemary and Rue are sort of comic in their sparseness. It's going to improve, I promise.

One of the existing pages most in need of a major revamp is the album reviews page, which is just a mess right now. So please, if you have one of my albums and you have a moment, can you either link me to your existing review, write a full review, or toss me a comment mini-review? That way I can get some new options and fresh text as I clean everything else up.

Whee!

We've done music. We've done (and are still doing) horror. Writing is pretty solid. Now here's the amorphous one:

Who has questions for my GENERAL FAQ?

Be creative, but also ask what you'd like to know that isn't directly tied to music, horror movies, or writing. Thank you all so much for your help!

1. If you wander on over to my website -- which is getting shinier and more functional every day as the back-end code comes online, all hail porpentine, who has slaved over a hot keyboard for our delight -- you may find a few truly awesome things waiting for you. Specifically, we now have icons and wallpapers, designed by the splendid taraoshea. All icons and wallpapers are free for use! Print them out, stick them to things, do whatever makes you happy. Well, except for posting them to your Deviant Art account and claiming that you made them. That would make the Tara sad, and she knows where I keep the chainsaws.

2. As you explore the site, you may see that there is now a landing page for the 'Velveteen vs.' stories. Yes, the link currently takes you to the big COMING SOON graphic, but its very existence means that, before too terribly much longer, there will be an online archive of the adventures of Velma 'Velveteen' Martinez as she struggles to survive the foul mechanations of the Marketing Department without giving in to the urge to just kill somebody already. Because the best way to show you care is with random semi-comic superhero stories, you know. My comic book store tells me so.

3. Speaking of my comic book store, the new best thing ever is walking into the place where I go for my weekly fix (I am such an X-junkie) and being greeted by Joe (the owner) with a cheery "Do you have CDs for me?" That moment, right there, was enough to validate my entire musical career.

4. Oh, and as an FYI for those who share my comic book habit -- Monday was a holiday, but it wasn't a shipping holiday. So today is still new comic book day, day of comic book-y goodness. Although according to the release lists, very little has come in that holds any actual interest for me. That's probably for the best, what with Wondercon right around the corner. Ah, sweet Wondercon. I wonder how I've lived so long without you.

5. I spent several hours last night at Borderlands Books, hanging out with Ripley, the freaky demon suede alien kitty-face (aka, 'the elder of the store's two resident hairless cats'). The more time I spend with her, the more I start to think that maybe life with a Sphinx wouldn't be so bad. Sure, they're naked and weird-looking, but they're also smart, friendly, and incredibly soothing to hang out with. This is probably a sign that I need some sort of 'cats are not like Pokemon, you do not need to collect them all' intervention.

6. While I was at Borderlands, I chanced to notice their list of top sellers for January, and jimhines grabbed the #10 slot with The Stepsister Scheme! Way to go Jim! The weird naked cats were very impressed.

7. For those of you who missed the (admittedly rather quietly delivered) memo, I will be leaving California for a short time in March, as I hop on a plane and fly out to New York for more fun with my friends at DAW. I love visiting my publisher, largely because it gives me an excuse to say 'my publisher' a lot, and that's still a sort of shiny-and-new thing for me. I am assured that by the time An Artificial Night (the third Toby book) hits the shelves, I won't find it all quite so exciting, but I really hope not. We all need things that make us irrationally happy. Anyway, my schedule is pretty packed while I'm there, so I'm not going to be looking to host a meet-and-greet or anything, but it's definitely going to represent a break in my standard routine.

8. Zombies are still love.

9. I have now managed to go three months without starting a new novel. For some people, this may seem like an unremarkable 'I just went three months without bursting into flame' or 'I just went three months without unleashing a global pandemic'-type statement, but for me, it's the result of Herculean efforts in the arenas of focus and restraint. I love starting books. The freedom and the scope of it all is just a wonderful thing. But I can be strong. I can be controlled. I can keep myself from getting beaten by my editing pool.

10. This coming Sunday is the official release date for Ravens In the Library, a benefit anthology assembled to help with SJ Tucker's unexpected medical bills. It's got an awesome list of authors, and, on a more personal note, it's got my first official this-is-in-print anthology appearance: my short story, 'Lost,' will be the final piece in the book. I'm very excited.

That's my wending for Wednesday. What's yours?

Hey, take a look at my website!

Just to detail the changes...

Landing Page.

The new back-end interface for the front page updates is in place; I can now make changes to the news, welcome box, and appearances box without anybody helping me out. This means the news will stay up-to-date, the welcome box will stay topical, and new appearances will be appearing as they, well, appear. I didn't really think that sentence through, did I? (As a side note, clicking 'more information' in the appearances box will do exactly what it claims, and provide you with more information about the appearances themselves. Footnotes and surprises will often be buried there. You have been warned.) We've also increased the font size, and reduced the number of news items visible at any one time to three. Recently posted news items can still be viewed by clicking 'read more,' and that will also take you to the news archive.

Bio Page.

Check it out -- we have one! Currently, it contains a self-written bio, and a bio that was written for me in 2007 by Zander Nyrond, when my vocal group, Lady Mondegreen, attended the UK filk convention as Guests of Honor. (Plurals and Lady Mondegreen are always confusing.) We're going to be adding a bio by Michelle Dockrey, and a link to a deeply goofy little survey-style bio that I started writing during last night's episode of NCIS.

We're also going to be adding photo credits; their current absence is my fault, as I went to bed before telling Chris where they should appear on the page. For right now, the black and white headshot is by Beckett Gladney, and the color picture in the pumpkin patch is by Carolyn Billingsley.

Coming Soon!

All links that don't actually lead to their anticipated content now lead to a 'COMING SOON' page, which proves that, y'know, we're planning on getting them updated ASAP.

Feedback is welcome, and the current plan is the have the entire website functional and live by March 10th. Some things have already moved to new places on the page, and other things will be moving in the near future. Big, big thanks to porpentine and taraoshea for all their hard, secret work.

Woo-hoo!

Hey, all you Twitter-enabled peoples out there. Ever wanted to really know what was going through my mind? (Hint: it does not involve the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota.) Well, you can now stalk me all over Twitter, as...

seananmcguire

I know, I know, it's not that creative. But I'm lonely all shouting into the Internet void by myself! Come keep me company?

10. I appear to have started doing art cards. (Because, as Brooke said, I need something to do with all that spare time that I had just lying around.) For those of you who are unfamiliar with the art card 'concept,' they're little pieces of original artwork, done on 2.5"x3.5" cards. Mine are Micron and Prismacolor on bristol paper. I've done three so far, one to go with Grants Pass, one to go with Ravens in the Library, and one of Velveteen and Sparkle Bright during their first year with the JSP. I figure I'll use them as book giveaways. Right now, they're just being colorful and soothing; two things that I need more of in my life.

9. My reboot on Late Eclipses of the Sun appears to have done exactly what I was hoping it would do; the new first chapter is about ten times stronger, faster, better, and generally bionic in all possible regards. Now I'm working on the revisions to chapter two, just to really lock down the changes to the continuity, and once that's done, I can start processing my editor's notes on An Artificial Night. I'm spending so much time with Toby these days that we should really start charging her rent, I swear.

8. I write more poetry than is strictly healthy, sometimes in batches of two to five hundred poems at a time. (These batches are called 'Iron Poet' rounds, and are a variation on a standard writer's workshop exercise. They make me happy. I may be crazy.) I managed to write five poems yesterday, including a counted devan (although I skipped the internal rhymes on the zipper, because I didn't feel like giving myself a migraine) and a counted technical terza rima. Take that, everyone who said there was no use for structured poetry in the modern world!

7. My story in Ravens In the Library is getting an accompanying illustration. This is...this is amazing. Not just because the illustration itself is amazing -- I saw the sketch, and it is -- but because I didn't expect an illustration at all. It made me cry. More and more, I begin to believe that 2009 is the universe giving me one big incredible birthday present.

6. It's not entirely visible to the naked eye, but my website continues to creep closer and closer to being entirely done. We should be getting the first few essays up there soon, and Chris is working on the functionality that will allow me to update and edit the front page all on my lonesome. Meanwhile, Tara works secretly behind the scenes on Wonderful Surprises that only a golden graphics girl could possibly provide. Prepare to be amazed.

5. I get to spend the weekend working on Discount Armageddon! (Quoth Dan: "I don't know anybody who gets as excited about being told what to work on as you do.") I love deadlines, I love directions, and I love Verity. She's so happy to see you. And so happy to kick you in the head. Pleasantly, I just put together my Verity playlist last night, consisting almost entirely of dance music and things with a BPM of over 120. Because Verity just looooooves the beat, yo.

4. It's new comic book day! Always the most wonderful day of the week. At least in theory -- other days are sometimes surprisingly awesome.

3. All my television is coming back on the air. I'm a huge TV freak. It's what lets me decompress after a hard day of working and writing and worrying about working and writing; it's also what I do with the other half of my concentration when I'm inking. (Most of the shows I watch are more verbal than visual, and have clear cues when I actually need to be paying attention to the screen.) I really appreciate the fact that the things I watch are staggered enough to make sure I almost always have something new.

2. This time next week, I will be heading for the airport, heading for the sky, and heading for Seattle, baby.

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

1. Oasis just called me, and THE CDS ARE DONE!!!!! They're mailing them out from the Oasis warehouse today, and they should supposedly hit my doorstep on Friday. This gives me time to actually arrange for CDs to reach Seattle, prep the first batch of pre-orders to mail out (probably the first twenty or so, more if I can possibly swing it), and generally get my hysteria out of the way. It also gives me time to use the CD boxes to build myself a little fort and crawl inside it to hide from the universe.

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

* Review the proofs for my new album, Red Roses and Dead Things. Decide that they are, yes, sufficiently steeped in mad science, horror, and awesome sauce. Return them to the printer. I should be receiving my albums on January 26th, which is what we call 'cutting it very, very close,' but will still allow me to do a formal album release at Conflikt II.

* Announce the awesomeness that is Ravens in the Library, a benefit anthology for SJ Tucker. Announce this to, among other people, my mother, who responds with an hour-long rant about the state of American medicine. I could charge admission to my mom when she's worked up about something, I swear.

* Receive edits for my Ravens in the Library story. Review the edits, and determine that yes, they're pretty much all accurate. (This is why I have people who read for me. It's a vital part of not looking like a total idiot every time I turn something in.) Life is good.

* Approach the cage where the supine form of Late Eclipses of the Sun lurks, waiting to strike. Poke a stick through the bars. The book does not respond. Rattle the stick around. The book does not respond. Unlock the cage. Suddenly get attacked by five hundred pages of snarling, possibly rabid manuscript. Decide to start work on Saturday, when I have access to a bone saw.

* Turn in some website corrections to my long-suffering, utterly fabulous web dude, Chris. (Mysteriously, Chris is setting up the new interface so that I can make certain small text changes on my own. I think, perhaps, working with the world's most obsessive editor is getting to him.) (I love you, Chris.)

* Do a lot of inking to make the items listed above less aneurysm-inducing. Because nothing says 'soothing' like three panels of cross-hatching.

What's new with you?

Well, what happened around here in 2008? Let's see...

1) I signed with the eternally delightful dianafox, who has shown a remarkable capacity for taking the things I say (some of which make very little sense, filtered as they are through my sunshine-and-zombies Pollyanna worldview) and doing something functionally useful with them. Everybody needs a personal superhero.

2) I started this journal. Because everybody needs their sunshine-and-zombies updates as regularly as possible. No, seriously. How can you know what's happening in their magical playland if somebody isn't making a point of telling you on a regular basis?

3) I arranged to have my website fully revamped, thanks to the design talents of taraoshea and the technical can-do of porpentine. Now it's glorious, it's gorgeous, and it's changing pretty much daily as we hammer the text into place and start getting the various sections hammered into their desired configurations. Which matters because...

4) I sold the first three Toby Daye books to DAW! Yes! Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation, and An Artificial Night have all been sold, after so many years in my head that it's really not even all that funny. Soon, the world will understand why I love these people so much. I hope.

5) I finished writing or revising six books in 2008. The three mentioned above, along with Late Eclipses of the Sun (Toby, book four), Newsflesh (The Masons, book one), and Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues (Coyote Girls, book one). So that's, y'know. Pretty productive of me.

6) I started work on three more books -- The Mourning Edition (sequel to Newsflesh), The Brightest Fell (Toby, book five), and Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, book one).

7) I recorded an album. Scaaaaaary. You can still place pre-orders for Red Roses and Dead Things at my website. I promise that it will be awesome. And filled with corpses.

So it's been a huge, exciting, amazing year, and next year is just going to be a bigger, more exciting, more amazing year. Thanks for being here, and I really can't wait to see what happens next.

* 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?

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

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

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

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

I will now go eat ice cream and watch Sanctuary.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So there’s more news from the arena of my website. First off, if you drop by the front page, here...

http://seananmcguire.com/index.php

Well, you’re going to see that the appearances have been updated to include the January 3rd house concert in which I will be performing with Vixy and Tony and oh, right, rocking some socks clean off the stage. It’s extremely rare for me to give concerts outside of a convention setting, so if you’re anywhere near Seattle, you may want to consider dropping by. Especially since, dude, this is a bit too much awesome for one stage.

Further browsing will show that the songbook is live again -- now with updated browsing and display action, to make it easier to get through the YOU WROTE HOW MANY SONGS?! vastness of it all -- as is the main albums page. (You access it by clicking ‘Music’ at the top of the drop-down. We’re going to fix that later, since it’s sort of less intuitive than we’d thought, but it’s there.) Now you can view the details of both my extant albums, as well as the forthcoming one. Yippee!

The disclaimer and contact links are also live; we’ll be making some small adjustments to the disclaimer page (and I know about the typo in the ‘adult content’ warning section, promise), but for the most part, they’re good to go.

Hooray!

So after months of hard work, discussion, and objections to my questionable belief that orange and green are always automatically complementary colors, my new website has launched! All credit to taraoshea for gorgeous graphic design, and to porpentine for skillful implementation. Take a look:

http://seananmcguire.com/index.php

You will note that most of the links don't work, and that the text in the 'Appearances' box is still completely out of date. We're working on that, and I'll be posting here as things go live. (We should get the disclaimer and appearances updates done today, and then Chris is going to work on swapping over the Songbook and setting up the first of the FAQ pages.) All shame for missing text should be directed towards me, as I've been terribly lax in actually turning it in before the site was ready to go live. I need to actually be able to see how it's going to look on the page. This is the danger of having a visual mind.

But isn't it pretty? I'm just as pleased as punch, and I'm only going to get happier as more sections of the site go live. Chris is even fixing it so I can update more parts of it myself, which means it'll get fussed with daily, just like everything else I can put on a to-do list.

Squee.

Life is good.

Well, I've done my songbook updates for November, and since there were buckets of them (although not as many as October), I decided to provide handy links. Because I'm friendly that way. Also because it was something to do with myself while I pretended I had any remaining inclination to process edits. So here you go.

November 2008 Songbook Updates.

Mother of the Crows.
Bargains.
Slippers of Glass.
Temporary Kings.
Waxen Wings.
Denial of Summer.
Into My Parlor.
Like a Cat.
The Terror from the Alintangy Woods.

Whee!

* Several people have told me that they used my turkey recipe, either as-written or slightly modified, and that their turkeys went over well. One person even said that their turkey was praised by their entire family as the best turkey ever. Ha! Behold my mastery of poultry and its many potential abuses. No one has yet said anything about using my cranberry sauce recipe, which leads me to believe that no one was willing to risk a recipe that came from me and involved boiling sugar. Wimps.

* Speaking of which, my mother had my cranberry sauce for the first time this year, and revealed that she actually hadn't ever had homemade cranberry sauce before. Wow. So that was an awesome experience to be able to give her, especially since my cranberry sauce is amazing.

* I am now almost a hundred pages into The Brightest Fell, aka, 'October Daye, book five.' I have been rewarded for all my hard work with no fewer than six continuity errors that must now be mowed down like ergot-ridden rye. I like mowing things down. I don't like continuity errors. Let the suffering BEGIN.

* Oh, and on the topic of letting things begin, Bolt -- the new computer-animated film from Disney -- is absolutely fantastic. There are some scenes near the end that may be a little too intense for children under six or so, but on the whole, the movie was fantastic, and layered enough to appeal to all age ranges. I started crying at one point, which is always the sign of an awesome cartoon.

* Facebook continues to be amusing in that daunting 'I fell out of touch with you after high school for a reason, you know' and 'I don't hang out with you after work, why would I want to hang out with you on the Internet' sort of a way. It's also helped me find some people whom I love dearly, but aren't on Livejournal. So you win some, you lose some.

* My new website design should be going live tonight or tomorrow. Watch this space for details.

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

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

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

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

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

My website and I have a love/hate relationship. I love having a website. I love my existing design, which was done by porpentine when the site was primarily intended to display my filk music and poetry. I love my new design, which was done by taraoshea and will be going live any day now. I love that my website is orange and green, just like a pumpkin patch that belongs specifically to me. I have a virtual pumpkin patch, filled with good things that I get to plant.

(Does that sound twee? That sounds twee. At the same time, I'm wearing jack-o-lantern pajama pants, socks that look like candy corns, and a fuzzy orange sweater that really makes it look like I've been hunting and slaughtering Muppets for their pelts. So right now, I'm actually allowed to be twee. I have the wardrobe pass to twee.)

I hate updating my website. I hate the fact that I always feel like I'm forgetting something when I turn my updates in. I hate the feeling of running uphill. I am not a fan of running up hills. It makes my calves hurt. I hate that my website makes my calves hurt. I hate sitting here being neurotic over whether or not these shoes make my website look twiggy. I hate, in short, the process of making the website functional. Seriously, if it weren't for Chris and Tara, my site would consist of 'PLEASE BUY SEANAN'S BOOKS SO SHE CAN FEED THE CATS' in big flashing black letters, and I'd be done.

In closing, I need to go watch some television and eat some popcorn, and tomorrow, I'll find something new to sit here and twitch over. PS: it's likely to involve my crazy-train Siamese cat. Lilly, who cures crazy by causing more.

So we've been working for a while now -- and by 'we,' I mean taraoshea and porpentine -- at giving my website a total overhaul. Because of the way my brain works (which is not like your Earth brains), this means Tara designs the new graphics and layout, Chris implements them, and then I start doing the new site text, because I can't 'see' where the new text should go until I have the old text in place on the shiny new layout. So poor Chris is going to do a huge amount of heavy lifting and then immediately get hammered with textual updates. Feel for him.

In an effort to keep him from killing me, I figure I should start prepping some of the text now, while I still have a little wiggle room. So I present to you...

What goes into my FAQ?

Obviously, there needs to be a section on filk, as well as the absolutely required section on writing. What do you want to see there? What makes sense? What have you always wanted to know, but been afraid to ask? What have you put into your own FAQs?

Help me keep Chris from killing me.

Okay, now we REALLY have to have a dino dance party. Why, you may wonder? Why, you may ask yourself? Because I have just finished my first post-editorial pass through A Local Habitation, book two in the Chronicles of October Daye. And I have turned that puppy in. Yes! No longer is my manuscript malingering around on my thumb drive, looking lost and lonely and wondering whether it ever gets to go anywhere! It's gone, off to the magical wonderland of sunshine and zombie ponies that is DAW Books. (I've seen the offices at DAW. They're totally filled with sunshine and zombie ponies. I swear. Okay, not really, but wouldn't that be lovely? Zombie ponies for all!)

I kinda completely love this book right now. I mean, I kinda completely love this book all the time, because hello, my baby, all grown up and ready to go play with the big books, but also, I've just gotten up close and snuggly with all its little bells and whistles, and this has resulted in me kinda completely loving it. This is sort of awesome, as I have a very love/hate relationship with my books while I'm working on them.

I'm reasonably sure all this glowing happy 'yay my books are finished yay' is just the endorphin rush before the inevitable and soul-consuming crash. I'm basically okay with that.

Meanwhile, off in the land of 'people doing arcanely productive things that I don't understand but which fill my universe with buckets and buckets of awesome,' Tara is mostly finished with my website redesign, and Chris continues to keep the site itself alive and not eating people who happen to be passing randomly on the street. Let's be clear, here: my skill with HTML basically extends to the cutting-edge of 1997. I can close a tag with the best of them, as long as it's not, y'know, a hard tag. Once it gets difficult, I crawl under my desk and hide until Chris manfully rescues me. So credit for every ounce of visual and functional awesome? Goes to Chris and Tara, rather than to me.

Plans for this weekend include a lot of house cleaning in preparation for Terence's upcoming visit, a family funeral, and probably starting to dig myself into The Mourning Edition (which is the sequel to Newsflesh). I may also head for the Starbucks and spend a few peacefully isolated hours inking, as that's the best way to get ahead of myself.

I have finished this week in triumph.

DINO DANCE PARTY!

By now, many of you will have had a chance to go browse around my website (www.seananmcguire.com), and may have noticed that it's currently oriented fairly heavily towards my musical activities. All the current content is going to remain online -- you'll still be able to access the songbook, view details on my CDs, and more -- but we're in the middle of a major reworking of the entire site. Expect exciting developments...and that's where this post comes in.

What would you like to see on my website? Be aware that some things either can't or won't be done; I can't offer entire albums for download (I don't have the bandwidth and would really like to sell the physical CDs before the cat uses them to kill me in the night), I won't start doing daily photo docudramas about my cat, but still, there are options. Are you looking for wallpaper? Forums? A more detailed schedule page? Bios? Let me know! Since there's no commitment involved in having an opinion, this is your chance to pie-inna-sky me without fear of anything more than being looked at funny.

Technology is awesome.