I finished two stories this weekend, "The Spring at Spellwinter Inn" and "Zebulon Vance Sings the Alphabet Songs of Love."

I'm kind of in love with writing right now. I wonder what else I could do if I didn't have to go to bed right now...

Let's play a writing game, instead of actually writing. I drank caffeinated soda during AND after Iron Man tonight, so I'll be up a while...

( First lines... )

I wish there were a way to rate an entire album as a single entity and iTunes--or whatever--would be smart enough to realize that while I don't like single tracks of the album, the album complete is a work that brings me much joy. (For example, the soundtracks to The Crow or Bring It On.)

Actually, I suppose there is a way: you could, in theory, re-rip the music from the CDs but in so doing click the "join tracks" feature, and make the album in question one long track.

But that's not what I actually want to do. I think. Because there could be that ONE time I want to listen to just one song. I mean, it hasn't really happened YET, but it could.

Even if you don't have a solution to my dilemma--let me rephrase: an EASY solution--you probably have one of those albums. What is it?

The house is vampireless after all. However, I do have an ear infection.

I just broke my 13-year antibiotic-free streak.

PLUS, I may have managed to get this gook in my eye! I may have taken a simple cold and turned it into an ear infection plus viral conjunctivitis! If I wake up with my eye sealed shut again tomorrow, I get to go get eyedrops.

I have thrown elements of chili into a crockpot and taken all my pills and am about to crawl back into bed with YA novels.

I wish I had something fun to report.

I'm assuming all the banging around downstairs I hear is not vampires.

Day six of viral house arrest. Or two. Or three. Depending on how you count.

So, I've been abed, and I've been reading...

( The King's Equal: Tiny Chapterbook )

( The first 2 Gossip Girls )

Day three of awesome head and chest cold. I did go to work, to avoid boredom, so I'm not SUPER SICK, but I am going to bed as soon as I post this, though I'm shocked to see it's after ten. The evening just flies by when you get home at 7:30.

More on the Dodie Smith front. I read an essay called "Literary Executions" by Julian Barnes which was supposed to be about wresting control of film rights for I Capture the Castle back from Disney (which bought them up after the success of 101 Dalmations), but the essay proved to be nothing of the sort. It was a good essay, yes, and an entertaining one, and did discuss things like how Dodie Smith had heard once that the Japanese eat dogs, and refused to have her work published there, and how Barnes had to decide if Smith's misinformation meant that he should respect her wishes verbatim or go with the spirit of the wish and make her heirs another sum of money. It was an interesting essay for other reasons, too, like how being a literary executor (and a conscientious one at that) is a way to pay back a writing mentor.

Have not done Greek in weeks, and no gym in days. ( Fitness report. )

I'm home sick with a sore throat and cough, like I probably should have been yesterday... thing is, I didn't feel all that terrible yesterday, though I was low-energy and a little touchier than normal (I guess), and I had a fever when I came home, and I went to bed as soon as I finished dinner, and I slept the clock around (except for a brief half hour when Dann came to bed, where I was twitchy and couldn't lay still and probably came close to death a couple of times).

In any case, I've been meaning to do a book report for the better part of a week now.

( Dirty by Megan Hart )

( Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer )

19) It Ends with Revelations by Dodie Smith
There is almost nothing out there about Dodie Smith's works except for 101 Dalmations and I Capture the Castle, so when faced with the challenge of finding and reading more of her novels, I had no idea where to start. NONE. I basically chose this book because my library owned it, even though some of the other titles intrigued me a little more.

This book has a few of those excellent moments of random, character-driven aphorism like I Capture the Castle, but overall, the book is more subdued, more adult. Possibly more mature, but not necessarily in a way that I was fully able to appreciate until near the end.

( It Ends with Revelations by Dodie Smith (spoilers) )

Delightful sore throat and congestion. I bumbled my way to my computer at some point and said, "If I had an acceptance, I won't write this whole day off as a punishment."

Well, I didn't have an acceptance then. But I proceeded with life anyway. And by the time I got to work, I had a note from Nancy Fulda saying she was taking "One Million Years B.F.E." for Anthology Builder--along with a nice compliment about the story. So. Yeah! The whole day is not a punishment! And now I have four stories available at AB: along with "BFE," there are "Huntswoman," "Reparations," and "Dead Languages."

So. Huzzahs 'n' stuff.

-Holy crap, since Barney and Robin did it, HIMYM fandom asplode.

-Carpooling somewhere is an excellent opportunity for finding another Jane Austen fan.

-"Baking for the Apocalypse" was well-received at writing group. This worries me. Fundamentally.

-I had Dinty Moore "scalloped potatoes with ham" for dinner tonight from the hard rations in my desk drawer, stored for just such occasions. I'm still pretty sure that was a mistake. Keeping in mind my hard rations were installed 2 years ago, and I'm just getting around to eating them, I'm SURE I'm sure it's a mistake, and that I've known it for two years.

-Funny--I've read my contract three ways from Sunday, and everything in it indicates to me that by the beginning of July at the latest I can pop "Almanac" over to Anthology Builder (or perform it in the nude on a rooftop). I am getting this... feeling?... that the bigger the market, the less exclusivity they demand from you. Odd.

-Profundity escapes me today.

Last night I started writing a story--I started a beginning, in point of fact, which splash_the_cat would be the first to tell you is usually where I stumble and fall flat--or perhaps it's more like "plod endlessly"--until I finally reach the real beginning, 1 or 10 or 50 pages later. (I've gotten better, supposedly. The number of pages has gone down.)

And, like usual, I wrote the plodding part. But then revelation struck--and I skipped a couple lines--and started again, this time with action and dialogue, and when I'd gotten far enough, I inserted some choice bits from the first beginning into the story a good page or two down--but not all of said beginning, which I plucked out and threw into another file--and went sweeping on into the middle of the story.

It was so weird.

I've been knocking at the door of beginnings for... well, splash_the_cat would perhaps say five years now, but honestly, I didn't believe her really that my beginnings were a problem that I could actually do anything about until two years ago. So two years that I've been actively trying to fix this problem.

Not that it's solved or anything. I may very well give this story to her and hear, "Well, the story really picks up pace around page four." I may very well never manage to replicate this success. But today (last night), I had a small moment of triumph.

---

Also, rejection from Interzone. A dual rejection--once from Andy, once from Jetse, bookending my day. There might have been a time when I found this... disturbing, but on the whole, rejections don't phase me anymore, so getting two on the same piece made me sort of laugh. (Jetse did say he suspected I'd already gotten one from Andy. So it wasn't a total miscommunication. Jetse also communicated that he didn't know when there'd be another e-sub round for Interzone, which is bad news for me, because I can't think of a time when I've paper subbed and I've had any luck actually getting it there--oh, except when there was the change in management, the thing made it there, and sat through the whole change for like a year and a half, I withdrew it, sold it, and then got a rejection from the new management.)

I do look forward to the day I can say "rejections haven't fazed me in years," btw. It's been a long road for me, learning that they don't actually mean anything other than "I'm not publishing this one thing of yours." I vividly remember when I thought I was "finally okay" with rejections, but they still meant sacking out on the couch with a DVD of Buffy until I got my mojo back. So, there's visible progress, also.

I spent half the afternoon (perhaps a little more) mucking around in the garden. I watered baby blueberry bushes. I weeded. I sprayed noxious brushkiller in the area where the poison ivy got me last summer. (If you were around for the poison ivy, you'll know why I resorted to this. Suffice it to say, I still have a helluva scar and a lot of bad memories.) I cleaned out one and a half box gardens of weeds and extraneous leaves and considered where I would plant tomatoes and everything else. I sowed lettuce (a little late, but it'll do) and some other things for which planting is probably early (but again, it'll do) like marshmallow, ambrosia, and feverfew.

I also planted potatoes--this is a deeply experimental thing. I purchased a pound of fingerling potatoes at Whole Foods some months ago. We ate half of them, and I never got around to preparing the other half pound--I think because my mom brought me ten pounds of bakers from up north, and one thing led to another and we had some seriously sprouting fingerlings in the crisper. So, I chopped them up and planted them in our potato bed, figuring--well, it's either going succeed spectacularly or fail boringly.

I noticed that the onions I planted two years ago (or possibly three) and couldn't figure out when to harvest them are still kind of, um, being onions. They've clearly propagated. They're growing in a lovely row. Their leaves are already a foot tall, indicating either that they like cool weather or they grow really fast.

The clematis is up and going, as is the rhubarb. No signs of purple coneflower yet. The rosemary kicked it. The lavender looks hale and hearty, and that's good considering I bought a variety that purported to be winter hardy. The rue is budding. I haven't dug out the rest of the herb garden yet (I had covered it with leaves for wintering over), but I suspect it's doing stuff just fine without me.

I think iuliamentis is right, we slept with tsetse flies last weekend or something. I went to bed last night at 9:30. I'm probably going to bed tonight at 9:30. Absolutely nothing I've done or even considered doing today could possibly justify this. I had, for example, a very light afternoon of gardening (in the Unceasing Winds of Spring), in which much was accomplished for little strain. Apparently, it's much easier to pull up baby April weeds than it is to wrangle hulking July weeds. Who knew??

I also planted six blueberry bushes. And in about three years, I will not need to go to the grocery store to procure my own blueberries. Hells yeah. You go, Three-Years-From-Now-Mer. Enjoy those blueberries.

The only other thing I really did today (besides attend to some matters of personal hygiene) was to re-read Summers at Castle Auburn. In fact, that's book number 16 of the year. I have a feeling that if my reading count actually gets non-embarrassing this year, it will be due to judicial application of re-reads.

( Bookblogging Summers at Castle Auburn )

...that probably won't be fixed by sleep.

Today at work Suzanne and I went downstairs to our new annex (room 17) to talk to the electrician about outlet placement and some schmancy kind of conduit.

The Door was open.

There are three doors in Room 17--the main, double door from the hallway, the unpassable back door that opens onto shelves in the MonoCat room, and the Sekrit Door, the Locked Door. The door that opens onto a cement staircase overhung with pipes and pipes and pipes, that leads to a brick room with a layer of rust dust a centimeter thick, or so it seems.

We went down the stairs.

Into the steam tunnels.

It was awesome.

The electrician came down. "You guys going to Angell Hall?" he asked.

"Not today," we said regretfully.

I told Ralph--and my boss--, "It's how we can escape the zombie hordes when they show up."

Ralph said, "Won't the zombie hordes be IN the steam tunnels?"

"No, the doors are kept locked," I said gravely. "Zombies can't pick locks. But we can."

They didn't look like they believed me, but trust me. Someday they'll be grateful that I think of these things.

Okay, I am totally supposed to be writing, but since I can't find my thumb drive, I had to log on and email myself something to print out because it has reached the point where editing it on screen is no longer workable. Is there a name for that stage of a MS? There should be.

splash_the_cat and I and her co-worker Ayn met up for Write Club last night and it was excellent. Three is a magic number. We all worked hard and steadily, but had someone to look up and talk to. I worked on a rewrite of "Rampion"--because I wrote it 2 years ago, and I can do things better now, so it seems silly not to take advantage of that.

Between WC and staying home with K. for the first half of my work day Monday and yesterday (just in case her fever spiked again) (she's finally over it, for those who knew she'd been sick since Friday), I managed to get a lot of writing business done. Like updating my website and bibliography and sending contracts and subbing a few stories to the Anthology Builder project and that sort of thing. The stuff I've been ignoring in favor of writing, basically.

( And for the locals... )

A LOLjournal history of International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Wretch Day.

Oh, hai, once there wuz Luddite Writor, him named Howard V. Hendrix, an he sayed: I don't like the "the downward spiral that is converting the noble calling of Writer into the life of Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch."

An then there wuz Awesome Writor, her named Jo Walton, an she sayed: "On this day, everyone who wants to should give away professional quality work online. It doesn't matter if it's a novel, a story or a poem, it doesn't matter if it's already been published or if it hasn't, the point is it should be disseminated online to celebrate our technopeasanthood."

An teh forcez of Awesome triumpherated over teh forcez of Luddite, and there wuz free fictions for all.

Today i bequeathz unto you "Teh Herbalist's Apprentice" by Merrie Haskell. Happiest Technopeasantry to alls.

---

The Herbalist's Apprentice
by Merrie Haskell

"It was for the lust," I blurted out.

I was standing in Princess Daciana's solarium, flanked by my father and my master. No one had asked me any questions yet, and I felt like a dead fish--mouth open, eyes blank, while fighting an instinct that urged me to deny, apologize, and deny again. Not that I was even certain what I was accused of, but I suspected it had to do with cabbage.

( Read more... )

Okay. Seriously? I have read only ONE book in the 22 days of April thus far?

...Yes. This is true. I had some false starts, and I only finished one book.

( All about Avalon High by Meg Cabot )

( Other stuffs )

Okay, there's now an email from Rachel Swirsky with "acceptance" in the subject line, so even though there's no contract yet, I'm tallying this one in the wins category.

Podcastle is gonna do "Dead Languages"!

I've had to stop myself (I think I stopped myself, anyway) from unprofessionally squeeing over how much I love having my work read aloud/podcasted during my communications with velourmane, but it's true.

The writing of a story is probably my favorite part, particularly the moment of optimism when you start a story, but also that moment of triumph when you finish it, and sure, I enjoy acceptances as much as anyone (everyone?), but seriously, nothing feels as complete as getting podcast-reprint thingie done.

Maybe that's because I've been an audiobook listener since childhood, and the book-on-tape was always the last thing to come out, so it feels like the Final Phase as a consumer so it seems completionist...ic? for me too as a writer. Or maybe I just like having stuff performed--long before I was published in even the high school lit mag, I was writing monologues for the children's theatre group I was involved with.

---

And I don't even remember what the other huzzah was, because I just read pnkrokhockeymom's con recap and was laughing too hard to remember what other awesome stuff is going on, so I'll just randomly reel off some cool things.

• K. got all A's last report card
  
• uhm... I have all of Kate Elliott's Crown of Stars series, so I can finally read them!
  
• I kicked ass at pyramid position in yoga tonight
  
• ah... uhm... seriously, what was the other thing I was so damned excited about? This is ridiculous.
  
• oh, well. Sale!

---

Edited to add:

OMG. I remembered what the other huzzah was*. Tonight's HIMYM. Tonight's HIMYM. TONIGHT'S HIMYM. I had to switch icons just to express my feelings.

---

* After splash_the_cat emailed me. Subject: Did you see HYMIM tonight? Body: If not, you REALLY REALLY SHOULD RIGHT NOW.

---

Double edited to add
This icon works strangely well with writing acceptances, too.