I wasn't sure if collaging a book at this late stage of the game was going to net me any insights, but it was a good break from the slog. And, as it happens, yes, it did net me some insights. The gold woman with her arm extended and the gold man pulling his sword--why, hello! So that's how those two characters relate to each other. ( Spoilers for an unpublished book plus spoilers for an unwritten book? )



(If you click through, there are Notes.)

So, why book collaging? Jennifer Crusie does it. She does it a bit more elegantly than I do, apparently, which I only vaguely remembered after I finished mine. I've mostly been paying attention to Stephanie Burgis's book collages instead, which seems like a much more practical way to go about it for me--paper and glue--rather than building a dollhouse/shadowbox. In any case, I've always been intrigued by the notion that different plot and character connections than you knew might show up in a collage, and I confess, I'm a little surprised by how simply/accidentally that happens. I slapped two of the bigger pictures down, and immediately realized they were facing each other, and a whole 'nother dimension of backstory dropped into the book. Something that will only show up in maybe two sentences of this book, but is probably the lynchpin of the next one.

Anyway. Back to writing.

Got a haircut.





It's cute and sassy, but I am not sure what I was trying to prove. Mostly, I thought my hair had gotten too long and lacked vigor. This is about an inch shorter than I really was thinking, maybe 2, but on the other hand, it does not lack for sass.

Also, you know how they say your nose never stops growing? They are not lying about that. I am shocked by the nose-size in image one.

Also, I can't wait for the day that someone introduces me to my nose-twin at a convention. It happened to Cat Rambo at ConFusion last year. I saw the nose-twin again at Penguicon. I almost shouted, "HEY, CAT RAMBO'S NOSE TWIN!" but thought maybe she was having too good a time with the dude she was canoodling with, so I didn't, but trust me, it was hard not to do.

Also, I am far too pink for my own comfort. Like a little piglet. Ew. I am heartened by the notion that if I were a Vulcan, though, I'd be loads greener.

PS That's dannimal's office, with the navy blue flowered curtains. There are no other curtains in this house from the previous owners. Just his office. Yep.

Last weekend, my brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law and husband and I threw a party for my in-laws:



It was their 40th wedding anniversary party. We hired a tent, and held it on the lawn of the cottage.

Then we passed a week in relative quiet and peace:



We played a lot of shuffleboard, and petted the diabetic cat (who made the journey to the cottage for the first time in her life), and fought for seating with the dog (my brother-in-law's dog), and watched my five-year-old nephew bowl 300 on the Wii, and other random stuff.

Then I packed up and headed north to my aunt's little piece of heaven:



And spent some time with my mom and two aunts. Then we headed over to my uncle's farm, where I petted his cat and looked at his chickens:



And I learned that men well into their seventies can act fourteen:



That's tinfoil, a certain brand of toilet cleaner (The Works) and a plastic water bottle, for the record.

And then we went to reunion, which is an annual thing, and I believe this was the 39th? for this particular branch of the family. The other branch has been having annual reunions since the 1950s. Which is why I only go about once every 3-5 years.



That is pretty much how I remember reunions. Someone sometime climbs onto a piece of construction equipment or an old firetruck or something lying around.

Mom had to pop into work to prep for her class tomorrow, so we left around 3. I followed her to Midland to see an old family friend who is moving to Texas in a few months, and had a chat, and then drove home, where the cats attacked me, and I stopped taking pictures.

But one more for the road:



Goatsbeard and Hydrangea

And you?

Public Domain Curator at Anthology Builder

Okay, Nancy Fulda announced this yesterday, so I will share it here now, too: I'm the new (and first) Public Domain Curator for Anthology Builder.

I've loved Anthology Builder since the moment I first heard of the concept, and have been happily shuttling my stories over there in exchange for the glee of building custom anthologies (and, of course, for my share of the 10%(ish) author royalties that get split amongst each anthology's authors).

I'll be selecting public domain works to include on the site, and building anthologies, and generally having a good old time over there. And if there's an older story you've been hoping to find on the site, do let me know--I suspect Nancy will build me a suggestion form some day, but until then, I still have email and whatnot.

Have I finally found a hobby?

On a more mundane plane, I got my birthday present from my husband last night, which is a pretty sweet little photo scanner that also does negative and slide scanning. So, all my pre-digital photographic adventures will be coming to a Flickr account near you... slowly, of course. I scanned three strips o' negative last night, and only uploaded three pictures of Poitiers. I'm... pondering color correction and things like that. From a less useful angle, I'm also pondering the interesting textures from film that seem missing from digital--am I crazy? Am I sane? Who knows. And finally, I'm pondering the awesomeness that will be the uploading of all my college photography efforts. Oh, my secret artsyfartsyness, you will soon be revealed to all.

The question after THAT, of course, is... what if I did make my own dark room and develop my own negatives again? I could (theoretically) avoid the expenses of paper and enlargers by skipping that and just developing film to scan, and thus live in some crazy hybrid film/digital world. I'm not sure what the value would be, but I do keep saying that I need a hobby. This would actually be less expensive than replacing my film SLRs with digital, and I could explore that texture stuff I've been pondering. And plus... Ansel Adams wrote a whole damn book about negatives. There's something there. ;)

Novel rewrite

I'm having some very circular thoughts. There is a tiny but important piece of story logic that is missing from my novel, and my agent has offered suggestions--good ones--to nudge me into the right direction, and she's certainly right that I need to address it, but my brain is just running full-tilt around the mulberry bush and never finding the damn weasel.

If this were my dayjob, I'd send Outlook invites to a meeting and make people brainstorm with me on large pieces of paper.

Are writers allowed to do that?

Actually, I sort of think I need to ask iuliamentis and vidensadastra to read the book and then get them very drunk and see what comes out of them. Unfortunately, they're not coming to Penguicon. Hrm. I may be jaunting off to Chicago sooner than I thought... Of course, the workshop is coming fast, and maybe I can pick the workshoppers' brains hard while I'm there.

The rest of the rewrite, I can handle easily. Most of it is very minor stuff that I have figured out how to solve with a sentence dropped in here, a paragraph there. There is one largeish (10,000 words) section that needs a thorough rewrite, pretty much ground up. But not bad, overall.

Agent hunt

I'm supposed to be done with agent hunting, right? And I technically am. Except that, while my first three queries yielded me an offer of representation--they also yielded two rejections. And hey, my response to my first rejection was to send out six more queries! And I've since gotten two rejections, and two requests for partials. And one of the partial requests came in the snail, and I have to snail back my regrets letter. And who knows what the last two responses will be? Anyway. I'm not done, in other words.

When I am fully, finally done--is there anyone out there agent-hunting (or about to be) who would find it useful for me to perform a post-mortem on the hunt? Or is that just... annoying?

Being Erica

Am I the only person watching this show? I really love it. I know it's already aired in Canada, and it's being aired on the semi-obscure Soap Network in the US, but for serious, it's a good show, it passes the Bechdel test all over the place, and to me, it reads like an excellent take down of chick lit. You have a quirky heroine who actually accepts that her choices have led her to where she is, and instead of Bridget Jonesing her way through life, tries to come to terms with her past, owns and apologizes for her mistakes, and otherwise recognizes that one's 30s are actually a pretty good time to grow the hell up. (Not that I don't love Bridget Jones; I'm just very weary of all that has come after it. Bigly weary.) Plus, there's a time travel component. Which is always going to sell me.

So. Yes? Am I the only one watching?

Mer to Dann: "Let's take a cute picture!"


Too dark.


FAIL.

Let's look at the settings--

Wait, did you just take another picture?


Dann to Mer: "I'm working up to my 'you're weird' face."


Dann to Mer: "Full on 'take my wife, please!' face."


Mer to Dann: "At least *I* have different expressions."


Dann to Mer: "How did you manage to take a picture while checking the picture?"


Mer: "'Cause I'm a dork?"


Mer: "See? DORK."


Dann: This better be cute enough.

And that's the way it was, on our fifth anniversary.

If you needed a picture of a red callbox, look no further... Want, take, have.



One of these is especially for dsudis. Can you guess which one?