2010, and why I will not be attending many conventions this year. My deadline dance:

"The Unicorn Evils" -- immediately, more or less

The White City and attendant chapbook: March 15
Grail: April 15
"Spell 81a": April 15

"Uniform": June 15

A Reckoning of Men: July 1
untitled noir objective stuntwriting thingy: July 1
untitled vampire thingy: July 1

"Ligature": July 15

The Steles of the Sky: November 2

---

No fixed deadline:

space opera thingy
"The Romance"
Karen Memory
Smile
Singularity Rent novel

http://www.glitterbook.com/2009/?p=44

Part of me thinks, girl, you need to get some new music, and another part of me thinks, I feel like I am always the last one at the party, picking up empty cups and streamers, wondering why it's only 9PM and everyone's already gone home.

That's what writing feels like right now. No real community anymore, no one's got a reason to stick around and spend a moment spinning yarns.

Everyone's moved on, and I am wearing a necktie and crown made of crepe paper, confetti, stuck all over with nametags of people who never showed up.

Which, really, only makes me want to make another ARG or something, if all these wells are dry, and/or no one's drinking anymore.

Also, this was the last Holidailies entry for this season, so if you click through, you'll get to see all the song lyric reveals for each entry title. EXCITEMENT!

Oh, Glee. You and your silly shiny earnestness. And your catchy soundtrack.

So this just in: Kurt Hummel is, apparently, Relevant to My Interests. (What? You say, shocked. You like the pretty, stubborn, sarcastic gay countertenor with the keen fashion sense? When did this sort of thing start?)

He's relevant enough that he has hijacked my brain in search of an ideal boyfriend. (PG-13-type. Kurt's a nice kid and his demands are mostly appropriate. Mostly.)

So I think I should find him Somebody to Love. But who? I am beset by situations on all sides. (He's full of ideas, this kid.)

( Attention Gleeks: a poll the rest of you can skip. )

Whenever I attempt to do any college work, this is what happens:



Someone insists that he is the only thing in the house worthy of study. (Sorry, lousy picture) But, almost always, within 30 seconds of me sitting down to work, he comes flying across the room, skidding on the paper as he lands. Helpful cat is helpful. He is not fooled by the pieces of paper I don't need to read *right* then. There is only one alternative to the page I am reading, and that is the page I am writing. Sometimes he is particularly helpful, and inspects each word I write. As I write it.

But today, the desk is the coldest place in the house, and cats are Not Stupid when it comes to cold. Cats are sleeping in blankets.

( cut to spare you the cat spam, the bad pictures of curled up cats. Even the elusive mymble. )

Brushed! Giant ridiculous dog! Now with samurai topknots!

Dan McLaughlin, President of the New England chapter of the American Association of Zoo Keepers (AAZK) and a Senior Zookeeper at Franklin Park Zoo, will rock in a rocking chair for 24 hours to raise awareness about ape conservation. Dan will rock in front of the gorilla exhibit and will talk about ape conservation and answer questions from the public.

In addition to raising awareness about ape conservation, the New England AAZK chapter also hopes to raise money to support the Association of Zoos and Aquariums new Ape Taxon Advisory Group (TAG) Conservation Initiative. Visitors will be able to make contributions at the event. AZA's Ape TAG Conservation Initiative will be comprised of different zoological institutions and other zoo-related groups who will commit to paying yearly dues, which will support wild ape conservation programs. The ape family includes bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, gibbons, orangutans and siamangs. In the wild, apes face a host of deadly threats including illegal hunting, habitat loss as a result of mining, logging and agricultural conversion, disease and the pet trade.

On January 9, he will read animal-related stories at 11:00 a.m., 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. to excite the next generation of conservationists.

Come down to Franklin Park Zoo's Tropical Forest between the hours of 2pm and 4pm on January 8th and between 10am and 2pm on January 9th to see Dan and show your support!

I’ll be the first to admit this is a strange fund raiser. As I told Dan, since he’s throwing himself out there, I’ll support him. It is a very important charity. Even as the zoo struggles financially, the zookeepers are committed to wildlife conservation, and it only seems right to support the taxon we belong to. Our closest relatives are some of the most endangered animals in the world.

I will accept pledges here, via paypal, and write a check combining them all (along with my donation) to contribute. Please consider giving any amount toward this worthy cause.

If you prefer to donate by check, please send it to Zoo New England c/o Dan McLaughlin AAZK, One Franklin Park Road, Boston, MA 02121. Checks can be made out to New England Chapter of AAZK.

On Friday I’ll get some pictures of Dan as he begins rocking, and then I’ll come back on Saturday to see what’s left of him and photograph that as well.

GOOD LUCK DAN!

Event description from yelp, which I totally stole.

Event description from the Zoo’s website.

Who is AAZK New England?

What is the Ape TAG?

Conservation issues that apes face>

This is such a Stephen Reyes song.




I'm serenaded by a chorus of a thousand burning cigarettes
You've been taking chances, mama
While I've been placing bets
So tell it to the ashes, they know we served
It may be good for the soul but it's hard on the nerves

The very thing that drives you, can drive you insane
Got a head full of thought crimes and a number with no name
Got an eleventh hour Jesus and a mouth full of blame
A casket lined with silver dollars and a number with no name

There's nowhere to run
I've got no one to tell
My face has become a mask and I'm not wearing it well
For five days straight
I've been breathing fire
Don't have room on my body
For another scar

The very thing that drives you, can drive you insane
Got a head full of thought crimes and a number with no name
Got an eleventh hour Jesus and a mouth full of blame
A casket lined with silver dollars and a number with no name

Chanty sing last night was a bit Meh, though the company was good.

There were too big factors in the Meh. The first was that the winter weather meant that everyone was bundled up and it was hard to move around the pub. Maybe all the big, soft winter layers also muffled the singing a bit. There were also a couple of large groups of people, many of whom weren't there for the sing (although I'm fairly sure that the core of it was, but it looked like a birthday party of regulars that had invited a bunch of friends without warning them first), so it wasn't as participatory a night as one might have hoped.

My folks were split up at several tables, as Liz and Phil had family in town they had to look after. I had wcg and pictsy with me though, so we secured a table by the door. Later, one of the other regulars, arriving late, asked if he could take our fourth spot at the table as seating was limited. Even later, pictsy spotted Karen, who I haven't seen in years, standing by the door for a while, with no one to sit with, so I moved to sitting on the window ledge to free up a spot for her. It was cozy, which isn't the worst thing in the winter.

The singing was not bad, but there was a real tendency to slide into dirge territory, which is often the problem at Royal Mile. There also seemed to be a real problem with different parts of the room going at different speeds for most of the night, sometimes badly enough that it was a bit hard to figure out what the hell people were supposed to be singing. One fellow sang a version of Spanish Ladies that went so slowly that pictsy commented that the Spanish Ladies were saying "Fine already! I get the point! Go! I want to go to bed!" by the end of the song. I responded that at this rate it would be thirty six leagues to Scilly by the time it was done.

I do have to commend wcg for a truly booming rendition of The Holy Ground as one of the few performances of the night that got the room to shut up and sing (um, wait, that made sense in my head. Moving right along...), and pictsy for leading South Australia at a pace that kept the room alive. I wasn't quite in the mood to sing, having had a rough day where harmony was hard to find.

Still, it was good to be there, and it was good to listen, and I saw a lot of folks I was glad to see and songs I was glad to hear. I'm there for the community, not for the art, and it was a warm evening on a cold night.

Aliete de Bodard (aliettedb), Campbell Award nominee and all-around hoopy frood, is doing a really interesting series of historical posts about the setting of her new fantasy series, Obsidian and Blood. (I have read the first book, Servant of the Underworld, and it was good. Bloody, but good.)

For your delectation:

1) The Valley of Mexico

2) Tenochtitlan

3) The Sacred Precinct

She has, to all appearances, done her research. ;-)


I have eaten cottage cheese (how come I never remember how much I like cottage cheese until I buy it because it's on sale?) and am about to make tea. Then I will go watch TV and think about Grail (I am confident in my deadline, even though it's only three months off. This worries me a little. Can I possibly be becoming innured to the damned things?) and brush the dog for a while, before resuming my Editorial Functions for truepenny.

Poor dog, he doesn't know about this yet.

Climbing tonight. And guacamole tacos for lunch, about which I am already ridiculously excited. I really like guacamole tacos.

Sometimes, of an evening, we have a mendicant nun wander through our kitchen, seeking alms for the poor in these hard times. I believe she is an Uncumberite nun, an order not unlike the Solicitines (which you will know well if you have studied the works of Linda Medley) although admittedly even hairier.


Sister Ushi Claire stops by as we are clearing up after dinner, to see if we might be able to spare a little something for the starving puppies little children.


She prayed most affectingly for aid in her quest to feed the hungry.

The odd thing about these hairy nuns that show up in our kitchen is that they are a little obsessed by dog biscuits. I offered her some tabbouleh, very wholesome, and some nice vegetables, and half a box of Lara Bars, all extremely nutritious, but she said no, no, she would make do with the dog biscuits. It seems an unnecessary bit of asceticism to me, but who am I to judge?

You know the pendant I put into New Shinies yesterday, the one with the octopus and the teapot and seven teacups? The one that went on hold right away, and then all sorts of people emailed me wanting to get on the waiting list?

Well, what you guys didn't know is that I made it as part of a competition. A charm-and-findings seller was offering prizes for interesting designs using their items, and my octopus with tea met with their approval. However, in order for it to be used on their website, I need to take photographs of the work-in-progress, showing how it's put together... which means I have to make several more.

Given that they're handmade and given the nature of wandering wire, they'll each be a tiny little bit different, and while they'll all share the series title of "One Lump or Two" they will each have individual subtitles. (Only the first one will be "One Lump or Two, or, Shall I Pour, Pour, Pour, Pour, Pour, Pour, Pour?" though they will all be of that design.)

I'll be emailing the folks who have inquired tomorrow, and I'll keep the rest of you posted so I can send you over to the charms-and-findings seller when the design goes live. Whee!

A funny thing happened on the way to the--

no, wait, that's not how the story goes.

At some point in the past couple of years, I've lost control of my stories. I mean, not--not like I had no control over them when I started writing, and just did things in any way I could because I didn't have the toolkit to choose how I was going to try to accomplish any given task. It was all brute force and ignorance, and not a lot of technique.

No, I still remember how to write. I still have all the tools in my toolkit, and I know how to use them. It's not the writing I've lost control of.

It's the stories. They've gotten... well, all the tidy has come out of them, and some of the calculation, and some of the rigid adherence to structure. They feel kind of wobbly and loose and ambiguous in my head. It's been scaring me, because I've been getting this sense that what I'm writing these days is not just not under control, but not controllable at all. Like there's bottom down there I can't see.

But based on the reactions I'm getting to them, that's working out okay somehow.

See, I used to know what the structures did, what they were there for, what work every piece did and how it affected the balance of the whole. I was a watchmaker. I had figured out how to build these machines and I could speed them up or slow them down. They didn't control time, but they were excellent devices for measuring it, quantifying it, making it observable and maybe even comprehensible.

And then suddenly I couldn't do that anymore, couldn't make those approximations that make something incredibly complex and contradictory more easily apprehensible.

I was panicky about it. I felt like they were all wrong. They were broken; they weren't working.

And then I started looking at some of the stuff other people are saying about my newer stories--"The Horrid Glory of Its Wings," "Sonny Liston takes the Fall," etc--and I realized something. They were working. They were working in ways I couldn't explain or quantify or set out on the dust cloth on the desk and move around with tweezers. They were working in messing, organic ways. These were not machines: these were organisms.

You don't own an organism. You negotiate with it.

These days the damned things are less like fine-geared pocketwatches and more like TARDISes--full of mysterious clankings and familiar spirits. Quite possibly possessed, a little bit random and out of control, never quite doing what I expect when I expect it. But actually in tune with something nexpressible about the nature of time, rather than just measuring each second ticking past.

And bigger on the inside than on the outside.

They seem to have taken on a life of their own.

That's really nifty.

I guess I have to start thinking of them as partners rather than tools now. That should be interesting.

Let's see... on Friday, we went to Patrick and Teresa's open house, where we had much good food and conversation, a chorus of "Steam Heat" and other singing, and some serious discussions of language, aphasia, and such. The only down side of the day was that my bottle of Omas Gray ink seems to have developed SITB*, which I didn't discover until I'd already started loading up my favorite vintage Sheaffer; I have to get a new bottle, and watch the pen carefully, to make sure it's not infected.

Saturday was a thoughtful day, with some serious discussion, followed by goofy discussion and an amazing potato-bacon-arugula-kale soup. On Sunday, Soren's computer died The Hard Drive Death From Which There Is No Return, it seems; fortunately, Patrick came over and did arcane rites to make sure all the laptops were up and running, including figuring out why Mirror** wouldn't connect to our wireless network. That took most of the afternoon; Soren also started the unthrilling process of drinking a gallon of Golight-G to flush out his system before yesterday's colonoscopy. He did have a couple of hours of visual hallucinations and giggle fits from the bisacodyl, though (effects that don't show up in the usual lists).

Yesterday, of course, was the colonoscopy, and the discovery that my beloved is an unmitigated smartass and joker. And no, that was not an effect of the anesthesia -- that was Soren being a smartass at me. (The technician thought we were an adorable couple, though, even when I was threatening to squeeze him like a bagpipe to see what sort of sounds all the gas they'd pumped into him would make.) After the procedure, Soren wanted FOOD, so we stopped at Five Guys and acquired burgers and more french fries than I would have thought we'd manage to eat, but we did. And after that, I made him a chocolate coke, and added chocolate ice cream, which he enjoyed immensely.

Today, I have been a couch potato, rereading bits and pieces of books, and puttering about. Laundry, cooking dinner, more chocolate ice cream, and now we're at our respective computers, trying to figure out how to get Thunderbird to work on the computer Soren's using, so he can get to his mail. I suspect that that will wait until tomorrow night, or even this weekend; and tomorrow I go back to the office, which will be oddly pleasant.

* SITB is "Shit In The Bottle," the precise technical term that fountain pen geeks use when ink becomes contaminated and starts growing strange things in it.

** My ThinkPad's name, thanks to maryread, is "a mirror made of words," a beautifully evocative phrase.

Can you find the cat in this picture?



Apparently, the Presumptuous Cat approves of the new addition to our nest. In other news, the Fearless Kitten met his first snow:



and the depredations of the smouse continue:



Now that's hubris. He also made a raid on my walnuts, the little bastard. Our cats are lazy layabout goldbricks.

I, on the other paw, am made of virtue. Today I went to the gym and the bakery, adhered to The Discipline, spent the entire remainder of the day working on a critique for stillsostrange (Why yes, I do have the draft of The Bone Palace, and why yes, it is made of awesome.), and then took the garbage out and came upstairs and made my bed and cleaned my bedroom. With my girly new pink-and-purple wool blanket.

The downstairs is a pile, the office is a pit, the Christmas tree needs to come down, the bathroom is all but invisible under the mildew, and the kitchen is an indistinguishable heap of winter coats and surface clutter... but my bedroom is clean!

And now I am going to finish reading Amanda's manuscript. I was going to watch Mythbusters and Hustle tonight, but this is better.

A lichen is a fungus that has enlisted the help of/imprisoned a photosynthesizing organism (a green alga or cyanobacterium) within its tissues. The helper organism/prisoner makes food out of sunlight while the fungus protects it from drying out or being consumed by other microorganisms. Lichens are long-lived and extremely hardy in most environmental conditions (there are lichens in Death Valley and there are lichens in Antarctica) but they are sensitive to air pollution. Urban and industrial areas tend to have poor lichen diversity. Lichenologists can tell, by noticing which species are present in an area, how severe the pollution is.