Thanks to the fabulous Jason Sanford for dropping me a line letting me know that “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” is now out in the French anthology Ténèbres 2010! Continue reading
Can’t believe July is almost over. Sort of freaking out about it, actually. The @#$! grand jury duty isn’t helping, either. It’s become a tired refrain, but I’m so behind on everything I wanted to get done. Y’know, I’m really sucking at time management, or I still have too many hamsters on my plate. Or both.
Well, I did lob off one more hamster. Just finished overhauling fosteronfilm‘s Dragon*Con Independent Film Festival website. (Shiny?) And we did accomplish a couple major homeowner to-do items: ripped the carpet out of the half-bathroom (I have hated that carpeting since we bought the house almost ten years ago; who carpets a bathroom?) and replaced it with linoleum and had our poor, laboring air conditioner checked over and cleaned. But I never get much satisfaction out of accomplishing domestic stuff. More like a sense of relief to have it done and out of the way.
Continue reading
I know it’s been a while since I posted. Partly I was trying to avoid exacerbating my wing stubs so as to give them a chance to heal—which seems to have worked; let’s hear it for not being in perpetual pain—and partly it’s been insane-busy these last couple weeks.
The Georgia code page proofs are starting to come in at work, which curtails big chunks of my footloose and fancy freetime. Was utterly mowed down by the granddaddy of lingering sinus headaches. Days and days of “ow my head hurts, ow my arms hurt, ow ow OW.” This is also the busiest time of year for fosteronfilm. He’s making his final selections for the Dragon*Con Independent Film Festival, and he’s also still putting in hours as a census worker. And, for the evil icing on the cupcake-o-overwhelmed, we decided this was the time to refinance our mortgage. Did the math—historically low interest rates and all—and realized refinancing would go leaps and bounds towards offsetting this year’s financial hemorrhage.
So, while I was feeling pitiful and pained, and Matthew was stressing over his film festival spreadsheet and evaluating second cut (or third cut in a couple cases) film submissions, we were also filling out refinancing forms, reviewing and assembling piles of paperwork, making varied and sundry phone calls, and comparing and contrasting the bids we got. If I hadn’t already had a headache, the paperwork alone would’ve brought one on.
We ended up opting to do a short lock on our refinancing application, resulting in a much shorter time-frame between initial application to closing. We did it to lock in a lower interest rate when it looked like they were starting to creep back up, although as it turns out, they crept back down to the rate we locked in, so we didn’t really need to. However, assuming no eleventh-hour monkey wrenches, we close and finalize tomorrow. Rah.
But my head still hurts. Continue reading
Back in Atlanta after visiting the in-laws in Illinois. There’s a dead zone smack dab in the middle of Kentucky where I can get cell reception but no GPS or data connectivity, either 3G or 1X, on my Droid. Weird. I thought data and GPS rode on the cell signal, so I was rather baffled to find that I had full cell service but nothing else. My Droid found it confusing too and rebooted itself a couple times until I told it to quit already.
Didn’t get nearly as much done over the holiday as I’d hoped, of course, but in what might be a first, I did manage to get some writing done. Being able to take out my phone—and not have to boot my laptop—to write a paragraph here or there, really ups the convenience factor. Droid win.
Managed 1Kish new words on the editing pass/massive rewrite of “Rampion.” I’d say I’m in the final stretch, but I sort of feel I’ve been there for so long that I’ve lost touch with the meaning of that term.
And sold Spanish language reprint of “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” to Cuásar, slated for their special edition issue #50. Spanish is another new language that my work will appear in—making it the fourth for this story and my seventh overall. Coolio.
And the foreign language sales continue to roll in. Just sold an Italian reprint of “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest” to Robot! That makes the sixth foreign language my work will have been translated into.
The 2009 Nebula Awards ceremony was not only live cast but recorded for all posterity. The event is broken into several recordings but herein is the part that includes davidlevine‘s keynote speech and the presentation of the Andre Norton, Ray Bradbury, and Nebula Awards: Continue reading
Still dazed from Nebula Weekend but wanted to mention the AussieCon 4 folks have announced that online registration for WorldCon 68 is now up, and with it, the 2010 Hugo Voter’s Packet (with “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest” in it…*squee!*).
The Hugo Voter’s Packet is intended to help every AussieCon 4 member make an informed vote on the Hugos and is available to attending members ($310 AUD) or supporting members ($70 AUD) of AussieCon 4, which will take place Sept. 2-6 in Melbourne, Australia.
You can register online to become an attending or supporting member, and once you’ve registered, they’ll send instructions on how to access the Hugo Voter’s Packet. For those not able to make it to Australia, $70 AUD comes to around $60 USD—a fabulous deal for the incredible amount of fiction in this year’s Hugo Voter’s Packet, which is the most complete ever. And you get to vote for the Hugos! (The packet will be available until the end of voting deadline, July 31, 2010 23:59 PDT.)
Included are electronic versions of: Continue reading
Home now. Got in yesterday evening and had time to lovingly set my Nebula on the mantle and gawk reverently at it, unpack the barest essentials, have a light dinner, sort through all the emails and flag the ones that require response (but not, mind you, actually respond to them), and keel over comatose.
Awake, still dazed, still having to glance up periodically at the mantle to reassure myself that it wasn’t some delirious fantasy, but awake. So herein my promised longer post about the weekend:
First off, mad props to Mary Robinette Kowal, Jane Jewell, Russell Davis, Michael Capobianco, Steven H Silver, Peggy Rae Sapienza, and all the volunteers who worked so hard to make Nebula Weekend fabulous and kept everyone fed, feted, entertained, and happy. Y’all are wonderful and did an amazing job. Continue reading
Just sold French reprint of “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest” to the anthology Ténèbres, making French the second language this story will be translated into. Hurray!
Thanks for all the congrats, everyone! I’ve slept, woken up, gazed dumbfounded at my brand new block of Lucite, and I’m still having a hard time believing it.
Wonder if they make the award statues so heavy in order to impress upon the winners, “Yes, this is real. Do not drop it on your foot.”
Huge congratulations to fellow Nebula winners Paolo Bacigalupi, Kage Baker, and Kij Johnson and Andre Norton Award winner Catherynne M. Valente! It was reassuring to see the dazed, grinning, ecstatic faces of Paolo and Cat last night. They looked how I felt, and that gave the surrealism an edge of tangibility.
