AND
87-day SALE to the Modern Magic: Dark Tales of Fantasy anthology, published by Fantasist Enterprises. Woohoo!
Also got a lovely email from Laird Barron praising my Tangent review of his story “Bulldozer” in Sci-Fiction.
This weekend just keeps getting better and better.
Oh. My. God. I just got an email from Shawna McCarthy, the editor of Realms of Fantasy! She not only wants to buy one of the stories that Carina passed on to her, but BOTH of them.
EEEEEEEEEEE!!!
I just sold both “Returning my Sister’s Face” and “The Storyteller’s Wife” to Realms of Fantasy!
Omygodomygodomygod! 
I feel less flattened today. Amazing what crashing out for twelve hours straight can do to a person’s disposition. I even had the fortitude to update the Daily Dragon Online with some last minute articles, the Art Show Awards, and the Hall Costume Contest Winners. Go me.
More articles, pictures, and pagmatic‘s cartoons to be added as they trickle in.
Mostly caught up on my recent Friends List reading. Can’t possibly catch up on all the time I missed, so if something happened over the D*C weekend that I should know about, drop me a line, plez!
Want to go over my cute folkish tale again, but I think it’s getting close to ready for Matthew to first reader.
Might be a good weekend for writing. *knocks on pressed particle board*
Had a little alarm clock snafu this morning. I was pinned by a skunk and just wanted nine more minutes of sleep when my alarm went off. Wasn’t thinking too clearly, otherwise I would never have done what I did next. I rolled over, prodded Matthew, and asked him to hit snooze. After a few more prods, he lumbered up, the alarm clock fell silent, and I fell back asleep.
Half an hour later, Hobkin decided it was time for breakfast and scampered off to see if the breakfast fairy had made an appearance, which woke me up. I looked at the clock and realized it was much later than I had expected. Matthew blearily asked: “You didn’t want me to turn it off?” Chaotic rushing ensued.
Not a good way to start the day.
I heard my muse cackling maniacally, alternating with hysterical giggles. I thought it best to leave her be for a while longer, but she seems to be displaying a surprising amount of resilience.
Discovered a cute folkish tale I’d set aside. I re-read what I’d written, and liked what I had too much to leave it unfinished. So I rattled off 2000 new words and just like that, it’s done. Hunh. But I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it now. When I started it, I had intended it for Cricket. But it clocks in at nearly 3.4K, far too long for them. Hmm. Perhaps that’s why I set it aside in the first place.
Ah well. I’ll see if I can cut it down or, more realistically, hunt down other markets for it. I wonder if it would be suitable for Cicada?
But I finished another story. Yay!
Dragon*Con happened. Haven’t fully recovered from it yet. May not for many more days. Oof. My brain feels tenderized. I have bruises that I cannot fully account for, and blisters that I can. Our bedroom looks like the costume fairy exploded in it. Our living room is only marginally better, and only because we had to pick things up off the floor or Hobkin would have been more than happy to investigate them for us. And there are some post-con issues that I’m having to deal with that are not making me happy.
But from what I can pick out of the actual convention blur, it was great! Highlights, or rather those bits I can remember enough to be coherent on:
So busy I can’t believe I’m taking the time to make this LJ entry. Gearing up big-time for Dragon*Con. Had a very aggravating thing happen last night. Heard from one of my staff that she wasn’t working D*C this year. Talk about last minute notice! I didn’t think I could fill her spot by convention time, so I was frantically rethinking my painstakingly synchronized desk schedule.
But, as fortune had it, I got a note from the volunteer coordinator today. Due to staff cuts in other departments (sorry, tk0667), there was a staffer adrift who expressed an interest in working for me and he stepped into the gaping need. Welcome tanglered!
Got the majority of Thursday’s pre-con hardcopy Daily Dragon issue laid out. It can’t be finalized until I get the deluge of schedule changes received and entered, but I’m pretty happy to have gotten this far ahead of the game. Also updated the online template and created a brand new one for the hardcopy. Hoping to streamline the publication process this year. Otherwise, I will need a holiday to recover from my holiday.
Also made some updates to the behind-the-scenes parts of the website to get it prepped for convention action, and so I can hand it over to arkhamrefugee in something other than an embarrassing, chaotic mess.
Matthew and I have both been working dude_the like a dog. But Matthew’s getting more of his time than I am, which makes me glower. Except I’m ahead of my hubby in the convention readiness arena, so I guess I can only glower so much.
They are still sending us boxes of swag. We got Sky Captain posters and cards. Glah. My dining room is layered in cardboard boxes AGAIN, dammit.
Lastly, my immune system appears to have rallied (or de-rallied, as the case may be) and halted my MCTD flare-up in it’s initial stages before it could put me down and out for the count. *knocks on wood*
Um, I did get a personal rejection from Andy Cox of Interzone, but at least it had a heartening invite to send more: “please continue to send us your stuff, which we very much look forward to reading.”
dude_the is here, hurray! Everyone is asleep, except for a hyper skunk, who at last check seemed to be getting ready to put himself away under the hutch. So soon, everyone else will be asleep. But I’m awake.
Dammit.
Ooo!! I want THIS. It’s a “Bunny of the Month Club” with extremely twisted hand made bunnies (and bears and penguins). Oh I want it I want it I want it!
But, err, my birthday isn’t for four months. Sigh.
Spent most of last night doing Daily Dragon prep: setting up templates, forms, fiddling with graphics, peering at my staff schedule, etc. Feeling pretty confident about being ready in time for the convention. Barring any unforeseen emergencies. Oh, wait, what am I talking about? It’ll be chaotic and insane. Yup.
Did something incredibly careless the other day. I’ve got several prescription meds I take daily to keep all of my physiological aggravations under a semblance of control. Normally I take them religiously with my breakfast in two gulps. I downed the first set, reached for the second, and noticed that I was one pill less than I thought I ought to be. I figured I’d grabbed an extra pill in the first swallow, no biggie.
Low grade fever, aches, minor joint pain, and fatigue ensued, classic signs of one of my Lupus/MCTD flare-ups. I didn’t think anything of it as I’ve been logy for a while, and my meds have been doing an excellent job of keeping me on an even keel. I thought I was just tired. Then I discovered the pill I thought I hadn’t taken, but assumed I had, had rolled underneath my keyboard. I must have knocked it with my hand and not noticed. It was my Imuran pill, the one I take in concert with Prednisone to keep my stupid immune system from attacking me. Except I’m being weaned off the Pred, taking only a single, measly milligram a day, not enough to hold the fort without the Imuran riding shotgun. Ergo, the beginning of a flare-up.
Of course I immediately resumed my regular scheduled Imuran doses and I think my system is rallying. But I’m a little dismayed to discover how fragile my health equilibrium is that a single missed dose could throw me off.
AND, we got eight more boxes of promo stuff from Fed Ex–posters and postcards! ARGH!! Will the stream of boxes never end?
Heard via the Rumor Mill that there are other writers in the waiting-for-a-response-from-LCRW boat, so I’m glad I didn’t query yet. Waiting is.
After getting nearly eleven hours of sleep last night, I feel better today. Still pretty yicky, but better. Matthew’s looking a bit ragged, too. He’s been spending most of his days doing website updates and schedule coordination for his track.
The Dragon*Con schedule grid is live! I’m also nearly finished constructing the Daily Dragon orientation packet. Got to work out the desk staff schedule, but I can’t do that until I hear back from all my volunteer people. dude_the will be flying in this weekend. Going to see about assembling the skeleton and tendons of Thursday’s edition so that all I have to do when I get onsite is its flesh and makeup, and running it off–barring egregious schedule changes.
Also, the D*C volunteer coordinator is going to swing by and pick up over twenty boxes of promo stuff to distribute. Hurray! But the Fed Ex. Man came and brought six more. Boo! There’s still dozens of boxes littering my dining room, dammit!
The amount of wordage that I’ve been able to accomplish can be summed up with a big ole goose egg. But then, I tend to experience a significant writing hiatus both before and after D*C.
