My GOD this has been an excellent day! I just SOLD my kitsune folktale “When Shakko Did Not Lie” to CRICKET!
God, I wanted to break into them so badly! I can’t believe it!
And what they’re paying me for this story will pay for the second half of our new television.
Hot DAMN!
I’m gonna go screaming through the house now.
Apparently I’m in a big LJ updatey mood. Today is Ostara, the Festival of the Trees. Happy Ostara everyone!
Matthew and I left beer bread and bourbon balls out under the topiary tree for the visiting faerie folk. Look what they left us!
It’s a Dianne Shapiro soft sculpture tuffet/ottoman. I saw one like it at a Caribou Coffee and just fell in love with it. I’ve got a passion for whimsical things. Dianne Shapiro has this line of humane trophies including plush bear rugs, animal heads and “other ends,” and of course, tuffets! Absolutely adorable. Stuffed animal furniture. Gotta love it.
Matthew also got me Wolf Wing a new Tanith Lee book. And I got him the complete Series One Wodehouse Playhouse on DVD.
We went out for breakfast and it’s amazing outside. The trees are sprouting these gorgeous colored blooms. Even the ground covering is coming out in lavenders and yellows. I love spring in Georgia.
Ooo. There’s cover art for the Blasphemy anthology up at the website!
Isn’t it sexy?
Paul Fry, one of the editors, sent me a request for my bio for the book, so it looks like things are moving right along with them. But I’m never happy with my bios. Should I make it funny? Or serious? Do people read them anyway? Glargh.
They still haven’t sent me the contract. I do wish editors would send contracts out more promptly. It never quite feels real unless there are signatures involved.
Why should I express my rage and horror about the war when Peter Freundlich says it so much better HERE?
Thanks to mouseferatu for the setting-it-down-on-LJ-so-people-can-link-to-it part.
I’m not dwelling on the war. Refusing to dwell on the war. I have a friend who’s in the air force reserves. They haven’t called him for active duty, but it’s hanging there, the possibility that they might.
Agh. Not dwelling on the war!
So . . . this week has seen several important holidays:
Hob Day/St. Patrick’s day on Monday
Feast of the Lady on Tuesday
The Vernal Equinox yesterday
And Ostara on Saturday
To celebrate, Matthew and I put up our Spring decorations. We bought a topiary bush and adorned it with berry sprigs and a string of butterfly lights, and have hung a pair of light strings over the fireplace encased in these little wicker balls so the resultant shadow gives the room a forest glade ambiance.
And, since Spring is all about renewal and feasting, we’ve feasted.
On the menu this week: fresh baked beer bread, homemade bourbon balls (actually, we didn’t have any bourbon so substituted scotch and when my back was turned, Matthew sploshed a little extra in than the recipe called for, so there’s a definite kick to these), delicious apple and parsnip soup, Matthew’s amazing eggplant parmesan, parsnip cakes, and fresh asparagus and plum tomatoes sautéed in olive oil over pasta. Yummy.
Happy Spring everyone.
It’s officially a novelette now. 9600 words at end-of-day yesterday (Ack! That’s 11,000 by manuscript count.) and still going strong. It does indeed look likely that I’m going to hit “novella” with this one. But I sincerely doubt there’s enough story to make it to bona fide novel.
Fuck.
I did decide to introduce a new POV character. I think I can get away with it in a work of this length, although all my short story instincts are railing at me. I’ll assess how successful and necessary the POV switch is when the thing’s done.
I find it interesting that once I decided (with resignation) that this work was going to be a novella, I didn’t balk the way I usually do when I neared the 7.5K mark. I just kept plunking along. There’s a barrier in the writing part of my brain that disheartens me when I start creeping into the “longer than a short story” range. It’s just that it’s so hard to sell longer works. Hell, bucketfuls of markets dry up at the greater-than-5K-marker, much less the novelette/novella range.
But with this one, I don’t care. I want to write this story to completion, dammit.
I’m almost over the climax, soon to be edging into the denouement. Wonder how far I’ll get this weekend.
Not that I’ll have all that much free time between the Dragon*Con staff meeting and the Fantasm shindig . . .
Received the draft proofs of my story from Phobos yesterday. Caught one error and I noticed that the editor (I assume Keith, the Phobos editor, and not OSC) de-contracted a few of my contractions. It’s not a biggie and only occured a handful of times, so I didn’t raise a stink, but it doesn’t sit completely well with me. I think my original prose reads better, but obviously Keith didn’t agree. Oh well. He’s the editor. And I doubt it’ll affect the readability one way or the other. It’s just a couple incidences of “she’d” to “she had” and suchlike. I suspect only I’d notice the difference. Hrmph.
The whole Phobos anthology project is moving along at a good clip. In his note, Keith said that he’d like to get the approved proofs to the production people by Friday of this week, or maybe Monday.
In other news, Hobkin is shedding his winter undercoat. Except, unlike other animals that poof their fur all over the furniture and their human’s clothing, he’s getting all snarled and matted. I’m having to brush the dead fur out. I think I need to get a better brush. The bristles on the one I’m using aren’t long enough to reach the really deep mats, and every time he sees it, he gets all tail-up and defensive. I feel like I’m torturing him. Last night I had Matthew help me hold him so I could brush him, and Hobkin struggled and wiggled, and tried to bite the brush out of my hand. When we finally let him go, he zipped under his hutch and sulked there for most of the evening. I felt terrible.
I just got an acceptance email from a newish British magazine called Here & Now. They’re buying my short story “When the Lights Go Out.” Two fiction sales in a row in the same weekend!
They’re paying me in pounds. I’m not quite sure how to manage the exhange from pounds to dollars, but I’ll figure something out.
The issue my story is slated for is the August 2003 one.
In other news, Hobkin has learned a new trick. And apparently he’s still growing, even if it’s just a wee, little bit. Usually, things placed on top of the coffee table are (were) fairly safe from his grasping paws if put close to the middle of the table. Last night, we had Kristen, a wonderful person Matthew met on the Buffy Board he frequents who lives in Athens, over for gabbing and various Buffy/Angel viewing. I had just poured everyone a round of soft drinks, and I stepped back into the kitchen for a moment when Hobkin took that opportunity to latch his paws on the edge of my glass full of pink lemonade, and dump it. Fortunately, he didn’t pull the glass down on top of himself, but he did manage to drench himself and the carpet. And then he began happily helping Matthew and I clean it up. He was quite miffed when I wiped him down and locked him away. Silly, lemonade-flavored skunk. Fortunately, it was diet, so everything isn’t all sticky now.
Hobkin’s asleep in my lap making little skunkie snoring sounds. It’s terribly cute. Last night I fell asleep on the couch and he crawled up on the cushion I was using as a pillow and slowly edged his way into my arms. He and I slept with him playing teddy skunk for hours, until he suddenly rolled over and fell off the couch. Poor little guy. He landed on his feet and was totally unhurt, but I looked down to see him standing there with a dazed, perplexed look about him. I reached down to pick him back up, but he squiggled away and ran off to sulk under his hutch. I think he blamed me for his plummet. Silly beastie. But apparently he’s forgiven me this morning.
Yesterday we went out after dinner to pick up some more Ostara decorations (doesn’t everyone celebrate Ostara?). Our timing couldn’t be worse. Apparently a tanker truck overturned on I-85 across all lanes in one direction, and the overflow bottlenecked the roads for miles around. A twenty-five-minute drive turned into two hours. Gah.
I just noticed on the Phobos site that there’s links set up for a “signing tour” for the anthology (that go to a “coming soon” sort of message when clicked). That implies that they’re planning such a thing for this release. They had one for the first anthology, so I shouldn’t be surprised. But I’ve never been on a signing tour. What if I sit down to sign and no one shows up?
Phobos just updated their website with cover art and info on the anthology: Hitting the Skids in Pixeltown! In addition to it being edited by Orson Scott Card, Larry Niven’s short story, “The Coldest Place,” will be included as a bonus story. I’m going to be published alongside Larry Niven!
And, unless there’s another cyberpunk tale in amongst the winners, one of the stories highlighted in the write-up is mine:
“. . . From a gritty cyber-noir tale of dangerous technology to a parable for peace in the distant future, the stories in Hitting the Skids in Pixeltown continue the Phobos mission of bringing devoted SF readers the best brave-new fiction by emerging authors . . .”
I’m pretty sure mine is the “gritty cyber-noir tale”!
