Category Archives: LJ

Went out to check on our websites this morning only to discover that they were all down. Every single last one of them. I type in a URL, and I get a “Page URL Not Found” error on the Comcast server. This is for all of our pages, our graphics, everything. Poof. Gone.

I’m assuming Comcast’s server went kablooie and took all our content with it. I’m hoping they have backups and will restore them soon so I don’t have to go through the laborious process of restoring them from this end. But in the interim, I’m royally peeved with them.

So I guess I spoke too soon when I said that the transition to Comcast went smoothly. The lunatic fiasco was just delayed.

Bastards.

It’s official. It took a little wheel greasing on my end because of various miscommunications, but Phobos will indeed be at Dragon*Con this year. Keith Olexa (Phobos editor) and James Maxey (fellow contest winner and novelist) have been approved as guests.

The Phobos folks are coordinating with the director of the Writers Track at D*C to arrange a panel. But it looks like the panel, autograph signing, and publicity mongering will all be a go. Very exciting! I get to be on the other side of the autographing table–the side with the pen!

Err. I still haven’t told Keith and James that I’m deathly afraid of public speaking. I should probably do that . . .

The Dragon*Con staff meeting was yesterday. Bruce Boxleitner canceled from D*C because he got a job that conflicts with the timing. Understandable but unfortunate.

We almost filled our Daily Dragon staff dearth, but the guy who we snagged got dragged to a different department by his friends. It’s his first convention–not just his first Dragon*Con–and he’s worried about getting lost and overwhelmed, which is understandable, and wants to stick close to his friends this year. But still, pook. It does sound likely that we’ll get him next year. He’s published a book and wants to do something involving writing for the con. Unfortunately, that means we’re still down a staff member. Dangit.

Joe (director of the Con Suite) was handing out these jumbo tubes of pixie stix powder. Mmm. Sugar high. He’s always giving away such wonderful things: sugar, caffeine, food. And he ordered extra cases of Amp this year. Hurray for Joe! Amp is what kept me going for large portions of D*C last year.

Got a sneak-peek of the backstage pass artwork (drawn by dire_epiphany). Very cool! Can’t wait to see the passes when they’re done.

Came home and watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit and promptly fell asleep about halfway through it. My sleep cycles are totally messed up.

Hobkin’s in my lap, totally being a comatose fuzzalump and I’m almost out of coffee in my glass. Trying to figure out how to pour a refill without disturbing the fuzzhead. Heh.

Trying to keep myself busy so that I don’t focus on my mood–currently free-floating glumness which I’m positive is totally chemical in nature. So:

Books read: Slant by Greg Bear, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling.

Reading: Slippage by Harlan Ellison

Movies seen in the theater: Charlie’s Angels 2: Full Throttle, The Pirates of the Caribbean, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Movies seen at home: The Man Who Would be King, Key Largo.

And to get my mind off not producing any new word count, I’ve spent the last couple days updating our various websites in my free time: Musta-lay-day Grove, our homepage, and my writing page (again). I think I’ve re-set all the attbi.com references to comcast.net now, and for laughs and giggles, I played a bit with the scroll bar appearances and how the links looked. But what the hell is Bravenet doing? They’ve totally re-vamped their counter structure and I hate it. I’m giving them a couple days to see how it ends up being, then I think I might have to go looking for a new counter provider. Damnit. Oh well, only so much I can fume about a free service.

There’s a Dragon*Con staff meeting this afternoon. The last one before the convention. I think we’re still down a staff member, number-wise. Hope we can recruit one then.

Saw my rheumatologist for a follow-up yesterday. He’s pleased with how I’m tolerating the Methotrexate and wants to start weaning me off the Prednisone. The man takes “weaning” very seriously. I’m currently on 10mg/day and he wants me to drop 1mg every four weeks. At that rate, it will be ten months until I’m off the damn stuff. But at least it’s a start.

He also thinks I should see my GP about the mood issues I’m having. Since I tolerate meds so very poorly, he’s loathe to prescribe something to counter the side-effects of what I’m on without me consulting with another doctor. Sigh. I can’t keep the names of all my doctor’s straight anymore!

I’m terribly behind in writing “thank you” notes to all the (30+) critiquers that I got for my last offering on Critters. Hmm. When is too late to send a belated “thank you note”?

I’m feeling fractured, and I think it’s the meds. I tried writing something, a brand new story–something I haven’t done for a couple weeks. I wasn’t stressing my lack of productivity because I finished up a bunch of stories in quick succession a little while back and my writing tempo tends to be irregular. I have a flurry of productivity and crank out a bunch of new stuff, and then I sort of stew for a bit as they go through the critique/re-write/submit process. And I can quite legitimately claim to still be at the tail end of that as I have something waiting in the queue at Critters, not to mention something up for review right now.

But it has been several weeks, and I felt like I really needed to get cracking on some word count. I tried writing something from a mood/idea that percolated up. I thought “great, my muse is back in gear!” Managed to get through nearly 1000 words, but then I petered out. I just didn’t have the direction or focus to keep going. So I started something else that I’ve been mulling over. That lasted all of 300 words. And then an idea for an opening with no story behind it came to me. Hell, I’ve written 8000-word stories from less. So I put my fingers to keys. Got maybe three paragraphs before sputtering to a stop.

Now I’ve got three openings to stories I’d like to write. But I can’t seem to keep the momentum up. I think it might be the Clonzepam that’s making it so hard for me to focus. I’ve noticed that I lose my train of thought an awful lot of late, which makes it really difficult to achieve “flow.” I can’t seem to immerse myself totally, which is when my best stuff comes out (not to mention the greatest bulk of word count happens).

Now I’m in a dilemma. The Clonzepam is really helping my TOS. I’m not hurting. There’s still occasional warning twinges, but I’m not in active pain. But at the same time, if the Clonzepam is mucking up my muse, then that’s just a plain ole untenable situation. Snort. Irony. It hurts to write when I’m not taking the meds, but when I’m on them, I can’t seem to produce anything. And I’m afraid to ask my neurologist to switch me to something else because I seem to run a high risk of becoming allergic to anything my system gets introduced to.

Maybe I’m still in my “muse stew” phase and I’ll get back into the swing of things in a week or so.

The next step is to go the ultra-caffeine route to kick start my writing process. But the usual doses that get me twitchy but productive aren’t working anymore. I’d really like to avoid acquiring a pot of espresso a day habit in order to write.

Artists having a history of substance abuse of one sort or other (and being insane) is really resonating as a reality.

Oo! I just got the check from the editor of Erotic Fantasy: Tales of the Paranormal for “Inspirations End”!

I love markets that pay on acceptance!

Actually, I haven’t gone to see fireworks on the 4th of July for years. It’s not that I don’t like them, I do, it’s the going outside where there’s foliage and insects that I have problems with.

Just finished doing a substantial overhaul on my writing webpage. Frames and JavaScripty fun.

Watched Trading Places last night, the movie with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd. Matthew has been waiting and waiting for it to come out on DVD. As soon as he saw it was available on Amazon, he ordered it. It came really quick too. Much fun. And Jamie Lee Curtis’ breasts.

Had another Angel Season 1 viewing fest on Thursday with Kristin, a (fellow) rabid Spike fan. She’d never seen the Angel S1/Buffy S4 cross-overs, even though one of her favorite Buffy seasons is 4. One really needs to see those cross-over episodes in order to get the full umph of the relationship arc. We watched something like nine episodes of Angel S1 straight. Now I can’t wait for Season 2 to come out on DVD! And James Marsters is going to be at Dragon*Con. Rrrrr.

We emptied out and powered down the hot tub for summer. It’s just way too hot to use, even with the air conditioner on (the little A/C unit in there is a trooper but it’s really not up for the task). It’s rather sad, the hot tub all empty and forlorn. Poor thing. We’ll fill it up and again when it cools down in Fall.

Matthew and I also spent several hours troubleshooting on the computer. After the Comcast transition, we noticed a really dramatic drop in performance–huge lags in response time to the point of madness. We ran a diagnostic at PC Pitstop and it flagged our CPU as running at 100%. Weird. And yikes. After a lot of trial and error (and watching the System Monitor react as we tried different things) we discovered that it’s the scanner. Our scanner software loads on startup and we think that whatever transition software Comcast ran for the switchover is in contention with some memory or resource that the scanner software uses. Unfortunately, we can’t turn off the scanner automatic startup unless we update the registry and neither Matthew nor I wants to muck with that. But at least we have a workaround. Boot–>wait for scanner software to load–>close out of scanner software. Voilà. Not happy with it. But at least we isolated the problem. And the strange thing is that the scanner still works. We can manually start it and scan stuff, but as soon as it launches, our performance time plummets and our CPU usage spikes to 100% again. Stupid computer brain.

To: All the writers on my friends list who have websites and/or think a link to promote their work or themselves on my website would be spiffy.

One of the writers groups I’m in started a flurry of banner and linkback activity and since I just went through this ISP switchover to Comcast, I thought I’d take the opportunity to update my writing homepage.

So, anyone interested in doing a link exchange?

mouseferatu, I’ve already got your back. But if you make a banner, toss it my way so I can post it.

And I’ve got your Four and Twenty Blackbirds banner up, wicked_wish.

Here’s my writing links page if y’all want to see: http://home.comcast.net/~eugienmatt/writing.htm

And for my shameless self-promotion side of things:

My banner:

Although I’m happy with just a text link too. If you want to link me as just a friend then please use this URL: http://home.comcast.net/~eugienmatt. If as a writer then this one: http://home.comcast.net/~eugienmatt/writing.htm

Promote promote promote.

Oh, and Happy Independence Day, everyone!

I just sold my horror story “The Reign of the Wintergod” to The Asylum Volume 3: The Quiet Ward anthology! Two sales in two days! Yowza

The Quiet Ward will debut at the Horrorfind convention in Maryland this August!

May this be indication of more floodgates opening. Pleasepleaseplease.

Woohoo!

WOOHOO!

I just sold “Inspirations End” to the anthology Erotic Fantasies: Tales of the Paranormal.

Hurray!