Category Archives: LJ

Neat! My honorable mention certificate from the 4th quarter ’02 Writers of the Future contest came in the mail today:

I’d rather have placed and gotten cash and publication, but this is nice too.

To the driver of the black pick-up going the other way who flashed his headlights at me to warn me about the speed trap just around the bend: THANK YOU!

On last night:
Had a blast at britzkrieg‘s birthday shindig. I was naughty and had a Tom Collins, although Matthew helped me finish it so I wasn’t that bad. My speaking voice appears to be at about the same tonal range as the background noise created by a bunch of other people in a room talking. In such situations I always feel like I’m shouting and people still lean close, give puzzled face, and say “what?” a lot at me. Sigh. I tried talking high and squeaky, and Matthew, at least, could hear me better then. But I felt too silly, even with several swallows of gin in me, to keep it up.

On writing:
Hacked at my new “weird” fantasy story a bit. Streamlined the prose a smidgen and added about 600 words (bringing it to around 7000 using manuscript count) to the ending to try to give it a little coherence. I think it’s now spilling over into Dark Fantasy or even Lite Horror, but I’m not sure. I seem to have a hard time labeling what I write. Sometimes I fit nice and snug into genre boundary lines (fairy/folk tales, for e.g.) and others I end up scrolling through all of Ralan.com trying to find a market which might possibly consider a cyberpunk vampire novelette or a SF-ey psychological horror tale. Argh.

Maybe I should just write more fairy tales.

On Hobkin:
I’m rather worried about the little fuzzhead. He’s got a really (really) sensitive tummy. Periodically, for no reason that we’ve been able to accurately pinpoint, he sicks up his food. At first, we thought it was just a young animal thing. Human babies do it all the time. But he’s no longer a baby, and from all the sources we’ve heard from in the skunk owners community, his case is pretty unique. He did it again this morning. He always seems fine right afterward. He’s active and usually hungry, but all this sicking up can’t possibly be good.

We’ve taken him to the vet and they can’t figure out what’s causing it either. Fortunately, they also reassure us that he seems perfectly healthy otherwise. He only sicks up occasionally, not enough to lose weight or run the risk of dehydration or malnutrition. But I’m so worried that things will get worse and he’ll stop eating or won’t be able to hold anything down.

Wah.

Matrix: Unloaded (no spoilers, just vague commentary) was shiny, black vinyl, escapist goodness. Although I really did get the feeling that I was watching a bridge piece between movies one and three, much like seeing The Empire Strikes Back. I also think almost all the action scenes tended to go on for a couple measures too long, but it wasn’t an egregious issue. I still greatly enjoyed it, although I have a feeling that I really need to see what they’re going to do in Matrix: Revolution before I can form a positive or negative opinion about the overall Matrix storyline. It’ll either be really amazing, fantastic, cyberpunk or it’ll be fluff like I find a lot of anime–pretty, but contentless, and occasionally somewhat bewildering.

Also re-read Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. It inspired me to try something in a new direction with my writing, style-wise, that I’ve never tried before. Sort of a glib, almost spartan tone. Very slipstreamy. I’m 3000 words into a new story. The words flowed as smooth as soapy water over linoleum. Don’t know how long the rest of it’s going to be, but I hope it comes as easily as the beginning did.

I’m feeling better this week. Although I suspect part of that is that I forgot to take my half-a-weekly dose of my new med yesterday PM and so took the whole dose today with breakfast and lunch. The impact on my mood has undoubtedly therefore been postponed. Or maybe it won’t happen at all. Positive thinking. Rah.

In any case, this week has to be better than last week.

Trying to unwind after this really crappy week with shiny, escapist fantasy.

Last night we watched seven of the nine Animatrix shorts. The Last Voyage of the Osiris really blew us away. It was made by the same people who did the Final Fantasy movie and you can really tell. And we also watched The Matrix on DVD on the big 60-inch upstairs. That’s one movie that a smaller screen just does not do justice to. Today, we’re going to see The Matrix: Reloaded. I’ve been trying assiduously to avoid any spoilers. Excited movie goodness.

On the writing front, I haven’t been doing any all week (fuckity fuckity fuck). I have been continuing my run of rejections, though, amassing five more in just this week, adding to the suckitude. The hard-drive issue freaked me out too much to focus on writing, and I’ve been spending my writing time compulsively going through my backups to see if there were any gaps in the files I had left. They look okay so far. Glad I’ve been anal about backing up those, although now I feel that having a copy on our desktop’s hard-drive and monthly backups on CD-RW aren’t sufficient. I’m debating between burning a monthly CD-R in addition (and just keeping an ever-growing pile of monthly CDs) or burning to a Zip Disc. But we’re a little low on Zip Discs.

I keep wondering if I should make hard-copy backups, but I just don’t have a place to store all those pages and pages of manuscripts. Not to mention every time I make a tweak to a story I’d have to print it out again. The last time I tried to keep hard-copy backups, I lost track of what stack of paper was the most current pretty quickly.

I need a neural implant storage device so I can backup all my files digitally to my brain.

I am having a week from Hell.

I think I’m seeing a trend with my new meds, although it might be too early for me to be sure. I take it once a week, split into two doses on Sunday PM and Monday AM. It hits my mood on Monday and lingers until Tuesday or Wednesday, casting a layer of depression over me for those couple of days.

This week, our car broke down, which didn’t help things, but our Prelude is an Older Car and we still have my Accord which is shiny and newish. And the fix-it price wasn’t horrible. So no biggie.

But then the hard drive on my laptop totally fubared itself on Tuesday. And all of the techs and all of their tools couldn’t put it back together again. I am not screaming on the floor in a padded room because I made backups, but only of the things that I would scream on the floor in a padded room about if I lost. Other Very Important files are gone to the place where deceased bytes dwell, leaving me extremely unhappy but not devastated. The techs I have been on the phone with and consulting since then inform me that it’s something that “happens” and that we’re nearing the life-cycle of these particular systems, which is why we’re scheduled to get replacements in a few months.

Oh why couldn’t the damn thing have held out on its brain implosion for a few more months?

Hardware/mechanical issues always leave me feeling powerless and depressed, and so I’ve got a double whammy going on in my head.

I had that laptop for something like five years. There was a LOT of data on that thing. All gone.

*whimper*

Well, I got home today and there was nice news and crappy news.

The crappy news was that our Honda Prelude broke down while Matthew was driving it to the grocery store. Fortunately, it broke down like a block away, so it wasn’t much of a trek for him to come back home. We’ve got towing insurance too, so we’re having it towed gratis to the dealer to get it fixed. But it will undoubtedly cost $$ to get it fixed. Crappola.

The nice news is that I was surfing the blog of the editor of Eggplant Productions, and she was talking about the covers of the ELP library works. She mentioned that she asked John Savage of Rumor Mill lawyer fame to create a cover for one of the entries. And the one he did was my piece, “Troubadour and the Moon.”

So I got a sneek peek of the artwork:

Neat. But our car is still broke, goddamit.

Yep, my shiny 2003 Taylup Calendar informs me that today is Limerick Day!

Poetry for the common man, eponymously named after the Irish town, a limerick is a five-line poem in anapestic trimeter, renown for humorous and bawdy content. Go, limericks!

And no, I’m not going to torture anyone with my doggerel efforts. I ain’t no poet. But don’t let my reticence stop y’all!

I just found out that the editor who requested a story of mine just resigned. Apparently she had editorial differences with the publisher.

Fuckity fuckity fuck!

And jeez that was fast. I mean she’d only had the position for a little over a month!

Well, there goes my sure sale. But the story in question is still at the original market I sent it to. Maybe they’ll buy it. *crosses fingers*

Happy Mother’s Day/Lunantishee everyone!

I slept in today. Didn’t get up until nine. Woot! Well, it’s an accomplishment for me.

One of the engines in our hot tub was making some really loud whirring noises, so we called the store that sold it to us and they sent someone out. It’s still under warrenty so we didn’t have to pay anything, but we were pinned in the house until the repairman came by. It’s all fixed now, but I wanted to go out and do some shopping yesterday, and that didn’t happen.

We did treat ourselves to a dinner out at a little Italian place nearby. I believe it’s called Ippolito. Had white pizza and black and white cake for dessert. Yummy.

Came home and watced Dave, the movie with Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver. Fell asleep during it with both Hobkin and Matthew snuggled against me, all warm and safe. Mmm.

Got an email invite to a Memorial Day picnic that the local Mensans are having. Guess here’s our chance to get together with them. Erm.

Didn’t get any more writing done yesterday, but I’m trying not to force word count.