Category Archives: Blog

Friday – musing on the skunk show

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Well, it’s finalized. Matthew’s going to be a film festival judge and guest at the Midwest Entertainment Industry Conference in Kentucky in November. They’re getting him a room and everything. It’s very cool for him, but 1. he’ll be gone for the whole weekend and 2. it’s the same weekend as the ADSA skunk show. So, not only will I have to deal with being alone, but I also need to decide if I can manage taking Hobkin to the show all by my lonesome.

I really want him to go because I’ve been looking forward to having a chance to catch up with folks like puskunk and alijt as well as letting Hobkin hang out in a new place that’s skunk friendly. Plus I’m very proud of him and want to show him off. He needs to defend his “Prettiest Tail” title! But I’m seriously doubtful that I can do the show on my own.

For starters, I’m terrible with directions. I’m worried that I’ll get lost driving there, although Matthew assures me he’ll get me directions, plus I’ve been there before (last year for the 2003 skunk show).

Next, Hobkin hates car rides. We’ve always both of us driven him places–Matthew driving and me holding him to keep him calm. If it’s just me, he’ll have to be crated, which will incense and stress him.

Then, I have to figure out a way to bundle skunk, pen, blankets, litter pan, extra towels, skunk food, and any miscellaneous items necessary to keep a skunk taken care of for a day into a configuration I can manage all by my puny self. Last year, Matthew dropped me off at the door with Hobkin and a blanket while he went to park, and then lugged the pen and miscellaneous stuff from the lot to the site. He then set everything up while I held Hobkin because I am such a wuss. Without him to assist I’m at a loss. I can’t leave Hobkin in the car while I cart his pen and blankets and stuff to the site, and I can’t leave him alone at the site either. Best case scenario, I could leave him with a friendly skunk person while I wrestle with his stuff, but then I’d have to crate him for a while. I might be able to get everything bundled onto a wheeled luggage cart or something to make a single trip of it, but I don’t have a cart and I can’t imagine how I’d go about doing that. The rover gate pen itself is several large, unwieldy, bulky pieces, and the litter pan is the enclosed variety, also large, unwieldy, and bulky.

And last, but not least, I get hit by social anxiety in new surroundings. It’s relatively mild as far as anxiety issues goes, and it never manifests when Matthew’s with me, but it tends to overwhelm me when I’m on my own.

Dammit. I’d hate to miss the skunk show, but I see myself becoming totally stressed and having a meltdown. I don’t know what to do.



Writing Stuff:

Received the contract from the Cricket folks for “The Tax Collector’s Cow.” Still don’t know if it’ll end up being in Cricket of Spider, but I’m glad to have another contract in!

Thursday stimulants

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Today decided to decrease the number of chemicals thrashing through my system so I just had caffeine (double tall coffee) and sugar (pre-sweetened cereal) for breakfast. Result: continued twitchiness and an (increasingly annoying) under eye muscle tic. But also an absent headache until after lunch, at which point it reared its ugly face. And I returned to the miracle which is Sudafed.



Writing Stuff:

Heard from the Cricket people that “Razi and the Sunbird” has been slated for their Feb. 2005 issue. Hurray!

Wrote up my review for this week’s Sci-Fiction story and emailed it to my Tangent editor. He still hasn’t published the last several reviews I’ve done. I hope his workload lightens up soon.

The words were insistent. They wanted out. Did they care that I didn’t have a plot, theme, or much of a storyline? No, they wanted out. So I made a start on yet another story. Sigh. 700 words. Need to finish something, dammit. Why won’t my muse listen to reason? The willful doxy!

Beginning to have a major jones for a sale. Again. Been over a month since my last one. Still conspicuously under thirty pieces out to market. Need to stick more irons in the fire.

Wednesday is for flying

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With much determination, I embarked upon a regime of aggressive, preventative medication this morning: Sudafed, Aleve, caffeine, and sugar. Results: a qualified success. No headache, hurray! But I did a lot of restless twitching at my desk, and the muscle tic under my left eye has returned. Time for the magnesium supplements.



Writing Stuff:

Decided to re-read Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea trilogy, prompted by all the shiny trailers of the mini-series coming up in December on the SciFi channel.

Managed 1000 new words on the fantasy. Rah! And I’m percolating an idea for another story. So far I’ve got a good setting, characters, and beginning, but I’m not sure where to go with it. Not sure if I should go ahead and start it on the hope that something will get jostled loose, or wait until a plot and theme coalesces. Ponder ponder. Also beginning to dwell on the science fiction story I set aside. Multi-tasking is me.

Did a Critters critique, which seems to be my default activity when I feel like I should be writing, but can’t seem to focus on putting words on the page anymore.

And finally received a response to my query to LCRW, over a month later. Quite frustrating and a trifle perplexing: “Sorry, I think this one was rejected. It’s not in our submission pile, so it must have gone back to you already.” They’re not sure they got it, but “think” they rejected it. That does not fill me with neon flashes of “oh boy, that was postage well spent!” Oh well, back out it goes.

Tuesday back to the grind

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Despite the faint pinging in my skull this morning, I ventured back to work today, armed with Sudafed and many OTC analgesics. Made it through most of the day feeling pretty chipper, but toward the mid-afternoon, my head began throbbing and pounding again. Ugh. The last hour was torturous.

While lounging insensate on the couch yesterday, there was a lot of passive entertainment pandering. We watched Haunted, a properly Halloweeny ghost story starring Kate Beckinsale. It was a mite bit predictable, but there was gratuitous Kate Beckinsale nudity, which makes everything good.

Also watched The Wicker Man, the 1973 movie starring Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward. It’s incorrectly labeled “horror” on IMDB. It’s more of a dark comedy, IMO. I guess it’s also possible both Matthew and I have really twisted senses of humor, but I giggled a lot. It’s also more appropriate for May Day than Halloween.

Wrapped up the day with The Peacekeeper Wars. Man, the Sci-Fi channel is really overplaying that thing–wringing every single on-screen minute out of it they can. I remain terrifically amused at the Henson muppets, especially Rigel. A muppet swimming (nice CGI effects there), throwing up, and being chained to a wall. Now that’s wicked funny. I think more SF shows should use muppets. There were a lot of “this is here solely to further the plot and makes no sense otherwise” moments, but I was willing to give it to them. There were enough good sections, and I bow to their effort to wrap everything up in a two-part miniseries.

There’s always a “my brain feels liquefied” after that much boob tubing. I have the urge to read something obtuse and deep now. Or maybe something shiny . . . once my brain ceases its efforts to bound out of my skull.

Got a flu shot after work. Itty bitty line, hardly any waiting, but they did want to make sure I was at “high-risk.” The receptionist, when I told her I had Lupus (which I typically just say because it’s more universally understood, versus MCTD which gets blank stares), she proclaimed “perfect!” and shooed me into the to-be-injected line. First time anyone’s responded that way. So yay, I’ve been inoculated. But owie, why is it those damn shots hurt so much? I’d rather give a bucket of blood than get a few CCs of flu vaccine in the arm. Ow.



Writing Stuff:

Finally finished my review of this week’s Sci-Fiction for Tangent and emailed it to my editor.

Saw on the TTA Press message board that “Running on Two Legs” is going to be illustrated by Kelly Dyson. I’m getting good and excited about seeing it in print. I’m so very fond of this particular story.

In less good news, new wordage achieved was so pathetic it’s barely worth reporting. Maybe 100? Crappola. Usually October is one of my most productive months. My muse has forsaken me, the strumpet!

Sunday yay.

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Had a lovely day yesterday, despite the early AM wakeup. I did actually get to take a nap, with Hobkin as squeezy toy to make up for the morning. Matthew and I had a nice soak in the hot tub, and then watched The Bride with White Hair I and II, and Underworld. It’s October, high time to immerse in properly Halloweeny movies! Hurray for NetFlix.


Writing Stuff:

No new words, and didn’t even finish my review for Tangent. But I did receive my contrib. copies of Leading Edge #48! Apparently my check was mailed separately. The editor assures me I’ll be getting it soon. There were three illustrations for “Of Two Minds in Lanais”! Very cool. And this issue is HUGE. It’s more like a book than a magazine. And I love ursalav‘s cover art. It’s even more delightful and fabulous in real life than rendered in pixels on the screen. Happy happy.

Saturday Yay?

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Hobkin woke me up this morning at 5:30, quite convinced it was time for breakfast. No matter how I tried to explain to him–groggy and half-asleep–that breakfast shouldn’t be for another hour and a half, he was adamant.

Hungry skunks are not to be denied, so I got up and fed him breakfast. Now I’m awake, he’s curled up on my lap, and I haven’t had enough sleep. Maybe I’ll flop us on the couch and have a nap.

He’s getting to be very soft, though.

Friday Yay

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Hurray for Friday! It’s been a long week.

Hobkin’s winter coat is coming in, I think. He’s feeling softer and sleeker, although he’s still blowing his coat all over the place. At least he’s loosing far fewer of his long, coarse tail hairs; it’s mostly the short undercoat fuzz that’s littering our house now. I think he’s also beginning to put on his cold weather pudge. That would certainly explain the ravenous “feed me now” behavior that seems to have gripped him of late.

Slept a LOT last night trying to catch up on lost slumber. It sorta worked. Didn’t feel like my eyes were weighted with coins this morning.



Writing Stuff:

Got a call from Nathan of Scrybe Press! Editors are calling me. On the phone and everything. Oooo. ‘Course Matthew’s been hogging the phone and hasn’t been setting it in its cradle to recharge, so mid-way through the conversation, Nathan’s voice begins cutting out. Sigh. How embarrassing.

But we got the last details on the contracts for “Still My Beating Heart” and “Inspirations End” hammered out before the phone gods intervened. He’s going to write it up and send me the finalized copy. And we discussed Nathan’s vision on how to lay the chapbook out as a flipbook. He’s going to pad the shorter of the two stories with ads and my author’s bio etc. at the end, to fill up the extra pages to the middle. Coolness!

This week’s Sci-Fiction story was late being posted. I saw yesterday that it had gone up (a new story is supposed to go up every week on Wednesday). And it’s a novella, woof. Due to that sleep-catching-up thing I haven’t finished my review for Tangent yet. I plan to do that tonight or tomorrow at the latest. On that note, I finally got an email from my editor. He’s swamped with work (80-hour weeks!), and is therefore a bit slow with the Tangent updates, but at least I know he’s alive and kicking out there.

Thursday Yuck

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Instead of writing, I’ve been spending my free time fiddling with my website and converting my bibliography to CSS tab navigation pages. It was getting too big to put on a single page (yay!), so I initially broke it down into fiction and non-fiction pages, but I wasn’t happy with that either. CSS to the rescue. My first effort, while looking lovely using IE, crashed and burned on Safari and Firefox browsers. My second effort appears to be working in Firefox now, but dude_the, my Safari browser tester, is offline until the weekend. Fooie.

If anyone out there is using a non-IE/Mozilla browser–Safari, Opera, Netscape, etc.–I’d greatly appreciate it if you could surf over to my Bibliography page and let me know if the tabs are showing up properly!

I think Hobkin is feeling the season and it’s making him restless. These last two nights he’s been very active, making it hard for me to sleep. He starts fussing about his midnight snack at 10, hopping up and down beside me to snuggle for a minute, and just as I’ve fallen into a light doze, hopping down to check to see if the food fairy had arrived yet (and thereby waking me). In the morning he wakes up at 5ish wanting his breakfast, a good two hours before his usual breakfast time (and a good hour+ before my alarm goes off), and pesters me to feed him.

My sleep has not been so good.



Writing Stuff:

I ended up with something like thirty-eight critiques from Critters. And the rewrite is done and it’s out. Bon voyage little story! But I’m so behind in writing my thank you notes. Something to do this weekend, I guess.

Heard back from Nathan. He’s cool with my suggestion of printing “Inspirations End” and “Still My Beating Heart” as a double feature chapbook. Both stories are in the 5K range, and I thought packaging these two together would be nifty, both being vampire stories–especially since “Inspirations End” is a reprint. Nathan suggested he print it flipbook style with the second book printed upside-down in the second half. That would be super spiffy ’cause it would mean I’d get two “front” covers with the resultant artwork. Except the stories aren’t the same length. And since the chapbooks are staple-bound, I’m uncertain how it would turn out with the stories not breaking exactly in the middle.

Tuesday Yuck

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Had coffee with my tea today. That’s a lot of liquid stimulation. Too much, apparently. Ended up with a painless but annoying tic under my left eye. *twitch* Perhaps I need to see about getting some magnesium supplements. Or, I could cut back on the caffeine. Decisions, decisions.



Writing Stuff:

Received a 48-day rejection from Strange Horizons and a whiplash-inducing 1-day rejection from NFG. Ouch, the smarting. It burns! It burns!

Also finally had a chance to go over the contracts Nathan sent me. I need a little gadget that will translate legal writerly jargon for me. Once the terminology gets to a certain (obfuscating) point, my head starts to do one of those Exorcist spins. My brain is in some weird ass sailor’s knot now. Fine for tying up floating vehicles, but not so good for cogitating.

Thirty-one critiques from Critters and counting. I need a new statistics generating system. I consistently get thirty to forty crits these days. Not that I’m complaining, but that many overwhelms my current system.