Category Archives: Blog

So I took a clonazepam for the first time in months last night, both ’cause my arms and hands are hurting again, and I haven’t been sleeping very well. The upshot of that is, I slept like a dead thing. Rah! The less uppy part is that I hit snooze three times on my alarm clock before dragging my groggy self out of bed this morning, and didn’t have time to put my contact lenses in before going to work.

And the drive to work was . . . fun. I felt spacey and light-headed, which is, of course, exactly what you want to be feeling while maneuvering a large piece of metal through commuter traffic. But, fortunately, I was focused enough not to get into trouble. And as soon as I got to my desk, I poured myself a great big cup of steaming hot coffee.

Half an hour later, I was very, very happy. Apparently a dose of caffeine mixed with the dregs of a clonazepam buzz is a good recipe for a warm, fuzzy state of being. Or maybe it was the discovery that the deadline I thought was next month, isn’t actually until March.

I’ve been busting my tail at work, cranking out specs and code for a major upgrade my company is doing. I finished the first batch of thirty-four modules I was given, and like a good worker bee, I asked my team lead for more. He handed me fifty more programs, and I began muttering under my breath “hard work never goes unpunished” as my new mantra.

Feeling overwhelmed, I sent a note back to him to verify the timeline as he’s an excellent TL and I couldn’t believe he’d load me with so much work with such an impossible deadline. I had to be missing something. He replied, telling me that yes, I’ve got two weeks more than I thought I had. Whew. It’ll be tight, but it’s enough. So I dig in.

This morning, I open up that old email to check some detail or other about the project, and my eyes flit upon the date he gave. Somehow, I had misread “mid-March” as “mid-February.”

I don’t have two extra weeks. I have six. Woo!! Nice surprise. And the world is a calm and loving place once again.

Although my arms still hurt.

Writing stats:

1000 words on a new fantasy story. What happened to the other new fantasy story I’d started? It’s sitting on my hard drive, sad and forlorn. Blame my muse, the flighty strumpet.

Ended up with twenty-seven crits on my Critters story. Hoping to get some work done on the rewrite over the weekend.

Haven’t been sleeping well all this week. Between just having a restless time of it, Hobkin’s been restless too and keeps hopping up and down next to me all night, waking me up every time he does it. To make matters worse, I’ve been seeing an encore of my early AM insomnia. Been barely able to make it through the workday, calamity-free, even slamming high intensity coffee. Not good. And my hands and arms, which for several months have been pain-free, have started giving off warning tingles and little zapping shooting pains again. Dammit.

Writing stats:

Finished the rewrite on the Magic Realism piece. It’s out. Fwoosh.

The Urban Fantasy that’s up at Critters will be coming down after today. It’s got twenty-four crits now–a nice, manageable number. I expect a few more to trickle in between today and tomorrow, but I’m fine with this level of feedback.

I’m hearing some dissatisfaction with the ending, which has brought about something of a quandary. This story has a pretty heavy addiction theme. I didn’t intend to submit this to On Spec for their “Me and Mr. Jones” issue, but two critters now have suggested I do so. Problem: it’s 1000 words longer than On Spec‘s maximum stated length. So, do I want to totally overhaul the ending and gut some of the earlier bits to see if I can cull 1000 words? Or do I just want to do a less aggressive rewrite and just skip sending it to On Spec? Ponder ponder ponder.

No new words, though. My muse is undoubtedly napping somewhere. At least one of us is getting some sleep.

My early AM insomnia seems to have reared its head. Woke up at 5ish and then couldn’t get back to sleep. Dammit.

The first Dragon*Con directors meeting was yesterday. They fed us again. Yum. We traded small animal adventures with dire_epiphany, astralfire, and tk0667 whereupon we learned that tk0667‘s nemesis is gerbil-kind. Laughed so hard my side still aches, and I had tears coming from my eyes.

Also swiped a whole bell pepper from the buffet table to bring home for Hobkin. A peace offering for abandoning the fuzzbump for so long.

A few announced guests for this year at the meeting:

Harlan Ellison (!)
Peter Jurasik
Peter David
Storm Constantine (she’s actually going to direct a new track this year!)
Emerald Rose
Cruxshadows (yes!)

I’m jazzed.

It was also officially announced that Matthew will no longer be co-director of the Daily Dragon with me as he is now going to be the director of a new film track as well as taking over webmaster duties for the main site. Sigh. I knew I’d lose him from the DD, but I didn’t think it’d be so soon! But he’s bouncy about the film track, so that’s cool. Less bouncy about the webmaster position . . .

Just found out the Scrybe Press senior editor liked my story too! I sold “Ascendancy of Blood” to them. Woohoo!

This is turning into a truly excellent weekend.

After a whole pot of tea, I am zingy and ecstatic. It must be magic tea.

And . . . *drum roll please* I made my first sale of the year! And it’s also the shortest response time I’ve ever gotten. Under three hours to an acceptance email from the editor of H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror, the new sister magazine to Weird Tales. I sold them “Within Your Soul I Sightless See.” Very, very happy now!

I’ve got story nominations in two categories of the annual “Preditors & Editors Readers’ Poll” for 2003! It’s a little Internet award sponsored by the same guy who is the moderator of Critters.org. But it’s a nice feather-in-the-cap sort of thing since it’s popular especially among the small-press venues.

Voting ends next week. It’d make me very, very happy if my stuff made a decent showing. Vote for me? Pleeeeease? Pretty please?

Best SF/F Story published in 2003 (All in My Mind):
VOTE

Best Horror Story published in 2003 (Reign of the Wintergod):
VOTE

Felt like a lump for most of this week. It’s cold, and I keep getting headaches. I suspect they’re sinus headaches. But finally (finally!), my muse popped in. Her visit feels fleeting, but I’m sitting on her as she tries to squiggle away.

Writing stats:
800+ words on a new fantasy story inspired by Hobkin’s foray against the lizard people. Not sure where it’s going. Don’t have anything in mind plot-wise or character-wise, but the words started coming. Who am I but a story’s channel, after all? I suspect I’ll have to engage some sort of concept before too long, but I’m pleased to be making progress on something.

Tried to pick up the novel. Re-read the first few chapters, and then put it down. I wonder if I should stop fighting with this and call it quits, dammit. Maybe I would be better off starting another novel concept rather than trying to force this one. I dunno.

I’m at seventy-one critiques of my current offering at Critters. Glurk. I don’t think I can do my usual statistical analysis with that many. I think instead I’m just going to read each critique over again, and apply suggestions as they “feel” right to me. I’ve started on the rewrite. Most people thought the opening was weak, so I redid it. I was dwelling upon tightening it before the tale went up for critique, so that just cemented it. Also, there was a general consensus that my antagonists were a little too heavily drawn. Going to dwell on how to rectify that.

Finished reading Mortal Suns by Tanith Lee. It was beautiful and powerful, but it felt unconcluded. Wonder if she intends for it to be the beginning of a series?

Is it already Sunday? Where did my long weekend go? I have to go back to work tomorrow. Wah!

Going to try to jam as much “fun” into today as we can. Didn’t watch Zorro yesterday after all, so we’ll do it today. Instead we watched the rest of the Firefly commentary episodes and went shopping. Picked up a new bathroom scale. I know, not very exciting, but I needed it to help out with my “lose weight” New Year’s resolution. We had one of those fancy digital ones with the “lifetime lithium battery.” The battery died, and the company wanted us to mail the thing back to them in order to fix it. Since it would cost a good portion of the cost of a new scale to USPS it, we decided “no.” And we got an analog scale this time with no batteries, and obviously from a different company. Bastards.

Writing stats:

Currently at sixty-one critiques of my Critters offering. Wow. And I’m still up for three more days. (I got yours, britzkrieg, thanks as always for the excellent feedback!)

One of the writers in my DC2K writers group won the 2003 Wahmpreneur Books/LughnassadhBooks.com Annual Fiction Manuscript Contest! Her book is being published! I’m so excited for her!

Definitely gets the fire lit under me to get cracking on that novel . . . again.

Also got a note from the first reader of Scrybe Press on a submission I sent them last month:

“This story was absolutely incredible! The first words from my mouth as I finished it (after reading subs ALL day long) were ‘Now THAT was a good story’

I’ve passed it on to the senior editor… should have a conclusive decision for you in a day or two.”

And the twitching and nail biting commenceth.

Matthew and I went to see Return of the King yesterday:

(Spoilerless . . . I think.) My God that’s a long movie. Three hours is a looong time to be sitting without a break. They should have an intermission when they show that. I’m sure theaters’ sales of concessions would go way up if they did. I was starving by the end of it.

But, physical discomforts aside, it was also the best of the the trilogy. Beautiful and epic. An excellent battle scene. Loved the Nazgul. Although I left the theater feeling sort of melancholy. Normally at the end of an epic series I expect to feel up–exulted, energized, peppy even. But I didn’t. I still enjoyed it, though. Except I don’t understand people who want to go back over and over again to see it. Maybe it was the conspicuous lack of stadium seating in the theater, but sitting for that long with my neck cricked back makes me disinclined to repeat the experience anytime soon.

Went home and watched the 90’s remake of Godzilla versus Mothra (which was truly awful) and some of the commentaries from the Firefly DVDs. Today: Zorro.