Both Amanda Pillar and Jennifer Brozek posted the official ToC for Grants Pass today. It looks beyond cool, and I’m more excited than I feel comfortable expressing in public to be a part of it, for so many reasons.

Fabulous cover, too!

And this will likely be my last post until I get back from India– unless something magical happens there that makes me feel the need to plague you. Which is of course possible, since Madras is awesome. The good news is that I will be back just in time for the Super Bowl.

Yeah. The Super Bowl. Guess who’s excited?

Now, on to frantic pre-trip shopping, then trying to load up my iPod and get my notebooks in order for that hellish plane trip to the other side of the planet. Woo! Have a great week, y’all.

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Now playing: Primal Scream – If They Move, Kill ‘Em
posted with FoxyTunes

I’m proud to report that I’ve stopped sulking. Well okay, I stopped sulking about five minutes after that last post, and then the Steelers won the next day, but it sounds much more dramatic this way, doesn’t it? It’s what we do.

I’m stalling myself on purpose right now, writing-wise– a weird practice I engage in a few times a year when I know my peaceful life of constant daydreaming is about to be interrupted. That means I shouldn’t start anything big, not even an editing project, because I’ll get my head all wrapped up in it and be really angry and annoyed when I have to leave it for a whole week. The general interrupt of my groove is never good, and sometimes has a nasty aftertaste of bitterness toward the novel-in-progress. I have two books that want edited right now (three, but I’m totally not ready for the Nano book yet), and two more that want written. If I give in, I’m screwed.

I suppose I could try for short fiction, but as I’ve already confessed, my ideas in that field don’t come often or easily; I’m lucky to get one a month, and I have to jump on them almost immediately. I can turn one out in a day without any trouble if it’s there– but if it’s not, what can you do? (No really, if you have an answer, please tell me.) I have a list of ideas for short fiction, but none of them have given me that weird flash, that sudden moment where I know where the f#$k I’m going with it that is pretty much the meaning of life. Sometimes I can try and write it anyhow, but more often than not it’s just an exercise in futility.

And so I’m sitting here, collecting notes for the massive editing projects to follow upon my return from Madras, and continually world-building. And what happens to me?

I get that flash. I wasn’t kidding, it really is the meaning of life. The thing that makes all this crap I’m compiling just to amuse my brain while I’m trying not to get wrapped up in anything in particular make sense…

Talk about backfiring. Now I’m almost ready to write three books about this screwed-up epic/clockpunk fantasy crap, too. I mean, if I have to have a problem, it’s a a freaking great one to have. But thank god India’s only a week away now, because I think that’s all the longer I can stall. The voices are getting loud. Soon, they’ll start getting mean. Dun dun dun!

(Again, I charge you not to pretend you don’t know what I mean. Please feel free to share your own stories and make me feel less crazy. Or you know, comfort my misery.)

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Now playing: MGMT – Kids
posted with FoxyTunes

Well, I’m scheduled to do one of my usual Online Spec Fic things today. Only I’m not going to, because frankly I am pouting. I lost all my damn bookmarks for potential candidates when I was forced to reformat my computer two days ago, plus the text file on my desktop that had my inane little thoughts on each of them in it. I’m grouchy and disinclined to re-do it all after so short a time.

Plus, it’s a playoffs weekend, and those are always a major excuse to sit on your ass for two days and do nothing but yell at the TV. As a dyed in the wool Steelers fan, tomorrow is more important than today, but the current Titans/Ravens game dictates who my boys will play should they win. (Which they will. Yes. Of course. Or so I tell myself. Look, I was born and raised a half hour out of Pittsburgh. The Steelers dictate much about my mood. It can’t be helped. The best gift I got this year was one of those dorky girl-sized pink Polamalu jerseys.)

So I’m turning my attention to a bottle of pinot noir and a little bit of worldbuilding stuff for future projects (during commercial breaks, obviously– I have maps and political/cultural histories and that kind of stuff, it’s very exciting.), and telling myself I’m excused. I’ll try and make it more interesting next time to make up for it. Not that it’s a major event or anything, but I do like to at least attempt to publicly recognize when people are awesome!

Whoa. I just looked at this site for the first time in IE since the template changed. Someone once told me it was center-aligning all the posts (I think it was Meghan), but I forgot about it… and now I see that it is. All the time. Holy crap, I am so sorry. I’m about to go and fix that right now (hopefully). I use Firefox all the time so I just let it slip my mind. Sucktastic, man.

I’m stuck with IE right now though, because my computer got a nasty Trojan that refuses to come clean, so I had to commandeer one of my husband’s collection. Which is sad, because it is not mine– but hey, I have all my crap on a backup external so I can just plug it in. No games, but I should be working anyhow. Or something. Right.

Speaking of working (oooh masterful segue!), I went to get my Indian visa today. Thankfully, they’ve outsourced it from the Embassy since the last time I needed one. Lines in the Indian Embassy are very much like lines in India (If you know what I mean, you do, but if you don’t there’s no way I can explain it without writing an essay on the traffic patterns of the Indian public as seen by a clueless westerner)– which I’m good at dealing with IN India, but find somehow impossible while in the States. No, that does not make sense, but not much about my thought process does, apparently. Anyhow, there was a nice little outsourcing place near Adams-Morgan in the District. They had you fill out the app online and show up at a particular time to drop it off, very efficient and cool. But the woman at the front desk looked at me and said, “What do you write?”

I was confused. I’d been really excited that I could now officially pretend I had a job sort of freelancing, since I made a few bucks last year off it. First time in over two years I could write something other than “unemployed”, and as a good middle-class American I felt great pride. Oh yes.

But the question made me nervous, so I danced. “Just do some short stories.”

“That’s all?” This wasn’t an indictment of short fiction, mind you, but a very serious question, obviously pertinent to the application process. Somehow.

I wondered momentarily if the Indian government had finally had enough after all that Empire crap, then the Beatles dragging a bunch of hippies there, of whitey interrupting their flow to come and write about how deep and spiritually advanced they are as a nation or whatever. Maybe they were cracking down on such nonsense.

But then I realized that was possibly one of the dumbest, most inane thoughts I’d ever had, and turned to more practical matters. I was unwilling to launch into an explanation of things I had a feeling this very kind lady was really not interested in hearing. Hell, I’m not even interested in saying them, I knew she wouldn’t be interested in hearing them. Well, I’ve written a few books, you see, but I’ve yet to place anything. These things take time, effort, help, patience…

Yeah, not so much. So I just said, “That’s it, yes.”

“They’ll see this and try to make you get a journalist visa. If all you write is stories, you’d be better off just not saying this. Do you have any other job?”

My heart cracked! (Well, it didn’t, more like my barely-there ego groaned in defeat.) “No.”

She just smiled. “All right, I’ll just ask him to fix it. The journalist visa will take much longer.”

The first time I tried to pretend officially that I could be a writer and the Indian Embassy dashed my hopes against the bureaucratic rocks! “I’m pretty much the opposite of a journalist,” I said.

I repeated this three minutes later to the man behind the desk as he fixed my application ever so cheerfully. “I make things up,” I added.

“So what do you write?”

I realized this was a personal question, not professional, so I said, “Horror.” Well, close enough, anyhow.

He started laughing and shaking his head. He was holding my passport photo and looking at me, and I realized he must’ve been laughing because I’m a 5′2″, pink-faced, round-cheeked 28-year-old who looks about 16, my hair in a pony-tail and a plaid scarf and a Banana Republic long black coat. He must’ve expected me to say Romance. Or, at the very least, Literary Fiction of Great Import and Artistic Value.

I cracked up, suddenly feeling much better. “Bet you didn’t think I’d say that.”

“No, I did not, but it made my day.” He handed me my receipt. “You can probably pick this up tomorrow.”

So that soothed me somewhat.

And that’s the story of my morning! Ha!

Why yes, I did survive the parental liver pickling ritual that is New Year’s Eve, thank you for asking. Hope you all survived whatever you usually get up to as well!

For my first post of 2009, a meme. I was tagged by the lovely and talented Amanda Pillar. Hers was interesting and mine probably will not be, but it’s better than me listing what I’m doing to get ready for my upcoming trip to see the in-laws. (Doesn’t sound like it should be complicated, but bear in mind that they live in Madras, India. It’s exciting, but yes, complicated.)

It’s just lame personal stuff, so beware.

Share seven facts about yourself in the post. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.

1. My parents and my only sibling are all music teachers. The last time the four of us spent an evening alone together (September) it consisted of going to my dad’s final Fall Concert (he’s retiring this year!), then out for sushi, over which my brother and I had a Sapporo-drenched discussion/friendly argument about Franz Liszt. Which even my parents thought was pretty much the lamest thing ever. But it’s kind of their fault that their kids are lame, wouldn’t you say?

2. My favorite X-Man is still Gambit, after all these years. I can’t help it. I was 10 in 1990, and it was when I re-discovered my dad’s old comic collection and my love for Iceman, Human Torch, and Spidey. Gambit was new and shiny and… threw cards. And talked like a redneck. Come on.

3. The only thing I’m really qualified to be is an art historian, and seeing as I’m still a class and a thesis away from an MA that I can’t imagine I’d ever want to finish, not even that. I went to school to specialize in Himalayan Buddhist art history. I cannot get enough of art of all kinds, though. Reading about it, looking at it, talking about it, injecting it to the stuff I write.

Except that I hate Impressionism. But seeing as I have some characters who love it, I’m stuck with it all the same :/

4. I used to paint a lot in high school, and my teacher got pissed when I told him I didn’t want to go to art school to try and get actually good. I told him that I couldn’t be an artist, because I didn’t have anything interesting to say.

The only thing I was ever good at painting was people, anyhow. Turns out that I write exactly how I painted, but I try not to think into that too much.

5. People can knock Britpop all they want, but I fully credit it with saving me from the grunge plague that was eating my peers by the thousands in the mid-90s; I’d fought it off up to that point only by burying myself in classic rock. So I tend to think of it with the all the disconnected academic nostalgia of an American kid who didn’t really get it, but was just really grateful there was something other than Pearl Jam going on.

Plus, if it hadn’t exploded when it did, I probably wouldn’t have heard such seminal obsession-causing bands as The Jam, the Stone Roses, etc., until college at the earliest. Let’s not think of that, though.

6. One of my earliest memories is watching my dad play King Arthur in Camelot. My whole family spent lots of time at a summerstock theater, and I think I was like three or four the summer they opened with that one. I never quite forgave Guenevere for cheating on my dad with that dorky Lancelot– though Dad kissing someone other than Mom on stage seemed perfectly normal, if a bit silly.

(I also really, really love Waiting for Guffman thanks to the community theater childhood!)

7. I think George Harrison was the coolest dude ever. When I get questions about “who’s your personal hero?” or whatever on a meme/questionnaire, he’s always my answer.

Okay, so if you want to do this, I’d like to hear from:
N.K. Kingston
Meghan Brunner
Catherine J. Gardner
Michael Stone
Natalie L. Sin
Corinne Duyvis
Aaron Polson

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Now playing: Manic Street Preachers – Slash’n'Burn
posted with FoxyTunes