This weekend to next, I’m likely to be very quiet, if not completely out of it. I’m off to my parents’ in good old West Virginia to keep my mother company. She’s laid up with back trouble and going stir crazy, and there are only so many cozy mysteries she can read from her friends’ libraries before she starts trying to gnaw her arm off like an animal in a trap. I can’t say as I blame her. They do have internet there, but it’s dial up (just like we had in 1994… when I was a freshman in high school), so I’m not sure how patient I’ll be with it. I’ll have email on my phone though, so if you need me, I’ll come running!

But first, tomorrow night, I get to see Primal Scream. After more years than I’d care to admit to listening to them (how can I be so young and still feel so old sometimes?!), I’m finally in the right place at the right time! Yay!

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Now playing: Primal Scream – Skull X
via FoxyTunes

Silence from me again all week! I’ve actually been busy, which I know sounds strange, but real life distracts me from my perpetual daydreaming now and then. Or, weeks like this, real life tries to distract me but I carry on daydreaming anyhow. I’m a trooper like that, but I sacrifice my net time for it. All work and no play, etc.

A few points that are completely unrelated to one another:

– My first published short story was The Mirror, in Voices from Morrigan Books. I finished reading the book a while back, and while the experience was a little surreal at first (Whoa dude, I’m in here? How did this even happen?), since mine’s near the front I managed to forget quickly enough and enjoy it. There was a review posted last month over at Dark Wolf’s Fantasy Reviews, which I’ve realized is my first mention in a review. Exciting! More recently it got a really nice mention over at the AHWA site as a work of merit, talking about the Australian Shadow Awards. It specifically mentions Pete Kempshall’s, which was a particular favorite with me in the collection.

Sweet.

– I recently had one of those clarifying moments, with the lightbulb over the head and all, with the creepy period novel I’m planning to write next– working title The Resurrectionist… or maybe The Resurrectionists, I haven’t decided. Anyhow, because of life deciding it would like more of my attention recently, I’m not finished editing my urban fantasy, The Audio File, which is the manuscript I need to have beaten into shape by mid-May so I can try this conference thing.

So I think I’m slowly going crazy going back and forth between the two projects, is what I want to say. Crazier, whatever. I edit until I can’t stand the gnawing on my brain anymore, then I run off and slip into 1820s mode, pulling up fashion plates, reading old newspapers, studying outdated medical books, and constructing scenes in random order.

But it’s better than being blocked, or so they tell me.

– I’m interested in the issue of pet projects. I’ve had loads of conversations with my friends about it, but I’d like to ask the people I don’t regularly correspond with on personal matters: do you have a pet project? A thing that you know might not be so very marketable, or might not even care to make marketable, but something you can’t stop pulling out of the drawer and working on anyhow? They say you have to know when to move on, and I agree, and definitely keep moving. But there’s still that one novel (or, for me, series of five– god help me) that when I’m most frustrated with writing and/or myself, I get out and chew up a bit just to have some fun. Like visiting old friends! Does this sound familiar, or like a pathetic exercise in futility?

Right, I’m done now. See what happens when I save up all week? Madness.

The very definition of it. (And yes, I did just hunt through a pile of Invader Zim screencaps to find that damn madness dog. I think that illustrates my point even more perfectly than the dog itself.)

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Now playing: Joy Division – Disorder
via FoxyTunes

Hope everyone came out the other end of St. Pat’s properly hydrated and all!

Important Newsflash: The lovely Catherine J. Gardner has asked for some help with her friend and sidekick, Wolf Dude. I won’t give it away, but it involves a circus. A very creepy freaking circus. You want to know what’s going on here, don’t you?

Of course you do. And if you go to her blog by Friday midnight (GMT, y’all), you might even win a cool prize for helping.

And that is how you shamelessly beg for a booby prize, by the way.

Also, did you see Neil Gaiman on Colbert the other night? Well, if you stalk his blog, you did, but if not, check it out. Dude was hilarious. I think The Bombadil Response might be the best of all possible answers to that question. (Yeah, I just went Liebniz on you. Er, sort of.)

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Now playing: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Six Barrel Shotgun
posted with FoxyTunes

Pretty much the minute I turned 18 I got my first tattoo. It is a shamrock. This means that even today, I don’t have scramble to find something green to wear, since I have green bits on me perpetually.

I still get pinched sometimes though. I want to tell people their mistake, but then I realize that flashing my lower back might be a bad idea. People won’t take my word for it.

And no, it’s not a tramp stamp. I do have one of those, of course, but it’s in Elvish. You think I’m joking, I can tell.

Anyhow, if I’m remiss about wishing you a good one today, I might be excommunicated from my mother’s side of the family. Irish-Americans are a strange and militant lot about these things. (Educational to those confused by this phenomenon: American Gods. These things take on a life of their own once they get away from home. Fascinating! Ha, see how I slipped in a book rec there?) But I don’t mind, because it’s always an excuse for a new set of Guinness glasses, and I inevitably break one or two of them over the course of the year. Not due to intoxication– if I’ve not broken my martini glasses yet, I can handle anything!– but because I’m just an awful klutz doing the dishes.

So of course: here’s your St. Pat’s Day card.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d better put my new glasses to use.

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Now playing: The Pogues – The Sick Bed Of Cuchulainn
posted with FoxyTunes

Yes, there’s even a greeting card for today in the vaults at someecards.

I hope this puts your fears to rest.

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Now playing: Johannes Brahms – Hungarian Dance No.19 in B Minor
posted with FoxyTunes