I come here for your help.

Save me from the boxes.

No, seriously.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, two more days and we’re actually on schedule with the packing! I must thank those of you who’ve been kind enough to blog over the last few days, because this has been my chief source of distraction during breaks– of which I take many since, you know, I’m trying to make sure my back doesn’t use this as an excuse to freak out on me again. So far so good, so thanks for all the good luck wishes! Your Vibe is solid with the universe, clearly.

Today’s post consists mostly of links garnered from my bloggy reading, unsurprisingly. First, from one of Jay Lake’s spectacular link salads, always a good meal, Tom’s Glossary of Book Publishing Terms. With the site redesign here, I put a “Word of the Week” bubble over in the sidebar, in which I will house a new word from Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary every weekend, simply because it makes me happy to see it there. (This week we get something spectacularly dated, because I’m writing/trying to write, a historical horror novel currently. And I will use the word “blackguard”. Oh yes. Count on it.) This link is sort of the modern publishing version. Thought y’all would get a kick out of that, in case you don’t read Mr. Lake’s blog.

Consider it though, because he’s awesome. Just saying.

Second, I think I mentioned that I’m going to the Pennwriters conference this year, just for one day. This horrifies me somewhat, being the first time I’ll actually be face to face with a bunch of Writers, Agents, and other Publishing Types all at once. But at the same time, being weirdly busy for the weeks leading up to it doesn’t allow for a lot of dwelling, so I reckon I won’t be as scared as I should be by the time I get there. To a certain extent, it’s smart to be nervous– keeps you on your toes. Most of this whole conference thing, I’m okay with trying to wing, but then there’s the pitch session concept. Not gonna lie: this terrifies me. I’ve worked up my Elevator Speech just like everyone else, and I don’t have any trouble talking about my head people, obviously… just saying, this is different.

And then, along comes Nathan Bransford yesterday, discussing “How to Maximize Pitch Sessions”. I mean, I’m sure you all already love this guy, but I just wanted to say that he saved me some serious stress with that post. Sweeeeeeet. Maybe I’ll even de-lurk next time he does a de-lurking day!

(What? I’m shy! Okay, I’m not shy exactly, but I am an introvert. No, seriously. Hey, stop laughing, it’s true!)

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Now playing: Super Furry Animals – Mt.
via FoxyTunes

My apartment is wrecked. The walls are bare, there are piles of books and boxes everywhere, and I keep finding crap laying around where it should not be, because I should’ve put in a box that’s already full and taped up and ready for the movers. Because yes, I am moving. Again.

No one likes moving, so I’ll spare you the whine I’d normally insert here. But it’ll all be done on Thursday, and then the unpacking can begin. It’s not all bad though, because we really, really dislike where we live right now, and are moving back to our old neighborhood in Pentagon City. The major negative points of Pentagon City (cleverly named, since it’s literally right behind the Pentagon) are that you get a lot of Blackhawks flying overhead, and they’re very loud in the morning, and that the traffic is, er, DC traffic.

The positive points are everything else.

And then, finally, I might freaking write something again. Or finish editing something, at least. God, that will be nice. I hate when things are gummed up like this. How dare reality interfere with my daydreaming?

In other news, I’m on another Franz Ferdinand (the band, not the Archduke) kick because the week after I move I get to take the train up to NYC to see them at the Roseland Ballroom with Neuroscientist Reenie. They’re really excellent vampire music, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, so even if I’m not messing with that little pet project of mine, it just puts me in that frame of mind. They’re not quite as dirty-attractive and death-oriented as, say Louis XIV (the band, not the Sun King), but they’re 100x better, and their sense of irony is entirely in tact. I sometimes despair of Louis XIV’s.

Then again, the latter are American, so we’re lucky they even know what it means. American rock stars take themselves so seriously. How’s that for a commentary on America in general? It really inhibits our glam, man. Thank god for the Scissor Sisters.

But I digress. So I’m listening to Franz in the car and thinking about vampires, and I think of this quote I read from Alex Kapranos (lead singer guy) about how, “The last record was…like a teenager having sex. This one’s a bit more assured…”

And I thought, wow. No wonder it works for the pet project. I started it some 7-8 years ago, and I look at it now and it’s exactly like a teenager having sex. As Meghan Brunner said to me last night while  discussing it, “The enthusiasm’s there, you just don’t have the mechanics down yet.” Awkward, but fun enough that you don’t really care at the time.

Of course, I’m not sure how you can ever be positive you’re out of that awkward stage and actually have decent technique. But you know, it’s an ongoing process. Which kind of continues the metaphor, if you think about it. But try not to, too much.

And I guess I felt the need to share that with y’all. Figured you’d understand.

Anyhow, the new record works too, but in a different way. Just for good measure, here. I love this song. (Look, you can’t just listen to Joy Division your whole life. Sometimes you just need to dance.)

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Now playing: Franz Ferdinand – Bite Hard
via FoxyTunes

So this makes about 3 themes in the past 24 hours. One that I jacked, one that I tried to save, and one that Becca swept in and, with a wave of her hand (and a few hours of seriously hard work), made appear.

Well, it might as well have been a wave of the hand, to me. All I did was plug those little pictures into the holes. Seriously. With that, the Saga of the Redesign comes to a close. Thank god. But since it wasn’t my work, I don’t mind saying Becca did a hell of a job.

I’ll stop plaguing you with it accordingly.

Okay, so movie talk now.

My husband is gone about every other weekend for some classes. On these weekends, I tend to watch experimental movies– which doesn’t really mean that the movie is experimental in the real sense, but only that it’s something I’m sure could either be Very Good or Very Bad, and I don’t want to test it out on him since he has the attention span of a gnat that needs Ritalin. Makes him a good beta reader, but you know, I try to spare him the experimentation otherwise.

So last time I watched Girl with a Pearl Earring, which was pretty cool even though I’ve never read the book. Dutch Baroque art was my second Dead White Guy painting love, so I’m likely biased. The story wasn’t that engrossing, but Colin Firth as Creepy!Vermeer was very interesting  (look, I know I’m not the only one to whom he’ll always be Mr. Darcy), and I could look at Scarlett Johansson all day. And night. And then some. But I think the reason I enjoyed the movie was the way they captured the light and composed the shots in strange, extraordinarily Vermeer ways, without being too annoying about it. It was just flat out pretty to watch, in a very intricate way, so… shiny, man. Shiny and Vermeer, most importantly.

So tonight I watched Goya’s Ghosts. Spanish art was my first Dead White Guy art love; I took Spanish as my language in high school because I thought Picasso was the man. (Still do!) So this one is a Milos Forman film, and anyone who knows me knows I watch Amadeus at least once a month, so I figured okay, Goya, Forman, Javier Bardem (God, he’d better not be Goya, that’d be too weird– don’t worry folks, he’s not), Natalie Portman (bit hit or miss, but you know, I’m shallow and I like her face), and Stellan Skarsgard (there’s our Goya! A good choice!). Can this be a bad thing?

And if you like Goya at all (which, I mean, how can you not?), you’ll sit through this movie just because it’s even more literally like seeing a Goya come to life than that whole Vermeer thing. Those were some screwed up years for Europe– for a lot of the western world, really– and he got them right. There’s a moment in the very beginning where Bardem’s character is talking to the latter-day Inquisition, saying that his work isn’t blasphemy, but shows us what’s really wrong with the world as it is.

It’s up for debate whether it’s wrong, but the man’s work always hit a chord with me so I think it’s fairly apt in a general sense. This movie showed it without just telling you constantly, which was one of the major differences between fairly capturing an artist’s oeuvre, as in the Vermeer movie, and actually owning it, as in Goya’s Ghosts. (Oh movies, you teach me how to write daily.) So again, not the most amazing plot, but lovely, and Forman-y, and Goya-y. And it had some art geek squee moments, like the entire etching process being presented, etc. etc. So worth all the pain it caused me, being rather depressing.

Except that now I’m up too late/early again, and I know when I finally hit the pillow I’ll have some seriously weird ass dreams. So I leave you with a favorite etching of mine from Goya– not one of his most screwed up visions, but still, it always worked for me. I’ve gotten some good mileage out of it, writing wise.

This is El sueno de la razon produce monstruos, aka The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. Doesn’t it just?

El sueno de la razon produce monstruos

So I kind of broke everything again on this site with one swift click of my mouse button. I think this should be a lesson to me in the temperamental side of WordPress (and the fact that I know sweet FA about it, as if that hasn’t been made abundantly clear to me in the last year and a half), so I just kind of re-did everything myself instead of begging Becca, who did it all in the first place, for help. I actually know how most of the code here works now, on the up side. Wooo.

It’s not done, but I think I got most everything from the cache and my rss reader, in terms of links and stuff. If your name isn’t over there and it should be (even if it wasn’t before, now’s your chance for an extra link!), please let me know.

I’ve been meaning to clean things up anyhow, so yay for a kick in the ass, right? But it’s 4am, which is even past my bed time. Tomorrow I’ll make things look– well, if not pretty, at least a little more navigable.

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Now playing: Suede – Jumble Sale Mums
posted with FoxyTunes

I’m so unqualified to choose the Top Ten Favorite short stories by me, in the trend begun by Aaron Polson, but I’ve loved reading them in a creepy stalker “Oh, I hope some day I can have ten stories I’d send out!” way. There’s something comforting and entertaining about knowing how a story got under a writer’s skin, even when I’ve not read it.

Told you I was being creepy.

The Top Five Favorite Characters was the next meme to infect everyone with its juicy viral goodness. I first saw that one over at Catherine J. Gardner’s, who got it from Danielle Ferries. Equally awesome, since character is definitely my favorite thing about reading and writing.

Since I have way more novels in various states of progress/out with someone-or-other/in the drawer than I do short stories, I’m sort of qualified to reciprocate on that one, but it’s a bit meh. I mean, no one’s seen them except–

Oh wait. My friends read this, and you’ve read my ridiculous novels! Go Team Friends!

I can’t actually do favorites, because that will start a Civil War. So these are a few really loud, enjoyable-to-write characters, ones that kind of make me do it their way.

1. Aldo Caruso. No one will be shocked– dude has been in my head and my stories since I was 13. He’s a vampire, but I recently wrote a short with a weird alive version of him. (Hoping it’ll meet with approval; I’ll let you know.) He’s a bugf$%k insane murderer, prone to cutting up his family and friends, and a tragically unattractive artist.

2. Alex Franklin, from Wolfton Paranormal. Alex hears evil things from behind mirrors. He snorts crushed up Vicodin to remain functional, he’s a nymphomaniac, and without his bromance he would absolutely be dead in a ditch. I did a weird alternate-sandbox version of him and his bromance in The Mirror for Voices. That story is literally Alex’s worst nightmare. Man, was he pissed when I wrote it.

3. Elliot Prince. Strange one, because he’s actually from a short story– one TBR in Arkham Tales, Cemetry Gates (or the Dubious Magic of Elliot Prince). He’s a super narcissistic, pretentious faux-intellectual, and he has Bad Magic and No Qualms. He also thinks he’s sexy. No wonder he took over, I guess.

4. Becca Appleby from my current first draft, The Resurrectionist. She’s a 20-year-old woman in Philadelphia, 1820s-ish (nearly an old maid!). She has a veneer of fierce practicality that’s really just refusal to be thrown off balance. It’s sheer will. I can throw grave-robbing, whore-mongering, grog, and the undead at her, and she just goes on with business– after having a good scream.

5. Kay Healy from The Audio File, an urban fantasy based on the idea that a small percentage of humanity have powers that affect the senses. He’s this kind of pathetic ex rent boy with dampened (read: inferior) powers. I think I like him because even if the people try to make him ashamed of what he is, he at least knows what it is, and somewhere in there secretly loves it. He’s also a happy drunk, and in vino veritas.

So give it a try. Yeah, I tend to shift my characters around into different ‘verses and see what happens. It’s like an exercise in acting class, or something to that effect. Same starting set of rules, but now you’re in this situation.

Or I’m lazy. Or a little too attached to my characters. Shh.

Completely off topic: I just noticed that at the end of Ghetto Defendant, Ginsberg starts saying the mantra at the end of the Heart Sutra. Om gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi swaha. How many times have I listened to Combat Rock, even since I lived in Kathmandu and had to say the Heart Sutra every morning, literally, and I’m just now catching this?

I love when music you take for granted as a kid suddenly makes sense once you’re (sort of) grown up. Sometimes I think having heard it a million times makes you just stop listening. Until one day, when you start again.

Yeah, effing deep, maaan.

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Now playing: The Clash – Death Is a Star
via FoxyTunes