If my circles were cubes, I'd be building.

January 6, 2010 Progress Notes:

"The Closet Monster"

Words today: 700.
Words total: 4400.
Reason for stopping: Out of tea. Out of plot. Game over!

Books in progress: Dashiell Hammett, The Dain Curse, The Glass Key, and Selected Stories.
The glamour: Not a lot, actually. I got home cold in that way you just can't shake, and finally had to retreat to the bathtub and soak for an hour to get warm again. Yes, I am a born and bred Canadian girl. No, I do not do cold weather well.

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Today after work I made pilgrimage to Tap Phong with ginny_t to ogle piles and piles and piles of really inexpensive kitchen stuff and have a nice, satisfying materialist binge. Luckily, a nice, satisfying materialist binge at Tap Phong only really costs you forty bucks and includes virtuous things like five million kitchen sponges, a cheap saucepan to melt candle wax in for purposes of candlemaking, a tagine pot-like object so we can eat off dishes at work like a civilized person (tm) instead of warming stuff up in battered tupperware and hoping for the best, a tea tray (also for work), a replacement for that ceramic soup spoon we broke, and a new teapot.

New Teapot has already earned its keep. Aside from costing me four bucks ($4.00 CAD), it has a very nice little mesh cup thing that you put the tea in and suspend into the pot proper, a good grippy handle, and holds three or four mugs' worth. The spout isn't great, but I will consider this to be New Teapot's nod to Wabi-sabi.

I was greatly pleased and nipped down to Furama for a box of tasty Chinese bakery buns to express my pleasure. You know, while I was in the neighbourhood and stuff. Like you do.

Some reviews are coming in, and there's some other announcey stuff to do, but I will save that for tomorrow, when I'll be more awake and you guys will probably be...awake, period.

The promised reviews and Cool Announcement.

Now that we're mostly all in the land of the living here (sorry, Australians), it's time for for the reviews and Cool Announcement. Yes, more reviews. I've got to put them somewhere or they clog up the vents.

First off, Blog of the Fallen says some very nice things about Clockwork Phoenix 2, calling it the best original genre anthology they read this year. Which is nifty.

Moving into the main course, Hannah Strom-Martin, in the Strange Horizons 2009 in Review article, gives a shoutout to Realms of Fantasy and "Mister Oak":

In the last issue Harlan Ellison’s effortlessly brilliant "How Interesting: A Tiny Man" and Leah Bobet’s touching "Mister Oak" reminded me of the fabulous literary lights we possess. May they continue to burn into 2010 and beyond.

This is especially nice because I opened it up and ironically did a little search on my name, so I could find nothing and get on with my life. And then I found something. And felt bad for being such a terrible cynic like I am, but was crazy flattered that it turned out this way.

Next rock! The Twitter saying something nice about "Mister Oak" the other day has been located, mostly because he expanded it into a blog post: Pete Tzinski says some further nice things about that story, and likes the stats page as well. Which I need to do a little redesign on to handle those freaking tables. They are ugly.

There. That's reviews.

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The Fun Cool Announcement of Import is that I, along with a bunch of the other Shadow Unit authors, will be appearing at the Tucson Festival of Books in Tucson, AZ on March 13 and 14. We'll be doing a panel and signing, and otherwise just roaming the festival in a pack formation, being festive.

There are a lot of authors already signed up for this thing -- I'm sort of personally boggled at the hugeness when I'm not doing little fangirl dances about various attendees -- so I'm really looking forward to this trip. If you're in the area, hope to see you there!