I've put off talking about this for FIVE DAYS because I keep thinking oh, it's not enough for a post to itself and something interesting has to happen for me to blog.

Well, clearly that is not gonna happen.

So "The Sorceress's Assistant", a story that was written as an artist's challenge piece so I could take home elisem's necklace-crown "The Name-Thief", will be appearing in a future issue of On Spec.

There, I said it.

1) Going to Wiscon tomorrow morning at an ungodly hour -- in fact, I should be in bed already -- so...yay Wiscon! I will be at the hotel around 1pm if all goes well, wandering and shaking off my pre-travel panic (which I've been working on all day. I love flying, I love travelling, I just hate hate hate airports and all the fuss involved in getting to them on time, being searched in them, and being asked probing questions about one's life in them).

I will be out of here super-early, so just assume I'm gone right...now. *g*

2) Just got word that "Bears", my SH April Fool's story and the story I'm reading at said Wiscon, was in fact accepted by Strange Horizons. So this is now in the order of a sneak preview. *g* Whee sale!

3) I am in love with ringwoodcomics's cat. She is 1200 miles away and I waaaaant to pet her tummy so bad. Kitty!

4) We like Ben Jonson better than John Donne. He was a working writer. We approve.

5) Okay, for real I'm going to (bed and then) Wiscon.

See you there!

April 20, 2007 Progress Notes:

Above

Words today: 1000.
Words total: 6650. Yes, that doesn't match -- I zorched about 250 words.
Reason for stopping: Quota, and I've been at this for three hours.
Liquid Refreshment: Water.
Munchies: None.
Exercise: 1 hour walking.
Mail: Sale! of a poem to Lone Star Stories.

Darling du Jour: Whitecoats never smile, Atticus told me, back in the days when me and Hide and Seed, who was a teenager but hadn't had much school, learned at his chair in the afternoons. You could tell the Whitecoats by the smoothness of the corners of their eyes.

Tyop du Jour: N/A
Words MS Word Doesn't Know: N/A

Mean Things: I just broke someone's heart. And mine with it.
Research Roundup: Gender-neutral pronouns.
Books in progress: Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms

The glamour: Shelved a bookstore today. And did all those glamorous bookstore things, like working haaard for the money--

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Pushed for three hours tonight, circling the opening of this chapter looking for just a twitch where it might let me in, and nothing. Nothing nothing. So I wrote a bunch of the middle instead. And then some of the end. And then some of the end of the book.

That's the bit when another thematic thing clicked and I started bawling.

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In better news, "Three Deaths", which is now the name of the Greek Thingy Poem that I read at the SFPA reading at WFC Austin, has sold to Lone Star Stories for their June issue. New market! Yay!

Also, Tangent has reviewed Chizine #30 and thus "Deer's Heart":

“Deer’s Heart” by Leah Bobet has to be the most twisted spin on “Sleeping Beauty” ever conceived. Inhabiting the fog-shrouded landscape between fantasy and horror, some pure horror enthusiasts might be turned off by this story, rooted as it is in shapeshifting and old-tyme earthen magic. The story closure, the evident thought with which it was constructed, I think will win over people who stick with it. It is very complex with several twists and turns, no mean feat in a story only eleven pages long. It is furthermore a carefully paced and structured story, very pleasing from a technical standpoint.

To which I reply: woot. Go go Russian werewolves!

...and the first acceptance of the year: "A Thousand", aka the Crane Wife Story, will appear in Japanese Dreams, an anthology of Japanese-themed specfic. Wherein I will hopefully not embarrass myself. *g*

It has a pretty cover.

Out in May!