6/28 UPDATE: I've decided to stop posting on Livejournal - and, I'm going to unbookmark most of the LJ's I've read in the past, so feel free to unfriend/unbookmark me. I'll go back to posting over on my website blog. I won't be deleting this journal, as I'll still use it to comment on other people's posts, but expect no more activity on it.

FYI, I've also deleted my Facebook, Twitter and MySpace accounts. Some people thrive very well with massive, constant, overlapping interaction online. I can't do it and continue to write. So, this part of my life has to be excised.

Back from Naples. Not much happened - I twittered (tweeted? twatted?) about a few things, and took some extremely boring photos (I only got out of the hotel once in six days.) Didn't get swine flu. Ironically, I got a massive cold, and my head almost exploded, Scanners-style, from the pressure in the cabin on the flight home. I thought a Cenobite was hacking its way out of my head - I couldn't stop sobbing, and I scared a bunch of passengers and most of the airline attendants into thinking I was having some kind of psychotic episode. lol. I've mostly recovered, except for a deep hacking cough and a voice that sounds like Bea Arthur is haunting my vocal cords. I have nothing else to blog about, so here are some illuminating links:

The Art of Penguin Science Fiction

some thoughtful Amazon reviews of an awesome wolf t-shirt

This post is for myself more than anything else, so that I have it bookmarked in a place I can access from both work and home computers.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&t=p&msa=0&msid=106484775090296685271.0004681a37b713f6b5950&ll=32.639375,-110.390625&spn=15.738151,25.488281&z=5);

I'm traveling down to Naples, Florida next week for our company's annual sales conference. I'm not that fond of air travel to begin with, and I tend not to be overly-paranoid, but... this time around, I really, really, really wish I weren't going. Spending three hours there and back crammed in a giant metal petrie dish the breathing recycled air of several hundred strangers has never been conducive to my health, even in the best of times and circumstances. I plan to be medicated to the gills, lol. Also: no sardine-packed PATH commuting to and from work next week, or for the rest of the the summer. I can walk the extra blocks and take the light rail, now that the weather is warm. No need to be underground, until I have to be.

A(n ongoing) conversation lifted from Facebook:

livia_llewellyn is experiencing "writergasm" - the moment when you've just thought of a stupendously PERFECT story/novel idea, but haven't actually started writing that shit onto the page yet.
livia_llewellyn It's kind of like falling in love with someone from a distance: all sooper-hawt fantasy, no pesky reality. :D
txtriffidranch I like to think of it as the vacation you see when you're first scheduling the time off, not the reality of missing credit cards and mosquitoes the size of RC aircraft.
livia_llewellyn Exactly. I'm looking at the pretty travel brochure, not realizing that when I'm on that beach, I'll be broke, sunburned and doubled over from dysentery.
nballingrud Yeah, as soon as you type "Chapter One," it all goes to shit. Happy writing! :)

Vermeer Blue

In case you're wondering, it took me about two hours to write that. Yes, go ahead and laugh...

I would really like for all this to be over with. But I'm just too tired to bother.

...is going to the Strand with books that have your stories in them (in a desperate attempt to get enough money to pay the bills), and being told that they are worth nothing.

Last night I had a terrifying dream that my publisher bought up all the little publishers and presses it could, including nihilistic_kid's place of work. So they shipped everyone to Hoboken, and the rest of the dream - nay, NIGHTMARE - consisted of Nick Mamatas making everyone do freaky calisthentics in the morning, followed by throwing frisbees out into the Hudson River and making us fetch them. He told us that's how they did it in California. Also, he kept manuscripts in his underwear. I know, because he showed me. ::weeps::

I swear to god, that's the last time I have chili for dinner.

Yesterday, I thought I heard what was the sound of someone moving into the downstairs apartment. Evidently, I was wrong - it was my downstairs neighbors moving out. How do I know that? Well, when I went downstairs this morning, as a parting shot he wrote CUNT in big black letters all over a stack of mail sitting underneath my mailbox. Except, lol, it wasn't my mail - it's mail I set aside for the carrier to pick up because they were addressed to tenants long gone from the building - including one woman who has a very similar last name to mine. It was her mail that had the largest and most vigorously-written c-word scrawled on them, along with something about my being a bitch as well - just in case I didn't clue into his hatred of me the first time around, I guess. Now, I'm pretty sure my next-door neighbors didn't do this, and the two tenants on the first floor don't even know who I am. So, yeah, it was the jackass downstairs. Well, he sure put me in my place. I am NEVAH going to walk on my apartment floors again.

In other news, there are spiders everywhere. I think they're getting ready for the ants.

don't drink and bake.

nick_kaufmann is FORTY YEARS OLD. So, it's like he's a dead person, but he acts like he's still alive 'n' shit when doesn't know he's all corpsified inside. That's also called "middle age". For many of us, this is simply called "life". Also, he's been thinking it's his thirty-fifth birthday, for like a couple of years in a row now - go ahead and wish him a happy FORTIETH anyway. He's officially an old fucker, so it's not like he's going to remember anything you said, right? I hear he likes creamed corn, so that would be a good gift. Wait till he falls asleep or starts mumbling about "the good war", and leave it next to his walker.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NICK!

Last night I broke up my little gym/writing routine, and went to the KGB reading. nick_kaufmann has a great write-up of it right here. Personally, my favorite part of the evening was when ellen_datlow mentioned that it was Laird's first time in NYC, and we all mugged the shit out of him! Fun times. Also: it has become clear to me that I cannot be seated anywhere in the vicinity of Kaufmann and jplangan. While everyone else was acting most adult-like (kudos to sinboy and Michael Shea for not calling the police), the three of us were by turns profane, filthy, raucous, gibbous, and quite possibly squamous - at one point, I laughed so hard, I almost shot rice out of my nose. Well, I'm calling it rice. At any rate, I'm pretty sure I broke a rib. rosefox shook her head a lot. Although, in our defense, it was imago1 who brought up rumpy-pumpyism. I don't know who to blame for the killer chimp conversation, though. [::shudder::]

The evening peaked when we were served a crispy Leviathan. I pealed back the fried exterior of the giant fried whole fish, and found its gelatinous eyeball winking most hideously and saucily at me. Then I tried to pry open its mouth so I could practice my mad ventriloquizm skillz on it; and when that failed, I tried to make it my evil puppet bitch. All I can say is, if maryrobinette had seen me, she probably would have put me down with a chopstick to the heart. I wouldn't have blamed her. All in all, it was a great evening. Tonight I made up for it by going to the gym, PLUS stopping at Starbucks for an hour of writing. But without a big-ass fried fish staring at me, it just wasn't as fun.

You know this is a Serious Post when the title is fucking song lyrics, lol. /pretension

After I broke down about my apartment of HOLY FUCKING HELL two weeks ago, I went home and spent the evening sobbing and breaking things. And I realized, in the midst of all my wanton destruction of very small and unvaluable objects (fyi, it's really hard to break a toothbrush in desolate rage, lol - they're so bendy!), that if I didn't get my shit together and at least try to work with the life and the home I have (because let's face it - unless I suddenly get a financial windfall, I'm not going anywhere better), then I might as well just stick a knife in my throat. And I really don't want to die, because my shell of a body would become a bee hive/squirrel condo/ant nest in about five minutes... also, Herbert would never forgive me. And frankly, I'm more afraid of Herbert than bees or Death.

So, anyway. For the past two weeks, I've been alternating my evenings between a local gym and the local Starbucks. I come home, I get into my sweats, I do a bit of housecleaning, eat a bit of food, and then I either go throw weights around and run for two hours, or I spend two hours at Starbucks (hey, it's close and it has tables, ok?) with a latte and my Acer Aspire, Patti. No matter how shitty or exhausted I feel, by 6:30pm I'm out the door - and I don't let myself come back home until at least 9pm.

The result? Well, I've lost five pounds. I've stopped waking up with headaches every morning. I haven't freaked out or inexplicably burst into tears since the bendy-toothbrush episode. It's not like anyone's around to gauge my mental/emotional ups and downs, but now, when I come home at night, I don't feel this huge weight settling down around my shoulders and chest like I've just aged forty years - the kind of weight that'd make me reach for a big Bag-O-Carbs and a bottle of wine, or take long naps when I wasn't actually sleepy. It's not like everything's suddenly sunshine and roses - I still live in a fucking garbage can, my 401k and savings are a goddamn joke, etc. etc. - but I just feel better. There's still no light at the end of the tunnel, but I don't feel so much despair about it anymore.

And, I don't have time anymore to dwell and brood about things. As much as I hate the thought of spending $1200 a month for nothing more than a sleeping chamber, I find that when I have less time to spend here, I spend less time obsessing over how shitty everything is. It used to be that I'd come home and sit for hours in my office, not writing a word, just boiling over with helpless rage over things I obviously have no control over. Now, I don't have time for that. I'm up in the morning and then I'm out the door. And then I'm home, and I have to get ready to go. And then I'm home by nine, and I have to get ready for bed and for work tomorrow. Yes, I have moments (like this) where I can sit and space out in front of the TV or computer with a glass of wine, but it's the exception now, not the rule. And it feels deserved.

I'm also writing more. I've found that when I have less time to write, I focus more - two hours at Starbucks (of all places) three or four times a week doesn't sound like quality time, and it isn't. So I have to make it quality time, whether I like it or not. It became far too easy for me to mull over a single sentence when I had five or six hours every night, and call it my "process". Yeah, right. Now that my schedule is far more disjointed, I tend to focus quickly and write quickly, and write well. This, by the way, is something I did NOT learn at Clarion, and probably never could have. Instead of waffling about with tons of stories I start and never finish, I've been very steadily working on a few select projects, which I've been finishing and sending out - yes, this is where you all say "no shit, Sherlock - writers finish things and send them out, you moron". Well, everyone has their process, and it's just taking longer to find mine. And it may all change, I realize, but for the moment, this seems to be working. I finished and sent out two stories, and I'm currently finishing up the first of a trilogy of novellas. So, I'm doing something right, and doing it well. For once.

I just wish that fucking Yip Dog would shut up. That's one thing I can't seem to fix. Arg.

And that's it for now.

http://sfscope.com/2009/01/realms-of-fantasy-closing.html

RoF was one of those magazines on my "must be published in" list - it wasn't just the quality of the fiction, which was top-rate, but it was beautifully made, with incredible story illustrations that made me want to be published in it even that much more. It also had a fair amount of articles on fantasy in other mediums that I felt gave it an edge over other short fiction markets - RoF never ignored reporting on the blockbuster fantasy movies and television shows that I hoped would entice non-fiction readers into picking up an issue or two, or even subscribe to (thus funding contributing writers). Well, I guess not enough people did pick it up. What a shame. Godspit and FUCK.

On Saturday, I took the train down to Philadelphia to meet The Nameless Workshop, which I have just become a member of. This was my first time to Philly, and I'd like to say that I did all kinds of wonderful, sparkly, glorious things (as we all know lillianleitzel would have done), but there wasn't time. Also, I was most thoroughly traumatized by the train trip, which took me through the ugliest sections of the United States I've ever seen. And I've seen Hanford, people - I didn't think it could get worse than Washington's scenic NUKULAR WASTELAND. Hey, I was wrong!

Anyway, mroctober picked me up at the 30th Street Station, and drove me to the suburban house of a Nameless Workshop Writer - actually, she has a name, but I'm not sure I'm supposed to speak it. Massive amounts of cheese and other savory victuals were consumed amidst what had to be one of the largest personal libraries I've seen in quite some time, followed by a game of "Munchkin Cthulhu". Yes, a board card game (happy now, Berman?). And I have to say for the record that I do not do card games: I don't get them, I don't care for them, I have no desire whatsoever to participate in them. But Mr. Berman made it pretty clear that we would Game or Die, so we gamed. Actually, four people gamed, while I did the following klassy things:

1) Sigh loudly and moan in a rather unsexy way
2) Slide down on the couch until I was almost falling on the floor, whilst snapping my head back in an attitude of sheer boredom
3) Listlessly throw my cards onto the table, before falling backwards as if hit with an anvil
4) Bitch endlessly about how FUCKING BORED I was
5) Weep
6) Stare at the clock, scream SWEET BABY JESUS SAVE ME, weep some more
7) Beg for death to overtake me
8) Shake my fist ineffectually at Mr. Berman, who only laughed maniacally and pranced around the room at my bitter, bitter pain
9) Pass out

After about eleventy billion hours, the game ended, and we were free to eat hot pastry-encrusted brie and Godiva truffles. Then the gracious hostess made me an incredibly potent hot toddy for my sore throat - after a couple of sips, I was transported to a magical world where unicorns shoot diamond-studded rainbows out of their asses. Either that, or I was drunk. I prefer the former, thank you very much. Also, a giant orange cat stopped by, and we all spent several minutes joyfully having the shit kneaded out of our arms whilst he curled around us like a giant scampi and purred like a diesel engine. Mr. Scampi drew blood, but it was far less painful than Munchkin Cthulhu. Believe me.

And then I went home. It was the best workshop evah! Well, you know, except for that game part...

I'm serious. This is it. I would kick ass doing this, and anyone who knows me knows that this is true: Henchmen/Henchwoman Needed 6 Month Contract

Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet has made the Bram Stoker Awards Preliminary Ballot for Superior Achievement in an Anthology. Very cool.