Finished the JUBILEE script. I still have to write beatsheets for the next 3, but then I should be able to send it out. Maybe tomorrow. More likely Thursday.
Walked 3.5 miles.
miles to Rivendell: 217.5
ytd wordcount: 207,300
ytd miles swum: 26.5
G'night.
Several months ago, Sarah and I were discussing the bewildering behavior of writers who shook their fists at the skies and cried, "Where's my rejection letter, dammit?!" I mean, why would somebody be demanding to know where their *rejection* letter was? Isn't that putting the wrong sort of vibe out into the universe?
I get it now.
It's not that they're shaking their fists at the sky and hoping for a rejection letter. It's that they're desperate for a *response*. An *answer*. *Any* kind of answer is better than the interminable waiting. If it's a rejection, fine, just get it over with and stop wasting their *time*.
I'm feeling that way today. All week, in fact; I'm expecting the mail to have a *response* in it. Since it's pretty much entirely the wrong amount of time for anybody to respond to anything, there's no logic behind this, but it's itching at me anyway. Where's my rejection letter!
I'm not actually /expecting/ rejection letters, mind you. I'm certainly not hoping for them. I'm hoping for insanely positive responses--we'd like to buy your book! That'd be good. Or, we'd like to buy your comic! That'd be good too. Or, please send us the rest of the manuscript! All good, and those are more what I'm expecting, because despite what I said earlier, there is something worse than the waiting, and that's the soul-crushing rejection.
I know, too, that publisher time does not work like writer time. Publisher time reflects an entire industry; writer time reflects the agonizing hopes and dreams of an individual. Publisher time has to consider will this sell? can we market it? who will buy it? while writer time is I need a response, I'm trying to build a career here!
I'm having a bad case of writer time, today.
Shae, who is magic, figured out how to make my simplemu work again. Yay Shae!
Boy is it raining.
Stupid stupid stupid computers.
Last night I paid for my WS_FTP software because I need it for work. They had me download another, non-evaluation version. I did, and installed it, and now simplemu doesn't work.
*sigh*
According to the bulletin boards for SimpleMU, I need to uninstall and reinstall my TCP/IP software. Well, WinXP doesn't let you uninstall it, so I can't. So if I'm not around online for a while, it's not because I hate you, it's because XP *SUCKS*!
On the more or less positive side, I got up and swam 1500 yards this morning.
Hrm. If I walk 3 miles (ok, 3.09 miles) EVERY SINGLE DAY til Dec 17th, I will make it to Rivendell.
I need encouragement!
miles to Rivendell: 210.5
It turned out to be a very writeful day. 3600 words, 1400 of which were on THUNDERBIRD FALLS and the rest of which was on a Jubilee script. 11 pages written, 11 to go. I'll try to send it out on the first, 'cause what the hell.
I also went and saw Underworld again, this time with Jai, who looked very cute and was having good hair. So that was good. :)
miles to Rivendell: 208
ytd wordcount: 205,400
ytd miles swum: 25.5
Things Catie wants for Christmas, not so much a hint as a list for my own self so that when people start asking me, I'll know:
the Rhodochrosite and Jasper journals, and the Charoite journal... I have the others.
highlander season 3, which'll be out in November-ish
x-men: evolution season 1 collection and season 2 collection if they've put one out
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Days of the Dead by Barbara Hambly (only out in hardback)
Sunshine by Robin McKinley (only out in hardback)
The Boy From Oz soundtrack (due out oct. 16th)
(X-Men busts removed because I just decided to quit collecting them unless they're Rogue and Gambit specific.--9.28.03)
original rogue painting (hey, it's worth a shot!)
I'm going to stop now because my own geekiness is overwhelming me.
So yesterday I downloaded Sonar, which is a pretty cool piece of manuscript tracking software. It's very simple; it has who you sent what to and when, and keeps track of whether you got a response or not. It's sort of for short stories, not manuscripts -- there's not really an option to say 'Got a response, sent complete ms in' and keep it all in one ticket, but that's ok. It's nifty, is the point. And now I've got this tidy little list of what's been sent out to whom.
There are only four items on it.
This bugs me.
Now, of those four items, three are novels and two are complete ms requests. This is actually a pretty good return, as it were, on my efforts.
But man. Four items. It bugs me.
So I was thinking about /why/ it bugged me, and I think I've kind of got it. The problem is that, for example, I want to write a Jubilee script to send to Epic. Comic book scripts are only 22 pages. My tiny brain is saying, "22 pages! That's nothing! Why haven't you /done/ that and sent it /out/?" Same with screenplays; there are a couple I'd like to write, and those are 100, 120 pages or so. It's a sort of daunting number, but really, I write novels, and I expect 350 or 400 page manuscripts, so 120? Not so bad.
So there goes my brain again, saying, "So what's the HOLD UP? Get in GEAR! You're SLACKING!"
And the hold up is that it doesn't matter if it's /short/; it still needs to be plotted and considered and written out. I'm working on a novel right now (yes, I am, faithful readers, even if you're not seeing evidence of it at the moment). If I were spending 6 hours a day on writing, then maybe I could spend 4 of those hours on the novel and another couple on the comic script or the screenplay. Maybe there'd be a more impressive crush of submissions out. But I'm not, because I've got this day job that I have to spend 8 hours a day at.
On any /practical/ level, I'm doing quite well. I've written two and a half books in the last 11 months, as well as a 50 page comic submission and a whole bunch of rewrites and vignettes. But there really is this nagging voice that's saying, "I'm not doing ENOUGH." It's really /frustrating/.
This afternoon's writing angst brought to you by the letter S and the number 4.
Swimmed again today! 2000 yards. My shoulder hurts today, though. I'm going to have to make a chiro appointment and try to get this loosened up.
The worst part about getting up and going swimming is that on the way home we pass about 7 espresso stands, and it makes me want to stop for a hot chocolate with mint in it! But that would sort of be defeating the point.
I need to get SwimEar. My hears are all full of water. Sloosh sloosh.
Does it not seem obvious that if yesterday all the sites had a graphic in place, and today they do not, that this is not an HTML problem but is some kind of database problem? Particularly, let me clarify, as the banners are called dynamically, rather than being hard coded. It goes and says 'this is a senior health page, that means (this banner) should be called'. QA keeps goddamned assigning problems like that back to HTML. In *extreme* frustration, I finally talked to my project manager about it:
me: When all the graphics on all the sites suddenly go missing at once and they were working yesterday?
me: It really, really shouldn't take more than an instant's guess, much less a minute's research, to determine that this is very probably not an HTML problem and is much, much more likely to be a database problem on QA.
pm: aha- yes I think QA has been looking into that very possibility-
me: I'm laboring under the perhaps mistaken impression that it is in fact QA's job to go look and see if that is the case, rather than automatically assigning the bug to HTML without any research.
me: Because like I said, while I understand that everyone is tired, I am also tired, and getting things like that makes me say very, very bad words in endless repetition.
pm: yes- I see your frustration. Let me check in with QA and see what the process is
pm: --maybe you need to learn more bad words
pm: so you don't have to repeat them as often
I feel somewhat better after that. :) Actually, the PM was very helpful and perhaps it will help make this not happen in the future.
I actually got up and swam this morning. *gasp* 2000 yards, and it was v. nice. They've fixed up the UAA pool and it's not nearly so chlorinated now, which is a *huge* improvement.
Let's see. Getting bread made, getting work done. It's sleepy out, since I got up at 5:30. *yawn*
I'm ready for writing to be the day job, please.
200K has been LEFT IN THE DUST! I ROCK!
Ok, not really left in the *dust*, but I finally broke 200K words written this year, so I'm very pleased with myself. :)
ALSO broke 200 miles in the walk to Rivendell! Go ME! Look out, Shoka! Look out, Heather! I'm catchin' up!
ytd wordcount: 200,500
miles to Rivendell: 201
Just some stuff. I'm trying to work, but I'm not sure what it is I'm supposed to do, and the person who could answer me isn't answering, so I thought I'd do a little update.
Went to the RWA meeting last night. It's not their fault I got used to the Sacramento chapter. :) They're a nice group of people; the president is leaving for a while, so the VP is stepping up, and I anticipate that'll change pretty much nothing. I think I'll go to another couple meetings before I decide if I'm going to stick with them or not. It also depends, I suspect, on what I'm writing, which, at the moment, isn't in the romance vein at all. Still, I got to talk to Lani from last year's NNWM, and that was nice. :)
US made it to Luna this morning, yay! Aaaand let's see. Oh, and HoS made it to Roc yesterday, so that's all to the good. Which reminds me: I'll want ... nope. No idea what I was going to want, since the person whom I needed to speak with at work answered me. So back to work now. :)
Well, I'm more or less managing to accomplish all the things I wanted to, anyway. I've gotten a reasonable amount of work done, I cleaned the kitchen, I made dinner, and I brought Chanti on a little walk. I'd wanted it to be longer, but a mile will have to do, because I want to go to the RWA meeting tonight and maybe get over to the stupid Wolf Card place to get my wolf card updated so I can go to the damned gym.
I /should/ be taking Chanti on walks at lunchtime, but I haven't quite gotten myself to do that yet. OTOH, we've gone on a walk every day since we got back from traveling, so that's good!
miles to Rivendell: 198.5
Despite the angst, the peach jam turned out Very Well Indeed! I shall have to buy some more peaches and make small jars of it to send out for Christmas stuff. I'm going to do the same with raspberries and blueberries and probably blackberries. And maybe even strawberries. Making jam is kinda fun. :)
My *other* nefarious plan is to find sugar-free jam recipes so that I can make Trip-safe jam. :)
My plans to conquer the publishing world proceed apace.
I've packaged up the Chance script to send to Marvel. All told, it's a *fifty* page submission -- 32 page script (22 page script, but 32ms pages because it *looks* so much better with forced page breaks), an _eleven page_ beatsheet for the next 5 issues, a 3 page complete story arc, cover letter, and the papers Marvel requires for submission, an idea submission release and a W-9. Sheesh. They'll be fools if they don't take it! Fools! FOOLS!
Actually, looking back over the script after 3 or 4 months of idleness on it, I still think it's pretty good. I edited it down a little, cut a couple pages of too-many-frames-per-page stuff out, and I think it's pretty good. :)
The peach jam may have turned out after all. *dancie dancie dance*
Well, I've accomplished /some/ things today. For example, I've made a batch of peach jam which went wrong in every possible way (didn't dice the peaches small enough, resulting in too few peaches for the amount of sure-jell added to the mix; the sugar didn't burn, but it did brown, making for some v. ugly jam, and I'm pretty sure that even if it tastes okay, which I doubt it's going to because I think it's going to be like pieces of peach held together by a LOT of sugar, it'll be too stiff to spread), I went over to the university and tried to buy a year pass to the gym but they wouldn't bloody let me, and I brought Chantico for a walk. That's the only thing that didn't get mucked up somehow, so far.
Well, that and the waffles Ted made this morning, which were brilliant.
miles to Rivendell: 197.5
Tuesday night we went to see The Boy From Oz (note: that's an annoying flash site), which is not a particularly good musical. It's more like a musical review with acting bits thrown in between the numbers in an attempt to make it a cohesive unit. It doesn't work very well, but I don't think it's a lack on the part of the performers. It's just not much of a story. Ted called it disjointed, and that's exactly the right word.
However.
The performances were magnificent.
We went to see it primarily because Hugh Jackman (Wolverine in X-Men and X2) is playing the lead role of Peter Allen (who is best identified to American audiences as 1. the guy who wrote the theme song for the Dudley Moore film Arthur and 2. Liza Minelli's first husband), and we wanted to see him perform live on stage. It was the show's opening preview night -- it doesn't open officially until Oct. 16th and they've got a month of live audiences to work out the bugs before the opening night. And there were, indeed, bugs. :)
But Hugh was wonderful. He can certainly sing -- I'll probably get the soundtrack for the sheer joy of listening to him sing 'Best That You Can Do' again, even though it was one of the weaker numbers in the show (I think they were trying to be too true to the movie soundtrack version of the song, and that it suffered for it) -- and while he's not a trained dancer (which I surmised by the fact that in the soft-shoe/playing around bits, he did not point his toes), he *can* dance, and in the fully choreographed numbers was wonderful.
Dear *God* has that man got nice long legs.
He's absolutely lovely to watch. Very comfortable, very full of joy, very showy -- Peter Allen (despite being married to Liza Minelli) was gay, and lemme tell you, if you didn't know the guy up there on stage was married and had two kids, you'd think he was queer as a three dollar bill. He *swished*. In fact *laugh* at curtain call, he's got an entrance from the top of Vegas-style lit-up stairs, and he swished his way down the stairs so enthusiastically that he lost his balance and nearly fell. *swish swish ACK grab for rail no more swishing big eyes at the audience*!
Aside from the laughter-inducing, overboard foppishness, there were some really wonderful moments of acting, as well. Peter's lover, Greg, died of AIDS, and there's a scene after his death where Peter, who isn't good at expressing himself emotionally to his loved ones, just... falls apart. In a very controlled way. And comparing that to X2 was wonderful (that being the only other time I've seen Hugh Jackman play a character who fell apart over someone's death) was fantastic, because it was absolutely and completely different.
There was, in fact, only once in the entire show where he did something physical that made me say: Ah, Wolverine, and /that/ was an eyebrow lift, and look, if you gotta lift your eyebrows, it just looks like that, right? It wasn't that he went all Wolvie on stage, but simply that I recognized the expression.
There is no fourth wall worth mentioning in TBFO. Peter begins the show by talking directly to the audience, and not only plays to individuals in the audience, but encourages hooting and hollering and cat-calls and whistles, and the audience was more than happy to oblige. He's one duecedly attractive man. *Man*! Ahem. :)
However, there's a scene, mid-song, when he and Greg are just getting together, where there's a kiss. You know it's coming, it /has/ to be coming, and it's a pretty good kiss. To my absolute delight, the audience *didn't* hoot and cat-call (LOOK, MA, WOLVERINE'S KISSING A BOY!), and that made me really, *really* happy. It would've been deeply inappropriate for that moment, but I was really afraid people would anyway. They didn't. Good audience. I was really pleased with them for that.
We did, however, shriek like mad when they un-and-re-dressed him on stage. *cackle* Shirt first (shrieks ensue), then pants (he's wearing boxers; shrieks ensue anyway), and then later he's got another on-stage change where 7 guys surround him and change his clothes while he's delivering a monologue ("Don't pretend you don't know I'm naked here! Aren't they lovely? Seven men, all for me!"). *hee hee hee*
Let's see. I think it was partly a miking problem, but when he was singing with his female costars (who were, in character, Judy Garland and Liza Minelli), he wasn't putting as much voice into it as they were, and that was unfortunate. I suspect it was a directorial thing as much as a miking problem, but it really weakened his songs with Liza, especially 'Best That You Can Do', which, like I said, I think they were trying to be true to someone else's cover of the song and that was a bad idea. Neither Liza nor Judy /needed/ him to step back, vocally, because both of those women could bring down the house.
Isabel Keating, the woman who played Judy Garland, was so good it hurt. She had Garland's body language down and vocally she sounded very, very much like her. You sort of wanted to gather her into your arms and hold her so she'd stop twitching so damned much. She was amazing. Liza (Stephanie Block) was also terrific -- it was just a very well-cast show indeed, so it's too bad it's not a very *good* show. Ted and I are convinced there's a story there, but they hadn't quite gotten it yet. I'd love to see it in another couple of months to see if they've pulled it together.
There's one, in my opinion, fatal flaw in the way they've got the story laid out. 'I Honestly Love You', sung by Greg, is performed after his death; it's done as a ghost song, and I really, *really* wouldn't have done it that way. I'd put it before Greg's death, because a big part of Peter's life was his inability to express himself to the people he loved. In music and on stage he could do it, but what he felt inside was something to be kept private, and he had a really difficult time letting that out. So I think that in the face of that, 'I Honestly Love You' would've been a much, *much* more powerful and poignant scene if delivered to Peter by a dying Greg, leaving Peter unable to respond appropriately. It could really rip your heart out placed there; all it did for me, placed after his death, was make me think 'boy, this should've been sung before Greg died'.
I insanely want to write the director and tell him this. 'cause, you know, I'm Somebody. :)
There were some really funny flubs. :) One of the ensemble -- this wasn't so much a flub, but it was certainly noticeable -- didn't get his costume zipped up during a quick change, so his unitard was open in the back and kept falling off his shoulders. He handled it with aplomb, though, which is more than Jackman did when he flung his tophat off stage and instead of going into the wings it hit a curtain and flopped down to sit on the lip of the orchestra pit. He didn't notice for two or three minutes, and ended up stopping dead in the middle of his lines and saying, "Now what're you doing there, you naughty thing?!" Which wasn't really breaking character, because Peter's always talking to the audience and making asides. So he went and got the hat, saying, "Well, *that* was a shitty throw, wasn't it?" to the audience. He handed it off, then made real big eyes and looked at his wrist (upon which, the costumer in me notes, there was not a watch), and said, "It's after 10pm, I can say shitty, right?"
The audience laughed, Hugh turned and looked offstage, and I'm reasonably certain he was trying to remember his lines, but the pause got just too long, and the audience began to laugh, and then /he/ began to laugh, so that was great. *laugh* Then he got back into character and the show went on. :)
There were a couple of other flubs where he repeated a line from earlier in the show -- it's like 20 years later, and he says, "So there I was, eighteen and on top of the wo--what am I talking about, I'm not eighteen!" Which I thought was pretty funny, and then there was a bit where I'm pretty sure Greg sang the wrong verse in their love song, because he got this slightly consternated expression and then grinned REAL BIG, although *Hugh* didn't break, that time. :)
We did not hang around afterwards at the stage door, partly because the crowd was very boisterous and I didn't think I wanted to be part of a mob, but more because we had to get up at a quarter to five in order to catch our plane in the morning, so staying out another hour or more didn't seem wise. So no pictures of Mr. Jackman, but boy am I glad we went to the show. *beam*
Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to present to you the 2004 Writer's Weekend website. Come one and all, and register, 'cause it's sure to be another great party next year. :)
Some pictures of the wedding and Tor books, hidden behind a cut tag 'cause there are several. Except for the gratuitous puppy shot:
Bridesmaids (and bride!) 'on the rocks', as Laura said:
One of the camp kitties, also known as the Ben Calming Device:
Ted, Mr. Photographer Man:
Mary Anne and Jen:
The gride and broom:
And the Flatiron Building and Tor's slushpile:
Chip chip chipper me! All this writing stuff is good. *beam* Although, just for the record, I want to point out that I've got nothing like a book contract with Tor, or anything; heck, they haven't even finished reading the novel. It was just a really nice conversation with Teresa. :) Very positive. :)
Hungry me, too. Hung hung hung. I should get breakfast.
It's, lemme see, what was I going to say? Oh yah. I was a Good Human yesterday, and actually brought Chanti for a walk, even if I didn't do it until the end of the day. I'm trying to figure out how much walking we did in NYC. I'm thinking of giving myself a nice round 10 miles towards Rivendell because, if for no other reason, we were walking around in eighty degree muggy heat and poor Alaskans aren't made to stand that kind of weather!
HUNGRY. Must get food soon. Apparently can't drag myself away from my own scintillating life, though, and therefore will continue to type.
I sent an S&3 for HoS to Roc yesterday and sent US to Luna. Let us think good thoughts for the little books flying off to make their fortunes! Or better yet, my fortunes!
Ok, hungry enough to no longer be able to think, now. Breakfast.
miles to Rivendell: 193
14th floor of the Flatiron Building: to the right, nothing in particular. To the left, Mecca. SF books coming out the wazoo. I'm not sure it actually says 'Tor Books' or anything of that ilk on the doors, but there's no mistaking that This Is Tor. So in I went, and said I was Catie Murphy there to see Teresa, and a minute later she came out, slowed, and loooooooked at me and lifted a finger like, "Heeeey, you look familiar!" And I told her we'd met, in fact, at Writer's Weekend, and she said, "Ah!" and began loading me up with books. *laugh*
I got to see the slush pile, except there was practically no slush! Patrick's assistant, who is apparently Very Mighty Indeed, had slain it, and it lay in a corner, whimpering and mewling. Then there was a tour of the whole office -- now, the Flatiron Building is very silly-shaped and narrow, and there are bookshelves EVERYWHERE in the Tor offices, so getting through the place is very much like winding through a narrow maze. Unexpected walls and skinny halls and tiny offices--well, they'd probably be bigger if they weren't so filled with shelves, but tiny because of them--and one has the sense that a minotaur, or at least a ravening editor, might leap out from one of those narrow halls at any moment, and wreak havoc upon the world. However, neither Anna Genoese, whom I wanted to say hi to, nor Jonathan Schmidt, whom Teresa wanted me to meet, were there, so we collected Ted from under the William Seward statue in the park across from the Flatiron Building, and off we went to lunch.
Where we talked for a LONG TIME, about many, many things. TNH is a Font Of All Knowledge, just exactly like her weblog suggests, so it was just really insanely entertaining. A few weeks ago she had a wonderful entry called 'The fabric of the city' which is just all about NYC, which came up in conversation, and I said I hadn't been able to let myself start clicking through the links, 'cause I'd have still been there reading. It's really kind of cool to be able to get a reasonable picture of someone via their weblog, although the flip side of that is I suppose it's really kind of weird that complete strangers have a reasonably good picture of you from your weblog. :)
Eventually, after topics ranging all over the place, she said, "I suppose I should ask you some questions about your book," which she then proceeded to do. *laugh* Bearing in mind she'd only read the first 3 chapters and the synopsis for the book, her biggest concern at that particular moment was that--ok, here's the teaser for the book, before I go on:
Five children discover a faery circle on Midsummer's Day, and make their way into a Faeryland torn apart by centuries of strife--on one side is Faery, caught in Winter, and on the other side, Goblin, bound to endless Summer. The five make allies on opposite sides of the conflict, and individually go on quests that will help to bring the shattered land back together--or destroy it forever.
--so she was worried that the kids being separated would be arbitrary and not do anything to further the story. Random Happenstance, as the synopsis didn't touch on that. Fortunately, that's not what happens--they enter Faery/Goblin through two different locations, which splits them up, and then they get further split up by the quests they're sent on -- so that was all to the good.
She also wanted to know how long I'd been working on it, and if I'd re-re-re-written it, and Ted said, "She's been working on it ten years," and I said, "In a way, yeah," and explained that I'd wanted to write that book my entire life, and that I'd tried for years, but then last October I woke up in the middle of the night and got up and started writing, at which point Teresa said, "You finally knew where to begin," with *perfect* understanding. Yes! Yes! *Exactly*! And I said I'd written the bulk of the book during NaNoWriMo last year, and that I'd rewritten what I needed to, but basically the book had just come very easily and very well, so the actual writing of it hadn't taken all that long at all. She said the voice and writing were very fresh and didn't feel over-worked. *beam*
*laugh* So I asked her if she was familiar with the phrase 'book of my heart', which of course she was, and told her that while I thought the phrase was insipid and irritating, that Angles is, in fact, very *much* the book of my heart, as it's something I'd wanted to write my whole life. She seemed to understand that, too. :)
And, let's see. She asked how long it was, and I said 330 manuscript pages, and she slapped her hand on the table and said, "Perfect!" (which seems like a good thing o.o) aaaand asked what else I'd written, so I told her about some of the other books, including Urban Shaman, and a book that I *haven't* written yet, the idea of which entirely caught her attention *laugh*, and led to the interesting tidbit that she's been excommunicated from the Mormon Church, and I said that I was planning another two books in Broken Faery, not using the same kids from Angles but using the same setting, and again with perfect understanding, she said, "There are still stories you want to tell in that world," and I said, "Yes!" She was also glad they weren't direct sequels, since books that have sequels are lacking something (like, say, a conclusion!), but they're not; all three of the Broken Faery books ought to stand alone just fine.
She also said, while we were talking about the contest, that Angles was the first of the RMFW contest entries she read, and that she thought, "Damn! If these are all this good, we're really doing something *wrong*, because it means these people should all be *published*!" And she said again that it was a really tough call between Angles and the second-place entry, which she was also extremely enthusiastic about, which is really cool, 'cause last year I met the author of that piece (although I haven't read it) and he's a really nice man, so I'm delighted that his entry was also so highly regarded. *beam*
Interestingly, last year, the same sort of entry won, as mine this year. Last year's winner was also on an established theme--it was a coming of age war story, a la STARSHIP TROOPERS or THE FOREVER WAR -- and what I read of it was, well, perfect. Interesting side note there, that's all. :)
Eventually we went back to Tor and I got to meet Jonathan Schmidt, who said he was looking forward to reading the manuscript, and then I stopped by to say hello to Anna, who said something to the effect of, "HEY! Wait! *This* is the one you were talking about? No! She's mine! I've already got her manuscript!" To which Teresa said, "Which one?" and Anna said, "Urban SHaman!" and Teresa said, "Lucky you! But I've got her YA, I'm not stepping on your toes, nanner nanner!"
Well, that was the gist of it, anyway. It was pretty funny. *laugh* Anyway, Anna thought it was too bad she hadn't known it was me whom Teresa was lunching with today, else she'd have come with us, so Teresa and I gave her a hard time for having actually been at lunch at lunchtime when we went through to meet everybody, and it was all a lot of fun. :)
Finally Ted and I went to get the floppy with the manuscript on it, and brought it back to Tor, and that was the end of *that* part of the day.
Later I will write about Hugh Jackman. :)
We're back!
I have about twelve BILLION things to write about, but I said I'd quote what Teresa said about Angles, so I'm going to do that now:
... [a] near-perfect version of an established theme and subject, which is ... =Right Angles to Fairyland=. It's in the C. S. Lewis/Susan Cooper/Lloyd Alexander/Joy Chant territory: not new, but surprisingly hard to do well, and she does it very well indeed. The surface of the words almost exactly matches the surface of the story. She conjures the kind of full-sunlight close-up real-world magic that can only be made out of precise, concretely imagined language. I truly laughed out loud, twice, on page nine; and that shimmery transformation on page eighteen raised goosebumps on me.
And I came home to a rejection letter from an agency and a request from Luna for URBAN SHAMAN. Go ME!
Updatey!
Not actually so hot today. Well, as hot, but not so muggy, so we're not quite dying like we have been. That's good.
I went over to Tor Books at 12:30 and met Teresa, who remembered me from Writer's Weekend and who promptly began giving me books. I had been so good! I hadn't bought any new books or anything! And now I've got, er. Seven. Three of which are hardcovers and .. maybe four of which are hardcovers. And one of which actually belonged to Teresa, rather than being a Tor "these are for giving away" book.
She introduced me to everybody in the office and gave me the ten cent tour of the building -- it's SOOOOO COOL! ahem. -- and I said Chinese would be good for lunch, so we went outside, collected Ted -- who was waiting patiently, since we didn't know if I should drag him along -- and then we spent half an hour marching around Manhattan trying to find a Chinese place. Teresa was most ... mortified is too strong a word. Perturbed. :) Eventually we ended up at a terrific old bar called... possibly called The Old Bar. I forget. Where we had burgers and very good potato salad, and where we talked extensively about all sorts of things, including, eventually, Angles.
Let's see, 3 minutes left. Should I leave you with that teaser? No, no, don't hurt me! Don't hurt me! Eeee! Ow ow! Okay, okay. :)
She likes it. *grin* In the vein, she said, of Susan Cooper, C.S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander and Joy Chant, all of whom I've read but Chant, and Chant was the one she thought it was most like. She asked if I had the manuscript with me, and I said not a hard copy, but I'd brought it on floppy, and she said, "Good!" and said she'd print it out in the queue right after she was done printing out Steven Brust's new book.
I said, "Could you say that again, please?" And she did, and I giggled rather ferociously, because, well! *laugh* Ok, I'm a big old geek, but Brust! :)
Hm. Plenty lots more to say, but now down to 54 seconds, so I'm going to post this as is and you'll probably just have to suffer with the tidbits I've given you until tomorrow when I get home. :)
Again with the hot, and it's only 9am. Blah. People live in this on purpose, that's what blows my little tiny dehydrated mind away. Of course, I'm a particularly wussy breed of Alaskan, too, so that may have something to do with my general feelings of BLAH! BLAH! BLAH!
We went to Trinity Church and St. John the Divine yesterday. St. John is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world, and lemme tell you: walking into it is like walking down the Halls of Moria. It's *huge*. It's dark and beautiful and made to make you feel tiny and insignificant, and lemme tell you, if there were anything in the world that could make the Master Of All Egos, Catie, feel insignificant, it'd be a gothic cathedral like that one. It's absolutely gorgeous. It's also not finished, and I sort of wonder if they'll ever finish it. Dor calls it St. John the Unfinished, and I think it'd lose its notoriety if they finished it.
It's possible I said all this yesterday. I can't remember. I have, thankfully, slept since then, although the hostel bed is primarily made up, Tigger-like, of springs. Tigger, one imagines, wouldn't dig into one's ribs quite so enthusiastically, though. Well. He'd probably be enthusiastic, but it wouldn't seem quite that malicious. :)
Um. In a fit of fitfullness, we went to a movie last night. Movies cost $10 in NYC. o.O It was all right (we went to Once Upon A Time in Mexico but it wasn't ten dollars worth of good. Sheesh. We did get rained on in the two blocks we walked home. Rained on to the I'm-dripping degree. Also, there were several trillion cops hanging out outside the theatre when we left. New York has a lot of cops.
Ted says I haven't forgotten anything, so I'll stop typing and go get breakfast.
Did I mention the hot and sweaty?
Up at the crack of 9 this morning to stagger about in a slow fashion and ultimately find some breakfast and go down to Trinity Church and Ground Zero. We weren't 100% sure we were going the right direction, although we left the subway station from the southwest corner, which implied the right direction. Then, a couple blocks from the station, there was suddenly this huge, gaping hole in the city of New York.
We were going the right direction.
Ground Zero's a little strange. It's so... empty. A block of emptiness, a tremendous hole in the earth, where one expects there to be city. I can't imagine how jarring it must be for New Yorkers: it's shocking enough to somebody from out of town.
Planning to find St. James the Divine (or Unfinished, as Dor calls it) this afternoon, probably after a bit of food.
Oh! I won the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers' contest for the SF/F part! I'd tell you more about it, but I only have 45 seconds left on this ticket. :)
Hot. Sweaty. Dying. MEOW!
Hello from the hostel in NYC. It's pretty decent. Bright colors and clean rooms and my god it's hot.
Laura and Ben are safely married in what was a terrific wedding ceremony. I'll write more about it later when I'm not paying $2 for 20 minutes of net access.
Their friend Barry drove us into NYC this afternoon and walked us around some so we could get a feel for the place (THANK YOU, BARRY!). It's a little much for Ted, who doesn't like going into new cities because he doesn't know where he's going, but he and Barry sat down with a map and got oriented, and that seemed to help.
The bad thing is that we missed mony. We haven't had net access at all the last few days-- we hoped to log on at Russ, who picked us up in Boston (THANK YOU, RUSS!)'s place, but the net was down at his place and ... yeah. Failure all around to be able to get to the net. Anyway, it turned out there was a brunch this morning that I wasn't entirely aware of, and it also turned out that it's harder to get out of West Milford by public transportation than I would've expected, so we didn't get into the city until like 4:30. We went to Grand Central Station just in case mony was still there, and looked around at the information kiosk where we were supposed to meet, but there was no joy. Snif. I hope she very sensibly went home when we continued to not show up for very long periods of time. :/
Hm, I've got 11 minutes. The wedding was gorgeous. Everybody, and I do mean everybody, wore 14th century medieval garb, and everybody looked fantastic. Laura and Ben were gorgeous and goopy and looked magnificent, and the attendents, male and female, all looked smashing. The parents wore blue (the wedding party was in green) and Laura's mom's costume was just wonderful wonderful. She'd spent lots of time making it herself. :)
The site was amazing, even if it rained ALL DAY on Saturday. There's a pond and cabins and a story to go along with the guy who owns the place-- his grandfather went to boys camp there, and his father did too, and then he did too, and in the eighties the place was abandoned, and in the early 90s he was out hiking and found the abandoned site, which was starting to get vandelized, so he took all the stuff that was there, memorabilia and knicknacks and whatnot, and put it away so it'd be safe, and in the mid nineties was able to buy the site -- 45 acres-- and they're renovating it. It's absolutely amazing. And they loooooved what we did with the hall to decorate it, and wanted pictures. Hee hee hee. :)
Ok, down to 7 minutes and I'm going to try to get my email to work. Bai!
Ok. We're off, in about an hour. We'll be gone from tomorrow, the 11th, through the 17th, next Wednesday. We'll presumably be entirely without email the next three days, but Sunday through Tuesday we'll be in NYC and one imagines we can find access to the net there somewhere, so if you simply can't stand being without me another moment, you can always send email.
In the meantime... there is no meantime. Man, I'm tired.
The manuscript, bless its black little heart, is off to the agent. In a fit of ... something. Efficiency? Editor/agent-inspired panic? I rewrote the section of the book I thought was weak, and now I'm very *very* pleased with the results and extremely happy with the novel overall. Not that I wasn't happy with it before, but I'm much *happier* now. *beam*
Let's hear it for rewrites jacking up the wordcount:
ytd wordcount: 197,000
I would go die of exhaustion now if I didn't have a billion trillion million things to do prior to going to Laura's wedding. For example: laundry.
*goes to do laundry*
Man.
Sunday I worked all morning and then at 2pm Ted and I decided to drive down to Kenai, where we went and tromped around in the woods behind my old house to see if we (I) could find Leader Green, our old fort. I did, in fact, find it, although somewhat worse for the wear. I took a few pictures, but not many, because as I told Ted, you can't take pictures of memories. We also went to Paradisos and Dairy Queen, since we were down there, but we didn't have pizza. :)
Saturday I had an email from the contest coordinator of the RMFW which said I should call her, and although she called me before I had a chance to call her, she verified that I have an appointment in NYC on the 16th with Teresa Nielsen Hayden to talk about Angles. Yay!
There is also an agent who wants to look at Angles. I'll be sending it to her tonight. *beam*
I finished all my sites at work and it's all taken care of. I'm tired.
busy day, despite myself.
i got a site finished this morning, and then we went to buy a new split keyboard because there were no XP drivers for mine (fuckers), and while we were at Best Buy we accidentally bought SG-1 season 4. Oop.
Stopped by the pound in hopes of finding Annie there, but we didn't. :( We've put an ad in the paper and called Friends of Pets and put up posters. I don't know what else to do. :(
Um. What else. Oh. Then I went and got a massage to see if it would help my horrible shoulder/elbow/pinky problem that stems from using a standard keyboard, and it did. Came home to do a little more work and to install the new keyboard, the latter of which was successful and the former of which was not; the VPN went down and I can't connect to work. *sigh* They're working on fixing it.
We also went and got our hairs cut, after that. And had an ice cream for a snack rather than having lunch at 4pm, so we might manage to eat dinner at a reasonable time instead of at 9 o'clock.
That's about it, then.
My alumni card finally arrived, and my headache seems to have finally gone away, or at least mostly.
My desk is not as clean as it was, but I think I managed to keep it clean for a week.
Obviously not a lot of news today.
My family's dog got loose two nights ago (the 2nd) at Mount Vernon Court in mid-town Anchorage between Arctic and C Street (Benson and Tudor are the east-west roads on that block). I know it's an awfully long shot, but if anybody sees her, please email me at kit AT mizkit DOT com. Her name is Annie and she's very old and fragile and I'm awfully worried about her. :(
Thanks.
A fiction interlude, from The End of Days.
The revolution began the day they closed the polls.
Oh, we didn't know it, then. It was only later that it became clear, embarrassingly clear. All the little signs, but then, they say hindsight is twenty-twenty.
If you want to reach back and pick a date, there's an easy one to see. They say a decade isn't measured by the zeroes at the end of the Years Of Our Lord, but by the events that shape it. Going back a ways, the Sixties, they had a short run, from one assassination to another, but the Fifties lingered on for almost twenty years. The Seventies looked almost like a decade, right from the King assassination all the way through to the Iranian hostages. I was fifteen on November 9th, 1989, the day the Wall came down. Even then I knew, right in the gut of me, that was the end of the Eighties.
The Nineties ended on September 11th, 2001.
Even so, that wasn't the first sign. There were the rolling blackouts in California--yeah, artificial, but looking back, it looks like a damned flare: look here, we've got serious problems, asshole. And then the East Coast blackout--praise be to Allah for showing the Americans what it's like, even if only for a few hours. And the thing I remember is thinking how fast it would all go, if it went. That was when I knew. Sign of the end days.
Now I'm supposed to say it got better, but we're not kidding anybody. With the election getting kick-started with Governor Dean's grassroots showing, enough to scare the administration. Right about when the Doctor started looking good, the Pentagon started saying we oughta expect another terrorist attack like 9/11 in the next year.
And gosh darned if we didn't get one.
June 14, 2004. Hasn't got the same cultural ring to it--9/11, now that means something to an American. That's the number you dial in an emergency. The irony cuts right to the bone.
It was Los Angeles, that June. They say Governor Schwarzenegger faced down a missile himself, like he really was the last action hero. 'course, it blew him right to shit and back again. Just like the poem says, the man on the television screen didn't get up again.
There were no elections in 2004. For the good of the nation. Martial law, to keep us safe.
November second. That's when America began to see. Sign of the end days.
Hey, Patch, Quinton Hoover came by my page and responded to your comment about "The Proposal" Magic card.
Whew. Sort of, anyway.
Travel plans are All Changed Around Now. We are now flying into Boston and immediately getting on a train to go to New Jersey. Then we will spend two days doing Wedding Things. Sunday we will go into NYC and meet up with hegemony, possibly meet up with Garrett on another day, and go to see the premiere preview of The Boy From Oz, which Hugh Jackman is starring in, on the 16th before flying back to Alaska from Newark on the 17th. o.o
Crrrrrap. I have just discovered that Ben and Laura's wedding is in New Jersey, not Conneticut. While I remember Laura saying that it wasn't in Mystic *itself*, I seem to have missed the fact that it wasn't in Conneticut at all.
Now waiting to hear back from either Laura or Ben about which airport would be best to fly into, and then going to see if I can switch our plane tickets. This, as we say, changes everything. Nrf!
V. sleepy!
I accidentally bought three books this weekend. I only read two (not of the ones I bought over the weekend), so I'm clearly not keeping up on my noise to signal here. Besides, only one of them was a real accident. Two I bought for book clubs, one of which caused me to stand for fifteen minutes in the YA section at B&N and admire how many YA novels have come out since I was a YA myself. I restrained myself from buying forty books, mostly because I need to WRITE about forty books. Ahem. So I bought The Watcher by James Howe, 'cause that's the YA book club at Title Wave book, and I bought the Tanya Huff book Valor's Choice which is the TW SF book club book. Those were on purpose. The accident was another biography of Elizabeth I. I just really like those, what can I say?
*yawns my brain out*
We watched the remainder of season 3 Stargate, which I may have mentioned before, and this evening we went over to Mom & Dad's for dinner and had a whole lot of really yummy ham and had homemade strawberry shortcake for dessert. Then we came home and I watched my favorite scenes from Chicago and watched the behind the scenes special feature, and now I'm taking my very sleepy brain to bed.
Night night.
Another 2700 words written this morning, for a respectable 5K in the last 2 days. Too bad that's all I've done in the last six weeks, or at least most of what I've done in the last six weeks. Oh well, it's darker out now and it's easier to focus on writing. Trying to get anything accomplished in the summertime up here is generally a total wash.
ytd wordcount: 163,450
miles to Rivendell: 182
I forgot to put up a goals chart for July, so parenthetical numbers indicate July and August combined:
Words written
anticipated: 267,300
actual: 163,450 (6600)
Miles biked
anticipated: 1250
actual: 605 (10)
Miles swum
anticipated: 64
actual: 22 (2)
Drawings drawn
anticipated: 64
actual: 13.5 (0)
Books read
anticipated: 64
actual: 51 (15)
Pounds lost
anticipated: 20
actual: 5 (0)
