for agrimony and esmerel:

did we call it or what?

barfity barf barf.

:)

I got home safely around 1pm yesterday and my internet crashed before I had a chance to post and say that I’d made it home safely. So I went to dinner at Mom and Dad’s and then just went to bed. *tud*. Like that. I went to bed at 5 to 7 last night and got up at 10 to 9 this morning. Goodness. O.O

Later I’ll do a big fat ComicCon posting. But right now I just wanted to say I’m alive. :)

the book meme!

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. Well let’s see.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.

Read the rest of this entry…

currently: lethargic

I actually got to 100K on PRETENDER’S CROWN this morning! Hooray! I can now go off to P-Con feeling pretty satisfied with myself, and not have that hanging over my head all weekend. Yay! See you all on Monday!

ytd wordcount: 119,100

currently: pleased

Today I got everything on my thinks to do list done except writing. I suddenly suspect that this is basically why I stop doing everything else when I’m writing: the slightest excuse hares me off and then it’s 6pm and I’m not likely to start writing *now*.

*yawns brains out* I might’ve had more profound things to say, but I’m yawning my brains out so I’m going to bed.

Oh! I’ve been LOL-booked! :)

miles to Minas Tirith: 122.5

2008 has arrived safely here in Cork, Ireland, and I should say judging from the fireworks and cheers that it’ll be a good and welcome year for all!

*raises a glass and beams all around*!

currently: happy

arright, a bunch of thinks to do which are setup for launching into 2008:

- print TPC proposal
- email paul
- email mark
- email jenn
- see if there’s a wordpress semagic equivilant
- set up an rss feed for my growing list of links?
- make a shopping list
- go shopping without forgetting the list
- add things to this list as I think of them

I have had a stupid number of colds this year. I got sick at Pi-Con in August and remained that way pretty much straight through the third week of November. I had a variety of colds previous to that, mostly coinciding with any time I saw my nephews (which is really depressing). I’ve got another one now (coinciding, I’m afraid, with having seen my nephews.) I am very, very tired of having colds. I’m so tired of it I’m even tired of complaining about them, so aside from this one little bitchfest I probably won’t anymore. And poor Ted is even tireder of me being sick than I am, which is saying a lot.

Okay. Moving on. I would like to thank the Academ whoever it was who recommended The Daily Coyote in comments a few weeks ago when I said the intarnets were boring me, because I’m getting a lot of delight out of it.

People are starting to post resolutions and goals for 2008. I’m really rather enjoying reading them. Mine’ll go up NYE, I expect, since I think that’s when I usually post them, and very probably I will launch my WordPress website with that posting. Don’t worry, I’ll have it set up to crosspost here, so nobody’ll miss anything. :)

Oh, wow, the design actually works with the latest version of Internet Exploder. I was appalled to read earlier today that 80% of users are still using IE. I mean, I guess that pretty much correlates to 80% of users using Windows, but man. Depressing! But at least the site design works with it, which means IE is up to CSS standards, which it didn’t used to be.

…a long time ago when I started writing this I had more ideas about random things I was going to talk about, but I’ve utterly forgotten them all now. I’ll blame it on the cold. :)

We bought a cute little pork roast to make for dinner. I put it in the oven in a glass pan and roasted it up. After I took it out, I realized I’d completely forgotten to SEASON it. *sigh*

The potatoes turned out to be what the Irish call “floury”, and began to dissolve in the boiling water.

I had a couple of granny smith apples. I made applesauce with them. I burned it.

Each of these things finished at a completely different time, and because the applesauce pan had burnt apples stuck to its edges, I did not have time/inclination to wash that pan and put the green beans on to boil so they’d be ready at the same time the potatoes were. I ended up washing the floury potato pan instead, making the veggies that much later.

Despairing, but confident I couldn’t make anything worse, I scraped the glass pan free of the juice and fat and put it into a cast iron pan and made gravy, in hopes that I might make something to make the bland pork roast slightly more interesting to eat.

My mother makes the best gravy in the world. I am horribly trepidatious about making gravy. I’ve only made it about six times, which of course makes me *more* trepidatious about making it, because I have no practice.

This was easily the best gravy I have ever made. It was good enough to be Mom’s. It made the pork roast taste wonderful.

The apples, it turned out, were barely scorched, and the applesauce turned out just fine.

Still, I think maybe I should stay out of the kitchen for the rest of the night.

Someone asked if I had any plans to finish CENTENARIAN and when it would be published. Yes, I do plan to finish it sometime (that would be one of the projects I’d *like* to do, but have no idea if I *will* do in 2008). I do not have a publisher for it, nor will I search for one until after the book is done*, because I am not going to commit myself to more than 2 contracted novels a year ever again**.

However, when I do write more on it, I’ll be posting it. It’s my Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Wretch project, and perhaps at some point I’ll be crass enough to put up a paypal button with the story, but mostly it’s for the fun of writing it and presenting something directly to readers. There’s no real pressure aside from that which I apply myself and the occasional note from a reader saying, “More?” (which is lovely), and after the last few years, having a dilettante project is very appealing. (This is why my agent and editor both told me I needed to get a hobby that wasn’t writing. They’re so very right.)

Someone else expressed dismay over the Negotiator Trilogy, specifically the “trilogy” part of that, and wondered if there was any chance I might expand that into the Negotiator Series.

No and yes: Margrit’s story will be finished at the end of the trilogy. But there are a number of other books I could write about the Old Races, none of which I have any intention of writing any time soon. Maybe when the Walker Papers are done, if people are still buying urban fantasy in that far-off day.

This, you may surmise, is not very much like getting work done. I had better get to it.

*Except for once I’ve got a proposal together for it, which will happen 2 more chapters and a synopsis from now, there is a publisher I very very very much want to work with who would like to see it, and who wants to see the S&3 as soon as it’s available so they can have a chance at actually getting the book…

**Unless ANGLES sells as a trilogy, in which case I will make an exception.