New icons and wallpapers available now!

Since we're counting down to the release of A Local Habitation—seventy-one* days, but really, who's counting? Beyond, I don't know, me—it seemed like a good time to get some awesome new graphics out into the world, courtesy of the always-spectacular taraoshea. And so, without further ado, I direct you to take a look at the Icons and Wallpapers Page of my website. Go ahead. I can wait.

Now, aren't those amazing? The icon and wallpaper sets at the top are totally new, designed to go with A Local Habitation; we'll be adding a few more in January, but this was just a mind-blowingly awesome start. If you scroll to the bottom (or make use of the handy new navigation bar, of which I am justly proud), you'll find the wallpaper and icon sets for Winterfluch, the German edition of Rosemary and Rue which comes out this January. Tara did a remarkable job of recreating the feel and emotion of the cover without using any part of it in her graphics: that's all stock photography and CGI magic. She also relabeled several of the original Rosemary and Rue icons with the new title, so as to create a wider range of choices (this is going to be standard with non-U.S. releases).

I am beginning to get excited and scared and all that other good stuff. But the new graphics are gorgeous, and I totally recommend taking a peek.

(*Seventy-one is the twentieth prime number, and is the twin prime of seventy-three. It's also the permutable prime of seventeen. This has been your moment of prime number math geekery for the day. Sadly, I feel better now.)

Word count -- DEADLINE.

Words: 6,064.
Total words: 87,401.
Reason for stopping: end of chapter sixteen.
Music: Girlyman and Glee.
Lilly and Alice: sleeping in my backpack.

As of this evening, I have managed to break three hundred manuscript pages. Exactly. (To be fair, I cheated juuuuuuust a little, and went ahead and wrote the blog post that opens chapter seventeen. Come on, it was that or walk away at two hundred and ninety-nine pages. That's the kind of choice that leads to getting up at three in the morning to start writing again, and that's just no good for anybody.) I'll probably break 90,000 words by the time I get to Seattle, what with that whole "airplane ride" that I have to take to get there. Great Pumpkin bless my Netbook, that's really all I have to say about that.

My page proofs for Feed have been finished and returned to my publisher. I have cover proofs for the US and UK editions of the book; they keep surprising me when I see them out of the corner of my eye, like "Who wrote that? Who's Mira Grant?" followed by "Oh, yeah. I did. That's me." It's like having a secret identity, only instead of being a superhero, she's a total bad-ass horror movie heroine, ready to kick ass and take names (all while having fabulous hair, naturally).

I estimate I have about another 38,000 words to go on this book, give or take a couple of thousand. That's a lot of wordage...but it's a lot of plot. And then I get to revise, and rewrite, and finally stand on the edge of yet another precipice, looking out over the unexplored country of Blackout. I'm almost there.

When will you rise?