Kaja's birthday, AGATHA HETERODYNE AND THE AIRSHIP CITY, and nattering about books.

Today is Kaja Foglio's birthday! If you don't know Kaja, she's one-half of the creative team behind Girl Genius, along with her husband, the interminable Phil Foglio. Together, they won the 2010 Hugo for Best Graphic Novel. Also, they fight crime.

I'm just saying.

This month, the Foglios unleashed their unspeakable powers on a new arena: the novel. While Phil has written book-length prose before (most specifically Illegal Aliens, co-written with the awesome Nick Pollotta), this is Kaja's first foray into this particular medium. Agatha Heterodyne and the Airship City [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] is a novelization of the first two volumes of the Girl Genius graphic novel. Meaning what? Meaning that if you already read the comic, this isn't new story, per se, but it's deeper story, more intricate story. It enriches and expands on what you already know. And if you haven't read the comic, well, why not? It's available for free online. Yes, all of it. Yes, the Foglios make a living giving away their product. Why? Because it's that good.

Why am I telling you all this? Because it's Kaja's birthday, and what she asked for this year was, well, that we talk about her book. If you were considering picking up Agatha Heterodyne and the Airship City [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy], why not do it today? Give Kaja a book sale for her birthday, and help the Foglios ring the bells on Amazon (or at your local independent bookseller—I note that Borderlands Books has the book in stock, as, I'm sure, do many others).

The Foglios are great people, and Agatha Heterodyne is a great book. If you like steampunk, gaslamp fantasy, wacky science, mad science, cute blonde girls in corsets, and making my friends happy, give Agatha Heterodyne and the Airship City [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] a look! Statistically speaking, if you're reading my journal, you'll probably be glad that you did.

Apparently, I am an enormous nerd.

Since it's a "talking about birthdays" kind of a day, here's my own (belated) birthday report:

Last Wednesday was my birthday, and it was, quite frankly, pretty miserable. I had gone home from work early on Tuesday, suffering from a nasty cold. It had mostly cleared up by Wednesday morning, which was awesome, although there was still some, well, let's call it "blockage." The "blockage" continued to reduce over the course of the day, until somewhere around noon, when I sneezed, knocking the last of it free...

...and unleashing the GALLONS OF BLOOD I had apparently been storing in my sinuses, courtesy of an unnoticed six-hour-long nosebleed. I managed to burst a blood vessel deep inside my head with all the sneezing and misery of Tuesday, and then, well. Bleeding! Like it was an Olympic sport! Accompanied by dizziness from, you know, LOSS OF BLOOD. I managed to make it to the bathroom (barely), where I passed out on the floor, and was later found by a co-worker unconscious in a pool of my own blood. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME.

(Yes, I have seen my doctor; no, it was not an aneurysm; it was really and truly just a burst blood vessel, and I am now fine. There have been no repeats of the "massive bleeding followed by passing out" party-time fun.)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I was sent home from work after turning the bathroom into my own private horror movie, and—after medical what-not and transit—met up with my mother and youngest sister for our usual Wednesday errands. We actually put off going to the comic book store in order to drive to Berkeley and eat Indian food for dinner, because it made sense from a traffic perspective. I complained a few times about the lack of cake, but not with any real passion, as I was a) tired, and b) still a little out of it. We ate. We drove back to Concord. We went to the comic book store.

Upon entry, I declared happily, "It's my BIRTHDAY!", since it's awesome when your birthday corresponds to new comic book day. The staff looked theatrically shocked...probably because that was about when Libby (the owner's wife) emerged from the office with a cake.

Yes. A cake.

MY COMIC STORE GOT ME A BIRTHDAY CAKE.

Did you ever need proof that I was an enormous nerd? Because if you did, here it is: my comic book store GOT ME A BIRTHDAY CAKE. That is how much time I spend there. BUYING ME A CAKE amounts of time.

I love my life. Medical emergencies and all.

In which Seanan controls neither the weather nor the mail.

Okay! So here, in conveniently numbered form, is the status on the mailing of Wicked Girls CDs, and the ordering thereof.

1. All paid-for pre-orders have been shipped.

2. Because of high holiday traffic at the post office, it is entirely possible for you to have received your "it has been shipped" email during the last week of December, and then for your CD to have not been sent until the first week of January. This is because "it has been shipped" really means "it has been stuffed into an envelope and also we were able to find it on the checklist."

3. Ironically, since I'm still working my way through the checklist, this also means you could have your CD well before you receive your "it has been shipped" notice. Sorry about that.

4. I do not have tracking information on any of the CDs. They were all sent either first class or media mail (whichever was cheaper for that specific package), with no bells or whistles of any kind. Why? Because confirmation would require another dollar per package, and a lot more time per package, at which point I sadly don't have time to mail more than three at once, and you're still receiving CDs into 2012.

5. There's an awful lot of weather hitting North America right now, and this, unfortunately, means that quite a few packages are being delayed. I do not control the weather. I mean, besides the rain. I control the rain. But it's not the rain that is causing mail stoppages and slow deliveries. So please have patience until the horrific weather stops keeping you apart from your precious CD. Waiting makes the payoff all the sweeter, right?

6. If you need to verify the address your CD was sent to, you can email me. I will then grumble at you for making me remember where I left the database, and go and look it up. I do not have a time machine, so I can't change where the CD went, so please don't tell me today that you meant to get me an address correction last month. I can arrange to re-ship the CD when the post office returns it to me, but I'll have to ask you to pay postage again.

7. If your CD has absolutely, positively, "it's been a month and I have nothing" gone missing, email me, and we'll see what we can do. I don't control the mail, but that doesn't mean it should be messing with people, either.

8. Right now, you can obtain copies of Wicked Girls from either Southern Fried Filk or from Bill Roper (at-con sales only). I'll be getting the album up on CD Baby sometime in the next month or so; there just hasn't been time, and I wanted to make sure that all pre-orders were sent out before I started supplying the vendors.

9. No, I really can't take direct sales until then.

10. No, I am not recording a fifth CD. Yet.

If you have any other questions, comments, concerns, or cuckoo birds, feel free to share them here. I just wanted to try to get the big ones out of the way in a centralized manner, because I am currently crap at answering my email.