Bits and bobs for a Friday morning.

[seanan_mcguire]

1. Only four hours remain to enter my random drawing for an ARC of An Artificial Night! It's probably the simplest contest I'm going to have, so what have you got to lose, right? Besides, they're pretty. I like pretty things. I am a simple soul.

2. Speaking of pretty things, remember that the ALH pendant sale will be starting today at Chimera Fancies. I cannot possibly overstate how much I love Mia's pendants. If I were a wealthy woman, I'd just pay her to sit around and make them all day, and keep the bulk of her output for myself. Again, simple soul. Also, occasional magpie.

3. Leverage comes back this weekend! So You Think You Can Dance is back on the air! Cartoon Network has Unnatural History and Total Drama World Tour! Oh, I love you, summertime television. I love you so much, forever.

4. Tomorrow is my last pre-Westercon rehearsal with the fabulous Paul Kwinn, renowned in song and story, master of the meaningful look while wearing a gaudily-patterned shirt, husband of Beckett, whom I love beyond all reason. I'm very excited, despite the fact that I'm still occasionally coughing like I'm on the verge of actual death. It's gonna be awesome.

5. I have my editorial notes for Late Eclipses, and I'm busily incorporating them into the finished manuscript...while, possibly, fixing a few little language issues at the same time. It's been long enough since I touched this book that it appears to have been written by an alien, which is the best time for doing editorial. It's still my baby. It's just my weird alien baby, and that makes it more fun to autopsy.

6. Zombies are still love.

7. It's June already. That means we're getting closer and closer every day to my departure for Australia, LAND OF POISON AND FLAME, which I have only been dreaming about for most of my life. I'm so excited it's scary, and not just because I'm on the ballot for the Campbell (although that remains a constant GOTO loop at the back of my brain). I get to go to Australia! I get to breathe Australian air! My life is awesome sometimes.

8. We've entered the final stages of recording Wicked Girls, and it should, I hope, I pray, be able to make the October release date that I so optimistically set for myself. I'll be announcing the pre-orders soon, since that's how I finance mixing and mastering, and I'm really, really happy with this album, as a whole. It's just...it's what I wanted. And that's incredible.

9. I think the cats are stealing my will to leave the house. I just want to sleep.

10. I need more ARC contests! Suggest something. Be silly, be serious, request that I do your favorite all over again, whatever. I need ideas, and so I turn to you, the glorious Internet, to give them to me.

It's Friday!

Comments

[markbernstein.livejournal.com]

For your possible amusement, my SYTYCD thoughts for this week.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[stormsdotter.livejournal.com]

Have fun in Australia! I'm sorry I won't be there to stalk you hand you food!

I liked the LOL Cat, haiku, fan art and collage contests from last time. *wracks brain for ideas* Perhaps you could have a contest for coffee shop photos with Toby (or things from Toby's world) edited into them?

How about a "King of Cats" look-alike photo contest? ...ok, I'll admit it, I'm suggesting this as an excuse to encourage people to post cute kitty photos.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Hey, there is NOTHING WRONG with cute kitty photos.

[textileowl.livejournal.com]

Woo Australia! I've achieved swatches, looked at them once and then ran to my show opening. I'm hoping to have them photographed this weekend to email to you.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Excellent! I'm hoping to get someone to take my measurements this week.

[inkedhistorian.livejournal.com]

I suggest a Toby/AN-related haiku contest:

Rain falls where she walks
It is always October
Between light and Night

[mariadkins.livejournal.com]

brilliant :)

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

It's an excellent haiku...

...but I don't actually like haiku, and usually remember to disqualify them from poetry contests.

[mariadkins.livejournal.com]

read this as "bits and boobs". :)

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Boobies!

[fatherofdragons.livejournal.com]

9. I think the cats are stealing my will to leave the house. I just want to sleep.

This is, of course, because cats are powerful sleepion emitters. Sleepions, are, of course, the elementary particle that carries the sleepy force. Cats saturate their environment with sleepions. Places where they sleep regularly (life, say, your bed) become gain particularly highly charged with sleepions. And since humans (who usually don't sleep enough) are natural sleepion sinks, they find these areas of high sleepion charge well neigh irresistible.

[inkedhistorian.livejournal.com]

In my house we call it "cuteon radiation" but the same principles apply. My son, when he was littler, was also a power emitter of this energy.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Making me nap is their job, it's true.

competition idea

[valdary.livejournal.com]

I think a competition to find Shakespeare quotes that would make good titles for Toby novels. Extra points if they are quotes not everyone has heard of, but you have to identify in your entry which scene/sonnet/poem they came from for verification. More points for keeping it to three words, maximum of five.

Re: competition idea

[sheistheweather]

I second this one.

[deire.livejournal.com]

Oooooo. How about silly or costumed pics of self contest? Or Seanan T shirt slogans? Or a ballad?

[aliciaaudrey.livejournal.com]

I like the T shirt slogan idea. Or a bumper sticker slogan contest. I absolutely adore how complicated concepts can be condensed to short statements.

[aliciaaudrey.livejournal.com]

I've got my AHL pendant. Mwhahhahahahha.

Wait. Perhaps this is not the time for an evil cackle.

SQUEE!!!!

Have fun in Australia. Ogle a clock spider or something. Come back with a tiara!

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

CLOCK SPIDERS ARE LOVE.

[all-ephemera.livejournal.com]

Leverage Leverage! I'm stupidly excited over this show (and SOPHIE) coming back!

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Season premiere did not disappoint.

[theashgirl.livejournal.com]

I snagged a pendant! \o/ Victory is mine!

Of course I really, really want the Neverland one up for action - SO BAD - but it depends on how much it ends up going for. Damn living off student loans, it does not leave nearly enough for my shiny things budget.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Yay, pendants! Which did you get?

[tygerversionx.livejournal.com]

Kitties don't steal the will to live. They do, however, encourage the will to nap.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

True.

[tikiera.livejournal.com]

Pendant acquisition achieved!

And know I know to budget for preorder for Wicked Girls... ;)

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Yay!

[apocalypticbob.livejournal.com]

I know I've already told you how much I loved FEED, but I did want to let you know that I finally put a review up on my journal, which you can see here (http://apocalypticbob.livejournal.com/592156.html).

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Awesome! I have added you to the giant list of links.

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

PREORDERS! *flails like an excited muppet*

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

I fully support this comment! :D PREORDERS!

[danceswithlife]

It will be a great week if I can pre-order Sooj's "Mischief" and Seanan's "Wicked Girls" near each other.

Idea contest:

In 10 words or less, why is the night artificial?

Lola

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

The night is artificial because the day is.

[talkstowolves.livejournal.com]

Contest ideas:
1. Design signature cocktails for major characters/places in the Tobyverse.*
2. Artistic photographs involving candlelight.
3. Put together a mixtape characterizing a major character/place in the Tobyverse. (List-form, of course, actual tapes and files not required.)
4. Tobyverse/fairytale-themed motivational posters. (If you can't make it, you can still describe it.)
5. Slogans! As in, get people to devise Tobyverse slogans - for judging, you can do categories like "Most Hilarious," "Most Apt," "Most Likely To Get One Banished by the Queen," "Most Likely To Get One Gutted in Cait Sidhe Alley," "Most Likely to Be Carried by Picketing Changelings"...


* Ah, if only there could be a great big judging party (that I could attend), where firsthand and very scientific research was done to decide the winner(s)!

[aliciaaudrey.livejournal.com]

I support 1, 3, 4, and 5.

I don't support two mostly because most of the time when I try to take a picture it ends up either being of my feet or of my thumb. :(