seanan_mcguire: (me)
seanan_mcguire ([personal profile] seanan_mcguire) wrote2011-04-13 08:05 am

In which Seanan pleads forebearance, and bullet-points the week.

1. I have been blazingly ill since Sunday afternoon, and spent most of yesterday and Monday in a cold medication haze. I am thus behind on LJ comments, email, snail mail, passenger pigeon mail, Facebook mail (well, I'm always behind on Facebook mail), sending out the mail, opening the mail, and anything else that required actual effort on my part. If you're waiting for a response from me, please, be patient. If your request is urgent, please, mail again. If I do not consider your request to be actually urgent, like you're asking for kitten pictures or something, I reserve the right to delete your email and scowl in your general direction.

2. Despite being blazingly ill, I managed to make my word counts on Blackout both days, and am on track to hit 100,000 words on April 23rd. This is good, since it means I may actually finish the book, you know, on time. I love finishing things on time. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and slightly less completely deranged.

3. Saturday night was GP's birthday party! I did not come home that night, as it was late and we were all exhausted and sort of drunk (and yes, this may have dealt my immune system the fatal blow). Thomas showed his disapproval by climbing onto my computer desk, gently nudging aside the dolls on the second shelf, pulling down the jar in which I store my earplugs, opening the jar, dumping out the earplugs, and eating half of them. I do not know why he is so obsessed with eating the damn things, but he's why I bought that jar in the first place. Now he shits little pink bullets, and looks smug.

4. My vet has confirmed that this won't hurt him, but is also sub-optimal. I have moved my earplugs.

5. The first draft of "Crystal Halloway, Girl Wonder, and the Terror of the Truth Fairy" is finished and being hacked at by the Machete Squad. This is seriously the most depressing, nihilistic story I think I've ever written. Which makes it appropriate that I wrote it while I was sick even unto death. This thing reads like the prologue to a Vertigo comic series.

6. I am not writing a Vertigo comic series. Unless, of course, DC asks me to.

7. I also got started on the first draft of "Rat-Catcher," a Tobyverse story set in London, in 1662 (yes, only a few years before the Great Fire, and the Great Plague). In it, a young Prince of Cats named Rand must stop playing theater cat at the Duke's Theater long enough to find a way to deal with his father, keep his sister from doing something monumentally stupid, and oh, right, maybe save the Cait Sidhe of London from a fate worse than death. Is this Tybalt's origin story? Why yes. Yes, it is.

8. Things already pulled from my research shelf in service of "Rat-Catcher": The Writer's Digest Guide to Character Naming (second edition), London: A Biography, Sex and Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, and The Wordsworth Dictionary of Shakespeare. Make of this what you will.

9. Being sick did allow me to catch up on some of my cache of SyFy Original Movies, including the second half of Meteor with Marla Sokoloff. This was a disturbingly good, surprisingly high-budget feature, especially for a SyFy Saturday. Also, not only were women competent and realistic characters, they didn't all die. Well done, SyFy. Keep up the good work.

10. Zombies are still love.

What's up with you?
archangelbeth: An egyptian-inspired eye, centered between feathered wings. (Default)

[personal profile] archangelbeth 2011-04-13 09:37 pm (UTC)(link)
Ugh, point. >_> At least this is probably just my personal bacterial load, and it's not been exposed to antibiotics more than twice now. And I am very good about taking all my antibiotics even if I feel better. No breeding resistant bacteria for me!
archangelbeth: Quote from Bujold's work: after five-space navigational math, how hard could motherhood be? (Vor - After 5-space math motherhood hard)

[personal profile] archangelbeth 2011-04-13 09:38 pm (UTC)(link)
(Ooo, shoggoth and toddlers! Excellent! Mine was discussing the Illuminati and how they make sure only they have truly-functioning subliminals, yesterday, but she's 11 now.)

[identity profile] mlerules.livejournal.com 2011-04-13 10:29 pm (UTC)(link)
Big YAY re: 7.!

I'm off to SoCal for a long weekend (Th - Tu) where, amongst other things, I'll get to see Re-Animator the Musical. Hoping to sit in the very front "splatter zone"...

[identity profile] dragondances.livejournal.com 2011-04-13 10:37 pm (UTC)(link)
Hope you feel better soon, although it's encouraging that you are still well enough to write! I recently ordered Rosemary & Rue and Feed and am delightedly awaiting their arrival- and I did end up getting them from Borderlands Books, where the people turned out to be just as friendly and awesome as you said. :D

[identity profile] yellowblackhaze.livejournal.com 2011-04-13 11:06 pm (UTC)(link)
You accomplish an awful lot more sick than I do when totally healthy. Anything that cats and dogs aren't supposed to eat they invariably do, you gotta love 'em.

[identity profile] dimloep-suum.livejournal.com 2011-04-13 11:48 pm (UTC)(link)
Is this Tybalt's origin story? Why yes. Yes, it is.

\o/ Tybalt!


Wishing you a speedy recovery.

[identity profile] vincentursus.livejournal.com 2011-04-13 11:57 pm (UTC)(link)
I find myself quite fond of the phrase "I'm knitting a Dalek," may I steal it?

[identity profile] vincentursus.livejournal.com 2011-04-14 12:03 am (UTC)(link)
Is feeling deranged a negative?

I have put up a charm to ward off the evil eye in my bedroom and have been slowly and vaguely planning an RPG campaign involving time travelers in the Georgian era.

[identity profile] emmalyon.livejournal.com 2011-04-14 12:15 am (UTC)(link)
I loved London: A Biography. It dovetailed interestingly with the fiction I was reading at the time. I am currently reading Paris: A Secret History, which is somewhat similar in tone.

[identity profile] bercilakslady.livejournal.com 2011-04-14 12:27 am (UTC)(link)
Certainly, though I don't know when you would use it unless you were actually knitting a Dalek.

http://www.entropyhouse.com/penwiper/who/extermaknit.html

[identity profile] asphaltangel.livejournal.com 2011-04-14 01:00 am (UTC)(link)
Everytime you talk about the Newsflesh books I go "YAY!"

Strep throat is going around my school and I am trying to avoid it. I think seven or eight of my students have it. Luckily, spring break is next week! Woohoo!

Also, at karate class, Sensei taught us this trick to make "an unbendable arm," then proceeded to disrupt our ki energy with is own and, y'know, bend our arms. It was insanely cool. Karate is love- and will be so very useful if I ever need to fight off zombies. Or wicked creepers.
batyatoon: (...duuuude.)

[personal profile] batyatoon 2011-04-14 01:16 am (UTC)(link)
Tybalt's origin story! I LOVE YOU.

okay that was true before I read this.

*smishes* Feel better, dear one.

[identity profile] tezmilleroz.livejournal.com 2011-04-14 01:54 am (UTC)(link)
Thomas can unscrew jar lads? Wow, that kitty has THUMBS ;-)

[identity profile] phoenixrave.livejournal.com 2011-04-14 02:22 am (UTC)(link)
After days of writing ABOVE my page count, for the thesis, I've written nothing for two days. So, now I'm only marginally behind. I DID get an interview for the job in Boston! Yay!
I jotted down two novel ideas in my "To Be Gotten To After Thesis" file. In between, I finished my MP3 "re-read" of "Feed" while driving, jogging, and grocery shopping and Steven Brust's "Tiassa," in my pre-bed reading. Dino-dance for both.
Seanan, has anyone ever compared your witty dialog to Brust's? There's a definite similarity. Anyway, a McGuire-Brust collaboration is on my big wishlist (along with a McGuire-Claremont collaboration, and a Grant-Cherryh (C.J.) collaboration).
Oh, and I finally added Twitter to my phone. It was nice to get witticisms over the weekend. I hope some of the healing energy hit you.

[identity profile] groblek.livejournal.com 2011-04-14 03:12 am (UTC)(link)
I e-file my federal taxes by using the free file fillable forms website - it pulls up blank forms and lets you fill them out, then does the calculations for you. The only drawback is that there doesn't seem to be a way to then e-file the state ones if you use that site, so I end up printing a copy and mailing those.

[identity profile] groblek.livejournal.com 2011-04-14 03:14 am (UTC)(link)
*hugs* Hope you get well soon.
I've been figuring out what supplies to spend the remains of our budget on to stock up for next year's cuts. And trying to work out where in the lab I'm going to stash nine cases of petri dishes.

[identity profile] hoppytoad79.livejournal.com 2011-04-14 04:39 am (UTC)(link)
10. Zombies are still love.

The Head of Wardrobe I'm spending two weeks as a dresser-type slave for has made similar comments. I've told her to get busy reading Feed.

[identity profile] catsittingstill.livejournal.com 2011-04-14 12:40 pm (UTC)(link)
You wouldn't happen to have a url for this website, would you? I looked at the e-file / free file stuff on the IRS website but there were so many options to choose from it was pretty confusing. "Free file" wasn't just one option, as I recall; it was a whole bunch.

[identity profile] catsittingstill.livejournal.com 2011-04-14 01:45 pm (UTC)(link)
Yay! Thank you!

[identity profile] vettecat.livejournal.com 2011-04-14 03:35 pm (UTC)(link)
Hope you're feeling better now!

[identity profile] seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com 2011-04-14 03:39 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm such a light sleeper, I need ear plugs unless I'm sleeping in an actual vacuum.

[identity profile] seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com 2011-04-14 03:39 pm (UTC)(link)
Cats are weird.

[identity profile] seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com 2011-04-14 03:40 pm (UTC)(link)
I am deeply jealous of your weekend.

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