Rose-Owls and Pumpkin Girls

Hello, everybody, and welcome to my journal. I'm pretty sure you know who I am, my name being in the URL and all, but just in case, I'm Seanan McGuire (also known as Mira Grant), and you're probably not on Candid Camera. This post exists to answer a few of the questions I get asked on a semi-hemi-demi-regular basis. It may look familiar; that's because it gets updated and re-posted roughly every two months, to let folks who've just wandered in know how things work around here. Also, sometimes I change the questions. Because I can.

If you've read this before, feel free to skip, although there may be interesting new things to discover and know beyond the cut.

Anyway, here you go:

( This way lies a lot of information you may or may not need about the person whose LJ you may or may not be reading right at this moment. Also, I may or may not be the King of Rain, which may or may not explain why it's drizzling right now. Essentially, this is Schrodinger's cut-tag. )

For our second full day in Australia, Jeanne and I had signed up for a Walkabout Tour, along with David Levine and Kate Yule (two of the many, many people I met at World Fantasy in 2009). The tour was run by Echidna Walkabout, and started obscenely early in the morning, with a friendly woman named Janine coming to pick us up from the hotel. Janine wore the media-standard Australian leather bush hat. Hers was the only one I saw on an actual head during our trip.

"Are you Seanan?" she asked, after Jeanne and I got into her van. I affirmed that I was. "I thought you'd be a bloke!"

"I get that a lot," I said.

We drove around Melbourne picking up the rest of our party (hi, Kate and David!), including a bunch of cheery, chattery ladies from Tennessee, and then we were off for the You Yangs, where we would see, presumably, wild koalas doing wild koala things. On the way, we were treated to an enormous cornucopia of Australian birds, including my new personal favorite, the Australian magpie. This is a magpie that is not fucking around. It doesn't just have patches of white, oh, no, it is a white-out FACTORY, and it is COMING FOR YOUR EYES. (Also of note, the magpie lark, which is a third the size, very similar in coloring, sings duets, and will peck the holy crap out of you if you get too close.)

After we'd been driving for a while, Janine pulled into a field so we could look at HOLY CRAP PARROTS. Just THERE. Being WILD PARROTS. Dude, what the FUCK, Australia? There were also a few magpies around, so I wandered off to take pictures of them. "Seanan ignores the ostensibly interesting wildlife to photograph magpies" was a big theme of the day.

Once everyone had finished flipping out over the parrots, we got back in the van and finished driving to the You Yangs. On the way in, one of the chattery ladies spotted a swamp wallaby. The van was stopped. I spotted a second swamp wallaby. Janine was delighted. The ladies were delighted. Everyone was delighted! I found a guide to the native spiders of the area. Everyone was less delighted, probably because of my well-voiced desire to become the Spider Queen and lead my arachnid minions to victory.

We were met in the eucalyptus grove by Mary, the koala guide, who had been koala scouting to make sure we'd actually see some. Since koalas don't move much, she wasn't that concerned that the koalas would have gone anywhere, and we went hiking off into the brush. Koalas are boring. They sit, very high, and do nothing. It's like staring at shelf fungus that will pee on you if you get too close. I quickly lost interest in koalas, and started picking things up off the forest floor. "Things" included feathers (two of which went in Janine's hat), eggshells, interesting rocks, and pieces of bone. I am a dangerous individual when bored.

We drove on to an inordinately large rock called, reasonably enough, Big Rock. We climbed Big Rock. This was fun for me. Not so much, maybe, for the Tennessee ladies. Sorry, Tennessee ladies. Janine fed us all gum, like, from a gum tree. Janine is the devil.

Next up: lunch, served in a lovely little picnic hut in Serendip Sanctuary. It included sandwiches, fruit, biscuits (tim tams!), and outback tea, made with fresh gum leaves. I did not drink the tea. Everyone else drank the tea. Everyone else is CLEARLY INSANE, and I say this as the woman who went to AUSTRALIA to look for SPIDERS.

Now fortified, we went to finish the tour, and look at kangaroos. It turns out kangaroos don't much like being looked at. You have to sneak up on them (totally easy when you're a large group of people, most of whom don't spend much time outdoors), stay quiet, and look at them through binoculars. And then, when they inevitably notice you, you get to watch them boing boing boing away. Super-fun. The kangaroos were boring. The many varieties of giant flesh-ripping ant were not. Neither were the echidna scrapes, the big orange bugs, the entire denuded emu skeleton, or—best thing ever—the dead kangaroo. Oh, the dead kangaroo. Its flesh had been picked away by meat ants, and I was able to truly study its structure. Plus, there was a spider inside its skull. Thank you, Australia. I love you, too.

(Upon discovering the dead kangaroo, I hankered down to study it and take pictures. Our guide gamely tried to make this educational, and not get upset about the fact that the crazy Californian was way more interested in the dead kangaroo than in the live ones. Thank you, Janine. You were awesomely tolerant.)

With rain imminent and everyone exhausted, we made one last stop, at a billabong completely filled with birds. Black swans! So cool! Then it was back to Melbourne proper, passing kangaroos, swamp wallabys, and dozens of magpies on the way. Janine asked us about pie (apparently, cherry pie is viewed as a cruel joke in Australia, where cherries cost eighteen dollars a kilo during the off-season). We answered as best we could, until at last, we were back at our hotel, and could collapse for a little while before heading back to the alley for dinner.

I had lamb. Holy crap, lamb in Australia is like a religious experience. Welcome to the First Church of Mary's Little Lamb, please pass the sweet potato mash.

It was a very good day. Even without spiders.

I am weirdly superstitious. I say "weirdly" because the things about which I am superstitious tend to be, well, weird. I think black cats and the number thirteen are lucky, but I won't walk under a ladder (at least in part because I don't want anyone dropping paint on me). Finding a penny on the street is cause for celebration and declarations that all day long, I will have good luck. (Finding a nickle, dime, or quarter is cause for a ticker-tape parade, as people tend to be more careful about their silver.)

I count crows, I count cherry pits, I hunt for prime numbers and multiples of nine. I use my slide show screensaver as a funky sort of personal oracle. Get the concept? Superstitious and weird, that's me. So...

Yesterday, I found out that Hugo voting (and hence Campbell voting) is open to Supporting Members of AussieCon, and that voting is open until July 31st (along with registration for Supporting Members). Details are here, in case you're curious. That was pretty cool, as people have been asking me about it for a while now, and I like having answers.

Yesterday, I went to Borderlands Books to pick up the three most recent Repairman Jack books (I had a craving). As I was walking down 4th Street to the BART, I saw a coin on the sidewalk. I'm always on the lookout for coins; they might be pennies. So I stopped and picked it up.

It was an Australian two-dollar piece.

I'm weirdly superstitious, and found money is always a cause for making guesses about the intent of the universe. Last night, I dreamt about Australia. Who's surprised? Not me. And not the pony-sized huntsman spider I was riding around Sydney, either.

One of my favorite things about Brooke is the way she gets excited about a lot of the same horrible things that I get excited about. I love all my friends, but very few of them respond to "Hey! I found a horrific multi-segmented exoskeletal thing under this rock!" with "Oooh, neat, let me see!" the way that Brooke will. Brooke is awesome.

Since the book release party was Saturday, and Brooke was going to be staying with me all day Sunday, we started talking about California Things We Could Do. Somehow, this led to my announcing that we have foot-long electric yellow slugs available for viewing in Muir Woods. INSTANT RELEVANCE TO BROOKE'S INTERESTS. And this is how my long-suffering mother found herself roped into spending Mother's Day driving out to Muir Woods so that we could go hunting for monopods in the damp redwood forests of Northern California.

Once again, the apple really didn't fall all that far from the tree.

Muir Woods is about a ninety minute drive from my house, and we used the excursion as an opportunity to educate my mother about Canadian music, blasting Moxy Fruvous and Great Big Sea (she was tolerant). She did ask me at one point whether I'd called the park to be sure they were open. I confirmed that I had. Then...

"Well, did you ask if the banana slugs were out?"
"It's not like the park rangers were going to go and check."

There is no banana slug time clock.

Muir Woods was surprisingly crowded when we arrived; apparently, I wasn't the only person who thought celebrating Mother's Day with giant yellow slugs was a good idea. Brooke and I were ready to be thrilled by nature; I started with being thrilled by the chipmunk in the parking lot. SO CUTE. After that, we were thrilled by a Banana Slug Crossing sign, a First Amendment Zone, and the bathroom. Did I mention that we're excitable?

It was misting lightly as we entered Muir Woods: perfect weather for casual hiking and banana slug-hunting. We had barely been inside for five minutes when the first banana slug sighting occurred, with a three-inch yellow guy* waving his eyestalks saucily at us from the clover next to the walkway. Brooke took his picture. Two minutes later, banana slug sighting number two occurred. So here we are, wandering through this cathedral of redwoods, the tallest trees in the world standing sentinel all around us...looking at the ground. I love my friends.

We did stop to gape at redwoods, and Brooke took many, many pictures. Eventually, we turned onto a side trail, where we proceeded to hit the banana slug jackpot, finding a four-inch Pacific banana slug and two seven-inch California banana slugs in quick succession. Yay!

Now, there's an old tradition that, if you disturb a banana slug while in the woods, you have to kiss it before you put it back. I was watching the Pacific banana slug industriously ooze around on my coat sleeve when a family with three little boys walked up, irresistibly drawn to my slimy friend. Not wanting to be responsible for the squishing of every slug in Muir Woods, I told them about kissing slugs, and that I'd have to kiss the slug before I put it back.

They looked at me expectantly.

I kissed the slug. (I admit this only because Brooke was carrying a camera, and hence has proof.) The eldest of the boys also kissed the slug. His mother made sure to get it on camera, and will thus be able to horrify his prom date in a decade or so. That's me, making the future harder since 1978.

We stopped at the park gift shop when we finished slug hunting, and Brooke acquired a glow-in-the-dark Slug Patrol T-shirt, which she chortled over with great glee. Then it was off to the car, and onto what Brooke termed "the roadkill buffet." A deer came bounding in front of our car, causing Mom to shout and point it out to Brooke (because they don't have deer in Canada, apparently). She was so busy shouting and pointing out the deer that she totally missed the fawn that was following its mother across the road. I screamed. Brooke screamed. Mom hit the brakes, missing Bambi by inches. I swear, if she had hit that damn deer, we'd still be up in Muir Woods. Mourning.

We started moving again after the fawn cleared the road. A wild turkey came strutting across the roadway, unconcerned by the large motor vehicle hurtling toward it. Mom stopped for the turkey.

"You have turkeys here, just wandering around," said Brooke, nonplussed. "That's a thing."

Also featured on the roadkill buffet: joggers! Suicidal joggers! Some people really don't want to live to breed. We managed to not kill any of them, and went rolling merrily back toward home, Mom and I bellowing along to the radio, Brooke slowly passing out in the backseat.

Happy Mother's Day!

(*Technically, banana slugs are hermaphroditic. Really, I don't think they care.)

10. Betsy -- aka "the breeder from whom I am purchasing my new Maine Coon" -- emailed me last night to get the last of the information she needs to fill out Alice's health certificate. (The airlines require you to have a health certificate for any animal you wish to carry onto a plane; something about not really wanting to deal with a rabies outbreak at thirty thousand feet. This just shows that they don't want me to have any fun.) So it's officially official, and I'll be bringing home my new baby girl this weekend. Perhaps then Lilly will allow me to sleep through the night. Unlikely, but a girl can dream, right?

9. The word counts have been missing lately because I've been continuing to hammer on the reboot to Late Eclipses, trying to yank the book into alignment with the awesome I know it truly has the potential to be. I'm about a quarter of the way through the text at this point, and things really are becoming visibly more and more awesome. We haven't reached the point in the revisions process where I can no longer make fair and measured assessments of quality, and that's good.

8. People everywhere are getting their copies of Ravens In the Library, and while I haven't seen any full-length critical reviews, I'm generally seeing positive reactions to the book itself. (I am, of course, primarily interested in seeing the book do well, because it's for an excellent cause, and in being my usual neurotic little blonde self about reactions to my story. But at least I'm up-front about it, which makes it a little less crazy-making.) Remember, the book will only be available until Sooj's medical bills are fully covered.

7. I have registered for World Fantasy, booked my hotel room for San Diego, applied for professional membership to San Diego, and arranged for hotel space in Montreal. I am, in short, basically done with my convention arrangements between now and August. (BayCon is local enough to require little pre-planning on my part, while Duckon is taking care of all the arrangements for me, on account of I'm one of their guests. It's nice.) I'm always happier when I know that things have been set up as far in advance as humanly possible.

6. Zombies are still love.

5. In the last several weeks, my website has gone from "idle" to "awesome," with almost all our functionality now up and online. The only things still pending are the forums and the mailing list, and both these are being held up by issues on the server side, which we're working to resolve. (Getting the forums up and functional now gives my mods time to try to break them before I'm banned from that part of the site nigh-completely. Planning ahead. It's what's for dinner.)

4. While I'm still not sleeping nearly enough, thank you Lilly, I feel somewhat less like a corpse today than I did yesterday, probably at least in part because I forced myself to go to bed immediately after Big Bang Theory last night. Nothing says "a good night's sleep" like adorable physics geeks and inking before turning in. Although losing my pencil for half the episode really didn't help.

3. I have seriously not read a book that was anything short of awesome in the past week. They were YA and adult, mainstream, fantasy, horror, and science fiction, and all made of pure, unadulterated awesome. If all books were as good as the ones I've been reading, the bar would be set so high we'd need a telescope to see it. I couldn't be happier with my recent reading choices. I really couldn't.

2. In two days, I go to Seattle. In three days, I see my Vixy. In four days, I see Kitten Sundae live and in concert. And in five days, I get to take Alice home with me, thus ruining everything, in the nicest way. (Obligatory Jonathan Coulton reference for the quarter!)

...and the number one good thing about today...

1. My life is so wonderful right now. I'm tired, I'm grumpy, and I'm inclined to smack anyone who pokes me with a stick, but at the end of the day, even I can't pretend that my life isn't amazing. Rosemary and Rue is well on its way to publication, and according to Amazon, 90% of the people who visit the page are buying the book. Lilly and Alice are both healthy. My back is behaving itself remarkably well, and spring is springing up all around me, making my normal walking habits much less crazy. I have the best friends in the world -- everyone should have the best friends in the world, because it makes everything better -- and I own more bad horror movies than I could watch in a lifetime. The world is wonderful.

I think we're gonna be all right. So what's new and awesome in the world of you?

Step one: Wake up. This is the least pleasing step. I was having a very pleasant dream about attending a convention in England with my agent and most of my crew of rotating musicians. Vixy and I got to raid a Tesco's. It was nice. Waking up was so not on the agenda.

Step two: Lilly realizes that I have woken up. On weekends, I tend to stay in bed long enough for Lilly to come over and spend some time on my chest, getting heavy-duty affection directed her way. This is because I foolishly believe that if I adore her enough before I start trying to do things, she might leave me alone to do them.

Step three: Check email. Hello, email. Yes, there certainly is a lot of you, and no, none of you really appears to matter. That's always a pleasant discovery on a Saturday morning, as the last thing I want is an emergency or for an unexpected deadline to pop up and wave to me.

Step four: Stare blankly at The Brightest Fell for about three minutes. After that, decide that I am not yet in the necessary head-space to struggle with navigating those particular waters, and close the file again. (Toby Daye, book five. Because finishing four of them in a year just wasn't enough.)

Step five: Copy-edit two chapters of the manuscript I'm currently copy-editing for a friend of mine. It's on today's to-do, even: 'edit chapters 10 and 11.' I am, at this point, sufficiently engrossed by the story that I wouldn't be surprised if that turned into 'and 12 and 13 and just keep going already,' but since I also have to finish the next Velveteen vs. today, it won't go on forever.

...and now, pants, and the ceremonial Saturday morning stroll to the 7-11, hence to obtain a soda whose volume is slightly more than the volume of my skull. Because that will make me feel better.

How's your Saturday?