Rose-Owls and Pumpkin Girls

10. Seattle is beautiful. I know this, because I am currently in Seattle, at least until Monday (the 30th), when I will fly back to California, have my hair done, do my laundry, sleep, and get on a plane to England. I won't be home for more than a day until April 15th. My accountant is thrilled.

9. Emerald City Comic Con is this weekend! I have posted my schedule. It's very packed and very pretty, and I am super excited about all the good things to come. Whee!

8. Before I left California, Kate and I did a massive post office run, and I mailed another huge batch of domestic shirts, as well as about a third of the remaining international shirts. I will try to send another batch before I leave for the UK (although I can't guarantee it). Also, my mother called to let me know that a box from the shirt shop has shown up, which I presume contains the shirts that weren't printed in the initial delivery. Hooray! I won't be able to sort these until after April 15th, but hopefully this means we can finish fulfillment sooner than later. Thank you all for your patience.

7. Still not writing the X-Men. Give me time.

6. Rolling in the Deep comes out next month! On the seventh, to be exact, and it is fancy. Seriously, this may be the fanciest book I have ever written, at least in terms of awesome production values. What a fancy, fancy book. Also it is filled with murderous mermaids and ill-fated ocean voyages, which are two of my favorite things. Because this is a Subterranean Press book, there's no guarantee it will be coming to a bookstore near you, and it may need to be ordered directly from the publisher.

5. This morning was the San Diego Comic-Con hotel scramble, and it says something about how stressful this is on an annual basis that I was on the Air B&B site shortly after, looking at local condos and thinking "maybe this wouldn't be so bad." I need help, and the con needs a better way of handling hotel assignments.

4. We are getting pedicures today. Because we are fancy ladies.

3. Speaking of fancy ladies, I am seeing so many of my favorite fancy ladies this coming weekend that I can't even express how happy I am. Like, I try, and all the words go away and then the flailing happens and sometimes I just really love my life, okay? Sometimes my life is best.

2. Zombies are love.

1. I will be going to Disney World for the first half of May, so if I seem a little AHHHHHHHHHHHH for the next few weeks, it's because I am literally three conventions and six weeks away from Disney time, and I need Disney time so bad y'all, I need it so bad I can taste it.

What's shiny and new with all of you?

I (as Mira Grant) was asking to put together a list of potential pandemics for Buzzfeed. I like anything that gives me an excuse to wallow in delicious virology, so...

http://www.buzzfeed.com/orbitbooks/10-epidemics-waiting-to-happen-that-you-wonat-e-16hk

Enjoy, and remember, medical science is more interested in keeping you alive than it is in cutting you up and reassembling you as a shambling horror.

Most of the time.

10. I haven't been posting much recently, and I'm sorry. I could make a lot of excuses, but at the end of the day, it boils down to one thing: I'm tired. I had a lot of deadlines hit all at once, and I've been spending the time that would normally go to blogging trying to "recharge my batteries" by doing things like cleaning out my inbox and re-dressing my many, many dolls. And on the one hand, I feel sort of like I'm failing you guys through my radio silence. But on the other hand, I feel like you'd rather have me alert and peppy than gloomy and drooping, so it'll all come out in the wash. Right?

9. Vericon was lovely; Boston was not, so much, since New England observes this season called "winter," and they celebrate it by leaving huge heaps of snow everywhere. Ev. Ery. Where. There were literally heaps of snow all over the place, and since I am a California girl, my tolerance for snow is basically non-existent. People kept asking me where my coat was. It's adorable how they assume they own one, isn't it?

8. But an old friend of mine showed up at my book signing, and brought me a PAX East scarf and several hugs, and that was lovely. Really, Boston was awesome for people: I saw Shawn, and Dave, and Nora, and Tammy, and Katy, and it was all splendid, and I have no regrets. So many hugs. I love hugs.

7. Oh, and then I found Carrie at the airport, as we were on the same flight home from Boston. She was quite ill. I fed her Pepto Bismol chewables and made her feel better. This is why I carry such things.

6. The cats are done being furious with me over my absence, and are now trying to love me so enthusiastically that I will never leave them again. For Thomas, this means a lot of flinging himself at me and trusting that I'll catch him. I have some really interesting scratches from where one of us misjudged the distance he was going to need to travel. Kitty love is pointy love.

5. My podiatrist has given me a prescription for...running shoes. Because that is the next rehabilitational step, after the walking boot that I've been in for the past month. Basically, they have the support and cushioning that I need, and they'll allow me to continue healing while also walking more normally. I have never been so excited about the prospect of putting my jeans back on, you have no idea.

4. I have so many deadlines in 2013, and some of them have been moved by other people, and it makes me pull my hair and whimper. But! I am triumphant thus far, and thanks to my compulsive list-making and passion for organizing my life, I am confident that I will be able to stay on top of them. As long as I don't get sick or distracted or forget to come home from Disney World in May (which is a genuine risk, let me tell you; Disney World is like a black hole for Seanans).

3. Jean Grey is no longer dead and I am not happy about that fact.

2. Zombies are, however, still love.

1. You all make me very happy, and I am glad that you're still here. I promise to try to be better about staying on top of things. I can't promise to succeed, but everything begins with trying.

We here on the internet are a lot like intersecting flocks of crows: constantly chasing the shiny things, and then bringing them back to the nest to be pecked at, admired, and envied. These are some things I've been brought recently.

1. Singing mice. Yes! Mice can sing. I know this, and am delighted by it.

2. Mark Reads is doing Feed. Actually, Mark Reads is doing the whole series. I drew him a nun. We have a close friend in common, so I'm pretty well-informed.

3. Many people are making many types of horrifyingly flavored candy corn, including caramel, sour apple, and worse. None of these are The One True Corn. Only candy corn, flavored like candy corn, is The One True Corn. Chocolate candy corn is acceptable in Autumn Mix, and no other time.

4. Community is awesome and I should be watching it. Well, I listened, and I'm now most of the way through season two. Y'all were right. I salute you.

5. Amy Mebberson drew Disney Princesses as the various Doctors. I have dispatched people to try and get me a print at NYCC, since I'm not attending the convention this year.

6. The Bay features tongue-eating isopods eating an entire small community. I am so excited for this movie!

7. Steampunk Disney pins, coming this November.

8. That video of a bulldog puppy whining for five minutes. Adorable.

9. There is no new Glee until November. I hate the mid-season hiatus with a burning passion, but I did notice that it was happening.

10. The Monster High dance class dolls have been released. Yes! But they're not showing up in California yet. Boo.

And those are the things I know, because I have been told about them multiple times in the last week. I hope the world is as relevant to your interests as it is to mine!

1. So I have been forced, by the technical limitations inherent to LJ, to change my Friending policy. Specifically, I am now at MAXIMUM FRIENDOCITY, and adding any more Friends will cause me to be instantly sucked into a horrifying shadow dimension where demons will feast on my delicious bones. Read also, "LJ won't let me Friend any more people." So while I am still a Friend/Unfriend amnesty zone, I will no longer be automatically Friending back. Also, I have now typed the word "Friend" so many times that it has lost all meeting. I shall have to Foe some people.

2. You know it's summer when the Maine Coons felt their bellies by sleeping in their water dish, and you have to take them back to the groomer to be shaved. Again. In other news, guess who gets to take forty pounds of cranky kitty to the groomer? Good guess.

3. I've been scarce recently because a) I've been trying to catch up on some things, and b) I have 600+ comments to answer and it scares me. I will endeavor to post more, if y'all will be understanding about it taking me a while to answer you. S'good? S'good.

4. Disneyland was awesome, except for the part where I twisted my ankle and spent Sunday in a wheelchair. It turns out that I'm still surprisingly good at navigating myself when I need to, and Vixy pushed me when we weren't in spaces that required fine cornering and control. Neither of us died, but wow, was that not an experience that I am in a hurry to repeat.

5. I will, however, say this: if you see a girl pushing a manual wheelchair down a hill, maybe stepping right in front of that wheelchair is not the world's best plan. Especially if that wheelchair contains a person larger than the girl doing the pushing. Because you know what neither of us was able to do in that situation? Stop. In other news, I ran over some idiot-ankles, and I am not sorry.

6. The Hugo Voter Packet has been updated, and now contains the files for Best Related Work. That means that, for the first time ever, a full length filk CD is included in the Hugo packet. So. Cool. It's not too late to register and get your voting rights into the bag! Check out https://chicon.org/membership.php for details.

7. The new season of So You Think You Can Dance has started, and that means that my urge to write InCryptid is returning to normal. This show is totally restorative, in the best, weirdest way possible. I am a happy bunny.

8. Other things that make me happy: the San Diego Comic-Con exclusives have been announced for this year, and they include a new Monster High doll (Scarah Screams) and a new My Little Pony (Derpy Hooves/Bubblecup). I am a sucker for toys.

9. Other things I am a sucker for: Australia. My Mira Grant Q&A on Saturday was the most marsupial-centric Q&A I've ever been a part of. It was sort of impressive, in a "why are we talking about this again?" sort of a way. It may have had something to do with the fact that I had a plush Perry the Platypus on the podium...

10. Jean Gray is still dead.

1. First off, for those of you who may have missed it yesterday, the cover of Ashes of Honor has been posted for your viewing pleasure. Chris McGrath has done it again, and I am totally overjoyed by the ongoing evolution of Toby. (Also by the fact that I am now six books into an urban fantasy series, and the most sexualized my protagonist has been was on the cover to book five, where she had no pants on. She was also a fish at the time. I am overjoyed.)

2. I am home from Emerald City Comic Con! Yay! I am too tired to die, and there's a very good chance that I am going to bed without any supper tonight because I will be herded by the cats (to my doom), but it was a great weekend, I got many, many hugs, and I am now safely back in the Bay Area. Life is good.

3. Welcome to all the new people who got linked here via my post on diversity in fiction! I'm thrilled that you're here, and promise not to be upset when you realize that I'm rarely that intellectual and go off to do something more useful with your time. I hope you enjoy us while you're at the party. We are already enjoying you.

4. Speaking of not being intellectual all the time...If anyone out there is collecting the blind bag My Little Pony figures, I have all of them except for the basic, non-glittery Rainbow Dash. I have many doubles I can trade, including the special edition Twilight Sparkle. Inquire within. Please.

5. Shirt post coming this week.

That is all. Now I must nap.

10. Well, that's that: I am officially out of "skip days" until after March. My friend Debbie rather unexpectedly pinged me Tuesday to say that she would be in San Francisco starting Wednesday and would I have dinner with her? So we had dinner (and I dragged her along on the usual round of Wednesday errands, because there's "taking a skip day" and then there's "committing professional suicide"), and now I have to make word count every day from now to March 15th. Yes, that includes the days when I'm at conventions. I have no regrets.

9. ...okay, I have one regret: I am so far behind on everything I watch that it's not even funny. The only shows I've managed to keep up with are Fringe and Glee, and that's because I prioritize them in bitey, bitey fashion. Because I have to preserve my questionable sanity somehow.

8. I'm pondering a post on the financial realities of the Hugo Awards and the electronic voting packet, but for the moment, if you are eligible to nominate for the 2012 Hugos, and you haven't, why not nominate now? WorldCon isn't getting any further away.

7. Tax time is approaching. This means I need to clean my entire house, so that I can get my receipts into something vaguely approximating order. Oh, goodie. It also means it's time to make my annual pledge to set up a better filing system than "the bottom of my purse is full of receipts and Luna Bar wrappers, look in there." Although my faintly peanut butter-scented receipts are always nice.

6. Ryan is coming to visit! Which is wonderful, and will lead to much hugging and adoration (and also to the dry cleaning of the guest room duvet). Also much doll photography, since Ryan has promised to take some pictures of my unnervingly glossy-eyed collection for the edification of all those who think it can't possibly be that bad trying to sleep in my room.

5. I fly to Seattle tomorrow for Conflikt, where I am doing absolutely nothing official. It's going to be great. I get to spend the weekend hugging my friends, working on the books I have coming due, and going to Barnes and Noble to sign books. Plus the hotel is walking distance from the airport, so no one has to get up at four a.m. to drive me. That'll be nice for everybody. Well, except me. I still have to get up at four a.m.

4. I want to go back to Disney World. I find myself grumbling slightly at my taxes because I know that self-employment income (i.e., "writing") means that I'll be paying more than the cost of a really nice Disney World vacation. I actually like paying taxes, except for the "finding my receipts" part, but sometimes the sheer amount of tax that I have to pay makes me weep for Babylon.

3. Mailing is ongoing! At this point, there are only a few shirts I can't find, and I'm hoping they're buried under the more popular styles/colors. I got a list of inquiries on status from Deborah this morning, and I'll be answering her tonight, but really, patience is king. I'm doing this alone. Any future batches of shirts will be super-limited, because even aside from the part where some people are annoyed (and I'm sorry about that), I just can't process 300+ shirts in 30+ size/color/style combinations in anything resembling a timely manner. Like, it is physically impossible to do that and go to my day job and not miss my deadlines. And sadly, "pays the mortgage" and "makes my publishers happy" beat everything else.

2. I have been playing a little tappy game called "Pocket Frogs" during my admittedly limited free time. I don't think the game's designers intended it to be played quite like this, since I have a very "gotta catch 'em all" approach, but it makes me happy. As does slowly watching the breed counters go to 100% as I breed all 368 possible individuals.

1. Zombies are love.

1. I'm currently running an ARC giveaway for Discount Armageddon, and will be choosing a winner via random number generator tomorrow morning. US addresses only for this particular giveaway. I'm leaving the state very shortly, and I don't have any customs forms, so I have to limit the entries if I want to be sure of mailing out the book.

2. Speaking of mailing things...I sent a massive batch of shirts this weekend, and will be preparing another batch to go out at the end of this week. The "I do not have any customs forms, and neither does my local post office" issue means I'm only sending US orders right now, but hopefully they'll have more customs forms soon. The shirt shop finally sent me the last of the shirts, so if your order was skipped before due to me not having your actual shirt, I should now be able to package it. (Yes, this is taking a long time. I can only send what I can hand-deliver, and that sort of complicates things.)

3. Why am I leaving the state? Because I am going to DISNEY WORLD!!!! More specifically, I'm going with my mother, my youngest sister, and vixyish, who has been drafted into the role of "person who keeps Seanan from killing her family." We're meeting up with hsifyppah and sweetmusic_27 in Florida, along with Amy's friend Patty, and then we're going to spend NINE DAYS enjoying the glories of Orlando. I'm the only person in my group of four that's ever been before, and I can't wait.

4. This does mean, however, that I won't be online for over a week. No email, no LJ, nothing but Twitter from my phone. So please don't email me and then get upset if I don't answer. (I mean really, don't do that anyway, I beg of you. I am unable to promise a swift reply for anything sent in my email. I'm even retooling my website in a vain attempt to reduce the amount of email coming my way. Have mercy.)

5. Which brings us to release dates. All books and stories with confirmed release dates that I can say "yes, it comes out on that day" about are listed on my bibliography page. Please check there before you ask me when something is coming out. It's unfair, I know, but I get asked that question so often that it makes me cranky, and I hate being cranky at people who don't deserve it.

6. I am currently trying to either write or revise ALL THE THINGS, and will be doing another inchworm post shortly, because that has turned out to be a distressingly good way of staying on top of things. Thanks, Bear.

7. So The Agent returned her editorial notes on Ashes of Honor, and as always, has proven to be incredibly good at identifying the major structural flaws that all the rest of us mysteriously missed. I'm currently fourteen chapters in on the editorial rewrite, after which the book can go off to The Editor, and I can forget about it for a little while. And by "forget about it," I really mean "start The Chimes at Midnight." I think there's something wrong with the way my brain works.

8. I am now on season four of Criminal Minds. I'm sorry I started watching so late, because damn. I'm also glad I started watching so late, because it means I've had lots to enjoy. Also, Penelope Garcia for the win.

9. Jean Grey is still dead.

10. Happy holidays! Try not to freak out and bludgeon anyone to death with a fruitcake, okay? Because that would be a horrible way to go.

Things are insane around here (which is ironic, given that I'm finally between conventions), so here are the updates and events du jour, presented in convenient bite-sized fashion.

Science Crawl.
Tomorrow night (Friday, November 4th) the Bay Area Science Crawl will be at Borderlands Books from 7:15 until 8:15 PM. Quote: "The Bay Area Science Festival is proud to present the first ever Sci-Crawl, a coordinated takeover of venues throughout San Francisco’s Mission District, showcasing the science inherent in the neighborhood." I'll be appearing as Mira on a panel discussing the Science of Science Fiction, along with Jeff Carlson and Scott Sigler, and moderated by Brian Malow. The event is free, and should be super-fun. Come and join the geek!

Dental horrors.
Yesterday, I had dental surgery. Yes, again. This time, I managed to somehow break a titanium post inside my mouth. SUPER FUN. Without going into details, largely because they would freak me out, I shall simply say that I am rarely given that many pharmaceuticals during a twenty-four hour period, and I can still taste colors. No fun at all. I basically lost a day and a half to a great gray pit.

T-shirt mailing.
According to my spreadsheet, there are still over a hundred shirts that have not been introduced to envelopes. Over a hundred means that one in three, roughly, has not been mailed. Unless you have reason to think that gnomes have stolen the contents of your mailbox, please don't email yet asking where, specifically, your shirt is located. I'm packing and mailing them just as fast as I possibly can, and this being such a manual process means that it's very hard to track specific list items. Also, because there is such a variance of colors and styles, sometimes the only way to find a shirt is to remove all the shirts around it, which makes it impossible to go "oh, you mean this one? Yeah, it's right here." So I plead for patience. All you do by poking without good cause is make me, and Deborah, sad and grumpy.

Cats.
We're coming up on the one-year anniversary of Alice getting so very, very sick, and she has realized that this means she can basically get away with anything, just by doing while Not Being Sick. This morning, she hit my abdomen like a fuzzy bowling ball, shoved her wet feet up my nose, and trilled happily, only to receive hugs and love, because She Wasn't Sick. Am I setting a bad precedent? Yeah, probably. Do I care? Not one damn bit. Alice isn't sick, and that's really what I need out of life.

Television.
All the shows are coming back on the air. ALL THE SHOWS. Bones starts up again tonight, and I'm gamely plugging through season two of Criminal Minds, which means I may be catching up to watching it live before too much longer. It may seem counter-productive to watch this much TV while also trying to get writing done, but it actually speeds me up, by giving me something to finish for. Speaking of which...

Writing.
Ashes of Honor is done, and I'm getting ready to go into draft two. Midnight Blue-Light Special is finally moving at what I'd call a reasonable pace, and I'm about a quarter of the way through the projected text. And there are various other projects kicking around, including the second installment of the latest Vel story, which will take us to four for the year I can so make my goal. Hah.

Zombies.
Are love.

1. I don't know why this needs to be repeated, but here you go: If you friend this journal, I will friend your journal in return, so that you can see any friend-locked contests or giveaways (they're rare, but they happen). I will not necessarily read your journal, as I am very, very outnumbered, and I need to sleep occasionally. Assume I don't see anything you post unless you point it out to me explicitly. If you unfriend this journal, I will unfriend your journal in return. This is not a personal thing. This is just mirror-image reciprocity.

2. If you're looking for book release dates, or want to know when/where a story will be appearing, check my bibliography page. I update it regularly, and while not all recently-sold stories will be present (since I don't add things until they have a firm release date), this will answer ninety percent of the "when can I get...?" questions.

3. If you want to know where I'm going to be and when I'm going to be there, check my appearances page. It, too, is updated frequently (although I'm not as good about editing past appearances to put them in the correct tense as I would like to be). I'll usually post about an upcoming appearance here, but long-range planning is rendered easier by the actual appearances page.

4. If I was supposed to mail you something—a poster, a CD, a book you won in a contest, a severed human head—and you haven't received it, the appropriate channel for letting me know is via email. My website contact link is easy to find and easy to use, and if I don't know you don't have something, I can't look into it. I don't use mail confirmation when I send things; the additional postage cost is simply not an option. So please, please, if you don't have something you think you should have, email me!

5. Zombies are love.