Look! Ducks!

Am just sorting out my accommodation for VCon and got to wondering: Is anyone from the f-list is going to be there?

Anyone still subscribing to this lj (for reasons know only to themselves), please feel free to come on over to my new, active blog where there's a fantastic, democratic Photomatography-Choose-A-Thon taking place. No prizes this time, except the pleasure of knowing you've been a part of the rare and beautiful democratic process and the possibility of getting the photo you vote for on the back of a book.

Here it goes. After about a month for trying the two-blog system I've decided I spend too much time blogging and not enough writing. I'm making the change to wordpress and that means this blog, I'm afraid, is over.
See you on the flip side.

How hard core is this?
Went to karate, found class cancelled and trained anyway. Then jogged home.
I always wanted to be that tough.

I'm wearing a trial pair, given to me by my sympathetic optometrist. They are not quite my prescription, but better than the squinty alternative. That said, looking at the keyboard and screen is slightly sick-making just now.

Glasses proved to be too expensive to buy so I got a round of contacts (cheaper by some five hundred bucks, as I have to replace my frames and get new lenses ground). They're coming in on Friday.

Dentist tomorrow. O boy o boy.

Have to make a mention here that Jadian has an amazing ability to detect trouble. I arrived home broke and demoralized the other day to find a card from her on my kitchen table. I could kiss you, J, if only you weren't so damn far away.

Lastly, I've posted some more fiction on the other blog. This is the piece that's coming out in Thornapple, so if you like the story but hate reading on screen, you'll want to pick up a tangible (and illustrated!) copy when it comes out in September.

O my god. All hell broke loose in my pocketbook today.

My glasses which had been a long time on their last legs finally died today and I've been out of contact lenses for six months. This means that tomorrow at 11:30 instead of making money I'll be spending it. In fifteen or twenty minutes I will spend a day and a half's wages, and that's just getting my eyes assessed. To be able to actually see where I'm going, I'll have to spend about week's wages. Holy fuck.

Then, the next day, I'll be spending the same amount at the dentist where they'll be assessing weather or not I need more work done. And the trouble with dentist work is that you really do need it done. I managed to keep my glasses going for two years on twist-tie wire and tape, but you just can't do that with fillings.

So… yeah… I wanted to go to visit friends in September and October, I wanted to buy some new clothes for winter, a pair of boots and a new coat but that's totally off now. I'm broke. The money I put aside for insurance is thrice spent. In two days. Short of the wedding, this might be the most expensive twenty-four-hour span of my life.

Keep an eye on me, OK guys, 'cause if I break a leg or something I'm hooped.

Permanent link is posted. No, not here, on your right. Under links. Yeah, there.

A big congratulations to my buddies Logan and Paul, who did amazingly well at the Western Canada Barista Championships. They put huge time and energy into their presentations and returned to the shop both humbled and proud. And a slap on the bottom to Ken and Zack at Habit, great folks who deserved all the praise they got yesterday (*aside* Ken, if you read this please answer my burning question: Did you wear your molestache for the compo?).

The results of the compo are official now. Here they are, as posted on Coffeed.com:

6. Zack from Habit (hoopla!)
5. Brett from 2% Jazz (woo hoo!)
4. Cady from Wicked Cafe
3. Ken from Habit (yay!)
2. Logan from Discovery (woo!)
1. Derek from Buon Amici

It was great to get Logan and Paul back and hear their stories. Especially great because I've been opening the store the last couple of days (at five a.m., so if anyone wonders why I've been essentially MIA, now you know.)

The Big Wedding is coming. The wedding that marks the end of this summers special madness. The wedding that means I can be kind to my liver again. That's on Saturday-Sunday. No offense to my friends (I love them) but I can't wait till Monday morning. Then I will look at my calendar and see One Tiny Event till the end of the month.

And that's it. Except getting groceries tonight. Woo.

For book news, please tune into the other blog (I'll be posting a permanent link on the side of this one soon).

So, after looking at my blog stats I realized I've had this blog for almost a year and feel, well, kind of attached to it. I'm going to continue to use it for personal twaddle (mostly) and put most of my fiction and picture posts on the other one.

It was a long, busy weekend. I had a wedding, an infestation, writing, making all those phone calls I've been meaning to make, editing, etc but despite it all I manage to get some fresh fiction posted at the new blog and managed to get in a bit of editing on a friends piece and started listening to Odyssey Podcast which has short but great lectures on nuts-n-bolts writing by sf and f megastars. Who feels pretty amazing today? That would be me.

Wedding! Shopping! MacNCheese! Friend's birthday! Reception! Tenting! Iguanas!

Yay! The new Hegemony Shift is out. It's done by the same dude who runs Thornapple and he's putting my story Lacuna in the October issue of said magazine. If Thornapple looks anything like HShift when it comes out, I've died and gone to heaven.

is starting to go up on the new blog, comments are enabled (you won't have to sign up to post) and my flickr account is now attached!

I'm moving my blog to wordpress so I can post more pictures and have a little more freedom with my blog. That means I will stop updating this blog.

You can reach my new blog by following this link .

Hopefully I'll see you there.

Am oscillating wildly between happy and very grumpy indeed.

Happy about realizing there's a better (ie, more fun) way to edit my manuscript, grumpy about not having been paid yet.

Happy about starting a new blog (more on that later), grumpy about work having lost something important of mine.

Happy about having heard at least a little news from Publisher X and grumpy about not hearing enough, or from the right person. You get the picture.

Have been spending a lot of time walking around and not getting stuff done, needing things I can't get or have lost and waiting for people to get back to me. Can really use that qi gong class tonight.

A while ago I was talking to a friend of mine who makes short films. He asked me if I had any ideas that might translate into a short movie. Pfttt. What kind of a question is that? I'm an idea generator. (You want some? How 'bout you? Please, take them!) I sent him three short stories (unpublished) and the seeds for two and bless his heart, he's interested in one of them. The trouble is, everything I think of requires claymation or CG because I think in fantasy. This means that, in the end, budget may determine whether or not this film gets made.

Regardless of the actual outcome, man am I enjoying myself. I've never written a screenplay before and have no idea what it takes or what it's like and, to be totally honest, I don't play well with other children and I know that film is collaborative. Basically, I figure I'm looking at a vertical learning curve for the next four months. Just like I like 'em.

O God. Those of you who have not seen the Potterdammerung but have read the final Harry Potter book, or just want to spoil it for yourselves, go here.

Others may enjoy cool airship related stuff from Paleo-Future.

And something for the third class among you, the joy of bibliomania.

Got Liz away in under four hours with six of us working. Was almost in tears when I hugged her goodbye.
came home and felt too low to work so I went for a short run and feel much better now.

I still intend to try to get another few chapters done today. I don't feel especially inspired to do more edits but the mountain of work by my desk (not on my desk-there's no room for anything else on top of it) and my calendar are conspiring to make me feel like a lazy lout.

My weekend run (as well as edits to Bamboo) are being shunted to the side as I'm helping my friend Liz to move house today.

I got another chapter of edits down yesterday (the pages lie, vanquished, at my feet). I'll be taking the manuscript and a coil notebook up to Port Renfrew on the annual retreat so I can get some work done in that spectacular setting. Can't wait to be sitting under those huge cedars, writing and watching the waves come in.

This week, I was thinking I might keep track of the hours I spend at the computer versus the hours I spend at work. I just took a quick tally of last week's computer time and can say in all honesty that my brain simply won't accept the numbers I've come up with.

Anyway, I've discovered I work a lot more than I thought. And, as I'm working on spec and not on contract, there's a good chance that lots of that work will come to nothing. I'm not whinging here, (after all, I write anyway, if I can sell the work, so much the better!) I'm just astounded that I manage to fit a (small) social life into my day at all.

So my truism of the day is brought to you by (I think) Verner Vinge "No one gets into SF for the money or the fame."

A new addition to the long list of things that drive me crazy about writing fantasy is the way people assert that because I write fantasy I must therefore write for kids. This happened to me on Friday in spectacluar and public fashion.

While it's not an uncommon thing for people to say (I have my retort packed and ready for this at all times), it was made newsworthy because the person in question is a bona fide Homeric scholar.

What can you say except, 'Hi. Have you read your own texts?'