I have arrived in Taos, New Mexico, rather far above Taos, actually, and am firmly ensconced in the Snow Bear Lodge with the rest of the Rio Hondo writing workshop. I have a lovely room all to myself in which to work, a fabulous multi-head (is there anything which could not be improved by the addition of "multi-head") shower, and wonderful, brilliant people. I feel remarkably peaceful and ready to have my work torn up and to make more in this not-very-little room.

Which came with its very own faceless stone neolithic Bear statue on the writing desk. I take this as an excellent omen, and I have named him Augustine, and he has assured me that he can help me with structure.

I also have Reliable Internet Access, and so vow to post frequently. If my car-conversation with bram452 on the way up is any indication, this will be a fascinating week, and like the dork I am, I can't wait to learn! It's like the first day of school, only without math.

It is beautiful here, to say the least. The mountains remind me of the Sierras, and all the trips we used to take to Boreal and Strawberry Valley when I was a wee one. It's not exactly the same climate, but the smells are similar, and the feel of sitting on the roof of the world. There is still snow on the ground, and it is quite cold. Nevertheless, I'm already going barefoot. I am a more comfortable human without shoes.

When I landed in Jamaica, I felt absurdly like Johnny 5 in Short Circuit: all my dishes and antennae out, eager for input. Same thing here, but with brisk winds and mountain stars instead of hibiscus and turquoise water. But it makes me prickle and thrill and feel alive.

I'm so glad I came.

 

Incidentally, the IAF, the wonderful people who brought you Interfictions and the Orphan's Tales Road Show, are having an auction.

In it, there are a few fabulous necklaces based on my Interfictions story, "A Dirge for Prester John." Which will one day be a novel, maybe even a series, if anyone ever gives it enough love.

Go check it out--it is of the awesome.

Thank you to everyone for making my 29th special, most particularly vrax, s00j, omnisti, tithenai, and passionandsoul. Sisters and shipmates, you know?

There are pictures of the Epic Sooj Birthday Concert of Ninja Doom here.

I felt like quite the Mama Orca, feeding my pod with meatloaf--turns out that what you feed the jet-setting Lebanese-Canadian girl who has eaten everything are the exotic dishes of the "loaf" school of cuisine--and cuddling with everyone. It was a lovely time. Thank you to everyone who sent their wishes, and to blazepoet, yakavenger, and earthenwood for sending pretty presents! earthenwood, how did you know I'm obsessed with keys? ;)

Unfortunately I followed that right up by losing my brand-new purse. Perhaps this is a cosmic message to get an Ohio license already. Urrrrgh.

I'm in Columbus Saturday for the Ohioana Festival, and leaving for Taos on Sunday for the Rio Hondo workshop. Hopefully there will be internet access there so I can post at leisure about what I learn--I'm really looking forward to this, as it is my first serious workshop experience.

Until then, I work and work. No rest for me, wicked or no.

So it's my birthday, and there isn't a better time for announcements. In this case, announcing Happiness with a capital H.

justbeast and I are getting married on November 1st, 2009.

I can still hardly believe I have stumbled onto such grace as my life with him, and I know that this is the right path, without reservation. That is quite a feeling.

It is very important to me to have a Tribal wedding--we have such a vast network of love and connection in this world. To that end, since Livejournal has been such a major part of our lives and was, in fact, how we met, I would like to have as much of the wedding stuff supplied by my massively talented LJ tribe. So, please, if you have a skill that might lend itself to a wedding--photography, dressmaking, floristry, ritual planning, food, craftiness of any kind, please contact me via the comments on this entry or by email. A year and a half is not so long as it seems! (We certainly don't expect such help for free. We'd just rather pay Our People than strangers.)

My first wedding was a small nightmare, one of the worst days of my life. While I will absolutely not get stupid or crazy about this one, I want it to be special and sweet, and involve everyone we love. I hope a goodly number of you will be a part of it.

I love you, Beast. We go together like Grease and awkward Jamaican lip syncing. Here's to the rest of our lives.

I am now a 29th level paladin. Ph33r.

I want to take a page from sheryl67. If you would like to get me a birthday present, send me your art. Anything that you Do, that is your peculiar Thing. Knitting, jewelry, stories, photography, whatever it is that you can do. I can't think of a better present.

Email me and I'll send you my snail mail address.

Thank you! Last chance for loot before level 30!

(Also, I have a tithenai in my house. And will soon have a s00j and an omnisti and a passionandsoul. There is nothing that makes me happier than a house full of shining bodhisattva like this. O, bliss.)

Am back. Had a great time and will post--no internet access in the hotel meant I was away from everything for a week, and now I pay the price.

I am absolutely deluged with work. On top of which I must clean the house for my birthday party on Saturday. On top of which, Omikuji. (The PDFs will go out within the hour, but I may be stuck mailing on the 2nd again. Still working out the kinks in the system. Sorry!)

In the meantime, please do have a read--the wheel turns and I'm in Clarkesworld again! A Buyer's Guide to Maps of Antarctica. I'm rather fond of it--I hope you enjoy it. There's also a cool article on RPGs in which I discuss a bit of our campaign.

I will make an attempt at a real post before my birthday, I promise.

If I read one more book that involves a mystical society bent on liberating Dark Gods from Beyond Time (tm) for no particular reason except to be assholes, I will bust. heads. Lovecraft: ur doin it wrong.

In other news, my nose is be-grindstoned, frantically trying to finish all my work before departing for Jamaica tomorrow with justbeast, darlox, gieves, and the rest of the People What Work with My People. An actual, real-live vacation. I haven't had one of those in forever.

I will most certainly blog about it, so stay tuned, but right now I'm in scramblemode.

And also a werefrog. Ribbit.

Getting ready for the Penguicon-Jamaica-birthday triple header--and please if you haven't answered the Evite yet, do so, so I know how much food to make. It's going to be an amazing couple of weeks in the CatHaus.

If anyone wants to send cards or suchlike, I'll happily provide an address, as birthdays are one of those Important Things to me. Too many forgotten in childhood for them not to be. There's a wishlist in the sidebar, though I feel odd about pointing that out. Enough Christian Science guilt has crept in, I suppose.

Also writing the new Omikuji and various other deadliney things. So am a bit busy.

In the meantime--my  Doctor Who review is up!

Oh...and I got a tattoo last night. *winks*

Bored and blocked. The Monday is for to suck. Let's play the old LJ game!

Ask me anything. Comments screened. Comments not screened because I have to, you know, answer them. Why can they not make unscreening optional when you respond? Ugh. Anyway. If it's a private-y thing, email me.

Any topic.  I'll do my best to answer honestly.

Tomorrow is the last day to vote in the Locus Poll, in which In the Cities of Coin and Spice is nominated for Best Fantasy Novel. You don't have to subscribe to vote, so please go take a look at all the worthies and vote if you are so moved!

Once upon a time, there was a leopard-print dress. And a girl who really wanted it.

I mean, it's a leopard-print dress. It's slit up to oh-my-god in the back. It's perfect 50's trampgear. And I happen to be one of the few humans who can carry off cat-prints, with the long black hair and all. I reasoned to justbeast that I have a class and repression and respectability to spare, so I can wear something stupidly slutty and it still comes off as merely risque.

But I didn't buy it. I stroked it in the store and looked longingly over my shoulder at it. And I didn't buy it. And in a week, it was gone. Why, you ask?

Because there's a little voice inside me that belongs to a particularly insidious gnome, and that voice says: you are so fucking fat. You can't have that dress. You should be wearing a sack of shame and hiding yourself from human eyes. You look like a walking manatee. No one wants to see you in trampgear, no one wants to see you at all. You're hideous, and you can't "get away" with that dress because your ass dishonors your slim and untroubled family line, not because it's slutty. Sluts are hot, after all. You're nothing.

I'm going to go out on a limb and bet some of you know that voice pretty well. It's a constant friend, no?

I haven't been talking about it, because the progress has been slow and therefore sometimes discouraging, but in the last year I've gone from a size 18 to a size 12. I've been working out every day, and I could safely bench press my college girlfriend. I'd like to be a size 10, and I'll get there. I will.I'm trying not to stress it. That should matter, right? The gnome should be a little mollified.

But it never is. Not even a little. That gnome has all the power of our collective culture behind it, all the power of every girl you thought was so much prettier than you, every boy whose eyes skated right over you like you didn't exist, the power of every family member who glared at you for taking an extra helping of turkey at holidays. It's ripped. And it never shuts up.

I spent years not buying myself new clothes because it was too depressing. I'll buy that when I lose some weight, I thought. And then I never did, whether I lost weight or not. It was easier to deny myself than to believe I was pretty enough to deserve a scrap of overpriced fabric. Than to stop thinking clothes were something I had to earn.

But you know, denying yourself and listening to the gnome has consequences. You sag in the shoulders, you don't look people in the eye. You don't feel sexy, and so--as if by gnomic magic--you aren't. You compare yourself endlessly, and you always come up short. Funny, that. The amount of mental energy it takes to convince yourself that you are the ugliest creature on earth is really astounding. Yet we do it, good little boys and girls, because the world tells us that to feel otherwise is to upset some basic natural balance where thin is virtue and fat is sin. Even a little fat. Even the smallest lump. Not only is it ugly--it means you're a bad person. It means no one could ever love you or desire you.

Look at that poison, man. It's black and it's horrible, isn't it? Like tar in the lungs, and we carry it around, doing penance for living.

So, there was this leopard-print dress. And I looked at its twin online for three ever-loving weeks, telling myself I couldn't have it, I didn't deserve it. Until I just broke down and bought it, and all the other clothes I'd been telling myself I couldn't have, promising myself to wear that leopard-print like a mantle of power, a techni-color dreamdress.

And you know what? I look amazing in that dress. Because it isn't the dress, it's the girl inside it--and that girl, the very instant she stops listening to the gnome in her, walks tall and has a great rack, an ass that all three graces would envy, and a sweet, gentle slope to her tummy. She's got lioness-hair and the olive green eyes that Mary Sue writers give their fantasy characters. She walks regal, and she's smart as anything--she has worlds inside her and a big, warm belly laugh. Whatever else she is, she is a woman of appetite, and she is alive. Being a size 10 will make her neither more nor less those things.

And it was brutally hard for her to write that paragraph, brutally hard to say those good things. How smart and strong that gnome is!

No matter your size, if you think you're smoking hot, you are. If you own it, if you strut it. There is nothing sexier than confidence, on guys or girls. Nothing sexier than that glint that says they know they've got something worthwhile in them. It is not an easy glint to maintain, but it's worth, forgive the pun, its weight in hotness. There is nothing you're "not allowed" to wear. Nothing you can't get away with. Nothing forbidden.

Own the dress. Don't let it own you.

I realize I have not mentioned the Many Places I Will Shortly Be. Thus, a fix.

Today, I'm in ur Goblin Fruit, bein' a featured poet. There is interview and new poems, and also recordings of me reading them--including me reading part of a lovely poem by Jasmine Johnston called "Seeds." I speak Greek in SexyVoice (tm). Phear my degree in linguistics.

As I mentioned before, this weekend I'll be reading with zakbar at Suspect Thoughts Books at 4903 Clarke Ave in Cleveland.

Next weekend, I will be at Penguicon, blathering, being intoxicated, and wearing something low-cut. That's just how I roll.

In May I'll be going to the Rio Hondo writing workshop in Taos--I got invited! I'm a real girl! For someone who appeared out of nowhere with no Clarion or resume behind her three years ago, it's a big deal to have one of your heroes invite you to a workshop. I'll also be in Columbus for the Ohioana Literary Festival on May 10th. I get to meet the governor. Or his wife. One of them.

I'll also be at Wiscon, leading a piercing expedition, paneling about, leading a workshop on acting for writers, and very probably having a small White Elephant party for Omikuji kids.

In June, I'll be at the Blue Heaven writing workshop on Kelley's Island here in Ohio, which is awesome because I am obsessed with the Erie Islands and also because I get two workshops in a month! Plus the group seems amazing and I'm thrilled to be included, again.

Oh...and I'm going to Jamaica in two weeks. On vacation with justbeast's company, which is super-cool and holds vacations on which you can take your girl. I've never been to that part of the world, or anything like it. I can't wait! A real vacation!

I'm being remaindered! Sweet!

All aboard the Failboat! Publishing: Ur doin it wrong! Numphar, do the dance of shame!

I know it seems funny to be delighted with that, but in a way I am. It's a rite of passage, a mark of battle.

No one ever gave a crap about The Grass-Cutting Sword, anyway. It was a book plagued by delays, cover issues, and the fact that it was published as I was transitioning to Bantam, and thus the book was, predictably, stomped upon by The Orphan's Tales. It was virtually unreviewed, unread, and unnoticed. I'm fairly comfortable with that, even though I think it's a good book, one of my favorites that I've written, certainly better than the above would indicate. It makes me a little sad, but I did my best. I wrote the best book I could. I wouldn't write it any differently now. It just...didn't go anywhere.

But hey, books are like kids. Sometimes they pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get into Harvard, sometimes they drink absinthe all day and go to art school, sometimes they smell like crayons and sniff rubber-cement and permanent solution on their breaks at Mathilda's House of Secondhand Fruit. It happens. You gotta let them go their own way. You still love them and feed them when they come back to your house in a giant box, but railing to the heavens on account of their fate is sort of silly.

Is it weird to feel like I've taken another skill level in "real writer" because I've been remaindered? It's like that cool eye-scar your uncle got when he was in the shit setting off fireworks with a can of Natty Lite in both hands. Yeah, bitches, I been there. I been in the shit. I remember landing under sniper fire...and when my books burned, oh, the fire was like the hand of god...a small, pulpy, accountant-god...

The Defense Department wishes to inform you that your books are dead because they were stupid. *takes a minute to stop laughing at her own lame quotejoke*

So yeah, three and a half years after the start of my professional publishing life, my third novel has finally shuffled off its glue-addled coil. I feel absurdly like getting a bottle of the CHEAPEST POSSIBLE champagne tonight. I'll have a big frigging box of these books at Penguicon, I tell you what. My shipment of fail has quite literally arrived. But very shortly, I'll be the only place you can get them. (My fail, let me show you it. Ok, I'm stopping now.) If you want them, which, historically, you don't. And I'm fine with that. I made my offering to Susano-no-Mikoto. Not my fault if he blew his nose with it--in fact, he probably thought that was the best way to honor it. Represent, Susie. Represent.

Well tried, little book. You get a forty-failed-author-moan salute.

I'll have real content soon, I promise. There's this leopard-print dress I want to write about.

But the cat got spayed and I have to go get her drugged little fuzzy butt. So in the meantime:

If anyone wants to come, I'll be reading at Suspect Thoughts Books in Cleveland this Saturday from 7-9pm with Chris Barzak--should be fun! I'll also be at Penguicon in a week and a half, and you probably don't want to miss us on the party floors. ;)

I have a cell phone again! Same number, but I am contactable once more. It is, for those who care, a sleek black little Palm Centro named Paracelsus--and not by me! One of the many reasons I love justbeast --he can handily whip out a P-Cel reference before I can.

Also, my Doctor Who reviews have begun--Ep. 4.1 Partners in Crime.

This short story is hot and Greek and worth reading, but not if you...ahem...have anything else to do this morning.

This one just just pure awesome, distilled. Where have you been all my life, Thom Metzger?

And finally, my score for the new purity quiz:

Shredding Skill (Average: 50%): 81% Obsession and Devotion (Average: 34%): 58% Showmanship (Average: 28%) 48% FINAL ADJUSTED SCORE (with judicious usage of Star Power): 88% Average Finish: 52% THREE-STAR PERFORMANCE! Brought to you by My Name Is Might Have Been, the post-apocalyptic Rock Band comic Take the quiz yourself!

Is done.

I fall over now.

New math:

102 envelopes = one very alarmed-looking postal worker.

Sorry, guys. One girl is just not that fast. Between sealing, addressing, stuffing and licking--and god, I can't feel my tongue anymore, that shit is toxic--I have just made it to 3/4 done with Omikuji mailings as of now. I'll mail them first thing in the morning, and have a much more streamlined process for next month, including a justbeast to help me.

Very small delay!

Am busy all day stuffing Omikuji envelopes and feeling violated by the price of toner. Thus, no posts of substance from me until tomorrow!

In the meantime, should you like to read the short story out of which sprang my next novel--and yes, the plots of the two intersect and it would be beneficial for you to read the story to pick up on a certain thread of the book--check out the Paper Cities anthology, which comes out today and also has Hal Duncan, Jay Lake, and Barth Anderson in it, who are spiffy.

In other news, I broke my cell phone yesterday, the crown to an already utterly crappy day, so I am incommunicado by that means until I get a new one. Which will be...I don't know. Maybe this weekend. Well juggled and then dropped on a cafe floor, Cat.

Last day to sign up for April's Omikuji--story is done, all is ready to go. Subs turn off at midnight--any received after that will start with May's story. Just trying to keep the Post Office trips to a minimum. I'm not going to announce the lottery winner, but rather trust that person to squee in omikuji_project.

I am tired like oh my god. I have no brain but I must poem. But I cannot poem! But I must. I need a brain-throttle.

I've done the thing where I put everything off and now it all has to be done but I'm just snailing up and not doing it because after all, I do have a few days of wiggle room, right?

Self, you suck.

In conclusion, I slink back to Word, my nemesis, my curse, my hated master.

But!

Happy birthday sheryl67!

Have paper, wax, seals, envelopes. Have an extremely rickety idea of how to make a pdf. Still working on story. And something like 7 poems for two featured poet gigs I managed to pick up. Oof.

Keep in mind, Friday is the last day to sign up for the Omikuji Project and receive April's story, which is called The Glass Gear, and is a steampunk Cinderella tale. Any subs I receive after that will get May's as their first. This is just to keep the Post Office trip singular.

I find it hilarious, by the way, that Hallmark no longer sells stationary of any kind. Their stock in trade seems to be musical statuary and other assorted crap these days. I walked in and was assaulted with potpourri and ceramic angels.

"Do you carry paper?" I said.

"Uh...no," intoned the clerk, dusting a crystal frog with an air of boredom.

"Really? Hallmark doesn't sell stationary?"

"Yeah."

Awesome.

But I was eventually triumphant, so barring disaster, we are having a little envelope-stuffing fiesta Monday night and mailing everything out Tuesday. I still don't have all the addresses, so if you have not sent me yours manually yet, I implore you to do so.

Deep breath!

 

 

Happy birthday to justbeast, heart of my heart, love of my life.

"The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history."

--Oscar Wilde

(Emergent Boa winner imminent.)

So...if I were to buy some beads and such and make tea with cream in a little glass pitcher I blew myself, and set the table, and put on pretty music, are there any local girls who would come over and be crafty with me?

Edit: boys are welcome too, but I don't know any crafty ones, I don't think.

It is pleasing to the Overboa that so many have accepted and rejoiced in the natural course of events, and the superiority of the Equally Large Boa Gambit.

Thus, to amuse all on this estimable Thursday, and shore up lulz against the impending boycott, the Boa challenges you, yes, you!

Create your own Boa!Macro. Leave it in the comments. Crack me the hell up. Best image wins...let's say a giant package of Gummi Snakes, mailed to their door.

There is a film. It might be the greatest film of all time. It might make you cry, it might terrify you, it might fill you with ineffable hope or despair for the future of man.

I wouldn't know. I haven't seen it.

I haven't seen it because the cover copy was so completely awesome that it obliterated  in a stroke all need to actually view the film itself, and rooted its phraseology directly into the daily speech of Cat and her Beast. I had to sit down on the floor of the video store to calm myself from the waves of greatness attacking my every cell. Writing wins. Film loses.

That film is Boa vs. Python.

For some clearly nefarious reason Amazon does not reprint the cover copy, but I am here to reproduce for you the essential line which elevates this film above all other snake-featuring pretenders:

When an enormous python escapes from a game reserve and attacks the city, the FBI is forced to release an equally large boa to hunt it down!

I'm willing to accept that there may be a more awesome movie in the vaults somewhere--though it must contain "vs." to qualify--but you must admit: this is the greatest response to crisis management ever invented in the history of the world.

Aside from the implication that the FBI has a bunch of boas of varying sizes hanging out in Quantico, and that they would choose one approximately the same size as the titular python and not one that's, you know, bigger, this is the best public policy system I have ever heard. Dubya is not the Decider. The motherfucking boa is the Decider. I picture a serious man in a serious suit, red tie, salt and pepper hair, maybe a cane, entering the Situation Room with a grave expression and a thin green folder.

"Gentlemen, the time has come. We have no other choice."

"But sir!" says a hapless intern. "We could try conventional bombing!"

And the Serious Man shoots him a glare of pure hatred and disdain and strokes the sensuous skin of his beloved serpent as it rests its head on its master's Armani-clad knee and hisses quietly. If this scene is not in the movie, do not tell me, for I will not believe you.

It really shouldn't be a last resort, though, my good man! It should be your first, last, and only resort! There is literally no problem that cannot be solved by releasing an equally large boa. I use it in my everyday life, and it can work for everyone!

You cannot argue that the outcome would not have been infinitely preferable if, instead of $30 billion, the Federal Reserve had released an equally large boa into the Bear Stearns offices.

Bogged down in an ill-considered invasion with no way out in sight? Release an equally large boa, my friend. It'll work itself out.

Political party tangled up in two egomaniacal candidates who won't quit or work together? I believe an equally large boa will bring them to terms.

Britney Spears running amok, pursued by an army of gloating, culture-devouring morons? Equally large boa.

LJ cancels basic accounts, censors interests, and mouths off about it in Russian? Why boycott when you can release an EQUALLY LARGE BOA?

There is no problem to which this policy cannot be applied, with results in the range of awesome to fucking awesome.

Join me, my comrades. The time has come to put aside our petty partisan differences and embrace the only real agent of reform in these degenerate times. We have no other choice.

If we all put our boas together, we can bring about true change. 

I am spreadsheet, hear me roar!

Of the 42 (yea verily, I lol'd) people who have signed up so far, I have about 20 addresses. Paypal is showing no shipping address selected for those people. So I need you to email your address and username if you have not done so already to this email. I like all my spreadsheet columns to be filled in.

I'm heading over to the stationary store today to pick up lovely papers and wax, and scheming for this month's lottery gift. tithenai also had a great idea--dab a drop or two of BPAL under the wax so that there is an olfactory element--so for April, you will all get to sample the lemony goodness of the Yuki-Onna scent.

Also, I should mention--I did not promise that the accompanying art would be good. Eventually I hope to wrangle some guest artists, but for now you get CMV visual art. CMV does not have visual art talent, but she tries very hard. Part of the fun of this project is seeing bits of me naked, without the filter of fine, fine graphics departments and samurai-editors, and see the writer fall on her face when she tries something else. You can laugh at the art, it's ok. But it is sincerely attempted.

Back to organizing!