I haven’t even had a close call like the other day when I was jogging under snow with my hood up and didn’t see the car which managed to stop inches from me. Yeah, it was a total idiocy to jog with impaired visibility and headphones on. Sometimes I’m stupid in more ways than one. BUT if I had been — if I HAD been, then my counter was clean. (This was my mom’s own particular obsession. She never much cared about the state of my underwear, probably figuring if I got hit by a bus it WOULD be messy, but she told me never to leave the house with dishes on the counter, because if the police came to tell people I was dead, if there were dishes on the counter they would know I was a slob.
It’s more that I’ve been dealing with family things. Robotics let the younger kid come home for a day, so I’m trying to remember what he looks like. (Build season ends next week, so there might be more opportunities for this.) Also doing laundry and dragged older kid for a walk (That way he can look out and make sure I’m not run over.)
Now I’m going to go over some stuff that needs to come out with Goldport. Recently I put out two short stories that are out with my collection Crawling. (So if you’ve read that, you don’t need these.)
Ariadne’s Skein which is in the Darkship Thieves sequence, before the turmoils (for those who have gleaned the future history, which I promise to put up in chunks really soon. I’ve been collating it.)
and Thirst which was a an honorable mention in the year’s best fantasy and horror for 1994, but which also, unfortunately, has given Mike Kabongo the idea I write “Legions of gay vampires” which is silly, since the legions are barely mentioned in this story. (Also, it’s a gross exaggeration, since I’ve written… 5 vampire stories and two vampire novels and only two of the short stories even involve gay characters — both historical, btw, so I didn’t have much choice.)
While on that — for those who read Witchfinder’s latest installment, no, it’s not about to turn into supernatural bdsm, much less gay supernatural bdsm. While the characters might er… lean that way, a) it’s not where the story is GOING. It remains primarily an adventure story. b) it’s more an elf thing than an orientation thing. Oh, also a chip on the shoulder thing. And, yeah, one of the characters has made a bad, bad choice, and not the one you’d think. (Cue evil writer laugh.)
I don’t know why I — the woman who tends to hide all sex behind a pink veil of decency — should need to reassure you, but be reassured. I told you at the beginning this book contained a gay villain (You’d complained of the lack of same) though I’ll warn you that like most of my villains he might (or might not) end up redeemed as well as punished.
Now, what else? Oh, yeah —
Would anyone be interested in a series of posts on speeding up your writing? (Yes, there are tricks and tips.) And, if you’re interested, the free short story IS up. Click on the tab at the top of the blog.
And now I go put another load of laundry in. The glitz! The glamor! The mad whirlwind of a literary career!
According To Hoyt 
HIt by a car? I thought it was trucks that people had to look out for. [Wink]
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Vehicles-that-run-unsuspecting-authors-over had to change their MO because trucks were becoming too well known for it. I have proof too — remember Stephen King got run over by a van. Now I think about it, the vehicle that almost ran me over a few days ago was a van. It did not appear to be driven by a dog, however, and the owner/passenger probably wasn’t on his way to the store because he’d run out of marze barzes, so it was probably not the same that ran over Stephen King.
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In the software industry we pretend they’re buses.
*rolls eyes*
Why management can’t officially accept the need to plan for people either quitting or being promoted from geek to suit is beyond me (especially since that’s where most of our lower level managers came from).
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Sounds like you’re one of those joggers that terrify drivers. ;)
But on to more important matters…
Yes, I would absolutely be interested in a series of posts on speeding up my writing!
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actually I don’t normally wear a hood, which is why I was so taken by surprise. It’s just that it was snowing hard. I also normally leave one ear free, but the headphones had slipped out of place and covered my ear.
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Oh, and in my defense, the van ran a stop sign. It’s just I don’t normally count on the stop signs to keep me alive.
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Please please please tips and advice about speeding up writing. I’m pretty glacial when it comes to writing speeds, I’d really need those!
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I think I want a story (or maybe a book) under the title “The Legion of Gay Vampires.” I’m not quite sure what kind of a book this would turn out to be — apocalypse, secret mystery, picaresque humor, or some other skewering of our sensibilities, but I think the title deserves something :-)
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Gay romance. I ain’t writing, but there are people who might.
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If there are people who will buy, there will be people who will write it. I want to say “If you write it, they will come” but, in the context of extraordinarily cheerful romance the obvious bad pun is well nigh unavoidable … almost as unavoidable as this ditz I nearly ran down t’other day; can you believe anybody going jogging in a hoodie with the hood up and their ears plugged? Bloody suicidal, and me in a rented pick-up with dodgy brakes!
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LOL. If it WERE a hoodie I’d have had more visibility. It was a much larger jacket hood.
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I would find it far more enjoyable to have ‘The Legion of Gay Vampires’ a rip roaring adventure with minimul overt ‘romance’. Of course, I have enjoyed wasted my time reading Japanese light novellas about a post-apocaliptic world with Vampirism, cyborgs and a female Pope – so we have established my tastes are questionable.
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Vampires of any sort are acceptable, so long as you make then a metaphor for Marxism.
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Of course. THAT’s very much what they are in the long short First Blood coming out from Naked Reader Press soon, and in the first musketeer vampire book. well, a metaphor for an intruding state. Um… close enough.
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Another vote here for how to speed up writing.
Sigh. Types the woman who’s spent the last two of her precious early morning hours trying to figure out what team sports would have been played in imperial Russia.
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ROFL. Kali — I didn’t know you were a woman. (Well, the name is ambiguous.) I’m now mentally adjusting Kali-silhouette in my head (yep, the little monster you were assigned as an icon now wears eyeshadow and mascara in my head.) Vive la internet. And I do that type of thing too. The trick is to confine it.
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(Don’t worry — I didn’t think that the tone of the book had taken a left turn into BDSM supernatural romance! ;) Which is why contracts like that are much like plans where you lose you hat. Remember: any plan vhere you lose you hat iz a BAD PLAN.)
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