Writing – Page 20 – Sharon Lee, Writer

It’s got 8 cylinders; uses ’em all; and an overdrive that just won’t stall

It snowed overnight, wet, sticky stuff that looked pretty on the trees; maybe an inch, all around. It’s mostly out of the trees and off the road, now, though there’s still some on the grass.

Around mid-morning, we received the propane truck. We had expected the propane truck last week, but paperwork in the office is backed up to the point that the delivery guy still thought he’d be topping off a 50 gallon tank, rather than totally filling two 120-gallon (for the purposes of polite conversation, these are understood to be 100-gallon) tanks. He was able to do some monkeyshines with his truck computer so that he could complete the delivery, and we now have two hundred gallons of propane in the tanks and ready for the generator to draw on.

So that would be everything done except paying the bills.

This morning I also fulfilled a long-time dream. I placed a stick-up spot-light inside my side of the shared bureau and? I can see my socks and my tshirts. Yes! It is no longer a pitch-black cavern in there, but a delightful little oasis of light, which I control with the tap of a finger.

*so happy*

And? I have more happiness in my future, because I bought a whole bag of these little stick-up lights, and they are destined for the insides of cupboards and closets to the farthest, darkest corner of the Confusion Factory.

Let there be light, indeed.

In news that may be of more interest to the wider community, the book description for Alliance of Equals has appeared on its Amazon catalog page. Be aware that the description may be considered to contain spoilers, and, also, that the hardcover edition of the novel will not be published until July 5, 2016 (count backwards 60-90 days to calculate the possible appearance of the eArc edition).

Also, work continues on The Gathering Edge. It currently stands at a smudge over 53,000 words. We’re shooting, as we always do, for 100,000 words. Here, have a snippet to prove we’re working:

“You’ve asked me to develop new outlets, negotiate partnerships, build viable routes, and earn us a profit! Tell me, denubia — what is it that you think a master trader does?”

Today’s blog post title brought to you by Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, “Hot Rod Lincoln.” Here’s your link.

PSA: The next Theo novel

Theo Waitley has a lot of fans, and they write to us from time to time, politely pointing out that it’s been, like, forever (or 2012, whichever comes first) since the latest installment of her story, and they wonder when the next Theo book will finally gladden their lives.

Sadly, because of how we write (organically, say some; chaotically, say others), we have not been able to answer this seemingly simple question.

Until now!

Now, we can say, with authority, that Theo will play a large part in The Gathering Edge, the 20th novel in the Liaden Universe®. We’ve known this for a number of months, and I apologize for not saying so sooner, but, um, I’d forgotten it was an issue until, providentially, someone wrote to me, wondering when we were going to get around to continuing Theo’s story, and I realized that this was a topic Of Interest to Many.

So, yes — The Gathering Edge. Theo. Also the Uncle, Miri and Val Con, and — oh, a number of folks, some of whom you won’t meet until Alliance of Equals, which is kind of the bad news here.

See, Alliance of Equals is the 19th novel in the Liaden Universe®, and it’s not a Theo novel. It’s a Shan novel, sort of — possibly a Padi novel more than a Shan, but in that range. It, too, features the Uncle, and those folks you haven’t met yet, and it?

Is scheduled to be published on July 5, 2016.

We’re writing The Gathering Edge now — in fact, we just cracked 50,000 words (or passed the Theoretical Halfway Point, which sounds a little more encouraging, though its unlikely to be True) of the first-draft-and-a-half yesterday. The final manuscript is due on Madame the Editor’s desk in mid-February, 2016.

So, while there’s a Theo novel on the road to publication — yay! — you’ve gotta use binoculars to see it.

I am not going to predict when Edge will be published. Every time I produce my best guess for a date, Madame surprises me, so we’ll just say — publication is expected after July 2016.

Here ends the PSA.

For the FB peeps, a rare photo of Scrabble, who, unfortunately, had her forcefield engaged:

I bet you say that to all the boys

So, let’s see — Amazon is taking pre-orders of Alliance of Equals, which is kind of crazy, but there you have it.

For those who like autographed copies, we have spoken to Mr. Blyly at Uncle Hugo’s and he professes himself willing to do the not-inconsiderable amount of extra work to make signed copies available. However! He would (rationally, in my opinion) like to wait until next year to place Alliance in his catalog, so that he doesn’t have to do even more extra work, like calling people whose credit cards have expired during the nine months between now and the book’s publication date.

Bottom line: If you want a signed copy of Alliance of Equals, which is scheduled for publication on July 5, 2016, Uncle Hugo’s will be taking pre-orders. We’ll tell you when. Or: Watch the skies.

In other news, I made bread, yesterday.

This isn’t a particularly new thing; I like to make bread, and do so pretty often, but I have been on a Quest for a way to make sandwich bread for Steve. Sandwich bread being uniformly square, and easy to cut, and (this is me) tastes like something other than paper, and doesn’t become glue in your mouth.

This has been an Uphill Quest, and I was honestly despairing — my bread tends to…reject uniformity as a lifestyle choice, which, given the household, isn’t particularly surprising. I’d about given up, and then, entirely by accident, I found this. “This” being, in case the link expires at some point, a 13x4x4 inch Pullman Pan.

Here are pictures of my Pullman Pan:

Observant readers will note that this pan had a lid, which keeps the bread from rising into a weird humped shape unsuitable for sandwiches.

This is what my first finished loaf looked like:

Yes! It’s square(ish) and regularly shaped and altogether a Thing of Beauty. On top of that, it tastes great, and sliced (as you can see, above) thin. I think we’re on the road to having a winner, here.

I’ll note that the loaf did not rise quite as much as I thought it should. Next time I’ll add rise time, because (1) our house is chilly, in bread-risin’ terms, and (2) I’m using whole wheat flour (King Arthur’s White Whole Wheat, in this case, which tends to be heavy lifting for yeast).

Also (my besetting sin) I combined two Pullman (aka pain de mie) recipes to make My Own, and I probably should have made one of the canonical recipes, first, to see how it’s Supposed To Look.

(For those interested, here are the two recipes I combined. Honey-Oat Pain de Mie. Pain de Mie.)

(Also, for those who may be wondering, “Pullman” is a shout-out to the Pullman train cars of yore, which, among other things, provided meals for their passengers. Pullman bread was developed because it went together fast and always produced a uniform loaf that sliced thin, and was good for sandwiches and toast.)

Yesterday also included writing, as will today. With luck and a tailwind, we’ll break 45,000 today, and something came clear about the structure just this morning, as the caffeine kicked in, so that will be helpful when it comes time to braid the various threads.

And that’s all the news from the Confusion Factory today

I wish a Blessed Samhain to all who celebrate.

Today’s blog post brought to you by Meatloaf, “Hot Summer Night.” Here’s your link.

And for the Facebook peeps, here’s a picture of Belle, trying out the unmade bed:

The drillin’ in the wall kept up but no one seemed to pay it any mind

This was not the day I had planned.

I had planned to do some business emails, then get with the manuscript, and finish the squaring up of the Big Narrative Lump, and indeed, the day went agreeably in that direction for about two hours. Then, I noticed that Belle’s back foot was bleeding. Steve and I did an examination, and determined that, yes, this was a matter for the vet, so we called, and achieved an appointment for 2:30 today.

After that, it was my turn to call The Guy From Dead River (for those coming in late, the whole house generator was installed yesterday, so yay! However, the generator needs propane to operate, and, as reported earlier, siting the propane tanks was apparently going to be A Big Problem). This would have been, you understand, on the order of the sixth phone call we’d made to the office since the site visit.

I actually reached someone who could help me. She informed me that this project was going to be Very, Very Difficult, involving two guys for six hours and a ditch witch, it was going to cost A Bundle of Money, and! — insult to injury — the work can’t be done until November 16. At 8 a.m., naturally enough.

This is the point where you’d walk away and call the next vendor on the list. Sadly, there is no next vendor, so I agreed to Terms, and ask you please to all join me in hoping that the damned ground doesn’t freeze before November 16.

Grr.

I did a little more work, Steve made us a lemon and chicken soup for lunch, and at precisely 2:30, we were at the vet’s, who was saying, “Good grief, what happened?”

As near as we can figure, Belle tried to get into the drop ceiling in the basement — a favorite hangout for Cat Farm Coon Cats, though they really are Far Too Big to get into the drop ceiling in the basement — missed her jump — or insisted that she had so made the jump — and in the process ripped a claw out of her back right foot.

The vet cleaned the wound, prescribed antibiotics (because Belle weighs very nearly 17 pounds, Belle gets to take Dog Drugs, which is to say 1/4 of a dog-sized antibiotic), and sent us on our way with instructions to watch the foot, and Belle’s behavior, and call if anything changed for the worst.

I will note that Belle was a perfect lady on the ride to and from, and at the vet’s. Though her foot must have hurt a lot, she didn’t utter a single curse, nor tried to discipline the doctor or her assistant. I expect Maine coons to be mellow, but this was really above and beyond.

Home again, I did the dishes, and got back to work for another hour. My concentration, however, is not what it ought to be going into this section, which needs a bunch of description, and is also somewhat scrambled on the Who Said What To Whom front. Which is to say, the kind of stuff you need to bear down and micro-concentrate on.

So! That will be Saturday’s job, since tomorrow, day-time, is filled with appointments, and that evening with the Rocky Horror Show.

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In other news, I have been remiss in reporting the anniversary of our 27th year in Maine. We crossed the border on, I believe, October 3, 1988, and commenced an exciting day, indeed, in which we found in short order that we had no place to live (because the daughter of the owner of the house in Skowhegan we had rented long-distance, had left her husband in the time it had taken us to drive from Maryland to Maine, and moved into “our” house); Steve’s job, also arranged long-distance, had evaporated; that the Skowhegan library had on its bookshelves in 1988, SFBC editions of books that hadn’t gone out since 1977, and the librarian of same advised me, earnestly, that, if I was a reader, I should go to the high school library to borrow books.

Yes, it was epic, that day; one of the Great Ones that you look back upon in calmer times and wonder how you had held your hand from murder and mayhem.

Still on topic — in another three weeks, Steve and I will be celebrating the 35th anniversary of our marriage. We moved to Maine together, where we knew no one, save Tom Easton and Barry Longyear, through SFWA, when we had been married less than eight years. In retrospect, I’m not sure if that was heroic or stupid.

Whichever, it turned out all right in the end.

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Yesterday, I did go elsewhere to work, and got a bunch of redlining done on the threads which are not the Big Narrative Piece. In the morning, since it was sunny, and windless, I went out to Oakland, and worked at a picnic bench at the Messalonskee Lake Public Boat Landing. I was wearing good Maine layers — long-sleeve tshirt, long-sleeve denim shirt, long-sleeve fleece hoodie, jeans, and wool socks — and it was actually quite pleasant for a couple hours, until the wind picked up. Later in the afternoon, I moved my base of operations to China Lake, where I lunched, and worked in the car.

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Today’s blog post is brought to you by Bob Dylan by way of Tom Russell, “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts.” Here’s your link.

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Here’s a shot of yesterday’s temp office at Messalonskee Lake:

In which you may now pre-mug

Offworld Designs has added pre-orders for the Brand! New! 11 oz Liaden mug to their Liaden Universe® Store!

Here’s your link.

Yes! You can have your very own tree-and-dragon ceramic mug in time for the winter holidays! I gotta tell you, hot chocolate tasted great in the previous iteration of mugs, and I’m betting? That it’ll taste even better in the new mugs!

You will also find in the Offworld Designs Liaden Universe® store the opportunity to order tree-and-dragon denim, polo, and t-shirts. Remember that these items are printed/embroidered in batches, so plan ahead for gift-giving.

* * *

In other news, we will tomorrow! entertain the Generator Guys. They plan to arrive at a Truly UnGhodly Hour — I believe Seven-Thirty A M was quoted — and go to it, making lots of noise and turning the electricity on and off. Steve mentioned that, all this being so, I might want to arrange to work Somewhere Else tomorrow, and so I shall do.

Today turned into a Day Off, by which I mean, no writing/editing/revision happened. Mundane errands — including a doctor’s visit, and grocery shopping — took place. We also snuck in a ride through the rapidly falling fall, and a pleasant lunch at the Flatlanda. I still need to clean out the cat fountain, while Steve preps the Engine Room for the arrival of the Generator Guys, and then this day is over. I’ll hit the couch with my book, and plan an early night, given the projected Moment of Arrival for our guests.

I did make a discovery today in the doctor’s waiting room. Television is really irritating. So, OK; I knew that. But, honestly, three grown women going on and on about whether or not they would permit their husbands/SOs to have a “work wife?” Please. I wanted to read my book, obviously, but the volume was such that reading. . .was difficult.

So, I’ve added to my list of necessities when visiting doctors/hospitals/waiting rooms in general — earplugs.

As reported elsewhere, yesterday, The Gathering Edge now stands at 39,525 (which is to say it has gained about 4,590 words; I’ve Outright Removed about 500, and played fast and loose with a bunch of sentences and paragraphs, which is the nature of revision). I have another 20 pages of the Big Narrative Lump to go through and bring up to trim, and then I believe we may proceed in a forwarder direction with style and confidence.

. . .and I think that’s all the news that’s fit to print.

Trooper and Sprite, sharing the bookshelf in my office:

Gang agley

So, yesterday was a wash. Woke up with a headache, and decided that I’d take two aspirin and soldier on. Turns out that the headache was tougher than that, and! tougher than everything else in hand, so — long story short — I didn’t dare go in to the manuscript, because my brain actually hurt. I took a nap, did some lightweight research, and sorted out some stuff I’d been meaning to get out of the recipe file. Then I went to bed early, weighted down with coon cats. Not my most productive day ever.

While I was napping the Guy from Dead River — which is not the title of a novel by Edna Ferber, though it ought to be — came by to scope out the placement of the propane tanks while will provide juice to our generator when it is installed.

Now. . .we call this the House of Negative Feng Shui for a reason. The people who built the place had a Positive Genius for Wrong Placement. The living room and kitchen are placed so that they will catch the full fury (insomuch as Maine has such fury) of the summer sunshine, and! most of the snow winds. This means that the front of the house (pre-roofed-deck, thank you, Todd) was a broiler in the summer, with the added bonus of not being to get out the kitchen (main) door in the winter, because the wind dumps All The Snow exactly in front of the door.

On top of this, the house is sited too close to the road, and too close to the eastern boundary, which is the only rational place for a garage, since all the doors are on that side of the house.

Anyhow, yesterday, and the Guy From Dead River — who discovers that the the Only Possible Place (by Code) to site the propane tanks is where the propane tank for our stove is now — on the farthest side of the property from the generator. And? Yep, you got it; there’s only one place where the generator may (by Code) be sited.

“Gonna have to do a lot of trenching,” said The Guy.

On the other hand, he didn’t say that it couldn’t be done.

Though he did say that he needed to talk to his boss.

*sigh*

In other news, frequent auditors of this journal will recall that Belle had been limping off her right leg, and we took her into the vets a few weeks ago to be sure she hadn’t sprained or broken a paw/leg. At that point, the vet found no indication of a break, but suspected soft tissue trauma. She prescribed three days of pain killers, and warned us that soft tissue injuries take a Very Long Time to heal.

The limp hasn’t slowed Belle down; and, if it’s gotten no better; it hasn’t seemed to get any worse. So, we decided to Be Aware, but not panic.

Fast forward to Monday, when I was grooming the cats. I took hold of Belle’s right leg, stretched it out along my arm, and pressed her foot pad to shoot her claws. I cut the first claw on the right foot — and when I moved on to the second claw, Belle let out a scream, and jerked forward, as if she was going to bite me — and then dropped back, looking Very Embarrassed, indeed, while being Not At All Interested in having me touch her paw again.

“I think I found the problem,” I told Steve, after we’d all gotten settled down.

“Right,” he said, and phoned the vet for an appointment.

Which was for today, at 8:30 am. A thorough exam was made, including x-rays of both feet, and — diagnosis still inconclusive. There does seem to be tenderness in the right foot, but no evidence of infection, or of a break. We have glucosamine to put in her food, to see if that helps with the situation.

Belle rode to and from the vet on my lap, wearing the Royal Ruff, which is Standard Traveling Livery for all the coon cats here at the Cat Farm. None of them cares to travel in the palanquin, so they’ve learned to tolerate a small dog harness with a clip-on leash, and the ruff. Both Trooper and Sprite drool in the car — less on my lap than in the carrier — and the ruff helps them preserve their dignity, not to mention keeping most of the cat spit off my hands. Belle is a neater traveler, but this was her first time on my lap, and we wanted to be sure.

She did fine on the ride to and from, and at the vet’s, and is now sleeping the sleep of the Justly Exhausted on the copilot’s chair in my room.

Now, it’s time to get to work.

Here’s a picture of Sprite, wearing the Royal Ruff:

What on earth has the woman been doing?

. . .mostly, I’ve been going through the manuscript of The Gathering Edge, fixing sentences, doing continuity checks, breaking long chapters into short chapters, moving a chapter up, sharpening dialogue, and layering in details. At the moment, the word count stands at 36,777, with a net gain of about 2,000 words.

“Net gain” is of course a moving target. Whole paragraphs have been removed from the playing board — and replaced with other paragraphs. I have wantonly removed maybe 300 total words of an explanation that will be needed later, but happened not to be in the right place. Maybe a couple thousand “new” words have been written, but there’s really no way to quantify that. “Word count” as an indicator of progress is really only (sort of) useful in the active drafting phase; there’s no good indicator of progress being made in the revision/squaring-up phases of the work, except maybe, “Yes; that’s better!”

At the moment, the manuscript is in the form of one Largish Lump of narrative, following one set of characters, and several Smaller Lumps of narrative, following other characters. These will have to be woven together at some point, but, at just over a third of a book, word-count-wise, we don’t have enough material to begin that particular process.

So! That’s what I’ve been doing. I’m a little over half-way through revising/sharpening/squaring-up the Largish Lump. Today, after I get through Various Mundane Chores, I’ll sit down with my red pen and the other half of the LL and get to work.

In other news, the GoFundMe project for replacing Larry Smith’s van (for those coming in late, ref here and here), is $5,292 short of the $30,000 goal. If you can, please donate; if you can’t donate, you can still help by spreading the word. Thanks so much.

Here’s a picture of Sprite in one of her favorite places, overlooking the Cat Garden.

In which there is dismay and confusion

It’s being something of a zoo this week here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory.

On Monday, we did a lovely Skype interview with John Mierau at Patreon, which will be going up on youtube, in the fullness of time. We’ll let y’all know when it’s available.

Today, the generator guy came and scoped out The Situation. He was supposed to have come by on Tuesday, but. . .didn’t. I’m not sure what’s with that, but I remember a wise man once told me that contractors run on their own time. Anyhow, he promises an estimate this week, so that’s in process.

In and around these generally benign events, I have been having. . .discussions, as in multiple hour-long phone calls with the ACA and the local health insurer, Community Health Options. Which has officially been No Fun At All.

First, I got a phone call from the ACA on Monday morning, wherein I was informed that, since I had submitted a Change of Income, the person making my new eligibility determination noticed that I had not “attested to” last year’s income. I needed to call a representative, she said, and do that. Any rep who answered the phone would be able to do that.

. . .Now, I actually know better than this, because I had been for many years a secretary, and I am Very Aware that, when the instructions include a variation of, “Call this person, say this, and they will know exactly what you mean” — they won’t. No one will know anything even approaching what I mean, and if I have not elicited Actual Hard Facts that bear directly on What This is Actually About from the person for whom I am making the call, it will end up taking days to resolve this One Really Simple Thing.

With that said — no, the rep who answered the phone on Tuesday at the ACA had no idea what “attesting” to last year’s income was, nor did her supervisor. Her supervisor, however, recalculated my eligibility, which was not what I wanted, at all. I wrote a letter, explaining what had happened, and why, and logged into the ACA website to upload it — only to find that, if the ACA isn’t expecting to receive documentation from you? There is no option to upload documents.

Unwisely, then, I tried to go into my (new) application and see if there wasn’t something there. . .got twisted around and called the ACA back, hoping they’d bail me out.

The rep I spoke to this time also didn’t know what “attesting” income was, and said that 2014’s income was completely beside the point, this being 2015. She also told me that the ACA representative who had handled my first policy change, back in July, when Steve went on Medicare, had just cut my Best Guess at Income for both of us in half, and had figured my monthly payment/subsidies from there, and that this was Utterly Wrong.

Apparently, we still count Steve’s income, even though he’s on Medicare and I’m only looking for a policy for myself, and that! amount! put me over all the subsidy limits, and — long story short — it appears that, because of this, my insurance has been canceled. If it hasn’t been canceled, I’ll be in the happy position of having to pay something on the order of $2,000/month for health insurance, but I can’t find the amount for certain, because Community Health Options only allows access to its plan descriptions and prices during Open Enrollment, which this is not.

Today, I was supposed to call CHO to find out if, in fact, my insurance is canceled, and — if it has been, what do I do now? if it hasn’t, how much will it cost to maintain the policy?

I did not make that phone call today; since I had lots of leftover frustration from yesterday to work with. Today, I refined a scene that I’d written over the weekend, and then wrote a few more words in a forwarder direction.

Tomorrow, I will have to call CHO, and try to straighten this out, and, man, am I looking forward to that. Not.

In the meantime, the nights are getting seriously chilly and the day-temps aren’t really exerting themselves above the middish 70sF, so, yes, winter is coming. And very possibly with bells on.

And, to pay you for your patience in allowing me to vent, have a look at this place — a college of fools, just outside of Paris. Here’s the link.

Moonlight, you’re just a heartache in disguise

So, I have a cold. I’m not happy about this. I also have work to do, so best to get at it.

But! Before I quite get there, I’d like to share some articles about “strong female protagonists,” and the notion of “likable (female) characters.”

A Plague of Strong Female Characters

Not Here to Make Friends

These articles are interesting to me, as a writer — and as a writer of characters often described as “likable.” Which is somewhat baffling, considering the histories of many of our characters, at least on the Liaden side of things. Among my/our other characters. . .Well. . .

Poor Becca Beauvelley gets all kinds of abuse for allowing herself to fall into the hands of an ancient and powerful magic-wielding villain from whom she has no hope of freeing herself. She should, one gathers, have Done Something.

Jenn Pierce, a middle-class woman of the last century, who doesn’t know judo, or sword-fighting, or anything at all about guns — as most of us, I will argue, do not — has her lack of martial skill scorned, and is advised to get some basic training in weapons. Her lack of skill in these matters is called “unbelievable.”

Kate Archer is described by one reader as “repulsive” and by another as “uncaring.”

And Val Con yos’Phelium, who really will kill you, if necessary. . .is seen as kind of a nice guy, a little shy. . .While the Uncle, whose probable sins I suggest that we dwell not long upon, is “fascinating.”

Anyhow, these are things that concern me nearly, as matters of craft and art, and it’s interesting to see how other people have thought about them.

Speaking of likable characters and reality. . .There’s an article in this week’s New Yorker about the defense lawyer who specializes in defending our most notorious criminals, most lately, she has been the lead defense attorney for Dzbokhar Tsarnaev. Her idea, as far as I understand it, which may not be very far at all, is that — while Society has an obligation to rid itself of Monsters; it has the corresponding duty not to dispose of those who are. . .less than. . .Monsters merely because it would be convenient to do so. To this end, she undertakes to show juries the humanity of her clients. Here’s the link to that article.

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Week Five of the Do It Like a Delm Challenge is well underway. You view this week’s challengers here.

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In other news, I received a package today from Amazon, and Sprite has found a use for the box.

Let no box be discarded. Sprite asserting her royal dominion. Photo by Sharon Lee

Today’s blog title is brought to you by Juice Newton, “Queen of Hearts.” Here’s your link.

The view of the future from a small rise in the present

So, here we are at the start of a new week! Let’s see what’s on the roster.

This is Week Five of the Do It Like A Delm Challenge. We have two challengers already, both taking the theme of knitting. You may view them here. Think you can do better? Enter the list of challengers! Rules are here. Don’t want to enter, but really want some Cool Liaden Gear? Here’s your link, and remember! Liaden Universe® shirts make wonderful presents!
Belle has developed a limp off of her right front leg. We haven’t been able to find anything obvious — she just lies still and purrs when I probe; nothing seems to hurt. So, anyway, a trip to the vet tomorrow, Just to Be Sure.
The guy who replaced the chimney was just here, and confirmed that, yep, that spot up there on the roof does need caulking. Which he couldn’t do today, because it had rained overnight, so! More contractors in our future.
Speaking of contractors: We hope to hear back from the various folks who need to be involved in Generator Installation today, and!
Mike the Electrician will be by late in the week to install my new ceiling fan, a circumstance that fills me with a really embarrassing amount of anticipatory delight.
The Rocky Horror Show (the play; the movie is The Rocky Horror Picture Show) will be playing at the Waterville Opera House in late October. I tried to buy tickets online this morning, forgetting that the Opera House’s website never does work properly in re the online purchase of tickets, and I will therefore need to make a phone call. Boo. On the other hand, I’ve never seen Rocky Horror, and really ought to close this gap in my fannish resume.
We have a Skype interview scheduled for next Monday, which means that this week? I need to get a haircut.
Besides all that, of course, we have work to do, stories and novels to write! So, yanno — onward, upward, and sideways, as appropriate.

And that? Is all I got.

Here, have a picture of Belle and Sprite to start your week off right:

Belle and Sprite. Apparently, Sprite has just been Interesting.