 |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Work has been a bit hectic these days so I'm way, way behind on the more social stuff - like posting, reading LJ and such. But, the mood struck me last night to post a variety of links of interest as I go through my RSS feeds. [sidebar: alsdkadjfladkjf stupid eljay posting interface didn't update the post like I wanted; then, when I edited and fixed, kept reverting back to the original post. ARRRGH. So I've had to reconstruct.] Linkspam: Some people are just plain assholes awardGene Hunt: vampire?Henry Jenkins: behind the glass - discussion of slash and a cool ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) thingswithwings vid. John Scalzi's new gig.![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) fangs_fur_fey have some lovely stuff going on, from interviews to the fascinating Monday topic-of-the-week post. Sidebar 2: Note to hyperfocused, and cereta who played the question meme with me. If you want a copy of the teaser sampler for Blood Bargain, e-me (mylima AT Gmail dot com). Send me mailing info and I'll get it out to you. :) If anyone else still wants to play - feel free - the post is here. I've got a bunch of the teaser books so come on and play! Last but not at all least, a VERY happy birthday to resonant8ekaterinnraveninthewindHope your respective days were extremely special! Sigh, I had this lovely paragraph written about how my inconvenient and annoying insomnia last night led to me being really productive on the day job front (e.g., allowing me to catch up on some mundane, tedious, yet extremely necessary tasks...say, somewhere around midnight). But the stupid eljay interface ate it all. Both versions. So the short version: Couldn't sleep. Got up. Worked. Back to bed. Slept. TGIF to all and I sure hope I can wake up!! ::g:: (the groggy me is not to be trifled with!) Tags: birthday, linkspam, rl
Current Location: Casa de la Lima
Spirits:  frustrated
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Evidently, there's some sort of obnoxious virus going around. One that makes a person feel like they've been run over by a truck and that there's a heavy iron weight on one's chest and hey, no breathing allowed! Yes, I've got it. Slept all weekend, slipped into virus land sometime Sunday and stayed home Monday. Heroically (or foolishly) I tried to go to work on Tuesday (today) and by 9:30 realized that I was not only foolish but really really D.U.M. dumb. Could barely concentrate on anything. I went straight home and to bed, only to be interrupted by a client calling me on my cell and then by the apartment management stopping by to change out the HVAC unit filters and check smoke detectors. Great service, but sheesh, I was in a fog when they were here. Feeling a wee bit better now and not sleeping, so I guess that's progress! Planning to make it into work tomorrow. I'm horribly behind on LJ and on just a lot of things. This stupid virus saps all my energy. I supposed I can get caught up by the weekend. I'd BETTER feel better by then, as I have a pamper afternoon scheduled at the salon. Something I rarely do, but am treating myself to on Saturday: hair cut/color and European facial. Hope everyone stays well and am looking forward to seeing fellow fangrrls next month! Tags: sick
Current Location: HOME
Spirits:  sick
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Happy May Day all! It's raining and chilly here, so not so much with the "ooh, spring weather" but much with the drearies. Oh well, can't have it all, I suppose. ::g:: Not really sure how it got to be May as life has seemed so accelerated lately. The meme/contest (sort of). I came back from Malice with a bunch of the teaser samplers. They contain the first 3 chapters of my upcoming book, Blood Bargain, plus the first 3 of Carole Nelson Douglas' new one, Brimstone Kiss. In the spirit of book pimps everywhere, I thought I'd do a contest. I couldn't really think of anything clever, so instead, I'm going to participate in the question meme that is going around and will send samplers to those of you that submit questions that amuse me. ::g:: Here you go: If you would be so kind, ask me the seven questions below. Just copy and paste them into a comment, replace the blanks with anything you want--personal, silly, surreal (e.g. 3. Donkeys or sandcastles and why?), or deep--and I'll answer honestly as I can! Then post this in your own LJ and see what kind of things people want to ask you! 1. What do you think of _____________ ? 2. When did you last ____________? 3. __________ or ___________ and why? 4. What did you ______________? 5. What's your favorite ______________? 6. How would you ______________? 7. Who would you most like to ________ ? Over at fangs_fur_fey, check out the Thursday interview with Melissa Marr ( melissa_writing. Cheers! Tags: contest, meme, writing
Spirits:  amused
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Happy birthday to astolat - may your day be fantastic! Major congratulations to my dear friend and fellow author, Nancy Pickard, who has been chose Malice Domestic Guest of Honor for 2009. w00t!! A second round of congratulations to Elaine Viets, another dear friend who will be Malice 2009's Toastmaster. Getting back to the normal work schedule was a bit of a challenge yesterday. I think I was still in "don't want to see people" mode, but I managed. I'm glad this weekend looks to be a quiet one. I've begun reading Louise Penny's 2nd book, Dead Cold (Canada/UK title; A Fatal Grace US title). There was a run on the book in the Malice dealer's room after her win, but I bought the UK edition from Sleuth of Baker Street, a favorite vendor. Sleuth is located in Toronto and I appreciate their presence at Malice, since they often carry books not available in the U.S. As with her first one, Louise P hooked me right away with the characters and setting. The books are set in a small village in Quebec and are the best of traditional mystery. Louise won the Agatha Award for Best Novel for this book and I'm looking forward to reading the third one. I've also got my copy of Personal Demons by stacia_kane. I'm saving it for the weekend, when I can concentrate and read it through. Darn work, anyway, getting in the way of good reading. ::g:: Off to the salt mines in a few. Hope everyone has a fabulous day! Tags: malice domestic, reading
Spirits:  chipper
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I'm home...in fact, I was home early afternoon on Sunday. The "doofus" part comes from having overreacted a bit to the pest control announcement from the building management and getting it straightened out by Sunday a.m. (turns out - not so much with the fumigating and more like, squirting some gel in the bathroom and kitchen - d'oh!) Appreciation and thanks to DA and Mary who graciously offered their room on Sunday night should I need it. Although it would have been fun, I was in dire need of solitude by Sunday noon. I adore my friends and enjoy the heck out of meeting fans and making new fans, but like Lindsay Davis said in the Sunday panel: writing is a solitary profession. Although I do have a day job, I find that being alone and quiet recharges me and I really needed that. Saturday at the convention was great. My panel: fabulous! Quite a few people complimented me on it afterwards and throughout the rest of the day. Kudos to my fellow panelists! Had a sort of picnic lunch with my publisher, John Betancourt, and some friends. B brought in sandwich makings, chips and fruit and the 4 of us sat in the hospitality room, ate and chatted for about an hour. Because of where we were sitting, I ended up winning a great basket o'goodies in the charity silent auction. It was nearing close of auction and, as a lark, I put my name down and bid up the final bid by $5. I won the basket. :) Got to chill in my room a bit later in the afternoon, with beledibabe, Jan Burke and Pat M. Then we went down to the banquet, which was quite lovely. Directly after the banquet, I went upstairs, got packed and was able to crash at a reasonable hour, which meant that Sunday was hassle free and I could get up and make a 7:30 breakfast date with SF and Dana Cameron. Got to hang out with Dana for a bit and talk about social networking (for a possible blog entry for later) and then went to a fabulous panel with all the GoHs. Then: home. Home is a great place to be. :) Monday, I spent lazing about, reading and napping. Today, it's off to the day job. Overall, Malice was a blast and quite successful for me. The samplers were a huge hit. I think we went through at least 300 of them, if not more. I met some lovely folks, including a woman who writes for the Dallas Morning News and may interview me. (how cool is that!?), and Michelle from the UK, a television producer who worked on one of the Torchwood eps. We spent a great deal of time in the book room squealing like the fangrrls we are. Also made a lovely new friend, Marie Claude from Quebec. All in all, a great con. Now, back to RL. :) Tags: malice domestic, rl
Spirits:  cheerful
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Friday @ Malice Domestic Early morning wake up after a loooong night of talking, laughing and reconnecting. Went down to brekkie before the others so I could collect the boxes of samplers sent by my publisher. The lovely shipping clerk, Jerome, brought them up for me and we trekked back up to my room to drop off 4 of the 5 boxes. After brekkie, I placed the samplers out on the author promo table. They look FABULOUS!! (pictures at 11...in other words, I am a doofus and forgot to take pics, so I'll do that today). Most of the day was spent back and forth from the hospitality room to the dealer's room (there's a GREAT t-shirt vendor that sells lovely SF/geek type shirts, too. I might have bought some.) beledibabe arrived late morning, so we got some great time in, had lunch and then she had to go off to the author speed-dating event. I didn't wish to participate so I just stayed at the restaurant chatting with Donna Andrews and J.B. Stanley. After lunch, back to the hospitality room to refresh the sampler. We were already nearly out of the first box, so I drafted Chris Freeburn to help me carry two more boxes down. After my duty was done, I ran in to the inestimable John Betancourt, chief of all that is Wildside Press. (My publishing house). He's really excited about Blood Bargain. So cool! Took off down to the bar to meet Dana Cameron for our sekrit assignment. She and Toni Kelner had been planning this for weeks - a bunch of us got a waitress apron, 5 sets of buttons and the directive to pass them out amongst the crowd. We became waitresses at either Merlotte's or Fangtasia (guess which one I chose? ::g::) . The buttons all celebrated Charlaine Harris, as she is GOH at Malice this year. Buttons included "Congratulations, Charlaine", "Merlotte's - Beer, Burgers, Blood", What Type Are You? True Blood; Come to Fangtasia for a bite" and "I Find Dead People". They were a HUGE hit! Charlaine was so surprised and touched. beledibabe and I passed out all our buttons by the end of the opening ceremonies. There's a 2nd contingent of "waitresses" due today. By this time, I was exhausted. Little sleep in the last few days and too much mental energy expended. Beledibabe, starrcat and our friend Sally and I took off to eat an early dinner at Lebanese Taverna, then came back to the hotel where I promptly went upstairs and passed out. I slept 11 hours. I feel loads better today! Oh - and one thing I forgot to mention - really cool - while we were doing the button duty outside the meeting room for the opening ceremonies, I ran into Ginjer Buchanan, who was so tickled by what we all were doing with Charlaine. John walked up then and we all three talked for a moment, John introduced me as his author, yadda yadda. Then he asked Ginjer if she'd seen the book sampler. She hadn't, so I gave her one. She flipped it open and skimmed the first couple of pages (chock full of GREAT blurbs from authors and reviews of Matters of the Blood. She smiled and said it looked good and that I'd gotten some good authors to give me blurbs. I thanked her, and John promptly told her she couldn't poach his author. Hee! It's so cool to have a publsher that is so much behind your work. Quite a change from the Asshat(tm). It's also quite a lovely feeling to have Ginjer (who is a VERY well-known and brilliant editor) say such nice things. Off to brekkie in a few and then my panel is at 10:30, followed by a signing at 11:30, then my duties here are DONE. I plan to spend the rest of the afternoon relaxing in the company of friends. Tonight is the Agatha Awards banquet. Hope all of you are having a fabulous weekend! Tags: malice domestic, promo
Spirits: cheerful
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Wherein names are dropped, liquor is consumed and many books/movies are pimped @ Malice Domestic Arrived about 3:45 p.m. Thursday afternoon. Immediately ran into old buddy P from San Antonio, and Margaret Maron. Checked in and reconvened at the bar with P, and a couple of other buds. Eventually Margaret came back and joined us, as well. starrcat eventually arrived with Jan Burke in tow. We were soon joined by Mary Saums, Mary Jane Maffini (a lovely Canadian writer), and several others. You know, the usual con roundtable. Went up to register and got our badge stuff, and squeed like a 12-yr-old fangrrl when I saw my buddies Elizabeth & Robert, who I haven't seen in YEARS! I met them at Moonlight Rising some 4 years ago or so and we've not been in the same place since. I had NO idea they were coming. Verena (Malice con chair and the friend that introduced us) kept it a secret to surprise me. So much greatness there! They were working the reg booth, so we're going to catch up later. Went back to the dinner/bar table and discussions ranged from word processing programs (I pimped Scrivener heavily); books (I pimped Personal Demons, Wicked Lovely and others in the UF genre) and of course, then the talk somehow slid over to fandom. Say, how we love our Canadian actors, Due South, etc. At one point, Mary Jane pipes up (during a discussion of Paul Gross' post-age-40 major hotness) - how about Colm Feore. I squeed and agreed with great enthusiasm. She immediately asked, "Have you seen Bon Cop, Bad Cop?" The major squeeing ensued and I think we've successfully pinmped the folks that were there into buying this movie. The dicussion then ranged to other Canadian films and I extolled the virtues of Wilby Wonderful and A Dog's Breakfast. The movie/book list (for all) is growing! I totally credited the lovely lamardeuse with having supplemented my film library with her great pimping posts. Retired to the bar for more yakking and reconnecting with my favorite people. Retired to our room about 11:00 and stayed up talking about books, Blood Bargain (starrkat just read the ms) and some ideas for Book 3. I think I finally crashed about 1 a.m. But my body is too used to waking up at 6:30 and so here I am, all bright, shiny and full of energy for the day. Today's agenda: -- breakfast with starrcat and Sally F and whomever else floats in -- retrieve the Juno samplers from the hotel mail (arrived yesterday, but I was too engrossed in bonding with my buds) -- place the samplers on the author giveaway/pimpng table in the hospitality room -- find out my banquet table number for tomorrow night -- hang out with buds -- hook up with beledibabe when she gets here -- peruse the book dealers offerings (must NOT buy many books) -- meet up with DC and TK at 4 for our SEKRIT event -- Attend opening reception at 5 (?) (note to self: check schedule) Oh, one cool thing - because it's the 20th anniversary, every attending author who was once an Agatha award nominee or winner got a ribbon to place on thier badge holder: Agatha VIP. Tres cool! I attached mine to my Wolfram and Hart badge holder that I'd bought at Moonlight Rising. starrcat and I haven't seen Supernatural yet b/c the hotel doesn't have CW. (how does that not surprise me?) In any case, I'm about to acquire it this a.m. so we're making plans to take an hour sometime today to sneak back to our room. ::g:: I think I'm going to have to go downstairs early and snag a coffee from the Starbucks kiosk before brekkie. starrcat is still snoozing and we're meeting the others at 8:30. That's an hour away. Off to caffeinate. So behind on LJ! Tags: con report, malice domestic
Spirits:  giddy
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hi, Internets!!! I'm still here, still kicking and very much alive. Just been a wee bit busy at the RL job. I'm still juggling 2 production teams. We've hired one Project Manager and are still working on #2. Things are insane, but handleable. :) This, however, really was a pretty awesome crazed week. First, we have Monday and the sinus headache of the damned. I got to work early, managed to tough it out until 10:45 a.m. and then succumbed. It's been rather muggy around here, though the temps are way cool and lovely outside, the inside temp at my apartment is extremely warm. Greenhouse effect FTW! Oh wait, that's good in WINTER. Not so great right now when I have no a/c yet (building usually flips the HVAC system over sometime at the end of April) and no way to open my 2 measly windows because of the ongoing and annoying brickwork. The windows are both sealed from the outside. Seeing as how I'm on the 10th floor, not so easy to just run out and unseal. ::g:: I've survived - thanks to Internet tricks (cold cold water soaked washcloth and a small electric fan) and the fact that it rained for a couple of days. Today was the height of OMFG you are going to be GONE for 2 work days, quick, can you look at this, send me a reply, tell me status of XX, omg, talk to me, please. Plus all sorts of fun and games with tech. I get stuff done, check in with da BossLady and head home to finish packing for Malice Domestic (I'm going to the hotel around 3 tomorrow). When I got to my door, I find a notice - hey, we're going to spray for bugs on Monday. Just an FYI and say, you can't be here when we do it. Say what? Monday? No frakin' way! That's my post-convention recuperation day. I was going to come home Sunday, pass out and laze about all day on Monday so I could go to work less con-fused. ::g:: Okay, no worries, I'll just update the hotel reservation and add one more day. Except, nope, no rooms left at con rate and so sorry, dude. Arrrgh. I've sent a plea out to a group of friends, some of whom might be staying an extra night, begging a bed. Hopefully, someone will come through. I so hate to do this last minute, but hey, had I had some notice, I might could have actually *planned* something! Sigh. Oh well, I'll figure something out. If all else fails, I'll just go to work and save my day off for another day. (Hey, universe, that would so be my *last* choice, 'k?) Book 3 - as yet untitled - is coming along nicely - that is, the pre-writing gathering of thoughts, of research, of planning and such. Since I'm spending the weekend in the company of some of my favorite writers, I'm hoping we'll get some time to do some idea-exchanging. Got to love cons! My Kindle is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Now to stop buying books (at least for a while). I've purchased about 20 books so far, some new items (John Adams, Small Favor by Jim Butcher) and bought e-copies of favorites for re-reading. Hope to start a great list of To Be Purchased soon. This is totally not going to replace my print library, but to allow me to supplement since I have such a small living space. In fact, my copy of stacia_kane's Personal Demons just arrived and I'm bringing it to the con with me. I hope I'll get a little reading time! I just realized this morning that I'm going to miss tomorrow night's episode of Supernatural, because the hotel does not have CW! EEEP!!!! I guess I'll have to be very careful around LJ when I do get to check in over the weekend to avoid spoilers. Oh well, perhaps I'll just stay in the bar and pretend it's not really on. ::g:: Hope everyone's week is less insane than mine and more fun! Oh yeah, ETA: Happy Birthday, William Shakespeare!! Tags: kindle, malice domestic, reading, rl
Spirits: cheerful
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
| |
Previous
ecstatic