Elder God minions and Permanent Account

So this morning I was awakened before my alarm by what sounded like minions of the Elder Gods in our backyard announcing the imminent destruction of the universe.

As it turns out, it was only a couple of cats–a yellow striped kitty who I’ve never seen before and a spotted tawny and cream plumpy who is a regular visitor–either mating or fighting. I’m not sure which activity I’d feel better about, actually. If mating, then they’re ferals making more ferals and increasing the homeless feline population. Whereas fighting cats often inflict grievous wounds upon each other, and I don’t want either of the Elder God minions/kitties to be hurt.

Zounds, but they were loud.

But, in a wondrous turnaround of my morning, since I was awake, I booted my laptop. Figured I would check my email since I wasn’t getting back to sleep. And I discovered that teflaime, in what can only be described as a munificent and bountiful act, has gifted me with a Permanent LiveJournal account! *Squee!*

I knew that the LJ folks were having another Permanent Account sale, and I’d pressed my nose wistfully against the window of the “buy” page, but didn’t dream I’d get one. Huge *smooches* to teflaime!

I foresee that this weekend will herald much new icon making . . .

Writing Stuff

This week, I had three “author’s notes” pieces to write:
– “Beauty’s Folly” in the forthcoming issue of OSC’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. The editor, Edmund Schubert, does an ongoing series of author essays on his blog. This, incidentally, is the only one I managed to finish.
– “Li T’ien and the Dragon Nian” for the forthcoming Black Dragon, White Dragon anthology.
– “Honor is a Game Mortals Play” in Heroes In Training for a promo that jimhines is doing.

While I enjoy writing these sorts of mini-essays and think they’re great publicity, I also never know what to say. I get the same deer-in-headlights feel when folks ask me “where do you get your inspiration?” at conventions. I keep thinking I ought to having something erudite and/or droll to say, and instead, I feel like what I come up with is along the lines of, “well, I was staring at the blank screen of my computer, and it occurred to me that I should write something . . . ”

On a tangential segue, once, Ann Crispin suggested to me (after I hemmed and stuttered out a dull and rambling summary of the novel I was working on at the time) that I come up with an “elevator pitch” for major projects. Sort of a one or two sentence synopsis that I could blurt out in a seemingly off-the-cuff manner should I get the unforeseen opportunity to pitch a project in person to a publisher/editor. That led me to speculate whether I ought to come up with a series of quippy sound byte answers to the most common writerly questions I get like the aforementioned “inspiration, where?” one. ‘Course, the problem there is that my mind fuzzes out when I’m in a spotlight speaking situation. I’d undoubtedly never remember them.

Yup. When it comes to speaking, I verily suck. Wish I could carry around one of those portable scrolling marquees with the multiple programmable phrases. I could just flash my pre-composed witty repartee in blinking red lights.

Published:
– “The Tanuki-Kettle” in the July issue of Cricket. I just love what the Cricket folks do with my stories. The illustrations are by Taeeun Yoo, and I squeed out loud when I saw how she’d imagined the tanuki-kettle:

New Words:
– 700 on my Writing for Young Readers column. Hoping to double-check my references and have that formatted and to ye olde editor this weekend.