Hamsters at the Gates

Yes, there has been a dearth of posts. The hamsters are at the gates, and they are bitey.

Dragon*Con is this week (GAH!), and the schedule changes—O the schedule changes. (Did I mention, “GAH!”?) Busy does not begin to describe it. I’ve let The Fix pretty much fall by the wayside this week and last. I’m hoping to publish a glut of reviews this week before the convention starts, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to squeeze in the time.

Various updates:

Hobkin is better, although he still has a bit of a limp. We’ve noticed that he limps less after walking around, so we’ve been trying to encourage him to move more—which is about as effective as one might expect. But he’s much better, which is a great relief.

dude_the flew in this weekend, and fosteronfilm immediately put him to work putting together bumpers, intros, and clips for the D*C Independent Film Festival. They were up all night and were still working when I woke up this morning (@5AM) trying to get aspect ratios to behave—and making various groaning and swearing noises. Poor Paul actually fell asleep wedged between two couch cushions with his laptop still encoding a clip.

Matthew’s birthday was last Friday. It was pretty low key. I made him a chocolate cream pie (his favorite) and got him a teragigabyte external hard drive, which he immediately put to film festival use.

I’ve got far fewer guest duties at Dragon*Con than last year, which is intentional; last year I was so busy and stressed out, I didn’t really enjoy the convention. I decided this year I wouldn’t over-schedule myself unto oblivion so I could try to have a little fun.

My schedule:
•Fri (8/29) Noon: Reprising my guest lecture for Ann Crispin’s Beginner Writers Workshop, “Marketing Short Fiction” Marietta (Hyatt).
•Sun (8/31) 5:30PM: “Writing for Small Presses and Magazines” with Mur Lafferty, Deborah Smith, and Lee Martindale, Manila/Singapore/Hong Kong (Hyatt).

And that’s it. Hallelujah! If anyone wants to swing by to say “hi,” I’ll likely be chained to my desk at Daily Dragon Headquarters. This year, we’ve moved to Chicago C-F (Exhibit Level) in the Hyatt.

Writing Stuff

New Words:
• Managed to get around 3K more words on Taijiya before I had to stop and devote myself to Dragon*Con prep, bringing my total count to 30.5K. Definitely not at zero draft, but at least I hit the 30K mark.

Received:
• 5-day Sale of “A Box of Spoons” to a new anthology project edited by Lee Harris (editor of Hub). Lee emailed me about a month ago inviting me to submit to one of two anthologies he’s editing that are coming out next year (in January and July). The publisher is a major one, although the specifics are still under wraps, and the pay is pro, so I’m verily stoked.
• Edits from Aeon of “Black Swan, White Swan” with a few requested tweaks. Last week. In the midst of Dragon*Con chaos. Somehow I managed to squeeze in the (very) minor rewrites and sent it off on Saturday. Very much looking forward to issue #15, which is due out any day now.