Was slayed by baby vampires yesterday at Dragon*Con:
Arose from the dead today to the realization that Dragon*Con is over.
Had much fun. Had less sleep than I’ve ever had at a D*C (which is saying something). Did not win a Hugo but did get a lovely prezzie—gift certificates to Spa Sydell—from my D*C co-workers which made me go all smoffy and waaah-you-guys-loveyouall-waah!
More complete post to come.
Looong day and it’s only Thursday! Dragon*Con is *so* going to kick my ass this year.
Packing: haphazard. Sleep: insufficient. To-do list: sentient and growing.
And I’m off to Dragon*Con. The boys are still sleeping and will join me later, but I need to get on-site to finish the Thursday issue and start the print run.
Charge!
Unable to comprehend how Dragon*Con can be tomorrow. Haven’t even started packing and various logistics and complexities are piling up into a tragic dark comedy.
Continue reading
And we’re counting down to Dragon*Con. Updated the Daily Dragon website for 2010; sent out the second official staff email to my fantastic, fabulous, and forbearing DD worker bees; revved up the @Daily_Dragon Twitter engine; and am generally rapid-firing hamsters like a madwoman.
There will be no sleep. There will be no sanity. There will be only Zuul.
T minus 14 days.
Got my schedules for both Faerie Escape Atlanta, which is this weekend, and Dragon*Con (Sept. 3 – 6):
Faerie Escape
Dragon*Con
Hope to see folks!
And, now that I’m swamped to my eyeballs, I’ve decided to rev up The Stupid Novel effort again. Yep, I only seem to be able to write when I’ve got too many hamsters in the air. My brain hates me, and my muse is a sadistic harlot.
*Yes, that’s 6 o’clock in the morning. The time zone difference between Atlanta and Australia is going to slay me. But it’s not like I’d be able to sleep then anyway. Hell, I’m already losing sleep now, twitching about the Hugos.
Getting ready for the 2nd 2010 Dragon*Con staff meeting. The all-staff meeting begins at 4 (the directors meeting begins at 3). And this one’s at the Marriott, not the Hyatt. Hope to see folks there!
Taking a break from madly packing to look over my Nebula Weekend schedule.
Aside from the Atlantis shuttle launch on Friday morning/afternoon, the mass book signing is also slated for Friday at 6:00 PM at the Hilton. Check out the horde of us who’ll be there: Continue reading
Weekend was chok-full. fosteronfilm is working as a census taker—band-aid on our hemorrhaging finances and all—and he is neck-high in door-to-door interviews, so wasn’t able to accompany me for most of OutlantaCon. Fooie. But the folks at OutlantaCon took fabulous care of me; Edward deGruy, the Director of Guest Relations, is an absolute sweetheart and filled my ear with the most outrageous ego-booya throughout the weekend.
Panels were a mixed bag. I felt totally intimidated at my “Social Activism” panel. On top of being on the panel with Jessica Bair (co-chair of the Los Angeles Steering Community for the Human Rights Campaign) and Lee Martindale (amazing writer and editor and a leader in the Size Rights Movement), I ended up sitting next to Dr. Darieck Scott, who is not only a brilliant, celebrated author and literary professor at Berkeley, but is gorgeous to boot. I was treading water like a duck on speed to keep from going all “tee-hee-hee *blush* you’re cute tee-hee” whenever I was within ten feet of him.
And while I enjoyed my “Getting the Word OUT” panel, as it gave me a chance to get to know and catch up with my fellow panelists, Greg Herren, Edward deGruy, and ceciliatan, respectively, I shall best appreciate it for its cosmic irony, as we panelists outnumbered our audience.
But I did enjoy my “Beware of Homophobes, Homophobes Beware” panel. Thought it produced some interesting discussion and addressed subject matter I haven’t encountered at a panel before. Snaps go to neo_prodigy for his thoughtful questions and to Joseph McDermott for giving us a launch point with his opening question.
Was thrilled to see that David Steffen included “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” on his “Best of Escape Pod” top-ten list over at Diabolical Plots—at the #1 spot no less!
The morning after Day 40, and the atmosphere in my office is totally transformed. So peaceful, so quiet, so serene. ‘Course there’s hardly anyone here, but even so, it’s like a benevolent wind came and whisked away all the tension and anxiety and stress, leaving everyone blinking and grinning.
Although I am a little scared to open up my to-do list or bring up all the emails I’ve flagged as “needs response.”
In other news, I got my official guest approval letter from Dragon*Con the other day. I’ll again be wearing multiple hats at D*C this year. And OutlantaCon begins today. I’ll be at the opening ceremonies tonight. Hope to see folks there!
I like for the names I give my characters to be somehow meaningful to their nature or their role in the story. I often spend far too long researching etymologies and the meaning of names to find just the right one, although I also sometimes just use whatever strikes my fancy at the time.
In my current WiP, I have a character who is obsessive, driven to assuage an unappeasable intellectual hunger, and I came to the point of “he needs a name now” while in the middle of some good writing flow. So I didn’t want to pause to do my usual name deliberation. Often in circumstances like that, I just stick in “XXXX” and go back later and do a Find–>Replace on the appropriate holder text. But this time, the name “Esur” popped into my head, and it felt right. So Esur he became.
This morning, while I was groping for a synonym for “hungry,” thesaurus.com offered me “esurient.”
“Wha—?” sez I.
My vocabulary is fairly respectable, at least so sayeth all the standardized tests I’ve taken in my life, but this was a new word for me. Hopped out to etymonline.com and discovered that it’s from the Latin esurientem, the present participle of esurire, “to be hungry.”
Huh.
My Latin is nonexistent (to my enduring regret, I listened to my mother and took Russian in high school instead of Latin). So was this a cosmic coincidence or some odd linguistic quirk of my subconscious? I’m going with quirk. It’s cooler.
