Digging My Way Out of an Unplanned 5-day Weekend and 2 Honorable Mentions in YBFH 2008

Ended up taking Monday off from work as well due to the fuel shortage afflicting the Southeast. But happily, fosteronfilm went out during the early afternoon on Monday to brave the gas queues so that I might be able to get to work on Tuesday—and he waited for over an hour and was only able to purchase enough for half a tank due to rationing limits. But half a tank should last through this week, and every day that passes brings us closer to the end of this annoying situation.

So yup, five-day weekend. At least I only ended up taking a single vacation day for it; Friday was my scheduled 4×10 day off, and I took Monday as my 4×10 day for this week. But it was still not happy making, and I got very little accomplished.

For some reason, when I was sans day job, all my time at home was work time. If I was awake, I was in my library office working or on the couch working or brewing tea in order to stay awake so I could work more. That essentially meant I customarily worked 14+ hours a day, seven days a week—which isn’t as terrible and sweatshop as it sounds, as I’ve come to accept and embrace my workaholism.

But gradually, now that I’m solidly past my 2nd anniversary at the OLC, I’ve noticed that I’ve been reverting back to how I was during my cubicle monkey days. That is, when I’m home, I’m “off.” My motivation and drive to get anything done bottoms out, whether that work is writing, editing The Fix or the Daily Dragon, keeping up with various correspondences, or just about anything at all that isn’t fluff-recreational reading, brainless surfing, or vacuous movie/television watching. So five days at home is essentially five utterly unproductive days. I actually woke up in a cold sweat Tuesday, freaked out about how many hamsters had gotten fat, bitey, and dropped on my foot in those five days.

Grumf.

Writing Stuff

Received a note from mroctober sharing the kudos for So Fey* from Kelly Link and Gavin Grant in their write-up in the recently published The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2008:

“Steve Berman’s So Fey: Queer Fairy Fictions (Haworth) was one of the stronger themed anthologies of the year. Favorite stories include Holly Black’s heartbreaking ‘The Coat of Stars’ and Eugie Foster’s ‘Year of the Fox,’ as well as work by Craig Laurence Gidney and Laurie J. Marks.”

Of course, I immediately (well, after some delighted squeeing) surfed off to check out whether “Year of the Fox”** had gotten an Honorable Mention (in addition to being mentioned, um, honorably) and was ecstatic to see that yes it had, and also, so had “The Music Company” (published in issue #26 of Hub).

Verily, there was more squeeing.

* The first print run of So Fey from Haworth Press sold out, and the anthology is being reprinted by Prime Books—which reprint, according to Amazon.com, is due out late November.
** “Year of the Fox” will also be in my forthcoming collection from Norilana, Returning My Sister’s Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice, coming out in March.