Category Archives: LJ

Best Horror of the Year: Volume 2 Honorable Mentions

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ellen-datlow has posted her honorable mention picks for Best Horror of the Year: Volume 2, and she gave nods to both “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” and “Within Your Soul I Sightless See.”

Shiny.

I find it interesting that “Sinner” has been described or categorized as both fantasy and horror as well as science fiction. Personally, I consider it to be science fiction, although it’s not like I take issue with it being classified as science-fantasy or horror SF. I’ve never been one to play the “what genre is it?” game or its first-cousin, the “that’s not such-and-such genre!” blood sport.

Genre labels are wibbly. That’s my line, and I’m sticking to it.

Thank Yous and Springtime Seasonal Affective Disorder

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Thanks to everyone for all your congrats for my Hugo nomination!

I’m thrilled beyond words. Literally. I keep trying to express how much being a Hugo nominee means to me, how awed I was as a young reader by the stories in the first Hugo Winners anthologies—you know the ones, edited by Isaac Asimov—and how they inspired me as a writer. And every time I try, it comes out sounding trite or inadequate. (I know, I know, some writer I am, huh?) So I’ll just say that I am honored, elated, and overjoyed, and also a bit incredulous, to be on this year’s Hugo ballot.

On a completely different subject, I’ve been wondering whether I suffer from SAD (seasonal affective disorder), but not the traditional kind that kicks off in winter. I think springtime may put me in the doldrums. These last few days in Atlanta have been gorgeous—warm, bright, sunny—and I’ve felt irascible, logy, and generally glum. But I noticed this morning, with it’s cloudy, dark, and gray skies, that I feel much better, downright upbeat.

Guess I shouldn’t be surprised that my mental equilibrium is in tune with my physiology (which I already knew was in agreement with my aesthetics), and that I find the sun oppressive on multiple levels.

Nebula Awards Weekend and Shuttle Launch…and Grand Jury Duty Conflict

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So I’m all registered to attend Nebula Weekend*, and the SFWA has set up VIP viewing passes for the Friday, May 14 Atlantis shuttle launch which I very much want to see. Yay.

However, I’m slated to do my civic duty as a grand jurist during May-June. I just checked the Fulton County jury duty site, and I realized that the Grand Jury meets on Tuesday and Friday, not Tuesday and Thursday as I had thought. Glargh!

Don’t know what to do. Last day for registering for the SFWA VIP shuttle viewing passes is tomorrow. And I’ve already had my jury duty postponed once. (I was originally slated to serve during January-February…right smack dab in the middle of the legislative session.) Don’t know if the powers that be will be amenable to another postponement. ‘Course the first time, I did request to have it postponed until July-Aug, and they only bumped it to May-June, so there might be a case I can still make.

Glargh (again)!

* And as a reminder, the voting deadline for the Nebula Awards is today! Final ballots are due by Tuesday, March 30th 23:59 PST. If you’re an active member of SFWA, please remember to cast your ballot!

News I Can’t Tell and News I Can

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Thankfully, yesterday was neither as long nor as grueling as I expected. Got home before 9:30. And, as an end of day pick-me-up, I received some amazing news.

Got it at work and just barely managed not to whoop out loud, but it was a close thing. Did babble it to my co-editors—after calling Matthew, of course; otherwise I would’ve gone ‘splody-boom at my desk. Unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to squee publicly about until next month.

So as not to be accused of being (too much of) a tease, here’s news I can tell: PodCastle asked me to narrate “Honored Guest” by Ellen Kushner for a forthcoming podcast. I read and adored this story when it was originally published in the Coyote Road anthology, so of course I said I’d be delighted to.

Sleepless Night

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Had a really bad night. Insomnia kicked in hard, worse than usual. My best and favorite remedy for sleeplessness has been snuggling Hobkin. He was the softest, warmest plush beastie to cuddle at night. Guess it should go without saying that I felt his absence particularly keenly as I tossed and turned. Ended up getting almost no sleep whatsoever, so now I’m exhausted and emotionally frail. Add to that the likelihood that we’re going to have a very late night under the gold dome, and we have a definite not-my-favorite-day day.

Crossover Day 2010 and Featured Special Guest of C. Dennis Moore

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The current legislative session calendar has Crossover Day (Day 30) as this Friday. Blargh. Crossover Day is the deadline for when bills have to pass at least one chamber or be dropped, and usually goes to midnight or later for the legislature and therefore us Office of Legislative Counsel folks. Gonna be a loooong Friday night.

Next week, they’ll be in session for a few days, and then they’re recessing again for another week. At this rate, we’re going to be in session ’till May. So not happy.

In other (better) news, cdennismoore featured me as a Special Guest on his website and had some very nice things to say .

Droid Gmail Error: Engaging My Google-fu

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This morning kept getting a force close “process com.google.process.gapps has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again” error on my Droid every time I tried to a launch the gmail app. Annoying and alarming.

Initial perusal of various Android forums suggested I do a hard wipe and reset to factory settings, the prospect of which triggered a prolonged (silent) wail of anguish. Decided not to do that and filed it into the “last ditch solution, to be exercised only in an excess of desperation and after every other solution has been attempted and failed” drawer. Kept digging and found folks suggesting I uninstall third-party apps one-by-one as one of them might be the culprit. Better than doing a factory reset, but striking me as a random, laborious, catch-all troubleshooting effort which, furthermore, made no sense since I haven’t loaded any new apps or upgraded any old apps lately. Filed that into the “to be tried if no better/more sensible alternative presents itself” and kept digging. Finally found someone suggesting that clearing the Droid’s gmail cache and gmail data might fix the problem. Now that tingged the “reasonable solution”-o-meter of my programmer sensibilities. Fingers crossed, I cleared both, rebooted, re-synced, and voila, no more scary force close error.

Whew.

Long story short, if folks either sent or are expecting an email from me this morning, it might’ve gotten lost in the gmail force close debacle. It might be wise to re-send any urgent emails or give me a nudge for reply.