suricattus

"I acknowledge that the gains we have made with the health care plan are a strong and valid first step towards reclaiming our place as a First World nation. However, as a woman who believes nobody has the right to take away my freedom of choice, the Stupak amendment is not acceptable.

And I say to those who tell me to wait, that it will be overturned, that I do NOT trust in the same organizations that said this was acceptable to reverse it later. Blind faith in anyone can get you killed -- be it by a bullet, or a wire hanger."

Brain is still whirring away on many thinky things, so I am distracting the conscious brain with a meme via EBear:

( three things )

Also: If (big big if) I were to find myself filling in the empty moments of my day by working on something that would, possibly, be something that looked like Leverage fic... who would want in on the filter for that? I'm not saying it would happen, just curious to see who'd be interested it it DID happen...

off a conversation debg and I were having, and since she posted first... the last lines of my published Cosa Nostradamus books (I'd do the other books, but I'd have to go dig them out and I'm laaaazy) and a few others that were on the bookcase. And yes, I know. Some of them are the last two sentences. Pbbbtthht.
--------------------


"They weren't bad, as humans went. He rather thought he might keep them." (STAYING DEAD)

"But there are things stirring now, things that would lead me to believe that a coalition of sectors might be to our mutual benefit..." (CURSE THE DARK)

"They'd fight -- tomorrow. Today, there was art to display." (BRING IT ON)

"So long as you're safe." (BURNING BRIDGES)

(aside: BURNING BRIDGES may be the most romantic book I've ever written. And there's barely any actual romance in it)

"His startled laughter was the best sound she had heard in months." (FREE FALL)

( potential spoilers ) (BLOOD FROM STONE)

I am, btw, damned amused that the last line of the first book and the last line of the sixth book tie together both thematically and emotionally. In fact, the sixth book picks up and ties in a neat little bow things I set in motion in that first book. Of course I did it on purpose. *nods firmly* Totally on purpose, planned out, all that. Uh-huh....


"When Merlin came back, everything was going to change for her." (GRAIL QUEST: THE CAMELOT CURSE)

"But nobody heard her." (GRAIL QUEST: MORGAIN'S REVENGE)

"And, in the window of her bed chamber, a small owl clucked mournfully, then spread its sawdust-stuffed wings and flew away." (GRAIL QUEST: THE SHADOW COMPANION)

"And the line between the two is often merely the width of interpretation." (P:TL: THE SHADOWS BETWEEN)

"And somewhere in the non-distance of time, she felt a vaguely feline, powerful purr of approval." (THE NIGHT SERPENT)

"Laughing, a book tucked carefully under her arm, Buffy obeyed." (BTVS: DEEP WATER)

"And, as the Observer would admit to Sam much later, he had never seen his friend make a more beautiful Leap -- a description that had little to do with the display that he alone had witnessed." (QUANTUM LEAP: DOUBLE OR NOTHING)


ETA: and, for those of you who want a weeeee taste, the first line (sort of) from FLESH & FIRE:

"In the hills of southern Iaja, thunder had rolled through the night before, but no rain accompanied it, and the slaves were at work in the vineyards soon after sunrise."

There was, as it turns out, no writing done today. A lot of cleaning and furniture-rearranging, though. My windows were all open and the music was blasting and hey, it's either Spring at last, or it's going to snow all week. Who knows. Welcome to February.

To amuse you: I have discovered a drawback to the "note" function on my phone. The only way I've figured how to save it is to set it to 'remind' me. Which isn't a bad thing...except I am also a meerkat of little short-term memory. So when I get a notification this afternoon that reads "fine, call me a whore" my first thought was "WTF? Who did I piss off now?"

Then I remembered that was the start of the note I'd made yesterday, off a discussion of a UK newspaper calling romance writers whores. My phone was just reminding me I'd wanted to do something with that quote.

Much relieved.

More entertainment:

from neadods: Comment to this post and I will give you five subjects/things I associate with you. Then post this to your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.

My five:

New York City
Wine Maven
Foodie
International Travel
Publishing


( and away I go... )

Having words with the felines this morning and I realized that "furry son of a bitch" really didn't work. What is a breeding cat called? Oh, a queen. Right. Well, that explains a lot, dunnit?

Back to work this morning, fortified with bagels and coffee. The apartment is unbelievably messy, but we're inching along toward deadline. But first, a few items:

stephen_dedman tagged me with ( the interview meme )


In the world outside, the Catholic Church is getting tighter, as Pope Benedict XVI revoked the excommunications of four schismatic bishops, including one whose comments denying the Holocaust have provoked outrage. Way to go, Bennie. Bring back that Old Time Religion. You're already advocating women-as-chattel-of-man, so what's next, forced conversions* and the stoning of non-believers? News flash: it's not the umpteenth century more. Going small-and-hardcore isn't going to win you any Crusades, and the wealthy aren't tithing their estates to you.....

But while I'll be watching Bennie and his extreme right-wing adherents carefully, I refuse to let it dim my mood. As I said to a friend overseas, there is a sense of 'we may survive' in the air here now. It won't last, but the lifting of the Bush malaise has been just amazing to feel, like knowing that the class bully and his cohort have been shipped off, at long last, to reform school....
--------------------------

Dinner last night was extremely good, and deadly easy: Soak flounder fillet in teriyaki sauce and brown sugar and a dash of sesame oil. Heat skillet. Brown two cloves of garlic and a scattering of sesame seeds in safflower oil. Slide fillet into pan, cook over medium heat until flesh flakes easily. Plate and quickly cook string beans in same pan until they turn a more brilliant green. Nom nom nom. Boomer approved; the gonif tried to take it right off my plate.

I will not be having haggis tonight however, piped in or no. I had some on New Year's Day (no piper) an that's enough for the year.




*apparently, part of the recent concessions from the Church have included considering a Good Friday prayer calling for the conversion of Jews. I'm sure that will make many people soil themselves in ecstasy. Pagans and other-believers, this is your wakeup call; we may be the favored targets, but you're on the list too, I'm sure....

If The Game were to be restarted for the holidays, would you be interested in playing?


EtA: Oh dear lord. I've been reading the archives of the first Game, and I think we invented cracktastic.


And because everyone else is jumping off the bridge...
( Which creature of the night are you? )

earlier I claimed: Number of books sold: 17 (novels), 1 (short story collection), edited anthology: 2

I sit corrected:

6 Retriever novels
3 PSI novels
3 Grail Quest novels (YA)
3 Vineart novels
2 Buffy tie-ins

and

3 "Anna Leonard" paranormal romances
1 "L.A. Liverakos" tie-in (Poltergeist: The Legacy)

for a total of 21 novels sold.

Huh.

I'm still behind Catie on count-to-age ratio. Gotta get cracking...

Current Status as of this morning:

HARD MAGIC revisions: underway
"Strong Earth": underway, if sticky
VINEART 1 polish: pending (Kiki? were you the one who wanted to read this? sing out, if so...)
PACK OF LIES: pending, very very impatiently
-------------------------------------

And a look back, taken from rolanni, constructed by autopope, and turned into the wild with permission to use. All ages approximate, because I swear I don't remember ages, just events....

* Age when I decided I wanted to be a writer: 8-ish. Although I knew I was going to be an editor, too. Focused, moi?

* Age when I "wrote" my first story: 4, according to family legend (and my teacher at the time was unnerved because it had a beginning, a middle, and an ending, something preschoolers weren't supposed to quite grok. My parents, again according to legend, laughed and sighed simultaneously, knowing What Was To Come.

* Age when I got my hands on a typewriter: hrmmm.... I was using my mom's by the time I was 10 or so... I never got my own, although I think I had 80% ownership by the time I moved on to a computer...

* Age when I wrote my first novel: 12 or so. I still remember it. It was much to cringe over.

* Novels written between age 4 and age 34: er.... six? Maybe seven. How do we count the co-written ones?

* Age when I first submitted a short story to a magazine: 25 (it sold)

* Thickness of file of rejection slips prior to first story sale: See above. Don't hate me, I've gotten plenty since then.

* Age when I sold my first short story: 25

* Age when I first came close to selling a novel: Near-misses, like near-convictions, don't count. Especially since it eventually sold.

* Age when I killed my first market: 31

* Age when I was first told I had no talent (by an editor): 30

* Age I was first told I had no talent (by a reader): 28

* Age when I first sold a non-fiction book: 33

* Age when I first sold a poem: 36

* Age when I next wrote a saleable novel: Original, not tie-in? 34

* Age when that novel was published: 36

* Age when the second saleable novel finally sold: 34 (multi-book deal)

* Age when a work was first shortlisted for a Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy or Stoker award: Hah. And again I say, hah.

* Age when the second saleable novel came out: 37

* Age when the third saleable novel came out: 38

* Age when the fourth saleable novel came out: 39

* Age when I first won a Hugo award: See above re: awards. If they'd had the long-form editorial Hugo back then I might have had a shot. Not that I'm bitter.. oh wait, yeah, I am.

* Age when I finally shut down the day-job and became a full-time novelist: 36

* Age when the money coming in matched/exceeded my previous employment: 40 [note: past results are no guarantee of future income. The life of a freelancer is variable. Oh yeah]

* Age when I returned to the day-job because of economic implosion: not yet, but the resume remains polished.

* Age now: 41

* Number of books sold: 17 (novels), 1 (short story collection), edited anthology: 2

* Number of titles in print: 13 (one way or another)

* Number of titles fallen out of print: 3 tie-ins, 1 YA, 1 original (although they swear it's temporary)

*Consider this an LJ-meme: if you write professionally, feel free to post your own equivalent of this list. (Obviously you'll need to customize it to track your career path -- but you get the idea.)*

If you saw ME in a police car, what would you think I got arrested for?


Meanwhile, despite the fact that I'm supposed to be All Book, All the Time until this damn thing is Done, a phrase tagged my brain, and I thought "huh. that's a title." I wrote it down.

I wrote the opening line.

I wrote the opening paragraph.

I realized it was actually the penultimate paragraph, and wrote the final line.

Now I have go go figure out the beginning (got it) and middle of the damn story.

Damn it....

(not that I mind the fact that my brain has apparently decided to finally return to work. But must it do so with such... vigor?)

Wow. Um, I guess I know more than I thought? (it helps that I've seen a lot of these in person because I took a grand total of one actual art course in my entire life....[stage design counted toward my requirement but wasn't really Art as such]).

Your result for The Famous (and Not So Famous) Art Quiz...

Art History Major

94% Artiste!

Take The Famous (and Not So Famous) Art Quiz at HelloQuizzy

--------------
Freelance project landed. I now have revisions [hard magic], copy-edit [blood from stone], editing [freelance]and a copy job [freelance] on my plate. Nom nom, nom. And I leave for Seattle on Tuesday. [flails] Thankfully, the due dates are staggered, so I won't be.

New keyboard a little stiffer than the old one, but actually having an s key that works 100% of the time is making me happy. Also, got to take Mei-Chan out for a walk yesterday and she was such a good girl (except for the nom-noming of every dead leaf she could find). She still hasn't quite accepted "walk walk walk" rather than "walk stop sit sniff walk a little BOUNCE!" but the fact that people stop on the street to exclaim over her (jaded New Yorkers are still suckers for cute puppies) makes her day.

and, on that topic, via m'sister Sue: ( Subject: Dog food diet )

* I make small pots -- only 2-3 cups per. But still...

As I head off for a weekend of offline activity, I leave you with this:

You can tell a lot about a person by what they keep on-hand to read when they may be trapped unexpectedly. So come on, fess up: what's on-hand for the browsing in your bathroom?

Me? The most current Wine Spectator and Bon Appetit, and a Lands' End catalog (clearly, this i the only time I get to read magazines. My New York magazines just pile up, unread)

(My parents, I noted recently, have a Health Newsletter, the most recent update from The Asia Society, and real estate pron. Admit it, we all love real estate pron. Especially glossy-finish Manhattan real estate pron).

EtA: and, for those of you who are in more of a LOL mindset -- ( caption this! )

Worldly Things:

-The phrase "my friends" needs to be banned from politics. Immediately.
-Tom Brokow is never allowed to moderate anything again. He was about as effective as a crossing guard in a stampede, and twice as flat while still being intrusive.
-Whatever is happening with the economy, the rules are changing. It would make sense for everyone to pay attention and hold on with as little panic as they can manage.

Right. Moving on. Yesterday was a useful lunch with Madame Agent, then a useful few hours at Starbucks with my manuscript and red pen and probably too much caffeine, and then a totally un-useful but fun few hours at [name redacted to protect my fave wine bar from being overrun].

Non-Worldy Things: And it is Yom Kippur. I missed kol nidre services and that made me sad. Kol nidre is possibly the most beautiful (if controversial) thing religion ever created. ( [cut for small religious history lesson] )

On Rosh Hashanna we ask to be forgiven trespasses against others, and forgive them against ourselves. On Yom Kippur we ask of god the same forgiveness, and if asked in good faith, s/he grants it.

Yeah, I don't believe in god, as such. There is still something There, and today is the day I try to make my peace with it, and myself. Fasting, as much as my body resents it (fasting and hypoglycemia do not mix well) is my way of focusing my mind and soul on the question: am I calm and accepting/forgiving enough to have the Universe be calm and accepting/forgiving of me?

I am thankful for services broadcast on the internet. Next year, having moved into a neighborhood where there are many congregations who would welcome me, I will do better.

And, for those of you for whom this is just another day, ( the alphabet meme: )

Take a picture of yourself right now.
don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture.
post that picture with NO editing.
post these instructions with your picture.


FYI, this was taken before caffeine. You SURE you wanna look?


EtA: alas, that I didn't see this meme before I went out last night. I was clean and well-dressed and everything!







And now the coffee is ready and I feel the editorial lash coming down...

Brain dead and wanting only to crash, but you know I had to do this one...


1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

( oh come on, I thought this was supposed to be a challenge? )