I need to start writing them down again, regularly.

I dreamt about zombies last night. Also, a group of people who had no souls, and therefore could not die. You could tell who didn't have a soul by using some kind of infrared light on the bottoms of their feet. (Clearly, your sole is where your soul ought to be attached. My subconscious is plugging in puns now?)

Every time the other kinds of zombies were around, there was this song playing... Vacation, by The Go-Gos. Yeah. I don't know why.

In some other dream, I was somewhere... frustrated? E. was there. We were talking, mostly me just kind of... talking to him about frustrations, worries, things not going well... Then there was leaning in, and kissing. Stopping me from going on. No other dreams are as poignant or sad for me as those.

I will have to go through my IM logs for some others. (One involved my boyfriend from when I was 14, meeting him again. And jealous boys. More weirdly sentimental, etc.)

In other news, which probably spawned last night's sentimental 'drivel'; Not eating or sleeping well. Just... don't feel like it. It's after 2am and time for me to put myself to bed.

...is that I drop into writer mode 'waaaay too easy, and I get enough sleep. Writer mode + awake + day-job = Oh, so, not a good idea. I'll try to keep my head down and just Enter Data.

Today's labors included laundry, putting together the InfoDump, doing a lot of thinking and a little bit of writing. Thirty-two hundred words on the weekend isn't actually that bad, given all the balls that need to get into the air at the beginning of this book. I've sort of been creeping along, trying to introduce characters and backstory enough so that the inevitable reader who has never seen a Liaden book will get enough of the game-rules for the story to make sense to them, while not boring continuing readers to distraction.

It's been a tightrope-dance, but I do believe I'm through the worst of it and can commence in with Blowing Things Up(TM), which is always a relief.

Chores yet to do include washing the dishes, so I guess I'd better get with the program.

Everybody ready for Monday?

Progress on Ghost Ship

9051 / 100000

In Beautiful Theory, there are about a dozen Liaden Universe(R) short stories available through the Sony Ebook Store. I have just spent half-an-hour on the site and cannot prove that this is so. My hope was for an URL that I could send people to. Can someone more tech-savvy than I am find this for me?

Abundant Spanish Aunts.

Tonight was a good night.

A couple days ago janni posted a wise and reasonable opinion on the value of readers having space to talk candidly about books with other readers, without being afraid that the writer will be looking over their shoulder.

I agree with much, and possibly all, of this post. One of the things I miss is being able to talk candidly about books here in my own blog. Alas, experience has shown that I hurt the feelings of people I know when I do that, so I don't. Readers who don't know A Lot of science fiction and fantasy writers, but who read a lot of books of which they have opinions, shouldn't have that problem, particularly.

We all know not to respond to nasty reviews -- even those which are gratuitously and specifically mean to the author -- because that's 'way more trouble than anyone wants.

But.

What about the folks who make the. . .effort, I suppose it is, to write an email to a particular author specifically to complain about an aspect of the writer's work? I'm not, note, talking about readers who want to know What Happens Next (though, really, I'm not going to tell you in an email; that's what books are for) or who have questions about plot, world building or character. All of those communications express interest and involvement in our work -- and that's a Good Thing in my view.

What I'm talking about are the folks who write to say that they find the fact that Priscilla goes topless in the privacy of her own home offensive. Or need to share that they dislike Miri because she has bad grammar. Or who are compelled to say that their least favorite books are those dealing with Val Con, because they're so violent. Clearly, these are opinions held by these readers, but am I the reasonable recipient?

My inclination has been to throw away communications like the above, unread. Certainly, an honest response is not appropriate in such cases (see "We all know not to respond to nasty reviews..." above), and it would seem that we have a case of, "If it sounds like a griefer, and disrupts like a griefer, it's a griefer."

Does anybody else get these sorts of emails? How do you deal with them?


Progress on Ghost Ship

5799 / 100000

Ours was okay, only I wish the cooking instructions on our turkey loaf had been more accurate. After following them to the letter, Mom cut into the turkey only to find a frozen block of pink ice sitting in the middle. (Next year we're deep-frying that baby, threat of house-shattering-hot-oil-explosions be damned.)

I managed to set up my BJDs into something of a charming Christmas Tableau:



Rufus' trumpet is nothing more than a plastic ornament that just happened to have the right finish and be the right size for him. It was the best 50 cents I ever spent at the Valu-Thrift.









I have managed to post a few of the ebay auctions I hope to post this month in time for the holidays. (I only hope people haven't run out of spending money by now.) I have some more items to post and am hoping to get that done before the weekend ends so I can get back to my regular projects.

EDIT: Some possible good news in my future that may help in the promotion of my website. (Not that you can SEE my website half the time since my new webserver likes to randomly cut out. I've been getting a lot of e-mails from people asking where my online tutorials went since they're unable to find them. Sorry about this. If you're having trouble getting my pages to load, come back in a few minutes and try again. That will hopefully fix them.) With the advent of the new FMA series, I really have to revamp my Automail tutorial. (I'm hoping I can get my webcam to work as I want to make a few new armor construction videos. I switched operating system recently so there's a good chance my webcam WON'T make my computer go kerblooey next time I plug it in.)

White opera gloves! Why are they so hard to find this time of year? I swear, they're abundant until right after Halloween, at which point every department, boutique and bridal store in the nation socks them away in some dark eldritch corner of the universe to be brought out again only during Prom Season. (Sure I could order a pair from ebay, but I need them now. NOW! *Sigh.*)

We're back! Did you miss us?

We realized at the ninth hour that we were both strung out from working too hard and too much, and that adding the making of Thanksgiving Dinner to that was going to be More Work rather than a pleasant break. That being realized, we went looking for a restaurant taking reservations for Thanksgiving Dinner and found -- zip, zero, none, in Waterville. There were, however, four restaurants open on t'day for dinner in the vicinity of Old Orchard Beach. So! Having also realized that we had worked right through our anniversary, we made dinner reservations -- snagging the last two places at the table -- at the Grand Beach Inn Cafe, and found ocean front accommodations at the Sea Cliff House.

It was foggy, cool and intermittently rainy at the ocean. We did the Wednesday evening dinner at JJs Too, one of our Usual Places, and tarried to listen to the live music. Thursday, we walked, napped, did some story planning, played cards, made it to dinner (which was splendid) on time, and in general had a good rest. Yesterday morning, the nor'easter's fingers had just crept over the dunes, and we drove home in alternating bands of heavy and not-so-heavy rain. Here, the rain was heavy and wind-driven on the overnight, and has settled in to merely heavy this morning.

The cats were glad to see us; Hexampuma told us a story about the people who used to live here, who went away one day and Never Came Back, and snuggled into my lap. Mozart stretched out on the dining room table while I got my computer back online, rested his chin on my arm and purred. Scrabble had paperwork for us to go over -- but allowed as how it could wait until after she had been brushed, and the food bowls replenished.

Today is a writing day -- and tomorrow, too. I have looked at my email (of which more, possibly, later), but -- today is a writing day, and tomorrow, too.

Those who celebrate T'day -- how'd it go this year?

Everybody -- what's on deck for your weekend?

Black Friday madness arrives! From now through Nov. 27th at midnight central USA time, everything in the shop is 25% off. EVERYTHING! Buy it now or set up a layaway plan. Wait for an adjusted invoice or get refunded the difference back!

Etsy Buy Handmade Aranel

I am taking the liberty positng this everywhere I can because this is potentially a big breakthrough for mydaughter's Sarah's band "Mustang Sally!"

I am copying the email Sarah wrote to me. The upshot is, the band's single is the "new band free download of the week" and what happens to the band next hinges on how many people download the song. So if you can download it AND pass the info along--let's see if we can get this viral web promotion to work!

THANK YOU!
Betty

Hi everybody,

Pardon a moment of shameless self-promotion, but... Mustang Sally is
appearing in the Dec. 7th issue of Country Weekly Magazine, which is
available in stores and newsstands now! We're very excited about this,
as it is our first appearance in a national magazine.

Part of what Country Weekly is offering is a free download of our single, "C'Mon
DJ", from their website. http://www.countryweekly.com/freemusic
We are asking everyone to please download our song, because if we can
show Country Weekly that our fans are wonderful, brilliant, and most
importantly numerous, they will do a feature article on us sometime in
the spring.

Our song will only be available to download until Dec.14th, so act quickly,
please and thank you. And really, we're asking
you to get something for free while looking at a picture of pretty
girls. What's not to love?

And while you are recovering from your fabulous Thanksgiving dinner
and procrastinating about doing the dishes, take a moment and check
out our music video on YouTube- www.youtube.com/mustangsallyband -
again, the more folks who watch it, the quicker the powers that be at
CMT will perk up their ears and pay attention.

Thank you for giving us a moment of your Thanksgiving day. Have a
beautiful holiday, and may all your turkeys be tender and juicy.

Much love,
Sarah and the Mustang Sally crew

I had hoped to wait until I'd finished a few more projects, but ebay decided to have a special today whereby it allowed you to post 5 auctions with no insertion fees. So I've posted a few items here:

http://shop.ebay.com/aa_chan/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p4340

(It was tough to do, what with me being down at my parent's house and all of my images and html editing software at home on my computer, so I'll try to polish up the auctions once I get back. If you have any questions about the items I'm offering, please let me know at dietzt@cloudnet.com.) Hope everybody has a happy holiday!