stillsostrange

Good morning, LiveJournal! Happy 2016!

My website has been languishing with server woes for some time now, so my scant updates will be split between here and Patreon for a while.

2015 was a good year. At the end of 2014 I moved in with my partner and his roommates; this spring we moved out of a cramped apartment on the 3rd floor into a very lovely house in Austin. This summer I got my ass in gear on The Poison Court--and, with the help of Patreon, was able to scale my hours back at the used book mines. I didn't type The End in 2015, but I can see it from my couch now.

We spent Christmas in New Orleans, which was delightful. Eventually I'll finish sorting through our pictures.

And of course, Dreams of Shreds & Tatters was released this year, and the Necromancer Chronicles finally earned out.

Books read:

1. Dark Places - Gillian Flynn
2. Red Delicious - Kathleen Tierney/Caitlin R. Kiernan
3. The English Girl - Daniel Silva
4. Critical Space - Greg Rucka
5. Foreigner - C.J. Cherryh (reread)
6. Invader - C.J. Cherryh
7. Dark Dance - Tanith Lee (reread)
8. Inheritor - C.J. Cherryh
9. Precursor - C.J. Cherryh
10. Ancillary Justice - Anne Leckie
11. Cocaine Blues - Kerry Greenwood
12. Defender - C.J. Cherryh
13. Explorer - C.J. Cherryh
14. Hellboy, a volume whose title currently escapes me - Mike Mignola
15. Hellboy: The Troll Witch and Others - Mike Mignola
16. The Wicked + the Divine: The Faust Act - Kieron Gillen
17. Destroyer - C.J. Cherryh
18. Pretender - C.J. Cherryh
19. The Hellbound Heart - Clive Barker
20. Deliverer - C.J. Cherryh
21. Conspirator - C.J. Cherryh
22. Deceiver - C.J. Cherryh
23. Betrayer - C.J. Cherryh
24. Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts - Orrin Grey
25. Ancillary Sword - Anne Leckie
26. Protector - C.J. Cherryh*
27. The Stone In The Skull - Elizabeth Bear (in draft)

My favorite book of the year was definitely Painted Monsters.


* You may notice I skipped the 13th book. That happened by accident, but having finished the 14th, I just can't bring myself to go back. Perhaps someday.

Things I have done today include:

Taken Agent J to therapy.
Returned her to school.
Gone to the store.
Made an appointment to have a corgi groomed.
Got an oil change.
Registered for Warrior Dash.
Poked Poison Court and made some notes.
Done three loads of laundry. (At once. I'm sorry--I'm that asshole today.)
Walked to the grocery store.
Started borscht, to deal with my farmshare beet problem.

Now I fall over for a bit, but in a few minutes I'll get up, put my laundry away, and clean up the beet crime scene in the kitchen. At some point after that I will eat borscht, put on my Pogues shirt, and go out for a drink. Because I deserve it.

A somewhat productive week. I made progress on "Snakebit," which has been languishing unfinished for a year since the last time I made progress on it, and even longer before that. When it's finished I need to turn my attention to either "Flood" or "Waiting For The Train," since novels love me not. I also need to find a market for the ghoul-smut sestina, which has been lying around for far too long.

I also have a referral for physical therapy now. We'll see what that does for my knee. Sadly, I think it's too late to hope for the half marathon in March. But I already have my Warrior Dash registration, by god, and dash it I shall.

And now, on to the inanity of the survey.

50. Have you ever saved someone's life or had your life saved?

In the intricate web of causality way, probably. In a dramatic direct intervention way, no.

51. Make up a definition for the following silly words...

No. I am too much on my dignity today, meme.

52. What was the last thing you made with your own hands?

I assume we're not counting books, no matter how they make my wrists hurt. I haven't made jewelry in a long time, sadly. I helped assemble the Gothtopus, and made the (tragically underfeathered) wings for my griffin costume. Or perhaps the cookies I baked to bribe a coworker.

53. What was your favorite toy as a child?

I can't remember a single favorite, but it was probably something She-Ra related.

54. How many TV’s are in your house?

Two.

55. What is your favorite thing to do outside?

Climbing, followed closely by hiking and swimming.

56. How do you feel when you see a rainbow?

Grateful that we've had any rain.

57. Have you ever dreamt a dream that came true?

In a symbolic sense, yes. And a few that were just that boring.

58. Have you ever been to a psychic/tarot reader?

I had a tarot reading on New Year's Day. It gave me good advice.

59. What is your idea of paradise?

A dancefloor.

Hah, found a meme! I'm swiping the 5,000 question survey thingy from jennythe_reader, at least until it can no longer hold my interest.

1. Who are you?

Amanda. I'm a fantasy writer, a goth, a recent mom, and--lately--something like an athlete.

2. What are the 3 most important things everyone should know about you?

I suffer from Resting Bitch-Face Syndrome. Don't take it personally. Unless you're being a dick, and then I really am glaring at you. I'm sure other important things will reveal themselves after more questions.

3. When you aren't filling out 5,000 question surveys like this one what are you doing?

Writing, being bothered by cats, keeping children alive, working at a bookstore, dancing, or possibly climbing rocks. Notice how housecleaning doesn't rank very high on that list.

4. List your classes in school from the ones you like the most to the ones you like the least (or if you are out of school, think of the classes you did like and didn't like at the time).

I enjoyed enough lit classes to earn my degree. Linguistics and German were also a lot of fun, but I loved Physical Anthropology and Forensics unreasonably. I had such a crush on that prof. Math was an ordeal which I survived.

5. What is your biggest goal for this year?

To sell another book, or at least have one ready for arcaedia to start shopping.

6. Where do you want to be in 5 years?

Writing books, raising a slightly less feral child. Maybe still living in Austin. It's starting to develop a strange home-like sensation. I will still be closing out clubs.

To be continued...

Still alive, mostly. Saturday and yesterday I tried to woman up and take as little Vicodin as possible, but that resulted in two nights of waking up at 4 AM in pain, so today I'm going to take a happy pill every five hours and be a good zombie. I don't like overmedicating, but I like feeling as though my skull is lined in pain even less.

Today Agent F--who is considering changing her name to Jessica*, which doesn't require anonymization--is at daycare, and the Stepspawn has been given carte blanche to play Skyrim until his brain drips out his ears. I will be in bed, playing hidden object games and trying to write a synopsis for The Poison Court. Because synopses are incoherent even when one isn't on drugs.

Bed is boring. Comments are welcome.



* I can't argue with any Shakespearian name, and I can live in hope that she'll grow up to be a Bene Gesserit. Also, while her real name is very pretty, it will also leave her with a lifetime of "how do you spell that?"

March 1 - 7

March 1 - I have completely forgotten what I did last Thursday. Either I did something, or it was a rest day.
March 2 - Yard work, 2 hours.
March 3 - Day job, 5 hours.
March 4 - Day job, 7 hours.
March 5 - Day job, 5 hours; bouldering; core class, 1 hour.
March 6 - House cleaning, ~ 1 hour.
March 7 - Day job, 5 hours; top-roping; yoga, 1 hour; dancing, ~3 hours. State of the badass art.

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Every time I see the video for "Lucretia, My Reflection" I think of a line from Traveling With The Dead: ...Because it was white, a color no sane woman, dead or Undead, would wear on a train. This makes me want to work on my Spies With Fabulous Hats book so very badly.

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Day 15 of no sugar. These molasses muffins are my salvation.

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I am typing this boring post on Jadis! The blue fire worked! We upgraded my OS and she came back to life. We're guessing maybe a file had been corrupted that was replaced in the upgrade. I hope that is in fact the case, because my Apple Care expires next month, and I don't really want to spend a huge chunk of my publication check for Kingdoms on a new computer.

Today was not as productive as I might have liked in wordcount, but I did also manage to take my car to the shop (cracked ignition coil), buy jmeadows' brand new book, meet commodorified & co. for coffee and mutually assured corgi destruction, and spend some time chatting with a strange and tiny new cat in my driveway.

Dreams of Shreds & Tatters

70105 / 80000 words. 88% done!

I have five chapters left to revise from the old-old file, or around 13,000 terrible awful nogood words. I'm not sure what that will become in new words. On the one hand, the old stuff was overwritten and repetitive sentence-wise, so things will shrink. On the other hand, I'm adding more useful bits in this draft, and have two new plot points I want to squeeze in. And the original denouement was atrocious, and needs to become completely different. I would guess the final product will turn into 85k, but I've been wrong before.

Tomorrow I have dayjobbery and climbing, but Thursday through Saturday shall be a bookmarch of epic proportions.

Also, Publishers Weekly has nice things to say about Kingdoms.

Can a collection of PVC, joints, garden wire, and electrical tape become something resembling wings? We'll find out soon.

I'd originally planned to have furry boot covers, but it's too late to eBay them and the fake fur at Jo-Ann was more than I feel like paying. So I won't be a cyber/rivethead griffin.

Tonight I plan to measure and cut the PVC and wrap the wing-bones in electrical tape. Because that is how we roll here. Then I'll test the weight and stability and see what I need to do to stabilize them.

Besides buying pipe joints, I've also been to the optometrist and the bank today. At the former I made an appointment to be fitted for contacts for the first time in my life (because griffins don't wear spectacles, and I'd like to see while marching in the parade). At the latter I closed my Chase account, because a) I don't feel like paying $12 a month because I don't have direct deposit, and b) I have a credit union account already. The banker looked very sad, but really--charging me more because I don't have money is not the way to win my undying customer loyalty.

I have not been update-avoidant the past week because of LJ ennui, but because of extreme busyness. matociquala was here for a week, during which time we climbed four times, danced three nights, kayaked once, drank a lot, and crashed World Horror. I managed to hang out with mr_earbrass, vegan_vulcan, fadethecat, the handful_ofdusts, stillnotbored, marshallpayne1, stina_leicht, Orrin, Camille, Andrew, Jessica, and many more! I snuck into the dealers room long enough to buy an orthoceras fossil pendant from Lillian Butler and a copy of A Rope of Thorns from the CZP table. Two trips to Peché were undertaken, with various companions. And I even got a little more editing done on Kingdoms.

This morning I deposited matociquala at the airport, dropped the boy off at work, and took Gretchen to the vet. Gretchen's inner princess nature is once again manifesting with nasty allergies and autocannibalism, so she's currently wearing the Cone of Shame and full of pills. It's a hard life when one is both a princess and a shark.

Now I will eat some of the many leftovers crammed in my fridge, and try to do more revising.