stillsostrange

My WorldCon was an unexpected whirlwind of delights. The obvious highlight was when matociquala and I presented the Campbell Award and I got to give the tiara and brand new scepter to an astronaut. Then Jessica Jones won a Hugo for "Smile," which filled me with violent, vicious glee. But I think my true favorite moment came during the Losers Party, when the band struck up the Time Warp for the second time. I don't believe I've ever been to a two-Time Warp party before, and I'm very grateful to grrm for providing that experience. I also participated in great panels, and had a blast with new friends and old friends and random passers-by. I am making every effort to attend in Helsinki next year.

And if you happened to see my Hugos dress, which I hope someone got a good picture of, I'll let you in on a little secret: Jobst: It Stays. I bought a backless bra to wear with that dress which completely failed to function. So in a moment of panic I borrowed matociquala's sock adhesive and glued myself into the dress. Everything stayed where it was supposed to for ten (10) hours, perfectly comfortably, even through the aforementioned two rounds of the Time Warp. Sorcery!

My agent sent me her notes for The Poison Court just before WorldCon. Now that I'm beginning to recover from the excesses of the con--not to mention driving to Minneapolis and back in four days immediately afterward--I will buckle down and turn those around. I also need to get cracking on another project, and figure out the three short stories I have in various degrees of completion.

The Poison Court has now reached 56,000 words, and you'll all be happy to know that I have finally poisoned someone. In case you worried it was merely a metaphorical poison.

I forgot this metric in my last post, but it can fill a post all its own.

Things what don't have names yet:

The hijra temple
The wing in the palace where the king's close advisors live
The street where the Iskari embassy is
The name of the embassy (e.g. the Something House or the Something Serai)
The street where Varis lives
Selafaïn method of execution
A butler
The Iskari royal palace

Anyone want to name a street or a butler?

This is just to say that I did a pull-up today. Two of them, in fact. Sadly, there was an hour in between those two, but hey. I did a pull up. I am officially a valkyrie. I'm also running two miles at minimal intervals. With any luck next week I'll be running 2.25 miles.

In other news, Poison Court is closing fast on 20k. And we're still in the first round of plot twists. Long book may be long. I'm also watching Hannibal, because bulletproof kink. I blame Tumblr. And also bulletproof kink.

Thank you to everyone who weighed in on the name change question. I'm afraid some of you will be disappointed, though. I can't let Varis and Vargas appear multiple times on the same page (much as I couldn't handle Kieran and Kiril), but there will not be any cute in-text reasons for this. (Okay, I say that now, but I may think of one later.) I just have to change it. The first reader who actually notices will get a cookie.

The true lesson to be learned from this is: there's no such thing as a throwaway name. At least if one is writing a series, anyway. One never knows when Random Character Bob will show up again, and when he does, you may regret naming him Bob.

In other news, Agent F just passed out while watching Animal Planet an hour before her bedtime. This is an unlooked for windfall of writing time, if I can manage not to pass out.