stillsostrange

I am, I swear. I even survived Run For Your Lives with matociquala on Saturday, despite it being 28 degrees (F) out, and me having a raging sinus infection.

I will have News soon, on both the writing and personal fronts, but for now I am biding my time and VagueBooking. I was going to haul out the first lines meme tonight, but I am le tired, and must open a bookstore in the morning.

Err, hello. I am being part of the lack-of-LJ problem again. I've even slacked off on spamming with workout stats. But Run For Your Lives is this Saturday, so maybe that will be worth an update! (I ran another 5k on Sunday, and finally beat 5 mph. So progress is happening.)

Are there any memes going around worth doing, to keep some semblance of activity happening here?

Today I sent the final* draft of Dreams of Shreds & Tatters to arcaedia. Selling the damn thing may be a new nightmare, but it will be one that is mostly out of my hands. There is suddenly a book-shaped hole in my life. And since there's no pressing need to kill myself over D2 until I know the fate of D1, this means I get to cruise the city looking for sexy novels to have torrid flings with. Maybe Salvage wants to tell me more about its alien scientists and speedboat chases.

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In other news, I will be at Monster-Con on Saturday, October 13th. I'll be signing books dressed as a fish monster. As one does.

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In other, other news, I hope to participate in Run For Your Lives on December 13th. This depends on me getting the day off work, since large contingent from my bookstore wants to go, but I'm going to start training for a 5k anyway. December is the best possible time to run 5k. This means I have to abandon my beloved elliptical tomorrow in favor of the dreaded treadmill.

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On Friday I made a last minute decision to go see TKK after work, and am glad I did so. It wasn't like seeing them 12 years ago, but the show was fun and the venue pleasantly small, and Groovie was ambulatory the whole time. And they played "After The Flesh," which I'm been waiting to hear live since I first saw The Crow. And in an added bonus, my recent love affair with the elliptical means that I can now wear the striped tights which are the custom of my people without looking like a hobbit.

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And on that note, I'm off to the gym.


* Yes, I know. There will be a revision for an editor, copy edits, and proofs. Let me cling to my delusion for a time.

B is for baby bats, because tonight is zombie night at Exquisite Corpse, which means I get to dress up extra. I was a late blooming baby bat--I didn't learn the term "goth" (as opposed to Ostro- or Visi-) until I was seventeen and started college, despite years of watching vampire movies and wearing black. I also discovered VLARP my freshman year, which doubled the tragedy of crushed velvet and cobwebs on my temples. And then I discovered Hot Topic. I won't lie, readers: those were a grim few years.

My love of dark clubs, loud music, and dressing up hasn't faded in the past fifteen years. Luckily, my fashion sense and taste in alcohol have mostly improved.

B is also for blood, because it's compulsory, and because I need to mix some up for extra undead verisimilitude. Pictures may follow, if the gods of photography are kind to me.

In the meantime, enjoy a sampling of the music of my people.

I seem to find myself with a day off. This is good, because I woke up this morning from a long dream about an unfinished short story, which might be a sign that it's ready to become more finished. That would be nice, since I've known the whole plot for this damn thing for the last four years. Less nice is the part where I wrote a whole scene for this story in a notebook on a road trip years ago, and now have no idea which notebook it was.

Luckily it has a good soundtrack, since I'll have that on repeat for the rest of the day.

I need a military uniform for this year's Halloween parade, preferably WWII era (though older is good too). A Red Cross nurse's uniform would also be great. (This is what I really want.) My initial googling has yielded a whole lot of skimpy cheesecake costumes, and rentals from places that don't help me, like Seattle and the UK. Does anyone know a place that sells decent historical costumes for decent prices, and will ship to Texas?

I have army surplus stores in town I can hit up, but they are far and the internet is near.

I dreamed about The Lost Boys last night, and woke up with "Lost In The Shadows" stuck in my head. My success in repurposing Fallen Towers into salable work doesn't mean I should try to dust off my awful junior high Lost Boys homage. Really. My perpetual state of annoyance with Lost Girls shouldn't factor into this either. Or my life's ambition to write a decent vampire novel. Really.

But I'm 31 and haven't written more than one short story about vampires, and it is one of my great ambitions...

Ack! What do I doooooooo?

I need a word, o my wise and learned LJ. This time, I need a word for undead sorcerers that isn't lich. Not zombies, mind you, or any sort of shambling undead. I need something that implies power and sentience.

truepenny suggested necrifex, which I'm very fond of, but if might have the sanguiturge problem of crossing the Greco-Latinate streams. So I turn to the court of the LJ poll.

[Poll #1548248]

I bought this today.



Let's take a moment now to mock this cover.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

How many seconds would the Cullens last against Jesse and the gang, I wonder?

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In other exciting news, my story "The Garden, The Moon, The Wall", originally published in Ideomancer, will be reprinted in squirrel_monkey's Running With The Pack anthology.

This doesn't make up for the fact that I haven't written any new short fiction in two years, but is very pleasing none-the-less.