8 January 2003

I'm back.

The flight was one of the less pleasant ones I've had -- C.J. didn't leave the Coopers' until fairly late last night (not that I'm complaining -- more Ceej time is good), and then I kept waking up in hyperdrive (David's "go mode") way too early and being unable to sleep. So. No sleep. Leaving home. And my back decided to rebel. Yay. So there was only a very little turbulence, and the pilot seemed competent, but I dozed fitfully and read bits of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, which was interesting to me, but the back was kind of interfering with getting a lot of focus in. So work was out of the question, really, and I don't know that I'll get much of it done tonight, either. Maybe a little on Chapter Nine, though....

Got home to very few rejection letters, which was a little weird. Timprov and I did sell our first completed collaborative short story, "Portrait of the Artist As a Young Boy (With Aliens)," to Would That It Were, so that's a happy (pro-paying!) thing. I'm proud of the story, and I think Timprov is, too. It's about René Magritte as a little kid. And aliens. It was fun for us, and now it can be fun for you, too. Well, not now. But soon. The next issue, in fact.

As the reference to Chapter Nine may have told you, I worked on Dwarf's Blood Mead a good bit while I was gone. A very good bit, in fact. I've got Chapters One through Eight drafted, plus bits of other stuff. Which is pretty good for someone who doesn't write sequentially and stuff. And I'm all excited about it. And I went to the Viking exhibit at the MN Science Museum with my aunt and uncle on Monday, so I have all sorts of tiny sketches and notes about what kinds of dye was available, stuff that should never ever show up in the book but is good to know so that the stuff that does show up in the book has backing to it. So that it has weight and depth and makes sense and stuff. So that it doesn't annoy the three people reading a YA novel that's set in not-quite-Iceland who actually know something about Iceland.

I'm not even sure what-all to talk about. The state of California -- well, no, I guess it was just Alameda County -- sent me a welcome back love letter today: jury duty. Both bah and humbug, I believe.

Oh, well. I got paid for a bunch of stuff, including (sigh of relief) the new Chinese immigration textbook. So no edits on that for me. Rah. It's a pretty big chunk of my income, so it's good to have it here and at our disposal.

I'm going to write a lot more in the morning, when I hope to be in a better mood. I've read good books, hung out with cool people, and done interesting things. I'll babble more tomorrow. In the meantime, I have a pretty large list of stuff to do, so I'd better get started.