Friskbiskit

Dopey Dog

So Rodney and Willy both had procedures at the vet today. Willy was there to get his heart checked, to see if he can withstand anesthesia, because he desperately needs a dental, and Rodney was there for his dental.  I hate it when the vet has to give my dogs anesthesia because there's always the slight chance they won't wake up from it.  I know.  I lost a pet rat that way when I was a teenager.

But we've never had any problems at this vet and they called me around noon and said I could pick the boys up around 2.  Which I did.  Hooray!  Always a big relief to get them back from these little excursions.

Rodney is still pretty out of it, which, since he's recovered enough that we know he'll be okay, is pretty funny.  The whole ride home, when he wasn't sleeping with his head draped over Willy's back, he was sitting up with his eyes half closed and his tongue sticking out.  Stoner dog.   Now he's chilling on the loveseat in my office while I write this and Willy is exploring the house in search of food, since neither of them got breakfast this morning.

(Note: the pic was not taken today.  It's of Rodney and Steve napping when we were up north one year, but it still gets across the general idea.)

Suit Shopping

So it's Saturday afternoon and I'm just back from helping Steve pick out a suit. It doesn't happen very often, but when my baby decides its time for new nice duds, he invites me along. On these occasions I have a strong drive to admire him in lots of different combinations of jackets, shirts, and ties. I love colors, textures and shapes, and he's hot in them. Steve indulges me and I totally capitalize on the opportunity to play living Ken doll with him.  This is the kind of stuff that makes marriages work. 

By coincidence, I was just combining the mss. for Hero, Stay, and Scars, which Loose Id is reprinting as a single novella, and I came across the scene where David and Seth go shopping.  I won't elaborate for those who haven't read it, but suffice to say that similar tropes are at play in that scene. :)

1/20/10

The new White Collar episode makes me happy in all my special places. Early on you can totally read Peter as having this dark obsession with Neal, and he's talking about getting Neal's girlfriend out of the picture and everything, like as in so he can have Neal to himself.  And then in all the spy-betrayal doubletalk going on later, a nice healthy portion of homoerotic innuendo slips, uh, through the cracks. And it all wraps up with a lovely bit of I trust you, Peter/I'll save you, Neal/Neal, she's no good for you can't you see I'm the man for you?

Mmmmmmmmm.

Spent the whole dang afternoon on bills today.  Which sucks because yesterday, I actually got more done than I expected, which hasn't happened in I don' t know when. 

I'm first drafting a new m/m in the morning these days and that's going well. I take an apple and peanut butter w/ me when I go to the Y in the morning, and then I have breakfast w/ my pals at the coffeehouse, and then, since I've brought my notebook but not my laptop, I write longhand for a nice solid two hours or more.  I'm quite taken with idea of doing this every day for the rest of my life.

What I need are secretaries to type it all in somewhere.  Volunteer secretaries, preferably with armloads of White Collar slash.

Let's see, what else?  Oh yeah, here's an interesting story I ran across this morning about Amazon Kindle royalties, and did you hear about this shindig going down in New York next week? Digital Book World? It costs like $1000 to go but it would be so cool.  I'd love to cover it for Friskbiskit.  At least I can link to the blog.

And in other news, my close friend Sharon just got a kidney transplant a couple weeks ago.  It's been a pretty bumpy ride, but she's home now and doing better all the time. Send her some good vibes.

Relaxation and its Antithesis

Since I had to work straight through the holidays, I've been relaxing since I got back from residency Thurs. night.  I'm about at my limits of relaxing now.  Not very good at it.  I keep on thinking of things I should be doing.  But tomorrow I'll get back into my routine: meditation and swim in the morning, then write most of the day.  I'm struggling (as always) with how to balance my writing schedule with all the other things that need to get done too. What I've noticed is that worrying about it never seems to get anything done any faster.  I'm seriously considering ditching my to do list.  It's a constant source of anxiety, and I spend time on my schedule that I could be spending doing actual work. 

Have you ever had a done list?  Just keep track of the things you've actually done, instead of the other way around? It's a thought.

Home Again, Home Again, Again

Just got in.  After a day in the car, (nice smooth ride, by the way; entertaining clouds and sunset* in the afternoon), I'm madly Whiskerbiscuiting on Facebook.  No, Whiskerbiscuit is not Friskbiskit, though I do suspect a family connection between Princess Cheeseball and Todd's dog*.

*Only available image a facsimile.

And I'm Off

Tomorrow morning I'm headed out to Pennsylvania for the Seton Hill Writing Popular Fiction residency.  I am super jazzed about it.  I always have a great time at res, and since the program went MFA, enrollment is way up and lots of people I thought I said good bye to are now coming back -- bonus!

So, the car is loaded, the snow is falling, my work is done and I'm turning in early.  See you on the other side, folks!

Cleaning Day

So the new thing around here, now that hub Steve is juggling chainsaws working the tax season and taking a full course load, is that one morning a week I clean house instead of doing my workout.  Funny how I somehow find time for coffee and blogging on days such as this.

Anyway, I'm cleaning this morning, or will be as soon as I finish this delaying tactic post.

And I'm busy, busy, busy getting ready for Seton Hill's Writing Popular Fiction residency at the end of the week.  I'm teaching a module this time, on magic systems in fantasy novels and let me tell you, trying to get a hold of fantasy novels for research, without having to pay for them, is a bear.  None of the titles my students suggested were at my local library, and it took them two weeks to get them through inter-library loan. And even then, in many cases, the first books in the series were not available at all, so I'm trying to glean what I can from the second and third volumes of trilogies here.  Sheesh!  I have to say, the whole experience makes a pretty good argument for Google's goal of scanning every book in existence.  I'm not saying I'm in favor of the settlement they cooked up, but I do see the need for improving access to books. Of course that could be done lots of ways, and not just by Google.

Here Comes 2010!

Went to a lovely party last night, an "Old Year" party, which is a wonderful idea.  Lots of interesting people and of course I wound up blathering on about digital publishing, as usual.  Fortunately most of those in my impact zone seemed interested.  And my pal Hank Edwards was there.  A year ago I turned Hank on to Loose Id at a different party hosted by one of the hosts of last night's party.  Hank's been happy with his experiences at LI and this morning I got a lovely note from him thanking me for being generous and sharing information.  Made me all "aw shucks," but really, when you think of it, why on earth wouldn't I help another writer?  This business is so rough sometimes, and what goes around comes around.  You never know when you might stand to benefit from someone else's generosity, so I see helping out as part of a cycle. And readers read so much faster than most authors can write.  We're not so much in competition with each other as we are with all the many other forms of entertainment that can be produced faster and more cheaply.

As some of you may know, my agent Jenny Rappaport announced at the beginning of the month that she's leaving the business.  This is a great disappointment to me, as I like Jenny on a personal level and we worked well together. She was the first agent I ever had who made me feel like I actually had an agent, someone in my corner who was accessible and accepting of my artistic focus. Not sure what I'm going to do now. For epublishing, I don't need an agent, and my experience with agents in the past hasn't been all that great.  I've found that they can run interference with me as much as they do with publishers and that was a very frustrating experience. Then again, the universe is full of surprises, so who knows.  For now, it's full steam ahead with epublishing.

Speaking of which, I'm madly trying to whip Amaranth & Ash into a shape I won't be utterly humiliated to turn in to Loose Id.  The story's great, it's just rather sizeable, and toward the end, I think I have the right events in place, but the wrong scenes set to show them.  Thank god for editors. I feel like a little kid with a new toy she can't quite figure out how to assemble, shoving it at the nearest adult.  "Waaaah! Fix this!"

Did you know that tonight is a blue moon (second full moon in a calendar month) and a lunar eclipse? Whoo boy!  Be careful everyone, and have a wonderful evening and may 2010 bring you health, happiness, and prosperity!

National Coming Out Day

It's National Coming Out Day and so it seems appropriate, especially given the ongoing Unpacking series, to come out as, well a few things, I guess.  For years I identified as bisexual, but usually got shot down by folks, straight, lesbian, and gay, who'd say, "but you're married to a man."  I got sick of that and started describing myself as "primarily heterosexual," but now, I'm thinking maybe I should stick to my guns and just give it with both bi barrels.  And, very recently, less than a year ago, I stumbled across the term genderqueer, which I love a lot and am still in the process of exploring. It would explain a great deal of the trouble I had with my peers in the social pressure-cooker of adolescence.

And then of course, I'm an m/m author.  You already knew that, but I think that is the aspect of my queerness that most impacts my day-to-day life as a writer, and over which I often feel the most embattled. In some ways it is the most personal and because of that the hardest to stand up for.  That, of course, is exactly what I'm trying to do with the Unpacking series. I put a lot of thought into those posts, but today, I'm going to let this fabulous video of John Barrowman singing in a dress express how I feel, not what I think.

Happy Coming Out Day everyone!

Vacation Day

I finished revisions on my next book for Loose Id yesterday, one day early, after sweating it hard all week.  So I took today off.  No writing, no revising, and no reading for critique.  It's been wonderful!  I ran errands.

Yes, it's come to that.  Grocery shopping has become a big treat.

It was nice to spend all day out and about, catching up on a bunch of stuff I've been putting off, like getting my bike looked at and stopping by my local indie to sign some copies of the other project.  While I was at Book Beat, I picked up a copy of The Unstrung Harp by Edward Gorey.  It's about Mr. Earbrass, who writes novels.

I love Gorey, and Mr. Earbrass's uniformly horrified expression throughout does rather sum things up nicely. 

Except not always.  Sometimes, like yesterday, you actually feel satisfied with what you've done, and that tints everything such a lovely shade that picking up milk feels like a holiday.

Do You Want Kink With That?

Here's an interesting article from The Daily Beast about women freelancing as pro-dommes to supplement their income:

With staff jobs evaporating and former nine-to-fivers cobbling together incomes through scattered side projects, freelancing as a dominatrix—or “pro-domme,” as industry types prefer to call it—has become a plausible gig option.

Highlights of Today's Grocery Shopping Trip

I got a bunch of stuff at the store today. I'm particularly excited about the cornish hen stuffed with mushrooms, spinach, asiago cheese and wild rice, the beer battered cod, the lovely golden beets with thei r lovely greens still attached, the blue diamond cheddar and the chicken calzone with pine nuts. Wheeeeee!

Back from Vacation

Hey, I'm back from not-so-sunny California, after a whirlwind eight days of sightseeing and visiting.  I had a great time, and I'm downloading my vacation pictures as we speak.  More to come.

On Vacation

So while the hub is in the thick of school and tax season, and the weather in Michigan sucks, I've taken off for sunny California, where I'm visiting my niece and nephew, and my friend Nica Berry.  Here are some pictures Nica took while we were at the beach yesterday:

     

Welcome to 2009

The holidays are over, New Years has come and gone, and here we are, most of us desperately hoping that '09 will be kinder than '08.  I hate to be a wet blanket, but I have a feeling things are going to get worse before they get better.  Still, with Obama taking charge in January, and the sheer paradigm-busting awfulness of the economic crisis, there's reason to look forward to new and better ways of doing things.

As for 08, I know you'll think I'm high, but this was one of my favorite years.  No, seriously.  Some really important things happened this year for me.  Many things which had been floating around as potentialities for what seemed like forever finally became realities in 08.  I found places to publish my m/m work, for instance.  And we sold our surprise house.  And Steve found a new career path that he genuinely enjoys.  And BookViewCafe launched.  And Friskbiskit grew steadily in page views. (Thank you!)

So all in all, I'll look back on 08 fondly.  Can you think of something good that happened to you last year?