Pretentious Title

First, since I promised I would post the link:

Michelle Phan's make up tutorial videos. I don't even wear makeup, but I watch her ever week. It's always a thrill to watch someone who's so good at what she does! All her videos are pretty good, definitely worth a look, even if you don't like makeup.

Second, I watched some movies!

On Netflix I watched Pageant, which is about drag queens competing to be Miss Gay America. It felt more like an episode of Toddlers and Tiaras than a documentary, except the toddlers were overwrought drag queens (which isn't that much of a stretch) and there were no awesome/horrible pageant parents (the best part!). My main complaint was that too much attention was focused on the families of the 5 contestants they followed (very little of which ever came back to be important, or even shed light on the man behind the makeup), and not nearly enough screen time was given to the awesome drag acts or the back stage prep. Overall it was pretty entertaining, but it could have been much more.

I also watched Skid Row, a documentary by Pras Michel of the Fugees where he leaves his rockstar life style to live 9 days on LA's Skid Row, squatting zone of the largest homeless population in the US. The parts I liked best were the segments about the history of Skid Row, why it exists, how it's changed, why people go there, etc. Those were very good. The actual Pras wanders around being poor was mostly just a point of view connecting the good bits, though some of his interviews were interesting. If there was anything I didn't like, it was Pras and his occasional hissy fits, though considering the conditions he was under, I can't really blame him. I'd probably be a bitch to my film crew too if I was starving and had slept the last night in a tent being assaulted by rats. Worth the watch, though.

Last, Trav and I went to see 2012. We enjoyed it immensely, mostly (I think) because we went in with the right level of expectation. We knew the plot was going to be terrible (and it was), but we weren't going to see a great work of art here, we wanted to see world monuments being destroyed in epic fashion, and we got what we paid for in spades!

The film is beautifully made and wonderfully shot with national monuments leaping on the screaming cast like stone tigers roused from their slumbers! Seriously, there was a scene that went like this:

PRESIDENT: I'm going to find this lost girl's daddy! OH NOES, WHAT'S THAT?
WASHINGTON MONUMENT: Rarw!!! (falls over)
PEOPLE OF DC: AHHHH! *squish*

I never knew buildings could fall forward with such menace! It was awesome! And while the plot was extremely silly, it didn't really matter. The characters were surprisingly well written and well acted, and I felt genuinely bad when some of them met their dramatic ends. No one (except the computer graphics engine) is going to win an Oscar for 2012, but the actors held things together with laudable skill. Really, though, the star is the disaster waiting around every corner. Nothing is ever so bad it can't get worse for the poor people of earth. Travis and I were cheering for the volcano the whole way through. Go super volcano!! Eat Las Vegas!!!

If you can check your brain at the door, 2012 is a very entertaining movie that is well worth the price of a matinée to see in a theater. Just let your understanding of science go, watch the pretty pictures, and you'll have a great time. Travis and I are actually hoping they make a sequel, "2012: The Stuff We Didn't Show You Last Time." Seriously, there were so many monuments that didn't get their proper screen destruction it was sad! The next movie won't even need plot or characters, it can just be 2 hours of the Grand Canyon flooding as rafters madly paddle away from the giant wave, or the Pyramids jumping forward to crush Cairo (Roland Emmerich, call me!).

So now that being broke is hip, there's been lots of news stories about "super coupon clippers." These people (all women) spend hours scouring the web and buying 12 papers a week to get coupons which they then use at multiple different stores to get things super cheap or for free.

Now, as a newly minted work from home lady who dedicates (on average) 2 or more hours a day to housework and money saving, AND as a notoriously thrifty person, you would think (apparently, considering the number of times I get asked this) that I was a happy sailor on the good ship coupon. Now I certainly do appreciate a good coupon, especially the blanket storewide "get $X off your next purchase of $Y or more." Those babies are free money, especially if it's for a store I shop at anyway. But manufacturer coupons? The kind you get in news papers or on the interwebs or in those little mailers we use as fire starters for our fireplace? Yeah, I don't use those, which is sad, because that's what makes up 99% of the coupons websites I've looked at.

I don't like manufacturer's coupons for a simple reason, the type of products that get coupons are often for highly processed foodstuffs or new spiffy cleaning products. In other words, over priced, over marketed shit I don't buy. Sure, I can get it for 75% off, but if I wasn't going to buy it in the first place, that's 25% of the purchase price I just spent needlessly. I look at these news stories showing pictures of happy, middle aged women with shopping carts piled high with Fruit Loops and Charmin double-stuffed toilet paper, and I'm thinking sure, you just spent $5 on $100 worth of goods, but there is nothing in your cart that I would buy. Where are the vegetables? Where's the unprocessed meat? Do you feed your family nothing but frozen dinners? And let's not forget these super coupon people spend around 10 hours a week prepping for this shopping bonanza. If I had 10 hours a week to waste, I'd spend it earning extra money so I didn't have to eat frozen crap I got for cheap.

How do I save money on food? Easy. I buy store brands, cheap veggies (kale is cheeeeap, and awesome), I bake my own bread (SO EASY, NEVER BUY BREAD!) (I use a bowl, not a bucket, and it works great. I also buy jars of bread machine yeast for $2, way better value than package yeast) and I stay away from the middle aisles. Rather than pouring over coupons, I spend that 10 hours per week cooking. Nothing saves more money than cooking.

Also (and this won't work for everyone, but it's awesome for us), we have a chest freezer. About once a month I drive down to Atlanta and go to the Gwinett International Farmer's Market where the meat is 50-75% cheaper than any chain grocery store and super fresh (they do their own butchering in the back of the store). We buy a cooler full of meat, then bring it home and freeze it. There are veggies too, all fresh, cheap, mostly local, and all varieties. We freeze these as well when we can. We'll spend $100 on a cart that would have cost us $250 or more at Kroger's, and every bit of it is stuff I want. Now that's a saving.

There is only one real rule in frugality as I see it: To pay money is to be defeated. Even if something is 90$ off, if I don't need it and wouldn't use it, I don't buy it. Buying unprocessed, normal stuff saves me money, saves my cabinet space, and saves my waistline (and probably my health in the long run). Maybe having kids will change my perspective on coupons, but I doubt it. Kid shouldn't be eating Fruit Loops anyway.

First - The bad things

- I am pregnant and have a cold and am DENIED MY HUMAN RIGHT TO NYQUIL. Stupid baby...
- I have to go to a funeral on Thursday in Calhoun, GA, which 2 weeks from everywhere. Not looking forward to the drive. (My grandmother passed away, and if you're wondering why I'm not more upset about this, no I'm not heartless. My grandmother suffered from severe mental problems late in her life after the death of her husband. She hasn't been able to recognize me (or any of her family) since the 90s and hasn't spoken or shown signs of attention in 5 years. Basically her mind went a long time ago, and the body only now caught up. I mourned the death of my grandmother years ago, the woman who died on Monday was just the shell of the wonderful person I knew as a child. Honestly I'm more relieved than anything, at least she can rest now.)
- I am sick and spacey and am getting no work done.

Now, the good things

- Travis and I planned out all of the 3rd Eli book and it is AMAZING. I can not wait to write this stuff. Your socks, they will be blown off. I only hope I can fit all of this awesome into a reasonable amount of words.
- The A&E/BBC version of Ivanhoe is AWESOME. Not only is the story now one of my favorites ever, the acting is incredible! Christopher Lee! Livia from I Claudius (OMG NEW FAVORITE QUEEN EVER)! Words fail me, go rent it (or better, Netflix!), you will not be sorry. The writing made my life.
- I made cookies last night when I started getting sick. Cookies, um, for the baby. Yeah, baby needs cookies (om nom nom nom).
- It's raining and I'm on the couch with the laptop and my dog is sleeping on my feet. <3

That is all, carry on!

As someone who pays for her own insurance out of pocket (which is a criminal $360 per month with a $3300 out-of-pocket deduction before insurance pays for anything, and I'm a young, healthy woman), I take a deeply personal interest in the Health Care debate. I've been watching things slide further and further away from what I want, so today I called my House Rep to express my concern with the way he's been dragging his feet on everything. I used the really nifty House lookup system from the government's Write Your Representative site to get the contact info, and I wanted to make sure I took up as much of his time as possible to get things across. That meant no letter, which could go unopened, and no email, which could get a form response. No, gentle reader, I picked up the phone and I called.

It was actually a very pleasant experience. I got a person on the first ring. Sure, she was probably some hired teenager, but she was very polite and very well versed in what my rep had been up to, as well as his reasons. She listened to my complaints, wrote things down, repeated my points back to me, and promised to send it on. I don't know if she will, of course, but that wasn't really the point. My goal is to be a tally marker on the "STOP DRAGGING YOUR HEELS AND FIX HEALTH CARE, JACK ASS" list, and a bold one at that, because that nice young lady wasn't answering that phone for free. If he's going to ignore me, I'm going to make it expensive for him.

I did come away feeling that my complaint had been heard, however, and that's a good feeling. If you're not a robot (and thus do not get sick on occasion), I highly recommend you call your congressman about healthcare. It's painless, quick, and most cell phone plans give you free long distance. Even if you're not personally talking to your rep, you're at least making your voice known.

No single opinion counts more to a congress member than one of their constituents who cared enough to call or write a personal letter. Signing a form letter doesn't count, you have to show you put time into your complaint, because if you're willing to put time into it here, then with a little more outrage you could be willing to put more time into getting that rep kicked out of office. Time is our greatest currency, and I spent mine trying to make sure I don't go bankrupt because my insurance decided to drop me when I got sick. I encourage you to do the same.

My editor looooves my second novel. HOW HAPPY A RACHEL AM I?

Today, I come out of lurkerdom to make you all feel very old. First, however, this instructional video:



Holy shit, folks, I am pregnant!

:D

I promise not to be an awful pregnant lady. PROMISE.

Continue on!

Ok, Sarah Monette fangirl time! Squeee!

So Sarah Monette's regular writer's unplugged post is up today, and it's a pretty interesting look at breaking away from the formula when writing love stories in novels that aren't category romance titled "Should Cinderella Kiss the Prince?"

The whole thing is definitely worth a read if you care about how stories are put together, but her ending sentence totally blew me out of the water:

"If you’re writing a romance, yes, Cinderella kisses the prince. If you’re writing a novel about a girl who’s been abused and degraded and exploited by her stepmother and stepsisters for years while her father does nothing to help her, and whose fairy godmother seems to feel that the only thing worth intervening for is a ball . . . well, maybe she should and maybe she shouldn’t. It kind of depends on the prince."

TRUER WORDS HAVE NEVER BEEN SPOKEN. Fangirling justified yet again!

Edited to add:

Another awesome quote, this time from Sarah Monette's question and answer sessions:

"On the other hand, I can assure you that Amaryllis Cordelia planned that pregnancy like a war. And like a war, first contact with the enemy destroyed her plan."

This woman can turn a phrase into something it never dreamed of being. God, I love her.

So, you've all heard about the shooting in Athens. I heard about it too, but like most tragedies it seemed far away, something that only happened to other people. Then they released the victim names, and the tragedy got very very close. One of the victims in the shooting was Ben Teague, a funny nerd, all around awesome dude and husband of my English Department Mentor, Fran Teague. This was the woman who made me want to take English classes, whose office I stalked around when she was surely sick of me (but put up with me anyway). She's the only English professor I emailed when I got the news my book was published.

And now her husband is dead, just like that. He went to a community theater board meeting and got shot and died with no warning, no reason. And that bothers me a lot. Illness I can understand. A car accident. But this? I just can't get my brain around it. It's so thoughtless, so ridiculous. It feels like it can't be real.

But the worst and most selfish part of my feelings, the part I'm writing about here to get it out and away from me, is that I look at Dr. Teague's relationship with her husband, and I see Travis and myself. Here are two nerds in love, deeply in love, and have been for years. Two best friends, and then this. This horrible, stupid thing, and it's over. I know it's so cliche, but only yesterday did I truly understand how fragile human life is. How someone could lose their partner so quickly, and not even for a good reason, and how lost I would be, how inconsolably sad, if this happened to Travis.

And yet, you can't guard against it. Can't make plans around something like this. This isn't like, wear your seatbelt, or watch your diet. It's one of those cold, unfair, unexplainable tricks of the universe. Something so bizarre, it can only happen in real life, because we humans can't understand it enough to believe it in fiction.

Now I'm just rambling, and I need to get to work. Today I'll buy a card and send it to Dr. Teague, but it just feels so empty. What do you give someone who just lost their partner? How do you offer comfort? I just don't know.

For serious. Once again, here I am at the end of a novel draft with only the barest hint of how the ending will actually turn out. BUT, for once, I'm going to learn from my past mistakes. Rather than just plunge ahead with the ending, I'm going to go back and get things straight FIRST, then write the ending.

For posterity, I will mention that The Spirit Thief's original ending had everyone taking five and going back to their trailers. Not going to happen this time.

( Here's the plan for my reference, but public to keep me honest )

Yesterday I placed my semi-monthly Amazon order and I realized I either knew or was personally connected to every author on my list.

Ladies and Gents, that is god damn cool.

Back to the word mines.

First: OMG SNOW! TONS OF SNOW! OMG OMG OMG!

Second: Our power just came back on after being down since 5:00 yesterday. Snow with no power = suck.


But no work tomorrow, and insomnia tonight (thanks to the power coming back on at 3 am and shining lights in our faces! Woo!

Time to write. Insomnia writing is the best. And tomorrow.... SNOW!

For anyone interested in writerly-type things, my post is up on The Magic District today, and it paints Travis as quite the villain, in a loving way, of course. :)

Check it out! My Husband, The Worldwrecker.

This is where I say things like "it isn't always easy" or "marriage is no cakewalk"... but it's just not true. Being married to Travis is the easiest, most natural thing in the world.

Here's to three wonderful years of being married to the best person ever. I love you to bits, Travichu!

Hey folks!

Well, this is pretty exciting. My author buddy and all around kick-ass lady Diana Rowland, invited me to be part of a fantasy author group blog called The Magic District! I'll be posting there once a week about all kinds of goodies AND, way better than that, my fellow blogging authors will be posting there as well. We've got some serious talent on this, including (aside from Diana and myself), Tim Pratt, Greg Van Eekhout, Margaret Ronald, and N. K. Jemisin (another cool Nora in New York! :D).

All of these folks are seriously awesome. I'm going to have to put on my big girl author pants just to keep up.

Anyway, check it out. First posts should be going up all day today, and we're working on new headers and all that sort of fun!

Totally awesome! See you all there!

*g*!!

(Ellen if you're reading this, I swear I'm not a stalker! I just really really love your books!)

I love the internet!!!


Writing thought for the day:

Have you ever been nicely into a story and realized that you were too far in the future? I'm writing an awesome bit right now, but I just realized that the specific bit I'm writing is about three days too far in the future for the other characters.

It's a very weird feeling to be out of time in your own work.

Carry on, carry on!

"Speaking of livers," the unicorn said. "Real magic can never be made by offering up someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back."

- Peter S. Beagle, we all know the book

Sometimes it feels like my books have too many other livers in them, and not enough of mine. I wish my liver had more to say, just to make the soup more interesting.

Christmas was ok this year, presents and family were both generally nice, but my cousin was an amazing brat (seriously, he's 14 and he bitched the entire visit that he didn't get enough presents for Christmas, to everyone, including his grandparents, who'd given him a card with $100 in it earlier that week, which he'd 'forgotten.' Needless to say, his parents did nothing. If my kid EVER does ANY of that, I'll make sure they get NO presents, period.) Despite this, I've been really enjoying my break for a very simple reason - 2 weeks paid vacation to write my fingers off.

I'm making amazing progress, plowing forward to get the first draft done. Writing a first draft is way easier now that I've gotten some extensive revision experience under my belt. This time, for example, if I'm writing a scene and I realize there are too many people, or I put the wrong people in it, I just let someone drop. They just vanish, POOF! And I make a note in red to remove all previous mentions of them later. This is messy, but MUCH faster than the old way I used to do things, which was to go back and rewrite the scene. I've decided I'm not doing any rewriting until the story is done and I can look back and fix things with that good old 20/20 hindsight, rather than my current extreme near sightedness.

Going to hit 30k today if everything goes well. That'll put me a week ahead of where my schedule says I'm supposed to be, buying me priceless wiggle room for later, harder chapters where I have to actually tie this mess together.

This is what vacations are about!

Thanks to Diana Rowland (reddiana, check out her very sexy cover!), who emailed me to let me know she saw my deal listed on Publisher's Marketplace!

FICTION: SCI-FI/FANTASY

Rachel Aaron's THE SPIRIT THIEF, the first in a new adventure fantasy series about a wizard thief who kidnaps a king for ransom, unwittingly putting an entire kingdom in mortal peril, to Devi Pillai at Orbit, in a very nice deal, in a three-book deal, for publication in 2009, by Matt Bialer at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates (World).


Other than publishing peeps and the unpublished authors who stalk their every move, most people don't know about PM (it is a trade magazine after all, how many non-welders read Welding World News?), but if you're a new author, seeing your deal in PM suddenly makes it feel real, like this isn't all some crazy fantasy.

Also, around about the same time, my editor (<3 <3 <3) posted the news on the on the Orbit site! (4th paragraph down).

THESE THINGS PLEASE PUBLISHED CAT

Well, yesterday really, but the win continues!

So yesterday I got a call from my wonderful agent, Matt Bialer, and his wonderful assistant, Lindsay Ribar, with wonderful news! There had been an offer on my book!

And not just any offer... a REALLY GOOD offer. Orbit, the UK based SciFi and Fantasy house, had come through with a 3 book deal and a much larger number than anyone (or at least I) expected.

A 3 BOOK DEAL, GUYS! With enough money behind it where I could quit my day job!

I made it, I did it, I'm now a real writer by anyone's estimation. Life long dream achieved!

It wasn't quite as HOLY SHIT exciting as the day I got my agent, because that came out of nowhere at a time I was much more obsessed about it. This also came out of nowhere, but I don't think anything could beat the sheer joy of agent day.


And even better, I get to keep writing my favorite books ever. I am the president of planet win!

Until now.