Ragged Feathers

I woke up this morning to the Little Prince watching Akira. This leads me to believe I am an okay mother and to wonder if the millions of books’ worth of the manga are worth investing in. It is also awesome to watch him acting out critical scenes with the sponge-animals he gets out of grow capsules.

Lots of change here at Casa Saintcrow. Suffice to say that Tuesday morning is the beginning of the rest of my life, and I’m okay with that. Today, however, is for copyedits. Oh, lovely copyedits, which will no doubt make me glad to be alive.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been working with the same copyeditor for a lot of my stuff through Warner and later Orbit, and I love her with the fiery love of a thousand suns. I know I couldn’t do the job she does, and it makes the book so much better. There’s a reason I couldn’t do the job she does, copyedits for me like beating my head against a brick wall–it feels so good when I stop.

Well, no reason not to start the daily head-beating early. Get a jump on it, as it were. Just as soon as I have a spot of coffee. I leave you with a little bit of Cake–listening to them gets me through a lot. Plus, they have awesome, dirty horns.

Now if only they could cure this sodding cold, I’d be all set.

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This is what it’s like to be inside my head:

This morning I was making coffee, and I started wondering why coffee and coffee grounds mold. It’s awful acid. After a little while it occurred to me that the moss on my lawn loves acid soil, mold could be the same way. Then I started wondering what type of mold it was, and if there was any use for it, like penicillin.

This led to a long train of thought about a potential drug developed from coffee mold, and what the implications of it for the price of coffee would be. And how I could work that into a story, where it would it (futuristic world, fantasy medieval, hmm, I could even do an other-planet sort of thing…)

Then I realized I’d just been standing there staring at the espresso machine for a long, long time. The Prince was eating his toast and humming while watching me curiously. Oddly embarrassed–caught thinking again, I thought, and went back to making my morning brew.

No wonder everyone called me spacey. I was busy figuring things out, especially when I was younger. There was a lot to wonder about, and there is still more to wonder about now. Only now I can think in peace in my own house. Well, mostly. Once the rent’s paid.

I am doing one last push to get the edits on the second YA out. I’ve finished the line-editing part and now I’m doing a read for continuity, tweaking, and last-minute stuff before I send it in today. The weekend felt like weekdays, ebcause I was jamming all sorts of stuff in between the edits. Thank God for the UnSullen; he even mowed the yard and ran herd on the younger ones so I could concentrate. Cooperative living has a lot of drawbacks, but it has even more joys and pluses.

So, before I dive back into the manuscript (half done, the last half doesn’t need so much tweaking, since I’m a late starter in most novels) here’s a couple of Monday links to get the ol’ juices flowing.

* Steve Weber on his trouble with Amazon. I found this interesting because I was relating Amazonfail to the attempt the company made on POD, and nobody else seemed to see the linkage; I am vaguely gratified someone else’s analysis of the POD fiasco matches my own and that someone else sees the dangerous pattern Amazon’s business practices are falling into. Quite naturally, of course, since a big company will do what is best for its bottom line. It’s also quite natural for consumers and content providers to squawk and refuse to give in.

* HOW COME NOBODY TOLD ME BITCH MAGAZINE IS SO AWESOME? Last month’s issue held this article on Twilight as “abstinence porn,” which I just ran across yesterday, because I picked up the current issue on a whim. BITCH is local to Portland, and they even had a Sock Dreams ad in the front! I am in love.

* Can anyone recommend a good Wordpress plugin for Ping.fm? Just asking. Because the Internets, they know everything.

* And a new Writer Beware post: Vanity Is the New Indie. If you’re a writer and not reading Writer Beware, you should start.

* I want a Valkyrie helmet. Seriously. I’ve been a good girl. Really I have. But I’ll never get one, because I lust for these knives–for cooking! I swear to God, for cooking!–and I stand a much better job of talking myself into knives I’ll use every day over a Valkyrie helmet.

But the thought of cooking while wearing a Valkyrie helmet has a definite appeal.

Over and out.

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