It's been a momentous 12 months here at LiveJournal. We crossed a capital T at Ten years young. And, like most precocious pubescents, we celebrated turning double digits by publishing our first book! Needless to say, we've experienced some major changes, both inside and out. Before we recap, we'd like to thank you for bearing with us as we've struggled through ungainly growth spurts, identity pangs, and, yes, the occasional blemish. We hope you'll continue to stand by us: We're gaining wisdom with maturity.

Stuff you liked

• Back in February, we placed a call for entries for our ten-year anniversary anthology in lj_turns10. In December (less than a year later!), we officially announced the publication of Live Journal: The First Decade. Featuring an inspired collection of writing, photographs, and artwork from the pages of LiveJournal history, the book has been selected by Blurb.com as a top staff pick! We are proud to have played host to so much talent over the years, and we thank our contributors for sharing their extraordinary work.
• We all love quirky surprises, but not when it comes to managing our account settings. This year we streamlined settings into one central account management area. No more pouring through FAQs to figure out how to control privacy settings, modify notifications, adjust mobile settings, or update contact information!
• Being users ourselves, we realize our own mothers couldn't find us on LiveJournal based on our usernames and userpics alone (*heaves heavy sigh of relief*). But since there are times when we actually want to be found, we created a search tool--Find Your Friends--to help locate people by email address (it's in the Friends drop-down menu).
• Spam counter-attack: The war against vicious malware and spambots reigns eternal, but we've been making serious inroads to ensure your online security. We've established new protocols, such as requiring email address validations. We've grown more savvy about ferreting out suspicious behavior. We've added features, like whitelisting, to help you protect your communities. Our valiant (i.e., overworked) spam avengers (a/k/a the LiveJournal ops team) are standing on red alert so you can sleep safely at night.
• After an intensive beta, we launched My Guests at the end of the year, which lets you see who's been hanging around your journal. A number of you have even discovered secret admirers (not all of whom are creepy)!
• Last, but by no means least, we want to thank our volunteers for providing invaluable support and feedback. Their Herculean efforts enable us to answer your questions more efficiently, identify spammers, reduce abuse, and deliver better features (through tireless testing). On behalf of the staff and the larger LiveJournal community, we are truly grateful for their diligence, intelligence, loyalty, and passion.

You got your fix

• We recently debugged a number of the oustanding issues with the rich text editor so your entries look great regardless of whether you know html. You can read more about text editors here.
• In response to user demand, we brought back international voice posting. For more info on voice posting, read here.
• At long last, we revived TxtLJ with Verizon. For more info on TxtLJ, check out the FAQ.

Paid features you enjoyed

• In December, we introduced My Stats, which provides detailed data on who's been viewing your entries as well as statistics on commenting, RSS requests, friending history, and more. Despite a few early glitches, the response has been extremely favorable.
• This year, we launched and improved Notes (i.e., the feature formerly known as Alias), which lets you add private comments on friends and commenters (it's in the Profile drop-down menu). This way you won't be caught red-faced when you strain to remember details about that wonderful LiveJournal friend who sent you a birthday vGift. For more info, read the FAQ.
• When we first announced View friends pages by date, we thought it would be a quiet, minor enhancement. The rave reaction floored us, which made us all very happy. We gave it a fine tuning in February of 2009, so it's even better!
• How embarrassing! It appears pingbacks have gone back to the shop for service. We’ll keep you posted. We didn't know just much you liked pingbacks until it went in for service. It's back and, judging by your irritation when it wasn't available, this is good news. FYI, pingbacks send instant notifications (via screened comments) whenever someone links to one of your entries on LiveJournal. For more info, read this entry in paidmembers or check out the FAQ.

Mixed reviews

• The search is still on. Some of you have reported getting more comprehensive results for keyword searches using the new Yandex search engine and like the ability to search within content categories (like entries or comments). Others have not been satisfied with the relevancy of search results. Please be patient. We're still tweaking this product.
• This past December, we wanted to try out a new holiday promotion. Given the crap economy, we decided to offer our Paid/Permanent users a stack of $10 coupons to send to Basic/Plus users for paid account upgrades. We hoped you would like it. And some of you did, but many were disappointed that we didn't offer Give More as well. We want to thank you so much for letting us know. Your input will help us plan better in the future. Just FYI, Paid/Permanent users can continue to send out coupons through January 15th. Coupons can be redeemed through January 31, 2010.
• We were pretty excited about Your Journal Your Money, which allows Paid/Permanent users to earn extra cash by displaying Google ads to Basic/Plus and logged out users. A number of you tried it. Some of you really like it. Others, not so much. (Just FYI, Paid/Permanent users who do not participate in this program will not view ads on journals. Participants will see ads on their own journal, but won't see them on other journals unless they specifically opt in.) For additional details, visit here.
• We relaunched m.livejournal.com, our mobile app. While it offers a nicer UI and enhanced functionality, some of you think we can do better on load times. Like most of us, it's a work in progress. You can customize your mobile settings here. For more info, please read the FAQ.

Missing Inaction

• We shudder to bring up the neon purple elephant squatting on our heads, but, yes, we didn't give you those a la carte userpics. We've been making radical improvements to our backend in order to support them. But no excuses. We know you want them. We cringe every time you mention them. We're sorry we dropped the ball on this, and we promise to do our best to get them to you in 2010.

Stumbling points

• Back in early August, we experienced outages related to a series of DDoS attacks. We are proud to report that we were down a total of one hour over the course of a few days. We thank our heroic ops guys for getting us up sooner and more consistently than any of our less fortunate social networking friends. We apologize for leaving you temporarily stranded.
• A couple of months back, we offered a free, unrestricted vGift, which induced a snowflake cookie avalanche. This resulted in backed up/delayed notifications, which, in turn, led us to reboot systems, rendering scrapbooks unavailable. It took a while to shovel free. Apologies for the inconvenience. We learned a valuable lesson that should keep us calamity-free in the future (fingers crossed while knocking on wood).
• That darn Best Buy ad. First off, we're sorry about the audio auto-play (we got it turned off as quickly as possible). While it's true that we'll continue to show this type of ad to accounts that normally see them (never to Paid/Permanent accounts), we'll make sure the sound defaults to off moving forward. We promise to do our very best to keep ads to a minimum on LiveJournal, while keeping a roof over Frank's head.

Full steam ahead!

As we plunge headfirst into the next decade, we want to take a moment to look back and thank all of our employees, both past and present, who have worked so hard to create our unique and magical universe. We couldn't have made it this far without you: Your contributions brighten our path everyday. We also want to extend our heartfelt appreciation to each and every one of you. Whether you've been around for ten days or ten years, your humor, intelligence, talent, and creativity are what makes this the most vibrant global community on the Internet (the best place on the Web, in our humble opinion). Here's hoping that 2010 will be the greatest year yet! We thank you for joining us as we embark upon another glorious decade of LiveJournal history!

So I have a reporter from the Contra Costa Times coming over this afternoon to interview me and take some pictures for a local author profile piece. This is pretty cool. I've never been profiled in the newspaper before. We've cleaned the whole house (for values of "we" that mean "mostly my mother"), my room is slightly less of an EPA hazard zone than usual, and the cats have been thoroughly lectured on not throwing up in front of the cameraman. After a great deal of discussion, I have agreed to the following list of Things Seanan Isn't Allowed To Discuss With the Reporter (unless she starts it):

1. The Black Death.
2. Parasites.
3. How parasites caused us to evolve gender.
4. Endemic bubonic plague in California's ground squirrels.
5. The X-Men.
6. Crazy Australian mermaid shows.
7. Anything involving venom.
8. Dinosaurs.
9. The inevitability of the zombie apocalypse.
10. Anything that involves socially unacceptable hand gestures.
11. The ineffective nature of H1N1 as a slatewiper pandemic.
12. How my pandemic would be better.
13. Pandemics, period.
14. My collection of My Little Ponies.
15. My collection of plush weaponry.
16. My collection of plush viruses.
17. Banana slugs.
18. How to evolve a society of pseudo-mammal telepaths from parasitic wasps.
19. Why you would want to do that in the first place.
20. Giant squid.
21. Reality television.
22. Bedbug reproduction.
23. Anything Kate won't let me talk about during dinner.
24. Necrosis.
25. The slow conversion of aspartame into formaldehyde.
26. Monkeyspheres.
27. The fact that the turtle couldn't help us.
28. My limited and specialized knowledge of ASL.
29. The virtues of the machete vs. the meat cleaver.
30. That vial of liquid mercury I bought at a garage sale.
31. Tarantulas.
32. Cheese.
33. Jerusalem crickets.
34. What I did last summer.
35. The vast disparity between women's "appropriate" weight and the things women eat in television commercials.
36. Evil Dead: the Musical.
37. Why you should turn to cannibalism immediately when stranded on a desert island.
38. Kuru.
39. Flensing.
40. Parthenogenic reproduction.
41. Reasons to go crawling around in a sewer.
42. Observing autopsies.
43. Why yoga is better with Rob Zombie.
44. SyFy Original Movies.
45. The drinking games that accompany same.
46. Why I went to Waverly Place last time I was in Manhattan.
47. Pie.
48. Pi.
49. Structured poetry.
50. People as an available source of protein.

So jimhines made a well-considered post on character death, which, naturally, got me thinking about the topic. Because I am a thoughtful blonde, this thinking took about fifteen forms, and eventually resulted in something far too long to be a comment. I think too much.

First off, I want to say that I don't have a problem with the concept of character death. Sometimes, people die. Sometimes, yes, even in fiction. And as an author, I don't think I'm allowed to have a problem with character death. There's a point in Stephen King's Misery where Annie Wilkes, the crazy nurse, is accusing Paul Sheldon of being a murderer because his main character, Misery, has died in childbirth. He protests, saying very firmly that he didn't kill her. She just died.

Sometimes characters just die.

I've had that happen to me twice now: characters I really expected were going to make it through their stories have turned around and said "no, I'm sorry, this is where I get off the train." Once that point was reached, I couldn't go back. I walked away from a book for six months once, and I still couldn't take it back. I'm not saying that fictional people have free will, but I am saying that a well-made character will do things the author doesn't expect, and that a story acquires a narrative weight that can sometimes make certain things inevitable. Sometimes the only way an author can have control is to be untrue to the story, and readers can tell when that happens. A good story is alive. Saving a character who's supposed to die can kill it. I may love zombies, but that doesn't mean I want to turn my books into zombies, y'know?

Similarly, if not the same, sometimes you just need to kill people. It's entirely unrealistic to, say, write a zombie techno-thriller in which absolutely everybody lives. So sometimes, I have characters who are just, in the immortal words of Spider Jerusalem, here to go. Not all of them actually leave! Sometimes people I created as "fire and forget" wind up sticking around, refusing to die, while characters I expected to be working with for years politely take their leave six chapters in. I try to be true to the story. I try not to fight it.

At the same time, very little pisses me off more than a bad character death. One of my favorite television shows recently killed off one of my favorite characters in a manner that was unnecessary and just plain mean. It felt like they were going "how can we make it clear that things are getting really, really serious? Hey! Let's bring back this minor character that everyone thinks we've forgotten about, and just kill the crap out of 'em! That'll make everybody sit up and take notice!" Shock and awe deaths don't do anything but upset me. I've stopped watching shows entirely for pulling that sort of stunt—after the episode of Torchwood where I spent an hour crying and saying "I am not okay with this" over and over, I took the show off my watch-list. I dropped Sanctuary over a death that felt less plot-serving and more "the focus group says..."-serving. And yes, there are books that I've thrown aside in disgust, because it all just got to be too damn mean and purposeless to take.

This is not me saying "if you kill a character I like, you, too, are dead to me." For example, one of my favorite movies is The Fly. Yes, with Jeff Goldblum. For those of you who don't know it, it's a horror movie, and things don't go well for most of the main characters. I've been known to watch it when I'm not feeling well, in the hopes that I'll fall asleep and it'll get a different ending in my dreams, Just This Once. At the same time, the ending is so right, and so justified by what came before it, that I don't mind. And that's sort of the thing. When a character's death is right and true and meant to happen, it shows, and those deaths, even when they upset me, are the way things ought to be.

Jim also makes the point—and it's a good one—that killing is contextual. If I kill someone in a Toby book, that's expected. If I kill someone in one of Mira Grant's books, that's practically a legal requirement. But if I kill someone in a Corey book, people are going to be going "Um, w-t-f, over?" and threatening me with sticks. Genre determines a lot of what you can get away with, and what I'm willing to accept as a reader or viewer. I don't like to be blindsided; I don't think anybody does. (This isn't me saying "no deaths in YA," by the way. People will die in the Clady books. Just that the genre really does determine what is and is not okay.)

I will always kill characters. I can't help it. Sometimes the story needs people I care about to die, and sometimes individual stories are just done. I will also always get upset over senseless character deaths, because there's a big, big difference between "this needed to happen" and "I'm the author, that's why."

Thoughts?

SO IT BEGINS.



Man, the dogs are going to be bored out of their minds cooped up inside today.

Words: 4,606.
Total words: 92,007.
Estimated to go: 34,993.
Reason for stopping: done for tonight.
Music: mostly Meat Loaf and selections from Broadway.
Lilly and Alice: on the orange cat tree.

Tonight's word count is less based on "I have achieved some great goal," and more on "I am done for tonight and wanted to actually post about my progress for the first time this year." I've managed to break 90,000 words, which is pretty awesome; as you can see by the new column, "Estimated to go," I have a decent grasp of how much work is still ahead of me, and I'm on target to finish my first draft in a reasonable amount of time.

Blackout is the first book I've written while under contract, which has been an interesting experience for me. I'm used to setting all my own deadlines, creating a feeling of artificial urgency that's really just based on wanting to finish the book before it stops being a friend and starts becoming that house guest that just won't go the hell away. Now I have real deadlines, and real urgency. It's been less jarring than I was afraid it would be, probably because I had already written Feed when we sold the trilogy. I know where I'm going, I know how I'm going to get there, and now all that's left is finding out where I'll be stopping along the way.

I figure that from here, all the territory is familiar and awesome, and that's pretty damn cool. My focus is starting to narrow as I knock the short stories and blog posts off my "to do" list, honing in on what really matters: the end of the world.

When will you rise?

After going through the truly awesome questions presented for possible inclusion in the FAQ, I've settled on...

lgbtech, you are the winner of an ARC of A Local Habitation! Please email me through my website "contact" link with your mailing address.

tigertoy, you are the winner of a signed copy of Rosemary and Rue! Please email me through my website "contact" link with your mailing address, or with the address you'd like it sent to, if you want to give it to someone else.

Thanks, all!

January.
It's 2010! That's incredibly freaky! And to make things freakier, the month is already super-busy, because nothing says "love" like keeping me busy. On January 20th, I'll be appearing at the Clayton Books Book Club in Clayton, California. It's a book discussion, rather than a reading or anything silly like that, which really means "this is your opportunity to grill me mercilessly on the Toby books, along with basically everything else. I'm planning to bring cupcakes, because I am possibly certifiably insane. I'm also planning to bring prizes of some sort, because people like prizes, and I try to do things that people like.

I'm also flying to Seattle at the end of the month—yes, again—to attend Conflikt III, the Pacific Northwest's very own filk convention. Tom Smith is this year's Guest of Honor, which is going to be awesome. I love Tom, and I'm really looking forward to performing with him in May. Plus, this gives me the vital opportunity to hug me some Vixy.

February.
In February, I'm planning to write, write, write, and, oh, right, write. I'm nowhere near that dark and troubled country known as the Land of Missed Deadlines, but I fear that country's borders so much that I've set aside essentially all my spare time in February for staying as far from there as possible. Watch for flailing, and send care packages of Diet Dr Pepper and candy corn.

Toward the end of February, the fabulous stealthcello will be showing up (along with awesome bonus Katie) to stay with me pre-Consonance and check out the Bay Area a bit. Because doubling your awesome doubles your fun, Sooj and K will also be showing up, and a good time will be had by all. (There may be some extra awesome during this time period. Watch this space for details.)

March.
Oh, nothing major. Just, I don't know, THE RELEASE OF THE SECOND TOBY BOOK. A Local Habitation will be coming out in the first week of March. Expect flailing, hysterical, and awesome stuff. How awesome? "I've done this before and know what I'm doing now" awesome. Be there. (Just to make things more exciting, the release of A Local Habitation coincides with Consonance, the Bay Area's own filk convention, where Tricky Pixie will be appearing as Guests of Honor. Because I needed my head to explode if at all possible.)

On March 9th, we'll be having a reunion of the Traveling Circus and Snake-Handling Show, as we invade Borderlands Books to celebrate the release of A Local Habitation. The Borderlands Cafe is now open, and it's going to be twenty flavors of fantastic, including live music, readings, a raffle, and more. There's always, always more.

April.
April kicks off with the glory that is Wondercon, the San Francisco Bay Area comic and cool media convention. Last year at Wondercon, I didn't have any books in print. This year, I'll have two. What a difference a year makes. I intend to wander the dealer's hall with prizes in my pocket, making myself a target for treasure hunters, just like last year. Only this year, I'm bringing a real celebrity with me: my MOM. So here's your chance to meet her while she's too confused to try to drive you somewhere!

May.
In May, the first of the Mira Grant books, Feed, will be hitting shelves. I cannot express how excited I am by this book. I love the world, I love the characters, and sort of like the softer side of Sears, this is a whole different side of my work. Only for "softer," substitute "gory, merciless, scientific, political, and horrific." I really can't wait. I'm trying to pretend that I won't explode.

Also in May, I'll be attending Marcon in Columbus, Ohio as their Music Guest of Honor. The theme is "Necropolis," and the timing couldn't be better (nor the theme closer to my heart). Watch for thrills, chills, and possibly 1940s couture made from horrible zombie-print Halloween fabrics. Also, this is your chance to get up to three of my books signed. WHOA!

June.
June is currently totally free, and that's a damn good thing, because wow, am I going to need the break. Pressing on...

July.
Here's where things get crazy. In July, I have not one, not two, but three conventions to attend, starting with the very first weekend of the month: Westercon, which is combined with ConChord this year. I'm the Guest of Honor at ConChord, which means, y'know, I'm planning to attend, and more, planning to blow the roof off. Paul Kwinn, my frequent partner in crime, is their Toastmaster, and between the two of us, there's going to be a whole lot of hoot and a whole lot of nanny. Plus it's in Pasadena, land of Disney, where a good time can easily be had by all.

I'll barely have time to return to the Bay Area before it's back to Southern California for the San Diego International Comic Convention, where again, last year I didn't have any books in print, and this year I'll have three, as well as probably having ARCs for the fourth. I may hyperventilate and die. Only not, because at the end of the month, I have Spocon! In Spokane, Washington, where I'll be the Filk Guest, along with Author Guest Tanya Huff! Ladies of DAW, unite!

August.
Australia awaits.

The year is filling up fast, and more things are bound to appear as the months draw closer—look at how detailed the next few months are compared to the later ones. If you want me, book early, book often, and bribe.

Whee!

The thing you have to understand about snow panic in Alabama is that it's not about the snow. Mostly, it's about us not being prepared for snow; a meager two inches is considered an epic blizzard. It's also about the side effects of snow--I live in a heavily-wooded suburban area full of giant, beautiful, old trees. Very old trees. And they all have dead branches here and there hanging on by a shred of bark, so when you have just enough snow to weigh them down, they break off and fall onto the power lines. Or worse, the entire tree is mostly dead and it falls across the road or onto (and usually through) your house. There was one Epic Two-Inch Snow that ended up with a three-foot-thick, forty-foot-long pine lying across our street (and in what used to be someone's sun room), while live power lines were sparking in the road. In fact, my mother reported last night that, as she was driving home, she saw a number of official-looking trucks on the side of the road, presumably stationed for speedy tree removal.

It's also about the ice. None of us know how to drive on it, because we don't get it often enough to figure out how and then retain that knowledge. One time there was a Special News Report on Safe Winter Weather Driving, and I am serious, it was, in its entirety, "Drive slow." And now, over to Jim with the sports! So basically, entire schools, businesses, and highways will be shut down for safety reasons while all of Chicago points and laughs. I am not even kidding: my sister may not be able to get to work on Friday--

Oh God. I just realized that if we are all iced in together for the next four days, a remake of The Shining is going to break out.


While we're here, a teensy bit of Twi-spam, because I am getting a lot of email about this, and also, I enjoy the progression of the headlines:

Attn. Jackson Rathbone: Missing something?

'Eclipse' Script Wasn't Leaked, Says Summit. 

Nikki Finke: Yes, That Leaked Movie Script Is 'Eclipse.' 

1. I don't want to read it. I'm to a point where I don't even watch clips of movies I know I want to see anymore. I get so bored in the theater if I feel like I've already seen the movie. 2. I suspect the wink emoticon in the script (as seen at the first link) is forced product-placement sarcasm from screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg. 3. My dazzle is somewhat chagrined that (people tell me) the werewolf-vampire nose-fist bump is not in this version of the script, because, quite honestly, the Edward/Seth stuff is the only thing I find remotely likeable about Book!Edward. Also: COME ON! WEREWOLF-VAMPIRE NOSE-FIST BUMP! If there is anything funnier than that, I can't think of it right now.

Meanwhile, I am trying to work--I got a good bit of novel note-sorting and categorizing done yesterday--but am having a hell of a time. Lots of interruptions, and I can't concentrate for shit. Also, my new calendars (50% off!) came in from Amazon yesterday, but without the books I had bought for research, and then I realized I had forgotten to order a couple of other researchy things anyway, fnarr. Also-also, I bought another pair of fingerless gloves because I was concerned that my homemade recycled ones were fraying a bit from being worn so much, and I am really hoping they arrive before the cold snap is over. This is Alabama, after all.


OH OH OH I ALMOST FORGOT I have two questions to ask you:

1) How do we get e-books from my stepfather's Kindle onto my parents' computer? They can't figure out how.

2) Those identity protection/theft-prevention services, are any of them actually any good?

In addition to all the things on my Christmas wish-list, Brian gave me the perfect gift: A new robe and matching slippers. My old robe was black velvet with fancy red and gold trim and made me feel like Hugh Hefner for some inexplicable reason, but it wasn't very warm so I only wore it on the rare occasions when I wanted to feel like Hugh Hefner. The new robe is fleece-lined and soft and SUPER WARM. It feels like heaven. The new slippers aren't like the other dainty slippers I own--they're like boots and they are very winter-appropriate. So the slippers and robe are my new uniform. When I do my day job (medical transcription), I use a foot pedal. It's hard to wear any sort of shoe, including a slipper-boot, when I need to operate the foot pedal. So I've been walking around the house every day for the past week wearing just one slipper-boot and wondering why my right foot is always cold.

Around late December, I silently congratulated myself for doing such a great job handling the winter weather so far. And then I realized...winter was ONLY JUST BEGINNING. This happens every year. I struggle through the holidays and I'm feeling pretty good, and then I realize there are three freaking months of winter left, and nothing to look forward to until spring. This year is a little different because THE SNOWBALL EFFECT will be released right after the "end" of winter so I have a book launch to plan, plus I'm getting MARRIED in less than four months so I probably should be, I don't know, maybe ordering the cake I refused to order three months ago because it was too expensive even though it seems like everyone but me is okay with that, or mailing back the DJ contract I should have mailed in October.

My friend Maria is going to be six or seven months pregnant at the wedding, so I've completely given up on matching bridesmaids dresses. I never wanted matching dresses to begin with. I don't like picking out my OWN clothes, so why would I want to pick out someone else's? I'd originally picked red as the color, but my mom is paranoid that if they each pick their own red dress the colors won't match nicely enough, so my maid of honor is going to wear red and the other bridesmaids will wear whatever black dress they want. Kim and Kate, the junior bridesmaids, are going to wear matching red and black dresses that my mom bought on clearance after Christmas. For someone who doesn't have many friends, I somehow ended up with a HUGE bridal party.

Speaking of wedding attire, I have to schedule my dress fitting soon so alterations can be done (mostly to correct for the huge bosom I don't have). This means I have to shed my winter fat and actually fit back into my dress sometime in the next month. Should be fun!

So as you may have noticed, I love FAQs. I love writing them, I love updating them, and I love pointing people to them. With that in mind, we come to our second giveaway for the day:

Here is the current October Daye FAQ. You may notice that it's pretty sparse. That's why I'm turning to you, my best-beloved people who live free things, to ask for more questions. Be creative, be specific, be general, be pedantic, be whatever makes you happy, but ask questions.

I will be adding the best questions to the FAQ. I will also be selecting two winners from out those questions. One will receive a signed copy of Rosemary and Rue (and if you already have one, I can send a copy to your local high school or library).

One will receive a signed ARC of A Local Habitation.

I'll take entries until tomorrow morning. Now please, please, question me! Get rewarded! Flesh out my website! I'll be your bestest blonde if you will...

I forgot to mention! New episode of Made of Fail is up. "It's like... fudge... made of out PEANUT BUTTER."

Meanwhile! Right after I posted that last entry--seriously, I hit "post" while putting on my shoes--I went out and saw Sherlock Holmes again, this time with my mother. ( More Holmesian nerditry )

(For those of you wondering when I'll ever shut up about Sherlock Holmes: IT'S NOT TWILIGHT, OKAY? So shut it and count your blessings.)

Meanwhile: omg so cold. I love it. It's already one o'clock, but it's still only 26°F, which means it only gets colder from here. In fact, we've got snow predicted for Thursday. The dogs are bored out of their minds because I won't let them stay outside longer than ten minutes at a time; I'm under a fleece blanket (NOT A SNUGGIE) in the den at my laptop, and I had to put on my huge floor-length coat and my gloves just to take them out front. (I do have a pair of full-coverage gloves, but I put on my favorites just because they are pretty: fingerless gloves recycled from toesocks, because a hole got into one of the toes, and they were too awesome to throw away. Bonus photo feature: My stubby little hobbit hand.)




(Speaking of accessories: the purse I decided on, because it's simple, and the grey-on-black paisley is interesting but casual. I'm going to try to fix my faux Fendi for more stylish occasions, but this looks like a good everyday bag. And it's from Etsy, yay.)

And I think I had something else to mention but I can't remember what but I'm sure I will later. Very busy, tons of work, trying to alternate footnotes with novel-writing, yay.

Today is my birthday! Yaaaaaaay! And to celebrate my birthday, I'm going to give stuff away. Because I can. (Also because it's quite frankly easier than thinking of something coherent to say. The cats still haven't forgiven me for leaving, and I didn't get all that much sleep as a consequence. What sleep I did get involved dreams that were basically a cross between Cabin Fever and Parasite Rex, so I'm understandably a little loopy this morning.)

First up, let's give away a copy of Rosemary and Rue, again, because I can. To enter, comment here. I'll do the drawing in five hours, my time, using random numbers and snazzy math to select a winner, and then I'll post a second giveaway. Many will enter, few will win, please ask your parents before calling those suspicious-looking numbers that appear during the Saturday morning cartoons.

Now I nap.

So I'm past the hangovers and sugar-crashes and travel and oddly excessive number of cookies, and it is now time to begin assessing my current status. Beyond "awake," I mean. It's 2010! It's a whole new year! Sadly, the old year did not do all the dishes before it left, but hey.

Books. I have three coming out in 2010: A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] and An Artificial Night as me, and Feed [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] as Mira Grant. I have one currently due in 2010, Blackout (the sequel to Feed).

In addition to the books that are already sold/slated for publication, I have one finished October Daye book, Late Eclipses, and one finished InCryptid book, Discount Armageddon. I am currently working on The Brightest Fell (Toby five), Midnight Blue-Light Special (InCryptid two), and Sit, Stay, I Hate You (Coyote Girls two). In 2010, I'm planning to finish all three of these, start on Deadline (Newsflesh three), start on Ashes of Honor (Toby six), and start on Hunting Grounds (InCryptid three). I am not planning on a particularly large quantity of sleep.

Short Stories. I'm one of the 2010 universe authors for The Edge of Propinquity, which will be running my Sparrow Hill Road series from January through December. The first story, "Good Girls Go To Heaven," has been turned in, and I'm about two-thirds of the way through the second story, "Dead Man's Party," which should be finished by this weekend. After that comes "Tell Laura I Love Her," which should be a lot of fun. This is a series heavily influenced by the mythology of the American highway, and with a very strong soundtrack accompanying every story. There will be playlists! Much fun.

I have various other short stories out on secret missions, including two Fighting Pumpkins adventures ("Dying With Her Cheer Pants On" and "Gimme a 'Z'!"), my first-ever steampunk piece ("Alchemy and Alcohol," which comes complete with cocktail recipes), and an actual Mira Grant short story ("Everglades"). I'm noticing a high level of dead stuff in my recent short story output. Somehow, this is not striking me as terribly surprising.

Non-fiction. My essay in Chicks Dig Time Lords [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] will be available in March, along with, y'know, the rest of the book. So if you've ever wondered why I love math and have trouble with linear time, you should probably pick up a copy of this book. (You should do that anyway, because the book is awesome, but that's beside the point.) My introduction for jennifer_brozek's In A Gilded Light will also be available with the rest of the book, sometime in mid-2010.

Albums. Work on Wicked Girls is proceeding apace, and beginning to pick up speed as we get deeper into the process of mixing and arranging songs. I'm scheduling my various instrumentalists to come into the studio and get their parts recorded, and some of the arrangements are just going to be incredible. I still need to confirm the covers for this album, and start thinking about graphic design, but I'm still really, really pleased. There's no confirmed release date yet, and there's not going to be one until we're a lot closer to done: as I've said a few times, as soon as there's a deadline, this ceases to be fun and relaxing, and right now, we're too far from finished for that to be a good idea.

I'm within a hundred copies of being entirely out of Stars Fall Home (my first studio album), and right now, I couldn't tell you if or when there's going to be another printing. I'm doing a little better for Pretty Little Dead Girl, but at the current rate, I'd estimate that I'll be out (or very close to out) by this time next year. Red Roses and Dead Things, being my most recent release, is also the one with the most remaining stock (paradoxically, it's also my fastest seller, since a lot of folks don't have it yet). In summary, if you're missing any of my first three albums, you may want to consider whether you're going to want them, because when they're gone, they're gone.

Cats. Thanks to Susan's lovely gift of triple-strength catnip mice, I have discovered Alice's response to catnip. Basically, she goes batshit moonmonkey pumpkinfuckers INSANE for about half an hour, before singing arias to the invisible bug-people for the rest of the night. Lilly, on the other hand, takes advantage of Alice's, ahem, "delicate condition," and spends several hours gently shoving her off things.

And that's the local weather report. Back to you, Ken.

Overall, it was an interesting story. It did conjure up images of The Stand. I read a criticism that Stephen King's writing is too simplistic, that his characters in this story are either "good" or "bad". I reluctantly found myself agreeing with that assessment. I'd say read it, but that's because I'm in love with Stephen King, lol! It's a decent book, but it did not stand out for me as one of his best.

My flight back from Seattle to San Francisco touched down about twenty minutes before eight last night. We were actually early, which was a trifle annoying, as it meant that all the post-landing announcements interrupted the episode of The Wizards of Waverly Place that I'd been watching (yes, I am a total dork). Oh, well. At least it was one I'd seen before. I collected my suitcase from the baggage claim, met Mom at the escalator, and was promptly toted across the Bay Area to home, where I was greeted by a stack of mail and two incredibly irritated blue cats.

People who haven't met my cats often fail to understand exactly how good they are at making their annoyance known. These people need to be shut in a room with Lilly, Alice, and an empty food dish for half an hour. At the end of this time, they will understand a) that my cats are perfectly capable of explaining, in the detail, their displeasure, and b) I should get hazard pay for entering the house without feather toys and treats.

Thankfully, my girls aren't good at being mad for long. After a night of cuddling and a morning spent watching Boa vs. Python (with the pair vying for dominion over my lap), I seem to have been essentially forgiven. They still aren't letting me out of their sight, but that isn't all that unusual.

Over the course of my time in Seattle, I ate cupcakes, baked a turkey, made insane numbers of cookies, saw Die Hard for the first time, went to several bookstores, gave a concert, embarked on a successful quest for cranberries, reached 90,000 words on Blackout, formally turned in the first Sparrow Hill Road story, watched all of season one of Glee, played with kittens, rewrote about half my website, and hugged many people I love.

It was a good holiday break. I hope yours was just as lovely.

As a follow-up to the Sherlock Holmes movie discussion entry, I feel like I should clarify that I don't actually think Holmes and Watson were doing it although I can absolutely see why you might. (And the movie might agree with you. Commenters pointed out that there were lines from Irene in the trailer ("They've been flirting for hours" and "Will you two just kiss and make up?") that got cut from the movie, as well as a line in the original script where Mary tells Holmes that Watson's "heart is generous. He has room for both of us." Also, Robert Downey Jr. apparently pissed off Doyle's estate by suggesting that Holmes might be "a very butch homosexual.") I am simply saying that they are in love, love, looooooove. It is not for me to specify the nature of that love; I can only point to the GIGANTIC BLATANT IMMENSITY of it.

(I should also note that the words "Satan," "Satanic," and "devil" are never mentioned in the movie, as far as I remember. ( Spoilers? )

I also spent a good bit of yesterday afternoon rereading the first two Holmes novels, A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four. ( Reading recommendations )

( Back to the movie )

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/2010/01/sunday-secrets.html

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i just had to put my beloved pet to sleep after finding out she was dying of cancer. she was in so much pain the last few days, all i could think was that euthanasia was the most compassionate and loving last gift i could give her.




----Email Message-----
I have a stutter. So you think that when I meet people with my disability, it would give me a sense of community? Wrong. It pisses me the heck off. I just want to yell "SPIT IT OUT"




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The same thing crossed my mind as I drove home drunk from a party last week. I smashed into the car in front of me 3 minutes later.




















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Yesterday I had my last therapy session with one of my clients and I realized something. I am sure he will never read this but just in case I want him to know, I love you.

-----Email Message-----
While volunteering with my local crisis center, I once received a suicide call that reminded me so much of my own suicide attempt, I couldn't finish the call. . .

-----Email Message-----
The therapist I saw for my eating disorder and depression inspired me to become a psychologist. I hope that I can help someone as much as you helped me.




-----Email Message-----
I don't tell my therapist my real issues because I don't want to hear myself admit them.







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this is free right? i dont have to pay anything? i just want to read the post cards







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'The end of 2009 already happened' you may justifiably and accusingly say unto me. True!

But the end of 2009 was exceedingly busy, so I only have the chance to tell you about it now.

Not busy in a GLAMOROUS way, let me hasten to assure you. Being glamorous is not really my style. I have just had piles of stuff to do! Also there was the Christmas Day Disaster.

So I awoke on Christmas Day alone in the Cherry Bomb, as my housemates Jennet Wilde the DJ and the Durham Lass the Dead Bodies and Old Stuff Specialist were at their homes over Christmas.

Later I was picked up and brought to my family homestead for dinner by my uncle, who is an opera-fan piano-playing diplomat, and my aunt, who lives in Australia among oranges and silversmiths. We had a most delightful Christmas Day, and then it was time to return to the Cherry Bomb. I cannot stay at the family homestead, as they have turned my room into a gym.

This is not the act of wanton, daughter-hating cruelty it might appear at first: the gym still has my bed and books in it. But waking in the dead of night, I find it very disquieting to have gym equipment strewn about the room. They are dark menacing shapes.

SARAH (waking confused): Oh God what is that looming over my bed? Is it a wildebeest?
SARAH (calming): No, it is an exercycle.
SARAH (collapsing back on the bed): I would prefer a wildebeest.

So home I went, shivering in my crimson party frock, to a dark chilly house. Immediately I turned on both lights and kettle.

Then I was plunged into dark and bitter cold.

SARAH (calls the Durham Lass): The curse has fallen upon me.
DURHAM LASS: Explain with real people speech.
SARAH: Where do we keep our fuse box?
DURHAM LASS: Up... high... somewhere. In the hall.
SARAH: OKAY. I'm going to climb up on a chair.
DURHAM LASS: Stay on the phone, you have to stay on the phone! What if you fall off the chair and bump your noggin and we find you four days later? DEAD.
SARAH: OKAY. I'm going to stay on the phone. Oh, oh, going over sideways - feeling for box. Oh no, going over sideways.
DURHAM LASS: Why do you keep falling down?
SARAH: This isn't easy to do in the dark and high heels.
DURHAM LASS: Why are you still wearing your heels?
SARAH: ... I have a perfectly good reason for that.
DURHAM LASS: What is it?
SARAH (with dignity): I cannot tell you that at this time.

Fumbling and flailing in the night, I eventually got the lights back on. Then I tottered over to the kettle.

It had stopped working.

I gestured with my kettle, a kettle of despair and not tea. Then I trailed sadly to my bed, where I created a fort of blankets. I succumbed to illness and stayed in the blanket fort for many days.

Until it was time to get on a flight to Boston! The grumpy Frenchman on the plane seat beside me seemed annoyed by how sickly I was

When I arrived, I overcame illness by force of will! And then there was a party with rhinestone eyepatches, bald cats in tuxedoes, and assorted weaponry. I wore my crimson party dress and a pink wig. I am so tasteful. Tasteful like a disco ball.

The next day 2010 started off with a bang. I was in the cellar helping sweep up.

HOLLY: Sarah, come up here.
SARAH: No, I wish to help! There is glitter everywhere Holly - it is like a vampire exploded down here.
HOLLY: Sarah COME HERE.
SARAH: I am here.
HOLLY: Congratulations. You are a Cybils finalist!

Every year a community of bloggers puts out a list of finalists for Cybils awards, awards given out for lit'rary merit! I am extremely complimented to be a finalist, and to be a finalist in such great company!

Now as you may all know (because I never stop talking about it!) 2009 is the year my first book came out.

Having a book out, it is the weirdest thing! For of course I have spent years and years and yeeeeears (nineteen years, to be precise) writing books, hoping one day people would read them and tell me what they thought about them and hopefully they would like them and and and...

It makes one a Crazy Person, as I have often mentioned, and perhaps too often given practical demonstrations of. For you are now obsessively anxious about whether people will read this book, and what they will think.

And then things like starred reviews, and the Carnegie nomination, and now being a Cybils finalist happen, and it is glorious. Because you did what you always wanted to do, and other people saw what you were doing, and said that you did it well.

Fame, you glittering bauble, now you are mine!

... Oh, not really? Oh, well.

2009 was both glorious and incredibly nerve-wracking for me. Lots of unpleasant stuff happened which I am truly glad to have over with. Lots of truly amazing things happened, and all my favourites had to do with my book: the book came out, I got to meet lots of you blog readers, Scott Westerfeld and I travelled about America facing fiery and icy danger, my first anthology The Eternal Kiss came out, I dyed my hair pink and... wait, that was a terrible thing. With a story attached to it that one day I will tell you.

In 2010 the paperback of Demon's Lexicon will come out in the US (meaning with luck: more people reading it!) and Demon's Covenant will come out. (Also, at least one other anthology.) Second books, so nerve-wracking! Will people like it as well as the first? Will I wear my pink wig to events? So many QUESTIONS!

And I have lots of things to work on: Demon's Talisman to finish, short stories to write, a new book to write, a couple of secret things to write! I have my December book to give away, which I will do very shortly. And I have many more adventures to have.

Every day of 2010 so far, I have had good news! I wish you all the same.

I did pretty badly with these last year, so I made some of these objectives impossibly easy. Like The Snowball Effect's release, and the wedding we've already planned, and trips that we've already booked. NOT doing those things would require much more effort than actually doing them.

So here they are:

1. Celebrate THE SNOWBALL EFFECT's release on March 23.

2. Sell Novel #2.

3. Write Novel #3.

4. Throw my scale away.

5. Get married on May 2 and honeymoon in California.

6. Go to Orlando in October for Brian's birthday and to see HARRY POTTER LAND!

7. Get pregnant.

8. Take a picture every day. I already missed yesterday, so this one probably won't go well.

9. Read all 2010 debut books by my fellow tenners. There are a LOT of them, but I've already read a few ARCs so I had a (small) head start.

10. Stop wasting time (especially on the internet) when I have better things to do.

As is the tradition around here, I present the set list for my latest concert appearance (Wayward Coffeehouse, December 2009). The set list includes annotation and lyric links, because otherwise, it's not so helpful.

The Wayward list, with arrangement notes, was as follows:

1. "Counting Crows." (Seanan, Vixy, vocals; Tony Fabris, guitar; Betsy Tinney, cello.)
2. "Mama Said." (Seanan, Vixy, vocals; Tony, guitar; Betsy, cello.)
3. "Take Advantage (of Me)." (Seanan, Vixy, vocals; Tony, guitar; Betsy, cello.)
4. "Carnival Glass." (Seanan, Vixy, vocals; Tony, guitar; Betsy, cello.)
5. "Paper Moon." (Seanan, Vixy, vocals; Tony, guitar; Betsy, cello.)
6. "Dorothy." (Seanan, Vixy, vocals; Tony, guitar; Betsy, cello.)
7. "Evil Laugh." (Seanan, Vixy, vocals; Tony, guitar; Betsy, cello.)
8. "Still Catch the Tide." (Seanan, Vixy, vocals; Tony, guitar; Betsy, cello.) Talis Kimberley cover.

There was a break here. During the break, I read from chapter four of A Local Habitation. It seemed to go over well. Yay!

9. "In the Foam." (Seanan, vocals.)
10. "Fox Hunt." (Seanan, Vixy, vocals; Tony, guitar; Betsy, cello.)
11. "Oh, Michelle." (Seanan, Vixy, vocals; Tony, guitar; Betsy, cello.)
12. "Dear Gina." (Seanan, Vixy, vocals; Tony, guitar; Betsy, cello.)
13. "Tanglewood Tree." (Seanan, Vixy, vocals; Tony, guitar; Betsy, cello.) Dave Carter cover.
14. "Wicked Girls Saving Ourselves." (Seanan, Vixy, vocals; Tony, guitar; Betsy, cello.)

Encore: "Archetype Cafe."</a> (Seanan, Vixy, vocals; Tony, guitar; Betsy, cello.) Talis Kimberley cover.

These are some of my favorite people to perform with, and we were performing in a venue that's warm and welcoming in every possible way. The only thing that could have made this show any better would have been adding an Amy (the experience of hearing her play with Betsy was one that I won't get over with any time soon), and maybe a wading pool filled with autumn mix and lizards. I'm a fan of both autumn mix and lizards.

As always: "Take Advantage of Me," "Paper Moon," "Dorothy," and "Evil Laugh" are on Stars Fall Home (studio). "Oh, Michelle" and "Dear Gina" are on Red Roses and Dead Things. A distressing number of the other songs in the set will be on Wicked Girls (good luck guessing which ones).

Closing with "Wicked Girls" followed by "Archetype Cafe" was just...it was amazing. Vixy and I finished "Wicked Girls" hand-in-hand, and I basically wanted to either conquer the world or go home and hug for approximately a thousand years. It was a beautiful night, and it was made all the more amazing by the people who were there.

Sometimes I feel so blessed.