Saturday,
January 10, 2004
A writerly Saturday
The
day started off with a ding letter from Asimov's for my short-short "The
Scent of Gardenias." I think I need to go back and see if it can be expanded
somewhat -- 770 words really isn't enough for a proper story, although it seemed
to work at the time. Then again, it's entirely possible that I was just being
lazy.
And this afternoon was yet another slush party at the Editor from Hell's house. We finally cleared through all of the submissions, and reviewed through some of the stories in the Maybe pile (we were only giving opinions on those -- Julia will make the final decisions on each story). And, huzzah, it seems that my story "A Hell of a Note" is on the Probably pile -- nothing's final until she says so, of course, but it's certainly nice to have made it this far.
If I do make this sale, it'll be my third pro-level sale and will finally admit me to Active status in SFWA, which means I can vote for the Nebulas, vote for officers in the organization and run for office. I don't really have time for the last one, but it'll be nice to finally have my Active status after nine years of membership (hey, the last few years have been kinda busy, okay?) Although looking back on it, my productivity and sales have certainly increased in the last couple of years, so obviously I'm doing SOMETHING right. Anyway, keep your fingers crossed that Julia wants my piece for the Anthology from Hell.
The rest of the afternoon was spent blatantly lazing about the place, playing with the cats and re-reading the Helene Hanff Omnibus (she wrote 84, CHARING CROSS ROAD, as well as some other brilliant pieces about New York and life as a writer). You never really understand how tiring pain is until it happens to you -- then when it stops happening, you feel great for about a day, and then the backlash sets in. I figure everything will be back to normal by tomorrow, and I'll be running around like my usual hyper self (well, since the DFW Nano group has a meeting at Borders tomorrow, and I really want to make this one).
And on a final
note, I've decided what I want this year's Hugos dress to be (also assuming
that I lose a chunk of weight by then -- hey, it could happen, and corsetry
will be involved anyway because of the construction). Picture dark ruby-red
velvet, a slightly flared skirt slit up one leg, then form-fitting to the shoulderless
bodice, which is framed by a sort of cowl of red velvet worked with celtic designs
in gold. The leg slit is also bordered with the same designs, and the cuffs
of the sleeves. I'm blatantly lifting a lot of Rohan designs for this puppy
(it's GOOD to have the extended DVD with costume sketches) and it's going to
be gorgeous, bwahahahahahaha. . .