The book signing went pretty well, I think. Sold around 20 books, which isn’t bad for Fairbanks, and saw one friend from the North Road where I grew up whom I hadn’t seen in probably 20 years, plus another one who had no idea I was writing for a living, and did a wonderfully classic double-take when he saw me. :) And a third whom we had no idea was living in Fairbanks, but who is in fact actually working part-time at the B&N, so that was all-around awesome.

Ted, more than once, went dashing off to the shelved books to get copies of books I’d sold all the copies of (HEART OF STONE and THE QUEEN’S BASTARD, mostly) from my little display table. Ted is an awfully good guy.

One woman, the mother of a fan who lives in Chicago, came by with a bag full of books that her daughter’d sent to have signed, so that was awesome. Equally awesome was the fact that the grandmother accompanying the mother saw fit to move two large display/signs so people could actually see me when they came into the store. :)

Another gentleman whose wife had gone to UAF’s creative writing program told me the story of how they’d met when she’d picked him up off a fantasy bookrack at a used bookstore. :) She’d apparently come to Alaska with a fella, and they’d broken up shortly after arriving, so she’d gone to drown her sorrows by stopping by the bookstore, and found someone she knew to talk about it to. She said, “I guess I’m free to date now. Maybe him,” she said, gesturing to my storyteller. “He’s kind of cute. Tell him he should ask me out.”

“Ah!” said the friend, “that’s my friend John! John! Ask Mary out, she thinks you’re cute!”

That was thirty years ago. :)

Anyway, so it was a good day. We did a very little bit of shopping before the signing, but there were no mad crushes of people (though the parking lots were all crammed full), and we had a specific shopping list, so it was pretty strategic strike. That’s the only kind of shopping I like to do anyway, so it was all good. :)

A few of ‘em, anyway. Fat ravens, Books My Friends Wrote sighted in the wild at B&N, a layered turtle cheesecake, sunset, stuff like that. :)

(x-posted from the essential kit)

There will be a book signing event in Seattle!

Where: The University Book Store on University Way in Seattle, Washington

Where, in greater detail: This will be a Fireside Event, taking place downstairs on the far side of the cafe, rather than in the usual event area.

When: 7-8pm on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

What: I will definitely be signing, and my books will be for sale (cash registers close at 8, we may be permitted to hang out a bit longer afterward to finish signings & things).

I may do a reading. I may do a reading of the first chapter of DEMON HUNTS, book five of the Walker Papers, due out in June 2010. Let me suggest you turn up on time if you want to hear that. :)

Further details: Me doing a signing in Seattle means there will be, at least for a time, signed books available for ordering within the continental US. If you can’t make it to Seattle but would like me to sign books and have them sent to you, order the books through the University Book Store website, and make certain to put in the Comment Box that you would like signed books, and exactly how you want them signed.

Lithera sent me a True Blood t-shirt that says “It hurts so good” on the chest. But in a mirror, which is the only place I ever notice the text, “good” becomes “bood”. Then my brain transposes the “d” to another “b”, though it doesn’t try to read the rest of the words because they don’t reflect into almost-words. So I essentially think the t-shirt says “It hurts so boob.” And I wear it anyway. :)

Also, the box the t-shirt (and other things) arrived in is the Best Box Ever. The cats have been sleeping in, on, and around it for two months. One could argue this is due to the box’s location beside a radiator, except they were just as eager to sleep in it when the heat wasn’t on. Best. Box. EVER.

Ted and I got into Dublin fairly early Friday evening. Got to the hotel and Michael Carroll swept down on us and said, “So far it’s just us, the committee, and Mike Carey, the guest of honor! We win!” So we dropped our things off in the room and were subsequently introduced to Mike, who is, as advertised by Juliet McKenna, an absolutely lovely man. A few other people joined us, and after a bit we all went out to dinner at a kebab place across the street (which was really good!), where Mike got all caught up on the Saga Of Take A Chance, a tale which he hadn’t even known he was missing. :) Dinner accomplished, we retreated back to the hotel bar, where more and more people arrived throughout the evening, and where we sat around having a good long chat about (mostly) Marvel and the current X-storylines (Mike’s writing the X-Men), and my ambitions to someday write the X-Men. It was only sometime yesterday that it struck me that cheerily announcing these ambitions to the current writer, when all the comics experience I have under my belt is one five-issue independent miniseries, was perhaps on the bold side. He was, however, extremely encouraging toward the idea of me submitting a portfolio to Marvel, so that was heartening. :)

Mindful of being onstage all weekend, I retired early, and was awake bright and early, ready to go. The reg desk was up and running by the time we got there, with the slight oddity of everyone getting to add their own strings to their badges (though hole punches, embroidery thread and safety pins were all provided, so it was hardly a difficulty), and actually as far as I could see, registration went very smoothly all weekend. There was always somebody at the desk, they all seemed to know what they were doing and what was going on, and any time I dropped by with a question, somebody answered it satisfactorily (the only real thing I stopped to ask was if panel lists could be posted on the doors so people would know which panel was being held where as a back-up to their own schedules, and lo, on Sunday that pretty minor detail had been rectified).

The only real scheduling snafu was that Harry Harrison was unable to attend, which is hardly something anybody can be blamed for. Friday night the con-runners asked people to fill in for new panels replacing Harry’s, so it was all sorted out before the con even began, for which my hat is off to the committee: they handled it very well. As it happened, I ended up in both slots that would’ve been his, so apparently I was playing the part of Harry Harrison for the weekend. I’ve always thought the resemblance was uncanny… :)

Some of the panels could have used more clarification for what their topics were meant to be, but I only heard one described (by a panelist, no idea what the audience thought) as a train wreck, which I thought was pretty good; most cons have at least one train wreck of a panel. I thought the ones I was on largely went well, and our Bechdel Test panel on Sunday morning was a roaring success. We could’ve gone on for another hour, though really it was decided pretty early on that most films failed by dint of having only one female character at all, which made it hard to have two women discuss anything, much less something that wasn’t a man. However, Maura McHugh opened the panel with a film that succeeded–Pitch Black, which indeed has three good female characters, all of whom are a lot more concerned with whether they’re going to survive than whether Vin Diesel is hot anything else. There was a high point mid-panel when Alien V Predator came up, and we wrapped up by remembering Farscape, which is possibly the most successful Bechdel-Test-passing television show, SF or otherwise, that we could collectively remember seeing.

Something went wrong with the A/V in one of the rooms, so Dave Lally’s media/GoH presentation didn’t start til late, which meant the Golden Blasters panel didn’t start til late. Instead of panicking and trying to shove things into narrowed time-slots, the 4pm panels were simply cancelled–although at least one of them apparently went on without all (any?) of the panelists attending. So that’s actually pretty great, I think. :)

And the Blasters were pretty cool. It was the first year of what’s going to become an annual short SF film festival event. This year John Vaughn brought seven short films from the past few years, and we spent about an hour watching and voting on those. Next year will be its first year as an international competition: anyone will be allowed to enter their short SF film, and twelve finalists will be selected and aired over two days at the convention, at the end of which the award-winning film(s) will be selected by audience and panel-judge decision. They’re also going to be running a short film screenplay competition, so I’ll probably be mentioning this all again in the future.

I must admit to having been quite dubious going into the Blasters, because I’m not much of a short film fan, but Ted and I really enjoyed ourselves, and were surprised at how much time and thought we ended up giving to which film we thought should be the winner (and we didn’t agree!). Nor do I know who actually *won*, because we had to leave before the closing ceremonies in order to catch our train. :) But I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed the whole thing, and I’m genuinely looking forward to the Blasters becoming an aspect of Octocon.

The hotel was a terrific venue; the rooms were large enough, we were a few steps from the bar, so we were able to go in and out with great ease and yet keep all the convention-attendees in essentially one place, there were, it turned out, enough eatery places within a quick walk (the kebab place, an Indian restaurant we went to Saturday that was *lovely*, and a very very good French bakery for breakfast or lunch) to not feel like we were on wash-rinse-repeat with food (and the hotel’s bar lunch was fine too), and yet we were far enough away from the city centre that there was really nothing outside the convention itself to draw us away for more than the space of a meal. Really successful location, I think. And it appears they’re happy to have Octocon back next year, which is great.

So, yes, honestly, a good time seemed to be had by all. I have *no idea* how many people may end up interested in attending next year’s event, with GRRM as the GoH. I feel very strongly that the committee members should put some real advertising effort, both locally and internationally, into next year’s con. It seems possible there may be as many as several hundred potential attendees next year, in which case the con and the committee is going to really need to step up its game–but this year’s convention leaves me feeling as if they have the capability to do so. Ted and I will be back next year, and we’re really looking forward to it!

I have very *very* silly friends.

I posted on Twitter that I’d read two books over the weekend. Carl said, “Isn’t *writing* two books over the weekend more your usual thing?” I claimed I’d never written *two* books over a weekend.

I checked Twitter this morning to find the following:

@BryantD Did you hear? @ce_murphy just finished two manuscripts in one weekend, while making oreos and stringing beads?

@othergretchen Did you hear? @ce_murphy just finished twelve manuscripts on one weekend, while stringing Oreos like beads?

@carlrigney I heard @ce_murphy was going to be the 12th Doctor.

I’ve never been a game of Telephone before. *laughs and laughs*

promise, i will almost never do this, post twittery things. pinky swear. i just thought that was really funny. :)

The thistles are all exploding with thistledown. I have this utterly irrational urge to, like, collect, spin, and weave with it, or something, just because there’s so much of it! This was one of my primary thoughts while walking (dear god) nine and a half miles today. Another one was a long and serious consideration of how I would survive if I was thrown back a hundred years in time with only the clothes on my back (answer: get by long enough to place a large bet on the Titanic sinking), including how I would explain my utterly inappropriate haircut (I sold it for money!) and my even-more-inappropriate clothes (I was set upon by creative bandits? …who invented tennis shoes?). I decided I would be best off writing newspaper articles or serialized stories, and also, in order to help my future self, also writing all the manuscripts I’d like to get caught up on and putting them in a safe deposit box, which I would notify myself of via postal letter sent a hundred years into the future.

…don’t other people think things like this while they’re out walking? In my defense (if I need a defense) I think I sorted out some stuff for the short story whilst walking, too. *frowns at it*

Several people showed up at the war room this morning, some of them even with the purpose of writing, so I’ll probably start posting over at Toonowrimo when I go to work in the mornings. Hopefully some other Europe-based writers will join me.

Oh! Ted has arranged a hotel room for us for the 13th-15th of August, so we’re going up to Belfast to see the tall ships. Belfast-based people, get in touch, we should have dinner!

miles to Minas Tirith: 535.7
ytd wordcount: 198,600

Ted and I went into Dublin today to see Paul Cornell, who was in to Dublin for the day to do a signing at Sub City Comics. Getting off the train, we discovered we were walking alongside Brian S. from P-Con, to whom I said, “Brian. Brian! Briiiiaaaan!” He ignored me entirely until Ted nudged him (later he said, “I did hear you, but I couldn’t imagine anybody would be talking to me! I mean, who would I know in the train station getting off the train from Sligo?”), and then we exited the tracks to find not only Kate, whom we expected, but Tarsh, at which point we felt we were well on our way to having a Non-Con (which is to say, a convention without the panels and only the sitting around talking and drinking) in Dublin today. The five of us meandered through the city until we located Brian N., who tagged Brian S. out (he had to go to a meeting), and then the slightly altered although identically named five of us went to the Saturday Food Market in Temple Bar, where we had a wide variety of delicious food for not very much money. I love the Saturday Food Market. :)

Paul arrived at the comic shop with Rob (the comic shop owner), and we hung around for quite some time chatting and trying not to scare people off. We got the last of Paul’s Captain Britain run (which is really very good), and he and I talked about revision difficulties some, and Kate talked about a conference idea, and Rob mentioned the other shop had Chance #5, so Ted went tearing off to get a copy, as we hadn’t seen it yet. :) Then many of us retreated to the extremely pleasant sitting area near the comic shop, where we were joined by Gareth, talked about a wide variety of things, and were pelted with leaves by the trees above. Paul joined us for a while when he was finished signing–and the signing went well, they sold out of all the graphic novels and things they had!–and when he departed it kind of signaled the end of the day, particularly since Ted and I had to head home so I could finish making Dad’s birthday cake.

(Ah yes. It’s the chocolate chocolate pudding chocolate ganache cake. I got up early enough to make two and a half pounds of pudding this morning, and it turned out *brilliantly*. Nicest pudding I’ve ever made. Ted was agog with admiration at its smoofness. I’m very pleased. Also, Ted read WALKING DEAD on the train. It’s a little odd to have someone sitting right next to you reading a book you wrote, just for the record. Every time he laughed I wanted to know what bit that was. :))

An entirely, entirely lovely day. And I think we will not be in to Dublin again for Some Time. I’ve been in like six times in the past two months!

miles to Minas Tirith: 509.5

I checked my friends-list this morning and found Ursula being artistically antsy, and laughed out loud to read the following line:

I think of myself as lazy most of the time, but if I’m being objective, my standards are totally warped there, and C.E. Murphy and Ellen Million and I will someday wind up sharing a padded room on that particular topic.

This is particularly funny to me right now, as it was yesterday that I kind of went, “…y’know, I may have overloaded myself again…” I suspect she has us pegged. I also think that we would have more fun in that padded room than has ever been had in the history of padded rooms. And that when we were finally released we probably would have taken the room entirely apart and turned it into some kind of massive, multi-artist project of doom. Because little things like straight-jackets wouldn’t stop us!

I want these people to make me a Chance costume. As soon as, you know. As soon as I can be mistaken for a T2 Linda Hamilton at a quick glance.

…to live someplace where there are enough people I know around that I can throw Dessert Parties. I have all these great dessert cookbooks (Mrs Fields’ I LOVE CHOCOLATE Cookbook, a cheesecake cookbook, an ice cream recipe book…) and no reason to make any of the desserts in them. There are a hundred recipes in the Mrs Fields book. It could take years to go through just /that/ one. But the desserts are mostly too extravagant to make just for two people, and they’re *all* too *large* for just a couple people, so I never make any of them. But it’d be kind of fun to make, like, five different kinds of things for a party so everybody could get a taste and nobody would be too bloated. But I would need, you know. People around.

Ardian (and Mark Powers, the guy adapting the Dresden Files novels to comic form) has an interview with the Comics Waiting Room.

I’m very tired of doing revisions. The DEMON HUNTS revisions aren’t at all difficult, but I’ve been working on mostly revisions for the past six weeks, and I’m tired of them. I want to write something new. Or possibly take six months off, but I have gone to some effort to make sure *that* won’t happen. Which reminds me that I had a discussion with comics artist Matthew Dow Smith the other day which went something like this:

Matt: I’m trying to get all my side projects sorted out. Somehow I ended up with way more side projects than I intended to this year.
Kit: Me too. How does that happen?
Matt: Freelancers can’t say no.
Kit: Oh yearh.
Matt: Also we overflow with creative genius.
Matt: But mostly, freelancers can’t say no.

miles to Minas Tirith: 460

We had a very nice day in Dublin. Talked to someone about a possible Sekrit Project, and was roundly insulted by Pádraig (”Ah,” says he, “I don’t read any superhero stuff anymore, yourself included. EXCLUDED. Yourself EXCLUDED!” *laughs out loud, again*), and we didn’t find what we were looking for but managed to find other things instead, and I got very nearly the entire proposal for the second Chance graphic novel written on the train. Which is to say, on the computer while we travelled on the train; I was not in actuality writing *on* the train. That would be silly.

All right, lads. Here’s the thing: with the 4th of July weekend coming up in the States, I don’t want to wait to do a last-minute post/nudge for fear of missing people, so I’m jumping the gun a bit and asking for people to post/spread the word about the Janx & Daisani short story commission. There are eight days left and the pledges already have brought it to 83% of the way there–another $136 will get all pledgers a short story that no one else will see for months, possibly years. I’d really like to see this work, as much for the sake of experiments as for the potential of periodic direct market sales.

The teaser again, from “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”:

“She was too young, even for a man with no age, but she caught his eye. Slim, dark-haired, with long fingers caught in the skirt of a shapeless dress, she was clearly not a child of wealth. She no doubt belonged to the riverboat upon which she stood, a shabby thing that had seen better days. Even so, in the fire’s light they both bent toward beauty.

It was her gaze, fixed on the sky, which arrested him. Others watched the fire, drawn in by its glow and movement, but she looked upward as though she could see what soared above the smoke. That was quite impossible: even knowing who danced there, Daisani could barely see them himself, but the girl watched as if she knew. Such seeing eyes were enough that he might have gone to her then, despite her youth, but tonight; tonight Chicago was burning.”

(It’s okay, by the way, if I get /more/ in donations than the base amount I’ve set, which is 10 cents per word & factors in Paypal fees. Anyone who donates will get the story, whether they donate to help meet the base amount or if they donate after it’s been reached.)

The pledge site: http://tinyurl.com/hot-time-commission

Thanks!

miles to Minas Tirith: 427.2

catie: Sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like to just say, “Screw it, if it doesn’t fit in two suitcases I’m not taking it,” and sort of…start clean.
sarah: Me too.
catie: I get into the “but well” within about three seconds.
sarah: LOL. Me too. :)
catie: I’m pretty sure the genuinely important things would fit in two suitcases.
But, well.
sarah: Yeah, but it’s all the little weird things that make you, you know, who you are, right?
Generic you.
catie: Nah, the weird little things that make people who they are are really in their heads. They don’t change or go away. The eleven zillion Rogue dolls are just a physical manifestation of that. As it were.
sarah: -squints- Oh, stop being sensible. ;)
catie: O.O
SORRY YES IT’S ALL THE LITTLE WEIRD BITS WE COLLECT O.O
gosh, i feel all pithy and shit now. Maybe I should go live on a mountaintop and dispense advice.
…through my internet connection…

Okay. I give in. I have joined Twitter. I am a twit. I … have no idea what to do with it, you understand, but I’m told it’s terribly important for networking, and I’m trying to build access to my reader base, so… Surprisingly, I’m ce_murphy there. (Well, I think it’s surprising. I didn’t expect to get that username.) At any rate, I most solemnly swear to *not* pipe my twitter feed into my LJ.

Another rather lovely day in Dublin. I met up with Kate and we had lunch at the Saturday food market, I traded my shoes that weren’t right for a new pair, we swung by Sub City to harrass Rob, and I did the Frozen Dublin thing, which I actually thought rather sucked. There were a *lot* of people there, but they turned up way the hell early and were basically just standing around anyway, so there was no sudden slow-and-stop of activity around the spire, and even more annoyingly the event, which was supposed to start at 3, didn’t start until a few minutes after, so if you were like me and did time it so you were arriving at the stroke of three, you were left meandering around like an idiot until the freeze signal blew. Also, I believe this is probably a more effective performance art thing if it’s staged inside, though possibly it just flat out would’ve worked better if everybody hadn’t been standing basically standing still anyway. The Spire may not have enough physical room around it for it to be especially effective, either. Anyway, so I wasn’t impressed, but maybe the next one will be better organized.

I also got a lot of work done on the train. I’m now well past the halfway point in revisions, and have added 25 pages to the manuscript (I don’t know how many I’ve subtracted). Of course, now I’ve probably gotten myself back to the part where I’m doing massive rewriting instead of just the tedious work of switching scenes to the other character’s POV, so being halfway isn’t actually the same as having hit the home stretch, sadly.

I reached the part of the book where I can start putting stuff back into TRUTHSEEKER again. The place where I started to do that was, in the original manuscript, page 42. It’s page 85 now. A whole chapter went back in with almost no revisions, which was exciting. I have no idea how this whole middle section will end up working, at this point. It’ll be a little shorter, which will make my editor happy, but shortening it means the last section is going to have to be lengthened, which doesn’t make /me/ happy.

I have to go in to Dublin on Saturday to exchange the new shoes I bought. There happens to be a Dublin Improv Movement/Frozen Dublin (facebook pages) Big Freeze going on at 3pm Saturday afternoon at the spire, so if anybody would like to, I don’t know, grab lunch and then go hold still at the Millennium Spire for five minutes on Saturday, that would be cool.

We got my bicycle fixed! I now need to get a lock for it again, and then I can ride it to and from the gym, and possibly, excitingly, some other places too!

jimhines/Jim Hines talks sense about a writing career vs real/day/safe jobs.

And to pull together five things make a post, I will briefly natter about X-Men Noir and X-Men Forever ( beneath the cut. )

(x-posted from the essential kit)

The entirely wonderful Leah Moore and John Reppion were in Dublin yesterday to do a signing at Sub City, our favorite neighborhood (for some value of neighborhood) comic shop. I went in to Dublin to see them and to run errands, and had a really very splendid day.

(x-posted from the essential kit)

just to say “not dead yet!”

I have a Kate for the weekend. We went out to Lough Key castle & forest & grounds today (we were on our way to Boyle Abbey, but we didn’t quite make it that far). She was under instructions from Sammy to show me bluebells, and now I have seen bluebells, and soon I will post pictures of bluebells. :) It was really a very splendid day tromping through the woods, and it hardly rained on us at all, and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. And now I’m all knackered and shall go propose to Kate that we spend the evening watching some silly movie. ;)

miles to Minas Tirith: 245.5

I have to say, I think there’s something to be said for this whole strange idea of “write 5 days a week and take 2 days off”. I had a very hard time getting started this morning (I do not find the ends of books easy to write, although you’d think they would be, since most of the work is done by that point), but I eked out twelve hundred or so words and then had a fairly decent set of wars. Aiming to finish the book by Friday (after which I have the unpleasant task of re-reading my own novels in order to get some of the details I’ve forgotten straight. I’d ask for LJ-readers to do it, but there are spoilers involved that I don’t want, well, spoiled.), which seems reasonably likely.

Dublin on Saturday was lovely, and I saw friends whom I hadn’t seen in MUCH too long! So that was wonderful. I didn’t find a copy of the FCBD Chance issue, though. Oh well. Trent reportedly snagged me a copy, so at least I’ll get to see it.

I’ve joined Dreamwidth as mizkit. I have no particular intention of jumping ship unless something unspeakably weird happens with LJ, but I’ve got my handle over there now and…yeah. That’s all. :)

ytd wordcount: 163,700
miles to Minas Tirith: 225

We’re home again from P-Con VI, which was one of the nicest cons I’ve been to. With the glaring exception of desperance, whom I barely saw all weekend, I for once actually felt like I got to talk almost enough with everybody I wanted to. Almost. I keep thinking of more people I’d have liked to talk with as I type this, but, well, it was a damned fine try.

The panels all went really well, I thought. The whole con ran *extremely* smoothly, and panels were well-attended and there was a lot of lively discussion, which is always best. Off-the-top-of-my-head highlights (not necessarily at panels) included a discussion of jacuzzi-bathing snow monkeys reducing Paul Cornell to tears of laughter, an excellent revisitation of the Visualization Discussion, meeting Melissa from New Zealand, and Ted walking in to the room just as I finished discussing the fact that I had no real guilty pleasures (he got applause and cheers and laughter for his excellent timing, and I take no guilt in my pleasures, see. Juliet McKenna, however, had a genuine guilty pleasure which we all went ‘ooooh’ at. :)) The charity auction went well–the WALKING DEAD manuscript went for €50 and the FANTASY MEDLEY advanced reader copy went for €25, so I was glad we’d brought them–and I nearly reduced *myself* to tears by putting the Simpsons Movie, which I had promised natural20, into the auction in hopes of forcing him to bid on it. He refused, and was given it anyway when nobody else wanted it. :)

The toast to life memorial for Frank Darcy was utterly lovely, if such a thing can be said about a service of that sort. The whole Darcy family was around all weekend (Ted defeated the youngest Darcy girl, who is ten and whose name escapes me, in a lightsaber Wii battle, and she used her Devastating Defeat to sell raffle tickets. Of course, she also said, “I let him win.” :)), and it was very, very good to see all of them. I could see a lot of Frank /in/ the kids, and we got to hear some wonderful stories about him as a father as well as the fan side that we all knew, so yeah. It was fantastic, in a heartbreaking way.

Peter, who ran the convention this year, is working to create a Friends of the Phoenix society of sorts, a community beyond the convention itself (”I was going to call it the Order of the Phoenix,” said he, “but then I thought no, wait, somebody had used that recently…”), and gave those of us who had been guests of honor honorary memberships to it, by way of presenting numbered certificates to us. Pádraig, who began P-Con six years ago, was given the number one certificate, and Frank Darcy’s family was presented with the #2 certificate. Both of these things were hugely, and rightfully, applauded.

I am, not for the first and certainly not for the last time, reminded of how much I like the people Ted and I have come to know through the Irish science fiction and fantasy convention scene. We’ve had some rough times in this whole moving across the world thing, but I would have been so terribly sad to have missed knowing all of them. They’re just such utterly wonderful people, and I’m really, really happy to get to spend a weekend or two a year with them and their generosity and welcoming spirits and big hearts.

miles to Minas Tirith: 145.5

I haven’t started working today and I can’t figure out if it’s a bad sign (ie, the book is still screwed up and what I wrote yesterday is not right, and thus I don’t want to work on it) or if it’s just that I got up a little late and did a rather extensive Pilates set which pushed my work-start-time later than I like it to be and if that has set me off wrong. I *think* it’s the latter, compounded by the impulse, when I sat down at Nook, to write up a script for what I would say on a Pilates For Normal People video if I were to make one. And now I’m wondering if Silkie would actually use such a video if I made one, since she’s the one who thought I should do it in the first place. :)

So after that, rather than sit at the computer and beat myself up for not working I thought I’d come have lunch and pretend I was going back to work after eating instead of only just now getting started. 1600 words will finish the chapter; that’ll just be the goal for today. And I think I’ll go ahead and start on the WALKING DEAD proofs this afternoon/evening and just do them a little at a time, which shouldn’t take too much brain away from forward motion on TRUTHSEEKER.

I donno, an hour of exercise this morning was good for me or something. I’m feeling pretty chipper. So I shall take that chip and go write with it. Or, er, something like that. :)

Aside from the Gaimaning, we had a really good time in Dublin. Hm. That sentence seems to suggest that we didn’t have a good time Gaimaning, which is clearly not what I meant. Ah, language. Don’t try this at home; I’m a professional. :)

Anyway, aside from dinner with Pádraig and Deirdre we lunched with Brian/natural20, who is his usual charming self. (I mean this with all sincerity. Brian is a splendid example of a typical Irishman, with a tongue that is both silver and wicked. I love hanging out with him.) And we dined with Kate and Shelly and Michael after going a-Gaimaning, in a meal event which happened entirely organically and which Shelly, when we were halfway to where we were (trying) to have dinner, observed she hadn’t actually been invited to and started seeming concerned that she’d invited herself. Kate (who had also invited herself) then invited Shelly. *laughs* (Sadly, we did not get Mr. Gaiman and Ms. Palmer in on this self-inviting gig, although given that we ended up walking across the entire city centre only to walk into various restaurants as they closed, that might be just as well. I don’t feel so guilty about making my friends walk a mile and a half for dinner on sore feet (which is to say, their feet were sore, not dinner’s…) but I’d have felt dreadful about making two very tired performers walk that far. :)) Anyway, the point of all that was it was lovely to actually talk and hang out with them all outside of the Event. So it made for a very nice evening.

We accidentally bought a pile of books at Chapters, none of which was Jim’s latest Codex Alera book, which I’ve been failing to buy for several months now. Several *were* Gaiman books (and are now signed and shiny) and although I didn’t take Mary Anne’s specific advice, I did take the general advice and found two Pilates books which looked, between them, as though I could get some use out of them. (My friend Silkie said I should do like a youtube Pilates video for people who aren’t, you know. Supermodels. Or my sister, for that matter, who teaches Pilates and is slim and very strong, unlike me. :) I told her I would when I could do more than 8 exercises…:)) Anyway, I’m looking forward to reading them and creating some kind of regular (variable) program from them. (One says “do this program and in six weeks you’ll see a major change in your body.” Well, no *shit*, Sherlock. It’s an entire *book’s* worth of workouts. And as far as I can tell they’re suggesting doing it all daily. Even I, with my lacksadaisical schedule, am somewhat loath to spend two solid hours doing a Pilates workout. Assuming I could, which is unrealistic. Sheesh.)

Let’s see, what else. We went to the museum, which was pretty cool, although I noticed how we lingered at first and by the end we were almost marching through the rooms. :) Went to a movie (”He’s Just Not That Into You”), which we generally enjoyed. Ate out at different restaurants than we’d ever eaten at in Dublin (though we’d eaten at Milano in Cork, so it’s not quite a *new* restaurant to us), and…yeah. It was lovely. And now I’m going to eat nothing but salad and do nothing but Pilates for the next three years, or something, to make up for all that high living. :)

miles to Minas Tirith: 39.4