Since yesterday when I last posted, I have been semi-productive. I got the latest revision of Amaranth mailed to Carady. I also managed to get about 20 or so pages of Verdant edited. So I’m that much closer to being done and ready to go when October rolls around.

On the downside, I seem to have picked up some sort of bug. I’ve got the aches, a headache, a relatively mild fever, and the sneezes. I’m just hoping it’s not the flu. I’m pretty notorious for getting coughs, colds, the flu, bronchitis, and even pneumonia. It’s a big no fun. I’ve got a lot of work to get done tomorrow, though, so I’m going to have to be at work. Maybe Roy’ll go easy on me.

Anyway, I’ll try to get more done tomorrow, both on editing Verdant and getting the revisions done on Ash towards having it ready to start on October 1.

So, since sometime Sunday evening, I have a headache. Yesterday was distinctly miserable thanks to it. Today it was no better, but I went in to work to get arrangements made for the candidates. I managed to get that done, but by 11:30 the headache was even worse, so I went home. Well, I stopped by the post office and picked up my long-awaited and eagerly anticipated birthday present from one of my best friends, Dirjanka, then I came home, had a quick lunch… and slept from 1 p.m. till nearly 6 p.m.

Oddly enough, I feel a bit better now. Maybe it was just the stress and the lack of sleep resulting from the stress after all. It would be nice if I could get my current doctor to give me the prescription drugs that my old doctor gave me a free sample of recently: Wellbutrin. It seemed to help me. I don’t take it often because I only 7 left, though.

Jumping back a subject, my birthday present from Dirjanka was a million kinds of awesome. I love getting candy, especially candy I can’t get here in the U.S.: Old Dutch Boterwafeltjes, Dubbel spekken, and Napoleon Lempur candies are my favorites. My father’s former fiancèe was from the Netherlands, and her father used to share his Boterwafeltjes with me. I could have lived on those things. I’m not any better now.

Dirjanka also offered me some proper bribery: one candy for every paragraph. I think I have enough stashed now to do that. Once I get to feeling a bit better, I might have to start on that. When I feel a bit less like I have either the flu or major exhaustion, I’ll start trying that.

I’m going to try to start recording a bit of “current meta” at the end of each post, starting on this one. It would just be like “currently feeling”, “currently hearing” or listening to, and “currently reading”. Honestly, as much as music inspires me, it couldn’t be a bad thing; for example, “Something to Talk about” by Bonnie Raitt plays in my head every time I write one of those scenes where someone thinks Lizzy and Murdock are a couple.

Anyway, later, my freaky darlings!

Currently Feeling:// Sick
Currently Hearing:// Spiderbait – Riders in the Sky, Bonnie Raitt – Something to Talk about
Currently Reading:// Neil Gaiman – Stardust

I have major kitty love. I’ve watched an episode of Bones and (glee!) Poltergeist: The Legacy. My day has improved. Just sometimes my job gets me a bit down.

Probably a lot of what sent me spiraling today was a PayPal screwup. I bought an eReader for myself. I marked it for PayPal to put it on my credit card. Instead they charged it to the main bank account I have listed with them. What happened? Yep, you guessed it. So, cue cursing, money transferring, and an unhappy (but polite) email to PayPal, which I sent this morning but still haven’t heard back from. So much for that “customer service will reply promptly” bit they have on their website, huh?

Anyway, right now I have my headphones plugged into my computer, listening to a nice mix of European Goth Rock (Edenbridge, Epica, Within Temptation, Nightwish, Lacuna Coil, Kamelot, Xandria), with an affectionate kitty in my lap. This is not usually the kitty to be so affectionate. Usually she just claims a lap and bathes.

Anyway, sweet kitty and music. I would be singing along, but that usually gets me dirty looks, so I’m being quiet. I can do that sometimes. I’m ignoring writing, both Verdant and the fanfiction, at the moment and just taking a mental health evening.

But on another note… Dude! Someone just made a hit on this blog looking for Thomas Raith fanfiction. Rock on!

Also, they need to hurry up and release the rest of Poltergeist: The Legacy on DVD sooner rather than later. I would kill for better quality releases than the VHS episodes I recorded off Showtime way back when. The tapes are old, and the picture is fading. It’s still better than my VHS of Roar, but at least that’s come out on DVD now. I haven’t even seen the fourth season of Poltergeist: The Legacy; after the third season, Showtime sent it down the river to the SciFi channel, at the time where good shows went to die.

And that’s about it for me for tonight. I’m going to sit here and enjoy kitty affection, maybe read some fanfiction (I’m thinking Supernatural), and crash early. Ciao!

Some days at work, I need an assistant. Then again, I’ve said something similar to that one before. I rush trying to finish something for 1 boss, only to have the other boss toss three or four more things my direction. (It’s never one: it’s almost always three or four, at least: make flight reservations for X, Y, and Z; make copies of all these resumes; assemble packages about Tallahassee to give out to candidates; why haven’t you gone to pick up your travel card yet; et cetera.

Some days at work, I want to tear my hair/eyes/flesh off or burst out into tears if someone else hands me something else to do or finds something else they want me to take over/do or they think I’m not doing well enough. I’m well aware I’m not doing some of the things my predecessor did. Guess what? She was only one person’s assistant and I belong to two masters — she had more free time to do all these extra things that I don’t.

Some days at work, I miss antidepressants. Some days at work, I miss going to the Employee Assistance Program.

Some days at work, I hate everything, every second, and everyone — starting with me…

…and I hate that.

I have an icon over on my other journal that is a pretty accurate description of how I feel sometimes regarding my coworkers. The text reads “Careful, or you’ll end up in my novel”. I wonder if the people I work with on a day to day basis realize this. Just the little things that annoy me could be the things to get someone a bad name in literature, like:

• Only coming in my office when the Starbucks downstairs is closed
• Walking up to my desk and demanding (not asking or even attempting politeness) to see my records of something (Note, this wasn’t even my boss. This was just a random librarian)
• Complaining that the coffee I made for my boss isn’t to your taste
• Dumping out said coffee for boss and remaking the pot to your taste
• Only drinking one cup of paint thinner said coffee
• Giving me more work to do at 4:15, when I leave at 4:30
• Giving me more work to do at 11:15, when I go to lunch at 11:30
• Act like you’re too good to follow procedures

I had a problem with one person – not a coworker, but someone I knew from online and eventually met – where s/he completely annoyed the everliving crap out of me by cranking down the temperature in our hotel room to 68°, despite the fact the rest of the people in the roomeither were uncomfortable at that temperature (D. Marie, Godrod, and myself), were unable to stand said temperature due to metal pins in leg (Heavyarms), or didn’t want his/her temper and/or keep his/her friendship (the final person in the room). It wasn’t his/her apparently constant need for cold temperatures that got him/her in the book, though; it was said temper and attitude. I might work the other half into the story later.

One thing I love about my work is, B brings in candies. I grab a small handful in the mornings when I open up her office. Today they’re getting me through the day, mainly due to utter exhaustion, along with my usual one cup and one travel mug of coffee.

So, I did finally start that fan fiction that had been bothering me the last few weeks. I’m two very short chapters into it, and already it has more reviews than some of the stories I put on FanFiction.net quite a while ago. It’s number 30 out of 31 for hits, actually. For being out less than a week, that’s pretty good, I think. I’m also using it for some free advertising for Amaranth.

And that’s actually a lovely segue to a follow up on a post I made on 18 April, entitled “Tentative Green”: I now have a publishing contract through Cacoethes Publishing for Amaranth. I actually heard from Denise Mosley on Wednesday, April 23, and finalized the plan. On Thursday, I mailed all my information to the company. Friday, it arrived. Now I’m just waiting to see what sort of editing needs to be done. It should be out as an e-book in December and as a hard copy book in January.

So now, I’m working on Verdant and trying to plot out some ideas for Ash and Azure, the third and fourth books in the series. What’s bad is that I have ideas for Azure but not so many for Ash. I mean, I know basic plot elements and some of the major things that will occur, but I don’t know the case that they will be working on. Oh well, I’m sure something will come to me.

And now back to work, both on writing and on dealing with annoying coworkers. Ciao, my silent readers.

I don’t know which is worse: being held hostage away from my computer at the whims of the Microsoft madmen, being down with writer’s block, getting another “no” letter (and a very brief one at that!), or the cold I’m trying to avoid getting.

It’s a very rare circumstance that I ever feel the need at work to do quotations, but yesterday was the perfect opportunity for one: “No one can serve two masters”. It’s a little tough to have two bosses sometimes, especially when they both want you working on two separate (but equally time-consuming) projects at once. Yesterday was me calling around to hotels with one hand and one half of my brain, while the other hand and the other half of my brain was trying to create a label using the university seal for a notebook that had to leave the office by 3. Somehow I finished, but my brain was ready to fry by the time I was done.

If I haven’t mentioned it lately, I’m up to Book8 of The Dresden Files: Proven Guilty. The story is definitely moving a good pace. I’m still enjoying the characters. I’m enjoying it enough to avoid spoilers; that in and of itself is pretty amazing for me. I love my spoilers. I actively hunt them down sometimes when the mood strikes or I’m a bit bored with what I’m reading/looking at.

And in a final note, I’m back in black! I’ve missed having my hair that lovely shade of black for a while. I had been scrimping and not buying hair dye, but I splurged last week. D. Marie and I dyed it two nights ago, and I think it turned out rather lovely. Well, as well as I can look for snapping a picture with a 1.3 megapixel camera phone at work. Thank you, Photoshop 7.0, for my clear skin, and LG, for said camera phone.

So in today’s tale, I’m updating today from my PDA. My office computer is currently held hostage by a Microsoft Office 2007 upgrade. In other words, there is nothing I can do with it till the upgrade is done.

It actually finished once, but the Outlook upgrade refuses to play nicely with my calendar. So of course, I’m held hostage here till it decides to work. ETA: some time in the next few hours.

I’m still holding out hope on the queries I’ve got out. I think it’s sitting somewhere around 13 at this point in time. Continue to wish me luck, please!

Okay, obviously I probably shouldn’t be blogging right now. But it’s quiet and I’m a little bored, so here I am.

I’ve upgraded my WordPress here to Version 2.5 — and all I can say is, wow, it’s different! It’s taking a lot of getting used to. I’ve also changed out my layout, which looks really nice, I have to say. I haven’t quite graduated to making my own layouts, but I’m getting good at finding nice ones.

So, after years of saying I was going to, I finally started The Dresden Files series. Actually, I started two weeks ago. Now I’m on Book 5: Death Masks. The last two have been a bit on the slow side to me. I’m hoping after this one, the series will pick the pace back up.

In the same amount of time I’ve been reading Grave Danger, I’ve finished One Good Knight by Mercedes Lackey and A Breath of Magic by Teresa Medeiros, and I’ve almost finished Fortune’s Fool by Mercedes Lackey. Now, if this sounds terrible, bear in mind that I’ve finished those two, plus Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and four entire The Dresden Files books in the time that it’s taken me to get a quarter of the way through For a Few Demons More by Kim Harrison. Now, that, that’s terrible.

And work is almost over, so I go now to get ready to run a few errands… then return home and finish Fortune’s Fool.

Oh, my inbox… Why do you sit before me, so empty of all emails?

Perhaps I’m hoping for too much, that I would have heard something back from Paula (Guran, of Juno Books) by now. Somehow, though, I imagine she’s still not through going through the December submissions though. It would be about par for the course for me.

I managed to get what I had handwritten on Verdant typed and on my flash drive for safekeeping. This is a good thing. Also on my flash drive is my transliteration project and the 100+ pages I need to get finished on it by Friday. Yeah, Friday. I got too caught up with Verdant and didn’t work on the one that will give me money sooner: Dance in the Vampire Bund. Not that I’m particularly enjoying the work, but at least it’s money… in about 3 months.

After everything starts getting settled down, I’m going to start working on perhaps setting up a site with some of my photographs I’ve done recently, some for free stock exchange and some for sale. Some of them are really quite good… as long as they’re landscapes. I’m better with nature than people. Big shock there, right?

So, with no small amount of personal terror, I sent Amaranth, my baby, off to her first company tonight. This is only the second time she’s been out on her own, and I have to say I’m worried about it.

And I’ve stretched the child comparison as far as I think I can.

The fact remains, though, that Amaranth has finally been sent off to Juno Books‘ Paula Guran, where I live in hope that I will hear something good soon. As my mum would say, “the worst they can do is say no”. I really, really hope they don’t, but I’m bracing myself.

And till I hear back, I’ll be working on the translation for Vol 2 of Dance in the Vampire Bund for Seven Seas. Hey, a girl has to get supplemental income somewhere. FSU definitely isn’t paying worth a damn.

And in the meantime, in my happy place, my live-in editor/pre-reader/research assistant/voice of something-like-reason, D. M. has helped me flesh out my mental cast list: James Marsden as Murdock, Julia Stiles or Rachel Lefevre as Lizzy, Jimmy Smits as Val Drake, Rudolf Martin as Mircea, Adam Kaufman (maybe) as Rafe, and (this one is ALLLLL thanks to D. M., so blame her for this) Jason Statham as Roman Mozzati. This is my happy place.