Thank you thank you THANK YOU** to all of you who read or heard SFWA’s mad*** announcement yesterday & expressed some kind of positive spin on ‘oh wow how did that happen? What were they on anyway?’† Extra points to the people who threaded the technological maze & emailed me to say nice things about it. I am not in the least scorning good wishes I don’t know about. They’re all out there in the aether somewhere, they still count. & if I personally had a dollar or a pound sterling or a rare fossil that Sotheby’s could lucratively sell for every letter or email or thank-you card or congratulations or sympathy or Happy Birthday or Merry Christmas or ANY necessary glue-of-society ritual communication I haven’t sent or performed or what have you, I could so retire.†† Sigh. It makes me sad to have people think I’m a jerk because I am a jerk. I only want people whom I strenuously dislike for cause to think I’m a jerk because I’m intelligent enough to disagree with them.†††
I also want to say very nice things about SFWA’s graphics person. I was asked if I wanted any input to the banner, if I mean banner, they’d be organising for the announcement & I said, yes please! Roses! Dark pink or dark red with lots of petals!!
& did they do that?? YES.§
Other than that, well, squee. I gather, from some of the emails I’ve had, one is still allowed to say ‘squee’. I realise it is undoubtedly unattractive of me to squee for myself, but hey. This is me, trying to take the compliment.
THANK YOU.
Squee.
* * *
* I mean, master? Really?
** Pretend the first six words of today’s blog are in Basilica Fretwork Tandem font, or something equally lavish, with so many curlicues you can barely read the letters, & about two inches tall, with one or two curlicues that coil up higher yet, & in bold. Oh, & with a phoenix rising magnificently out of the final ‘u’ of the final ‘you’, flapping its wings, which change colour with every downstroke. Okay? Got that?^
At the minute I’m wholly dependent on Blogdad for everything, even posting a basic untrammelled & undecorated text blog, while he runs around being sensible about finding an appropriate . . . um . . . doodad to host, do I mean host?, I mean, you see his problem. There are jolly whizzy ones out there, whatever it is that they are, but he is hampered by the fact that it has to be something I can use.^^ He furthermore has to teach me to use it, & pick up the pieces when I fail. Since our conversations at present are by phone & email I can’t see him blanch at the idea of teaching me TWICE, once for the present blog incarnation & once for the comatose pony version, as opposed to the snorting flame-nostrilled stallion version, of whatever gizmo the blog finally makes its home in.^^^ The point being that Blogdad is even posting for me at the minute. Which means I can’t spend six hours head down & OBLIVIOUS to the passage of time~ over DIARY~~, look up, go, oh! 2 am! Fine! I’ll just knock out a blog post now before I take Genghis out! I also can’t check if the current tech package contains Basilica Fretwork Tandem or phoenixes. Probably not. & I’m sure I can’t afford the one that does. Sigh.
^ Shall we have it sing too? Something quiet & tasteful, I think, like STRIDE LA VAMPA, which is one of Verdi’s more unhinged arias, all about throwing the wrong baby into the raging bonfire.+ Very nice noise though. &, you know, phoenixes & flame.
+ Sic
^^ Back in the days when Peter & I used to take ourselves to America every year or so I used to bring back armfuls+ of American crossword puzzle books because I can’t do British ones. Arrgh.++ I still have some of the old American ones & indeed, while I am in MANY WAYS STILL NOT EVEN CLOSE TO UNPACKED & SETTLED INTO THIS HOUSE I’VE LIVED IN FOR GETTING ON THREE YEARS, an entire box of these turned up+++. The first clue in the one I just opened to today says ‘computer user’s need’. The answer is disc.
+ This was before airlines started charging luggage by weight, & anything over a spare pair of knickers & a tube of toothpaste cost you extra, & if you’re thinking ahead you bought a small tube of toothpaste to travel with.
++ Not even thirty-plus years later either.
+++ when I was looking for my box(es) of replacement Converse All Stars. Why is dark green so hard to get this decade???
^^^ Hey, I’m short of sleep. & technology makes me nervous even when I’m well rested.+
+ Supposing I were ever well rested. INSOMNIACS RULE THE WORLD because everyone else wastes so much time sleeping.
~ which I admit is my standard setting, but it’s worse when I’m writing
~~Novel in Progress
*** Good mad! Very GOOD mad!
† Readers of the old blog will remember that I’m not very suave & debonair about public author stuff. I’m delighted when my books find appreciative audiences—DELIGHTED!!!!—delighted beyond that grim thing about selling books to earn a living: wanting to be read is a visceral part of the writing process, money comes later—that doesn’t mean I know how to behave when they/I/who??, you know, wins something. Is given an award. I may be a sillier than usual example of this lack of grace but I doubt there’s anyone reading this blog who hasn’t, at some point in their lives, had their friends & loved ones shout at them: JUST TAKE THE COMPLIMENT, YOU DOOFUS. Yeah. Well. & there must be a word or a phrase for the thing a lot of us do?, of looking over your shoulder when someone rushes up to you to say, Great! Or, congratulations! Or even, thank you!, to see who they’re talking to. It isn’t you. No way. Of course not.
†† Except I don’t want to retire. See recent bio(s). But if Grand Matriarchy gives my book sales a nice little bump maybe I can afford to FINISH the renovations on this house. (See recent bios. Sigh.)^
^ & one of the new windows leaks. Badly. Just by the way.
††† No I’m not going to get into current politics. You’ll be glad to know. This is a frothy, frivolous blog. Mostly.
§ If they’d decided to use footballs or a collage of Boris Johnson & Donald Trump photos^ I WOULD NOT HAVE HUNG IT ON MY BLOG.^^
^ I did say mostly
^^ Actually that’s a nonstarter. As soon as they tried to print my name over said collage, their computer would have exploded.