Excuses, Excuses

Um, so that posting daily thing didn't quite pan out. But I'm back and–while buried under a deluge of varied and miscellaneous–promise a proper post and blurry photos from my cameraphone soon.

There is only wireless at the bar. You see my problem. 

It's lovely here though, and the people are nice.

Many deadlines to speak of and a new book to keep tapping away at. I promise there will be real content here one day, because I have interviews to post soonish. So, ha!

In the meantime, check out what John Crowley has to say in The Believer. (Via Maud, who is all fancy and fabulous on the cover of Narrative. Brava.)

Just popping in to say I'll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, go over to Ari Berk's and tell a ghost story, or alternately just selfishly read all the amazing ones in the comments. Which is what I did–but I will add one! It's just hard to choose from so many!* (Via Holly.)

And someday I'll do that 25 things meme too, only is that finally over? I haven't been tagged** in the last 24 hours…

*Remember, I'm southern. I spent half my misspent teen years chasing down ghost stories, like an episode of Random Ghost-Hunting Show with really bad hair.
**Not in any way, shape or form an invitation.

I'm on my way to Montpelier for my final MFA residency and graduating and such. Posting will resume, to some extent, once I'm safely ensconced at Chez Betsy's.

I hate it when deadlines attack all at once. I’ve got a lecture to think out and write, a Dear Aunt Gwenda column to finish, a workshop submission to generate (20 pages of new fiction… I’m thinking now is the time to tackle the big fun SF middle grade thing and we shall see), aaaaaaand something else I’m forgetting. Oh, a Crafty Monday topic to host on our program’s private, student-run message board. Plus, you know, reshelving all these books and junk once the front room is Officially Together. (Getting there.) Miscellaneous, etcetera, et al.

But I think this is the last big slew of vicious swarming deadlines for a bit. All to the good, that.

Sadly, and it does make me oh so sad, all the all meant that I didn’t have time to do interviews for the Winter Blog Blast Tour this time around. But I’ll be linking as it goes all next week anyway, because there’s some fabulous interviews lined up by my more industrious, better organized compadres. You would be remiss not to check them.

Now I smell another cup of Kava Stress Relief tea in my future.

Updated: This made me and C howl like monkeys… or puppies!

(Hat tip to Karen, who has definitely earned the new puppy!)

Yet another mini-trip, this time to Atlanta for work, and a looming packet deadline (not to mention a novel that’s being semi-obstinate) means there will be little here this week. Dust bunnies galore. Next week looks to settle down a bit, and I promise some actual posting.

For a much funner trip, make sure you follow Maud’s chronicle of her big adventure to the OED anniversary celebration: parts one and two.

Updated: Well, I’ll be back posting unless this happens, anyway. Or this invisible force gets superambitious and sucks us in too. Related?

Unrelated, but possibly of interest: F&SF has a new article online, Women Writing Science Fiction: Some Voices From the Trenches, and is inviting discussion on its message board. (Via Charles Coleman Finlay.)

I seem to have picked up a minor bug from mixing with the masses, and plan to spend the weekend catching up on the novel finishing I didn’t get to do this week because of said travel. However, may I direct you over to Stephany’s, where she’s been posting amazingly wonderful photos from the Mahone Bay Scarecrow Festival (such as the one at left)? And the photos are amid many other wonderful things, like a recommendation for the Monster Blood Tattoo books, which I’ve recently become enamored of myself.

Airplane reading was Hannah Tinti’s lovely, ripping The Good Thief and John Green’s absorbing Paper Towns, and I’ll have more to say about both of them soon. For now, I’ll just say that I give each my highest recommendation. I’m on to Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Princess Ben, so far a thoroughly charming high fantasy, and jaw-droppingly different from her first two books, Dairy Queen and its sequel The Off Season (both also highly recommended and I see on her site that the third in the trilogy is on its way–yay!). I like departures. I like range. I like authors with the guts to do something new–so much so that it’s probably what I’m doing my grad lecture on this January.

Good weekend, everybody.

The cave of novel-writing, that is, arriving on the express train from Miscellaneous Busyland. Posts here will likely continue to be sparse, until I am well and truly finished. Replies to e-mail ditto (and some are very tardy already).

of the deadline monster!

Things will be sporadic to nonexistent around these parts for the rest of the week.

Oh, and my literary pen name is: Karen B. Rabbit. Eh.