Things continue to come together over here. Yesterday we finished the last of our Major Stuff Shopping, and when the last thing gets delivered on Thursday, we'll officially have the place fleshed out - at least from a furnishing standpoint.

Not that we'll be "done" in any real sense. My dad says that when it comes to home ownership, you're only ever done for now. He's right, I'm sure. There are already a dozen little projects I'd love to fiddle with, not least of all the garden - which is, at present, a rectangular patch of backyard harboring dandelions, semi-wild onions, clover, and the tail-less cat.

The tail-less cat (henceforth TLC, as her name eludes me) showed up in our back yard shortly after we arrived, and at first, I thought she was a pregnant stray. A pretty little black-and-white longhair, TLC was too skittish to touch, and her pendulous tummy swayed as she waddled frantically away.

Poor kitty, I thought. I will feed her and lure her close, and maybe she'll have the kittens nearby - so I can catch them and vet them and home them and oh yes, I was making plans.

After a few days, she'd figured out I was a food-dispensing monkey - and I'd find her sitting outside the roses, waiting for me to open the curtains every morning. Just to make sure I would see her, and know that there was a hungry, pitiful, single-mother-to-be hoping for breakfast.

And then I met the neighbors, who had a good laugh about it.

Formerly a feral stray, TLC was taken in and spayed by these same neighbors - who have never successfully gotten her to stay indoors or wear a collar. She is, however, spoiled silly, routinely vetted, and amply fed.

On the one hand, I'm relieved. I'm always sad to see homeless animals, and it's just as well I don't have to find homes for half a dozen kittens. On the other hand, I could do without the turd presents the fat little scammer leaves outside our back door every day, now that I've stopped accommodating her.*

I'm told that she's an excellent mouser who has never successfully caught a bird to anyone's knowledge, and both of these points please me. We're right at the foot of a mountain, backing up to thick woods which are no doubt teeming with mice ... and we have a shit-ton of birds hanging around, not least of all because I feed them.**

Speaking of birds, though - we may have a couple of new under-the-porch-eaves residents: two of the cutest wee tiny purple-headed finches you ever did see. At first they considered the hanging planters, but after I knocked down an unrelated, long-abandoned nest from a corner, they seem to feel that prime real estate has unexpectedly opened up and the time to buy is NOW NOW NOW.

(Aside I: Obviously I would not have taken down the old nest if it had not very, very clearly been out-of-use for ages.)

(Aside II: Maybe it was haunted, and that's why nobody else took over the lease in all this time. Some kind of bird-atrocity was committed there, and word's gotten around. Maybe other birds called the nest, "The old McFeatherstone place" and teenage birds dared one another to go sit there by themselves ... and when the moon is full, they say that the ghost of Widow McFeatherstone hangs from the petunia planter while moaning, "I KNOW WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE WHEN DOVES CRY" and never mind now this just getting silly.)

Anyway, now they're checking out that freshly vacated corner, and I really do hope they move in.

Hm. Let's see, what else?

Well, today we went to the Chattanooga Market, which frankly blew our minds. The weekly (seasonal) market had just started up around the time we moved away, but it was pretty damn pitiful. Now it's a total circus - well stocked, with a lot of great local crafters, farmers, and other assorted people-with-stuff-to-sell. Well done, Chattanooga. Well done.

I spent a few bucks, brought home a few things, and plan to return, but here's hoping that next week it's not quite so damn hot. And you know it was damn hot if I'm complaining about it, because I'm the sort who keeps the AC set around 80 degrees if I'm left to my own devices, and if it's cooler than that indoors, I'm likely to jaunt around in a bathrobe. You can take the girl out of Florida, etc. etc. etc.

But damn. A few thousand people were crowded into a big old pavilion, and it was 95 degrees.

This having been said, the heat prompted me to sample the wares of a really great two-person soda company offering some seriously fantastic custom syrups. I had a "honey lime" beverage, and would cheerfully go buy another - or try out some of the other flavors. Now I just wish I could remember the company's name. I'll keep an eye out for them next time.

[Edit: It was these guys. Pure Sodaworks. Two thumbs up.]

Not a lot of news to report in home repair and improvement news. This is partly because we're coming up close to Done For Now - and now we're figuring out bills and services, and whatnot. The Perplexing Back Room is now a guest room, but it's big enough that yes, we use it as a game room too. We threw our old TV back there, hooked up the game system, and now we're just waiting for the seating to arrive. (On Thursday, see above.)

It actually looks pretty nice, despite the carpet. I took a picture or two for Twitter, but we've rearranged everything since I did so. The whole thing is still a work in progress.

The library/study has come along nicely, too. The husband's bookcases arrived, and are assembled, and are now holding up books - so yes, we are Officially Unpacked. [:: throws confetti ::] He still has some art to hang, but the place looks great.

If this meager tally sounds like a pitiful excuse for how little I've updated as of late, I would add another excuse to the pile: the copyedits for The Inexplicables landed a few days ago, and I've been eyeballs deep therein. I'm still not done, but I'm about 2/3 of the way through. I was going cross-eyed, so I thought I'd take a break and come over here to ramble.

Mission accomplished, I'd say.

Right. Well. Happy Memorial Day weekend, everyone. Go hug a veteran. I have to wait to hug my two nearest and dearest veterans, as my dad and stepmom won't be here to visit for another few weeks - but I will surely make up for it then.

---

* In all fairness, she quit doing this after a week. And now she'll let me pet her sometimes, which is great. She's really a beautiful, sweet little cat. Just ... hilariously fat.
** "Feeding" is one of the many services I am likely to provide for random critters.

Originally published at Cassie Alexander. You can comment here or there.

I am having such a good time at Wiscon!

My final panel (of three) was this morning, and everything went very well, and I’m getting quality hang time with some of my favoritist people in the world :D. Plus, some people here (Na’amen, *cough*Na’amen) have even read Nightshifted already and said super positive things, and are telling other people about it completely of their own accord, which is awesome and amazing to watch. I guess books do, if you’re lucky, go on to have a life of their own? But it’s very odd — and wonderful! — to see it happening to your own book. Even in a small way. After all the solo writing I’ve done in the dark, it’s very strange to see my book out in the day ;).

I have some more people to shout out now too!

I don’t think I linked to Book Sake‘s review a few days ago, and I should! While she’s not over the moon about the vampires in Nightshifted, she feels the hospital stuff is spot on, which I’m am so happy to see. I think half of my book related anxiety is fear of other medical professionals finding holes in my stuff, or thinking that I stretched things too far, so it’s nice when other nurses (or nursing students) feel it passes muster :D.

And there are two Nightshifted giveaways running right now, if you want to try to win a copy for free –

My Bookish Ways did an interview with me and they’re giving away a copy of Nightshifted and a very cool syringe necklace for one lucky enter-er. :D

And the Nocturnal Library also interviewed me and they’re also giving away a copy of Nightshifted — this one I can ship internationally! (I’m also very fond of this interview because I answered the questions late at night, maybe a little more honestly than I should have, heh.)

I’m positive I’m missing stuff, and I already know I’m not caught up — it’s probably going to take me a good week or two to get all the links I need down and emails responded to, so sorry if I missed your review or I’m linking/responding too slowly. I still have page proofs on Moonshifted to do when I get back home, not to mention going back to work, so it’ll be a process — but I swear I’ll get there :D.

The search for the winner of this year's Meager Puddle of Limelight Award for Best Short Story Title continues with heat eight (the last of the preliminary heats).

There are nine heats in all. The winners (or joint winners) from heats one - eight go straight through. The second place finishers battle it out in heat nine to see which title joins the others in the final round.

What's at stake?
Bragging rights for the winner? An interview and/or guest post here on An Englishman in New Jersey, as well as signed copy of my book, Fur-Face, and a couple of I are a writer! pens, as shown in the pic below.You'll need an LJ account to vote, but they're free).

Poll #1842793 2012 MEAGER PUDDLE OF LIMELIGHT AWARD FOR BEST SHORT STORY TITLE: HEAT 8 OF 9
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 17

From the following list, please select any short story titles which you think should progress to the final round

Links to the other Heats and the final:
Heat one
Heat two
Heat three  (now returned from it's little walkabout)
Heat four
Heat five
Heat six
Heat seven
Heat eight
Heat nine
Final Round

Voting in Heats 1 through 8 will close on Sunday, June 3rd 2012 at 6:00pm (US/Eastern). Heat nine will take place soon after.

Good luck to all who take part! Vene, vidi, puddli!

New on my blog: Joomla out, Wordpress in--major site revamp this weekend!

It probably doesn't deserve an exclamation point, but whatever. If you drop by my site and it looks goofier than usual, or absent altogether, this is why. And if it looks, I dunno, wordpressier, this is also why. Once it's done, I'm hoping I can get my brainmeats refocused on writing.

Originally published at Cassie Alexander. You can comment here or there.

Okay, I can breathe! We’re at Wiscon now, and we went with roomservice tonight — I feel like we’re finally getting a chance to celebrate :D. (For those of y’all who weren’t on twitter with me on Tues night, I got to eat a ‘celebratory’ Burger King meal since I was still hipdeep in Shapeshifted edits and had no time to go outside ;P ;))

I wanted to shout a few blogs and interviews and things out for being so awesome earlier on in the week — and some of these blogs have Nightshifted giveaways still pending, so if you want to win a copy, here’s your chance!

Ferrett is a friend of mine, I’ll admit — but he still has good taste in books. What’s more, is he wouldn’t lie ;). He wrote a  Nightshifted review, and it’s pretty much the kind of review I’ll read three times to make sure it’s really real, convince myself it isn’t real, then reread it later and be amazed I have such awesome friends who get my writing.

Sally at the Qwillery was the very first person to ever approach me about anything Nightshifted-related ever! And so she has a special place in my heart :D — I’ve got an interview up at her website, and a Nightshifted giveaway, and Nightshifted’s cover won her May release cover competition! :D

Beth Cato interviewed me for her blog, and she’s awesome, I’ll be interviewing her coming up soon too! :D

And Ishita at the Reading Fish is doing a birthday bash for books being released in May — with an interview up! and a giveaway!

Lawrence Schoen has me over at Eating Authors — where I profess my love for chicken fried steak from George’s in Waco ;).

And over at Writer’s Digest I talk about how I found my agent. For those that haven’t heard the saga (and it was a saga!) it might be inspirational. Or extraordinarily painful. One of those two ;).

And Love for Books has an interview I did translated into Romanian. I’m sad she doesn’t have an English language version up, her questions were awesome :D.

And last but not least, I talked about Writing What You Know for Shimmer magazine.

I’ve got a few more promotional things rolling in in the next few days, I’m not all done yet. But I wanted to get at least partially caught up here lest I seem ungrateful. I’ve been super amazed and pleased and thrilled and mystified. It’s very weird that people are out there reading Nightshifted. I finally sort of started to get it last night, when I was done with editing and I could pick up a copy that I’d bought, and there was this recursive loop, sort of like when little kids like to see themselves in a mirror. A “holy cow, that’s my book!” moment. I have to admit, it was pretty dang cool :D.

Considering that I started my first blog in 2002 you would think I would be a little more assiduous about maintaining it, but frankly these days I haven't the energy for much beyond Twitter. Plus, I have been so busy beating my head against the first draft of Quicksilver and all the associated research (which will NEVER END, I swear) that I have neglected even to report on my weekend at the Nebulas. But really, does anyone care about all that? Except for possibly wanting to hear how I (along with four other authors) ended up serenading Neil Gaiman in an elevator?

(Before we got on the elevator, however, I should mention that he also serenaded us with a rendition of Derek & Clive's "Jump", which is pretty much the sort of song one would expect Neil Gaiman to perform on short notice. He has quite a nice singing voice and can even keep a tune unaccompanied; clearly his wife has trained him well.)

(And before that he told us a few bits of trivia about his Bradbury-nominated [and later winning] script for "The Doctor's Wife", such as that it was called "Bigger On The Inside" until practically the last moment, and then Steven Moffat decided to change the title on the grounds that it was too spoilery. To which Neil objected, saying that he could think of any number of other story ideas that could be called "The Doctor's Wife", but Moffat said patiently, "Yes, but in the case of your story it's actually true.")

(All this happened late on the Saturday afternoon before the Nebula banquet, because Ellen Kushner, Diana Peterfreund, Franny Billingsley and E. Lily Yu had decided to sing folk ballads in an out-of-the-way corner, and invited me to come and sing along. Neil came looking for Ellen because she's an old friend, and the best bit was sitting across from Diana and Lily when they realized what was going on and watching their jaws simultaneously drop.)

(And that's about the whole story I think, except that the song we sang to Neil in the elevator was "Greensleeves", in four-part harmony, which dwindled to three-part and two-part harmony as we got off at the various floors, and Neil later described it as the best lift ride he'd ever had, which I have to agree with because it was tremendous fun and would have been even without him, but it's always nicest to have an audience.)

(Also, you should read E. Lily Yu's Nebula-nominated short story "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" because it is really clever and she is a lovely person, whom I hope I shall meet again some day. Ditto on Ellen, Diana, and Franny, of course, and also on Delia Sherman, whose Freedom Maze is utterly wonderful and thoroughly deserved to win the Norton, so I am thrilled for her and not even sorry I didn't win.)

(And I also met Genevieve Valentine who is delightful, and then I bought her Nebula-nominated novel Mechanique to read on the plane ride home, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.)

ANYWAY, after that truly epic series of parentheses, the actual point of this post was to mention to any of my readers in the Toronto region that I will be signing the Canadian paperback release of Arrow this Saturday at Chapters Brampton along with Megan Crewe (The Way We Fall) and Leah Bobet (Above), and we will even get to speak and answer questions for a few minutes first, which makes it more of a Proper Event than any bookstore event I've done yet. So I am quite excited about that, and if you should happen to be in the Brampton area around 2 p.m., please stop in and say hello!

(And now I must go and put dinner in the oven, and then I shall collapse.)

This entry was originally posted at http://rj-anderson.dreamwidth.org/2990.html. There are comments on Dreamwidth.

We're back in the debate! And this is a very interesting post from Kristin Battestella on the werewolf v vampire question, so enjoy!



Vampire versus…Vampire?

So often vampires and werewolves are pitted against each other in the battle of the genre beasties. However, more often then not, these terror titans work in tandem in fiction and media, creating a broader, richer tug and pull sharing in the horror medium. My 2008 Eternal Press novel The Vampire Family has a family of vampires that can shape shift and transform into wolves and scary weres- and scary werecats, too. My follow up series Fate and Fangs: Tales from the Vampire Family serves up vampires who prefer their wolf shapes in Book 3 Struggle.

While it is easy to have books and ebooks either have all the monster magic together or for readers to find literature specific to vampires and werewolves and all the mixes in the spectrum, films have also scored on the presumed animosity. The Underworld franchise tells of ancient vampire and werewolf wars- but fans of either creature can get their fill in these features. Likewise Twilight has made the Team Edward and Team Jacob themes top sellers. Vampires versus werewolves ideologies are good for business, simply put. Whether for or against, reluctantly working together or struggling to love or hate one or the other, in the end, vampires and werewolves are good for each other.

Unfortunately, the current subdivision of the vampire genre is getting too divergent for its own good. The watered down, lovely dovey, youth and glitter love vampire movement spurred by the Twilight craze has helped the vampire literature and media culture just as much as it may have damaged the genre. Book, television, and movie markets are now flooded with vampire material- all in the same youth, teen romance driven trends. As knock off begat knock offs, the quality pool has dropped considerably. People are tired of vampires. They think horror has been played, and all the sudden the same editors, publishers, and powers that be are now turning on the massive overdrive they helped to create. Backlash is inevitable.

Soon people even forget what came before the glitter vampire. Readers are afraid to take on another vampire story because ‘they all suck now’. (No pun intended) The quality vampiric horror gets lumped into the problematic downward glitter spiral. And when you the writer submits you hard worked, scary horror, medieval furthest thing from contemporary teenage vampire vampire manuscript, what does the publisher tell you? The worst thing a writer can possibly hear:

No.

And it isn’t just the ‘no’ that is the worst part. It wasn’t that your story wasn’t well written or not just good enough. It might be damn decent perfection and fit in just perfectly with what this publisher’s interests are. But no, it is the fact that the marketing, timing, and overblown played mayhem of that other vampire type has just ruined your publication chances. Well, doesn’t that just suck? (Pun intended)

So then, you see, the vampires versus werewolves theory is not what hurt your novel’s chances. Rarely does a publisher say, ‘we already have a werewolf book, so we can’t take your vampire story.’ In fact it is quite the opposite, editors often look for both together to balance out their catalogue and reader varieties. They might even prefer books or series dealing with both monsters so they can cross reference all their categories. How many times have you clicked on a publisher’s store links for both ‘vampire’ and ‘werewolves’ and seen the same books? Quite a bit I suspect.

Now, have you ever seen separate links for ‘vampire horror’ and ‘vampire romance’? The breakdown between the vampire medium is almost nonexistent in appearance, even if those readers and writers and vampires lovers in the know immediately know there is a difference. How many times have you been in conversation with a fellow vampire lover and they say either ‘oh, that was too scary for me!’ or ‘This vamp was too lovey dovey for me.’ What’s sad is how many times has a reader passed on your book because they like one or the other and dismissed your book as being the wrong vampire type for them.

What then, must a vampire author do to remain relevant in a subgenre at war with itself? Keep writing damn good copy! Whichever side of vamps your on- either pure horror or paranormal romance- keep it good. Keep your universe, characters, and tales true to what the manuscript needs to be its best. Don’t give in to the mislabeling and trends. Vampires rise and fall, go underground and subculture or rise up from the dead and reign supreme over media. Not too long ago, everyone wanted exclusively paranormal light and vampire romance, now call outs are returning to pure horror and uniqueness. Make your creatures of the night stand out from the pack. Keep them worthy of the hand in hand werewolf antagonism. Good competition is healthy in fiction, writing, selling books, and reader’s choice. Write crap copy and no creature wins!

Find out more about Kristin and her works:

At her blog

At her website

At her livejournal

On Facebook

On Myspace

At her Yahoo Group

And on Facebook again!