Thursday 13: Thirteen Random Favorites

1. Cookie: Carr’s Ginger Lemon Cremes

2. Architectural style: Victorian Gothic or castle folly

3. Color: Purple

4. Shape: Spiral

5. Sound: Laughter

6. Designer: Gallery Serpentine or Gypsy Moon

7. Artist: Anne Sudworth or Thomas Canty or Waterhouse

8. City: Anywhere Styx is playing

9. State: Ecstasy

10. Drug: Love

11. Perfumery: Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

12. Big cat: Cheetah

13. Flaw: Procrastination (it’s taken me all day to finish this!)

new website unveiled!

I'm delighted to announce that my new and improved website is now live! You can view it here.

What's new? Well, my webgoddess Hope moved everything over to Wordpress and we added a different Home page, which will be updated about once a month. The News page will be the place to go for announcements about new releases, sales, signings/appearances, and reviews.

Even better, you can now add comments to the news items!

There's some new info in the News, and please also check out the Bibliography for some new publications. I've added links to several interviews on the Biography page, too.

If you find any broken links, typos, or other errors, please e-mail me at cyvarwydd@mac.com. If you want to say something nice about the website, please e-mail me at cyvarwydd@mac.com! I'll pass all notes on to the amazing and wonderful Hope as well.

Please stop by if you can. There's virtual champagne for everyone!

The answer is...me!

Can I have a do-over?

Some Star Trek fans think that all the odd numbered movies are the bad ones and the even-numbered movies are the good ones. I’m beginning to suspect something similar is going on with my birthdays, only the other way around. What is it with my even-numbered birthdays? And when did this start? Thirty was pretty good, although a little weird since I’d recently gotten together with Ken and our first SCA event after that was on my birthday and a friend of mine won Crown, but somewhere after that…?

Friday night, our garage was burglarized. The fuckers came into our backyard and through the side door into the garage sometime after Ken finished loading the car with SCA stuff for Saturday’s event, and stole one of the remotes. They then sat somewhere nearby and played with the remote on and off through the evening to see if anyone would react. Our tenant did hear the garage door go up and down at one point, and she went down to investigate, saw the door was closed, and assumed we’d just come home from somewhere. (We have a detached garage with an apartment above it.) Then, around 12:30 a.m., she was still awake and in her living room right above the doors when she heard it again, and stomped around putting on her coat and going down the stairs to discover the door was open. She’d scared them off. She got us, and we called the cops, and were basically up until 3 a.m. dealing with the shit.

They made off with a bike bag full of Ken’s heated gear and some bike tools; the organizer that goes in my trunk (Ken had taken it out to pack the car), which contained the GPS cradle/plug for my Palm; and several electric drills/screwdrivers and their charging stands.

On the plus side, nobody was hurt, they didn’t steal anything that was irreplaceable (that we’ve noticed, anyway), and if our tenant hadn’t been home, we wouldn’t’ve found out until the next morning.

Bastards. Karma will get ‘em in the end, but it sucks that we won’t be able to watch.

Anyway. We got little sleep because we were carpooling to the event with Thomasina and we had to pick her up. The event itself was quite fun. It was great to see our friends, and I foisted cake on everyone, and everyone patiently put up with me being a great swirling sucking mass of “the world revolves around me.” After all, I am the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything now!  :-)

I spent my birthday money from my parents on a purple and white felted hat made by our friend Collette (there are no actual hats at that link, but go see her stunning glassware and stained glass! We have soooo many of the glasses!), and there will be pictures once Ken takes one of me that I don’t hate. I’m extremely tempted to sew six big pearls on the top… The feast was wonderful (there was pasta! and succulent roast chicken! and tasty salad!), too.

On the other hand, I managed not to step in any giant ground squirrel holes, but instead twisted my foot in a hole in the cement floor of the feast pavilion. No, the other ankle. I was approaching the table, and managed to catch myself on Ken, but my food all sloshed to the side of my plate and I proceeded to shower the table, the floor, and Ken with peas.

On the plus side, it’s not really that bad. It’s mostly the outside of my foot that hurts, and I was able to work out with my trainer today without any problems.

Given our state of exhaustion, we decided to stay home and have a quiet day Sunday. We went out to dinner with Morgana and Brian to Café Bariloche, a Latin American restaurant in Ventura. They love the place, but we’d never managed to actually get there before. Oh. My. Gods. I had shrimp (giant tiger prawns) in a basic lemon and garlic sauce, but the sauce was thick and clung to the shrimp, and I wanted to lick my plate it was so good. The rice was nicely seasoned. The vegetable had been sautéed in a bit too much oil, though, and I’m not greatly fond of string beans, so I decided, it was my birthday, dammit, and I didn’t have to eat my vegetables.

For dessert, M&B recommended the crème brûlée, and since we were all pretty full, we ordered one to share. If I’d thought my meal was good… They put dark chocolate in the crème brûlée, and when they caramelized the top it made the chocolate bits get soft, and it was so good I wanted private time with it.

Unfortunately, Monday morning we had to get up hideously early for our tax appointment, and then I my annual gyn exam in the afternoon… On the plus side, my hoohoo looks quite healthy and we’re getting a boatload of money back on our taxes. (Most of it will go to paying off our home equity loan, but I think we may also splurge on the sofa we want for the media room.)

I dunno. After all that, do I get a do-over? There was some really fabulous stuff in there, and all told, it could’ve been a lot worse.

~ ~ ~

Today I got my page proofs for “Some Old Lover’s Ghost,” which is spiffy. They’re due this weekend, but I’ll probably read them tomorrow. I also received rejections from Clarkesworld for “Matchmaker” and ASIM for “The Rising”; both are back in circulation, poof! A couple of other rejections came through recently as well, but I’ve already turned the stories around, so there, neener neener.

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I’ve scheduled my tattoo! April 25th. Yay!

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The otter cam continues to delight me to no end, except at night when it’s dark and I can’t see the otters. On the other hand, that means I can actually get some work done.

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I have lots more I could ramble about, but it’s getting late and I’m still trying to catch up on sleep from the weekend. More tomorrow!

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Currently Reading: The Chase, Clive Cussler (for the workshop)
Lately Listened To: Fellini Days, Fish
Recently Watched: Medium

Ghostly goodness!

Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades: Lesbian Ghost Stories is now available to order at amazon.com and will be released in May! It contains my story "Some Old Lover's Ghost," which I had a blast writing. I'm really chuffed to be writing and selling fantasy again (along with romance and erotica).

Long day

Well, phooey. The humorous fairy tale story was rejected. The main editor said the setting made my story stand out from the rest and my “opening line was simply awesome.” However, he basically had an issue with the conflict, which is fair enough, but the conflict is original to the fairy tale and I’m not sure how to get around that. OTOH, the other editor said it was in her top three stories and sent me a separate e-mail saying how much she enjoyed it, and that she hopes I’ll submit to their next anthology. So hey, it didn’t fit there, but it’s a really fun story and will be out in the mail to Realms of Fantasy on Monday.

Also a rejection from Spacesuits & Sixguns for “The Queen’s Gardener.” Drat it, people, don’t you know it’s my birthday weekend?! ::gg:: I have to check my spreadsheet to see where I’ll send that story next.

~ ~ ~

Other than that, I’m just bloody exhausted. Got up, went to the chiropractor, came home, went grocery shopping and other errand-ing with Ken, came home, at lunch, poked at e-mail, went to Costco* with Ken. All before my first cup of tea. Oh, and as we were getting ready to leave for Costco, Ken put on a new pair of shoes he bought yesterday, and they were so slick on the bottom that he fell down the stairs. :-( Banged up his elbow and smacked his back, although he says he doesn’t think there’s any major damage. Scared the crap out of me, though!

The first thing we did on the way to Costco was stop at the sporting goods store and return the shoes.  :-S

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A friend e-mailed me privately asking about my tattoo, and I realized I hadn’t rambled about it here yet, so now I shall!

For my 30th birthday I got a Celtic knotwork band around my right ankle. I planned it for two years and while I didn’t design the band per se, I spent a lot of time finding the one I wanted. It has eight connectors, and I always planned to have the phases of the moon hanging down from it like charms…only I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what I wanted the connectors to look like.

I finally decided to go ahead and get the moons done, and decide on the connectors later…but then I needed to find a tattoo artist I was comfortable with. I need someone I trust, someone I click with, because getting work done is not only physical for me, but emotional and spiritual. I’d been looking at Pat Fish’s website for some time, and on our way up to Black Oak Lodge last month, I stopped in and met her, and put down a deposit. (Check out her website—she does amazing Celtic work!)

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Currently Reading: Wicked Lovely, Melissa Marr
Lately Listened To: Holidays in Eden, Marillion
Recently Watched: Battlestar Galactica!

*Which means there is cake! White cake with chocolate mousse filling and buttercream frosting for whomever comes to King’s Hunt!

Almost here...

On Monday, I finally finished and mailed a fantasy short story that I’d been working on for a bit—a humorous take on a fairy tale for an anthology looking for the same. Yesterday I got word that the story’s made the first cut—hoorah!

This also meant that now I can get back to work on Ghosted with my full concentration. Plus Teresa and I have a collab story to write, and she’s already sent me the beginning, but I want to get my head back into the novel before I play with the story. It’s too easy to use stories as an excuse not to work on the novel! And I really do love this novel.

I’ve been spending a little time tweaking my new website, which to you all won’t look appreciably different from my old website, except maybe for the home page. But it’s so much easier to work with (for me to add updates and change things), and I’m excited about it going live soon. My webgoddess has once again done an amazing job!

Today brought a nice present in the mail: a royalty statement from Virgin. Several Wicked Words anthologies have been sold to Germany (including Sex at the Sports Club, which includes the first story Teresa and I wrote for them and which garnered the invitation to write a novel), so I get a percentage of that, plus a bit of royalty money for both novels. With the exchange rate, it’s an even nicer chunk of change—but lest you think I’m suddenly rolling in it, let me say that it’s not enough to cover the Marketing Workshop in May. But it certainly helps.

~ ~ ~

I also got a birthday card and check from my parents. Whee! Birthdaybirthdaybirthday! April is Happy Birthday Month!

Although I had a big party for my 40th birthday, it was somewhat lost in a haze of pain and painkillers and muscle relaxants (I spent my actual birthday in the ER). Last year’s birthday was deliberately quiet (although hiring the personal trainer was the best present I’ve ever given myself). So this year I’m feeling a bit obnoxious and all about me. :-) Saturday is King’s Hunt, and we’ll be taking a cake for everyone to share. (“Cake or death?” If I ask you, will you understand?) Sunday, my actual birthday, we’re planning on doing a charity bike ride and visiting the big cat sanctuary, and maybe dinner with Morgana & Brian if we’re all not too exhausted. The next day we’ll be right back to reality with a tax appt, and the following day I have my yearly gyn exam (healthy is good!)…

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Currently Reading: Wicked Lovely, Melissa Marr
Lately Listened To: workout playlist
Recently Watched: Without a Trace; CSI

Thursday 13: Thirteen Things to Do This Month

in no particular order

1. Finish Ghosted.

2. Celebrate my birthday!

3. Write cathedral story with Teresa.

4. Prep for Marketing Workshop (read three assigned books and write proposals for them).

5. Work out 2x/week with trainer and more times on my own!

6. Taxes. Woo.

7. Schedule my birthday tattoo and hopefully get the tattoo (the latter may end up in May, alas).

8. Have my annual gyn appt and mammogram. Healthy is Good.

9. Go to two SCA events and hang out with friends.

10. Attend LARA meeting.

11. Write with fellow author friends in coffee shop 2x, have tea with same 1x.

12. Be very grateful I can’t come up with anything else for this list!

13. Enjoy life!

Owie. But, otters!

Oh ow. Ow ow owie ow. I worked out with my trainer for the first time in about two months yesterday, and today I can barely walk, I hurt so much! It’s my own fault, really; I haven’t been going to the gym nearly as much as I should, even discounting the traveling and cold and hives and so forth. I’ve been reasonable about cardio—Ken and I walked on the beach recently, and we often walk to the P.O. and library. Strength training? Not so much.

I don’t know how I’m going to actually work out with her again tomorrow, seeing as right now I need help getting out of a chair…

~ ~ ~

Otter cam! I found an otter cam that’s a widget for my Google home page! I'm not getting any work done, but Ken is amused by my squeals of delight and running commentary. ("Look! Two otters!")

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Currently Reading: Wicked Lovely, Melissa Marr
Lately Listened To: Ghost of a Rose, Blackmore’s Night
Recently Watched: CSI: NY; Ghost Hunters

Fun With Photoshop

Because my first thought on seeing the original picture really was that he should holding his copy of A Little Night Music. I am deeply indebted to my friend Lev for his Photoshop wizardry in bringing my little fantasy to life. (Original photo of Lawrence by Tommy Shaw.)

The end of an era (or, at least, a month)

Holy crap, March is almost over! And not a moment too soon, I say. I don’t know anybody who had a good March this year (although mine started picking up about halfway through).

I’m having my Sunday afternoon ritual at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. I wasn’t going to get a drink, but when I walked in, the place was empty and I felt guilty… No idea if any of my other writer friends are going to show up, but that’s okay. It’s good to get out of the home office once in a while, you know? Ken helped me figure out the final thing that was bugging me about the story I’m working on, so I’ll finish it today.

A girl just sat down on the sofa near me wearing a long blue top with black polka dots and black plastic pearls and a big belt and black capri pants. Except for the fact that her belt is shoved up under her boobs, it’s an outfit straight out of the 80s. I’m pretty sure I wore it.

I think she would not appreciate me pointing out that fact.

I think I don’t want to think about the fact that I want to walk up to people and tell them I wore the same fashions 20 years ago.

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Currently Reading: Tell Me What You See, Zoran Drvenkar
Lately Listened To: Mighty Rearranger, Robert Plant & the Strange Sensation
Recently Watched: Torchwood

Pompoms raised high!

Sale! And it’s a sweet one! My story “If the Shoe Fits” will appear in the DAW Books fantasy anthology The Trouble With Heroes!

Commence the pompom waving!

Free! Spontaneous contestnessing!

I have an extra copy of the March 2008 Romantic Times Bookreviews. I'll give it to the first person who responds in the comments saying something nice about one of my novels or stories.

If the person posts a review of one of my novels to amazon.com, powells.com, B&N.com, etc., I'll put together a goodie package with more than just the magazine.

Onetwothree...go!

Why I <3 Nora

I love Nora Roberts so much. Not only is she an amazing writer and an amazing professional, but she’s snortingly funny (and I’ve heard she’s hilarious to party with). Smart Bitches, Trashy Books posted a note about an Australian “write the beginning of a bodice ripper” contest to win a “pamper hamper.” The contest is about twenty levels of offensive, starting with the fact that “bodice ripper” is a derogatory term for romances and doesn’t have anything to do with Mills & Boon (category) romance anyway.

First person to comment on the Smart Bitches site? Nora herself. With her “entry.” And it’s fabulously awful, and I love her for it. She doesn’t comment there a lot, but every time she does, it’s snarky and funny and witty and smart.

You know, at RWA last year I was at a party that Nora was at (thank you again, Phaedra, for letting me be your date!), and I was too scared to go up and talk to her. Seriously, every time I saw her at the conference, I practically ducked my head, my brain hissing “Eek, it’s Nora! No, don’t look! Did she see me?”

Dudes, I can flirt shamelessly with my favorite rock star, but I can’t talk to a fellow author?! The same thing happened when I met Guy Gavriel Kay. I was going to leave the convention without talking to him. I went to the bathroom before we left the hotel, looked in the mirror, and realized that if I didn’t talk to him, I’d regret it for the rest of my life. So then I had to have a drink to screw up my courage. And I bought him a drink, because in his speech earlier he’d said the price of a question was a shot of single malt. I handed it to him, and he put it next to the other two next to his chair…and proceeded to chat with me (in a small group of people) for several hours. Seriously. A totally nice guy, and I'd been terrified.

The only thing I can figure is that with rock stars and actors and whoever awe me on a particular level (or maybe two: awe of talent and desperate desire to shag), there’s an added thing with writers (er, and a subtracted thing: generally not desperate to shag. No offense to any writers out there.): professional awe. I don’t just respect their work, I want to be them. I want to mind-meld with them and share their knowledge and talent. I want that respect back, maybe not to the same degree, but a level of “I’m not just a fan, I’m a fellow writer.”

Anybody else out there with a similar reaction? Musician friends: Do you have this with other musicians? Etc?

Death by locomotive

Rejection from Triangulations for “The Rising,” addressed to “Mr. Dermatis” (sigh) and making it apparent he didn’t read much of the story because he referred to one character’s “failed relationship,” and it wasn’t a failed relationship at all. Hey, it didn’t grab his interest. S’okay. I’ve already turned it back around to ASIM, and also subbed Breakfast in Bed to Scarlet, since they liked “Flash!” but thought it took too long to get to the sexy bits, and I feel that I’d lose character development if I cut it too much.

In other news, my massage therapist cancelled on me again because of craziness at her day job. (My e-mailed response: ::wails, throws self in front of train”::). Sigh. But Ken and I had a scrummy dinner of stuffed pork chops and squash (both from TJ’s) and watched New Amsterdam before repairing back upstairs to poke at computer things (and I also went back downstairs to my writing office and moved ahead on a short story I need to finish ASAP).

I also received my first birthday card of my birthday season! ::happy dance:: Albra wins the prize this year. She just gave Ken his astrological chart reading that she promised him one or two birthdays ago, and I strongly hinted that I wanted that for my birthday, so the card is my promissory.

~ ~ ~

So many good things to read! I’m still enjoying Magic Study (although I’ve forgotten enough about Poison Study that I’m surprised by things I oughtn’t be), plus I got a Robert B. Parker and three YA books from the library when we walked there the other day. This is in addition to the magazines that litter the house and the brimming TBR bookshelf. And it doesn’t include the four books I need to read (and write proposals on) for my workshop in May (three of the books have been ordered; I’m hoping to find the fourth at Bart’s).

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Currently Reading: Magic Study, Maria V. Snyder
Lately Listened To: Lawrence Gowan Radio Special
Recently Watched: New Amsterdam, If Walls Could Talk

Eostre's Day!

Happy Eostre's Day! Nine years ago on Easter Sunday, a bedraggled, starving, pathetic white cat ducked under our car to escape the Welsh rain. Today she's our sweet, beloved, precious girl. Oh yeah, she knew exactly what she was doing when she chose us.

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Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf has a new Ultimate Ice-Blended Mocha made with chocolate-covered espresso beans. Holy crap, that’s good! Even if I’ve already managed to drip some on my white shirt!

So I’m here with Ellenie, trying to write, and it’s goooing verrrry slooooowly (despite the caffeine). Meh.

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We had a lovely, lovely time at The Huntington Library yesterday. It’s a little early for most of the roses, but they have a big museum display going on right now about the history of roses. We were most impressed with the early herbal and rose manuscripts; as we worked forward through history, there was less to excite us. The first and last rooms had troughs of rose petals to sniff, and in the last room, Morgana and I simultaneously leaned in, buried our faces in the petals, inhaled loudly, and then stood, moaning with delight. The docent thought that was quite funny.

We also went into the greenhouse, which none of had done before, which has rainforest and cloud forest and bog rooms. They had carnivorous plants! which made me jump up and down and squeal with excitement. I love me some carnivorous plants!

Tea was fantastic as usual. One of the sandwiches was cream cheese and watercress, but there was a hint of horseradish mixed with the cream cheese. Not enough to cause a bite (although I wouldn’t have minded that); just enough for flavor. Awesome.

We spent a bit of time in the herb garden and then wandered under the wisteria-draped arbor and down to the Japanese garden. Then it was a wander down another path, hand in hand with my beloved, to the new Chinese gardens. We stopped in the Pavilion for Washing Away Thoughts (Di Lü Ting), and I could’ve sat there for hours, just listening to the brook rushing by. It’s a sound I just never hear enough anymore. I haven’t felt so relaxed and connected in…well, far too long.

The only downside to the day that it was in the mid 80s, so we were hot and sweaty and tired by the end of it. (We’d brought lots of water with us, as well as hats and parasols, which helped.)

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Inspired by the babbling brook from yesterday, we finally set up our fountain (a beautiful pale green one that Ken bought in Korea many years ago) in my writing office. Mmmm…

Speaking of writing (did you like that little segue there, huh?)…

• Thursday or Friday I received a rejection from Asimov’s for “Love Makes the Universe Go ‘Round.” I knew it was a long shot, oh well! I’ve already turned it around to Strange Horizons.
  
• Just now came a rejection from Black Gate for “Dreamseer”—one of their glowing “this is fabulous, but alas no” rejections that always leave me so conflicted!

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Currently Reading: Magic Study, Maria V. Snyder
Lately Listened To: I heard “Renegade” on the radio!  ::rocks out::
Recently Watched: The Riches, Neat

Huntington photos

I got a wild hair and uploaded my photos of our trip to The Huntington Library already! Enjoy!

Blink, blink

I had an ophthalmologist appointment today and thus had my eyes dilated, which means I spent most of the afternoon peering at the TV (three eps of Northern Exposure!) because I couldn't focus close-up. Thus I'm entirely behind on everything I need to be doing, and a group of us is off to the The Huntington Library tomorrow for high tea and rose-sniffing, so most of tomorrow is shot as well.

So, in lieu of actual content, a couple of pictures. The first is from our Shire's Twelfth Night celebration in late December, and the second is from last weekend's Black Oak Lodge. Both taken by Cat Ellen. Full sets of pictures can be found here (click on 2007 for Twelfth Night and 2008 for BOL).

We are just too cute, aren't we?

If you can spare a dime...

Our friend Julie has MS, and every year she participates in a MS Walk to raise money for research. Go Julie!

I know we're all bombarded every day by requests for money. We have to pick and choose who we donate to. That's cool. As long as we give something somewhere... But if you can spare some change, please consider this one. If you can't, or if you have other charities you prefer, that's just fine.  :-)

Here's what Julie says:

Let your friends and family know that they can make a tax deductible donation online through my MS Walk website (the link is at the bottom of this message). They can also sponsor me with a check. Make it out to the National MS Society and mail it to me. I will make sure it gets logged in my sponsor sheet and I will forward it to the MS Society. My address is:

Julie Holbert
P.O. Box 1285
Twin Peaks, CA 92391

Any gift large or small will make a difference in my life and in the lives of all people with MS.

Thank you!! You'll never really know how much your kindness and support have meant to me.

Hugs,
Julie

Click here to visit my personal page.

Click here to view the team page for Mountain Movers.

Goodness

Finally, a hint of good news! Harlequin Blaze has asked to see a partial and synopsis for Out of the Frying Pan, based on the query letter we sent them. Not a sale, of course, but after two form rejections, it’s awfully heartening to get a nibble of interest.

And more good news! Not only is my hair purple again, but my Fabulous Gay Hairdresser agreed that there was finally enough white hairs in the clump at the front of my head that he could start pulling them out and not dyeing them. Of course, it’ll take a few months for them to grow out, but next time I go in he’s thinking about lightly bleaching them to hasten the progress. He thinks I’m hilarious for wanting to do this. :-)

And I came up with some stunningly awesome ideas for Ghosted while I was sitting under the dryer reading a book completely unlike Ghosted. Go figure! Now, to get my butt in the chair and finishing writing the darned thing!

Tonight I wandered over to Morgana’s to do some sewing, and finished my messenger bag for SCA events (all it needs is a button and buttonhole, which requires me figuring out the new sewing machine, which has approximately 762 buttonhole feet and options), repairs on a small pouch and a pot holder, and a kumihimo braid (Kingdom award cord).

Happy news to post about are A Good Thing. I’ve been feeling vaguely under the weather; nothing specific, just general malaise and minor complaints. Not enough sleep, etc. It’s a boost to have some things to celebrate!

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Currently Reading: Magic Study, Maria V. Snyder
Lately Listened To: Oh, the stupid songs I’ve had stuck in my head; you really don’t want to know.
Recently Watched: New Amsterdam

Mary Anne Mohanraj interview!

Come on over to Lust Bites today to read my interview with the insanely multitalented Mary Anne Mohanraj. She's a writer, editor, academic, new mom, artist, cook... Is there nothing this woman doesn't do?!