I haven't had a hotel room to myself in ages. At a con, if I'm not with justbeast, I'm rooming with someone to save money. It's so strange, to be alone in this clean room that isn't really mine, but temporarily tolerates my presence. It's a calming thing, though isolating. I miss my beast, his constant presence, even when I am off arguing silly things on panels--the hotel room is where I am always grounded, always loved and known. So I have an instinctual response to such conglomerations of bed + table + desk + TV, but now the source of the love and grounding and knowing is not here, and it is just a strange space. But I still feel a little of that grace, even alone.

There is a little waterfall outside my window, and a river in the canyon below. I can hear rushing water all the time. We lost power today, and so I spent most of the afternoon reading and sleeping. I'm cooking for the lot tomorrow, and am slightly nervous, as Walter Jon Williams and Maureen McHugh have been on dinner duty so far, and produced kingly feasts. I hope I can not screw it up.

Many long conversations on books, the writing of them and the reading of them, have spooled out already. And when they stop, I feel like a poor kid at the candy store window who saved up all her money for one little toffee, but is still so hungry. I miss this. There was a time when this was a daily part of my life, talking about literature and criticism and what books should be and do and what we settle for and why. A time when books mattered so much to everyone I knew that to love them--more than love, to be devoted to them--was not an idiosyncrasy. It doesn't happen offline (the online world is wonderful, but it doesn't really satisfy, ultimately) too much these days, except with justbeast, or the occasional manifestation of an online person in the too-brief flesh. I hang with people who love books, but not really the kind of books I love, not the way I love them, and the joy I take in criticism and the apparatus of studying books is something I don't get to let out play at all anymore.  Geekdom comes in many flavors, and I have broadened my horizons in the last few years...and lost the sandbox, lost the safe and vibrant spaces I used to love to play in myself. This week is like being thrown into a mountain pool after being allowed one drop of water every day for five years. I'm just so stupidly grateful.

Current Mood: awake

I have arrived in Taos, New Mexico, rather far above Taos, actually, and am firmly ensconced in the Snow Bear Lodge with the rest of the Rio Hondo writing workshop. I have a lovely room all to myself in which to work, a fabulous multi-head (is there anything which could not be improved by the addition of "multi-head") shower, and wonderful, brilliant people. I feel remarkably peaceful and ready to have my work torn up and to make more in this not-very-little room.

Which came with its very own faceless stone neolithic Bear statue on the writing desk. I take this as an excellent omen, and I have named him Augustine, and he has assured me that he can help me with structure.

I also have Reliable Internet Access, and so vow to post frequently. If my car-conversation with bram452 on the way up is any indication, this will be a fascinating week, and like the dork I am, I can't wait to learn! It's like the first day of school, only without math.

It is beautiful here, to say the least. The mountains remind me of the Sierras, and all the trips we used to take to Boreal and Strawberry Valley when I was a wee one. It's not exactly the same climate, but the smells are similar, and the feel of sitting on the roof of the world. There is still snow on the ground, and it is quite cold. Nevertheless, I'm already going barefoot. I am a more comfortable human without shoes.

When I landed in Jamaica, I felt absurdly like Johnny 5 in Short Circuit: all my dishes and antennae out, eager for input. Same thing here, but with brisk winds and mountain stars instead of hibiscus and turquoise water. But it makes me prickle and thrill and feel alive.

I'm so glad I came.

 

Current Mood: thankful

Incidentally, the IAF, the wonderful people who brought you Interfictions and the Orphan's Tales Road Show, are having an auction.

In it, there are a few fabulous necklaces based on my Interfictions story, "A Dirge for Prester John." Which will one day be a novel, maybe even a series, if anyone ever gives it enough love.

Go check it out--it is of the awesome.

Thank you to everyone for making my 29th special, most particularly vrax, s00j, omnisti, tithenai, and passionandsoul. Sisters and shipmates, you know?

There are pictures of the Epic Sooj Birthday Concert of Ninja Doom here.

I felt like quite the Mama Orca, feeding my pod with meatloaf--turns out that what you feed the jet-setting Lebanese-Canadian girl who has eaten everything are the exotic dishes of the "loaf" school of cuisine--and cuddling with everyone. It was a lovely time. Thank you to everyone who sent their wishes, and to blazepoet, yakavenger, and earthenwood for sending pretty presents! earthenwood, how did you know I'm obsessed with keys? ;)

Unfortunately I followed that right up by losing my brand-new purse. Perhaps this is a cosmic message to get an Ohio license already. Urrrrgh.

I'm in Columbus Saturday for the Ohioana Festival, and leaving for Taos on Sunday for the Rio Hondo workshop. Hopefully there will be internet access there so I can post at leisure about what I learn--I'm really looking forward to this, as it is my first serious workshop experience.

Until then, I work and work. No rest for me, wicked or no.

Current Mood: exanimate

So it's my birthday, and there isn't a better time for announcements. In this case, announcing Happiness with a capital H.

justbeast and I are getting married on November 1st, 2009.

I can still hardly believe I have stumbled onto such grace as my life with him, and I know that this is the right path, without reservation. That is quite a feeling.

It is very important to me to have a Tribal wedding--we have such a vast network of love and connection in this world. To that end, since Livejournal has been such a major part of our lives and was, in fact, how we met, I would like to have as much of the wedding stuff supplied by my massively talented LJ tribe. So, please, if you have a skill that might lend itself to a wedding--photography, dressmaking, floristry, ritual planning, food, craftiness of any kind, please contact me via the comments on this entry or by email. A year and a half is not so long as it seems! (We certainly don't expect such help for free. We'd just rather pay Our People than strangers.)

My first wedding was a small nightmare, one of the worst days of my life. While I will absolutely not get stupid or crazy about this one, I want it to be special and sweet, and involve everyone we love. I hope a goodly number of you will be a part of it.

I love you, Beast. We go together like Grease and awkward Jamaican lip syncing. Here's to the rest of our lives.

Current Mood: loved

I am now a 29th level paladin. Ph33r.

I want to take a page from sheryl67. If you would like to get me a birthday present, send me your art. Anything that you Do, that is your peculiar Thing. Knitting, jewelry, stories, photography, whatever it is that you can do. I can't think of a better present.

Email me and I'll send you my snail mail address.

Thank you! Last chance for loot before level 30!

(Also, I have a tithenai in my house. And will soon have a s00j and an omnisti and a passionandsoul. There is nothing that makes me happier than a house full of shining bodhisattva like this. O, bliss.)

Current Mood: loved

Am back. Had a great time and will post--no internet access in the hotel meant I was away from everything for a week, and now I pay the price.

I am absolutely deluged with work. On top of which I must clean the house for my birthday party on Saturday. On top of which, Omikuji. (The PDFs will go out within the hour, but I may be stuck mailing on the 2nd again. Still working out the kinks in the system. Sorry!)

In the meantime, please do have a read--the wheel turns and I'm in Clarkesworld again! A Buyer's Guide to Maps of Antarctica. I'm rather fond of it--I hope you enjoy it. There's also a cool article on RPGs in which I discuss a bit of our campaign.

I will make an attempt at a real post before my birthday, I promise.

Current Mood: omgwork

If I read one more book that involves a mystical society bent on liberating Dark Gods from Beyond Time (tm) for no particular reason except to be assholes, I will bust. heads. Lovecraft: ur doin it wrong.

In other news, my nose is be-grindstoned, frantically trying to finish all my work before departing for Jamaica tomorrow with justbeast, darlox, gieves, and the rest of the People What Work with My People. An actual, real-live vacation. I haven't had one of those in forever.

I will most certainly blog about it, so stay tuned, but right now I'm in scramblemode.

And also a werefrog. Ribbit.

Current Mood: rushed

Getting ready for the Penguicon-Jamaica-birthday triple header--and please if you haven't answered the Evite yet, do so, so I know how much food to make. It's going to be an amazing couple of weeks in the CatHaus.

If anyone wants to send cards or suchlike, I'll happily provide an address, as birthdays are one of those Important Things to me. Too many forgotten in childhood for them not to be. There's a wishlist in the sidebar, though I feel odd about pointing that out. Enough Christian Science guilt has crept in, I suppose.

Also writing the new Omikuji and various other deadliney things. So am a bit busy.

In the meantime--my  Doctor Who review is up!

Oh...and I got a tattoo last night. *winks*

Current Mood: busy

Bored and blocked. The Monday is for to suck. Let's play the old LJ game!

Ask me anything. Comments screened. Comments not screened because I have to, you know, answer them. Why can they not make unscreening optional when you respond? Ugh. Anyway. If it's a private-y thing, email me.

Any topic.  I'll do my best to answer honestly.

Current Mood: bored

Tomorrow is the last day to vote in the Locus Poll, in which In the Cities of Coin and Spice is nominated for Best Fantasy Novel. You don't have to subscribe to vote, so please go take a look at all the worthies and vote if you are so moved!

Current Mood: blah

Once upon a time, there was a leopard-print dress. And a girl who really wanted it.

I mean, it's a leopard-print dress. It's slit up to oh-my-god in the back. It's perfect 50's trampgear. And I happen to be one of the few humans who can carry off cat-prints, with the long black hair and all. I reasoned to justbeast that I have a class and repression and respectability to spare, so I can wear something stupidly slutty and it still comes off as merely risque.

But I didn't buy it. I stroked it in the store and looked longingly over my shoulder at it. And I didn't buy it. And in a week, it was gone. Why, you ask?

Because there's a little voice inside me that belongs to a particularly insidious gnome, and that voice says: you are so fucking fat. You can't have that dress. You should be wearing a sack of shame and hiding yourself from human eyes. You look like a walking manatee. No one wants to see you in trampgear, no one wants to see you at all. You're hideous, and you can't "get away" with that dress because your ass dishonors your slim and untroubled family line, not because it's slutty. Sluts are hot, after all. You're nothing.

I'm going to go out on a limb and bet some of you know that voice pretty well. It's a constant friend, no?

I haven't been talking about it, because the progress has been slow and therefore sometimes discouraging, but in the last year I've gone from a size 18 to a size 12. I've been working out every day, and I could safely bench press my college girlfriend. I'd like to be a size 10, and I'll get there. I will.I'm trying not to stress it. That should matter, right? The gnome should be a little mollified.

But it never is. Not even a little. That gnome has all the power of our collective culture behind it, all the power of every girl you thought was so much prettier than you, every boy whose eyes skated right over you like you didn't exist, the power of every family member who glared at you for taking an extra helping of turkey at holidays. It's ripped. And it never shuts up.

I spent years not buying myself new clothes because it was too depressing. I'll buy that when I lose some weight, I thought. And then I never did, whether I lost weight or not. It was easier to deny myself than to believe I was pretty enough to deserve a scrap of overpriced fabric. Than to stop thinking clothes were something I had to earn.

But you know, denying yourself and listening to the gnome has consequences. You sag in the shoulders, you don't look people in the eye. You don't feel sexy, and so--as if by gnomic magic--you aren't. You compare yourself endlessly, and you always come up short. Funny, that. The amount of mental energy it takes to convince yourself that you are the ugliest creature on earth is really astounding. Yet we do it, good little boys and girls, because the world tells us that to feel otherwise is to upset some basic natural balance where thin is virtue and fat is sin. Even a little fat. Even the smallest lump. Not only is it ugly--it means you're a bad person. It means no one could ever love you or desire you.

Look at that poison, man. It's black and it's horrible, isn't it? Like tar in the lungs, and we carry it around, doing penance for living.

So, there was this leopard-print dress. And I looked at its twin online for three ever-loving weeks, telling myself I couldn't have it, I didn't deserve it. Until I just broke down and bought it, and all the other clothes I'd been telling myself I couldn't have, promising myself to wear that leopard-print like a mantle of power, a techni-color dreamdress.

And you know what? I look amazing in that dress. Because it isn't the dress, it's the girl inside it--and that girl, the very instant she stops listening to the gnome in her, walks tall and has a great rack, an ass that all three graces would envy, and a sweet, gentle slope to her tummy. She's got lioness-hair and the olive green eyes that Mary Sue writers give their fantasy characters. She walks regal, and she's smart as anything--she has worlds inside her and a big, warm belly laugh. Whatever else she is, she is a woman of appetite, and she is alive. Being a size 10 will make her neither more nor less those things.

And it was brutally hard for her to write that paragraph, brutally hard to say those good things. How smart and strong that gnome is!

No matter your size, if you think you're smoking hot, you are. If you own it, if you strut it. There is nothing sexier than confidence, on guys or girls. Nothing sexier than that glint that says they know they've got something worthwhile in them. It is not an easy glint to maintain, but it's worth, forgive the pun, its weight in hotness. There is nothing you're "not allowed" to wear. Nothing you can't get away with. Nothing forbidden.

Own the dress. Don't let it own you.

Current Mood: hawt

I realize I have not mentioned the Many Places I Will Shortly Be. Thus, a fix.

Today, I'm in ur Goblin Fruit, bein' a featured poet. There is interview and new poems, and also recordings of me reading them--including me reading part of a lovely poem by Jasmine Johnston called "Seeds." I speak Greek in SexyVoice (tm). Phear my degree in linguistics.

As I mentioned before, this weekend I'll be reading with