Thingy.

heddychaa tagged me. I hear and obey.

The Rules:

1. People who have been tagged must write the answers on their blog and replace any question they dislike with a new, original question.

2. Tag eight people. Don't refuse to do that. Don't tag who tagged you.

I'm pretty lackadaisical with tagging, actually. I'm not really up for it. It stresses me out. If you can read this, and you want to do the thing, do the thing.

( A thing. With stuff in. )

Up past my bedtime

Thank [expletive] for 4:30 AM.

I’m not joking.

The funny thing about my weekday schedule is that I actually get more sleep getting up at 4:30 than I ever do when I haven’t got a bedtime. It’s like scaling a sheer cliff face. If I don’t respect it, there will be suffering. Bad things will happen. I have to get to bed on time Sunday-Thursday or else.

And then, miracle of miracles, starting around 5-5:30 AM, words happen. Sometimes a lot of them. Sometimes a trickle. But they’re words happening when words are the only thing that has to happen. Nobody needs me that early in the morning. Occasionally I brush up against my West Coast night owl friends, or my friends in Europe on Twitter, but otherwise my house is dark, even the most intense block parties have folded, and if somebody is going to phone me it’s a genuine emergency.

Even the dogs aren’t willing to get out of bed that early. It’s kind of like heaven.

~*~

I got news a few days ago that one of the Things I Can’t Discuss is another step closer to discussable. The other one is still, as far as I know, under wraps. It just occurred to me I haven’t been saying much about publishing of late because I can’t, and figured I should mention that Stuff Is Still Happening.

If you’re interested in stuff that doesn’t happen in geologic time behind a curtain of secrecy, you should absolutely check out Hold Something. I love making it, I love working at crazy, breakneck speeds with my friend Sam to make it good, and I sort of even love addressing all the envelopes. Hold Something also helps pay the bills, so if you like feeding authors, you could do worse!

~*~

- If you have a fistful of change going spare, Steve Berman over at Lethe Press has dropped the price on his short story collection Second Thoughts. You can pick it up via the Kindle store or Smashwords. You can also find other titles from him and other Lethe Press authors as well if you’ve got some money to burn.

- Dorchester Publishing/Leisure Books is screwing Brian Keene, and some other authors as well, by failing to pay their authors and selling digital editions of books they no longer hold the rights to. Genuinely angry-making stuff, and serious enough that the RWA and SFWA have taken notice.

- I have never read anything by Jessica Verday, but I suspect I’m going to give her stuff a try. Verday recently pulled a story from an anthology when she was told by the anthology’s editor Trisha Telep that she needed to change one of her two male characters into a female character so that their romantic plot could be a heterosexual one. The publisher has since come out on Verday’s side, albeit retaining Telep. Meanwhile, others have been pulling out of the project in solidarity. As for Telep, this is the only comment from her I’ve managed to find. That clang you heard was my jaw hitting the floor.

- Good news if you’re into sacred trees: in spite of this winter’s serious vandalism, the Glastonbury Thorn is showing some green.

- This whole Rebecca Black thing is not my cup of tea. On the other hand, the people suggesting that she should cultivate an eating disorder, or that she should “cut and die” (as this article describes) need urgently to check themselves. That is not on.

- A mom unpacks slut shaming for her 11-year-old son (Note: web address potentially NSFW because it is associated with Good Vibrations, but content is not explicit). Holy crap, I’m a fan. Related: accidental sex ed, and why context is your friend at Geek Mom.

- Willie Garson is a sexy kitty. Probably only funny if you like White Collar.

- I do a lot of Googling when I write fiction. Often I’ll need to see how big something is, or how it works, or what was happening in a certain year, and so on. Every so often, though, I find a gem by accident. Today’s gem? Private Snafu.

- I’m not adequately skilled enough to put these things right, but when General Electric is getting a tax refund in the billions of dollars while I’m busy calling my representatives asking them not to slash critical social programs and the legislature in Minnesota is floating a bill that would prohibit aid recipients from carrying cash, something has gone wrong.

- Fuck yeah, crows. And I’m not just saying that so that they don’t destroy me. Really.

- The best piece of random fan writing I’ve seen this week: Anthony Bourdain visits Narnia.

- An ancient-ish blog post I found by accident and kept in a tab because the photo was so fantastic. Possibly only amazing if you’ve done a bit of art history.

- Look, you can’t say you’ve never thought about doing this. Or at least something like it. I myself have fond memories of dressing up like Batman as a child and prowling the neighborhood with a telescoping light-up toy sword. Thank any and all applicable powers I never actually ran into the bad guys…

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com