"There's a gnome warlock in my living room, sleeping on my couch."

[snurri]

Today, for a moment, I felt like an underappreciated genius. The line to slap me forms right over there.

Things are happening, little things, mostly. My editor forwarded me some clarification questions from the cataloger at the Library of Congress. They have many, many David Schwartzes already in their system and wanted to know if I was one of them. (There are far too many David Schwartzes in the world.) I will soon have a call number. Can universal domination be far behind?

Copy-edits came, and copy-edits are all but done. Aside from some differences in the philosophy of comma use, no head-butting to speak of. My philosophy of comma use, for the most part, is that commas are as much for rhythm as for grammar, and that it is usually a bad idea to use more than two or three in a sentence. (If you have never had buymeaclue write "All the commas in the world!" on one of your manuscripts, I recommend it highly as aversive therapy.) My philosophy of comma use recognizes that the serial comma exists, but takes no definitive position on it either way. Sometimes it is proper and sensible, and sometimes it adds undue emphasis. Feel free to have a grammar flame-war in the comments if this offends you.

Saturday I went with my father to distant Cottage Grove, where for the thirtieth year the Schwartz, Wagner, and Neimann families made thousands and thousands of Christmas cookies. Lots of rolling and coating and frosting and baking, baking, baking. We only made 3.7k cookies this year, down from 4k last year. (I think the record was around 5500.) I should have taken pictures of the madness for y'all, but I was busy, ya know, making stuff.

I am not sleeping right. I have no schedule, really, so what I've been doing a lot of is staying up for 36 hours or so and then sleeping for 10. I wish I could tell you that this bold experiment has been a success. I have had some weird dreams, though. Today I had a dream about three fine ladies, possibly queens, who traveled in a horse-drawn carriage to a land where the graves of the dead lined the sidewalk and the prisons (four of them) were called His Majesty's Gates and hulked like brownstone Gormenghasts on the horizon. I believe it was Canada. (Seriously.) The three fine ladies all had fine gowns which I remember thinking of poetic descriptions for, all of which I have forgotten except for the one that was worn by the lady least likely to have been a queen. She was wearing a long gown of a tawny gold velvety material that shimmered as she walked. So, now you know that, while I never describe clothing in my fiction, I am apparently preoccupied with it in my dreams.

I only today discovered that The Guild existed. I have never played WoW, but I have watched all five episodes and I have laughed. The writer and star is Felicia Day, whom Buffy fans may remember as Viv the Potential Slayer from Season OMG-What-Were-They-Trying-To-Do-There-Anyway? The Guild is better than Season Seven, trust me. Plus it's not fifteen hours long. (22 if you count commercials.)

Comments

[rnb.livejournal.com]

Holy freaking god, Felicia Day is adorable. Didn't like the show, though.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

She's more than half the show's appeal, that's for certain.