1) Text sent to hypnagogie first thing this morning: "What does it mean when I dream that the screw top for the big hatch on the top of my skull has gotten gunky, so I have to unscrew the lid and walk around with my brain exposed while I try to find something safe to clean both the hatch and my brain surface, which has also gotten schmutzy due to neglect?" My subconscious has all the subtlety of a water buffalo on a Victoria's Secret catwalk.

2) Speaking of cleaning the gunk out of skulls, I had my first neti pot experience over the weekend, which despite my fears was much less "adventures in waterboarding" and more "bad day swimming at the Y." Worth it, though: two minutes of Dear Merciful Zeus Why Am I Doing This, five minutes of Post-Studio 54 Coke Binge Nose-Blowing, and then 12 hours of Holy Bugmonkeys I Can Breathe.

3) I still haven't watched the Netflix/BBC Watership Down. I have no reasonable explanation for this.

4) My creative cycle tends to consist of one project that occupies me body and soul for a week or two, then gets relegated to the back burner along with all of my other unfinished projects until I notice it down the line for another fortnight of obsession. As I type this I'm in the trough section of my creativity wave form, when nothing is poking my brain hard enough to command my attention and the pilot light of my work ethic. This either means I'm just about to latch onto something, or else I'm entering a gross protracted YouTube-and-pretzels-in-bed bummer phase. Since I'd really prefer to avoid the latter, I might just take a lug wrench to the issue and force myself to work on something. Most likely it'll be the Twine project that I was gung ho over a month ago, but we'll see how things play out. Watch this space.

5) The problem with a mild winter is that when the cold and snow finally do arrive, as they inevitably will, I don't feel as if I have the right to bitch about it.

6) Spilling chicken soup in your lunchbox makes peeling and eating clementines a weird experience.

Hope you're having a net-positive week, friends. This here's the downhill stretch.

Here's something you very much want to get in on: Fae Fatales: A Fantasy Noir Anthology, the first print production from belgatherial's Solarwyrm Press, is within a stone's throw of being funded and coming into glorious being. To quote from the website:

"Though this is the first publication from Solarwyrm Press, we are not publishing inexperienced writers. The anthology itself was put together by Jax Goss, winner of a Highly Commended Prize in the Commonwealth Short Story Writing Competition for her short story "Icarus" in 2011. Several of the other writers placed highly in the online writing competition LJ Idol over the 2010-2011 season, which was made up of over 250 contestants. Sally Bell, Daniel Heichel, J.M. Templet, and Dominica Malcolm placed 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 12th respectively. These 5 writers, along with Jeremiah Murphy, also have stories published in Idol Meanderings, a book that grew out of the competition.

"All of the stories within this anthology are previously unpublished, so you'll be getting completely new stories by each of our writers.

"Okay, but what exactly is fantasy noir? Consider it the gritty side of urban fantasy. If you're a fan of urban fantasy but not really familiar with the original 1940s noir films (where the noir genre began), then you'll enjoy this collection. If you already love noir and fantasy, then you'll LOVE it."

I've seen bits and pieces of the stories submitted, including works from comedychick, i_17bingo, the aforementioned belgatherial, and Many Others Whose LJ Names I Do Not Know (including a guy I coincidentally knew in college!), and they're truly stellar works and very much worth tossing a few coins towards even before you look at the nifty incentives being offered. Read more about the project here, then run, don't walk, to the project's Indiegogo site to get a finger in this pie. Thank you, and you shan't be sorry.

Two years ago, my lovely belgatherial wrote a short story called "Icarus," a lyrical and moving retelling of the Greek myth that shapes the old tale into something new. It was deservedly well-received, and she's been plotting over what to do with it ever since. That "what to do" is finally taking shape, and it's going to be stunning: she is teaming up with Josh, an artist from her town of Dunedin, New Zealand, to create an illustrated book for the piece, applying his gorgeous illustration style to give the whole thing a modern/Steampunk vibe. They're crowdfunding this project through Indiegogo, with incentives for bidders ranging from autographed copies of the final book in two sizes to the original artworks themselves.

In short, click here and get in on this. It's too beautiful not to happen.

I'm aware that some will be reading this multiple times, due to differing social media connections and/or filter access, but since I'm damned close to taking out a billboard on the MassPike to announce it, I might as well repeat myself here.

The first draft of The Noise of Endless Wars, my first novel, My NaNoWriMo project from nearly four years ago, is finally, finally done.

And you know what else? It doesn't suck. (Note: Evaluations of non-suckiness are strictly those of the Management. Your mileage may vary.)

It's just shy of 95,000 words, and it needs some serious polishing in places if not outright demolition and reconstruction, but it worked out better than I could have ever hoped for. This week I plan to start with the ol' red-pen hack-'n'-slash, but for tonight I'm going to revel in the fact that there's a rodent-concussion-sized stack of paper sitting on the dining table right now, and I WROTE IT. Drinks are on me! (No, literally, because my hands are sore from all that typing, and I'll probably be spilling quite a bit.)

Originally posted by belgatherial at Submissions are open.

I'm lying on my back in figmentj's dorm bed, my back turned toward the window and propped up on an impromptu hassock of pillows and blankets unneeded in the summer time warmth, with my laptop propped on the tent frame of my knees. figmentj is away at an appointment for an hour, and there's nothing much to do at the moment but to look around, take stock, evaluate, and write.

Last night, after Doctor Who and chocolate cake and giving of birthday gifts (speaking of Doctor Who, I got her a plush adipose, which she promptly named Zaftig), I took one of my occasional forays into my old LiveJournal posts, only this time I chose to go way back, back into the wilds of 2002 when I was still married and my LJ friends' list numbered somewhere in the high teens. What startled me, if you'll forgive me slipping on my meta loafers, was how startling it all was. Partly that was due to seeing that segment of my life laid out at all—I tend to think of LiveJournal as a post-marriage influence in my life, even though I started well before Kristi and I separated. And then there's the "ach, mein Herr, how my life has changed" factor, especially in the comments sections filled with people I have no contact with any more, either by inertia or by design.

But what struck me most was the writing itself. I don't think my writing style has changed all that much, nor has my sense of humor, at least during those times when I let it mince about in my sentences more. But there was something clearly different, and that was how much I needed to write. And not just write, but write with care and focus, and about everything important, and scads of things that weren't. Things I find myself not doing any more.

And yes, this is my cue to rail on about the erosion of the LJ community and the influences of Twitter and Facebook and all that, but I don't think I agree with all that. I don't believe LJ is dying; I've never been a member of the Chicken Little sandwich board-sporting Doomsayers' Union on this one. And I barely pay any attention at all to the other social media out there; my next-to-last Twitter post was about how bored I was with Twitter. All I know is that my days of writing the post in my head while the events are happening, the days of rushing to the keyboard and the update page as soon as I cross the threshold, are somewhere behind me, and it saddens me.

Look, I've got plenty to talk about in my life: joys, fears, sorrows, the whole lot that comes with living on this planet. In the past week or two I've been to a couple of really awesome parties, had some good times with my kids and more good times with friends and even more good times with figmentj, wrestled with unemployment, got some songwriting done, borrowed a microphone so I can start recording again, started a housing search, worried about my car, pondered doing a podcast, got into some personal discussions so deep and sometimes painful that they left my ears ringing, watched my children grow up before my very eyes. A few dozen journal entries that I can think of just sitting here in a dorm room on the Mount Holyoke campus on a Wednesday morning, and I didn't write a single one of them. Some of them sank in the mire of inertia, some I lacked the time for, and some I had no wish to talk about (not counting one thing I've been forbidden to blog about because my daughter feels that her goings-on with a certain boy are her business).

So many posts I read lament the passing of the LiveJournal that Was, and regret not posting more. I'm not lamenting here, and I'm not regretting. My statement is simple: I miss you. For all the good and the bad that it entails, LiveJournal, and you, have made my life into what it is today, and I'm more grateful than you know. And I want to come home to this old drafty journal, with all the passion and focus I'd forgotten about.

So. If you would, please take a second to answer the following. It's a poll I've posted a dozen times, and have answered in others' journals at least a hundred, but it's never less than necessary: Ask me something. Tell me something. Isn't that what we do here?

[Poll #1757153]


And by the way, the icon up there? That was my first default icon ever, back in 2002. I've never changed it. For all the handwaving over the shifting landscape, some things still remain constant.

I've posted it before, yes, and yes, I worked part of it into the Novel That Will Not Die, for those who have seen the fragments in progress. But if you'll forgive the indulgence, I adore it so much that I can't help but post it again:

Come Dance with Kitty Stobling

No, no, no, I know I was not important as I moved
Through the colourful country, I was but a single
Item in the picture, the name, not the beloved.
O tedious man with whom no gods commingle.
Beauty, who has described beauty? Once upon a time
I had a myth that was a lie but it served:
Trees walking across the crest of hills and my rhyme
Cavorting on mile-high stilts and the unnerved
Crowds looking up with terror in their rational faces.
O dance with Kitty Stobling I outrageously
Cried out-of-sense to them, while their timorous paces
Stumbled behind Jove's page boy paging me.
I had a very pleasant journey, thank you sincerely
For giving me my madness back, or nearly.

Patrick Kavanagh

From the mighty pen of the even mightier cluegirl: Tales of the Faithful—The Parable of the Snow. (Those of you who do not believe beverages and sinus cavities should come into casual contact might wish to set aside that Snapple bottle while reading. Thank you.)