author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

I got my author copies of Blood and Other Cravings Friday afternoon. They arrived by FedEx, accompanied by the cheerful FedEx delivery driver within whose beat I reside. "Been a while," we said to each other as I scribbled the stylus up and down the handheld's screen in a messy attempt at my signature. "How've you been? How's the weather out there? Still cool, or warming up yet?"

Once I got the package inside, I was all, What the heck is this? It's addressed to me. I didn't order anything.

Then I saw the Tor Books return address, and I was all, I know what this is! Squeeeeeeee!

So here it is. Here they are. Two lovely copies of a lovely hardback, as pictured here. That's one reason to have two author copies: so you can pose them for the camera like this. (Although you could probably do a better job than I did. Gah, that weird foreshortened angle.)

And there was a very lovely surprise waiting for me when I opened the book for the first time so I could do the foolish happy writer-mamma dance. You know how that dance goes? It's accompanied by a song: Look how lovely the paper is! What a beautiful title font! It's a book! It's really a book! Anyway, I turned back the front cover, and there was my name, right there on the book jacket inner flap. In the nature of anthologies, there's a brief summary of each of a sample several of the stories within, the better to snag the attention of random bookstore browsers; and one of the stories so summarized there is mine. How cool is that? That is way cool.

Tomorrow morning at what my husband calls "ass-o-clock" ('cause it's a vantage point from which you can see the crack of dawn, get it? get it? See, it's funny 'cause...) he's going to drive me down to the Amtrak Station for that motorcoach to Raton NM, where I'll board the Southwest Chief train to Chicago, where I'll board the train to New Orleans. And going with me is one of those author copies. Another reason to have two of 'em? So I can keep one, and, according to a tradition started with my very first published stories, give the other to Mom.

The official release date for this book? September 13th. Mom's birthday. Which I suppose makes this a sort of birthday present. I hope she likes it. It's not exactly her favorite kind of fiction. But I suspect that's not going to be the point as far as she's concerned. Heh.

I'm getting mentions in reviews. It's surreal.

Blood and Other Cravings is getting reviewed. It's getting quite nice reviews. And the surreal thing is when one of them mentions my story specifically. And favorably. With complimentary adjectives. Wow.

Here's a handful of reviews and/or reader responses that are online right now:

• Shroud Magazine
• The Tomb of Dark Delights (No permalink; review may drift downward the page over time)
• The first review from Publisher's Weekly

Pretty much all of these made me grin foolishly and sort of float about for the rest of the day. And beyond the immediate happiness of "They like me! They said so! They mentioned me by name!" there's the simple pride in knowing I got to be part of a book that reviewers agree is full of wonderful stories.

Ellen Datlow is posting about reviews on her LJ as they happen. Her alerts are how I'm finding out about 'em.

Another awesome thing that's up: The Vampire Book Club is giving away a copy of Blood and Other Cravings to one lucky reader. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment in response to the post describing "what draws you to vampires." To kick things off, they first posed the question to the anthology's contributors, and the answers some of us came up with are published there for your reading pleasure.

It was a weird question for me. I'm not actually aware of being drawn to vampire stories, and I certainly didn't set out to write one. And yet in a way that's what I ended up doing. Why? "Because I had this weird dream" sort of lacks something as an answer. I hope the answer I finally came up with is interesting, or at least doesn't sound gawdawfully pretentious.

(I have no idea where the paragraph breaks came from. No one else seems to have them, and I'm pretty sure I didn't put them there.)

The last bit of news concerning this anthology is that there may be certain anthology-promoting activities at World Fantasy 2011 should enough contributors be around to participate. I'm hoping to be part of that. It depends on if I make it off the wait list and into actual attending membership; WFC sold out this year because, I think, of its all-star Guest of Honor list. (WFC, what were you thinking? You are small. Why are you fielding a World Con-sized GoH docket?) It also depends on if I just go "F*&# it" and head over to San Diego for the weekend regardless.

So there were email communications about that this morning. Then, because apparently driving around Denver and bussing back up to Boulder is the Most Exhausting Thing Evar, I wound up hard asleep for a few hours this afternoon and dreamt that I suddenly remembered I was supposed to send Ellen a recording of me reading my story by today at 5:35 PM, and it was 5:30 PM now, but I was going to record it anyway, but John was sitting next to me making a lot of noise on his computer so I couldn't. As it happens, 5:35 AM is when my bus leaves the Amtrak station Monday morning, which because the Amtrak station only opens at 5:30 is why I was in Denver picking up my tickets ahead of time. O HAI THER BRAIN I C WUT U DID THER

Er. About that bus. The bus goes to Raton, New Mexico, whence my train to Chicago, whence my train to New Orleans. Yes, this is more complicated than it ought to be. The California Zephyr is not running between Denver and Chicago during the month of September because what with flooding in Omaha and track damage and freight traffic bottlenecks, there was so much constant lateness they just gave up. It seems I've been negotiating non-standard Amtrak accommodations all year. This appears to be what happens to rail travel when every waterway in the US appears eager to flood at the slightest provocation. Please to stop that, US waterways! Also, please to reverse global climate change and stop messing with weather systems. Please?

I suppose I could just break down and get airfare. But I'm out of practice putting up with airport TSA stupidity. It's been so nice not having to worry over whether some bully in a uniform is going to make an issue over my knitting needles, fountain pens, or electronic accessories. And I'm kind of looking forward to riding the Southwest Chief for the first time.

...roughly in order of actual writing-related relevance.

Firstly. Had the pleasure of seeing myself referred to, for the first time, in a Real Review of Actually Published Stuff, as a "newcomer." Like one's first lumpy handspun yarn, this is to be cherished. Only about 100 times more so. Again, I can't think of better company in which "First Breath" could see the light of print. This is amazing.

Relevant to this: Blood and Other Cravings is slated for release on September 13 of this year. It's available now for pre-order at all your favorite online and brick-and-mortar localities. I've presented here a link to do so at IndieBound.org, who help you place orders at your neighborhood independent bookstore if you're fortunate enough to have one.

Secondly, I've finally put "Blackbird" back into the slush. I'm slightly unnerved by Apex Magazine's insistence that submissions be done through HeyPublisher.com, referred to hereafter as "HP". (This should be unambiguous since I am not going to discuss boy wizards nor printer manufacturers in this post.) I can't submit a cover letter unless it's part of the manuscript; alas that I didn't think to prepend one. I can, however, enter a bio that will be attached to every darn thing I submit via HP -- which just feels weird. Also, in order to submit, I had to upload my manuscript to HP, which is worrisome even considering HP's reassuring privacy clause. Still, Apex specifically want dark fantasy, which this is, and Apex pay pro rates, which option I should like to exhaust before moving down the publishing hierarchy.

I'd have tried Strange Horizons first, but they have a list of horror tropes they really would not like to see again, at least not unless the manuscript is effin' fantastic, and I see "Blackbird" in at least three of those listed items. Which, despite SH wanting to see "stories that have some literary depth but aren't boring; styles that are unusual yet readable; structures that balance inventiveness with traditional narrative," is daunting. So... well, maybe later. Maybe a few rejection letters down the road.

Thirdly and similarly, I'm looking for other places that might like to reprint "Right Door, Wrong Time." Brain Harvest seems like a good fit. When I took a look Saturday, the most recent story was Helena Bell's "Please Return My Son Who Is In Your Custody," which, wow. Chills and shivers and a few uneasy giggles. I still need to read the latest since then, Simon Kewin's "Terahertz." The first few paragraphs tantalize me with their efficient worldbuilding.

Nextly, I've begun play-testing Glitch. Glitch is a very strange, and strangely compelling, MMO. You play the part of a figment of the Gods' (called "Giants") imagination. You learn skills, you do stuff. You interact with other people. You help build the world. Play-test opens again tomorrow, so I hear. What does this have to do with writing? Well, it's a reason why I might not be getting a lot of writing done. (Stupid online game addictions. I can has them. In multiples.) If you also are playing, I'm "vortexae".

And lastly (for this post at least), I am baking pound cake. I had this quart jar of whipping cream that self-soured, and pound cake calls for sour cream. So there.

And what does that have to do with writing? You ask a writer who's ready for dessert.

Actually, I can loop that back into writing. When I get done baking it, if the timing works out I shall take it over to our neighbors' place to share. John's over there with Kit and Austin of Transneptune Games, play-testing Becoming Heroes with some friends. Becoming Heroes is available for ordering right now this minute! Nothing "pre" about that. And if you go to Gen Con Indy this year, you can visit Transneptune Games at their vendor booth and buy it there from the team that made it happen.

I'm really proud of these guys and of the book they've produced, and not just because one of them's my husband. And not just because one of the copy-editors was me. (Gods help me, I'm a copy-editor.) And not just because Alison McCarthy's illustrations are stunning. And not just because the game draws on such a multifarious palette of literary influences. I'm proud of them and this book for all these things, plus because creating a new game and putting it out there for public consumption is an amazing feat to take from concept to fulfillment. And it's something John has always wanted to do, for as long as I've known him, so I'm especially pleased for him on that account.

And it's a dang good game, too. The team has put a lot of thought into it -- heck, they put a lot of thought into games as a category. You should read their blog. You won't take RPG mechanics or RPG terminology for granted ever again, that's for sure.

So Transneptune Games sold their first copies of Becoming Heroes about the same time I saw that Publisher's Weekly review of Blood and Other Cravings, which parallelism really amuses me. Hooray!

And that's the list of Things What I Wanted To Tell You What With Not Blogging Reliably Of Late. Which hopefully will improve in the near future.

I think finishing a story's final revision and converting it for email submission not only before noon but also from a medical waiting room is kind of bad-ass. Don't you? I do. And then submitting it from the diner down the road, over a plate of The Best Tamales In Town, IMHO (In My Humble Opinion).

Brief note about that: The Moonlight Diner is what I do if I have to go to the airport and there is time to wait around. Their staff are friendly and pleased to see me, they keep the coffee coming, and their wi-fi is reliable; but their food is on the whole not worth it. Pick up Popeye's on I-270 and eat it on the way over. But the Parkway Diner off 47th in Boulder is what I do by choice. It's what I do to treat myself after spending the morning at a medical appointment nearby. It's delicious and just as friendly, if not even more so, and if its wi-fi is less reliable, well, today it's working fine.

Anyway. Scene X got a total rewrite, as did the end of Scene XIII. And I changed the title from "The Only Moving Thing" to a line from Stanza VIII, "The Blackbird Is Involved in What I Know." I think that's a better summary of the story. The former was too coy, or cute, or something.

Got an email from my friend late last night announcing that his rewrite was also finished. I really like this submitting in tandem thing, but I bet we could both have done with finishing up about a week earlier than this. Morning of Deadline Day is... stressy.

But it's really hard to rush the composting process. Aside from meditating at the spinning wheel, I have no strategies for speeding things up. I'm not saying I have to wait until I'm inspired to write--I do have the ideal of showing up at the page every day--but it seems that particular stories have to wait until I'm inspired.

Again, it's like compost. Compost proceeds at its own pace; you can't rush the microbes. You can encourage faster composting by tweaking the envirnoment, of course--3 parts "brown" to 1 part "green," maintain proper moisture levels, turn the pile every few days--but none of this will get you instant potting soil on demand.

Just so with stories. I can do my daily free-writing exercises, I can think about the story all day and try to dream about it at night, but until it comes together it won't come together.

I'm just glad this one came together in time for the THUNK of manuscript hitting slush pile to happen on Deadline Day and not after.

Also, the THUNK of a work of fiction doesn't signal the same sort of THUD of imminent author collapse as does the THUNK of, say, all those 15K-word StyleCareer eGuides. I may actually get other work done today. Or at least I'm going to play real hard. Fiction is refreshing!

All for now. Battery failing. Until later!

I did indeed reach 50K.

Now, NaNoWriMo.org does not believe me, and indicates that I have used roughly 300 em-dashes in my manuscript thus far which have fooled its word count validator into believing two words to be one. But this does not worry me. I have one day left, that day having 2 write-ins in it, and I have two or perhaps three scenes yet to write before I can consider this draft ended. I expect it'll be another 1500 words or so. That should take care of the NaNoWriMo.org/yWriter discrepancy.

Yesterday's plot hole? I meant to fix it going forward. Not go back and edit; just, whenever referring back to the previously written scenes, pretend like they had gotten the appropriate amounts of Plot Plaster smeared on. Then what did I do? I took the plot hole and ran with it. I suppose the Muse did not approve of the quality of the Plot Plaster I had on hand, and sent me shopping for a superior brand. It's not evident from this excerpt. You'll just have to take my word for it that not only are the men Jet raised from the dead still walking around, but apparently she also can cause other profound changes that make the next conflict after this one seem increasingly artificial.

I think I'm onto something though. I'm hoping it'll solidify in my head while I sleep tonight.

You're disarranged. Deranged. You're mad. You think you can swallow a pill in the dream and wake up as a Commander of Adjustments? It's not I who am in danger of mistaking dreams for reality; it's you. My thoughts only make him chuckle. In humans, laughter is an effect of interrupted breath. In Chender it comes of his being, the thoughts that are his body; they are skipping like one of Lia's scratched CDs. What I am hearing is the sound of Chender making love with his own obsessions. The realization horrifies me. It's not possible. And even if it were, it would not be allowed. Regardless, I swear you will not be allowed the attempt.

But my words are mere helpless babble for all the effect they have on Chender, who continues chuckling at me. The skipping, looping, hiccuping thought shifts to new words: who could who could poss possibly possibly stop me?

Without thought, without a plan, I attack him. It is not so much in answer to his question as to make his insane giggling stop. I have the notion that, were I to listen to his madness long enough, I would be sucked into it, wrapped up and bound up and wound into this weird psychosis. So I attack.

This is all really geeky and possibly esoteric. It's very, very cool, however.

"First Breath" has sold. To a professional market, even. Which is a first for me. (Come to think of it, Ideomancer was my first semi-pro sale of fiction this decade. Damn, 2010 rocks!)

On the one hand, this means that the ongoing worldbuilding discussion with my friend is unlikely to result in a significant revision. On the other hand, that's totally OK and I know she'll understand.

This weekend: Floating on euphoria, squeeing to my nearest and dearest, having an extremely short attention span because squee!

Tonight: Angsting over writing the requested bio. What the hell does anyone put in those things? I mean, when they can't say "is the best-selling author of this, that and the other novel."

Tomorrow: Working on the next thing, because there is always a next thing.

And I'm not sure the Ant thing will be the next thing, because if there's something I've learned from this experience, it's this: Write at the intersection of passion and fear. That story that won't get out of your head, that you're kind of ashamed to let anyone else see? That's the one. Get to it.

Bonus points if it came to you in a dream.

I am thinking of another story that matches that description. And, while there's something to be said for the comic relief of something like that Ant thing, that other story does match the description. Which means now it won't get out of my head.

But tomorrow I get to see a bunch of writer-type friends downtown for my usual Tuesday Lunchtime At Atlas thing, and I will probably squee at them a bit more before settling down to writing the next thing. Also! I have a new laptop! It isn't falling apart, and its CD/DVD-ROM works, and it doesn't crash when I unplug it! Tomorrow is totally going to be show-and-tell day.

No, that would not be the Dairy Queen ice cream treat. That would be the sort of all-day blizzard that dumps a foot of snow on Boulder and turns any day into a "why bother?" sort of day.

I was feeling fairly chipper, otherwise. More than chipper, in fact. Yesterday, I finally sat down with my much-marked-up copy of "First Breath" and completed work on a thorough revision. The result was 150 words longer, one character shorter, a bit more focused in, and hopefully less confusing at the end. The other result was me tripping along in a euphoric haze of "See? See? I'm a writer! I did writerly things, like writing!"

That evening I relaxed with a long-overdue reread of Margaret Mahy's The Tricksters. Its teenage protagonist is a secret writer, and the story she's writing becomes the vessel for a ghost to embody itself. And... huh. I only realized the overlap between that and "First Breath" just now. Ghost-like creatures needing an external vessel to embody themselves in, I mean. Neat. But last night, what kept catching my attention was the way Mahy's treatment of the magic inherent in the creative act of writing made me even more happy with having seriously written that morning.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that when you write a first draft, you're not stuck with it. You can go back and change it, make it better, make the story grow closer to being the reason you wrote it in the first place. I know this; you know this. Anyone who thinks half a moment knows this. But for me sometimes it takes actually engaging in a serious rewrite to know it, know in the bones and blood and gut and in the happy place. It's the difference between knowing you're capable of something, and then actually doing that something and reveling viscerally in your own capability. (This would be why writing is like rock climbing.)

So: Rawr! I rock! But there's nothing like a morning-after full of so much snow and wind that we can't even take out the trash to remind me not to get carried away in my euphoria. "Yes, very good. You rocked yesterday. But it's today now. Write the next thing."

*sigh*

Big news: "The Day the Sidewalks Melted" is now live for you to read in Ideomancer volume 9, issue 1. Read it here. And since it won't take you all that much time to read, go read the rest of the free, online magazine while you're at it. The other stories are breathtaking, the poetry likewise, and the reviews illuminating.

And consider donating, since that's how the staff of Ideomancer keep the magazine going and the contributors paid year after year.

Meanwhile, I'm working on a new story, which is news and really oughtn't to be. That is, I ought to be doing it often enough--writing new stories--that it's not newsworthy. But I finally realized, considering the woefully slow progress I've been making on finishing the NaNoWriMo 2009 draft of Melissa's Ghost (I'm afraid John's getting the proof copy for an anniversary present; it wasn't done in time for his birthday), that putting off everything else until I'm done with that job is a recipe for unhappiness.

Recipe for happiness:

• One story idea that won't let you go.
• A portable Smith-Corona that's gathering dust.
• Five minutes reviewing the typewriter's instruction manual.
• About two and a half hours.

It's not actually a new story, but it's such a revision over the first time it showed up that it might as well be. What's it about? Well, in one sense, it's about succubi and how they reproduce. In another, it's about lives of ennui, lives of substance, and profound transformation. It's probably only going to be about 1500 words by the end of the day.

The end of the day will not be later than this weekend. I have promised it to the twice-monthly critique group. No, not the original typewritten draft. It'll get retyped into WordPerfect and revised first. Then emailed.

See, I'm not entirely a luddite here. (I mean, look! Blog post! On the internet!) It's just that sometimes, to recover from a stall, I have to switch from my daily laptop to something a little more "me plus words minus everything else". Sometimes I need to dust off the Ancient Decrepit DOS 6.2 Compaq, hide away from the wifi and from all my fancy editing tools. And sometimes I need to escape the bureaucracy of file names and directory trees and run away to where the paper shows up before the words rather than after, to where each letter has weight and the price of going too fast is a key-jam or the whiteout ribbon.

And sometimes I just need that immediate reward of a bell going "ding!" every time I invent a new ten-word sequence or so. "Go you! Now come up with another ten. Good job! Again!"

Seriously. You should try it. It's refreshing.

It was actually only four rewrites; I estimated and slightly exaggerated on Twitter. Four requested rewrites, and now an acceptance. "The Day The Sidewalks Melted" will be published in Ideomancer Speculative Fiction. Possibly in March.

I don't really have much to say beyond that, except that I'm really happy, and, despite how weary I may sound of rewrites, really grateful to editor Leah Bobet for seeing the potential in this story and pushing me to make that potential reality. Her attention, patience, and persistence were vital.

Now I must write a bio. Hooray, a new assignment to affix my dread upon! I'm off to procrastinate now, which we shall call "reading back-issues of Ideomancer to get an idea of what kind of bios the authors therein do write."

This is just to let the world at large know that I did manage to enter the "I Made It On My Schact" contest (deadline September 1, why, what a coincidence, today's September 1). I spun up as much more of the 4 ounces of Cloud City's "rose quartz" roving as I could, since I was woefully behind on the project. After about two and a half hours I decided, what the hell, there's yardage here to spare. Just start plying already.

There was a lot to ply. And I am here to tell you that beading navajo-ply is a terribly finicky chore. When I got my 33 beads on I was all, "Yeah! Done with the ordeal! Now all I have to do is ply!" Yes. Ply. For another 3 hours or so. Occasionally breaking the single and having to patch it back in. How the heck do you patch your single while navajo-plying? Very carefully.

And the entry is all emailed off, and I can't wait to knit with this stuff. It's sock yarn, see. You knit cuff-down from the beaded end, so you get a nice beaded lace cuff. It'll be cool, you just wait! Coooool!

...And that is all.