A Burst of Productivity

I seem to work in bursts these days. However, my definition of productivity is probably up for debate. In any case, I have news I've been accumulating. Not news like the meth "super lab" they just busted a couple miles away from my house. Good news. Firstly, and most belatedly, I found out that the young adult short story anthology that I was supposed to be part of after winning third place in a contest is back on. Click the link for the full story of why I had kind of given up on it. Sorry; just way too lazy to type it out twice.

Secondly, there's been a lot of activity on the non-paying writing scene. I contributed two book reviews to The Edge of the Forest, an online children's literature monthly journal put together primarily by children's and YA bloggers. There's no monetary compensation for this, but I get free books! That's a nice thing. I've also gotten a couple of free books directly from publishers, in order to review them on our reviews blog, which is cool. Lastly, I'm going to be part of the Graphic Novels committee for the Cybils--the first annual Children's and YA Bloggers' Literary Awards. I'm looking forward to that. I feel like all TadMack's and my blogging efforts are showing some interesting results, finally.

And now for something completely different: I've been working on Halloween costumes for me and Rob and I can safely say that our costumes rock this year. Yes, I know in the past I've grossly misjudged the awesomeness of our costumes, but this time I swear it's different. Nothing fancy. Just fun. As mentioned before, I'm dressing as Medusa, and I spent an evening attaching rubber "bendy snakes" I bought on eBay to a headband using big fat bookbinding needles and thread. I can definitively tell you that the snakes will give way before the thread does. You can see the in-progress and finished headband at right. I also borrowed a flowing black dress from a friend. I tried it all on earlier tonight and was very pleased. I promise to post a picture.

Rob, meanwhile, decided he wants to be a Jackalope, which I have to admit is an awesome idea. So our friend Jay found a pair of black bunny ears (which, amusingly, seem designed for a Playboy-bunny-type costume), and then I went to Michael's and bought an array of craft materials from which to create the antlers. I ended up constructing a sort of wire mesh armature, onto which I adhered brown felt. Then I used brown pipe cleaners to attach the antlers to the bunny-ear headband. See left for the result. I'm rather proud of myself. They're not perfect, but they get the idea across.

We'll be testing out the results tomorrow night at a friend's Halloween party at the Health and Social Justice Co-op in Berkeley. We're going to a show at Yoshi's first, so I'll have to try a quick-change in the car. Good thing it's pretty much just a dress and a headband for me, and a headband for Rob. I'm not going to a jazz concert dressed as Medusa.