Self-Aggrandizement Sure Takes Up a Lot of Time.

I guess I'm spending all my time lately on things like new websites and Facebook "pages" and networking and book-related junk. I did an uber-long blog post over at the YA blog recapping a conference I went to over the weekend--I seem to be doing most of my posting there lately, as well as at the Cybils blog, where I'm the blog editor. I'm blogging a lot. Just not here.

I'm hoping to remedy that. I think I'm making progress on my Gigantic List O' Random Crap that needs doing. I usually put blogging here at aquafortis fairly far down the list, sadly, but again, I hope to change that. Unfortunately, I get all exhausted and antisocial when I've been doing a lot of networking-type stuff and might disappear from the virtual world for days at a time. Sometimes I DON'T EVEN TWEET! Shock! Horror!

Anyway, speaking of horror, here's a great link if you're looking for some Halloween reading: a friend of mine, Colleen, got a good scary story published in Strange Horizons.  I keep pushing it on people because it's such an awesome piece. It's not TOO scary. You know me and scary: we're like two peas in totally separate pods on completely different planets. But I read and enjoyed this story, so there you go.

More soon. I swear.

Oooh, the Purtiness....

YEAH! I have absolutely, definitively found the image gallery I want to set up on my personal site. It's awesome. I love it. You can set up sets of images with captions. It's simple and classy. Best of all, it's really easy to set up (or it should be, anyway). That part is important, since I'm a computer dumbass. Also, the other good thing is that it doesn't involve server-side installation, or require PHP or MySQL. Those are things I would have to actually pay for with my web hosting provider. Plus they're things I don't understand or know how to work with, which usually makes things difficult. (I say usually, because I don't really know JavaScript but I can work with it on a very basic level, like installing scripts onto my web pages and even sometimes customizing them.)

Anyway, Lokesh Dhakar--the creator of the Lightbox image gallery, is my new web page hero. He rocks. And his blog is pretty cool, too--I like the little graphics that scale larger or smaller to indicate the number of comments on a blog post. Those are nifty. I'm looking forward to implementing Lightbox on my site and finally providing the long-promised image gallery.

Sllloooooowwwwww.

Apparently it's been a slow blogging week for me. I did, however, put up that nifty widget thingy, also known as a blidget, on the left-hand sidebar, with all the latest posts from the YA blog I contribute to. Speaking of which, I'm also involved in the Cybil Awards (Children's and YA Bloggers' Literary Awards) again this year, this time as an organizer for the Graphic Novels category and a nominating panelist for Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Nominations opened today, so if there are any children's or YA books published this year that you particularly loved, cruise by the Cybils blog and leave your nomination in the comments.

Now for the "I made this! Lookit me!" section...The picture of the bread I baked last week, which I promised to post for DaviMack. It was my first time trying cracked wheat bread--or indeed, any yeast bread other than plain French or plain wheat--and I have to say it went well. It helped that I bought new wheat flour of the King Arthur variety, though I did have some decision-making trouble at the store when I found they had about five different kinds of King Arthur, including organic. However, I went for the all-natural non-organic since the price-to-poundage ratio was much better. And two more loaves are rising even as we speak. Rising slowly, though--is it because of the cracked wheat?

And here's another "lookit what I did" thingy--I'm inordinately proud of my latest poster for the Prospect Theater. I've finally managed to get a little more done on our website, too, specifically adding the footer (which I forgot to do before) and adding the Imp Press page. Once the addition to our house is done, we'll actually be able to get said press up and running again, which will be nice.

In other news...you can now officially pre-order my friend TadMack's book on Amazon now. Whee!....I had a nice long birthday chat with my half-sister in Australia last night (her birthday) and found out something I hadn't heard on U.S. news (big surprise) about the APEC summit...And, last but not least, I seem to be wasting--er, spending an awful lot of time on Facebook lately. Maybe that's why I've been failing to blog. I've been busy playing that stupid Pirates game and throwing sheep at people and what-not.

Some Extra Coolness

So yesterday I was driving a bunch of bags of crap to the recycling center (in theory, we can put blue bags of recyclables in with the regular garbage and the garbage co. will sort them out, but we doubt that actually happens). I was in the car for a total of about two minutes, idly listening to Insight on NPR.

But perhaps I need to back up. After actually managing to finish my 50,000 words (see humongoid graphic at left) for National Novel Writing Month, I thought I'd drop the show's producer a line. I thought they might be interested to know I'd finished, since the segment about NaNoWriMo basically ended with them asking me if I thought I'd get to the end and me saying I was sure as hell going to try (without the hell part). Thus, on Friday I wrote a short e-mail to the host and the producer saying thanks again and, incidentally, I managed to finish by about 9:30 pm on the day of the deadline; and, gosh, being on the show must have given me a fresh burst of enthusiasm or somethin' for me to write 5,000 words in about six hours.

So fast forward again to yesterday. I'm sitting in the car, half-listening to Insight and thinking how it would really be neato (but unlikely) if they announced on the air that their guest last week for the NaNoWriMo segment managed to finish her 50,000 words in case y'all were wondering. And then...the host, Jeffrey Callison, announces it. Right at that moment, at approximately 2:18 pm. And he read my little e-mail on the air.

Whoooooooo!!!!

On a totally different topic, I have a couple of artists' websites to plug. My friend Corey does some really excellent nature and landscape photography and has prints of his work available. Secondly, I randomly got back in touch with someone Rob and I went to Cal with, in the Art Department there, when we saw her work on a book cover. I looked at the name of the artist and we thought, geez, that has to be her. It was. If you know someone who likes fantasy art, visit Shadowscapes, the art of Stephanie Pui-Mun Law.