mcollinknight

1. Tonight: Keeping Them Honest - Fort Hood Suspect/Massacre. Up Close - October Terror (that would be - the DC rifle killings). 360 Interview - the rest of the Oprah interview from last week.

Also, as they've mentioned a lot on Twitter, some doings about Healthcare.

2. Keeping Them Honest - Drew Griffen works the angle that Hasan met with a radical cleric. Etc etc.

So this is not the next chapter of the Foundations podfic. This is just me surfacing briefly to say I'm a bit behind, but the next chapter will be coming soon. I have the big nasty horrible budget presentation to get through tomorrow (you want HOW much money?!?!), and then I get Wednesday off for Remembrance Day. Other than observing two minutes of silence at 11 a.m., I promise to devote myself to completing Chapter 8.

Also, I apologize to anyone who has left me a comment in the last week or so - I have been supremely unresponsive. I do read and appreciate the comments (especially the one about giving up my job and just recording fics full time - I think that's a fabulous idea! If only I did not need to pay bills, and buy food and those other frivolous things). I promise I will get caught up soon.

I know I didn't mention this before, but I got my Enviro Econ exam back last week. I got a B- on it, which isn't bad at all, and exactly what I expected -- but I still have to do EXTREMELY WELL on the last problem set (which we do in groups, so that helps) and the final exam if I want to pull my grade out of the metaphorical gutter.

But lately this and other examples like it this past semester have made me reconsider whether or not I want to continue with my environmental policy major or if I should do what I've been thinking about doing for some time now and switch to Japanese studies (I blame mcollinknight's entries on her switching her major a month or so ago for stimulating my own little mini-crisis :P). I've been feeling extremely tired and burned out by what I've been learning in my ES-related classes, and as a result I've become paranoid about my grades, what I feel I ought to be doing, and in a sense what I'll be doing after I graduate. So I've got a decision to make, and I have to decide by Friday morning, when I register for spring courses.

Let's get this out of the way: While I still don't really have a clue what I want to study here (even though this is my goddamned junior year), I have at least a couple of ideas, neither of which I can successfully pull off without having to put off graduation a couple of years and blow hundreds of thousands of dollars more. One of them would've been East Asian studies; even though I've been very interested in studying Japanese language, culture, and issues, if I wanted to have a job or career that had anything to do with East Asia, I would have to be taking classes in Chinese language and culture and issues as well. Not because I'd feel like I'd have to, but because a.) anything Chinese interests me as well, and b.) even though Japan is still a major player in the world economy and a significant cultural exporter, it's China that has all the cool political and environmental issues and natural landscape (not to mention that I would probably love to learn more about its history and literature and philosophy as well, which I know zilch about -- I have J.A.G. Roberts' immense The Complete History of China at home, and because it's so huge and looks like dry reading I'd rather take a class on it, LOL).

The other big thing I would've liked to study is international sustainable development/public health issues, which there really isn't a major for, though International Studies, International Politics and Economics, and a self-designed major would come close (mcollinknight is also to blame for this, but then again I've always had a nagging interest in that sort of thing for a long time now). But it's too late to change my major to International Studies or anything like that. Besides, I've heard so many horror stories of people majoring in IS simply unable to find a job, it's ridiculous. Of course, it's more the economy than anything else, but as much as I'd like to major in something because I want to and not because it would make a good job or career, I'm not naive either. (I know one's major and one's job/career don't have to correlate, but when I graduate I'd rather be doing something that I've actually had some experience in.)

Which is basically what this boils down to: doing what I believe is right and doing something really important (environmental policy) versus doing something that I love (Japanese). Before this past weekend I thought I could have both worlds -- ES policy major, Japanese minor. I've been planning on taking Geographic Information Systems this year, which is a required class for my major, and is just as tedious, time-intensive, difficult, mind-numbing, and soul-crushing as it sounds. D: For my minor, I need to finish second-year Japanese this year as well (going beyond that isn't required, though I'd like to anyway). There were a couple of other classes I was thinking about taking, to help fulfill my major, and to get my College Writing credit out of the way as well (CW being a writing-intensive class).

Guess what? GIS, Japanese, and the CW class I was looking at ALL MEET AT THE SAME TIME. DDDDDDDDDDX

So....yeah. I have a couple of decisions to make.

( Read more... )

Okay well um I come bringing something entirely different. I know some people can't just read a good book and not want to play the characters for themselves sooo I bring to you have_dressing it's basically a dressing room style RP which is very laid back meaning there's no plot or there's as much of a plot as you want to make! Basically dressing rooms are where multiples of characters can partake in whatever you want them to! If you ever just wanted to play someone from the book or even try out a muse for a future endeavor here's your place. And what the hell most books nowadays get dressing rooms anyway and this one deserves one too, damn it! If you're not into RPing feel free to ignore this. /slinks back into the darkened recess of confusing hallways

Requests aren't done, they will be popping up as we go, but honestly I do not need annnyymooreee! I was looking at the Wonder Women that I drew last year and started drawing her again, because she's pretty fun to draw, and surly Wonder Woman here came out. Don't settle for being a tits and tits heroine ladies, be yourself! Poor Nibbles.


Hey Montreal! I'm going to be at Expozine this weekend! You should come.

Store!

"Hey, Touya," Hikaru says one day. He's sitting by the window in early winter, looking outside. It's cool, but not cold; the air is grey but not dark enough to be depressing. There's a strange sort of freedom, he thinks, that lingers in the air on days like these, days when Akira wraps his scarf around his neck, but hesitates and stuffs his gloves back in his pocket, settling for the warmth of Hikaru's hand in his instead.

Akira has been steaming hot tea for them both. He brings two cups over, hands one to Hikaru, and sits gracefully down across from him over the goban, perfectly balanced and never spilling so much as a drop from the other one. Hikaru has his legs bent underneath him to one side, half-turned to face the street outside Akira's apartment. He supposes it shouldn't feel so much like Akira's apartment anymore, since Hikaru's basically been living there for five, maybe six months; but he still gives his old place as his address because he and Akira haven't exactly talked about this. There's a lot of things they haven't exactly talked about. He wonders if any of it bothers Akira. Actually, he sometimes wonders if anything bothers Akira that doesn't have to do with Go.

Akira is giving him a curious look, one hand holding his mug, one hand tracing a nonsense pattern on the goban. He's been cutting his hair shorter in the back lately, and slowly letting his pageboy fringe grow longer and shift away from the front. He looks like a pixie. But it's gorgeous on him. Hikaru likes looking at him just long enough sometimes for Akira to know exactly what he's thinking about. Usually Akira will blush and turn pink at the edges, but sometimes he'll just narrow his eyes and look right back.

Now he's just watching Hikaru patiently. They haven't lit the lamps in the living room; the light around them is starting to turn dingy with the faintly stale quality of all light in winter. Hikaru realizes suddenly that he doesn't know if Akira prefers the lights lowered or bright. It seems a strange thing not to know about Akira, considering all the things he does know.

"What is it?" Akira says. He sips his tea as though it's not sending steam floating up over his cheeks. Hikaru's never figured out how he does that, how he can drink tea as though it's perfectly fine and not scalding hot. Maybe he's permanently scorched his tongue or something. "You've been quiet all afternoon."

Hikaru isn't sure what he wants to say. He tugs the throw that Akira's mother knitted for him last Christmas around his knees and tries not to shiver. "Do you ever think about what we'll be in a thousand years?" he says.

"What?" says Akira. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know," says Hikaru. "Will we still be here, d'you think? Or will we be...somewhere else? Will we even exist at all?"

Akira gives him a long, searching look. "Is this about Sai?" he doesn't say. It would be a stupid question anyway, since they both know all of Hikaru's weird moods are about Sai, like the one note on a violin that just keeps going out of tune no matter how many times you replace the string.

Instead Akira just takes a long sip of his tea, and looks at Hikaru as though he wants to be the resin and the bow and the violinist, too. Hikaru thinks that actually he probably is all those things, and almost laughs.

"I think that no matter where we are," Akira says at last, "in a thousand years, or two thousand years, or even ten or twenty years, Hikaru--" he uses Hikaru's first name, that's what he does when he wants something to mean more to Hikaru than ever, because he has yet to figure out, or Hikaru has yet to show him, that everything means more to Hikaru when it comes from him--"if we live every day with our whole hearts, here and now, we'll continue to exist."

"That doesn't make any sense," Hikaru says sourly.

Akira gives him a small, sad smile and reaches over to the window to turn on a lamp. Bright, Hikaru thinks. Akira likes it bright. And that does makes sense. He waits for Akira to bring up Go as a metaphor for life or something, because that would make sense, too. But Akira just returns to tracing the pattern on the board and sipping his tea.

"My grandmother died when I was young," Akira says. "After the funeral, I asked my mother where my grandmother had gone, because I was too young then to understand." Hikaru watches his fingers, slim and effortless in the way they move over the board, the way they curl around the mug. "My mother answered that she hadn't gone anywhere. She told me I could find my grandmother every time I looked in the mirror, and every time I went to the park where we used to walk together."

He takes another sip of tea, swallows without really parting his lips. Hikaru could watch Akira sit and do nothing for forever.

"I believe," Akira says, "that our spirits linger in the traces of what we have loved."

Hikaru nods.

"Sai's spirit lingers in you, even after a thousand years," Akira says calmly.

Hikaru looks up, feeling the twist of pain he can never ever seem to let go of, the icicle of it lodging deep in his chest.

Akira's eyes are lowered. He takes another sip of tea. Then he says, "So in twenty minutes, or twenty years, or twenty thousand, I will linger inside of your spirit, and you will linger in mine."

He looks up, his eyes suddenly brilliant and sharp in the white lamplight that floods over them. He holds his hand out to Hikaru over the goban.

Hikaru takes it, and their fingers tangle.

He looks at Akira, who doesn't look away.

Hi! I'm Shea and I'm new to the comm. I come with icons! I feel very productive.

1-6 song lyrics
7-11 Rook
12-16 Thom
17-21 Hal
22-26 Royston
27-28 Caius
29-35 others
36-38 quotes from capslock post
39-40 poorly done sheep-related crack
+bases

Preview


Fake cut goes to my journal.

Haha... I better put something here so it doesnt get lost in the flood of new posts.. 

So, as (again) requested by  artemisrampant,(is she the only one reading this?)  ( Parts 5&6 )

Title: Rage at the Moon 7/?
Series: TDS, Countdown w/ KO.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language, Violence
Disclaimer: I do not own Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, or any known political figures who appear in this story.
Summary: Summary: AU. Most people believe that the creatures werewolves and vampires only exist in myths and legends. But, they’re very much real, and in the city of New York. A chance of accident leaves one comedian in the middle of the eternal werewolf/vampire conflict.
Author's Note: Please comment. Feedback is good.

One /Two /Three /Four /Five /Six

( Chapter 7 )

Title: Rage at the Moon 7/?
Series: TDS, Countdown w/ KO.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language, Violence
Disclaimer: I do not own Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, or any known political figures who appear in this story.
Summary: Summary: AU. Most people believe that the creatures werewolves and vampires only exist in myths and legends. But, they’re very much real, and in the city of New York. A chance of accident leaves one comedian in the middle of the eternal werewolf/vampire conflict.
Author's Note: Please comment. Feedback is good.

One /Two /Three /Four /Five /Six

( Chapter 7 )

I thought you guys may appareciate this.

I've been wanting to write some fic for the book but had no idea how old Alan was exactly. So I asked. Not only did I get Alan's age - I  got everyone's!

"Alan is nineteen. I carry on, possibly needlessly, to say that Gerald is twenty, Jamie is sixteen, Seb is sixteen-going-on-seventeen, Mae is seventeen-going-on-eighteen, and Nick is sixteen and the baby of the group. "
That ^ is the response she left to my comment. I hope you find this as joyus as I do. Okay maybe not quite so much but still.



Edit! If this shows up on your flist twice, I apologize. I accidnetialy posted it on mailmalade_fish too *blushes*

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2009/11/never-give-upnever-surrender-guest.html

STATUS: Sorry about no blog entry on Friday. The whole day got away from me.

What’s playing on the iPod right now? A KIND OF MAGIC by Queen

No doubt, I’ve been on a ranting streak for awhile. For a nice change, how about a blog entry on a midlist series getting a second life. Let’s talk about something positive today rather than more of my righteous indignation. Grin.

Here is Mari Mancusi. Author of the YA BLOOD COVEN vampire series—originally started years ago, before the craze, but now have new covers and a new floor display in Borders.

Never Give Up…Never Surrender!

I know I can’t be the only author who mutters the Galaxy Quest creed every time the publishing industry throws me a curve ball. This particular time was three years ago, when I got an email from a fellow author, published by the same publishing house that did my Blood Coven Vampires series.

“They’re not picking up anyone’s options!” she lamented.

Shocked, I frantically called Kristin and she started to do some digging. Turns out, the author was right. My publisher was basically fading out their YA line and concentrating more on their core business of adult romance.

My series was basically DOA before the third book had even come out.

I was devastated. Though I’d written other books, none meant as much to me as my little vampire series. And I hated disappointing all my loyal readers who, after Book #3 - Girls that Growl - was released, kept begging for more. But what could I do? Kristin went back to the publishing company to ask again and again, but they kept saying no.

Of course, I could have given up then and there. After all, I’d just gotten a new children’s publisher and was under contract for two hardcover books at a much higher royalty rate. I could have easily moved on and said goodbye to my blood coven vampires. To my twin heroines, Sunshine and Rayne.

But the series meant too much to me for that. And it meant too much to my readers who kept begging to know what happens next. So I kept pushing. I started a “Save the Blood Coven” campaign in which I got readers to help spread the word and get bookstores and libraries to stock it. I did videos, I enlisted a street team, I encouraged my readers not to let the big corporations decide what they got to read.

And so the sales continued, slow but steady, over the next two years. And every day I’d have new teens write to me and say they’d just recently discovered the series. But though the publisher kept reprinting the first three books, they also kept refusing to buy book #4.

Then, out of the blue, something strange happened. My editor from Germany wrote me an email, asking about book #4. She said she didn’t care if the US published it or not. Would I consider writing it just for them?

I decided to do it. Namely because it allowed me to continue writing my beloved series. And Kristin and I schemed for alternative ways to get it to a US audience. Maybe a small publisher would see the Bookscan numbers and see it as an opportunity. Maybe we could sell it POD since I already had a fan base. Or I could give it away as an e-book. Somehow – someway – I was determined to get that story to my readers, no matter what!

But before pursuing those more drastic options, Kristin decided to go back one last time to my US publisher, to see if they’d changed their minds. After all, the Twilight movie had just swept into theaters and vampires were hotter than ever.

And low and behold, they said yes. Not only yes to a fourth book, but also that they would reprint the first three books as well, with shiny new covers for a whole new generation of (vampire hungry) fans!

I think I cried when Kristin told me the good news. She, in return, said that the sale, in many ways, meant more to her than ones she’d made for six figures because this particular sale was a victory. The result of a two year battle that seemed hopeless until the very end. But we didn’t give up. We didn’t surrender.

And sometimes, even in these bad economic times, a story of publishing can actually have a happy ending!

Mari

Visit the series at www.bloodcovenvampires.com

Kafka on the Shore was a mindfuck, to put it in the least classiest way...enjoyable read, a bit trudging in certain parts, but I liked the metaphysical and surreal aspects. Now on to Lolita! Hooray for unreliable narrators. ♥

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/for-those-who-read-this-blog-for.html

(Serena Altschul and some author in July, sitting on the trampoline after two days of interviews. None of which, oddly enough, were done on the trampoline.)

Mr. Neil,

I DVR'd yesterday's installment of Sunday Morning and after zipping through it back and forth multiple times cannot seem to find you, though the description indicated the correct episode. Was it bumped to next week? Have you been sucked into an alternate Neil-less universe?

A concerned reader,
Mary

I'm afraid it was bumped by the Fort Hood Massacre.

I checked: The profile CBS did of me is apparently still going out, probably some time in December, although no-one seems certain when. I was told that we could help ensure that it is broadcast (and possibly make it come out sooner than December) if CBS think people would actually like to see it. Which means that if you do want to see it, you can help the process along if you write or email CBS and (politely) tell them so:

ADDRESS:
CBS News Sunday Morning
Box O (for Osgood)
524 West 57th St.
New York, NY 10019

E-MAIL: sundays@cbsnews.com

...
Dear Neil Gaiman, I ask for half-a-moment of your time (I would not presume to ask for more). This Spring 2010 I am teaching a Topics in Literature class on YOU at Winona State University (Eng 225: Neil Gaiman). Easy enough to select representative novel (American Gods), short stories (Fragile Things), children and YA (Graveyard Book), but here's the rub: I will likely only assign one Sandman graphic novel to students. I have been debating which is most representative, most worthy of inclusion, most amenable to class discussion and student scholarship. Then I thought I'd ask you. I know you suggest above that, for questions of this sort, we consider you a dead author, but I know you're not. When I came to a similar impasse about which of Ursula Le Guin's works to include in another class, she actually replied and offered her input. I extend the same offer to you: which of the Sandman volumes would you like to see on the syllabus?
Thank you for your time,
Nicholas Ozment, English Instructor
WSU

It's a hard one. I think if I were teaching I'd either go for Season of Mists or Fables and Reflections, because both of them have stuff to teach -- those nice chewy bits that people can like or dislike, argue with or discuss. I know a lot of teachers like to teach Dream Country because a) Midsummer Night's Dream won awards, and b) it's short and c) it has a script in the back. Your call. And good luck.

...

I mentioned recently that there were some beautiful new Polish and Russian book covers for my books that I'd seen at signings, which got me thinking. The International Cover gallery on this website is incredibly out of date.

It's at http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Works/Books/International_Covers.

And though I get a lot of foreign editions in, and will at some point head down to the basement and rummage around and scan some (this week's mail brought the two-volume Japanese edition of Anansi Boys, on the cover of which Fat Charlie is not only Very White, but also Very Thin, and the complex Chinese - ie. Taiwan and Hong Kong - edition of The Graveyard Book) I thought that blog readers, being, as you are, all over the world, might be a better resource for knowing where to look for foreign covers.

Was your basement finished when you purchased your home or did you have it finished for your basement library? If you finished it yourself, how difficult was it? Also, I thought I saw a dehumidifier in one of the Photosynth pictures. Do you need one because of the books?

I'm asking because we have a full unfinished basement that we would like to have finished. We are running out of room for our books also. I don't think we don't have as many as you do though. :)

Any other suggestions for such a project would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
C.

No, when we got here the basement had a clay floor that puddled when it rained. We hired some nice builders and spent a lot of money finishing it, putting in drainage tiles, underfloor heating and all. There's a dehumidifier there in the summer and a humidifier in the winter, because after the first few years I noticed that binding glue and leather book covers were both cracking and flaking. There's now the equivalent of a large house in basement rooms beneath this house, filled with books and CDs and suchlike stuff.

And finally, a few photos from the China trip, taken by Ian Ford (or in one case, on his camera). Ian's a travel guide who now lives in China who helped organise my travels, and came along with me for part of the journey.

Amanda and I in the silk clothes that my publisher had given us as a thank you for coming, and because they are terrific.

I'm holding the Galaxy Award for this year, given to the foreign author most popular with Chinese reader-voters. This was my second year of winning it, so I have retired from the competition and said that they have to find a new favourite foreign author now.

I am using Tumblr again. Get some of dis:

http://greatloyalties.tumblr.com

I'm gonna use this thing again because well I don't even know.

Because I don't know about anyone else but now it's up on SRB's LJ I need to start discussing it (:

( Under a cut for those who haven't read the extract yet )

-Play