Just for Fun

Some fun things for all my friends to look at and laugh at:




This is Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Ross at this past weekend's Comic Con, with their tribute to the Britney-Madonna kiss:




In other news, my begging--um, query to Jennifer Jackson is going in the mail as soon as I get dressed and scrape together some money for postage. I stopped by AlienSkin's website last night and saw that they're closed to submissions, so I checked with them and they said since I submitted before they closed, they're still looking at the story. Yay! Still nothing from Blood, Blade and Thruster though. Sigh.

Well, off to attempt to win yet another agent.

More later.

Waah

I received a rejection letter from Steve Mancino today. ::mondo pout:: It was a very nice rejection; on the form letter he wrote "Thank you so much for keeping me in mind! Unfortunately, I'll have to pass on this as well. You might have something viable here, but the 'end-product' is neither my specialty or my taste. Keep at it. I hope you find great representation for this book. :) Be well and good luck!"

Sigh.

Once more into the breach. I'm planning to query Jennifer Jackson of the Donald Maas Agency next.

I also realized today that I have to put together 30 pages of "writing sample" for my MFA applications. Blah.

More later.

Supidness, Etc.

I feel the need to rant about the idiocy of our Federal Poverty Guidelines. (You can see the ones for 2007 here.) The guidelines for one person aren't too bad. I think I could survive on $10,000/year. It wouldn't be easy, and it wouldn't be fun, but it would be doable. But in what alternate universe does the government think that tacking an extra $3,000 onto that will support another person? That's about $6,500 per person per year. That is not doable.

I'm upset at the moment because I've been trying to help a friend of mine get back into school at the local Community College. However, she's been informed that "because of her income," she's not eligible for Federal aid. Now, I don't know the details of their financial situation, but I know that they're barely scraping by. This friend is currently out of work, and her husband is a manager at Burger King.

Not eligible for Federal aid?!

When W.E. and I started school at Community College, we were making about the same per year as this couple is, and we got Federal aid out the wazoo. We had money leftover to buy books and everything. It even helped keep us fed despite cutting back on our work hours.

In a few minutes, this friend and I are going to go over to the Community College and have it out with the Federal aid people. Part of me feels responsible, because I pushed her to go back to school, and I was so sure that she would get enough aid to at least cover her tuition and books, if not more. I don't want her to have to wait until next year, because we won't be here next year and I'm not entirely sure her husband will support her return to school without me pushing.

I hate feeling helpless.

More later.

Argh

The semester hasn't even started yet, and I'm already butting heads with a professor. Said professor, who will be teaching Intro to Graduate Research Methods (or something like that), gave me permission to work on my thesis for her class. In the process of getting more information about the assignment (since I'm working on my thesis over the summer anyway), she expressed concern that my topic was "too broad."

Too broad? It's a genre study. It's supposed to be broad. I managed a smaller version (25 pages) for my capstone class as an undergraduate, and that teacher was impressed by how much I'd managed to cover in such a small space. My thesis advisor also oversaw that paper, and he's excited about this chance for me to expand on it. It's not like I haven't worked on this and discussed it with the people who will be most responsible for me during the thesis-writing process. When I tried to explain this to the Research Methods teacher, though, she was all, "Yeeeaaah. You might want to talk to your thesis advisor about this."

Argh! Here I thought that after finishing that class with Dr. Meanie last semester I was done fighting with my teachers over every step I took on the road to scholarship.

Sigh. I guess I'll just do the smaller paper for Research Methods and try very hard to not discuss this with that teacher any more. After all, she's not in charge of my thesis.

On the writing front, still no word from any of the people I'm waiting on word from. (I'm not sure that was a sentence.) This staring at the mailbox and the e-mail box is getting old.

More later.

Fun in the Sun

Yesterday W.E., a couple of friends of ours, and I went to King's Dominion Amusement Park. It was pretty fun, other than the getting up at 5 AM, the huge crowds, and the heat exhaustion. I think our friends expected us to get more involved, though, which just goes to show how much they don't know about us.

W.E. is a type A personality, which among other things means he's an adrenaline junkie. However, roller coasters don't really get his adrenaline going; they just make him sick. I'm a type B personality, which among other things means I'm hopelessly boring and don't like adrenaline. We rode one whole roller coaster, then declared ourselves done with the whole roller coaster business. So W.E. and I baby-sat our friends' little sister, who also isn't much for really scary rides, while our friends went on several more coasters.

After lunch, we decided to split up--our friends and their little sister were going to the water park, and we'd hang out and do old-people stuff. So we browsed shops, rode the Model-T put-put cars (it was awesome), and had ice cream. One of the carnie games had huge stuffed Husky dogs for prizes, but after watching the game a couple of times, we realized that the guy running it was randomly picking winners; it had nothing to do with who had actually won, and absolutely nothing to do with skill. So we decided not to waste our money, though this made me very grumpy because I very much wanted a three-foot tall stuffed Husky dog.

By this time, everyone was pretty tired and sunburned (except the smart one [me] who remembered to put on sunscreen) and heading toward (if not deep in the throes of) dehydration. So after one more roller coaster, we headed out. A few pit stops and one dinner stop later, we made it home in one tired but much better hydrated piece.

So today I plan to take it very easy, treat my sunburned lips (that sucks), and maybe make brownies and do laundry.

More later.

Just For Fun

Here's a bunch of crazy stuff to brighten up everyone's day:

Badger Badger Badger
The Llama Song
The Guinea Pig Way

Enjoy!

More later

Here We Go Again

Well, I've finished a three-page synopsis of Stars Without Name, and it's currently on its way (with a carefully thought-out cover letter) to Steve Mancino of the JABberwocky Literary Agency.

Fingers are crossed. Also toes. Also eyes.

Mr. Mancino is the person I want more than anyone else in the world to be my agent. Except maybe Russell Galen, but he's WAY too prestigious for me. He represents cool people like Mercedes Lackey and Marion Zimmer Bradley. I'd have to publish a million books and get on the New York Times Bestseller List at least three times before he'd even LOOK at me, I'm sure. But unlike Mr. Galen, Mr. Mancino has at least expressed some sort of interest in my work. When I sent him the query for Healing the Elder about nine months ago, his rejection letter had a scribbled note that said to let him know when I'd finished "the Cupid/Psyche" story; "sounds neat!" So I'm letting him know, and here's hoping he's interested in it. My Favorite RedHead, who already HAS an agent, liked it a lot and suggested only minor changes, nothing that would cause as complete an overhaul as I had to do to Healing the Elder (not that I minded doing it, and I think it's a stronger story because of all that extra work I put in. Now if only someone would publish it!).

So the query has gone out today. I give it about 2 days to get to New York, and then we shall see what happens. Hopefully he'll want to see more of the actual book (all he wanted was a synopsis, which I dutifully sent), then he'll want to see all of the book, then there will be an excited phone call in which he informs me he's sending a contract over and can't wait to get to work on selling Stars.

I can dream.

More later.

Some Info

I got my draft of Stars Without Name back from My Favorite RedHead yesterday. It doesn't look like it needs horribly much work, at least based on her comments, so hopefully I'll be sending out query letters by the end of the week. I need to write up a synopsis, and that might take a couple of days, but then I'm ready to begin bugging agents again.
Still waiting on word from AlienSkin and Blood, Blade and Thruster. BBT said it would take about 2 weeks, and it's been one-ish. AlienSkin said it would be about 2 months, and it's been about 2-3 weeks. So no panicking yet; just lots of sighing and sulking.

More later.

Busy Brain

I've been thinking lately about the whole diversity thing. Especially where it's been very hard not to become a raging racist because of the whole illegal immigration thing. It's hard not to look at every Hispanic person I see and wonder if they're toting a Green Card or if they jumped the border. I'm well aware that there are people of many other nationalities here illegally--whether they sneaked in or overstayed a Visa--but it seems like the loudest ones--the ones at all of the rallies--are mostly Hispanic. And that makes it hard to remember that not every Hispanic person is illegal, and not every illegal is Hispanic.

The whole southern-border issue isn't helping; the government isn't doing one damn thing to secure it. Instead, they're giving drug smugglers amnesty to testify against our own Border Patrol agents because they did their job.

But what I've come to realize is that, evolutionarily speaking, we humans weren't meant to be diverse. We weren't meant to have a global culture-y thing going. We were meant to live in small tribes, not interacting with other tribes except to trade and maybe intermarry if the tribes get along well enough. Our brains are not wired for dealing with large groups of people of other nationalities. So some people don't deal and become raging supremacists, thinking their nationality is better than everyone else's. Others turn into diversity-pushers, insisting on tolerance, when what they really want is to erase the bits of our brains that don't play well with others and make us into a bunch of Stepfords who all think and act the same way--just like them, in fact. That's not diversity, but they think it is and they try to push it off on everyone else in pursuit of it. Then there's those who honestly try to get along with everyone, regardless of gender, race, or anything else. But they're buffeted on both sides by the racists (who call them whatever-lovers) and the diversity-pushers (who call them sexist, racist, etc), and it becomes more and more difficult to stay in the nice middle ground. That's where I find myself now.

So those are my thoughts.

More later.

Grr

I just got a rejection letter for "Passing Thus Alone" from the Magic and Mechanica people, claiming that they didn't want just "steam-punk," but something involving actual magic. After restraining the urge to throw something, I wrote back reminding the editor that the airship in the story is only propelled by steam power; it's kept in the air by a mage (who I mentioned at least twice during the course of the story, and I know I mentioned his function at least once). Hopefully they'll let me rewrite to make that more obvious (again restraining the urge to throw things cause I thought it was pret-ty damn obvious) and look at it again.

SIGH.

More later.

Waiting

This week I finished the steam-punk story, which I finally titled "Passing Thus Alone" (which, as a title, kind of sucks, but that's the best I can do right now). I sent it to the Magic and Mechanica anthology, and haven't heard back from them yet--which I'm taking as encouraging because when I've sent stuff to these people before, they've rejected me within 2-3 days. It's been about 3 now, so I'm hoping they're considering it a little closer.

I think the last time I mentioned this story, I was stuck on it because it was turning into a play-by-play thing on how the main character (Newt) creates a key in order to destroy the airship. I figured out a way around that; I started at the end. Instead of beginning at the beginning, when Newt discovers that he can make a key, I began at the end, on the day he actually blows the ship, and did the actual creation of the key in flashbacks and memories. I think it works a lot better that way, and I'm proud of myself as a writer for figuring that out instead of just scrapping the story--which I'd actually considered for a little while.

If Magic and Mechanica rejects the story, I'll run it through Critters, but I'm hoping it won't come to that. The submission deadline is August 1, so I didn't have time to run it through the writer's group before sending it in.

Still no word from AlienSkin, either, but again, it's only been a week or so.

More later.

Still Alive

I know I haven't posted in awhile. My Internet went haywire. I could dial up, but wireless wasn't working. The IT person on campus said I had something on the computer, almost like a Trojan, that was blocking the Internet. Weird. I wonder what kind of Trojan would block the Internet. After all, don't they want you to be online so they can spread themselves? Huh.

Still no word from AlienSkin--they said their response time is about 2 months, though, so I'm not worried. Really. Frustrated, maybe.

I picked up another book today to research from--Reliques of Ancient English Poetry by Thomas Percy. Volume 2. For some reason, that's the only volume our library had. Might have to get the other two volumes through the nifty inter-library loan thingy. Should be fun (not--I already know Percy's attitude toward Medieval British poetry, and it's a bad one).

I've been missing having a kitty-cat, spending time at a friend's house just to pet her kitties. One of my teachers today asked me to kitty-sit while she and her partner go on vacation. Yay! While I can't bring said kitty into the apartment, I'll be going over to her house twice a day to let the kitty out, let the kitty in, get their mail, and generally make the place look like someone's there. I'm happy about it, and not just because she's paying me to do it. Mostly because of the kitty.

More later.