Well, I know what I want for my birthday

Is there no end to the things that make my city the fabulous place that it is?? Check it:

Check in to the Heathman Hotel, check out a valuable signed first edition for a little leisurely reading.

On women's fashions in an imaginary world, and AU crossover fic possibilities

Oh my, how has it been more than a month since I last posted? Well, it’s summer, and of course busy. I’m behind on everything, including writing, unfortunately. It goes like that sometimes. Sigh.

I have a long post percolating about e-books and another about self-publishing, but haven’t even started writing them yet, so who knows if I’ll get to them or not. In the meantime, here’s a little something to put a smile in your day.

The setup: Cat was giving me feedback on Chapter 16, which included the scene where Grant, Lucius, and Tatiana go undercover, so to speak. As tends to be the case in our online exchanges, hilarity ensued.

Cat: I find it oddly endearing and hilarious that both Grant and Lucius have a sense of nice women’s wear.

Me: Inorite? Can you see them at the seamstress, picking out fabrics for her? Grant would be all, “You’re a winter, orange is not flattering on you. No, that pink is hideous and satin is for prostitutes. Put it back.” And Lucius would be, “Now, Grant…if she likes the pink, let her try it on. It might look better off the hanger. Oh Tatiana, dear, you need better undergarments if you’re to pull that one off. Foundations, dear, foundations.”

Cat: OMG *dies* Grant and Lucius host a very special edition of What Not to Wear…in HELL.

Me: YES THIS! Tatiana would like some dress not realizing it has a low cut bodice, and Grant’s all, “Sorry, but no. You don’t have the bosom for that.” And she’d be all embarrassed but rather than admit that, she’d get mad at him and tell him to go suck a goat, and he’d be like, “For someone who doesn’t want to dress like a whore, you sure talk like one.” Lucius would have to break it up by distracting her with pretty lace gloves, and then a dress with lots of lacy ruffles would catch her eye and she’d be, “OOOH PRETTY” and then “SHUT UP GRANT IT DOES NOT LOOK LIKE YOUR GRANDMOTHER’S DOILIES VOMITED ALL OVER IT!” Oh man. Now I have a whole new series to write.

Cat: Let the fanfiction begin….!!!!

Random Friday

Well, writing-related random, anyway.

First: porn for the book lover slash interior decorator in all of us. Or is that only me? No, porn is for everyone!

Second: if I had an agent like this, I would send her cookies made by Sal every week. (Seriously. If I got an acceptance letter from Agent Kristen, it would be almost as good as getting a letter of acceptance from a publisher.)

Have a great holiday weekend, everyone!

How an author reads Amazon.com reviews

Hee! Can’t say I’ve ever had the pleasure (pain?) of reading reader reviews of my own work on Amazon, but I can completely sympathize with the agony of it, the constant refreshing and the internal struggle not to hunker over the keyboard all “SOMEONE IS BEING WRONG ON THE INTERNET” and type out a crazed reply to that horrible unfair review from someone who clearly didn’t understand your genius and whose very literacy is questionable.

Not that I’d do that. I’m way more mature.

But I still lol’d at this:

The hills are alive with the sound of...

Working on the synopsis today — Eru bless the three-day vacation — but I have a random thought that’s been drifting about my wee brain and distracting the hamsters that run the little wheels up there. Where better to offload that randomness so I can buckle down and get to work?

I was thinking the other day about some of my favorite words and why I like them, and I started thinking about words that give me a visceral reaction and what about them makes me react that way. Like everyone, I have words I love and hate for varying reasons. But for some words, it’s the sound of the word that’s the cause of my strong reaction. In some cases, those are the best words because they’re so evocative and I love using them. Other words I hate the sound of so much that I’ll avoid using them if I can.

My strongest reaction-related word is “vulpine”. I have a love/hate relationship with that word. Love it, because it’s so deliciously descriptive and evil. (When describing people, obviously, not when describing foxes.) It’s such a wonderfully evil word that I reserve it for the really special occasions. You don’t even have to know what it means to be skeeved out by it. Just the sound of it makes a cold shiver run down my spine. When I think “vulpine”, I have a vision of a sharp, angular face, half-hidden in shadow, perhaps at the back of a poorly lit room. A half-smile that hints at unspoken horrors. Eyes bright and predatory. Maybe yellow or red, because those are my own personal squicks, or maybe solid black.

I first came across it in a description of a vampire-like character in a horror story when I was about 11, and I didn’t even have to look it up to immediately conjure a picture. It’s no coincidence, I’m sure, that it’s a vampire-ish image I associate with the word, but listen to the sound of it: the seductive, almost sensual nature of that first syllable, the undercurrent of danger, the similar sound to “voluptuous”; the abrupt edge of the second syllable, not a hard edge like a “k” sound would be, but rounded a bit, like a well-used blade that still cuts as fine as it did the first time. You hear the word “vulpine”, you run, run, run in the opposite direction because things are not going to end well for you otherwise.

Then there are the words whose sounds I detest so much that I avoid using them as much as possible. I don’t like the word “pregnant”* for that reason. It’s that “gn” sound that puts me off, like the sound you make in your throat when you’re trying not to hurl. Not a particularly charming sound, and other than the morning sickness, incongruous with the actual definition of the word. I mean, there’s a reason “malignant” sounds just like what it is, and yet that same “gn” combination is the identifying characteristic of “pregnant”. Heck, that whole “gnant” — so gutteral and back-of-the-throat — is completely repugnant.

I have others. In both categories. Squib. Babe. Guffaw. Puce. Most studies of loved and hated words list “moist” as the most oft-hated word, but “moist” doesn’t bother me. How about you?

*(Unfortunately, the alternatives aren’t any better. “Expecting”? It’s a baby, not a dinner party. “With child”? How very King James version. “In a family way”? Ugh, spoken by people who aren’t able to even whisper the word “sex”. “Preggers”? Barf. “Gestating”? Sounds like you’re hatching an egg. That, or an alien that’s going to pop out of your chest in the middle of dinner. No thanks.)

I heart fandom

Only fandom would come up with this:

An RPF Yuletide fic about a taping of “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me!” during the zombie apocalypse. The only thing that would be better would be if the WWDTM crew acted this out during a pledge drive.