and it is it is a glorious thing/to be a pirate queen

lifted from kateelliot's LJ, the following bit of self-awareness that hit way too close to home...

"As for my damned literature, God knows what a business it is, grinding along without a scrap of inspiration or a note of style. But it has to be ground, and the mill grinds exceeding slowly though not particularly small. The last two chapters have taken me considerably over a month, and they are still beneath pity. This I cannot continue, time not sufficing; and the next will just have to be worse. All the good I can express is just this; some day, when style revisits me, they will be excellent matter to rewrite. Of course, my old cure of a change of work would probably answer, but I cannot take it now. The treadmill turns; and, with a kind of desperate cheerfulness, I mount the idle stair." -- Robert Louis Stevenson (from the letters of)
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Today is mostly given over to the freelancer side: I have to talk to a client, and write up some copy, etc. It doesn't sustain the soul, but it does feed the piggy bank. And it switches my brain around a bit, makes it look at the business from a different angle, which is always a good thing.

Speaking of which, looks like I'll be getting a semi-respectable check back from Uncle, between state and federal. Better not to have paid it at all, but that's the thing about quarterly estimated... everyone's just guessing, not only how much income comes in, but how many deductions you'll end up having.

(y'all do know about the hellish joy that is quarterly estimates, yes? If you have any desire to quit the day job and strike out on your own in these United States, you should factor that into your plans, oh yes.)

to excerpt, or not to excerpt:

that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to offer
The words and quips of unpublished section,
Or to stay silent in the face of fandom,
And by not posting annoy them? To stay mute: to post;
No more; and by not post to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand rude comments
That fandom is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To finish, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to revise: ay, there's the rub;
For in that revision letter what changes may come
When we have already given our fannish morsels,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of offering early looks;


(at which point my dad, having heard me out, said with equal amounts dismay and pride: "that's terrible." And so I cease).

But the question remains: anyone out there want an early excerpt from BURNING BRIDGES? Or would you rather wait?

ETA: the excerpts from the first two books are still available on my web site:

Staying Dead
Curse the Dark

when politics and business are spelled the same...

Halliburton has announced plans to move their corporate HQ from Houston to Dubai.

They claim they're going to retain their legal incorporation status, meaning that they "will still be subject to domestic laws and regulations."

Um. Right. They're suddenly going to start now?

(ETA: Lots of yowling and screaming going on about this in D.C. And rightfully so, on so many fronts...)


Meanwhile, the Pentagon is finally going to decide if several "high value" prisoners being held at Guantanamo actually have enough evidenc against them to be tried. This is a "combatant review tribunal," and it will be held in secret with the evidence also held in secret, and transcripts will be released only after the secret stuff has been blacked out.

I make no judgment on their probable guilt or not. But anything determined in secrecy, by unnamed individuals, with no process by which those individuals can be checked for bias or influence? I am reminded uncomfortably of Charles I's version of the Star Chamber...

go on, tell me where to go! ;-)

A totally unscientific and non-binding poll, to help me finalize my summer convention plans...

[Poll #945503]


And, just for the record, the Russian Vodka Room is an evil place, ginger-infused vodka is evil, and I was an innocent bystander. That's my story and nobody has video to disprove it.