Cleolinda everywhere

AND I'M FREAKING OUT A LITTLE

( BEHOLD MY SCHEDULE )

This keeps happening--I'll start a "what's going on" post, and then things will keep going on, and I'll get so behind on What All Is Going On that I never post. ALLOW ME TO ATTEMPT.

(Note: This was written on Friday but not posted. Because of course.)

1) The Black Ribbon story I kept talking about, "The World to Come," is now available! It's in the anthology Athena's Daughters; the ebook is here, and the print version can be pre-ordered for next month.

2) Which I try to explain at the end of Anglo-Filles' epic-length Dracula episode this month (whaddup fucktruck), and fail entirely because my blood sugar had bottomed out. We discuss the Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee (a little bit), Frank Langella, and Gary Oldman Draculae, plus the recent TV show and Penny Dreadful, with an emphasis on romanticism, interpretations of Lucy, and my ridiculously long monologue about Jonathan Harker as abuse survivor.

3) As a reminder, I was also on A Matter of Taste's Hannibal finale episode. You may be able to guess the topic for which I will be present next month.

4) As a side note, mountain lions are not a vegetable.

5) With the Aromaleigh Hannibal eyeshadow, we took a couple of weeks off posting new additions (I think it was a couple of weeks? I am completely unmoored in spacetime right now, tbh), but we are back now! Here are the last color that went up before the break (Lapse, a cinematography blue) and today's two new colors, Lucid and Woof: ( YES WOOF )

6) Meanwhile, in lieu of posts for new individual colors, I was posting suggested pairings and combinations drawn from various scenes, now that we have a substantial eyeshadow palette to work with. I am not saying you have to figure out a way to cram three and four colors onto your face at the same time; as with a packaged eyeshadow trio or quad, you can use as few or as many as you want. (Also, consult this post for wtf a crease or an inside corner or a socket line is.) But if there's a particular scene or character you like, here are some ideas--Abigail's sweater, The Best Office Ever, the wendigo dinner, Freddie in "Amuse-Bouche," Bella in "Coquilles," Beverly in "Sorbet," and the Murder Basement because I'm a terrible person. I have some more ideas I'm still playing with and will continue to post and you can't stop me.

7) I also updated older posts with my own swatches for Unorthodox, Bellissima, Entrapment, and the aforementioned Veneer.

8) We are currently in the conceptual stage of a new, differently-themed collection (not modern pop culture). Kristen's also got an ongoing dragon-themed collection growing each week, and I believe an ocean nymph collection coming up soon.

9) Things have been exhaustingly hectic chez Jones for about a month now and are just now calming down, maybe. And yes, that is the reason I haven't gotten the recaps started again; we got hit with family health issues, my mother's car wouldn't start but did not need a new battery (then she chipped a tooth), a broken dishwasher (fixed), a dead washing machine (replaced, on sale), a tiny new back patio where previously no green would grow (finished) (then re-finished because a stone was broken in the middle), a yardmageddon (just finished yesterday) (wait, turns out not) that revealed that the brick is about to fall off the front of our house (finally finished), a ceiling (now repaired and repainted) because a toilet (replaced) spontaneously flooded it (I hadn't gone near it for two hours, I SWEAR). Yesterday, a third toilet fixed (a second one broke somewhere in there); today, a quick ten-minute repair on the dryer. (Breaking news: we're going to have to replace the dryer.) (Sunday: It's ordered; was on sale.) Meanwhile, House of Bark lived up to its name... every day. I won't even get into Professional Yard Master's angry phone calls to a sod farm regarding zoysia grass that has now died on our yard because it didn't even have roots. I'm just mentioning it because "sod farm."

10) Thus, I am not caught up on Penny Dreadful, either. BREAKING NEWS: I AM TOTALLY CAUGHT UP NOW

Honestly, until very recently, I've been going to bed some nights at 8 or 8:30 pm, just from the exhaustion of dealing with all this and a few other issues (long story) all day. For a month. And then today, "We're going to re-sod the yard. Again." ("WELL, SOD IT, THEN.") I had a whole paragraph here about medication adjustment, but I think I'll save that for an entry of its own.

(SUNDAY: Now I've come down with a sore throat/earache of some kind. I just. I PERSEVERE.)

So the last month has been such that I haven't even been able to stop by and say "hey guys it's my 35th birthday!" or "hey guys, happy holidays!" or "hey guys, I have a Black Ribbon story coming out in the Athena's Daughters anthology!" It was... that kind of month. Some kind of pinched nerve or pulled muscle in my back, a conglomeration of flu and blarg shortly after my birthday, other health issues, then two weeks off the grid partly to get things done and partly just to recuperate (and then my phone died again yesterday). So I feel like we need to catch up, although let it be noted that I've spent three days trying to put this entry together while feverish with a new rebound blarg--in fact, shit, it's only a few hours until the Kickstarter ends. Well, it's been an amazing success--over $40,000 at this point, I don't even know how. Anyway--here's a bit more about the final version of my story: a photoset of reference images, a little back story, and the idea of strength as a choice.

(I believe there will also be an Apollo's Daughters companion, with female protagonists by male writers, which certain accusers of ~misandry~ seem not to have noticed.)

Also, I started rambling on about That Time I Mailed In An X-Files Script, Or: Why Creators Can't Read Your Stuff, and ended up on Geekosystem? (That's got to be one of y'all. O hai!) Here's a longer version of the Twitter conversation we had, now on Storify.

Meanwhile: Dracula recaps: I don't even know, you guys. As of last Friday, I'm four episodes behind. I don't know if it's seasonal affective blarg or my own personal issues or this show genuinely not clicking with a lot of people (apparently I'm not the only recapper who's wandered away), but... argh. I want to give the recaps another shot, so I'm trying to think of a different format that's less labor-intensive than "8000-word recaps, wtf." Bullet-point outlines in Comic Sans with screencaps? I don't even know.

Because I want to save up my strength because Hannibal is coming back early! Hannibal is coming back early! HANNIBAL IS COMING BACK EARLY, THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

( omg )

(Also, I am still trying to figure out the username of the person who sent me one of the Wound Man sketches from SDCC, because that arrived a few days before my birthday when I was really down and it was like my favorite thing I got that week.)

Also-also, our vacuum cleaner died (House of Bark honors its service) and our washing machine is in its dying throes, so apparently we're doing the All the Household Appliances Dying at Once thing again. I'm at that point where I have tons of ideas--which are also possible sources of income--but no energy to write them down (untangling my illness bedhead was a major accomplishment today), so we'll see what happens next.

Sooooooo a thing is happening. Here's the deadline I referred to with such vagueness:




I'ma be in it. This is also why I asked the Twitters for help with an author bio, the writing of which was complicated by the fact that I've hardly DONE anything: ( An expanded discussion of Black Ribbon )

Jesus, how long have I not blogged in?

How long have I not blogged in. This is what is left of my brain, y'all. All my grammar is belong to novel.

( WE HAVE TO GO BACK, KATE )

Wow, it's been a while.

So. I think I'm at the tail end of a mild hypomanic/manic episode that's lasted about two weeks. I think. Using my Make Hay While the Sun Shines policy, I sat down to put as much of Black Ribbon together as I could, and write more whenever I thought of something. There are a lot of symptoms that I eventually notice--don't want to eat, have a hard time falling asleep and staying asleep, unexplained itchiness (often a caffeinated sort of tingle), creativity/productivity, and--sometimes--the distinct giddy feeling that I'm in love, even when there's no one around to be in love with. Turns out? Hypergraphia can also be a symptom of mania. BEHOLD: Tuesday. ( Read more... )

So. Writing update. That scene I had lost--I had tried to recreate it from memory. Turns out I ended up with an opposite take on how one character reacted, so after I found the original (like I said: Windows Explorer can't locate something you didn't type up), I realized that I had two opposing takes to reconcile. Which is fine; I just have to decide which works better. I have no problem writing out a scene in as many different ways as it takes to find one that works. I don't feel like the story exists, concretely, unchangeably, once you write it down, so I don't have a problem playing with different versions. I just have to sit down and figure it out now. It's a really interesting (to me) scene, so it's fun.

I'm skipping around at the moment because that's just how I always roll I'm trying to type up all my handwritten notes and drafts. I think the next bit I type up is going to be about the Chinese apothecary. ( Read more... )

MOAR BOOKS.

Not that you should trust any reviewer who uses the word "moar," but still.

( With pictures! )

I have a huge, partially-drafted backlog of books and/or texts I've read and meant to discuss, so let's have a couple now:

( Read more... )

I have been struggling with a severe downturn. I think what's happening is that we're getting into the seasonal depression... uh... season. And then there was the ice this week (we're still shoveling it off the deck; it's too thick to melt enough on its own). I mean, maybe it's natural to be sluggish when it's 18 degrees outside. Even though the days are getting longer from mid-December on out, the lack of sunlight catches up with you about now. And I usually get depressed just after Christmas and my birthday anyway. I tried to put together a linkspam post four days ago, and I just couldn't ever get it finished. I can get on Twitter to hit a simple "retweet" button and feel like that's the next best thing, for short bursts of sociability. It's hard to explain how you can bob to the surface, perfectly cheerful for a little while, or giddy about this or that little geek-interest thing, and then sink back under for hours of brooding. The thing about depression is that you can often keep up appearances in front of other people. Sometimes I think that depression is almost a separate, sentient organism, and it works hard to protect itself--it wants to make sure you don't believe in it, that you think you're miserable because you're a miserable person who deserves it, not because you have uncooperative brain chemistry. It wants to make sure you cover for it, you convince people that you're fine. It has its own priorities and best interests, a sense of self-preservation, and the self it wants to preserve is not you.

I've been trying to write. That actually went pretty well for a couple of days, except that people kept interrupting and pulling me away to do this or that just as I was getting somewhere. So instead, I went back to reading--non-fiction, which is why I haven't mentioned it; I might do a quick writeup on a few books at once. It's the kind of thing I take notes on while I read and come up with new characters or plot additions for Black Ribbon; a lot of it is to get details for high-society scenes or help me get a grip on the international political situation circa 1889. I think I'm going to be doing this mix of real names and fictionalized characters; I'm okay with dropping the name of a real person, but much more interaction than that, and I start to feel weird. Maybe you'll be able to tell who it's meant to be, maybe not. Because the thing is, Black Ribbon isn't a wildly alternate universe, though it looks like some historical elements are going to be accelerated a little bit. Major anarchist activity is going to start about four or five years early (uh. That is maybe giving something away), and we're going to have some technological developments happen 5-10 years early. In a weird way, I think I feel more anxious about getting away with this because the story world isn't wildly different. If I were just going to do outright fantastical steampunk with the airship pirates and whatnot, I don't think anyone would call me on discrepancies, because they'd know it would be pointless. But what I'm doing now is close enough that people are going to think I meant to be historically accurate, but internets, let them tell me, I am WRONG. I guess the solution is to put in a few Wildly Different elements to signal that. I was hoping that a mechanical peacock in the first chapter would suffice, but maybe not. I guess the only thing to do is write it and see. The only way out is forward.

I know I'm behind on Varney and Secret Life, but... just... nothing. I actually think about Secret Life a lot, but I can't get the new entry to turn out right. You know how there's usually more than one storyline going on at a time? Like, we visit with two or three different sets of characters? I've got one set of characters planned out, but the other storyline or two, they're kind of vague. I don't quite know how to get this entry to fill out properly. I mean, it's a process I go through every time; I'm just completely stalled on this one. And I don't want it to take nine months to work out again. But I think I am going to have to call a hopefully short hiatus until I work it out, rather than show up each weekend and go, "Yeah... still not done" and feel worse every time. I think the guilt actually torpedoes me worse than the block itself.

Meanwhile, the Golden Globes are tomorrow night. This is one of the awards shows I traditionally liveblog (one of the many services we provide at Cleolinda Industries). I keep trying to gear myself up for it, and... ehhhhhhhh. And we've got a really good slate of movies this year almost none of which I've been able to leave the house and see, so it's not lack of enthusiasm for the nominee pool. We've got one of those rare years where almost anyone could win and it would be deserved. I just... can't muster the energy. But I have to. I hate defaulting on things I like to do just because my dumb ass feels whiny. So I'm going to try to do that tomorrow night. At least with Lizzie now, it's easy to set up in front of the TV.

Also, I can't find my Lillie Langtry bio, which VEXES ME. On the upside, I've been given a couple of new YA books, so I might get to those soon.