Cleolinda everywhere

So! Today is the 10th anniversary of this LJ! And even though I am about to link you to a ton of stuff not actually on this LJ, I still consider it the mothership.

My second piece is up on The Toast! If you read it before, a Significant Correction has been made. It changes EVERYTHING. RUN, JULIE.

(The Toast is on fire generally today, btw.)

Over on my tumblr: a gorgeous new illustrated Hunger Games: Catching Fire poster, the Sleepy Hollow gang playing baseball (the follow-up), a few new Hannibal things (OMG), Old Maps of Paris, Kate Beaton's Halloween quiz, and Martha Stewart Halloween photography shut up.

Over on my new side tumblr: the lesser-known jacket of Anna Valerious, wonderful Dracula illustrations by Anne Yvonne Gilbert, and that POOF! gif I wanted.

And, in case you missed it, I finished the recap for the first episode of NBC's Dracula a couple of days ago (I need to go back and answer a lot of comments. ). I am SUPER, SUPER HOPING to make this November 1st deadline for my Black Ribbon story before the next episode that night, just in time to start the process all over again. Wish me luck!

Previously on The Secret Life of Dolls: I just went ahead and told Tonner Bella that Tonner Edward is a vampire, because life is too short. And then she and her sheep-herding yipyip dogs went to work at the Sparklerosa, and Clarice's frustrated little brain nearly exploded in a puff of woolly rage.

( And then, we all heard a low rumbling that was not fireworks )

Previously on The Secret Life of Dolls: I tried to get the more contentious Shelfians to Play Nice, but Anna threw the d6 under the bed, and then... UPS came.


"Oh my GOD, look at YOUUUUUU. You are just PRECIOUS, LOOK AT YOU."

( Read more... )

Previously on The Secret Life of Dolls: Doll mortality. This week: Shelf justice.

So once again, we had a Shelf Justice Council, this time on my desk. ( Read more... )

So, previously on The Secret Life of Dolls: The Battle of Beagle Yard; Faramir Two discovered a covert woodland arms deal; and Serafina explained to me what was going on with the birdbath. And then I felt kind of bad.

We were saved from an awkward pause by Tonner Edward limping into the room. "I need to... talk to you... for a moment, if... I could," he said between gritted teeth. And then he collapsed.

( Read more... )

Previously on The Secret Life of Dolls: A lot of stuff happened.

So: Christmas in Shelfia, with a bit of catch-up from the Compocalypse. ( We Two Kings of Númenor Are )


(To be continued. Part two: Serafina. Part three: Anna.)

I have a few links I want to talk about, but I feel too scattered at the moment to really pull those together. I will say, in terms of working on the "Vampires" e-book, that I sat down with a calendar and started working backwards from dates that are already set in stone:

1) New Moon comes out on 11/20 or somewhere around then, I don't know. That weekend, something.

2) My understanding is that we're going to record a podcast (not specifically about New Moon, but it will help to have seen it) that Sunday, 11/22.

3) I don't like to put out Movies in Fifteen Minutes entries until the Monday after a movie has come out, at the earliest--reader statements like "Now I don't have to see the movie!," while well-intended, are probably not going to endear me to whichever Studio Powers That Be. So I want to at least give any given movie a full weekend, since nowadays that's the most important time period financially anyway. SO MY POINT IS, I'm assuming that I can't not do "New Moon in Fifteen Minutes," so that would go up no earlier than 11/23.

4) I want to give myself at least a week of rest between the e-book and the Fifteen Minutes. Therefore, working backwards, I would want to have "Vampires" on Lulu by 11/16.

5) That's two and a half weeks or so from now. I know a lot more about the process of actually "publishing" the e-book now--how to convert the wonky footnotes to PDF (or who I need to do that for me, rather), how to navigate Lulu, and so on. But I would still like to give myself a week of padding to take care of problems, wait on people to get back to me on certain issues if necessary, do my obsessive proofreading, so on and so forth.

6) Therefore, I need to have a readable draft of "Vampires" by 11/9.

7) That's eleven days from now.

8) I've never made a deadline in my LIFE.

9) I did 90% of the work on Van Helsing and Dracula last year, though, when I was doing the previous, longer, more complicated incarnation of the e-book. It's mostly Twilight I'm dealing with right now. I hesitate to say "I can totally do this," in a Famous Last Words kind of way, but theoretically: I can totally do this.

10) Oh God I totally can't do this.

So basically, that's what's going on at the moment--I'm trying to work myself into an It's Go Time, Bitches mindset on the front end of the process and have plenty of emergency padding on the far end in case shit happens, because you know it totally will. I should probably refrain from testing Twilight merchandise during this time, in fact--sweetdragon tried some assorted Twilight chocolates the other day and they nearly killed HER.


(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

So: back to The Shelf.

Some days you do the best you can just to keep it all afloat. Gladdy and I settled down into a hard-working routine--me trying to finish my e-book project, and her trying to unravel the alethiometer prophecy, such as it was (next up: tea leaves).

( A truly harrowing experience, let me tell you )

It's always a three-ring circus here at The Shelf. ( The rooster is but a creature of myth and legend now )

Bargain shopping in my family is a spectator sport. I am the kind of person who, if you gave me a really great birthday present and then told me that you'd gotten it for 80% off, would not think you were cheap. I would think you were AWESOME, and then I would ask who the hell was having such a magnificent sale. So when I saw Lyra's school uniform on eBay for the princely sum of $14, I had to buy it. And the thing is, you can't buy the outfit separately--you can only buy it on the doll ($119), which doesn't even come with a Pan, and why are you going to fool with that? So, for whatever reason, someone kept the Lyra doll, probably to repaint or redress it, and sold off the school dress, which I then snapped up.

"I EN'T GOIN'!"

( Two new arrivals, and neither of them are a Bella )