miscellany

miscellaneous post of miscellany – june 2015 edition

I keep forgetting to blog. I used to blog so often that I had to grasp at things to fill up spaces between flax-golden tales and now there are so many unblogged about bits and pieces piling up that I don’t know where to start so I don’t and then nothing gets blogged at all and the pile gets bigger. Attempting to toss some things on today, so this will be very much all over the place.

(Part of it is also that I don’t have Official Author Things to blog about. There’s either no new news or no sharable news, etc. I’m not doing any events. Whenever there is bloggable book news it will be blogged, I assure you. In the meantime, thank you for reading all of this nonsense.)

A few weeks ago I was a clue in the New York Times crossword puzzle. 135 Across.

nyt crossword

Which was odd and cool and not something I’d ever thought possible. We went out and got a copy to keep that will probably remain blank because I am not good at crosswords. (Maybe I should just fill in the ERIN.)

I asked Twitter for potential things to blog about* and one of the suggestions was about my Twitter hiatus and how well/not well it went. I was on Twitter hiatus from November-April (I’m still not checking it as much as I used to) and I think it was really good for me. I have a few different social media things I try to keep up with but Twitter is the most active & time consuming. My Instagram & Tumblr are a little more on the pretty pictures & retumbling passive side, which is better for me when I’m working. Having all the Twitter connections and voices is tremendously awesome but not so much when I’m trying to pay more attention to the voices in my head. That came out wrong. But still, it’s very outward when I need to be inward at the moment so the hiatus was valuable and I will probably do it again toward the end of the year.

I am mostly writing right now, or working rather because I am not a write-every-day writer, I am a live-in-the-book-regardless-of-wordcount every day writer. So I alternate days with a lot of words and days working out character things or plot things or imaginary architecture, sometimes with pens in notebooks and sometimes just in my head, because if I have those things worked out the word days end up filled with more useable words.

My writing music at the moment is atmospheric & electronic & classical. Smitten with the Max Richter recomposition of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Currently listening to Forest Swords. Brand new Florence + the Machine and Of Monsters and Men albums are also on heavy rotation.

I have not been reading much, which always happens when I’m writing more. I tend to like absorbing story in non-text formats when I’m working on my own writing so I end up watching more tv and playing more games. Earlier this month I binge-watched the first three seasons of American Horror Story which I had never seen and now I wish I’d started sooner. Still haven’t seen Freakshow and looking forward to Hotel because I have a thing for hotels.

I don’t even want to talk about Game of Thrones. I was glad I had a lot of wine.

I got a new bunny friend because I couldn’t leave the store without him.

bunny friend

The apartment has an awful lot of bunnies now.

I’ve been trying to keep up with the E3 press conferences as much as I can but I wasn’t really excited about anything until last night’s Sony conference and then it was ALL EXCITEMENT with some extra shooty things I don’t care about. (Particularly interested in The Last Guardian & Horizon and really intrigued by dreams.) In related news I now I have surround-sound headphones that I got mostly for game-related purposes and I love them.

I am realizing I might not be blogging that much lately because I’m boring. I’m also hot, which doesn’t help anything. Despite being born in the summer I am not a summer creature, humidity makes me sleepy and I burn easily and our air conditioner is broken.

Someone is coming to fix the air conditioner.

Someday there will be book news and sharable things and excitement, I’m sure. I’m in hermit mode which does not lend itself well to sharing.  I am writing a lot and switching things around and finding structure and it is finally actually getting somewhere this time. There are people in my head I would like for you to meet but I have to follow them around awhile longer first.

The air conditioner repairperson came while I was writing this and it’s not a problem with the unit, it’s something electrical so I am apparently going to remain hot for awhile.

This post was even more all over the place than I’d anticipated.

I am an introvert who occasionally pretends to be an extrovert and then other times I forget how, even on the internet.

Doing my best but really need my attention focused elsewhere lately, hope you all understand.

 

*Twitter suggestions scattered randomly throughout post, I think I got most of them.

By erin, ago

miscellany for mid-january in a short, unnumbered list

  • I read Stoner by John Williams over the weekend. I was gifted it over the holidays and it is exquisite. Such a lovely, lovely book.
  • I also got this Giada cookbook for the holidays and while I haven’t tried any of the proper recipes in it yet I have become mildly obsessed with putting olive oil and sea salt on my oatmeal.
  • I have to have my wisdom teeth removed at the end of the month but apparently I only have three of them so that’s… something, I guess? I will be making lots of soup beforehand.
  • My new-to-me, on-heavy-rotation January music includes Le Loup and Austra.
  • I am currently out of yerba mate and so my morning tea routine is all confusing and not routine. I have more mate on order. Today’s tea was guayusa with coconut sugar.
  • Considering I have started and erased this last unnumbered thing four times because I felt ending on tea just didn’t have a proper sense of completion, I’m going to stop typing and just post this now.
By erin, ago

miscellaneous post of miscellany with links

This is not an actual post, this is a list of things I wanted to tell the internet on someplace other than Twitter. I have several proper posts in-progress and at least one of them will be posted this week.

 

  • This upcoming weekend I will be at ALA Anaheim. I will be participating in two events on the morning of Sunday June 24: the RUSA Literary Tastes Program and the Alex Award Program. Other than that I will probably be wandering around attempting to resist the urge to go to Disneyland and ride the Haunted Mansion over & over & over.
  • On July 3rd there will be a paperback release event for The Night Circus at Brookline Booksmith. And by “event” I mean “Epic Circus Party Complete with Band.” Come one, come all! I am still trying to figure out what to wear.

 

I think that’s all the miscellany for the moment. Someday I will be properly caught up with email and to-do list things and actually have time to write proper posts (and fiction!) again, but today is not that day.

By erin, ago

housecleaning

I have a small windowless office. Over the last few months it became more of a place to put things I didn’t want to deal with than a proper space to work in, so yesterday I made a lot of coffee and locked myself inside not quite with the goal of organizing, really, but in an attempt to clear out some of the mess and make it a more habitable space. I had aspirations of coziness. I put on my “Early Jazz” Pandora station for soundtrack purposes. It could still use some work and I need to go through all of my files and things, but I think as far as overall habitable/cozy I was fairly successful.

The floor was covered in piles of stuff, I really should have taken a “before” photo. Lights are both new to this room, I switched out the floor lamp that had been too bright for a lamp and a mirrored sconce and while it’s not hugely bright in here I’m usually at the computer anyway so I think it’s sufficient. It makes it more atmospheric. Almost everything on the walls was put up yesterday and there are still a few spots that need something but it’s a vast improvement.

The desk side of the room isn’t quite as cohesive yet, there’s also an oddly shaped nook behind it that really seems to want a tree or something. Maybe when I have time I’ll make a paper tree to loom in the corner.

So I am typing this from my much cozier yet still small and windowless office. Also, I think because it is windowless it stays toasty warm, I think it also gets heat from the hallway. Methinks I will be spending a lot of time in here while I’m at home this winter.

Also, this made me giggle delightedly:

Roswell in the circus! On the circus? Either way, I love it and you can click it and go read all the splendid stories that Kyle Cassidy’s blog readers came up with, circuses and clockwork and a truly splendid cat.

Am in housecleaning mode, both with the apartment and in my head. Getting ready to go out on my January mini-tour next week. This afternoon I took a walk in the snow and sunshine at the same time.

Now I am going to drink green tea and think thoughtful thoughts and possibly read.

By erin, ago

[enter title here]

This is what a book tour looks like in ephemera. In boarding passes and train tickets and accidentally retained visitor passes.

That’s not even all of it.

I am in something that I could probably call Tour Recovery Mode right now. It mostly involves looking at all the stuff that has been neglected in my absence, from several email inboxes to that not-a-novel-yet to the newly-home fluffy cats and not having the mental capacity to deal with any of it. I’m feeling really guilty about it, too, but it seriously took all my energy just to make myself gluten-free pancakes with strawberries this morning and I have been trying to write this blog post for three days. Make that four days, pancakes were yesterday. Also it’s dark at 4pm lately and that makes me extraordinarily sleepy.

Speaking of extraordinarily sleepy, Tessa is in love with the faux-fur blanket I got to warm up the sofa. Maybe because she so nicely color-coordinates with it.

I’m exhausted. I thought after a few days of sleeping in my own bed and not having to be on airplanes I’d feel better but I’m still exhausted. I think I feel worse, actually, that whole object in motion stays in motion thing, and that object in motion suddenly taken out of motion feels dizzy and nauseous.

I’m not sure what I really want to say in this post. I’m not sure I’m coherent enough to say anything, really. Here, let’s have some points in something resembling an unnumbered list, because I can totally not handle lists with numbers right now.

  • If you are waiting to hear back from me about anything, please be patient. I am only one person with a very overwhelmed brain.
  • My brain would be overwhelmed even if I were only dealing with book stuff and nothing else, but I have a lot of other things going on requiring brain time right now. A lot. I will spare you the gory details but I think the internet already knows I’m getting divorced and that’s just one of the non-book things. Life has a way of happening all at once.
  • I straighten my hair nearly every day and yet I still managed to burn my ear on my straightening iron this morning. This is likely indicative of how I’m doing right now.
  • I would really, really like to be able to write now that I’m a real writer and all, but it is baffling how many non-writing things are involved in being a writer. I did look at the novel-in-progress today and it didn’t look half-bad considering the unfinished messy draft stage it’s in, so that’s something.

Okay, I can’t handle any more list things. I think my attention span has taken a vacation with my short-term memory. I hope they’re somewhere warm with umbrella drinks.

I should probably wrap up this post before my typing skills and ability to form sentences decide to join them.

To those still NaNo-ing, I raise my coffee to you in a caffeine-driven salute for these, the Final Days. If you’ve already won: Congratulations!!! You rule. If you haven’t yet crossed the finish line: You can do it, you still have time! If you’ve already thrown in the towel: It’s okay, and remember you wrote more this month than you might have otherwise. Also, remember where you put that towel because a towel is the most massively useful thing you can have.

I am working on a proper post about writing-related things to cover some of the more frequently asked questions of late. It’s like a baby step toward having a proper FAQ. And I will have more tour musings eventually, possibly with photos if I can figure out how to get them off my old phone.

For now I am going to give up on figuring out what to title this rambling ramble of a post and actually post it.

By erin, ago

march miscellany

I still have tons of things to post about but some of them require photographs that I haven’t taken yet.

Also, am baffled that it’s March already. But March brings Sleep No More, and therefore I welcome it wholeheartedly, even in my skepticism about the passing of time.

I have been petting my shiny, shiny ARCs. A few have scampered off to new homes already, and the fates of the remaining ones are being pondered. I have ideas but I need to see how practical they’ll be to execute.

I spent part of the weekend painting, because I haven’t painted anything in ages and I had new old sheet music to play with.

They’re a companion series to a trio of paintings I did last year called music for the apocalypse. This bunch is music for the apocalypse part II: nocturnes. They should be up on Etsy by the end of the week.

Other than that I’m all reading, writing & waiting for the snow to melt while I slowly work my way through my ever-growing to-do list.

There are photos of shiny objects forthcoming, too.

By erin, ago