Rules for Anchorites

This is my Worldcon schedule--and boy, it is a big one:

Thu 1600 Rm 204: Steal the past, build the future: new histories for
fantasy fiction;
Fri 1300 Rm 213: I could do better than that!
Fri 1600 Rm P1: In conversation: Seanan McGuire and Catherynne M Valente
Sat 1300 Rm 207: Reading
Sat 1500 Rm 201: Signing
Sat 1700 Rm 203: Academic Panel: Fantastic females: reworking feminism
in women’s fantasy
Sun 1000 Rm 213: The eternal stories: myths and legends in YA spec fic
Sun 1200 Rm 204: The case for a female Doctor
Sun 1300 Rm 213: Has Hollywood sucked the vampires dry?
Sun 1500 Rm P3: Future trends in speculative fiction
Sun 1800 Hugo Awards Ceremony
Mon 1100 Rm 201: Kaffeeklatsche
Mon 1300 Rm 211: The eternal border: taboos in dark fantasy

You are correct, that IS seanan_mcguire  and I getting a room to ourselves for an hour. We'll see if someone can't videotape it. And that case for the female Doctor panel? Paul Cornell is on it too! I am dead of amazing now.

This is the post where I say: please come to my events, especially my reading and kaffeeklatsch, if you are going to Worldcon, so I don't feel like a loser. But! It is also the post where I say if you have any advice on things to do and see in Melbourne, or if you live in Oz and want to meet up, or if you are going to Worldcon and want to meet up, then let me know in the comments so we can make all that happen.

I'm arriving early on Tuesday and leaving on September 9th, so I have lots of time to do awesome things. My one goal for the moment is to put my feet in the ocean--I'll accept the bay, but actual ocean would be awesomer.

OMG I'm going to Australia in a few days! This is crazy! (I'm trying not to hope for the Hugo. It's deeply unlikely and I want to have a good time and not be nervous.)

Antipodes ho!

So I have this friend, Danielle. She does, well, kind of everything. I look at her with such envy sometimes, that everything she touches seems to turn into something beautiful. For a long while she and her husband Dave ran Jack, an occasional restaurant in Brooklyn, and oh my god, the food. You've never tasted the like. When I'm depressed about my place in life I tend to go cook recipes from her food blog Habeas Brulee until I feel competent again.

She got me into glassblowing back when I lived in Cleveland. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a studio with reasonable rates in Portland, so I gave up glass. But once again, Daniell inspired me--she started taking up lampworking, which is like mini-glassblowing without the blowing part. Making glass beads and sculptures with a home set up that involves a blow torch and some bitchin' purple safety glasses.

Since I'm on an island, and we have to make our own fun, I asked her to teach me when I was in NYC last, and I've just now finished setting up my studio at home. I'm ok at it, since I've handled glass before. I've finally solved my issue with having gotten a bad batch of bead release and am ready to try in earnest.

But you know, what she does? It takes my breath away.

Every time I look at one of her beads I'm filled with longing--and they're beads. I don't usually feel that way about beads. Her work is so exquisite and strange, and I love it.

And she has an Etsy shop, Emblems.

All my friends who make jewelry and use beads, y'all should check her out. And she has some finished necklaces for those who just want to wear something made with fire and glass and passion by an amazing woman.

I hope I can be as cool as she is when I grow up.

Many of you may have wondered if I have seen the discussion and letter-writing on behalf of the proposed cover of The Habitation of the Blessed.

I have.

In fact, it's been seen far and wide.

What I know today is that there will be a redesign of the cover, with input from me. Hopefully this will not delay the book, but it might.

I have optimism that things will be worked out now. I am grateful both to you all who cared so deeply about the book and to Night Shade who responded so quickly with reassurances. It will be a good book, and a beautiful one.

All will be well.