amand_r

1. The computer died. I am writing to you from the new one, Toshiko Toshiba, Mistress of the Dark Computer Arts.

a. This means that everything is actually trapped on my old hard drive, including the stories i owe three of you. I have to get ahold of a serial hard drive case, and when I do, I can access the giant vag in the center of the earth files again. I might just have to start those stories over in the meantime.


2. I need german food recipes! I am having the buds over for dinner, and i want to make spaetzle! I cannot get good brats here, sadface. But I was thinking I might try the strip district for some rabbit! Anyone have anything German to recommend?

3. As announced on twitter, I shall be writing a YA novel that is a steampunk vampire rip-off of The Color Purple called, "The Color Vortex" or possibly "The Vortex purple." It might also involve a Danny Glover robot that says "I'm too old for this shit."

Really, most of this stupid shit is on my twitter. If you ever feel the nee to talk to me during the day about lame shit, I'm cerebralcutlass.

4. ALSO--even though I am behind on the stories, I am still sending out the cookies soon! SO! IF YOU WOULD LIKE SOME GINGERNSNAPS OR GARAM MASALA CHOCOLATE GINGERBREAD, AND A LITTLE FICLET, PLEASE SEE HERE: Amand-r's Frabjous Writing Promo. The ficlets are supposed to be 500 words, but as you can see from the first one, I kind of discard that sometimes. BUT 500 WORD MINIMUM!

The first story was for lilian_cho, and was called Registry, inspired by her starter sentence of, "It's not like there's a Chinese gay kama sutra."

5. Soon I shall watch the second half of Torchwood Miracle Day. And then, even thought I have been discouraged with fandom lately, I shall open the las.

6. Highlander peeps, I have not forgot you! Not having the templates on hand makes life slightly more pissy, but I know how to cut and paste, so I'll steal them soon. Sign ups start tomorrow, I think!

Hello all, it's been a while, so I shall UPDATE BY NUMBERS.

1. Cookies have been awesome. I am taking a break. I have many new things that I want to try, but they aren't going to ship well in this heat. That said, if you ever want some cookies, feel free to drop me a line. I am now making shit on demand. Except the chocolate caramel shortbread. They are a pain in the ass.

2. Kidlet is done with preschool! Well, for this year at least. I have embarrassing video, but I am too lazy to upload it.

3. My computer died recently! It was horrible. I was trying to log on, and it kept telling me my user profile couldn't load properly. After shedding bitter tears, I managed to save all my files from safe mode onto an external drive, and then I had to reinstall the OS from factory settings. Strange how everything runs now. On the other hand, there's something cleansing about getting a fresh start.

4. I have been reading a great deal. You can find my reading on Goodreads. Right now I'm reading about the monster of Florence.

5. I MADE PASTA FROM SCRATCH. IT WAS AWESOME.

6. YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE IS AWESOME? HOT DOGS.

7. Here is the story of how I am bitter:

One day I started watching Wire in the Blood. I watched 2 eps and then forgot. Then a month later I was all, “I should check out Wire in the Blood”, and lo, I already had. I resumed my watching. BY THE WAY the special with Tony in Texas was the best thing ever. I lolled so hard. Anyway, I got to the end of season 6 when [spoiler] and it ends with [spoiler] and Then I click ed the “Next” button on the Netflix streaming screen.

Nothing happened. I looked and saw they only had up to season six. Never mind, I will download the torrent somewhere.

That's right, in my head I had convinced myself that there are 8 seasons.

Oh wait, no, that's Waking the Dead.

It became increasingly difficult to locate the season seven torrent No one had it. I was going to do a shot out to my flist. Then I decided to see when it was released. So I checked wikipedia.

Boy, am I bitter. WHAT A FUCKING WAY TO END. NOT TWIN PEAKS EPIC, BUT JESUS.

8. I read the new Sookie Stackhouse. Yeah.

9. I had so many things to say! I have no idea where they went.

10. Lastly, I have a novella/thing coming out in October, and the publisher, Candlemark and Gleam was nice enough to send me promo postcard things to distribute. I was thinking of handwriting some short short stories and offering to send them to people for postage. Would anyone be interested? Want one? I guess if you sent me five bucks, I could send you the card and a half a dozen cookies. Or something.

Postage has gone up package wise, by the way. That's how they get ya.

Off to read more about excising vaginas.

I HEAR WHAT YOU SAY, AND ALTHOUGH THE WORDS ARE THERE, I THINK THAT I WILL ONLY TRULY UNDERSTAND YOU WHEN I HEAR YOU SCREAM THOSE WORDS. AND YOU WILL SCREAM. YOU WILL SCREAM.

It has a shallow drop, but how lovely.

also: GOTTS SUCK A ***** IN THE PARTY ZONE:

1. What's with Family Guy's Conway Twitty thing? It started with short clips, and now 7.13 had a whole performance of "I See The 'Want To' In Your Eyes". Not that I didn't LOL, but what up with this? Did Seth MacFarlane get the rights to all Conway Twitty's music or something?

2. The drawback to CLEAN ALL THE THINGS in my house is that I don't want to write. Why does this happen? It happens when I have a shitload of things to do, that's for damn sure. Wholas, kinky krimmas, the twfemfic fest, about six original fic things to do, plus that charity book thing (NO I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN, TWITTER PEOPLE). I need something to jumpstart my ass. OH AND ALSO I HAVE THAT SEASON OF TORCHWOOD WOT I BE DOING. JESUS.

SOMEONE KICK ME IN THE ARSE.

3. My fried egg fu is sufficiently warmed up, so tonight it's stout and cheddar rarebit with fried eggs and the old stand-by, carrots and leeks. Oh carrots and leeks, why can't I quit you? I am using balsamic vinegar again instead of red wine vinegar.

4. My kid is in preschool! She started Monday, and so far so good.

5. This year she wants to be Snow White for Halloween. See Mander drive from one store to another.

6. I SEE THE 'WANT TO' IN YOUR EYES.

7. Ever look at all your junk and become filled with the urge to see how much of it you can sell? Because I think that might be my new hobby.

8. Writing a short story about a unicorn showing up on a midwest farm, and it's not going to have a happy ending. But all this urban or modern fantasy, I have no idea who takes it. My horror is not going over well with the horror markets. All my rejections are like, "This is good, but it's not us. Do you have anything more us?" It's enough to make a girl turn to poetry. Which, oh hai quiet passion.

9. I keep all my books that I'm currently reading stashed about the house in places. I have, at any given time, about 8 of them, and sometimes I substitute more when I get in a new pulp crap thing that I'll do in three days (or hours). So I finished Wharton, and picked up The Abridged Tale of Genji, like a responsible reader. Then I got waylaid by The Murder of Biggie Smalls. BUT THEN I GOT WAYLAID BY LKH'S NEW ANITA BLAKE BOOK. OH MY GOD IF MY READING HABITS WERE A NASDAQ CHART, IT WOULD LOOK LIKE BLACK MONDAY. With any luck I can skim my way through LKH and back into Biggie and then into Genji and the Burroughs I cracked the other day.

10. Okay, I just want to state for the record that I find it humourous, given the general attitude that the lyrics of Death Row records used to have re: the police, that they would only hire off-duty cops for their security. On one hand it's heartening, because it shows that it's possible to believe in the corruption of some of the police dept and still believe in their abilities or that some of them are good. On the other hand it's lol.

11. I have a mental image of Jack teaching Lois, Maggie and Robert how to lindy hop after hours in the atrium, to this song. They all have their shoes off, and they're goofing off in their stocking feet in the atrium. Gwen and Dee are in their offices pretending they don't hear. But they do. Gwen gives in, but Dee puts her head phones in and listens to Barry Manilow. BEANS AND CORNBREAD.

I don't think it's news to anyone that I'm an up and down person. I have mood swings, and until recently I have always gone with the flow. Back in February the anger end of those issues started to hinder relationships, so I tried to locate causes and tracking on a calendar, and lo and behold they were cyclical, like another cycle I have, go fig. Knowing that it was "that time of the month" for my anger issues had helped me to control that. That's fine.

( Here's where everything went pear shaped. )