beta readers

woot my Dutch beta reader is getting back to me soon.

Well, none of YOU volunteered to read my porn novel; mOm only did because I jammed plot for the wider series arc into it and she will devour anything with Sweetie in it. (tell me I’m wrong ma) Not, perhaps, the wisest artistic decision I ever made in light of current events …. But one that I feel will be richly attested to by history as a wise decision, because if this sucker ever gets made into TV I want gay love “between a genderqueer person and a guy whose orientation goes from straight to ‘huh, I never thought of that’ to ‘extremely accommodating'” baked into its DNA.

I never thought, when I wrote that first line about Slider in the first book that this was the turn their character would take.

But damn it, it is so very cute and fluffy and angsty and OBVIOUS. Which is the look I was going for.

 

no words today

Yesterday I want to the demonstration for Tina Fontaine. I’m really sick at heart about how many FNMI kids end up in care, and feel worse about how many of them die. I feel worst of all that a homeless white guy who confessed is more important than the FNMI teen he killed.

There were anywhere between 450 and 600 people there at any given time. I showed up late and left early (before the march down Granville), but I was there for a while. Thanks brOJeff for loaning me your folding stool – it’s really proven a godsend when you’re in sit/stand/mill about situations like demos and long waits to get into venues.

I think Margot has an infected anal gland. I expressed about a teaspoon of horrific glop out this am and I finally put her back down when the volume of her screeching was too deafening. Pet ownership, it’s a real trip.

more fambly fun

Keith (driving in the snow….) took me and Paul to TRIUMF yesterday for a tour. YES I WENT TO A CYCLOTRON and Keith bought a hat.

Here are the pics. The clean room, Know These Alarms, a cabinet full of Xantrex Power Supply manuals, and a stencilled word which got more comments on facebook yesterday than I’m used to… well I thought it was funny.

The man giving the tour had such a remarkable haircut that I was tempted to take a picture of him for the sole purpose of mocking him, which is mean, even for me, so I refrained, and I am satisfied that the prospect of your shocked amusement upon viewing what was quite possibly the strangest non-wig, non-hairpiece performance art you would ever see was still not enough to motivate me to take and subsequently share his picture.

His opening spiel was a blinking “HOLY SHIT is this how many people turn up for a tour when I put it a day ahead on the Vancouver subreddit?” (I paraphrase, as my son will furiously hasten to insist that I say.) There were forty of us. Not a lot of roooooom on the catwalks.

It was noisy, it was industrial, there was liquid nitrogen making cute little puffs of vapour, there were yellow concrete blocks assembled like legos in two storey piles, it was awesome.

got shit done

I finally have everything I need to update my passport, it’s like a miracle. I’ve been making stabs at it since December, now I just have to write a cheque and drop it in the mail.

Thanks Jeff for helping that happen.

Also finally took care of my follow-up stool sample. (No pictures by request.)

Paul and I walked in the GLORIOUS SUNSHINE at Oakalla, and then Katie and Alex and I went swimming, and Paul dropped by for that as well, and we splashed en famille and it was very much fun.

This morning I have brekky with Sue (I think I’m going to bring musical instruments).

I haven’t been writing – but I have been blocking out the rest of the book and I’m quite happy with how things are going, so fret not.

 

O my god, I’m eating it, aren’t I?

So Mike cooked tenderloin for me Sunday night but he overdid it with the kosher salt and it was almost too salty to eat. He got anxious; I ate mine, and then stole some of his.

I thought about all the times Paul just ate what I put in front of him, even if I couldn’t eat it.

Had a simply grotesquely bad sleep – I think I maybe got four hours in before I got up and started stooging around.

Then Mike fed me chik’n congee for breakfast, OMG it was so.frickin.good and this time he deboned it so the gwai lo chick didn’t have to deal with the congealed bits of bone end, etc. It was a superlative breakfast, with all the scallions and cilantro I could ever want to dump into it.

Balance was restored by the two and half hour nap that followed.

Keith and I are at loggerheads again. This time he hung up on me. What a pair of fucking children we are.

I told Jeff what I was arguing with him about (our argument consisted of him saying that Jordan Peterson is awesome and ‘saying things that need to be said’ while I want to die from being such a terrible mother). At the end of it I said four words and he ended the call. Jeff has already culled one friendship over Jordan Peterson (and since I know exactly what ceasing to talk to someone for political reasons feels like, I am sore on his behalf) and he’s not keen to make it two.

Keith says Jordan Peterson told him to clean his room.

I’m Keith’s mother. You know, of course, how it feels when you’ve told your kid to clean his room four hundred times (or thereabouts) but one fascist asshole tells him to do it once and he hops to it.

Fascism man, it’s hard to put down.

blah

I can’t find out how to pronounce vápni in Icelandic and it’s pissing me off

I think it’s V-owp-nih but the internet for once isn’t helping comme d’habitude which is probably just proof a few more of my neurons let go with a ghastly scream.

I’d love to say why I need it but no spoilers.

The US sure is making it easy for western democracies to see how low they can set their expectations. Expect right wing tyrants, vastly increased domestic spying, pork barrels that span the planet and offer your choice of exit strategies if the locals get stroppy, all tied up with the best press money can buy while you’re standing on the bodies of dead journos and indigenous people.

I retreat into fluffy sf.

 

 

 

38240

I was feeling pretty crappy early this week but I seem to be back writing. Coffee helped….

Sent the latest along to mOm. I’ll be taking Jeff out to breakfast later, but I think I’ll reward myself for making wordcount by watching Orphan Black. I’m watching it without Jeff since he loathes the main character. I’m kinda digging Helena, even if that’s not how mental illness works.

OH AND THE TRANS VERSION OF THE CLONES o my god. Tony was awesome, and it’s a shame I made the mistake of looking him up and learning he’s not in the rest of the show, but at least he kissed Felix just to make all my little valves pop.

Being a boy

There are times – there have been times in my life when I wanted to be male. I was never unhappy with my body but I sure would have liked to swap it out once in a while. I do like this body. It made babies, and breast milk. It also made honking big gall stones and proved to be no match for alcohol, but them’s the breaks.

Referencing Altered Carbon:

My most recent gosh wish I wuz a boy moment was thinking to myself that I’d love to look like Joel Kinnaman and make a coat sway like that when I walked.

Further comment on the show. Dichen Lachman sure gets cast as the crazy martial artist villainess a lot.

I really liked the art direction compared to a lot of sf shows.

The show runner’s been trying for almost 15 years to get it made. Netflix made it possible. Also, the fact that serious star power has stopped thinking that playing a nude role is a sign of moral defect.

 

Indeed

There are only four people on earth I hope to hear from on Valentine’s day and I heard from three of them so I’m feeling pretty okay this morning.

Also had a convo with one of them yesterday that was so amazing it is probably going to make me feel cheerful for a week. Or maybe it’s the new Vitamin D I switched to.

Despite me feelin cheerful I still want to bail on writing today and go binge on Altered Carbon. It’s SOOOOO clichéd (that darned Bill Gibson and that damned Ridley Scott) but I’d watch buffed-up Joel Kinnamon (whose chops I first recognized when we watched The Killing all those years ago) back up to a microphone and fart the Overture of the Burrito’s Opera so it’s all good.

Just told Jeff that’s what I want to do and I got the nod of approval.

36213 – so don’t think I haven’t been writing. Just wrote a scene in which Jesse lies his ass off to Michel in a good cause. (If we’re talking about getting the band back together).

Private post

 

I wanted to write a private post about how pissed off I am about something but it just made me look bad so I’m rolling my eyes and deleting all that crap.

Saw Coco, very much enjoyed it. A teensy bit more from our fave character.

I keep writing stuff in my novels that comes true, it’s fucking grossing me out. The Vancity council just eliminated view protection from the city plan SO UNLESS YOU’RE ON THE MOST EXPENSIVE LAND YOU WILL HAVE NO VIEW. I literally wrote, two months ago, the following line:

She lifted her eyes to what remained of her view of the North Shore, after two more condo towers had been built to block it.

Fuck this city, srsly.