1. Thank you, everyone, for the birthday wishes on Wednesday. So far, thirty-five is going pretty well.

2. One of my birthday presents was a ring made by Sara Jayne Cole. I think I've linked to her work before, but I gotta say, it's worth linking to again. (Disclaimer: she is a friend of my mother's.)

3. My birthday present to myself--and mirrorthaw--was buying a new bed with the advance from the goblin book. Since the bed we were sleeping on was the one I bought when I moved to Madison in 1996, you may rightfully say that this birthday present is neither self-indulgent nor, indeed, a moment too soon. Also, for the first time in our adult lives, we have an honest-to-god bed frame.

4. The bed frame has taught me that I do actually have a (rather dim and rudimentary) sense of spatial relations. I walked into it in the dark yesterday because I knew exactly where the bed was. Or, you know, used to be. I'm developing a lovely bruise on my thigh.

5. I have reached 65,000 words in the goblin book. 45,000 to go. Which will be easier once I figure out what the captain of the palace guard wants to talk to the emperor about.

This afternoon, mirrorthaw and I discovered the hard way that there is a yellowjacket nest at the back corner of our garage.

Neither of us was stung badly, but it may be a while before I get my hat back.

Things learned while gardening today:

1. I'm a much better gardener if you give me a task. "Go out and garden" does nothing for me. "Go out and slaughter all the grape vines you can reach" does.

2. If you have an Anthropophagous Rosebush, you let the grape vines co-habitate with it at your peril.

3. ZOMG! We have BERRIES! Blackberries, I think, but my woodsy lore is so stunted and vestigial that they might as easily be the rare and deadly cyanideberry for all I know. (No, we will not be eating them unless we get a positive ID.) They are also co-habitating with the Anthropophagous Rosebush, which explains why I have lived in this house for five years without knowing they're there. One leafy aggressive thing with thorns is much like another to me, unless one of them is actually, you know, fruiting.

4. I need better gardening gloves. Or possibly gauntlets.

5. The only thing that can be said in praise of Virginia creeper is that it is not as macho as the grape vines.

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Update on the Cerise Bouquet climbers, for any rosaphiles who care: both bushes seem to have survived the trauma of being planted. One of them died back quite a bit, but it has surviving branches (is branch the right word?), the largest of which happens to be the branch which has found the trellis. The other bush seems to be doing fine. So a round of applause for my rose bushes, please. They're making the best of a bad lot.

ETA: I am charmed to discover, by following links from the HelpMeFind.com page, that the nursery founded (in 1906) by the man who created the Cerise Bouquet is (a.) in Schleswig-Holstein, (b.) still in operation, and (c.) on the web (German-language only, despite the splash page being in English, but the pictures are lovely).

::is great big sparkly geek::

Today I planted two Cerise Bouquet climbing roses, in the hopes that they will be obliging enough to climb the trellis on the west end of the front porch. I am uneasily aware that I am standing at the top of a slippery slope, rose-wise, and am hoping that my aversion to sunlight will keep me strong.

Also, a plug: HelpMeFind.Com is very aptly named, for they did, in fact, help me find the identity of my roses. (The nursery from which I got them had had them for quite a while and had lost their information.)

"Waa-aaaaah! Fuck!"

Cover art for The Bone Key is up at Amazon.

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Also, after six days, we have heat again.

So, Wednesday night our furnace died.

Our oil-burning, asbestos-swaddled furnace.

Thursday (starting at a quarter after midnight) and Friday, when not gallivanting about with heresluck, were spent largely on the phone, calling people to come look at the furnace, to come look at the asbestos, to deal with the asbestos, to install a new furnace, etc. etc. etc. I'm in fact still trying to find someone to come pump out the fuel tank. On the other hand, the new gas furnace should be arriving with its entourage in about half an hour, and that's good, because we have space heaters and the house holds its heat remarkably well, all things considered, but the thermostat says 54 this morning, and I'm cold.

You will not be surprised to learn that we had four-cat bed-and-heater detente most of yesterday afternoon.

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Short review of The Virtu, and ditto of Mélusine.

Review of The Virtu at myshelf.com.

A thoughtful review of Mélusine.

oldcharliebrown quotes the IROSF review of Clarkesworld Magazine 1.

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The Bone Key is available for preorder from Clarkesworld.

I'm on a sort of vacation this week, because I realized Saturday, about a step and a half shy of a meltdown, that I am SICK TO DEATH of editing and revising--having done, it feels like, nothing else for the past three years--and that therefore finishing up the last pass through A Companion to Wolves could damn well wait.

So this week has been me doing a lot of nothing. For that particular writer's definition of "nothing" that means "no progress on the things that have actual deadlines and commitments." (Ignore The Sidhe Tigers flirting madly in the corner. It's a tease.) And mostly this week has been genuine nothing. Which means--you guessed it--I'm getting bored. Not quite bored enough to be virtuous (i.e., finish the pass through ACtW), but bored enough that I actually have the itch to be writing again.

And not two thoughts in my head that can be put together into a sentence of fiction.

We all have our own versions of Catch-22.

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In other news--

I used to think that kitten snot was the most tenaciously revolting substance in the world.

I was wrong.

Decades-old floor wax wins hands down.

The Mirador, Chapter 16: 6,480 words

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We now reach the point in our programme where I have to rejigger the plot on account of having lost my head in the first draft and never gotten it back. (This is the most complicatedly plotty thing I have ever written. Note to self: Don't do that again.)

Fortunately for me, I have matociquala, who's not only willing to say, "Yanno, this doesn't make any sense," but also to listen while I wail and thrash, and to help me get it right. So I know, more or less, what needs to happen. Now I just have to write it.

Watch that first step. It's a doozy.

On the other hand, this is the climax, and it's this and the denoument, and then the draft is done. And I have my little list of things to correct (with more doubtless to come as mirrorthaw progresses through the draft), but I'm very close to the point where, if my editor called me tomorrow and said, "I need the ms. Right. Now." I could give it to her and not have a cataclysmic hissy fit about it, either. We're not there yet, but I can see it from where I stand.

(In other news: wax. Definitely wax. 100 year old wax, even. Tra la.)

The Mirador, Chapter 15: 10,384 words

Three cheers for momentum, and for being able to just CUT things that aren't helping.

mirrorthaw and I also made some progress on the stairs. Tomorrow I'm going to try heresluck's baking-soda-and-hot-water idea.