1. Thank you to everyone who has expressed enthusiasm for the podcast of Chapter 2. I was surprised and very pleased at how happy it seems to make people.

2. I would be more impressed with the Oxford World's Classics collection of M. R. James stories, and with Michael Chabon's introduction thereto, if someone had noticed that Chabon gets the name of the main character of "'Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad'" wrong.

2a. Someone could probably do something interesting with James' "The Malice of Inanimate Objects" and Robert Benchley's essay on the same theme. Same starting point, and even some of the same tone, but radically different effects.

3. Two short story rejections in two days, both for very good reasons. I am baffled and disheartened at how easily I seem to have slid from writing good short stories to writing short stories that don't work--if I manage to write short stories at all. Also, I am trunking the zombie coyotes until they give me more story in their story.

3a. "Baffled and disheartened" is a pretty good description of how I feel about my writing and my career in general these days.

3b. Don't mind me. I'll just stand here in the rain and eat thistles.

4. As John Scalzi points out, Carl Sagan's Cosmos is available on Hulu.

5. I can't even think of a fifth thing, so have two videos of cats being, well, cats. The first is cute (and with extra bonus fennec!); the second is hilarious. My heart belongs to Bag Cat.

I need to write a Storytellers Unplugged post today, and I cannot for the life of me think of a topic. Anyone who wants to offer one will be hailed as a Hero of the Revolution. Anyone whose idea I actually use gets a statue in their honor in the Square of the Glorious Dawn.

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Many thanks to sasha_feather and jesse_the_k and the two other people whose LJ names I don't know for coming to the Q&A yesterday. I appreciate an audience. *g*

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I am told that I have four stories listed in the Honorable Mentions of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror XXI: "The Bone Key," "Listening to Bone," "Somewhere Beneath Those Waves Was Her Home," and "Under the Beansidhe's Pillow." Two of those are Artist's Challenge pieces (thank you, elisem!). The other two are from The Bone Key, and since "Drowning Palmer" actually made the cut for YBFHXX, I guess I can feel pretty good about that collection of stories.

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I am Eeyore today. With possibility of emo. I find this very tiresome.

Also? I do not need to dream about being exasperated with people. In the unlikely event that I have an exasperation deficiency . . . well, that's what Al Gore invented the Internet for.

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Q: ( spoilers for The Mirador )

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The poll winner seems to be The Emperor of the Elflands. Which, by a happy coincidence, is--of the three--the closest to being finished. So I guess I'd better get to work on that GAPING PLOT HOLE. Tra la la lally.

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ETA: cristalia has saved my bacon this month. However, since I'll have to do this again next month (and the month after that and so on and so forth), please feel free to offer more suggestions for things you'd like to see me write about.

ETA 2: and blogged

So, for reasons known to no one (bad brain chemistry? bad conjunction of planets?) I am having a lousy day, with that special Eeyore kind of glumness that feels like standing up to your ankles in cold mud while rain drips down the back of your neck and you wait for the bus to take you to the first day back from Christmas vacation of your eighth grade year.

Yeah. That.

Ergo, I was doing, for my own dim entertainment, the meme that heresluck just posted about (Jungle Jim would be the name of my band, and the album would be Phone Calls Taper Off, in case you were wondering), and the quote up from the Johnny Carson quote that produced the album title was this:

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
--Andy Warhol

And that is so goddamned true I had to post it.