Later

Toilet, yes. Sink, no. (It's a weird brand of fixture, with hard-to-get parts. He's going to talk to his wholesaler.) And then I went and ran a bunch of small errands, picked up Cal, and promptly lost my friggin' Metropass with ten days remaining 'til the end of the month. Perfect time to do it, though, I guess--as people keep telling me.

Otherwise: Watched The Town this evening, and made curry. Both were excellent, if Ben Affleck and me might say so ourselves.

But...it's late, and though there are many other things to discuss, I'm tired. So--tomorrow? It's a date.;)

Wondersday

Christmas lurking ever nearer, even as we speak. Today brought a beautifully thoughtful review of Lovecraft Unbound from greatalexanders, which included this:

Marya Nox by Gemma Files
The Christian overtones to this story, and the wonderful historicity of the pagan/Christian synthesis, is something I can’t help but love; and the fact that it’s involved in a fantastic story by Files, a small-scale tale of an unknown, nameless power replaced (sort-of) by Christianised worship is brilliant. Indeed, the format of the piece – an interview, retrospective – lends it a certain power; and the whole thing is just amazing.

...so naturally, a very happy-making discovery. I truly do love that story, not least because Fr. Wale Oja is one of my favourite recurring characters. If and when I can jumpstart the longer-form stuff involving Judy Kiss, most specifically Last Things, he'll definitely have a role to play.

And yeah, I need to start thinking about that project in practical terms, along with everything else. This was a pretty good year for me, overall: I saw my novel released, realized slowly but happily that it was becoming (fairly) successful, then built on that success. The process of writing Part Two in the Hexslinger Series has been odd, often haphazard, but highly educative. Now I see Part Three looming in front of me, though, along with the Rope of Thorns edit (which it needs, believe you me), and that's even scarier. I have to think of it in terms of having already introduced a crap-load of characters and set them in motion; if I just follow all their various plot-threads to their logical conclusions, it should work out, right? (Right.)

Short fiction, meanwhile, was a bit more frustrating. Had to default on one deadline, which annoys me, and "[Anasazi]" (monster that it is) has now been turned down by three separate places, including the one which originally asked for it. I've never been able to place "Signal to Noise" anywhere. The gem of the year was "Some Kind of Light Shines from Your Face", which was an absolute breeze from request to idea to writing to editing to acceptance. Second place goes to "The Shrines", definitely.

Going even smaller, "Copy Degredation", my first piece of outright flash, got into Black Static as a Campaign for Real Fear entry--I've very proud of that. And yes, I wrote some poetry, but no--aside from selling “Jar of Salts” to the Goblin FRuit-edited issue of Mythic Delirium--I didn't place any of it anywhere. Then again, I didn't send a lot of it out, either. I should do more of that next year.

The actual tally, then, as follows:

2010: Words Written

Novels
A Rope of Thorns: Volume Two of the Hexslinger Series (126,967)

Novellas/Novelettes
"[Anasazi]" (15,091)

Short Stories
"Some Kind of Light Shines from Your Face" (6,450)
"The Shrines" (3,081)
"Signal to Noise" (6,321)

Flash
"Copy Degredation" (500)

Poetry
“Bad Fathers” (132)
“Lie-father” (331)
“Bits and Pieces” (288)
“La Monadologie” (467)
“Sacred” (116)

Plus a bunch of supplemental stuff for Music at Midnight, each section probably clocking in at 1,000 or 2,000 words plus, for...let’s call it 9,000 words. Final count: 169,332, give or take...and that’s without factoring in all the blogging.;) Not bad, considering I was also reading for the Sunburst Awards, the ChiZine Short Story Contest and the Shirley Jackson Awards, and doing intermittent bursts of CZP slush. But next year, it’ll have to be even better...

Okay, I need to get that laundry folded, and pry Cal away from Treehouse, which he's been watching since 9:00 A.M. See ya.