handful_ofdust

I've obviously been really bad at this thus far, but...the con was great, particularly in terms of who I met, who I reconnected with, etc. There was a bit of drinking, even from me: Steve got really overextended at the ChiZine party, which sets him apart from everybody else not at all, but led to him puking all night and aggravating his hernia. The next night, we went out to a very sexy local absinthe bar called Peche and I had two cocktails--a Lucid, plus a Corpse-Reviver #2. Kept myself well-hydrated, and enjoyed how the vaguely hallucinatory kick made everything look step-printed, as though we'd suddenly slipped sideways into a Wong Kar-wai film. We also bought a crap-/ass-load of books, which was probably fairly stupid, but hard to avoid. I did manage not to pick up anything from Centipede Press, which I regret, but there's a reason most of their stock costs $40.00 U.S. a pop.

People I particularly enjoyed talking to include Robert Jackson Bennet, who I was a ridiculous fangirl around (read The Company Man! And Mr. Shivers! Because they ROCK!), Sarah Langan, Brian Keene, Jack Ketchum, Peter Straub (briefly), Joe Hill and everybody else on my "Why Horror Movies Suck" panel, Jesse Bullington, Molly Tanzer, Livia Llewellyn, all the people who went to Peche, Rain Graves, Benjamin Kane Ethridge, Amanda Downum and Elizabeth Bear, Stephen Graham Jones, John Langan and Paul Tremblay, plus the usual ChiZine suspects and (of course) Kenneth Mark Hoover. I know I'm forgetting lots of people, mainly ones I'd never met before, and apologize profusely because A) there were no bad conversations, and B) I just wish I'd had more time with everybody. Probably should've taken notes, but it was sort of my vacation.;)

It's just so nice to be around people who share your interests, especially when those interests are as eccentric and insular as mine tend to be. I learned things I hadn't known already, too, and that's always nice. But yes, I could've done without the disruption in our travel schedule, which returned us right on the cusp of several fairly important things, thus meaning I would spend the rest of the week (as I have) playing catch-up. And I also wish I'd known about the Stokers being split off into a weekend of their own this year beforehand, though that's entirely my fault.

Now, however, I'm back, and I need to get myself up to speed. Sold "Black Bush" (to the first market I tried, no less), so that's great. Stuff on the radar now includes:

--Writing that "Hex City, Here We Come" essay for Music at Midnight.
--Getting a Body Horror story up off the ground by next Friday.
--Continuing with "Furious Angels", a Five-Family Coven story I added 2,000 words to this morning/last night. Want to bet this one eventually tops out at 10,000 words too?
--Transcribing a bunch of Tree of Bones notes that came to me on the plane, and getting officially back on the damn horse vis-a-vis regular word-count rockage in that direction.
--Doing a detailed, accurate bibliography of my work thus far, which I started thinking about because someone--Fred Isajenko, I think--was telling me about a bibliography they'd just signed on to do. This may prove harder than you might think, because just yesterday, I remembered two whole projects I'd done back when I was 15-to-17 and 18-to-19, respectively; theatrical projects for which I received acclaim and/or money, one of which was stolen by friends of mine and put on up at Brock University without my permission. I mean, think about that: I simply forgot about them, completely. Not even factoring in all the stuff I've done over the years that never saw the light of day at all (y hello thar, Marjorie Bowen's Black Magic), what about eight years' worth of eye Weekly reviews and articles that now only exist in physical copy, shoved into three massive binders? To bad I don't have a scanner.
--I also, as I've said before, need to update my Wikipedia entry to embrace the Hexslinger stuff, and possibly submit a sub-entry that covers that in detail. Any help anyone would like to give me would be greatly appreciated, because I'm shitty at stuff like this.

And...I need to go to the doctor and get my anti-inflammatory prescription changed because they aren't working like they used to, plus I'm all out of them, anyways. But that can't happen 'til Monday, so I guess I'll just have to suck it up.

Good to be back, though. Good to see Cal, crazy as he is. Good to be home.