faster pussycat... type! type!

Hi. Time for some blog catch up. Some things I've been meaning to post.

First, it's important to mention that there are only ten more days until my sabbatical. Already, I have more planned for the three weeks off than I could ever accomplish. Which means I will probably accomplish nothing. That's usually how I work when things become overwhelming. I'll have some moving to finish, unpacking, organizing and storing to do. I want to redo the design on my blog page, and work on Satan's Bookclub. I have many books I want to read before NaNoWriMo begins. Since I am planning on writing a mystery, I wanted to do a bit of planning ahead of time. Structure, researching crime, stuff like that. Then, of course, there is the first week of NaNo itself. Plus, I have got a laundry list of things to do... things that fall under the category of "oooo... I'll get that done while I'm on sabbatical." I'm already preparing myself at work. I have to do my two Big Reports again. Early. Arrange the people who are going to back me up in certain meetings. Make sure everyone knows what needs covered and who to contact. So, to make sure that happens, someone has scheduled me to for two full days of training this week, and is sending EvilDeb off to Chicago next week. She's going to some dumb trade show. S'ok... everything will get done.

As I just mentioned, I am going to write a mystery this year, for NaNoWriMo. The working title is "Comfortably Dead." I got that from a laundry list of titles in the forums, a thread started by someone who made a random title generator. He posts a list every day. Of course, this is the second working title I've had, every day there is something better. Or funnier. One of my favorites from today was "The Gods In the Moon of Gay Women." But that doesn't really work for me. Anyway, it's just something to call the story for now. Last year I called it "Entropy." Like last year, I spend most of my time in the How to Procrastinate Effectively forum. It was mentioned yesterday, in some thread, that what we are currently doing is really Precrastination. Since the contest has not yet begun. I like that word.

Last week, Louise and I went to the "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" reading/signing. It was delightful. Susanna Clarke talked a lot about her research. How political history ends up being very boring, because it lacks all the things that a novelist would want for a story. The juicy and weird bits. You find out what Lord So and So thought about potato crops in Ireland ... or something dry like that. But you don't know if he was afraid of the color purple, or was allergic to carrots, or talked in his sleep, or hand six toes on his left foot. However, military history turned out to be very interesting. Because so much of it was written by the individuals involved in the battles. Who came home and wrote their memoirs. She explained why Northern England is probably more magical than Southern England; and why she didn't bother researching any known magicians before the medieval ages. And how she tried to use write in the same type of language and voice that Jane Austen, and authors of her time period, used. [which really is one of the most appealing parts of the book, in my opinion] I meant to ask her about the Note on Type, at the end of the book. It's one of those books that notes, at the end, what font was used in typesetting, even includes a bit of font history. But I chickened out. The question period was pretty short. So I meant to ask her when I got up to the table to have my book signed. But then I didn't want to hold up the line. In the end, I asked a woman who was responsible for event. She is an independent bookseller and book even planner. How fun is that? She said that the author was very particular about the font used for the book, because she wanted it to match the voice of the book. So we, Louise and I, told the bookseller where we worked, that fonts were our life... we lived for typography, and to please pass on to the author how much we liked books that had a Note on the Type. I guess most authors do not get much say in the font used. I imagine most authors shouldn't get much say, as they might not know beans about typography. However, Louise and I have decided that we do know beans, and when we write our books, we should get to a say in the font used**. Based on our Professional Experiences in the matter.

Speaking of books, I've been working on cleaning up my Things I've Read page. I've finished Spring and Summer of 2004. I still need to repost "Nov 03 - April 04" and "The Literary Commute" and Autumn 2004 is, of course, currently a work in progress. I've not posted any of the books I've been reading to this page. Bad Jodi. Louise would tell you that's because I've been reading Cat Mysteries and am ashamed. But Louise would be a rotten liar. Not about reading the Cat Mysteries. That's true. About being ashamed. At sometime in her past, Louise has read a Cat Mystery and did not like it. At some time in my past, I have read a Cat Mystery and thought it was awful. It had the substance, and sticky sweetness, of cotton candy. To be honest, I don't even know what "line" of Cat Mystery I read, at the time. What I have been reading lately, is different. I've enjoyed them very much. But Louise is making fun of me. That's because she sucks. I would never make fun of anything she read. I make fun of her accent, but that's different.

Additionally, I wanted to mention this web comic I've begun reading, Something Positive. It's all Ann Rice's fault. She decided to respond to the poor reviews her latest book is receiving at amazon.com. The author of Something Positive did a strip about it, or her. And this was mentioned on bookslut, which I read. So I read the comic, and I enjoyed it very much. Which meant I had to go back to the very beginning of the strip, read them in order. I think the strip started in, what... like 2001 or 2002? It took many hours. But I enjoyed them all, because if not for SP, I would have been packing. And that would have been boring and productive. I will probably add the link to the comic off in that side menu somewhere, off to your right. Eventually. It does have an XML feed, which is quite handy. I'm a big fan of those XML/RSS feed thingies.

Ummm... so I think that's enough for today. I would like to mention that Baby Moon celebrated her first birthday on Sunday. Happy Birthday Baby Moon!! [I was going to post a link to her photo gallery, but it seems to be down.]]

*one of my favorite randomly generated titles.
** don't ask me what font I would use, because I can't tell you... yet.