Tech read done! Cover letter also done! And it’s all been sent in!
Great book. I hate being nitpicky, though, because I know how the author feels when they get the edits. Your book is good, except….
Now I’m going to walk away from the computer for a bit.
I keep reading “native Celtic deity” as “naive Celtic diety”.
And I want to stab every single comma. Stabbity stabbity stab. I am in an anti-comma mood today.
This has nothing to do with the MS itself; it’s a wonderful and very solid book. And I envy this author’s ability to write meditations. They’re incredible.
Twenty pages to go! Then a second read-through to make sure I didn’t miss anything and all my comments are in order, polish up the overview memo, and away it goes. Then I can return to ESTC.
Tarasmas was a phenomenal success this year, as in previous years. This one, however, was particularly poignant (it saw the final chapter of the Dickens Carter saga), ambitious (the production of four (four!) radio dramas), and multi-layered (the inclusion of an overarching metastory of backstage production). We enjoyed a PI story, a soap opera, a horror story, and a superhero story, all linked together by the director character, a main actor character, the narrator character, and the stage manager character.
t! is a genius, of course. He’s a brilliant writer (something I can honestly say is common among the people I know, and it’s not just because a lot of them make a living by doing it), has excellent sense of casting, a beautiful understanding of what his audience wants and can take, and, above all, a real desire to entertain and share his birthday with forty other people.
ADZO put it this way:
It’s a unique experience, what t! has done with Tarasmas. The idea of participating and watching, of being and not being part of the show, plus the self-organizing chaos surrounding everything is special.
For those who aren’t familiar with Tarasmas, it’s the celebration of the inestimable t!’s birthday. t! writes two to three hours’ worth of radio dramas, and casts the attendees of the party in various roles. A very few people get a script ahead of the evening itself, if they have a very large role or a part that requires tricky delivery. In general, however, people get their scripts a half-hour before they go on the stage, and never do they get a script for the entire evening (unless, again, they require one, such as those who are on every page or so), for that would spoil the fun.
t! rents the hall, provides drinks, everyone brings snacks and specific beverages if they desire them, and away we go.
It’s a hilarious way to spend the evening. There are inside jokes, genre send-ups, homages, and the fun of seeing people enjoy themselves on and off the stage. The most touching thing, however, is knowing that this is t!’s gift to us, every year. The planning, writing (this year clocked in at somewhere around 21K of words), and execution are handled by t! (now with the support of his lovely assistant ai731), in a beautiful turnabout of the birthday tradition.
We love Tarasmas. We get to see people we don’t see very often. We get to act. We get to laugh until we cry. We get to appreciate the artistry of the writing, the talent of everyone involved, and the giant conglomeration of history and source culture behind it all. And we embrace the opportunity to celebrate a dear friend.
Happy birthday, t!. And thank you for everything that you give us, both at this time of year and the other three hundred and sixty four days. Life would be the poorer for us all without you.
Total word count, ESTC: 40,035
Total words today and yesterday: 1,508
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|
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40,035 / 50,000
(80.1%) |
Yikes; less than 10K to go. At least there now exist three pages’ worth of Chapter Two.
Like some others, I am working today. This is one of the blessing/curses of the freelancer and the self-employed: you can work on the weekend to make up for lost time during the week. Of course, the other side of the coin is that sometimes you have to work on weekends when you really don’t want to.
Everyone slept in till eight o’clock this morning, which was absolutely delightful although not likely to become a regular thing. We went out to the craft shop where I picked up beeswax (finally!), new votive molds, and wick tabs. Then we picked up three new fish to add to Liam’s aquarium, three because we usually have a death rate of one within twenty-four hours, which would leave us with a total of one old and two new fish. There were two Abyssinian cats at the pet shop, lovely ruddy Abyssinians who were probably around eight months old. I wanted them, of course, but not as badly as I wanted the little green parrot-type bird who flirted with me through the glass of his cage. I so adore birds. I should stop looking at them in shops, because I fall in love with them and they with me and everyone’s heartbroken when I leave. Liam was positively ecstatic about the huge waterfall/koi pond whose front glass wall was as tall as he was. He could peek over the top at the surface of the water, or crouch down and stare at the fish eye to eye. Big fish, too, some of them half his size. And we saw tiny tiny little corn snakes, about the size of a pencil! They were adorable, and it was hard to believe that they would eventually be the size of the six-foot corn snakes upstairs. Of course, we have to go out again once Liam is awake, because I’ve just discovered that my printer’s ink cartridge is dead.
Tarasmas tonight! I have a lovely role in a serious radio drama. And I have a pot of stew on, which is making the whole house smell cosy and defended against the grey and sometimes-rainy afternoon outside.
Liam has now been asleep for two hours. If we can keep him busy till lunch then put him to bed right afterwards, he really embraces the whole one-long-nap thing. And… he just woke up!
I’m getting tired of typing “Eileithyia” out. It’s not intuitive, for some reason, and it brings my train of thought to a screeching halt as I work.
I had the winter tires put on this morning, and while it was being done I sat in a cafe for two hours with my books and notebooks and worked. Not only did I get some goddess research done, I plotted out the end of The Moments of Being Pandora. It’s taken almost exactly two years, but I finally figured out how it ends properly. And about time, too. It was annoying me.
My hands are cold, and it’s making typing difficult. The rest of the house isn’t cold, but my hands are. Go figure. Maybe I should dig out an extra pair of cheap magic gloves and cut off the fingers, like I did years ago when I worked in the local F/SF bookstore (RIP) which wasn’t heated in the winter.
Forty-ish pages left to go on this tech read. I’m pretty relaxed when it comes to doing tech reads on others’ books — after all, so much is subjective in the realm of alternative spirituality — but still, there are things I read that make me scratch my head. It’s usually a result of the author thinking one thing and the phrasing indicating something different, which isn’t immediately obvious to the person writing because they know what they meant. Been there, so understand that.
I updated Firefox this afternoon and consequently lost the ability to view a bunch of web pages. I allowed this to lurk in the background of my mind as I collected the boy from daycare and by the time he was eating dinner the common element between them all had become clear. I sat down and clicked through the Options until I found the Java and Javascript radio buttons, clicked them on, and all’s well again.
Also, I have discovered BitTorrent.
Liam had his first bubble bath last night. Hilarity ensued as he repeatedly ducked the ducks under the bubbles then let them go, giggling as they rose from the depths. Splashing is also more fun in a bubble bath, because he can’t see exactly where the surface of the water is.
I’ve been remarkably cold these past couple of days. I’d forgotten how damp and chilly my office gets in fall and winter. I have to remember to wear slippers and have a cardigan handy. I may find a small rug for under the desk itself; that would help too.
We watched the first episode of the second season of BSG a couple of nights ago (yes, we are way, waaay behind; no cable, remember?). Blade lent us the entire second season on DVD, so I think we’ll be watching another episode tonight.
We lost a fish today. She somehow got her tail stuck in the intake for the filter, and we surmise that while wriggling desperately to get herself out she managed to kind of crush her back end and wedge herself in more firmly. ‘Twas a goodly fish, though dumb (hello, goldfish?), and we will replace her this weekend. Most likely with two fish, because three seems to be a good number for Liam’s tank.
That is all for now.
