Category Archives: Diary

Rewards

I sent the Undead Manuscript back to the publisher at four-thirty yesterday afternoon. My deadline was next Monday. So there.

Then because I resented having my day’s plans put on hold, I went downtown to shop and buy birthday gifts. It was odd to walk down Ste Catherine Street and hear most people speaking English. This is a phenomenon that occurs only during the Stanley Cup playoffs.

I was also reminded why I don’t like people very much. They’re rude and classless and superficial and self-centered.

Aside from gifts for others, to reward myself for a nasty day I popped into Lush and picked up two bath bombs, one a lovely rose-scent and the other the new Reynard dans les Fleurs scent – Fox in the Flowers. (For those who don’t know, I’m as obsessed with foxes as I am with owls.) It’s as close as I can get to new-mown hay, being severely allergic to all of Nature, and it felt heavenly last night.

Then in HMV I bought the new Susie Arioli Band album, and, er, the newly released Guns’n’Roses Greatest Hits collection. (You know you’re an eclectic music-lover when you bring home two contrasting CDs like this.) I blame ProsperosDaughter and t! for the latter purchase; t! for my original immersion in this sort of stuff, and ProsperosDaughter for bringing the Motley Crue tape along on our last trip to Toronto and reminding me of 80s rock. I also managed to forget yet again that I have an HMV gift certificate left over from Christmastime.

Apart from nasty insomnia last night, I’m feeling pretty okay today. There’s a friendly celebratory brunch for my goddaughter this morning, which I’m looking forward to immensely. Life may get bumpy, but there’s always two-year-olds with birthdays to make things better.

Pride

Our level 3 students led a fabulous ritual yesterday, aided by four brave level 2 students. My new favourite must-have ritual tool is a shredder. (You just had to be there.)

I enjoyed the afternoon immensely. For once I wasn’t stressed out about packing too much into the day, so I could relax and actually appreciate the school ritual. Before the rit, I was cornered by two of my level 3s so that they could apologise for the chaos of the oils & incense class two weeks ago. I tried to reassure them, reminded them that I was ill that weekend, pointed out that there’s a reason why making oils and incenses are supposed to be held in two separate classes; but they insisted that no, the class as a whole has to remember that the teachers have a ton of information that we’re trying to get across to them in a limited amount of time, and that class isn’t a social event or a place to kick back and relax. By the end, they had convinced me. (They weren’t going to take no as an answer anyway, so it’s a good thing I agreed.)

See, I believe that class does have a social aspect to it, and that it is a time to relax a bit while being focused. However, these students do have an excellent point: there has to be a balance between the enjoyable aspect and the discipline and respect necessary to work within a time frame and with educators.

So I’m very proud of all of my students this weekend, for a variety of reasons. My Saturday class hit upon a comprimise that allowed them to participate within discussion of modern religion at last, and it was fantastic; the ritual was marvellous; and there were several private exchanges on Sunday afternoon that impressed me with how mature and determined my students are.

And after it all, I got to spend a wonderful evening with my husband’s family. No one barbecues inch-thick pork chops with homemade sauce like my father-in-law!

Neil Stephenson and Satin Spike Heels

It’s been a while since I updated my reading list. I’m now enjoying Zodiac, a vintage Neil Stephenson. I really like his early work. I’m the only person I know who’s read The Big U.

I’m currently munching rice cakes. While people might surmise that this might have something to do with shaping up my physique for my annual body-skimming superhero costume, it’s nothing so health- (or fashion-) conscious: I just like the little spiced styrofoam disks. I’m weird that way.

Speaking of superhero costumes, I found the wickedest red satin spike heels with ribbon lacing today at the Le Chateau outlet. I also found the perfect top and skirt to kit-bash to make my costume, which I will pick up when the bank thaws my money at the beginning of May. (Yes, “thaws;” Ceri and t! came up with the term as an alternative to “unfreezes”). Hey, if it cuts down on the amount of sewing I have to do, and the cost ends up being approximately the same as material plus sewing-machine hours would be, I’m all for pre-fab costume elements. I’ll actually be picking up two skirts, one to wear and the other for extra material to with which to do other nifty costume stuff. Everything will require modification, but modification will take significantly less time than kit-bashing a pattern and sewing it from scratch.

The shoes are just so damn funky. The heels are hilarious. The idea of me in spike heels just makes me giggle helplessly, especially woven satin spike heels with ribbon lacing all the way up the calf. I’ll never wear them again, but for nine bucks, I couldn’t resist.

By the way, go to CBC’s Great Canadians contest and vote. Canadians are cool. Molson says so, but we knew the truth long before the commercials told everyone else, didn’t we.

Spellcrafting for Life, by Me

To everyone who has asked, “Series editor? That’s great, but when are you publishing your own book?”, I say:

Spring 2005.

Yes. My book on spellcrafting in the For Life series will hit the shelves around this time next year. My contract arrives sometime this week.

Trish Telesco, the first choice for author, was unfortunately occupied (I love you, Trish, and not just because you were contracted elsewhere; after two strikes while trying to contract you, I promise we will work together during this series eventually!). My two in-house editor colleagues at the publisher looked at one another and said, “Why not Autumn? She knows her stuff, writes well, writes quickly, and it just makes sense to have the series editor put out one or two books in the series.” (As in, more than one? Sure!)

They called me last Thursday and asked if I’d be interested in drawing up a proposal for it. (Thank goodness Ceri was here to confirm it had actually happened.) After random dazed moments of “This isn’t real,” I mulled it over on my short Easter jaunt to my parents’ home, and wrote a dynamic proposal Monday morning. It went through a publishing board meeting today, and the whole pub team is terribly excited and wants me to do it, with no revision to the proposal whatsoever. I just got the call.

I knew I would publish work at some point in my life; I just always expected it to be fiction first. After all, that’s what I write more than anything else.

So, yeah. Me, a published author in twelve months, give or take a few days.

I know there’s a celebratory Vanilla Coke around here somewhere.

It’s A Girl!

I have a new baby sister!

Her name is Cordelia, and I get to meet her this weekend.

Yes, my parents now have three Maine Coone cats. My husband joked about the value of their purebred cats almost paying off his remaining student loan. I responded with the observation that it would be difficult to fit three cats in an envelope addressed to the bank.

Well, it would.

Blue Monday

Yesterday started off so well, and gradually went further and further downhill as I overextended myself, thinking that this second spring cold was beaten. It didn’t help that we had a very high-energy hands-on class on making oils and incenses on Sunday afternoon, which resulted in trying to rein in eight excited adults, and ended with someone saying, “Well, this was a great class, except…”. I’m really tired of back-handed compliments. What’s wrong with saying, “I had a lot of fun. Thanks! By the way, next time could you give us a bit more warning? I really had to scramble to assemble the supplies for this.” I uncharacteristically physically turned around and walked away from the back-handed compliment because (a) it wasn’t my fault, and (b) I’d spent the past two hours repeating myself because not everyone was listening when I imparted the original information. I lost my patience. Passive-aggressive feedback does absolutely no good at all, and I wish more people understood that. It’s patronising and manipulative, and I see right through it. Coming from a student, no matter how they might think their five more years of age gives them an edge over their teacher, it’s even more insulting, both to me and to the student. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to realise that it damages them.

I missed a game last night because the afternoon’s class wore me out. I took an over-the-counter sleeping pill, stuck my earplugs in to counter the thumping bass from upstairs, and woke up eleven hours later. I have even less of a voice than I did when I went to bed, which is making me grumpy. I also discovered that the two hour TV program t! asked me to tape for him taped the wrong channel. I am not in a particularly great mood.

This weekend did have good bits, though: for example, we had a terrific dinner with Tal on Saturday night, where we made Ceri’s fabulous and eeeeeevil pudding. The second half of the Saturday class was fun to watch, after my whispered lecture on the very basic highlights of Mesoamerican, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian religion. (Note to self: your customary dynamism is completely sabotaged when you are forced to whisper, rendering the class lifeless and dull.) And I must say that the eleven hours of sleep last night were high up on the List of Good Things, considering my recent sleep scores, even if those eleven hours were drug-induced.

I have a Reiki workshop to attend tonight, to which I’m very much looking forward. And I think I’ll spend the day researching and making notes for this Brid project, which seems to be evolving into a dialogue between contemporary views of the Neo-Pagan goddess and the attributions found in achaeological and literary work.

At least, that was the plan until the manuscript for the second book in this ongoing series just fell into my inbox with the request to write a foreword attached. I work tomorrow, and they want it by Wednesday, so it looks like I’m working for the publisher again today, as I did every single day last week. (I know I swore that I was taking Friday off – I lied. I worked on checking the first half of the other manuscript that was sent back to me by the first author.)

I just keep telling myself that this book is atypical, and by the end of this week when I’ve checked the second half of those rewrites and sent it back to the publisher, it will all be over until I do a final galley read-through somewhere down the line.

All I want to do is curl up with a cat under an afghan, have someone bring me soup for lunch, and read books with my sticky tabs, a notebook, and a highlighter by my side. That’s all.