Finished!

I have just returned the copy-edits/rewrites for the Pagan Pregnancy book. Go me! Finished in under a day, with a minimum of trauma and angst! Okay, that may have been because I let the suggestions and questions and deletions brew in my subconscious for a week… but whatever and however, it is done and I am awesome.

For the first time in a while I feel like I actually did some work, as if I accomplished something. I’m having so much trouble settling into the hearthcraft book — it doesn’t feel coherent or cohesive yet, and every time I sit down to work at it feels like a struggle — so this was a relief. I never thought I’d see the day where I thought handling copy-edits for a book I’d written were a relief.

The next time I see this should be when the Fed Ex delivery person hands me the box of page proofs.

Reimagining Classic Design

When luthiers say that the basic design for the violin family of stringed instruments hasn’t changed in four centuries and talk about ways to improve upon it, this isn’t exactly the kind of redesign they mean.

In a clever feat of musical ingenuity, an orchestra playing instruments created entirely from car parts performs the soundtrack to the new Ford Focus television commercial. […]

Milbrodt’s team took apart a Ford Focus five-door hatchback that had, literally, just come off the production line. “When we got it to the mechanics shop, it had less than a mile on the clock. We took the doors and fenders off, but we had the body shell intact and we later cut out of that the parts we wanted,” said Bill Milbrodt.

By the time the orchestra had been assembled for the photo shoot at Universal Studios in California, Milbrodt’s team had constructed 31 instruments. Each has a name that instantly identified its origins, such as the Transmission Case Cello-Dulcimer, Clutch Guitar, Rear Suspension Spike Fiddle, Fender Bass, Hatchback Kick Drum, Handheld Gear Tambourine and Door Harp.

No doubt the commercial will be uploaded to YouTube the night it airs, or maybe it will be available on the Ford web site.

I wonder what it’s like to play.

(Did you notice the bow? It’s a windshield wiper.)

Grawr

I’ve had three virtual baskets of second-hand and new research books waiting for me at on-line retailers since early December. I couldn’t order them because we didn’t have the money at the time.

Today I skipped about paying bills with merry abandon, and then I went to confirm and place the book orders.

All but one of the second-hand ones had sold. And they sold within the last two weeks, too, because I checked at the beginning of January when I went back to writing the hearthcraft book, to make sure they were still there.

This makes me cranky. I’ve used an hour and a half of time trying to track down affordable replacement copies. I’ve given up in three cases; I’m waiting to hear shipping quotes from two sellers on eBay for another.

Life would be so much simpler if I wrote about things about which libraries carried books, so I could just borrow my research material instead of trying to find it in odd corners of the world.

On the other hand, now I also get to place orders for gifts, which were also put on hold for a while. So there is much pleasure in that.

Outrageous Fortune

That lovely USD advance cheque? I lost $50 on the exchange rate.

ARGH!

There’s a huge psychological difference between $X000 and $X000 – $50; it takes that number in the thousands column and knocks it down a whole step, making it feel like a thousand less when it’s really not. I depend on that extra fifty to couple of hundred dollars the exchange rate brings me on my small to medium-sized US cheques to spoil myself with a book or a sweater or something. Stupid exchange rate, bouncing above and below parity. When I looked the day before I got the cheque — which makes it two days ago now — the exchange rate would have made me a hundred-ish dollars. Boo.

But I found two Easter Creme Eggs on my desk when I came home just now, so all is well again.

And I read this on Metaquotes, too, and it made me laugh:

Klingon Kittens

They have a very tribblish trilling noise. But they wrestle all the time, like Klingons on leave. OMG, My house has been invaded by Klingon Tribbles! “We are mighty kitten warriors! purr purrr purrrr! Bring us more kitten blood wine while we wrestle and do other adorable warrior things.”

I wonder what Klingon is for “Today is a good day to — oooohhhhh string!”

A Sparkly Happy Day For The Author

Not only did my advance cheque arrive this morning (YAY! — insert cartwheeling and planning of many cheques to be written and bills to be paid here), but my editor just e-mailed me to say that Pagan Pregnancy got a short write-up in the latest Publisher’s Weekly as a forthcoming title. Nothing huge, just a mention and a synopsis, but it’s there and that is a very good thing.

Meer Meer Meer

I give up; this afternoon has been a write-off, as I was afraid it would be. There are now 20,052 words in the MS. I’m tired and achy and I need to lie down for half an hour before I go get the boy. I have no idea what to do for dinner; my dinner-from-nothing mojo has been exhausted.

It’s orchestra again tonight, and I have no idea how it got to be Wednesday. The cello hasn’t even come out of its case.