Paper-like displays without flicker!

A former cello-ist turned guitarist rants about Pachabel’s Canon.

I haven’t posted for real in a while because I’ve been frantically writing and working on the house, but Merry Christmas, everybody!

Something’s wrong with me. I find this funny: PSA with Darth Vader.

A French puppeteer.

Don’t put your cell phone through the washing machine. It won’t survive.

EDIT: Comment of evil DH, who was almost snorting with laughter:

“Honey, I know the instructions said you’re supposed wash your cell phone with a rag if it is dirty. However, you’ just supposed to take a damp rag and wipe your cell phone with it, not throw it into the washer with a dirty rag.”

I love you too, darling. And I won’t tell anyone any of you recent CAR incidents. *ahem*

…that SHADOWS will have the worst number of typos yet. It’s almost inhuman how many I’m making. This will be such a nightmare to copyedit.

On another note, in Feb, I’m going to give away ARCs of…darnit…um…VOICES (Good grief. I can’t keep the names of my books straight. I am amazed that any reader can.). I have a whole lot more this time, so I actually have an appreciable number to give away. Oh, yeah–and you can play spot the two horrible discontinuities, too. *ggg* Thank goodness I caught them at the galley stage! My faux-Irish villian suddenly began speaking with a Cockney accent, and I wrote “there was no signature” just after showing a letter, you guessed it, complete with signature.

I’m glad I caught them, but it happens to even the best storytellers. *g* In Michael Critchon’s SPHERE, people are staring out of a window that had been explicitly described as being covered over and unviewable only a couple of paragraphs before, and the event that made all the windows unviewable was never rectified or heard from again. He’s so good at creating tension that I missed it the first time I read the book!

(I know my best sections of tension because my editor and copy editor both miss my typos and hideously clumsy sentences. It’s a relief when they slip because it means I’m doing something RIGHT for a change.)

I’ve read a few howlers in books I hated, but I read another blooper in a book I really loved, in which a woman arrives at a tavern in a carriage which promptly disappears from the story. I caught that one the first read-through as a teen and reread the section several times to make sure I hadn’t lost my mind.

I am FINALLY finished tiling the kitchen. Now all I need is grout and countertops, and I’ll be ready for Christmas.

Of course I like Scary Squirrel World. Seriously warped.

A while ago, I caught a “special” in which a reporter was dressed up first as a well-groomed, well-dressed, pretty woman and then as an overweight, unattractive, inappropriately dressed (think $5-hooker), nasty-haired woman. Unsurprisingly, version #2 didn’t get into a selective nightclub or waited on at the fancy store. What *I* would have like to have seen was an overweight, unattractive, well-groomed, well-dressed woman and a thin, pretty, inappropriately dressed ungroomed woman in the same situation.

It wasn’t the “fat girl’s” unattractiveness. It was her clothes and uncombed hair. If that makes people shallow, fine, but dressing appropriately for the situation is as important as good manners and hygiene. It’s a critical part of playing one’s role in society. (I’m not claiming that the pretty girl won’t be prefered over the ugly girl every time, all other things being equal. Yeah, life ain’t fair. I just mean that the reason the ugly one didn’t get service had nothing to do with her looks OR weight in this context. An expensive shop, for instance, wants customers who look like they have money and like spending it. If she’d been dressed in designer clothing, expensive makeup, and a trendy haircut, the staff would have fallen over themselves to wait on her–no matter what she looked like.)

Which is why I confiscate my husband’s torn pants…

When we’re in MD, I’m going to have to revise my wardrobe. People dress up more on the East Coast. Here, I can wear a T-shirt and worn blue jeans into a sit-down restaurant and not be the least bit out of place. There, I’d be underdressed while grocery shopping!