Day: January 15, 2009

This year there is a special Hugo award category for “Best Graphic Story.” The section of the Schlock Mercenary serial that is eligible for this award is Schlock Mercenary: The Body Politic. We’ve created a pdf for anyone who wants to review The Body Politic before deciding on their nominations. The pdf is 35 mb and can be found here. Anyone who attended Denvention (Worldcon in 08) or who has a membership to Anticipation (Worldcon 09) is eligible to nominate works for the Hugo awards. You can print out a nominating ballot here. Or you can register your nominations online here. Remember your ballot has to be received before March 1 and it is going to Canada, so you won’t want to delay. You’ll also need your membership number either from Denvention or Anticipation. The membership number should be in the confirmation email you received when you registered.

When nominating, keep in mind the many other worthy works which are also eligible for this category. (Girl Genius Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones by Phil and Kaja Foglio and Rapunzel’s Revenge by Shannon, Dean, and Nathan Hale, both spring to mind.) I hope that everyone who nominates for the Hugo awards only nominates those works they feel are truly worthy. We do not want to advocate any sort of ballot stuffing.

A hearty good luck to all my friends and acquaintances who have works eligible for Hugo awards. I hope you all do well.

I store things in my brain, thoughts, memories, fragments of stories, topics for blogging, lists, schedules. Sometimes I accumulate too much and I need to dump it all somewhere so I can stop trying to keep it in the brain space that I need to use for working, writing, parenting. What follows is a dump of random things from my brain, many of which could have made excellent individual blog entries if my brain weren’t too cluttered for cohesive writing.

There are many advantages to being married to your business partner. There are disadvantages too. Howard and I have to work hard not to create stress feedback loops. This is particularly difficult at times such as now, when we’re in crunch mode to send the next book off for printing. As business manager my focus is on the needs of the project. As wife my focus is on the need of my husband. It gets tricky when the business manager places requirements on Howard that make him stressed. I end up feeling guilty for causing the stress even though I understand that the stress is necessary. Additionally, Howard’s moods affect mine and vice versa. We are as careful to keep frustrations clearly labeled as business related as we are to keep business and personal funds separate. This helps us keep our marriage happy even when the business is stressful.

Why do they put safety seals on bottles of bleach? I’m not talking about the Push Down Then Turn caps, of which I approve, but those little paper seals that you tear off to open the bottle. I’m honestly not really worried that someone might put something toxic into my bleach.

In the last couple of days I have: contacted the printer to start the process for the next book. Sent files to the guy who prints our posters, so we can get some new posters into the store. Decided that I need more time tweaking text before I’m ready to launch another picture book project. Quickly put together a pdf file of Schlock Mercenary: The Body Politic so that people can peruse it before deciding who to nominate for the Hugo award. (That will actually get its very own blog post once I have brainspace clear to do it.) Decided to delay some marketing activities until after we’ve sent OFU off for printing. Contacted various people about various business transactions and deals. Prepped OFU so that I can do copy editing. Neglected to do laundry. Managed to cook dinner from scratch because I’m trying not to spend money. Most of the preceeding took place after I spent most of Wednesday morning sleeping. It turns out that I’m much more capable and the world is much less bleak when I’ve actually had enough sleep.

It feels like my head has been full ever since school started up two weeks ago. I keep reading other people’s blog posts or comments and responding, but then I realize later that the response only exists in my brain. I never actually expressed the responses out loud. I suspect this is a function of limited energy.

And now it is time for me to pick up kids from school.