Regarding Entropy and the Moon

July 10

I messed with the main journal page, as you may've noticed, adding links to my bibliography, bio (courtesy of Scott) and links. Let me know if it doesn't look right or doesn't make sense or if I screwed up the code and made your browser cranky.

So today I decided to make an appointment online with the DMV, so I can take care of some car stuff. Their website is amazingly bad; it really is like a Virtual DMV. The forms don't work, operations time out, the system is intermittently "temporarily out of service..." it took me almost fifteen minutes to get my appointment.

Still faster than calling them, though.

My morning did not begin well. I overslept, for one thing, so my plan of coming into work early was foiled. I finally dragged in around 9, feeling very bleary and out-of-sorts. I also have this wild poofy clown hair for some reason. It sucks. Work isn't bad today, though. I'm making phone calls, updating contact information for our database, which is super easy.

Accomplishments: I did another read-through of "Battering Jack and the Headless Man" and sent it off. I reserved a truck for my move, and (as mentioned) made an appointment at the DMV. I found a bunch of job possibilities, and in the next couple of days I'll tweak my résumé and send out some applications. I'm zooming through my to-do list.

The bright point of my morning: I got e-mail from Timprov, accepting my story "Entropy's Paintbrush." I'm not sure when it'll appear (there's been a lot of me in Speculon already this year, so it could be a while, which is fine). "Entropy's" is a far-future fantasy that ranges from the surface of a nameless moon to the heights of Olympus to the halls of Valhalla, all in under 3000 words. It also features a cameo by the demon Puzuzzu, which is always a good thing. It's one of my very favorite stories, and I'm glad it's found a loving home.

I got my contributor's copies of Weird Tales today, including my poem "Daughter and Moon" (which seems to be a favorite among my friends). Yay! I thought this poem would never see print. They accepted it a long time ago, and now it's out, and there's no typos, and I'm happy. Go out and buy it. The issue also contains a really good poem called "Evil Is Simple," by Ann K. Schwader. I haven't read the fiction yet, but there's stories by Thomas Ligotti and Melanie Tem and Stephen Dedman, and they can generally be counted on to do good things...

Did some Genius edit-typing tonight; almost done with Chapter 4 edits. I finished Jeter's Infernal Machines-- pretty good, though there's about 4 pages of pure infodump that I found very annoying, the information quite robbed of all dramatic possibilities. It was a fun book, though, and it had some interesting twists and surprises. Not perfect, but pleasant enough.

Currently into Swanwick's In the Drift, which I like.

A better day than yesterday, by a good margin...