Drunken Goat
October 12
Heather and I went to get sandwiches tonight, and in the deli I looked at the cheeses, where I discovered a cheese described as "A semi-soft cheese, soaked in wine for 48 hours." The name of the cheese? Well, I've already given it away: Drunken Goat.
That made me happy. My mind is strange.
*
We watched The Mummy Returns tonight, and in many ways it was just the sort of totally mindless fun we were looking for. But it annoyed me, too, in some ways. One of the things I liked about the first Mummy was the fact that Brendan Fraser's character is just a guy-- a spin on the old Competent Man, sure, but he's not supernatural, he's this brash American who likes to shoot things and has no use for subtlety. In the sequel, we learn he's the Chosen One, Protector of Humanity, with prophecies to guide him and destiny to aid him and so on. Bleah. Crap. Bleah.
*
It's raining money, hurrah! Relatively speaking, anyway. Two days ago, Heather and I couldn't even afford to go out for lattés (though she won a bunch of free lattés in a drawing at Gaylord's, so all has not been lost). Yesterday I got two writing checks, small ones, and today I got a bigger check, and tomorrow I should get an even bigger one. When all is added up, I'll have made the equivalent of a week and a half's day-job pay. So I can pay a couple of bills now, and actually afford the Old 97's show we're going to tomorrow (we had a friend buy us the tickets a few weeks ago, before our straits became so financially dire, when we assumed it'd be easy to pay him back). We're not rolling in dough, but this will get us over the low ebb, the crisis point, quite handily.
And my writing did this. My fiction and poetry writing. The money is coming from four different sources... and it adds up.
I love being a writer.
*
Absolute and total condolences to Marissa. At least my book got rejected in a timely fashion; they kept her dangling for so long, and now this! And they're idiots, anyway-- it's a damned good book.
*
I'm being forced to overcome my mild telephonophobia. We're preparing for the Forthcoming Books issue, which means I have to call publishers to ask for their publication schedules. I have to call a lot of publishers. I called about thirty today, and halfway through I wasn't even tense anymore. I'm famously bad on the phone, and I don't claim to have become a scintillating conversationalist, but I got the job done... or, well, 1/5th done, since there are still lots of publishers to call...
*
Scott and Lynne stayed over last night; oh, that was nice. I've missed them. We stayed up too late talking and such, and this morning we got up *very* early, and they took us out to breakfast at Mama's. Nice, though heavy early food may have contributed to Heather's sickishness today. Scott brought my mail (I still have a few things trickling in to the old P.O. Box). It included one of the aforementioned checks, various nifty HWA things, bills I already paid, and a rejection, from the Dead But Dreaming antho. A close-but-not-quite letter; my story made the next-to-final cut, but they decided to pass. Ah, well. Such is the life of a humble scribe.
