Mermaids, #BuffyRewatch, and a vintage pun

My latest Buffy rewatch ends Season Five with “The Gift.” I call it “Beware of God.

If you’d prefer a pre-taste of my upcoming book CHILD OF A HIDDEN SEA, which is set in the same world as “Among the Silvering Herd” or my next related Tor.com story “The Ugly Woman of Castello di Putti,” here’s a post on mermaids I did for
My World… in Words and Pages.

Toronto continues to be a completely fun place to explore: here’s a store called Da Vintage Code. I love a good pun.
DaVintage Code Vintage store, in Kensington Market. #yyz #toronto

FanExpo, FanExposure, FanExposed!

JULIETLANDAUI will be at FanExpo Vancouver this weekend, signing books and meeting fans. Including some of you, perhaps? I hope so.

Some of the other writers who will be in Authors Alley include my good friend DD Barant, author of the thoroughly awesome urban fantasy thrillers, The Bloodhound Files, Hiromi Goto, whose Half World won the Sunburst Award in the youth category in 2010, the same year Indigo Springs received the Sunburst for adult fiction–we’re like Sunburst Twins! Eileen Kerneghan and Silvia Moreno-Garcia will be there too.

And also there will be a few other people you might, possibly, have heard of: James Marsters, Juliet Landau, Amanda Tapping, and Sean Astin, for example, along with many others including what looks like the entire cast of Continuum.

All about the Gottacon…

On February 1st and 2nd I was Guest of Honor at Gottacon, where I met many lovely and charming fans:

GottaCon

Gottacon is very gaming focused, with a single track of panel programming. I was on two panels: So You Want to Become a Published Author with Matt Hughes, Dave Duncan and T.J. Silver and Digital Rights Management: The Pros and Cons, with Wired author Jules Sherred and Karl Johanson. Both panels were expertly moderated by Sherred, who interviewed me for Geeky Pleasures last year when Blue Magic came out, and who has posted them on the same site.)

As we were talking writing and publishing, war raged on next door.

GottaCon

Getting invited to be a guest of honor had been on my career-related bucket list for a while. Getting to do it for the first time in Victoria, a city I love, was a delightful extra bonus. The organizers and fans were all very lovely and inviting, and the day was full of nice surprises. If you’re in the vicinity next year might enjoy playing games all day with like-minded spirits, I can’t recommend it enough.

And if you missed me, my next appearance will be at FanExpo Vancouver on April 21 and 22.

These are a few of my colorful things

Many of you may already know that I developed a fondness for the Spanish clothing label known as Desigual when Kelly and I were in Sicily in December of 2012. This led to some major dress-buying in Italy, and again at the Desigual store in San Francisco this June when I was on my Blue Magic tour. Then there was a sustained consumer explosion at Christmastime when Angel Vancouver, here in Gastown, started carrying the oh-so-pretty clothes.

This past weekend when I was guesting at Gottacon, I found another dealer in Victoria: Mango’s Boutique.

We are, apparently, in some kind of fashion transition. The spring stuff is only just coming in, and much of what Mango’s had was marked-down winter stuff I’d already pawed extensively at Angel, including their amazing coats. Even so, I did end up finding this dress:

Latest Desigual Dress

Cat TV and other pleasures

I am writing this in the cafe where I do most of my novel-writing, on a damp Friday morning. Vancouver has just had a week of fog in the mornings, with chilly sun and blue skies in the afternoons after it burned off. We’re trending back to warmth and downpour now. It’s one of the things I love about winter in the Pacific Northwest. It’s usually chilly but gorgeous *or* rainy but warm. The silver lining is always very apparent.

What’s more, she bragged, we’ll have flowers soon. The snow drops are over an inch high in places, and I’ve seen crocuses breaking the ground here and there.

(Edited to add: since I drafted this post, it’s busted out sunny and warm. Bask, Vancouver, while it lasts!)

Part of the winter entertainment at our house has been feeding birds. We have two ‘window cafe’ bird feeders suction-cupped to our windows. As they are also meant to amuse the cats, we call them cat cable and I’ve named the window feeders BBC1 and BBC2 as a result. The hummingbird feeder (which hasn’t had any visitors yet as far as I know) is ITV.

The seed feeders have had starlings, chickadees, bushtits, goldfinches and one downy woodpecker. They swoop in about a meter from our dining room table to grab seeds and run for it. It’s all I can do not to spend my days slack-jawed in the kitchen, staring fixedly at the thing.
bushtits at bbc 2

My class “Writing the Fantastic” has opened its virtual doors and I am getting to know a (mostly) new group of feisty and enthusiastic new writers. This is an intermediate workshop, open to both novelists and short fiction writers. Next quarter, I’ll be teaching Novel Writing 2 again . . . I don’t know about summer courses, but they’ll let me know soon.

And speaking of novels, I shall be starting mine–the third in the trilogy I sold to TOR last year–next week. Or possibly tomorrow. I was going to keep working on the outline until after Kelly and I go to Victoria next weekend, but I think I’ve gotten as far with planning as I can, and I’m keen to get into the first scene.

The Victoria trip is for Gottacon, and as I mentioned last week, I’m especially excited about it because it’s my first Guest of Honor gig. Eeee!

I love Victoria; I went last year to go sailing as research for the trilogy, which has a lot of old fashioned sailing ships in it. Kelly hasn’t been in ages–when her parents moved to the Island, we started going to Nanaimo, Parksville and Qualicum–so we are very much looking forward to it. We’ll have dinner at Clive’s Classic Lounge, home of the grilled cheese sandwich cocktail.