Holiday holiday, whoa!

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I am finishing up my work year early–this week, in fact–because next Monday Kelly and I are turning over the cats to the housesitter (or the housesitter to the cats; I’m not sure which) and jetting off to Italy for the entire holiday season.

Rumble is Unimpressed:
I'm coming with you, kibble bitches!

What does finishing up mean? First, and very exciting it is too: I sent a new novel off to my agent Monday!!! And I hope to be able to tell you all sorts of things about it in the very near.

I also have one last January blog post to prep for Tor.com. Meaning: it’s written, and I just have to do some coding.
Aaand I’m fine-tuning my Novel I syllabus for the spring quarter of the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. And, less this list bore you to death, I’m prepping An Unveiling. Yes, gang, tomorrow I will be posting the Blue Magic cover art.

After that it’s all minutiae, like tidying up paperwork, and writing that handful of e-mails to people that boil down to “If you want something from me this month, you need to let me know now.” If you’re reading this, and the preceding sentence might apply to you, you should remember that my brain will stop running well before Monday. Get your requests in STAT and use very small words to express ur needz. Because, really, I say I’m working this week but whenever I can get away with it I’m lying on my face on a dock covered in seagull droppings taking pictures like this:

Me, terrorizing a sea jelly.

And then going home to post the photo while washing my tights in gasoline.

Because, you know, the tights are also going to Italy!!

Italy, Italy, Italy, Italy. More specifically: Rome, Palermo, Agrigento, Modica, Siracusa, Catania, Napoli, and more Roma!

Between one thing and another, Kelly and I have been saving both vacation days and dough for this trip for a shockingly long time. I am tired and ready to experience some exciting new things… and to photograph them! In fact, since I am a mad photoposter, some may well go up before I’m back.

WiFi permitting, you can look for them here:

Tumblr: mirrors my Instagram posts, which also get Tweeted.
Flickr: I have set up an Italy album, but all it contains is the above picture of my suitcase with a cat in it. My plan is to see if I can leave a slide show running on the site before I go.
Facebook: Anything I put on Flickr ends up here.

All that said, I sincerely hope all of you have such gratifying and exciting holiday plans that checking out my trip photos is the furthest thing from your minds.

Hey, what are your gratifying and exciting holiday plans?

Exquisite words is about done for 2011

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But first, here’s the opening of Fiona Lehn’s The Last Letter.

The famous biologist Helmut Janvy stooped to collect the mail from his foyer floor below the mailslot, as he did each day. But on this particular morning, amidst the damp leaking in from the winter outside, he detected a scent he had known well years ago, one he hadn’t smelled since. He’d long given up trying to name the fragrance which resembled, more than anything, a summer storm: steaming earth, singed grosses, wind-whipped blossoms. He fell back against the wall as a wave of emotion washed over him. That scent! Had he imagined it? With trembling hands, he sifted through the pile until he found the source: a large, thick envelope bearing his name and address, several stamps from another continent, and the marks of travel. No return address. He inhaled. None needed.

Creating Universes, Building Worlds

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This January, I will be teaching Creating Universes, Building Worlds via the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. A full syllabus can be found here. As always, the syllabus is subject to tweaking right up until class starts January 25th… but it won’t change radically. If you want to spend Christmas getting a leg up on the reading and exercises, you can safely do so.

In April, I am scheduled to run Novel Writing One: Writing a Novel the Professional Way. Though there are no guarantees, what generally happens is that one teaches N1 in a given term, then teaches N2 in the next, N3 in the one after that, and so on. This allows students to work through the lion’s share of a book with one instructor, if they wish.

Questions? Let me know!