Frim Fram Alyx with Ossenfay

And, yes, shafuffa on the side.
Tomorrow I’m co-hosting Geekly Pleasures with Jules Sherred, whose review of Blue Magic contains one of those paragraphs that really does make the whole writing lifestyle seem like an endless round of hearts and ponies:

I have never been more thankful for a character than I am for the character of Ev Lethewood. Without going into extreme detail, Alyx did a superb job of illustrating what it like to be a trans man. It is always a wonderful thing when the LGBTQ community is represented in literature in a matter-of-fact fashion, instead of salaciously.

I wanted exactly this out of Ev’s storyline. To reach someone, in that way, on that level. Part of me was terrified I’d failed. Seeing this was a joy and a relief.
Things of me: I’m in a bubble of unprecedented super-busy, all tied into the release of Blue Magic. My inbox is full of interesting and exciting things, including travel stuff: I will be in Portland, reading at Powell’s, on the evening of May 7th, and I will have other events to announce soon. There was FanExpo and my own launch and I’ve joined Pinterest and started a newsletter (join button’s on my site) and you’ve all seen the guest blog links. Plus fiction-writing, teaching, tax season stuff, and all the usual… it’s been a whirlwind.

I’m very happy to say I’ve gotten over a thousand words in on the current Gale and Parrish story this week, despite having a meeting at 6:30 OMG ayem Tuesday and being quite bloody-minded about going outside for a walk every single damned day.

Spring in Vancouver is not to be missed. It’s cool and rainy out as I write this, and the double-flowering plums are spectacular right now. They are brighter and more vivid in the gray; bright sunshine is lovely, but it washes them out a bit. In another week or so they’ll start to edge past their prime, and the slightest gust of wind will fill the air with pink confetti. The tulips are in bloom everywhere. The days are longer and noticeably warmer, the trees are leafing up, and the birds are bubbling over with song in the mornings. Soon there will be ducklings and baby Canada geese to coo over. And, if I’m lucky, baby herons. Here’s about two percent of the heronry in progress:
All Imported-24

All around the town

If it’s Tuesday, Buffy must be in trouble. And I rewatched it, here, with this essay entitled History Lessons.

I also was a guest on the Scifitalk podcast this past week. You can listen to that interview here. And speaking of podcasting, I’ll be cohosting Geekly Pleasures with Jules Sherred this Friday. I’ve also written about five of my all-time favorite things, from getting paid to watch Quantum Leap to gay marriage, on the Geekly blog.
Finally, Library Journal likes me, they really like me–but their link leads to Viagra adds, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

FanExpo Vancouver was outstanding!

Butt in chair report: I wrote 549 words this morning on a story called “Island of the Giants,” another of The Gales (the first being Among the Silvering Herd.) I did manage to do about 200 words worth of work on the story at FanExpo Vancouver, in between surges of meeting fans and hanging with D D Barant and Spider Robinson. I also got to meet comic artist Shane Rooks and, oh, some actor guy. Brendan? Nicholas or something? He was on this show I kinda like, maybe you’ve heard of him?
No, seriously, squee! It was cool. And I was pretty cool, too, which means a) no picture of me in NB’s lap but also b) no criminal charges. Instead, here is a picture of me and DD Barant.
Photo Stream-794
Quite a few of the fans who stopped by wanted to know how one goes about selling a book. Don and I handed out bits and pieces of the usual commonsense and quite general advice: write daily or as near to it as you can manage, lots of persistence, seek feedback, start figuring out how to use it.
Meanwhile Shane Rooks, beside me, had young artists bringing him their portfolios. His advice to them was generous, specific and awesome: this dragon would be better if we could see its face, consider working in other media to get a better perspective on the subject, here you’ve got the light coming from the wrong angle for the shadows, and this figure’s anatomically incorrect.
I am envious of this. A visual artist can look at a whole piece in a second and give–or so it seemed–a lot of concrete feedback. At the Surrey International Writer’s Conference (and I’m sure other venues), there was something of a writer variation on this: I’d get three pages of a manuscript and the author would get fifteen minutes of my first impressions. But this is as close as that gets. There’s no quick-glancing at someone’s entire novel, obviously, especially at an event jammed with, I kid you not, 80,000 fans.

Blue Magic book launch is tonight!

If you are in Vancouver and would like to attend, please consider yourself invited. It’ll be at 7:30 p.m. at the UBC Bookstore DOWNTOWN, OMG, please don’t go to Point Grey! at 800 Robson Street. There will be cookies and teas and a surprise guest artist too, and I will read something shiny and new that nobody’s ever heard before.

If you’re out of town and want to join the online party instead, I have continued to do some guest blogging this week:

Joshua Palmatier interviews me about the book, here.
Starmetaloak asked me about the First Nations storyline, so I wrote Raising the Roused for her.
Did I already tell you about The Magic of the Pacific Northwest

Finally, I will be at the Fan Expo Vancouver this weekend, selling, signing books and, I’m thinking, maybe doing a little stuntwriting. In other words, I might sit in the crowded Convention center amid a massive hubbub and see if I can crank words on the latest of The Gales, which is called “Island of the Giants.” Tweeting could ensue.

(The Gales? What Gales? The first is “Among the Silvering Herd.”)

Tuesday’s Girl is Full of Post

Angel gets his stalk on in this week’s Buffy rewatch post, which is about “Passion.”

Contests! If you are in the U.S.A., Goodreads is giving away ten copies of Blue Magic. Contest deadline is May 4th–last I looked there are about 450 people with their hats in the ring for it. Those are better than lottery odds. And The Qwillery, meanwhile, has copies for Canadians and Americans.

I have been making appearances in other blogs in the past week. One was at The World in the Satin Bag, and it’s about why I chose Oregon as the setting for the Books of Chantment. People, especially Oregonians, ask this a lot. Another was at John Scalzi’s blog–I got to be a Big Idea author. I am a huge fan of Whatever so this was a big thrill.