Angela Benedetti

This is kind of fun. It’s a map of writers, placed by who else readers who like them also like. So frex., if a lot of people like Lee Benoit AND Stephanie Vaughan AND Syd McGinley AND Jay Lygon, they’d all appear near each other in the map.

Unfortunately, the map doesn’t have a lot of m/m witers yet; obviously this is a hole that needs to be filled, right? You can go to this page and enter the names of writers you think should be on the map, in the “Suggest a new Writer” box at the top. You can also vote for or against the top ten almost-made-it writers in the list below. If you suggest someone who’s already been suggested, it counts as a vote for that writer. If you suggest someone who’s already on the map, it’ll just tell you so; that’s not a problem.

Note: looking at the list of names to be voted on, most of them are (sort of) valid but have some problems with how they were entered. Sticking with full names, first-name-first, is probably best; using multiple formats of someone’s name just splits the votes.

From this page you can enter the name of a writer, and if they’re on the map, you’ll be shown that writer’s chunk of the map — their name, surrounded by the names of other writers “near” the first writer. So if you like the writer whose name you entered, you might also like the others, because a lot of readers like both. Different names are at different distances; I’m assuming nearer names are more likely to share a reader’s list with the central name.

This is fun to play with — it’s a great time sink. There definitely need to be more m/m writers on the map, though, and other small-press and otherwise lesser-known writers. Come enter your favorites!

Angie

PS — thanks to Emily Veinglory for linking to this.

[EDIT: links, links, I do know how to do links. I originally posted this on a Yahoo mailing list where HTML links don't work, and forgot to fix them for here. ]

I did more fresh writing in May than I did in April, but still not a significant amount. :/ The good news is I’ve done about half as much so far in June as I did in all of May, so that’s good if I can keep it up.

I did four story submissions, to various pro-paying markets. No sales yet on that end, but I got two excellent rejections — about the best kind of response one can get that doesn’t have a check attached. [rueful smile] Both editors said very nice things about the story they’d read, and that they were looking forward to seeing more from me. If I can’t have a check, I’ll take an invitation to submit again instead.

I went through edits on the novel again — proofreader’s mark-ups this time. And actually I did it a third time when I got my contributor’s copy a couple of days before the book went up for sale. I figured I’d scan through the PDF to make sure there weren’t any obvious formatting errors, and even with the quick click-click-click on the scroll bar to page through, my eye lit on a couple of small editing mistakes that I, the editor and both proofers had all missed. [headdesk] Back to the top, read it through again more slowly, found a handful more. My gratitude to Shawn for incorporating my last-minute fixes and re-doing the variously formatted files before the page went live for sales.

I’m not claiming points for that last edit, though, ’cause that would’ve taken me up to 32 points for the month. In a challenge where the top scoring tier is 9 points and up, 32 is just showing off. :/ As it is I got 18.

So the move went as well as these things do. We managed to cram four suitcases, two laptop cases, my husband’s other kit bag, the three boxes of books and stuff we’d mailed to the hotel, the five bags of stuff leftover from the kitchen (our hotel room had a kitchen, ’cause we didn’t want to have to pay for restaurant food for that many weeks), plus other miscellaneous stuff we’d accumulated in the thirty-one days we were at the Seattle Alexis, all into a town car at one time so we only had to make one trip, yay. I had a heavy box on my lap the whole way, but luckily it was only about fifteen minutes.

We got there a little after 8am, and the movers arrived at around 9:15 or so, which wasn’t bad. I spent the next five hours or so at the kitchen counter with a bunch of inventory sheets in front of me, checking off numbered items while the four movers called said numbers to me. There were 362 items in the inventory. Less six or eight voids, that’s still over 350 items. Most of them were boxes. Most of the boxes have books in them.

According to the movers, most people have like one or two boxes of books, max. I can’t imagine living like that, but there you go; I always knew we weren’t normal.

Oh, and have I mentioned the room we’re using as a library (the master bedroom, ’cause really, do you need more room for your bed or your books?) is on the third floor? The guys really earned their pay that day. Hey, one of the models we looked at had four stories, so the guys lucked out. I was sure to tell them that. [innocent humming]

But seriously, Seattle’s a fairly old (meaning developed) city, built on extremely uneven ground. There are slopes and ravines and various other non-horizontal stretches of ground pretty much everywhere. It doesn’t look full because there’s so much land with just trees on it, but it really is, and there are houses built in places which require like fifty stair-steps just to get from the sidewalk to the front door. (The movers charge extra for this, understandably.) But what this means is that new construction tends to be on very small chunks of land spotted here and there around town, and it tends to go vertical. Every condo and townhouse we looked at was at least three stories tall. That’s just how it is up here, with builders trying to max out the number of units per plot of land; they’re minimizing the footprint of each unit, and building up. I guess that means the movers up here are used to it. I’m just glad we weren’t doing this with a rental truck and a bunch of friends.

So they hauled all our stuff in, wrapped up around 2:30 or so, and took off. I hadn’t had any sleep the night before, so I crashed, and woke up about fifteen hours later. That felt really good.

That night, I’d planned to unpack the kitchen, since it’d be nice to be able to start cooking again, with my own stuff.

[Hint for folks planning hotel stays who are thinking this kitchen thing sounds cool: I've now stayed in kitchen-rooms at three hotels, and the tools provided universally suck. There aren't many, and the quality of what's there is incredibly low. The Alexis doesn't even provide bowls (cereal? soup? what's that?) nor plastic containers for leftovers. If you're going to be there longish-term, bring some of your own favorites, and/or be ready to go out and buy a few things.]

[Hint for hotel management: you have a standard inventory for your in-room kitchens, right? Post it on your web site, so guests know what to bring.]

Anyway, I started unpacking and discovered that we actually have less cupboard and drawer space than we did in Long Beach. :/ The pantry has a bit more space than our old pantry, so I can put some things which were in cupboards before into the pantry, but that’s still not enough. I’m thinking we’re going to have to get some (more) shelving units and/or one of those metal standing cupboard-things to go in the garage, for kitchen things I don’t use regularly. Right now, I’m sorting out things that can go in the garage, and figuring out where I want the things that have to live in the kitchen.

I also still need to sync my main computer (this one) with my laptop (which I was using for the last month and a half). When we arrived here from the hotel, I was carrying the laptop cases and such, so I put them in the closet in the computer room. There are some shelves in there, and I figured they’d be out of the way. Well, they were. They were also buried behind approximately three hundred pounds of boxes, which were back-filled into the closet as stuff was moved into the computer room. [headdesk] The spousal unit was nice enough to dig my laptop out for me last night, so I can transfer stuff across and start writing and cetera again, yay!

We have a new couch, and the washer and drier came, but the TV isn’t coming until Friday. It’ll be great to have it, though; Jim’s legally blind and has to be really close to see the TV. The one on order should be big enough for him to see while sitting on the couch with me, rather than sitting in a kitchen-type chair right up next to the set, which was what he was doing before. [crossed fingers]

Someone’s coming on Thursday from 3-Day Blinds [waves to neighbors] so we can get something up on the windows eventually. And we’re going to get like twenty bookcases (plus the overflow-kitchen-stuff cabinet/thingy for the garage) but haven’t actually ordered them yet.

And through it all we’ll be unpacking. I’m sure we’ll be doing that for a very long time. Heck, there are things we still had in boxes from our move to the condo, which just lived in their boxes because we never had space to unpack them and put them anywhere else. I’m sure it’ll be the same here with at least some things. When Jim retires and we move again O_O we’re going to need like 4000 square feet or something, LOL! We’re determined eventually to be able to put everything away, though, darnit!

In the eleven years we lived in the condo, I’d forgotten just how much work unpacking is. I can only do it for short periods of time before I get tired and my back starts getting really insistent about stopping and sitting for a while. I think it’s one of those things the subconscious deliberately buries, so people will be willing to move again some day. Hopefully I’ll have forgotten again by the time retirement rolls around.

Angie, heading back up to the kitchen to unpack another box

Well, February was another awful month for writing. :/ My brain seemed to be buzzing around between dozens of topics, half of them stories and half not, and never lighting on any one thing long enough to concentrate on much. I’m blaming the Olympics (hey, it’s only two weeks every other year!) and the general upheaval that life has been.

The Olympics is over now, though, and the upheaval is being fixed tomorrow, with one last upheave. We’re moving into the townhouse at an ungodly hour of the morning; we need to check out of the hotel at about 7:30 to take a cab over to the house to meet the movers. The’re supposed to be there with our stuff between 8 and 10, which means they’ll actually be there at 10:30, unless of course we’re late getting there ourselves, in which case they’ll be there at 7:45. Such is the way of appointments with service people.

The new TV and couch are supposed to be delivered tomorrow too, and the phones/internet hooked up. If something goes wrong with the latter, I guess I can trek over to the bookstore with my laptop every day or two and at least get e-mail until everything is hooked up and settled. Virtual crossed fingers for everything going well are greatly appreciated.

Unfortunately, I just squeaked by with a bit over 4K words written this month, and didn’t submit anything. With one point in McKoala’s challenge, I’m just barely safe from getting torn to shreds, woe. Hey, I have nowhere to go from here but up, right…?

Massive glitch with the Biathlon, in the men’s pursuit. The guys have a staggered start, with the delay based on their result with the earlier sprint event. They had several starting chutes, with officials up at the front with, like, a hand on the athlete’s middle or something, watching the clock and letting them go when they were supposed to. (Multiple chutes because there are some people starting like a second apart, so you need people able to start almost simultaneously.)

Which is all fine and they’ve been running the sport like this for ages, but today someone’s messing up royally. There was a little ?? at first, with people sort of squinting and going, “Wait, what…?” Then one competitor, Leguellec of Canada, was supposed to start 41 seconds after the person in front of him, but at the first time check he was right up there with the pack. Unless he had a jet assist, that’s impossible, so clearly he was let go way too early. Teela of the US was also let go at the wrong time, and they just mentioned Ferry of Sweden.

The best fix at this point seems to be to figure out how early (or late, if there was any of that) each person went, and then add or subtract time at the end. But that doesn’t completely fix things; the way you ski, how you push, depends on where you are in the race, who’s around you, when you approach someone ahead of you or are approached by someone behind. Where you are makes a difference, and that’s all different now. Also, the athletes are used to being able to judge where they are in the race, but now Leguellec doesn’t know; he can cross the finish line first and still not get the gold, or get any medal at all perhaps, after his time’s adjusted. Maybe he’d have made it up if he’d had the press of being another 41 seconds back and maybe not, but we don’t know.

This is a really awful error. Maybe not quite as bad as the vaulting fiasco at Sydney, but it seems to be in the same ballpark. :/

ADDED: they’re adjusting the timing on the standings graphics now, but the competitors are still out on the course in the wrong places. The timing might be correct now, but the dynamics of the race are still out of whack.

Angie

The Olympics is on and my productivity is going to plunge way down toward zero for the next couple of weeks. It’s funny, I’m not usually into sports — I don’t watch the World Series, I couldn’t care less about the Superbowl — but the Olympics always puts stars in my eyes. I’ve loved the games since I was a kid, and I’m going to be glued to the TV whenever it’s on.

Oh, we got the townhouse, woot! There’s more to the story there — it was completely insane for a while, ups and downs and giving up and reviving and whatever all else — but I’ll post more about that later, when the Olympics are taking a break. ;D

Angie, trying to figure out how to postpone moving till after the Games are over

The packers are coming tomorrow, so for some unspecified while my presence online is going to be kind of spotty-ish. Being me I’ll still be around some — have laptop, will surf — but I won’t be spending all day online the way I usually do.

I have more sorting, stashing and tossing to do; everything has to be ready for strangers to start grabbing and boxing by 8am tomorrow, and I probably won’t get much sleep. We’re moving into a hotel tomorrow night, and the main computers will be packed up well before then.

I’m just hoping we don’t lose too much between here and Seattle. :/

We’ll be in a hotel for eight or nine days (during the packing and moving out of our stuff, then supervising a good cleaning [flamethrower, firehose, backhoe] and whatever last-minute repairs need doing), then flying up to Seattle and moving into temporary quarters, still not quite settled where. It all depends on how the deals go — the guy who wants to buy our condo has been dragging his feet for the last week or more, and we’re counting on that for a down payment on the townhouse. If that ends up falling through for some reason, we’ll have to scramble for a quick refinance (which was our original plan before this buyer popped out of the woodwork) to get our down payment; it won’t be enough for a full twenty percent, which will impact our interest rate and monthly payment, plus the time it takes will cause us to incur a substantial penalty ($85/day) for failing to close on the townhouse by the deadline. I’m really hoping our buyer down here gets his act together RSN. :/

If it all comes together, we could end up staying at a hotel in Seattle for as little as a week or two. If it all goes pear-shaped and we have to go back to house-hunting from scratch, we could end up in an apartment for two months, then moving to a smaller apartment when our per-diem runs out. More likely it’ll be somewhere in the middle. Oh, then at the end, moving again to wherever we end up for the next few years, hopefully the townhouse we made an offer on. [crossed fingers] Most of our stuff (everything the packers will be packing tomorrow and Thursday) will be in storage until we’re in permanent housing, so we get to live out of suitcases until that happens, joy.

I’m just looking forward to all this being over. You ever wish you could go to sleep and wake up a month or two later…? [wry smile]

Anyway, later all. [wave] Keep the internets warm for me.

Angie

As Travis mentioned recently, the spammers have gotten more active lately, and some of them are also subtler. At this point, though, I’ve had it up to here with spam, and my tolerance for anything which seems even vaguely spammish is at an all-time low.

So. What this means is that I’m going to assume that anything which might be spam is actually spam. On the borderline, that means anything in a foreign language I can’t read will be deleted. (For a while I copied these and ran them through Babelfish just in case, but I never found any which weren’t spam and eventually gave up.) Anything which talks about an unrelated subject (”Hey, interesting discussion here, reminds me of my new plumbing business I’m eager to tell you about…”) without any specific commentary on the actual topic of the post will be deleted. Any vague praise which could apply to literally any blog (”I wanted to let you know how much I appreciate the hard work you put into your articles and that I’ve bookmarked your blog and will visit daily!”) will be deleted.

If that means I end up deleting a comment by the occasional sincere reader, I’m truly sorry for that. But I’m not willing to leave someone’s vague, spammish comment (and their link) up long enough to be spidered if I can help it. All roaches, and anything which has more than four legs and therefore might be a roach, will be stomped immediately, no exceptions.

Note that I don’t object to links per se. Someone on my Wordpress blog posted a short comment on my Visiting San Francisco post which actually responded to something I’d said, rather than just making some vaguely general remark. I responded to the comment and left it where it was, despite the very clearly commercial link attached to it. Anyone who actually participates in the conversation is welcome to include a link to their web site. And participation doesn’t mean a dissertation-level commentary — just some proof that the commenter actually read the post and is responding to some specific bit of it is enough.

I don’t think that’s too much to ask, and anything short of that will be deleted. I really don’t want to have to set up captchas on my blogs (or comment moderation on my LJ; I’ve gotten one or two spam comments on LiveJournal, but for the most part the spammers have so far left it alone [crossed fingers]) because I want it to be as easy and un-annoying as possible for real people to leave comments. That means, though, that I need to be a hard-nose about after-the-fact moderation.

I don’t imagine this’ll affect any of my regular readers or commenters, and I hope legitimate first-time commenters won’t find it impacts them either.

Angie