Spent much of the afternoon over at the University Book Store, where I signed some orders, visited with Duane a bit — and mostly hung out in a conference room with Cat Rambo, Mark Teppo, and Matt Simmons. The three of us were there to participate in a conversation about modern fantasy fiction, led by by Victoria Blake from Underland Press (for the purposes of a later podcast).

It was quite a lot of fun! And the grand company aside, this was the first time in ages anyone had asked me about anything other than steampunk. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some steampunk — and it did, in fact come up once or twice; but this wasn’t an hour of me trying to think of new things to say on the subject. I feel like I’ve had a lot of those hours lately.

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In other news I’m still a bit sick, working my way through the Tennessee Hamthrax Aric gave me last week; so if posting is a bit light or perfunctory (which is to say, a string of announcements or links) for a few more days, I hope you’ll forgive me.

I’m in the middle of a whole lot of reading (for day-job work, books for friends which I need to/want to blurb, etc.), and I’m still struggling to find the time to get writer-job work done too — but I’m not doing so hot with the latter part. The last week has contained several short story contracts and accompanying paperwork, a couple of interviews, lots of emails, the PNBA event at Third Place, today’s round-table at University Book Store, and a trip to San Francisco … [:: deep breath ::] … but I haven’t gotten any writing done at all, nor have I managed to pull any proposals together for future projects.

It’s the proposal thing that’s actually griping my soul right now. I’m already partially done with one, and it shouldn’t take me but an afternoon to finish it up … but dammitall, I just haven’t had that afternoon free to tackle it. Mostly, I’ve been sleeping in late as I try to shake this bug, then using my afternoons for day-job work and crashing into a cold-medicine coma in the evening. It’s not the world’s most productive schedule, I know.

Anyway. I’m taking enough Vitamin C to buckle my kidneys, as well as doing the usual fluids-drinking and neti-pot-using, so I’m bound to get over this one of these days. Hopefully it’ll clear up before Saturday, when I have yet another event … this one at the B&N at Northgate.

I hear there will be cookies! And sick people aren’t allowed to have cookies.