Current music:

My Chemical Romance

"Well, well, what else is in store? / Got all this and more, before twenty-four"

I'm letting myself take a few minutes to ignore all the work I'm supposed to be doing, in part because I sent out a single MoCCA-related e-mail yesterday that yielded a response positive enough to suddenly make me go from far-too-stressed to cautiously optimistic (this is kind of weird in light of a conversation I had with LK this weekend which he concluded, "And, you know, if you're expecting to have any fun during the festival you can forget it right now. You will be miserable the entire time. I know I was last year, even during the two hours I was hanging out with Art Spiegelman that should have been one of the highlights of my life. You'll notice a thousand things that could have been a hundred times better and people will rant at you about all the ways you screwed up... but it's okay, because everyone will have an amazing time, and the day after it's over you'll be able to look back at this incredible thing you did," and I replied, "If there's one thing I learned from three years of running CUSFS it's that you really have to be a masochist to enjoy volunteer work," but I guess I either just got over a hump, or there's something about crawling around on the floor of the Puck Building measuring the distance between support columns, and then taking a roundabout route up a hidden utility staircase leading to a half-built office suite, ducking through the centers of doors whose glass has not yet been installed, just so you can sneak a few floor measurements that you can't get from the appropriate floor because there's a food tasting in progress, that makes you feel really productive)... but mostly because it's nice to feel compelled to write, and nicer still to have some news that actually justifies the effort.

Which is: about a month ago, the contract request finally went in for the first book I acquired at Tor. Long story short ("yeah, long story short!"), I picked up a two-year-old submission off the slush pile, fell in love with it immediately, and contacted the author the next day, only to find that the book had been published a full year before that date by a small-press in Georgia. I flirted with a few of the author's other books, but postponed making a decision until her agent mentioned in passing that rights to the first book were once again available. Then the day I finally get the full e-text, Warren Ellis mentions on his blog that his friend's book is going out of print, hordes of his loyal minions go out and buy it, and it goes up to number two on amazon.com's horror list.

That's the point at which I began asking everyone around me at Tor (hopefully) just-shy-of-obnoxious quantities of questions, as I began the long and somewhat arduous task of learning how to buy a book. I emerged from the process with the rights to publish three books by the funny, talented, and gorgeous Cherie Priest (awhile ago, Shay and I were joking about how she'd only hire hot people to work at her production company, and I'd only buy books from hot authors. I didn't actually mean that—I mean, it's not like I'm superficial, or anything—but it looks like I'm off to an auspicious start). The first book in the series is a Victorian horror / Southern gothica / urban fantasy / mystery-ghost story called Four and Twenty Blackbirds (the link will take you to the previous edition's entry on amazon.com, where you can read some very favorable and surprisingly plausible-sounding customer reviews). Because I am lazy and because it will take some effort to come up with better summary copy than this, here's a short synopsis straight from the agent:

Although she was orphaned at birth, Eden Moore is never alone. Three dead women watch from the shadows, bound to protect her from harm. But in the woods a gunman waits, convinced that Eden is destined to follow her wicked great-grandfather—an African magician with the power to curse the living and raise the dead. Now Eden must decipher the secret of the ghostly trio before a new enemy more dangerous than the fanatical assassin destroys what is left of her family. She will sift through lies in a Georgian ante-bellum mansion and climb through the haunted ruins of a 19th century hospital, desperately seeking the truth that will save her beloved aunt from the curse that threatens her life.

What happens next: in the very near future, I sit down and talk with Cherie about how best to add 20,000-some-odd words to her book, to appease the sales force and reconceive the book from a standalone to the first of a series. And then we are going to start one mother of a quote campaign. This means that if you're the single auspiciously published author on my "Friend Of" list, or, really, are any public figure I have a reasonable excuse to send this book to, you'll probably be hearing from me pretty soon. The mere mortals among you will have to wait until September 2005 or thereabouts. Oh, and hey, word to the wise: no matter how much we mock the slush pile, that's where I found both 4&20 and the next book I intend to buy, so either I'm insanely lucky, or there are some pretty clever people out there without agents (I suspect a little of both).

Although it's clear that age means less at Tor than it does most anywhere—the ridiculously cool alg did it quicker and more competently than I—there is something pretty satisfying about becoming a book editor (in deed, if not in title) before I hit 22.5. I'm still convinced that I've been living in some dream world where it's not completely ludicrous that people get paid to make books, and some day I will wake up to find that I've actually been programming in a basement for the past 10 months. For now, though... life is pretty grand.

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A brief interlude, wherein I post some dialogue from an abrupt game of 1,000 Blank White Cards played at the CUSFS banquet last Saturday:

Julian: "Okay... I need to go. But before I do, I'm going to take this opportunity to play the 'Is Liz Goth?' card. So we need to take a vote. Who here thinks that Liz is Goth?"
(Everyone but Liz raises his or her hand.)
Liz: "Wait! You can't call a vote on me! I have the 'Leather Pants Exception' card."
Carrie: "Ha! But I'm going to counter that with the 'Liz is Wrong' card!"
Daniel: "Do you still think you're not goth, Liz?"
Liz: "Well, if it's a given that I'm going to be 'wrong', then, duh… of course I'm goth!"
Daniel: "Ha! Take that!" [plays the "Liz is Right" card]
Liz: "Awwww....!"
Julian, getting up to leave: "And, honestly, do we even need to consider the sheer absurdity of trying to counter an 'Is Liz Goth?' card with a 'Leather Pants Exception'? I mean, really..."

(If I've never played 1KBWC with you and this exchange is not enough to convince you that you've been missing out, please remind me to force you into a game sometime. It is simply the game for people who have always wanted to be improv comedians but are really only cool enough to play card games.)

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In case you'd begun to worry that I was anything other than predictable, I'm going to again pretend that you guys actually care about my musical obsessions. Most recently, I've stumbled into this trend (which had better freakin' continue!) of going to concerts with Miss moderntime. Last Thursday was the first Magnetic Fields concert in the age of i. It was predictably awesome, enough to really make me wonder whether I should go to both Town Hall shows instead of just the second. But since I am too poor and too busy, I've been consoling myself with the fact that they'll prooobably do pretty similar sets on both nights like they did at BAM and at the Future Bible Shows at the Merc (and, hey, Anna, did I mention that LD was their second opener?). Then on Monday, Fi and Moshe cajoled me into seeing Jason Robert Brown (and friends) play a two hour set at a jazz club on 58th. He is a charmer, that one, and songs from The Last 5 Years never fail to make me swoon. If the very notion of finding a "nice Jewish boy" was not anathema to my heathen heart, I'm sure I'd be harboring a major crush by now.

Finally, I'll close with a quick rundown of my life for the next ten days: Thursday night, I'll be volunteering at a MoCCA party for the Ted Rall-edited Attitudes 2: The New Subversive Alternative Cartoonists. Pat has decided she's cool enough to merit a 4-day birthday celebration, but since I'd probably want to see Schwervon! and Mary Prankster and take advantage of our last opportunity to do a WBAR exam show anyway, I'm not going to disabuse her of that notion. Still tentative: an AFNY show at the bar two blocks from my house on Friday (it's almost like I'm not stalking Toby Goodshank!), Jeff Lewis on 5/1 and 5/6, the High Line on 5/4, and/or Patti Smith at the Warsaw on 5/1-5/4. As always, feel free to influence me toward or away from any event that so compels you.