To celebrate the release of Beauty & Dynamite AND Apex's successful move to a new webhost, they are offering a 20% discount on all orders until June 30th. Just enter the coupon code NEWHOST on checkout!

http://apexdigest.livejournal.com/116292.html

And did I mention Beauty & Dynamite was out now?
I keep forgetting that...

If the old-fashioned ways are still around, there's a reason. Don't knock them.
I'm just an old-fashioned kind of girl that way.

Sorry, boo...it never would have worked out between us.

Ironically, had I snapped the necks of my last live-in boyfriends, I might currently be a little more tolerant and well-adjusted.

Then again, I might not.

I figured out why it was that I kept putting off writing about Mo*Con: history. Kelli Dunlap and I discussed this during one of our early-morning Garage Talk sessions -- as writers, we have this special magical power to rewrite the parts of history that we don't like.

And you are all at our mercy.

What happens at conventions? What happened last night? Last week? Last year? Whatever I decide to tell you about. Every crummy moment in my life is dressed up in pretty words and fingerpaints before I tout it for public consumption, and I continue to live in that perfect Ivory Tower that gleams mockingly at you from the horizon. I choose which juicy ripe memories in my basket will be immortalized, and I leave the rotten ones in the field for the birds.

That mess is just going to get forgotten anyway.

That's just one of the ways we brighten our own lives, and yours, and that lady's over there. It's how we improve the world and leave it a more beautiful place than we found it.

The dilemma comes when we live through a time so wonderful and amazing and meaningful and dripping in perfect bliss that our writing just isn't good enough. My dictionary doesn’t have those words. My paints aren't available in those colors. I'm not sure the letters or hues exist that could accurately depict the shining memories I've been playing over and over in my head all week.

THAT was Mo*Con.

I had been looking forward to the con but I wasn't sure to expect. Tim Waggoner had to bow out for Father's Day plans. Geoffrey Girard cancelled at the last minute. And there would be no whiskey-drinking trash-talking Magic card Keenefest, no guarantee of any such peaceful moments of Zen.

Anticipation bred apprehension. Just because I had found nirvana last year didn't mean I was going to again. So I bought a huge stack of books and dove headfirst into a week-long Mamatas-inspired baking marathon to prepare…I wanted the Indiana Horror Writers to remember how much they loved me.

Turns out, I had it all wrong.
THEY wanted ME to remember how much they loved me.

All the other reports you've read are true: Yes, I did go treasure hunting in a cemetery with Kelli and Lauren and Mark Rainey, and yes, the local police put an end to our business. Yes, the Mother Grove concert was a blast, and I posted the YouTube clip to prove it. Yes, Gary Braunbeck talked about my breasts more than once. Yes, we witnessed the musical stylings of Matt Cardin. Yes, Nick awed us all with his Feats of Strength. Yes, the food was delicious, and yes, the baklava was a hit. Yes, we stayed up until at least 3am every night. Yes, we probably talked about you. Yes, there were tai chi lessons and fireflies and shooting stars. Yes, hell rained down and grounded most of the GoHs, and yes, there was a Mo*Con III.2. And nope, you're not going to hear about that night from me either.

And yes, the IHW did induct Keene and me into their ranks as honorary members; my official title is "Princess." (I didn't see Keene's certificate, but it might have said "Saten.") I blushed and stammered through what is now known as the "Doug Warrick's Awesome Handshake" speech and realized two things: a princess should always have a speech prepared, and she should NEVER, EVER forget her tiara. (*smacks forehead*)

Best of all, Maurice gave me a knight to watch over me.

He has a place of honor in my Ivory Tower, and I polish his armor shiny with my memories.

The Incredible Whirlwind of Beauty & Dynamite (that's me) blogs about the new Tori Amos GN Comic Book Tattoo for Ingram HERE.

Back from Mo*Con.

Had a full night's sleep and then some. I dreamt about the most wonderful people in the world, about rainbows and flowers and shooting stars, about cemeteries and dark woods and a knight to watch over me.

And this time the cops didn't show up.

I promise a con report (and pictures!!) when I'm more lucid.

Love,
The Princess

Went geocaching in the cemetery with Mark Rainey, and the Mother Grove concert was FANTASTIC.

You wish you were here!!

Yay! My first-ever sale to Shimmer!
I am very honored.

"The Giant and The Unicorn" will appear in the infamous Clockwork Jungle issue. It's a clockwork retelling of Aesop's "The Lion and the Mouse."

I am totally bringing unicorns back.
Watch me. :)

Fred's got the Hypericon schedule hammered out. If you think it looks pretty light, just keep in mind that I'll also be on every panel Deb LeBlanc decides to pull me on at the last minute. If you make no other panel, be sure to get to DREAM CRUSHING 101. Janet and I don't need leather or whips. It is THAT evil.

I'm also going to be heading out early Sunday to head down to the Codex Writers Workshop.

"I need some distraction, oh beautiful release
Memory seeps from my veins..."
--Sarah McLachlan, "Angel"

There is a mouse in my house.

I was sitting in the middle of my living room floor, surrounded by obsessive compulsive piles of papers as I go through long-procrastinated boxes of junk and watch the movies that John has been piling up on my doorstep. A subtle movement caught my eye, and I looked over to see a darkish brownish-grayish mouse poking his head out from under the couch and sniffing at the pile containing clean notebooks, convention schedules, and magazines containing book reviews.

And something inside me snapped.

Not snapped in the sense that I freaked out standing on chairs and decrying my filthy, terminally cluttered existence (which I didn't, and it's really not) -- I got angry. Really, really angry. Here I am, trying to carefully glue the shattered pieces of my life together in a magnificent stained-glass masterpiece, and here comes another bleedin' freeloader who won't be doing the dishes or paying the rent or picking up fresh milk at the store to replace the old, spoiled carton.

So I'm a bit on The Warpath right now; I'm calling it the Lee Takes Her Life Back, Dammit! movement. I spent all weekend cleaning and organizing like a woman possessed...after going to Home Depot and buying a variety of Mouse Countermeasures (and a beautiful, exotic orange lily because I deserve it).

I plunked down my armful of caution-taped theme boxes on the checkout counter and looked the cashier in the eye. "I have a mouse," I said seriously.

He stared at the pile a moment. "Maybe you should get a cat," he offered.

"I don't like cats," I said.

"Hmmm." He started scanning the barcodes. "How about an owl?"

"Fantastic!" I smiled. "When you guys start carrying owls, I'll be back."

The excessive organization of course means that every inch of my house is bearing the brunt of the process. You have to make a mess to clean the mess, break eggs to make an omelet and all those good clichés.

In the middle of this, I'm making Greek cookies and baklava and walnut cake to bring to Mo*Con this weekend, which means multiple trips to the grocery store. I've got to pack, which means I have to do my laundry. I have four interviews, two essays, three short stories, and a novel begging to be written. I need to get my oil changed. I'll be lucky if I can get to the gym one night this week.

But what I really want to do is go home and rearrange the dining room. I know exactly how I want to do it, too. And if I had a sledgehammer, I could be ready to take out that stupid shelf in the utility room tomorrow…

*sigh*

So I'm a bit scattered. It's not a new feeling. At least I finally have the energy and the motivation to actually DO it. It feels GREAT.

All due to -- as much as I hate to admit this -- that curious little still-at-large mouse.

I need to make some CDs for the Indianapolis road trip too, because I don't think an audiobook's going to hold my attention. Some peppy stuff. Some sing-along stuff. Some Foo Fighters, for sure.

Back at the beginning of the nervous breakdown, Sharon Shinn told me I had to stop listening to music, because it would be too painful. It was the only advice from my Guardian Angels that I knew I wouldn't be able to follow. I can't live this movie-like life without a soundtrack. It just doesn't happen.

But there were songs I skipped when they came up on the shuffled playlist -- there are songs I still forward past, but only a couple now. I'm waiting for the inevitable days to pass by, for fresh memories to come and replace the old, spoiled ones.

One of the songs I haven't been able to listen to for a while is Sarah McLachlan's "Angel." (Heck -- most normal people can't listen to that song without breaking into tears.) Hearing that song transports me back to the driver's seat of the car making my way back up my parents' driveway in the Tennessee woods, Blair Witch country, coming home from yet another fabulous job interview that undoubtedly meant I wouldn't get the position. That song came on the radio and I wondered what people did who didn't believe in angels -- how lonely an existence that would be when they had nothing to depend on but themselves. And then I remembered how little faith I had and how lonely *I* was and it crushed me.

I cried all the way back to the house.

Thanks to that memory, that song's been tainted for me for the past 10 years.

Last month, on a peaceful, lazy Saturday, Bear played some songs for me over the telephone. He strummed the guitar and I knew the lyrics as he started singing but couldn't place them...when I recognized "Angel" I knew it would be exceptionally rude of me to scream at him to stop. So I yelled at my own brain to shut up and let myself be serenaded. It *is* a terribly beautiful song. It was being sung to me by one of my own Guardian Angels. I wasn't alone. And I did have faith; I knew with perfect certainty that everything was going to be okay.

Best of all, I have a new memory to be transported back to the next time I hear that once-forbidden tune.

Mom is the family authority on guardian angels. She says you don't get to pick your own angels -- they pick you, and if you ask they'll even tell you their names. I may have been cursed with Murphy, but I've been very, very lucky to be surrounded by the angels that I have, the angels who held me in my old life and walk beside me in my new one. Angels who guided me and sang to me and rung me at twilight and daybreak to dry my tears and kicked me in the butt when necessary and never let me give up.

I'm even thankful for darkish brownish-grayish angels who poke their heads out from under the couch and motivate me to set my life back in motion.

But he's still not allowed to live in my house.