why I am stupid today

(Following upon an evening of fussier-than-usual babies demanding to be held, bottles needing washing, laundry needing doing, and so on:)

1:30am, finally go to bed
2:30am, Kieran wakes up, needs feeding
3:00am, get back to bed
4:00am, Ada wakes up, needs feeding
4:30am, get back to bed
5:30am, Kieran wakes up again and needs more feeding
6:00am, get back to bed
7:15am, alarm goes off. Go to work!

If I shut my office door, no one will know if I take a nap on my desk...

(no subject)

Arcx
20,200 of 110,000(?)

I'm making slow but solid progress here. A minor character who I found very sympathetic in the first draft (and who was doomed to die a horrible death) is now morphing into someone a little less likeable, but all of a sudden it occurs to me that he might actually survive this draft. Huh. I'd've been very pleased for an excuse to save the first iteration of the character, but I don't know how I feel about his survival now.

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A very odd thing about actually getting stories of yours published -- the weirdest, surrealest, humble ego-trippiest thing I've found so far -- is other people making art based on your words. As the current issue of Interzone seems to have fallen afoul of some sort of shipper error (hopefully temporary), impatient me went and googled on the name of the artist that I know illustrated my story and found his web page (nice art!) One of the images has as its title the name of my aliens from that story: the Gnetsians. I can only assume that's the illustration for my story, and man is it cool. He actually got pretty close to what I was picturing in my head, and given the lameness and paucity of description he had to go on ("squinty-browed", etc.) I am indeed very impressed. And pleased as all hell. And touched that someone put the time and effort into making something that so wonderfully enhances my own work. And humbled, in a sort of embarrassed way I'd be hard-pressed to explain. It's the artist-in-the-closet in me; I really dig this part of it, the tangible object with strong visual appeal. I heart good art. (-:

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Meanwhile, four things on submission, ranging from 28 to 893 days.