Lilith Saintcrow's Blog

Crossposted from the Deadline Dames, which is full of all sorts of wonderful things. Check it out!

Last week I brought you the things writers should do with social media. (You can also check out Monica Valentinelli's recent SFWA article about online marketing, featuring Alex Bledsoe, Yasmine Galenorn, and Yours Truly.) I promised the should nots this week, and I shall fulfill.

This week, I promise to try not to rant.

I said try. My spirit is willing, but my flesh, alas, is occasionally weak.

I'll st

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I've had good luck on the book front recently:

* The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. Oh. My God. I LOVED this book. It was beautifully written, wonderfully constructed, lovingly translated, and Barbery did not punk out on the ending. The concierge Madame Michel looks like any other 54-year-old concierge in an upper-class Paris apartment building. This is camouflage. She is in reality an autodidact, a connoisseur of art, literature, classical music, and film. The privileged, hyperinte

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The day when I want to retreat into lit crit is the day I know I'm on the mend. (About damn time too.) And when a random Simone Weil quote makes me want to read the Barthes I've been saving for a rainy day, not only am I on the mend but I am back to my regularly-scheduled insanity.

So today is a day of gentleness, if I can manage it. Claws in, paws padded, tone gentle, walk soft.

So, in lieu of a real post, here's some links.

Start out with part I of Kaigou's "Dear (Not Just) Urban Fantasy Author."

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Ninety degrees even in the shade. The kind of weather that makes even breathing a chore for a pale mushroom PNW girl like me. If not for the air-conditioning unit I bought–was it last summer? Or so?–I would so be laying under a sprinkler right now and cursing the weather gods.

The blogging has been falling off my radar lately, mostly because of Personal Stuff. My method of coping is to work like hell. Unfortunately, when I get the decks clear and I've worked my way through the pile of OMG DEAL NO

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Crossposted to Deadline Dames, where every week brings more cool stuff. Check 'em out!

Good afternoon, chickadees. Today we're going to talk about social networking.

Don't make that face. This kind of talk is good for you. Like broccoli. Or chaos.

This started out with me getting spammed by someone with a screenplay on Twitter this last week. It hit at exactly the wrong time–I was already scraped-raw and frustrated. Fortunately, the spam touched off a discussion of what writers should and should NO

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A day or so of kinda-sorta-slowing-down (but not really, because there were a million things to do) is not enough time for the brain to recover. Which means I'm frantically running in circles, yapping, wasting even more energy flailing and feeling sorry for myself.

This just in: I give myself such very good advice…but sometimes I do not follow it. For example, if my writing partner started doing this I'd say "Slow down. The engine inside your head is running at full speed, it's going to take it t

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I shouldn't Twitter on a sugar high. Last night I gave some choco-chip cookie tips, and did promise to give my recipe. It's adapted both from my mother's and from Better Homes & Gardens.

BE WARNED: this makes a LOT of dough. I'll tell you why in a little bit.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

2c butter
1.5c brown sugar
1.25c granulated sugar
2.25 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. table salt
5 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
5c cake flour
1.25c-1.5c regular flour
1 pkg. of the best choco chips you can afford (I use Ghira

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Crossposted from the Deadline Dames, where this week we're answering reader questions. Come on over and play!

My brain is oatmeal today, because yesterday I finished the first draft of the third Strange Angels book. So if I occasionally sound like a babbling idiot, that's why. There's a snapback involved in finishing any huge project. This one is all the more intense because I don't get a break–I go right into last-minute Weasel Boy revisions and short-story reworking. Come August, when everythin

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I am one scene–count it, one–away from finishing the third Dru book into a reasonable first draft. If I put my head down and work today, I will have it done.

This is the point where momentum has taken on its own life, where I no longer have to worry about labor. Now the head's out of the canal and I'm still pushing, still expelling the rest of the thing. As soon as I send it off to the editor I will have a day or so of ARGH while my brain-muscles quiver uselessly (I think that's analogous to the

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Usually my front door is open, and friends know they can drop by anytime. But today…I'm keeping that sucker closed. I am Not At Home, even though I am at home.

What's the problem, you might ask? No problem. Just that I need to take a rest. I need to work, to sink into the worlds inside my head and get them out onto the page without interruption. Until tomorrow morning, I'm not up for anything except a true crisis. You're in a Mexican jail at 3AM and you have only a cell phone and my number? Okay,

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