Jacqueline West's Blog, page 14

Tree Feathers and Tour Schedules

First, the tree feathers:



Yesterday morning, our baby apple trees sprouted feathers, perhaps in the hope of escaping by flight from the deer who keep browsing through our yard and nibbling on their bark.  Then the sun came out, and Baby Macintosh and Baby Honeycrisp were promptly de-feathered, Icarus style.   

In other news, this Thursday marks the start of the pre-release bookseller dinner tour for The Books of Elsewhere, Volume One: The Shadows.  On the 18th, I'll be at a pre-publication eve...

The Shadows Audiobook

Fabulous New York actress Lexy Fridell (www.lexyfridell.com/index.html) has just finished recording the audiobook of The Books of Elsewhere, Volume One: The Shadows.   I can't wait to hear what she's done.

 

Been There, Done That

I’ve been letting this simmer for the last few days, wondering whether or not I should post about it, and in the end, I’ve decided on SHOULD.  Perhaps this will let me get it off of the stovetop at last, leaving room for other things to cook.

 

While doing a bit of internet browsing (as you do when shirking real duties), I stumbled upon a the blog of a writer I’d never heard of who had just read about the sale of my books, and, based on a one-line description of my series, stated that she h...

Children like Cannonballs

I'm having trouble finishing anything, writing-wise, these days.  My compulsion to work on anything short -- poems, short stories, articles -- seems to have disappeared for the time being.  Meanwhile, the novel projects currently underway keep playing tricks on me.  They change their names and faces and voices; they hide in the shadows under the furniture.  I've unraveled the Shakespearean time-travel thing all the way back to Chapter 3 (I had reached Chapter 22 of the second version) and am ...

Other Excuses for Laziness

Wondering if anyone else has injured him-/herself on a pomegranate.  I can't be the only one.  

Whining Ensues

I am sick.  I have been sick for eleven days now, which means that I was sick on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, my birthday, and New Year's.  It also means that we had to cancel plans to see friends who have gone unseen (by us, anyway -- they are not otherwise invisible ) for far too long.  For most of the week, I have been bundled, pupa-like, inside our house, surrounded by new books and clothes and DVDs and chocolates and making regular but plodding progress on my time-travel book-thingy.  S...

ARC!

I thought about calling this post "ARC de Triomphe", but then I sort of wanted to kick myself. When these arrived, I did in fact perform a triumphal dance around the dining room table (although it was far more gleeful than dignified).

The picture doesn't do the cover justice -- you can't tell that the title is embossed in gold with textured curlicues, or that the light coming through the frame is reflective, so that the book actually seems to be glowing from within, or see all the tiny, ...

Raining Cat(scan)s and Dogs

It is raining - again - here in Red Wing, but at least all the rain has melted the few remaining traces of last week's freakishly early blizzard.  (Look upon the photo, ye Minnesotans, and despair.)


Fortunately, I'm happy to spend the day indoors rather than let the world see the giant purple-pink lump on my head. 

So, the new dog sent me to the hospital yesterday.  He's had less than a week's worth of training, and he's a bit like Frankenstein's monster at this point: mute (except for the mu...

The Best Horror of the Year

This makes me extremely happy:  http://nightshadebooks.com/discus/messages/233/31565.html?1256505293

And just think -- if I hadn't been noodling around online rather than revising volume two of ELSEWHERE, zoning out for a while on Duotrope's Digest and following the links of the marvelous Bibliophile Stalker (charles-tan.blogspot.com/), I don't know if or when I would have heard about it at all. 

Sometimes procrastination is productive.  So there. 

All Hallows' Eve

My strange little story, "Subderma," is now up in the All Hallows' Eve issue of Strangetastic: http://strangetastic.com/ 

The journal is quite a new one, but it has a beautiful website with a fantastic creation history/mythology behind it.  Issue Zero (in the site's archives) features a short, A&E Biography-style documentary that made me giggle delightedly.