I aten't dead

But my planets have been veering around like drunken shopping carts.

After my trip to Ireland and England, which was in unequal measures exhilarating and harrowing (travel nightmares, hoo boy, and friends' crises causing both upheavals and concern), I've returned to yet more stress.

I haven't allowed myself even to think about this atrocious miscarriage of justice, or I will bite through an umbrella.  Warning:  involves smugly monstrous parents and a dead child.

Remember that Amazon review I posted of an Oxfordian's ludicrous book?  It was a Swiftian dismantling of his errors, which are systemic and irrevocable.  He and his bastard friends have been doxxing the hell out of me ever since, and plotting revenge against me in their lurking places (I have spies).  Last month, they got the review deleted as "offensive," and have been gloating and smirking online ever since:  claiming in public that I recanted, and crowing in private over their coup).  I wrote a polite but firm letter to Amazon, stating that this was a clear case of revenge on a whistleblower.  And not the first time either.  A few years ago, these same Oxfordians had tried the same ploy on my comments, but I appealed and got them globally restored.  All I got back this time was a form letter telling me that I could repost the review, once I'd taken out the "offensive" language, but if there were any further complaints, they would have to bar me from comment on Amazon.  My offense, of course, lay in stating that the book is an abject failure.  If I repost this home truth, Stritmatter and his minions will simply have it taken down again.  What I need to do is marshall my screenshots of doxxing, and pursue the case, but—

Up came a deadline.  Following their gorgeous edition of Kingdoms of Elfins, Handheld Press is doing a second Sylvia Townsend Warner book, Of Cats and Elfins (a reprint of her rare Cat's Cradle-Book, an early Ovidian fantasy story, "Stay Corydon, Thou Swain," and her uncollected Elfin stories, including the glorious "The Duke of Orkney's Leonardo").  Some wires got crossed, and my introduction turned out to have been Due Yesterday.  I swallowed hard and said Monday morning.  I do not write quickly.  That is law, like gravity.  But I bloody well don't break contracts either.  Subsisting entirely on caffeine and theobromine, I plunged into the maelstrom.  And by Hecate, I got it in.  It's pretty okay, I think.  At least my editor said it was "beautiful."

But before I could draw breath, I discovered that I hadn't gotten my invitation to Arisia, possibly because I bowed out last year at the height of the scandal, being conflict-averse.  Panel choices were already closed.  The progcom very kindly and promptly re-invited me and gave me a day's extension, and I spent it madly writing up thoughtful little essays on my chosen topics.  When I audition for a panel, I put my heart into it.

Now all I've got to do (on top of my day job and all my other responsibilities) is get ready for Scintillation.  More panel notes, O joy!  More readings to prepare.  Oh yeah, and packing.  It will, I promise you, be a perfectly lovely little con.  I can sleep on Greyhound, right?  Except I'd be missing the drive through Vermont in October.

There have been glimmers of a bright side, honest.

Last night, I thought I needed a little book therapy, and tromped off to the Harvard Book Store in the rain.  I got The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's Language and David Scott Kastan's meditation On Color.  That led to a wonderful conversation with a bookseller and a regular on dye-plants (the bookseller grows them); historical art techniques, with reference to the pigments used in Netherlandish paintings of the 15th century, Tibetan holy pictures, and the indigenous art of Florida; Cornellisen's fabulous shop in Bloomsbury; forgers; flint-knapping (both of the others had been anthro majors,and had done this.  I'm jealous.  All I've ever handled in that line is a blow gun.)  And this, O best beloveds, is why we need bricks-and-mortar bookstores.  As if you needed persuading of that.

Being with Fox is a joy.  At nearly three, he adores undersea creatures, cookery (he knows what spices go with apples, and he finds the cinnamon before I ask), music of all kinds, construction trucks, books, and discovery.  "I need a computer, so I can know things."  Just yesterday, we had a disquisition on his latest find, Patteopujoösaurus.  "I discovered it on the map."  Are they omnivores?  Yes, "they eat plants or meat".  No, they don't fly, but walk on "so many" legs.  "It's a rainbow one."  No feathers, but (bending his spine to display them) "it has spikes on the top."

Nine