Yaoi-Con and other things…

My last update was October 20th? That means almost an entire month has gone by. How did that happen? Well, let me back up a bit…

Back in May, I went on Lynn Flewelling's Writing on the Waves Caribbean cruise. At some point, Lynn mentioned Yaoi-Con to me. I said I'd heard of it, and was considering going, at which point she said she would be there and that she thought I should come too. Well, who am I to say no to Lynn? So I spent Halloween weekend at Yaoi-Con in San Francisco. And it was amazing!

I hung out with Lynn, and had the most amazing sushi ever with Jane Kindred and her friend Stephanie. I met scores of authors and other people in our biz. I met Andrew Grey, Z.A. Maxfield, Clare London, Astrid Amara, and Ginn Hale. I met Chris from Stumbling Over Chaos, Jenre and Tam from Jessewave, and Tracy from Tracy's Place. And really, I'm just scratching the surface. I met more people than I could possibly list, and every single one of them was fabulous. I sat on a panel with Lynn Flewelling, Ginn Hale, and Astrid Amara (and I'm still sort of wondering how I got so lucky).

Felicitas Ivey, Clare London, Andrew Grey, Lynn Flewelling, and myself

With Lynn Flewelling and Andrew Grey

Now, some of you may remember that my house has been on the market since May. Wouldn't you know it that in the midst of Yaoi-mayhem, we suddenly got a bite. In one weekend, we received not one, not two, but three offers on our house! Lucky for me, my husband is a good sport, and while I was having Yaoi-fun, he was running around our hotel, faxing papers back and forth. Upon arriving home, we were immediately thrown into house-selling and house-hunting chaos.

The good news is, we found a beautiful house and we're now under contract on it.  We close on both houses on December 17th – because heaven knows the holidays aren't stressful enough as it is, we thought we'd add moving into the mix. In short, we've been in a state of upheaval since we got home, and there's no reason to expect things to get better any time soon. On the bright side, I'm going to have the coolest fucking kitchen in the world. No kidding.

Guess I should start cooking again one of these years.

Yeah, yeah, you're saying. That's fabulous, Marie, but what's going on with your writing?

Between Sinners and Saints is finished and has been submitted to a publisher. I haven't heard back yet, so I can't tell you much more than that. It's probably safe to assume that the absolute soonest you'll see this story will be late next year, but I'll be sure to post more details here as soon as I have them. I've posted a very short excerpt here, and an even longer excerpt in my most recent newsletter, which can be found here.

I got a wild hair the other day to write a Valentine's Day story about Matt and Jared. It kind of came out of the blue, but it really was a lot of fun. It's only about 8600 words. I believe it's going to be called Putting Out Fires, and it will be available from Dreamspinner Press in time for Valentine's Day.

I have also re-tackled the Paris story. I've had this story mostly done for months, but I felt like something was missing. I've now spent the last few days on it, and I am happy to report that I have either a) finished the first draft for about the fifth time, or b) I've finished the fifth draft for the first time. Either way, I guess I can report that I have made progress. It might actually be close to being finished. I know, I've said that before, but I hope (fingers crossed) that I really will have it completely polished and ready to submit to Dreamspinner by next week, which would mean a release date around (I'm guessing here) May.

My next order of business is a silly little Coda Scooby-Doo spoof which has also been half-complete for a number of months. I think I finally know how to finish it. It's juvenile tongue-in-cheek silliness, and once it's done, I'll post it here on my site for you to laugh at, or to roll your eyes at. Whichever seems most appropriate.

After that, I'm not sure what I'll do. I do have another story on the back-burner for Jon and Cole. I have my never-ending fantasy project, Cockaigne. I think I know what I need to do with it – I need to change all 45K words of it from first person to third – but so far I've been too lazy to tackle it. Not a fact I'm proud of, but there it is. Jaime and Levi might end up with a sequel someday too, but I have no idea how soon.

That's about it for now. And since it seems to be such a good way to end posts, I'll leave you with a lovely bit of eye candy.