stop. start. stutter.

For the record, the blue in my hair came out awesome, and was only eclipsed at Disney by the fact that one of the members of our traveling party had neon pink and purple hair. She got more compliments than I did, alas. (Sarah, who is forced by her Day Job to at least pretend to be normal, looked on tolerantly.)

I have returned full of vim and vigor, or at least full of painkillers. (The weather is changing; it plays merry hell with my joints.) Yesterday I did two thousand words on an as-yet-untitled short story for an anthology submission; today, it's final revisions on "Shuffle Up And Deal", which is first-bound, I think, for Asimov's. (Best to start your rejection-letter collection with the big names, right?) Tomorrow it is finishing the anthology short (good Lord willin' and the crick don't rise), and then time to lie on the floor with actual paper notebooks, two kinds of pen, a pencil, and some markers to sketch out the relationships and cultures for Beside Strange Waters.

(The bits I've already written on Strange Waters were the test bits -- to see if I could get the tone and voice and characters to talk to me, and to see if there really was a there there. As there appears to be, and Kaden, the narrative character, is a darling delight and I adore him to bits and pieces and beyond, it is time to put in the work to make sure that I don't suffer from Generic TV Alien Syndrome, where everyone looks like humans in funny makeup and each species only has one culture.)

If I get things arranged to my satisfaction in time, I think I might do Strange Waters for NaNoWriMo this year. I have never found NaNo to be particularly challenging -- high word counts are not a problem for me; it's the persistency necessary to finish something -- but I'm trying to lure Sarah into doing NaNo herself. She keeps eyeing me dubiously. I think she thinks I'm crazy.

No, strike that, she lives with me. She knows I'm crazy.