Today's my brother's birthday. I'd tell him happy birthday here but he doesn't have a computer so it's not like he'd see it. But if you bump into my brother, tell him happy birthday.

I'm sitting here listening to "We Close Our Eyes" by Oingo Boingo (their version, not the Suzanna Hoffs cover) on a constant loop and working on the fourth installment of Perfect World (for those playing along at home, Part Three went up last night).

The band has a gig at Curly's on August 10th, with Shamrock and The Sound and the Fury. Come one come all! If, y'know, you live around here.

I'm so giddy that I can blog again that now I'm all distracted and not focusing properly on my story. I'll go see if I can get my focus back and come back to blog more later (God and Blogger willing).

Oh my God, look at that! After so many weeks I'm too shocked to be able to think of anything to say right now. PLEASE let this not just be a lucky fluke.

Sigh. Even so, I'm scouting around for alternatives to Blogger.

Closing my eyes and holding my breath and crossing my fingers and hoping that I can publish today ...

I'm feeling lucky today. Let's see if Blogger will let me publish.

Just trying to see if Blogger will let me publish today.

Just finished PW2. It's in the hands of my beta readers now.

The band has a gig at Curly's on August 29th. And there was much rejoicing.

Blogger hasn't been letting me publish for days. I keep getting an Error 503, which is not in the FAQ. Something about the template server. I see other blogs are publishing, though, so I'm beginning to suspect that it's just me. Let's see if it'll publish this time.

Spiderman will make you gay.

I've got myself a new hero.

I've finished the first draft of DL 3.6, yay. Also posted the first installment of my post-"Grave" fic that's really not a post-"Grave" fic, Perfect World (the link's over there above James's pretty head).

Speaking of pretty James, here are a bunch of pictures from his band's concert at Club Med World in Paris last week. I haven't had time to look through them all yet, but from what I've seen he's got the whole rock star thing down. So adorable.

Anyway. I'm doing much better than I was the other day. I've gotten good advice about the work study/loan dilemma, and I'm thisclose to getting the band booked at the club they most want to play, so things are looking up on those fronts. I'm taking a break from writing today and going to a movie and non-shopping with Tess tonight, who, by the by, thinks she just may have saved a hard copy of the story my satanic cat destroyed. I don't know yet whether to see the new Halloween or Reign of Fire. I'm jonesing pretty badly to see both. I'll have to make her choose. Though somehow I think Christian Bale's gonna be the clincher.

I was going to answer e-mail today but I overslept a lot and now I have to go get ready to go out. So I'll be doing that when I get back home tonight. I'd never caught up on the loads and loads of e-mail from before, and now I've got a whole new batch. Getting a lot of good feedback on Perfect World, and for that I thank you all. I'm going to try my best to answer everybody individually. But I've been so neglectful of everything but my writing lately that I even have a backlog of e-mail from friends that I'd better sit down and answer if I want to keep them as friends. It's gonna be a long, e-mail writin' night tonight.

I've finished the first draft of DL 3.6, yay. Also posted the first installment of my post-"Grave" fic that's really not a post-"Grave" fic, Perfect World (the link's over there above James's pretty head).

Speaking of pretty James, here are a bunch of pictures from his band's concert at Club Med World in Paris last week. I haven't had time to look through them all yet, but from what I've seen he's got the whole rock star thing down. So adorable.

Anyway. I'm doing much better than I was the other day. I've gotten good advice about the work study/loan dilemma, and I'm thisclose to getting the band booked at the club they most want to play, so things are looking up on those fronts. I'm taking a break from writing today and going to a movie and non-shopping with Tess tonight, who, by the by, thinks she just may have saved a hard copy of the story my satanic cat destroyed. I don't know yet whether to see the new Halloween or Reign of Fire. I'm jonesing pretty badly to see both. I'll have to make her choose. Though somehow I think Christian Bale's gonna be the clincher.

I was going to answer e-mail today but I overslept a lot and now I have to go get ready to go out. So I'll be doing that when I get back home tonight. I'd never caught up on the loads and loads of e-mail from before, and now I've got a whole new batch. Getting a lot of good feedback on Perfect World, and for that I thank you all. I'm going to try my best to answer everybody individually. But I've been so neglectful of everything but my writing lately that I even have a backlog of e-mail from friends that I'd better sit down and answer if I want to keep them as friends. It's gonna be a long, e-mail writin' night tonight.

I'm feeling particularly discouraged today, about a number of things (I know, I don't update in forever, and when I do it's to whine. If you don't want to hear me whine then just go away). First, I'm having a hell of a time getting the band a gig. I keep being met with, "If we decide we want you to play here we'll contact you" and "realistically, how many people do you think you'll bring in?" And I have no clue how to answer that last one. I want to say 50, and I don't know if that's a good number. And I'm beginning to wonder if I'm at all right for this manager gig. I don't think I'm aggressive enough. I mean, really, I'm acting as both manager and booking agent, which are really two separate jobs, and I'm pretty decent at the manager part, but the agent part, not so much. And I feel like I'm letting the boys down. But then again, they have yet to pay me a cent, so at this point I'm doing everything out of the kindness of my own heart, and that makes me feel less bad.

Also, I have a short story that I really want to try to publish, but I just figured out that the only complete and final copy was on the disk that my cat spilled my coffee on and destroyed. So now I'm searching frantically for my only hardcopy, and so far I'm not finding it. Damn cat.

And to top it off, I got my financial aid info from the university today, and instead of renewing my loan for the next school year they decided to grant me a work study. Wonderful because I won't have to pay that back, right? Except, the reason I need financial aid in the first place is because I can't go to school full time and hold a job and make good grades. I've tried it before, and I just can't do it. The ADD, it makes me slow with the learnin'. And I already am going to have to have an internship all year in addition to my classes. So unless I can arrange it so that my workstudy job also counts as my internship, that's two jobs in addition to a full class load. And if they can't do that? Then either I'll have to get them to give me a loan instead, or I'm screwed. I'll have to drop a class or something, which means I won't graduate on time. And right now I'm really pissed off at myself for not going ahead and doing a summer internship.

Sigh. At least the writing is coming along. This is all the more reason to sit my ass down and crank out as much of the new novel as possible before school starts, because once school does start I don't see myself having time for the writing. I just really hope we can get DL finished by then. If we don't it's looking more and more like I'm going to have to drop out of it once school starts. And considering that DL is my baby, that just ... well, it makes me want to cry. So I think I might go lie down and do that now. Maybe then I'll get it all out of my system and feel better.

I've been writing. And not much else. I'm a little freaked out at the realization that summer vacation is half over already and I've hardly accomplished anything. But as far as the writing goes, at least I've got me a system.

My first draft of DL 3.6 is almost done, and so, I'm told, is a final draft of the rest of 3.5, so there'll be new Dancing Lessons coming your way before too much longer. Also finished a rough first installment of the new fic, but I'm still wrestling with that one to make the first post-"Grave" encounter believable and realistic and inoffensive. Stupid "Seeing Red." As soon as 3.6 is finished I'll be getting to work on the novel. So, yeah. If you were wondering, I've been right here, writing my ass off. And this is where I'll continue to be.