Shannon Page

Greetings from The Land Formerly Known As The Land of Very Little Internet (i.e. Mark’s parents’ home in the Sierra foothills). They have upgraded their internet here considerably, although, ironically, their new provider doesn’t support logging in to LiveJournal, so I’m using my mobile hotspot on my iPhone, which never used to get service here, and now it does. There must be a new cell tower somewhere. So, the future comes even to the boonies, if you wait long enough.

Anyway, there have been some miles covered these last few days! I can’t believe it’s only Monday; it feels like a month ago we left Portland, though that was only Friday afternoon. We flew to Oakland, picked up the car at the airport parking lot (got overcharged; I’ll have to deal with that when I get home), and went to have dinner with some Good Friends of Mark’s. They cooked in their outdoor brick oven:

Oh So Much Yum! Also, scrumptious homemade wine was drunk, and sent along with us. Good times.

From there, we drove (very late) out to Fairfield and our economical motel room. For the next day was a wedding in Napa, the original reason for this trip.

Saturday, we got all snazzed up, got in the car, and gave ourselves an hour to make the twenty-minute drive to the meeting point where a series of shuttles were taking guests to the Seekrit Wedding Spot You Cannot Drive To. And….there was construction and traffic and I don’t even know what all, and the cars didn’t go and the cars didn’t go…and it took more than an hour to get there, and we missed the last shuttle.

Much dismayed, we settled in to wait for the Post-Wedding pickup…but then along came a shuttle, 15 minutes after the ceremony was due to start! “I think I can get you guys in,” said the driver, and off we went. Got to the Seekrit Location JUST as the processional was starting…snuck into some seats and saw the whole thing. Hoorah! It was gorgeous and moving and delightful, and the reception afterward was also marvelous, and ran very long, till late in the evening.

But we didn’t get to sleep in Sunday, for we had to get up early and pack up and drive to the El Cerrito Costco and buy food for a party for 30 people (and call my dad from the car along the way to say Happy Father’s Day) and drive to Alameda (getting a bit lost along the way) to Mark’s cousin’s house to set up this party for 30 people (which was to celebrate Mark’s mom’s 80th birthday which we missed because I got shingles in February and Mark’s dad’s 85th birthday which happened while we were at the funeral in Fresno for Mark’s uncle oh and also it was Father’s Day) and then the party happened and it was lovely (and I ducked into the bedroom and called my stepdad to wish him a Happy Father’s Day) and then we helped clean up the party because some fools bought WAY TOO MUCH FOOD and then we took Mark’s parents’ car and our car up here a three-hour drive to the mountains and here we are. I drove with Mark’s mom; Mark came a bit later with his dad; they arrived about 11:30.

Then we all slept until about 11 this morning. There had been some discussion of going for a hike today, hahahhahahaa. It is 4pm and I’ve just finished showering. Also today I: ate breakfast, read the internet, made most of a blog post. Mark is about to take a nap. I think we ran our energy reserve tanks WAY past zero.

Tomorrow, we start heading north again, bringing his folks with us. There will be a bit more visiting and the like along the way, but hopefully at a much slower pace. I mean, this was all good stuff, but, wow. Too much.

Hmm. A nap looks kinda good.

We had a lovely evening signing books at JayFest at Powell’s tonight, to benefit cancer research (and, of course, Jay). It was a smaller gathering than the big “authorfest” signings we’ve done after OryCon the past few years, but it had the same feeling, and I think we sold at least as many books as we do at the bigger events.

Plus, it was super cool to see so many author-friends and reader-friends. It was almost like a mini-con. We even did some business, in a potential sort of way. And there was the added extra bonus! surprise-delight of seeing fjm there, fresh off the plane from London.

And, speaking of planes, tomorrow we fly back to California, to embark on Phase 2 of the Great Wedding March of 2013. At least I got all my freelance work done….for now…. And, on this phase of the journey at least, I expect to have more internet access than the last phase. (Now, whether I’ll have TIME to log in and post is an entirely other matter…)

So our new game is cribbage. I played it as a child, but don’t remember a thing, so we’re puzzling over the (inadequate and badly written) instructions that came with the board, supplemented with (crazily excessive and overwritten*) instructions on the internet.

I think we’re mostly getting the hang of it, except for the one-point-at-the-end-of-play thing. Who gets that? You get it if you can’t make 31? Or your opponent does? Any cribbage players, please chime in!

Anyway, Mark won our first night, last week; I won tonight. This is going well.**

Other things happened today too, but they are boring work-related things, so I figured you only wanted to hear about cribbage.

_______________
*Seriously. 41 pages long. 41. Pages. Long. WTF, people?

**Our other two go-to games, backgammon and a card game called Golf, are becoming boringly predictable: I always win backgammon, he always wins Golf. Coincidentally or not, I taught him backgammon, he taught me Golf. We’re thinking trying a new game neither of us really know might be the answer. So far so good.

And…he is back, I have picked up Mark at the bus station late this evening. Neither of us are entirely finished with our work-tasks, but finished enough so that he felt it was safe to return to my presence. We will endeavor to make the next few days productive, despite being together.

Speaking of productive: yes, I was, again today. I’ve got a big box of freelance work packaged up and ready to send out, hooray. Didn’t make it into the garden; but I did manage a swim AND a yoga class, so I’m feeling good about that.

Onward!

So I have been so VERY VERY BUSY since I got home…lots of freelance work, which is awesome; and tons of gardening (o my god the weeds); and getting back on top of the exercise/diet efforts; and just general stuff around the house…

But no work on Hobgoblin.

It’s not that I haven’t done writing-related stuff; since I got into Book View Cafe (official launch is still coming up, don’t worry, I Will Announce) I’ve been working on what I need to do to get up to speed there, and starting to put together my collection–but I haven’t done any, you know, WRITING writing. Hobgoblin is just sitting here on my desk, looking forlorn and abandoned.

I tell myself it’s okay, I’ll get back to it, this is just a crazy time–and it’s true, two trips to California with just a scant week in between (why couldn’t these friends have planned their weddings to suit my schedule better?) –but this keeps happening, I get good momentum going and then…get interrupted, by something large and time-consuming and distracting, and then I have to climb back into the book all over again.

I do well working on several projects at once; I actually like to spend an hour or two on something, then move to something else, letting my backbrain catch up slowly, as it does; but this–this is too many projects to touch all of them in one day. So I end up proofreading, and editing outside stuff, and going for a swim, and proofing some more, and gardening, and cooking dinner, and proofing…and then it’s 11:30 and maybe I can get a little fun-reading in before I conk out.

I dunno. I’m not exactly complaining–I love all the things I have on my plate–but, well, I guess I wish the plate was bigger. Or something.

Maybe, just maybe, after the second trip is done, and after Mark’s parents’ visit just after that is done….yeah. I don’t know. Busy times.

The last two days have been a flurry of All The Things, as promised…I’m making progress, to be sure, but oh my goodness there are certainly more Things to be done.

But! I’ve slashed my email inbox down to something almost approachable; done a pile of freelance work; began to reclaim the garden; did some yoga and some swimming; restocked the fridge; and a jillion other little things. The next few days will be more of the same.

Mark went back to Seattle this evening, but not before we grabbed a few hours to go see “Now You See Me,” which was OMG so much fun. Incredible storytelling, VERY impressive. We were quite pleased.

And it feels like I should have more to report, but really, that’s kind of it. Workity work. Which is all right with me.

It’s nice to be here.

Bed now. Tomorrow, I’ll try to make the most of my limited time here and get All The Things done! Heh.

Sorry for the radio silence! We’ve been traveling, with quite a bit less internet and time than I’d anticipated.

First we drove down and attended a wedding in Mendocino. It’s pretty there–

–but quite remote and there wasn’t any logging in.

And from there it was off to see my various parents, which was lovely; and this evening we had dinner with my brother and his delightful girlfriend, also lovely; and tomorrow, more visiting, and then a brief return to Portland (yay!). Brief, you ask? Yes, because in another week is yet another wedding….also in California…tis the season, and all that.

Anyway, regular blogging should resume…um….sometime.

I seem to be constitutionally incapable of packing in advance. Mark and I leave for California tomorrow and I… did everything else today. Or, not even everything else, because there’s always more to do. But I didn’t even get started packing.

The good news is, Mark didn’t either, and he has to drive down from Seattle, so I’ll have at least a three-hour warning tomorrow.

______________

In other good news: I’ve been accepted as a member of Book View Cafe! Which is awesome and cool and great. I don’t have a backlist, like some authors; instead, I’m hoping to put together a collection of my favorite published short stories. Some individual, some collaborative. I will definitely keep you posted.

____________

And more good news: Dad got sprung from the hospital after only one night.

He’s looking good! We’ll see him on this trip, which will be nice. It felt weird to not be there for the surgery itself, but it sounds like it went so very smoothly. Here’s hoping his recovery is just as easy! He’ll be in that sling for weeks and weeks, though. Which is a challenge for him: he’s a very active guy.

______________

And still more good news: I made my first acquisition as a Per Aspera editor! Chaz blogs about it here. I’m excited to work on this project, it’s a marvelous and disturbing story.

_____________

So, despite not starting my packing, I’d say it’s been a pretty good day.

All the contracts are in and I can now give you the table of contents for the anthology Witches, Stitches, and Bitches, from Evil Girlfriend Media!

And the stories are:
Gabrielle Harbowy, “Blood Magic”
Christine Morgan, “Urgent Care”
Bo Balder, “The Knitted Man”
Stephanie Bissette-Roark, “Spare Parts”
Tom Howard, “The Secret Life of Dreams”
Kate Brandt, “Frogsong”
Caren Gussof, “No Substitute”
Bob Brown, “Forgetting Tomorrow”
Garth Upshaw, “The Bitchy Witch Queen and the Undone Stitches”
Kodiak Julian, “Not Even If I Wanted To”
Julie McGalliard, “Yes, I’m A Witch”
J. H. Fleming, “The Far Horizon”
Eva Langston, “The Three Gateways”
Camille Griep, “For Want of a Unicorn”
Alaina Ewing, “Blood of the Mother”
Rebecca Fung, “Dresses of Fur and Fangs”

It’s an awesome group of stories and I can’t wait for you all to read them!

______________

In other news: I managed a little yard work today, it actually stopped raining for a few minutes. My, those weeds do grow.

Also, my dad had his shoulder replaced this morning. He called me from the hospital this afternoon, chipper and normal as ever. Modern medicine, man. And he’s still beating me on Words with Friends.