(shudder) oh so much money….

No, can’t worry about that; I’ve run the numbers thoroughly, and I can make this work. And it will be SO much fun and SO worth it professionally.

I also signed up on a home-exchange site. That took most of my morning. Fortunately, it was a sunny day, so I was able to take lovely pictures of the house and yard and all. (And I hope I don’t get dinged for false advertising, showing a sunny Portland house while asking for a trade in October/November…)

So now I’m worried no one will want to trade for late fall, here. But, I’m doing all I can to make it happen. I searched the website for Londoners wanting trades, and sent one query. I’ll keep searching, and sending, and we’ll see!

The post It’s Really Happening appeared first on Shannon Page.

And I bought…wait for it….

Another rug!

That’s not where it goes. I have no idea where to put it; I’m totally out of floor.

But it was so inexpensive!! It’s like the lady had no idea what a good rug it was. I mean, under $100! It was my sacred duty to bring it home.

I got other little things too, including a deviled-egg-serving plate (I lost my last one in the divorce), and some useful knick-knacks. And the sun came out for our drive home, so we put the top down and let the wind blow our hair around.

Lovely day.

The post It’s Like a Rug Store in Here appeared first on Shannon Page.

Also I got some more anthology stories edited and out; not quite halfway done with those.

Also-also I got some acquisitions-editing-reading done. (I still LOVE it that I can lie on the couch and read, and that’s work!)

You can tell from all of the above that it was too rainy to go play in the yard today…

The post Hobbing and Such appeared first on Shannon Page.

Actually, let me backtrack, because what I learned also helped me solve a mystery that had been driving me nuts. Ever since the weather got a little better and I’ve been keeping windows open, I’ve been hearing this random, occasional “pok” sound. Like a very, very slow ping-pong game. I could NOT for the life of me figure out where it was coming from, though it was obviously nearby.

Though sometimes it sounded farther away, and sometimes it sounded really close. I actually almost peered into a fenced back yard down the block last week, because I thought I heard it coming from there, but when I walked by, there were people in the yard, and, well, I wasn’t going to peer through their fence when they were back there.

So the mystery continued. I started thinking I was going to have to move away, just to preserve my sanity. POK…. POK……….. POK.

POK.

But then yesterday I was out in the yard, puttering around as I do, and I saw my next-door neighbor in his yard. He had a bag of peanuts, and he was filling a couple of little container-device-things that he had nailed to trees.

And as soon as he filled one, a squirrel ran up, lifted the lid, got a peanut, and scampered off, leaving the top to fall back down with a little “pok”!

MY GOD, MY NEIGHBOR IS FEEDING THE LITTLE BASTARDS! (in fact, probably lots of neighbors are, which is why the sound gets closer and farther…)

And of course they leave the peanut shells all over my yard. AND BURY THEM IN MY POTS.

Because of course the little bastards aren’t satisfied with peanut-feasting all over the neighborhood: they still have to come into MY yard and dig up my pots and chew on my plants and kill seedlings and generally wreak mayhem.

I still may have to move. This neighborhood is not safe! Who would have thought my very NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOR had gone over to the dark side?

Oddly, now that I know what the POK sound is, it bothers me both less and more. At least I’m not crazed with wondering any more. And I suppose I could silver-lining it and tell myself that every POK I hear is a squirrel not at that moment in my yard, but I’m not quite that Zen yet. I just imagine them writing all their friends all over the country: “Hey, free peanuts in southeast Portland! Right next door to a bunch of juicy plants and freshly dug soil! Come on down!”

Little bastards.

The post Bad Neighbor! appeared first on Shannon Page.

Muddy yardwork, at least. But it makes the weed-pulling easier. I miss that hot weather we had! Though I can’t argue with getting the garden watered for free.

I have about a billion strawberries that are allllllllmost ripe. Just a day or two of sun should do it.

Sun? Hello, sun? Any time now! I want to take my socks back off!

The post Drippy Day appeared first on Shannon Page.

But hey, everyone has to learn sometime, right?

And I AM learning so much, it’s marvelous. Working with these stories, pondering what makes a good story work and what makes an unsuccessful story not work–it’s subtle, but also obvious; subjective, yet not. It’s already finding its way back to my own writing, as I finally got back into the edit of Hobgoblin today, and saw things I hadn’t seen the last sixteen times I went over it. Easy-to-fix things. At least so far.

The thing that has amused me the most this week has been something that is entirely DUH-level obvious once you realize it, but I hadn’t seen it till I got there. I was remembering reading all the anthology submissions, which I did as they came in–the good, the bad, the ugly. I read every word of all of them (and there go my friends rolling their eyes again)–but I needed to do that, for my own sense of what I had. And, as I mentioned, to think about why stories work and why they don’t.

So I chose sixteen stories (and I’ll post the table of contents when all the contracts are in), and notified the authors, and then prepared to edit…dreading, before I got into it, the amount of work to be done. Because I’d just had this experience of reading this huge pile of good, bad, and ugly, all jumbled up. And thinking about each story, what it would need…

I’ve edited three stories so far, and…well…they hardly needed any editing at all! Because, DUH, I chose good stories. NOT ones that needed much work–by me, or by the author. I mean, of COURSE. But I didn’t see it till I was sitting there with the stories going, Gee, that was easy.

Yeah, okay, I’ll get there.

In other news: I almost have peonies blooming…any day now:

But then I met Miss Q for tea in Ladd’s Addition, and afterwards we walked through the rose gardens, which are in full bloom:

We took the time to stop and smell the roses. They were lovely.

The post Editing Thoughts appeared first on Shannon Page.

Got one freelance job done; another one came in. Hey-ho.

Oh, and there is news on the Substitute Innkeepers deal for this winter: it’s going to be three months, not four. The owners have decided to cut their own trip a little shorter, and frankly, that’s going to make some things a lot easier for us. We’ll now start mid-November instead of November 1, and end mid-February. (Don’t worry, Mom, Thanksgiving is still a go!)

This way, we can get back from World Fantasy and maybe even have a day or two to get over our jetlag before packing up and going to Orcas Island for the winter.

Hmm, now I really need to get planning on that trip…

The post Monday appeared first on Shannon Page.

We did have a few stories that came to us outside of the established channels. But I think we caught all of them in the net.

Also, it did rain, as promised; that was actually kind of a relief. It had been rather hot for a while there, which of course is lovely, but I think I like variety, in weather. Also I like not having to water the yard every day. Thanks, Nature!

Speaking of the garden: Forever ago, the community garden by Mark’s apartment had an iris sale. He bought a number of them; I planted them last year. Irises apparently don’t like to bloom the first year they’re replanted. But the second year….

(I took these the other day, when it was still sunny out)

More to come, as they continue to bloom!

The post And They’re Out appeared first on Shannon Page.

Mark was feeling better, so we went tablet shopping after all, and bought an iPad Mini, which I look forward to playing with the next time I’m in the same state with it. Because Mark also went home yesterday.

Though not before helping me in the garden, a bit too strenuously, so that now he’s feeling worse again. :/ So he’s trying to take it easy. Again.

Down here, Brilliant Editor was in town last night, so we basically had a many-hours-long Per Aspera business meeting. Very productive and good!

And on the anthology front, I’ve got my table of contents ready but am waiting for some logistical things from higher up before I can move forward. So sorry, any authors who are reading this–I promise I will get notifications out very soon!! I just need one more crucial bit of information….

Meanwhile, the weather has been spectacular, though it’s supposed to rain tomorrow. Well the garden will like that. I’ve already been watering pretty regularly, which I think I didn’t start doing till July or August last year. No complaints about this spring, nope!

The post Progress Report appeared first on Shannon Page.

So no tablet shopping today either. It may have to wait till the next time we’re together, because he has to get back to Seattle very soon–he’s already canceled several plans for this week, and of course there’s always work to do.

But, when you’re sick, you’re sick. Not much to be done about that.

Me, I’m still well (fingers crossed, knock on wood); I did a pile of freelance work today, and puttered in the yard, and went for a swim, and worked on the anthology. I should have a table of contents soon, and will get notices out to authors in the next day or two; am composing generic “acceptance” and “rejection” letters now. (I tried to use something from the many many many examples in my files, but I didn’t find anything I particularly liked, so I’m writing them from scratch.)

I will have more to say about this process as it goes along, I am sure!

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