So things happened this week

[hrj]

 My minute-by-minute social media discussions are scattered all over the place, so I can forget what I've posted where. Here are a few things that happened during the last week:

Shira Glassman went live with a gorgeous fan-art promotional post for the Alpennia books that she commissioned. I feel immensely honored and flattered that my fans think so highly of my books as to do things like this.

My queer-Mabinogi short story "Hyddwen" was accepted by Podcastle.org. I'm overjoyed that it's going to get the audio-publication treatment, like the first story in the series (Hoywverch) did, because it's written very deliberately in an oral storytelling style. Selling it means that it's time to start writing the third story in the series. (Like the original Mabinogi, it's planned to have four branches. I have the basic skeleton of the plots for 3 & 4 outlined, but there are still a lot of details to noodle.)

The Golden Crown Literary Awards 2017 shortlists came out and Mother of Souls did not make the shortlist for the Science Fiction and Fantasy category. (Daughter of Mystery and The Mystic Marriage were both shortlisted but neither of them won--there are three winners in each category.) In one sense, this is not at all surprising, because the Goldies are--in their essence--awards for the best lesfic novels, and I don't write lesfic in the genre sense. But it's still disappointing.

On Wednesday, I came home from work to discover my front door kicked in and my house ransacked, including having my safe ripped out of its fastenings and pick-axed open. Mysteriously (but tellingly) I have not identified anything that was actually stolen (including the two older laptops that were stored in the safe, or any of the jewelry that was left strewn across the bed). My hypothesis is that the burglars were under the vastly mistaken impression that there might be drugs in the house, given the nature and scope of the apparent search activities. But given that one of the major reasons for moving out of Oakland seven years ago was being tired of regular burglaries, I'm furious and shaken and resigned.

Comments

[elbren]

oh dear! glad nothing important is missing, but, ouch, what a violation of your space.

[kareina]

Oh, those are some nice, well thought out reviews! Yay for the story acceptance!

I so understand being furious about the break in. Has it really be seven years already since you moved? How frequent were the break ins when you were in Oakland? I am guessing from how you phrased it that once every seven years is a better frequency, even if one would rather have a frequency of "never"...

[hrj]

When I lived in Oakland, I joked about being on the "three-year laptop replacement plan". (The extended AppleCare coverage is for three years. There was a long period where I was never not covered because of having to buy new machines.)

I moved to Concord in 2011, but my last Oakland burglary was in 2010.

[kareina]

ow, I never wanted to live in Oakland (or any other city for that matter), but this really reinforces my lack of interest.

[rosefox]

That's horrible! Many many sympathies.

[hrj]

I occasionally get a case of the "why me"s. If I believed in such things, I might think it was because I'm better capable of handling it than some others, but one reason I don't believe in such things is that many people demonstrably are hit with more than they can handle. That leaves me back at wondering if I'm somehow sending out "rob me" signals.

[meepettemu]

Ugh that's horrible :(

[hrj]

Thanks for the sympathy!

[dirtygreatknife]

Oh no! That's so awful!

[hrj]

Yeah. And it never helps to think that I'm getting practiced at the proper responses.

[gurdymonkey]

The fan art is delightful!

[hrj]

Isn't it? I'm always fascinated by the different ways people visualize my characters. (Although I was brought in as a creative consultant on these, so it wasn't entirely a matter of artistic imagination.)

[beth_bernobich]

I'm so sorry about the burglary. (And I totally understand about the fury. My house in New Haven was robbed, and I was shaking for days after that.)

[hrj]

It's almost more infuriating to think that I'm getting inured to it. Except I'm not, really. After the last double-whammy in Oakland back before I moved, I knew I had to do something drastic when I found myself having a complete emotional meltdown weeks later.