Still no internet

It will be next week when I get internet at our place, and a while after that until I have my computer, so I'll try to get caught up on blogging once I'm online, next week. We're settled into our home and Trevor has started his PhD. So far, things are going great!

New Home!

I haven't spent much time online this week, and that trend will continue until we get internet in our apartment next week. Just wanted to let family and friends know that we found an apartment and will get moved in tomorrow. More info when we're back online!

Worst. Crossing. Ever.

We're finally here, in the UK, staying with friends. When our flight in Albuquerque got canceled, Trevor went out to get us booked on another one, and they ended up requiring all of us to come out from behind the security checkpoint in order to check in with another airline. Then we sat at the ticket counter for an hour and a half while the airlines bickered about how to handle our tickets. In total I went through security twice, and Trevor had to go three times.

We then made it to Chicago, where we went to check in and learned we had no tickets for the connecting flight. Fortunately, this was with Aer Lingus and they handled all of that while we waited at the gate. This means we only had to go through security once, as we went from the domestic terminal to the international one. Our flight was delayed, but by 9pm we were on our way.

This morning we landed in Dublin (not a city that was on our original route) and had to clear immigration and security to get to our connecting flight, which was canceled. In order to even get into the airport, we had to go down an icy ramp and across the asphalt - our son lost his pacifier on the way, poor little guy. Aer Lingus booked us on another flight, but we had to go out and go back through immigration and security.

The new flight was late, and we arrived in Heathrow eight and a half hours after our original flight, and in those eight and a half hours we didn't have a single regular layover where we could do things like feed our baby or get food. Trevor has been through security six times on this trip, and I've been through five. I think that's a new record.

So, okay, it wasn't the worst crossing *ever*. The Titanic had it quite a bit worse, for example, but it was the worst I've ever weathered, and I've done this trip over a dozen times. We're just glad to be here now and to be safe! Now we need to work on getting an apartment.

Flight canceled

Well, we're not out of the US yet, or even Albuquerque, because our flight just got canceled. The plane had a mechanical problem. Our only deadline, really is that our health insurance runs out at midnight. We hope to be out of the country by then.

Trevor had to go back to pick up our checked bags, and we'll see what flights we can get on once he gets back to the ticket counter. Our son and I are staying back behind the security barrior.

Final countdown

This is the last post I'll be making from this computer for a while. As soon as it finishes backing up files, we'll remove its hard drive to carry onto the plane and pack up the rest of it to check. We figured out that checking bags and paying the fees for extra weight is still quite a bit cheaper than shipping items, so we'll be taking as many checked bags as we're allowed. We'll also be carrying on two bags apiece plus a diaper bag. People will find us annoying, but it's only for this one trip.

Right now Trevor is doing all of the manual labor, packing bags. I feel useless in this respect, as I still feel out of it from surgery, but I've done things like send emails to property managers to arrange apartment viewings and have gotten our bank accounts all in order with powers of attorney signed for my parents, should they need to access anything while we're abroad.

What is hardest to comprehend is that in less than two days, we leave New Mexico for not just a trip, but for years. My mother and I did a quick driving tour of Taos for me to do some research for my book. It was good to take in the landscape one last time. I always miss my home state when I'm gone.

Tomorrow I'll have a follow up appointment for my surgery, then we'll head straight to Albuquerque to try to pick up our new eyeglasses and contacts before that office closes. If we miss it, they can mail them. Directly after that we'll go over to see Char, who is very kindly putting us up for the night, and that's ideal, getting to spend some of my last hours here with one of my very best friends.

Our flight leaves early in the morning on Saturday and we'll arrive in the early morning of Sunday at Heathrow - just when Britain's supposed to get another snow storm. It's a good thing we aren't in a rush, because this journey is going to take a lot of patience.

If I can, I'll blog during the trip, but that will likely only be if we get snowed in somewhere. For now I'll say a brief good-bye and I'll be back as soon as I can.

FAQ for our move

Q: When and where are you moving?

A: This Saturday, January 9th, to London, England

Q: Why are you moving?

A: Trevor's doing his PhD at Imperial College.

Q: How long will you be there?

A: The degree program is 3 years.

Q: Where will you go after that?

A: I don't think most people know exactly where they'll be in 3 years. We're not obligated to go anywhere specific, so we may return to New Mexico, or we may not.

Q: Do you have an address over there yet?


A: Nope. Renting an apartment sight unseen is never a good idea, especially not in a foreign country. We hope to be settled into a new place fairly soon after we arrive, but for a little while we'll stay with friends.

Q: How do you get all of your stuff over there?

A: I don't know. We aren't even planning to try. We'll carry as much luggage as we can, but we're looking at furnished apartments to rent. We'll also buy baby supplies, like a crib and gates and that kind of thing over there. It's really odd to me how many people seem to panic when I say this and start telling me that I really, really need baby stuff. I do know that... and I also know that there are stores in the UK that sell it. Really, last I checked, it was a first world country, and shipping stuff trans-Atlantic was really expensive.


Q: How often will you be back in the US?

A: We are not returning to the US during our three year stay. It's just too much money, and we'll be living right off the coast of Europe, so if we do have money to spend, we're heading east. We assume the United States will still be there once we're no longer living off a student stipend.

Q: Are you sure you can't come back for-

A: Yeah, we're sure. Unless I net some giant novel advance, but by then I might be too famous to remember who you are.

Q: Will you get an accent?

A: I hear this one a lot, and I'm never sure how to answer it. It's just a weird question. For one thing, we already have accents, American ones. We have no firm plans about changing them. We think that's the kind of thing you don't really plan.

Q: What's your prior connection to the UK?

A: I am a graduate of the United World College of the Atlantic, in Wales, where I spent 2 years, and Oxford University, where I spent 3 years. And no, I am not a British citizen and my family never lived over there. It was my decision to get out and see the world when I was a teenager.

Q: Why are you going to the UK for Trevor's school?

A: It suits our situation better. American PhD's can be long and open ended. British programs are for a set number of years and the person doesn't have to take classes. Besides that, Imperial offered us money to go.

Q: What's the best way to reach you?

A: Email, and the call widget on this site will connect you to our North American voicemail box, which will email phone messages on to us.

Comrades in arms

Carrie's latest book, Kitty's House of Horrors (Kitty Norville, Book 7), is for sale! She dedicated it Mike Bateman and Daniel Abraham, "comrades in arms". Daniel's in Critical Mass - he was actually one of the first people I met in that group, and Mike was in Daniel's Clarion West Class and that's how he and I met and he's the guy I went to Denver to stay with for a while after his beautiful daughter was born. Okay, that's all convoluted. Welcome to the social circle of a writer.

Anyway, I got to see Mike and his family again over the holidays and all of us, plus Carrie, went out to eat on Saturday. Mike, Carrie, and I have been friends for nearly a decade now, and it's always wonderful to reconnect. When I first met Mike, he had a couple of sales to Asimov's (a pro market I've never cracked). Carrie had just made the cover of Talebones (another market I've never cracked). I had no sales whatsoever. All of us have progressed, and I'm sure all of us feel intense frustration at times about where we are.

Carrie's made it as high as 13th on the NYT bestseller list, and just had to switch publishers mid-series - something that's almost unheard of in the business. What's irritating about things like this is that it had nothing whatsoever to do with Carrie's writing quality (each book has sold more than the last), her professionalism, her relationship with her editor - none of the things that you think would matter. Rather, it was a whacked out turn of contract negotiation that made no legal sense. Her next books will be out from Tor, and I'm quite confident that her star will continue to rise.

Mike, the last time I saw him, said he was quitting writing, and I threatened to beat him with a shovel and then went off and cried. Comrade in arms is right. The very thought of losing him as a writer friend (though never as a friend) was painful. He and I had stayed up so many nights at cons talking about story concepts and submission woes. Every time I see him he hands me a novel he's just read that is fantastic. A lot of the best things I've ever read were recommended to me by him. As the years go by, I continue to be blown away at how his craftsmanship grows and develops and I just have to keep reminding myself that he's been at it longer than I have. Well, the good news is that he's now talking again about the frustrations of having writing he wants to do and not enough time to do it. Another of Mike's disgusting characteristics, he can write and work a story for 8-10 hours a day and make it better and better and better. Even with Carrie telling him that if she tried to do that she'd have a bunch of solitaire wins and no more words than usual, he was acting as if this were somehow inadequate. So both Carrie and I told him to shut up in as loving and supportive a way as possible. I'm not happy that he's feeling the usual writer frustrations, but I'm ecstatic that he's still writing (and you are, Mike. Your stories are developing and your skills continue to grow.)

As for me, since I first met these two, I've gone from being not even remotely published to landing my first sale in a pro market, then selling a novel to a small press, to now having parted ways with said small press and having a modest little list of short story sales. I think the novel I'm working on now will sell, but I'm not counting any chickens before they hatch here. Who knows where our careers will be when the three of us are together again? It's moments like that dinner on Saturday night, though, that I live for. These rarely make the sales come faster or the rejection letters any less cutting, but they let me know that no one need work in solitude all the time. Just, you know, 99.9% of the time (and no, that's not really an exaggeration :-)

I survived the anesthetic!

Was it at all likely that I wouldn't? Well, no. But I hope everyone reading this is happy to hear it anyway. If not, sheesh, why are you reading my ramblings?

My surgery went well today and the hospital staff were wonderful. The surgeon, also the bishop of one of the wards up here, has a sense of humor and told them that I was a "famous writer". I hope they don't take him too seriously. I did tell the CRNA that the only bestseller list I'd ever been on was Seagull Book's - and I'd been published by their parent company.

Despite warnings that this surgery would hurt worse than the last one, it doesn't so far. But maybe I shouldn't blog that, if I want to milk it for sympathy here at home....

Anyway, enough about my nose. I'm gonna put up another post about writing here in a sec.

Anthology up for preorder on Amazon

Okay, this week is going to be IN-SANE, but I'll try to blog a lot to make up for me being away from the internet next week while I find a new home in London. Thanks, Melanie, for your kind wishes! We'll almost be neighbors soon - by American standards, if not European.

First off, The Dragon and the Stars is available for pre-order on Amazon.com. My story, Across the Sea, will appear there, and the anthology will be out in May. And I need to remember to email this to everyone who's asked about it, but I won't do that now because it's 12:30 am.

And I need to go to bed before I get hungry because I'm not allowed to eat anything until after surgery tomorrow (well, later on today, if you want to be technical). I'm getting my deviated septum un-deviated. My last round of surgery went very well and last week my nose did this totally amazing thing. It weathered a cold without my going on antibiotics!!! I've done that perhaps twice in my life, and I've been sick a lot more than that. I won't go into all the disgusting details, but suffice it to say that not having all airway passages swollen shut makes it a lot harder for infections to take hold and spread. The top of my nose is still narrow, though, and when I last lived in the UK, I had a cold for about three years straight. I must've gone on antibiotics over a dozen times. I'd like to avoid that.

Okay, bed time for me. I'm sure you've all really enjoyed reading about my nasal passages. Maybe I should just plug the anthology one more time to get your mind onto something that (I hope) is more pleasant for you?

My blog went down, did yours?

My blog went down New Year's Day, so I went into the Blogger settings and moved it from http://www.emilymah.com/ to its blogspot address. When I tried to move it back to my own domain, I got the "Another blog is hosted at this address error".

It's a well known error message, but none of the old troubleshoots worked. What did work, for any of you frustratedly surfing the web, trying to fix this, was to log into the GoogleApps for this domain and disable the "Pages" feature. I may not know what I'm talking about (I probably don't), but my guess is that Google revamped some of its features through Google Apps and that screwed up the blog hosting.

I'm blogging this from Colorado. Go 10,000 words of the novel written so far. Today we'll be visiting friends and tomorrow we'll head back to New Mexico.

And one week from now we'll be boarding a plane to the UK!