A Most Improper Magick | Stephanie Burgis - Fantasy, Young Adult, and Middle Grade Writer

A Most Improper Magick | Stephanie Burgis - Fantasy, Young Adult, and Middle Grade Writer

Hey, cool, I like this Blogger addon for my web browser! It lets me post to my blog while I browse other people's pages, like this one. Looks like my friend, Stephanie, has new cover art for her book. Yay! It looks good! (The old art looked good too, but the buyer for a major bookstore chain didn't like it and wouldn't buy copies unless they revised it.)

And Amazon has a link to a hardcover with awful cover art! But I daresay this is just a placeholder.

Baby due near end of year

It's been a hectic week. The good news is: our baby looked nice and healthy at the 12 week scan, and my sleep has settled down to be mostly at night. I don't get enough of it to really function, but it's enough for me to limp along on until we re-evaluate whether I go back on my medication at 20 weeks. If I can make it without, I will, but I'm not sure I can.

Meanwhile, I've finally gotten rolling on another novel. I'd been tooling around with bits and pieces of things but nothing really held my interest until this project came together. It's more chick lit, but it won't be for the LDS market. We'll see if I can crack the national chick lit market with this one (or you may see it retooled if I can't, and I can always try the LDS houses.) And no, no word on my LDS chick lit sitting at Deseret Book. I'll pester them in a few weeks just to make sure they didn't lose my rejection letter, but they did warn me that this phase of their decision making process is the longest.

So, note to aspiring LDS authors, the response times on the Deseret Book website seem to be out of date. Not surprising for a house that has grown as much as they have since those submission guidelines were put up. Now, their response time seems to be closer to the 8 months or year that is common in the national market - a cautionary note for anyone who things writing is a way to quick fame and/or fortune. If a novel is picked up, it isn't unusual for it to be released a year or more after that.

Winter is Coming

Here's the teaser for Game of Thrones on HBO. It originally aired during the season premiere of True Blood and Parris (George's lady love) was kind enough to post a link for those of us who don't have HBO (and aren't in the US, for that matter.)

Winter Is Coming

Fraud Alert: Med Shop Express

Just a blogpost for anyone who's considering using this website: www.medshopexpress.com, especially people like me who are ex-patriates who might want to get US brand medications shipped abroad. I ordered some diaper cream from them (zinc oxide seems to be regulated over here, so the highest concentration I can find is 15%, whereas Desitin has 40%) and was quoted $10.00 for shipping. Not bad. I authorized the purchase, and ended up being charged $34.00 for shipping. I even got an email with the $10.00 quoted in the invoice and the $34.00 in the actual charge.

The problem here is obvious, I didn't authorize that extra $24.00 so they can't just appropriate it from my account. If they want to charge that much for shipping, they need to show that on the screen where I give consent to charge my card.

What makes this situation infuriating is that when I contacted their customer support, the brainless agent I dealt with said, "$10.00 is the cost of domestic shipping and you need international shipping." See, the thing is, when I placed the order and got quoted the price, I had already input my London address. The site knew it was going international. It wasn't as if I input a US address and modified the order later. They have no excuse for not quoting me the price they would actually charge. In fact, I don't think any company ever has an excuse, not without making it quite clear that the price isn't fixed.

So I've reported them to my credit card company and to the FBI. Don't ever use them. I'd better win this one! It's just a matter of principle.

If you like scary movies

http://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/jpabraham/

Okay, it's a science lecture, but it still scared me. I realize not everyone likes to listen to a university professor interpret graphs for 85 minutes straight. This lecture is a university professor debunking a climate change skeptic who fabricated much of his evidence and misrepresented nearly all of his sources. It includes the original evidence, articles, and even emails from the scientists the skeptic quotes.

What I find horrifying about this is that the skeptic has been invited to speak at universities to educated people, and only those willing to actually look at his sources will see that something's amiss. I always believe in taking a second look at anything interesting I hear, but I do also expect that when someone cites sources, they are citing them correctly, else why bother listening to anything they say?

I do understand being skeptical about climate change. However, I don't understand a) being ignorant of it - seriously, if I could have a nickel for every stupid joke about global warming that belies the joker hasn't even skimmed the Wikipedia article on it... it's a theory that entails life as we know it changing irrevocably. Disbelieve it if you want, but at least *know* it first. Or b) aggressive anti-intellectualism and a culture that allows someone like this skeptic, who's never published a peer reviewed paper in any subject and has no formal training in science to be given the same venue as people who've dedicated their careers to collecting and interpreting data.

Anyway, this week I've been experiencing somnolence, which is the flip side of insomnia. Rather than not being able to sleep, I have a hard time staying awake and will nap in 2-3 hour stretches throughout the day and night. It's difficult to parent this way, and impossible to do anything else in addition to that. (But yes, science lectures do keep me awake; I find them interesting.) These attacks usually last about a week or so, and I wish they left me all rested up for the next wave of insomnia, but no. I think something other than conventional exhaustion drives somnolence. But you'll hear more from me again when I'm awake :-)