@seananmcguire's Threads
I am awake on day two of #SDCC, which is going to be...very busy.
10am panel (MAGIC x MAYHEM), 11:30am signing, 1pm signing, 3pm signing, DRINK!
Please come to my things today so my publishers continue to like me. My 3pm signing is in-booth at Marvel (first. time. EVER.) and @AgentM only puts up with me because I'm cute.
They have awesome new reserved seats for travelers with disabilities at gate B12! I commented on how great they were to a supervisor just as a family of five started to occupy them.
This was a timing glitch, not a pointed comment, but they still looked abashed and moved to the non-reserved seats
Sometimes saying something does change things.
I do not enjoy how Google's increasing monetization of search results is making people understandably research averse
I've been asked for links eight times this week, when the answer was easy to Google and could have been acquired in a quarter of the time.
But "just Google it" is increasingly unhelpful, unless it comes with an exact search string. Which means I have to test the string. And now why not provide the information?
Since I am going into SDCC this year with an immune system that's already miserable, I am bringing hand sanitizer and will not be shaking hands with people. Please understand, this is for my health.
I've also picked up sanitizing wipes for surfaces I can't avoid touching--fomite transmission is real!--and some face masks for my airport/airplane time.
This doesn't mean I'm sick! It means I desperately DO NOT WANT to spend any more of the summer sick than I already have, and I leave for Ireland with my mother on August 4th.
A lot of what I like to cook is industrial vats of soups and sauces. And when people ask for recipes, I'm like, "so much of this is by eye/by experience, and another large component is my Sabatier multi-chopper."
The Sabatier multi-chopper is no longer commercially available, but you can find an image of you Google. It's basically a big Slap-Chop. You put things between the razor grid and the crusher, and you slap the top. BAM, instant chopped stuff.
Great for potatoes, onions, strawberries, all sorts of things I need to destroy in bulk, sort of frustrating with basil (you'll spend a lot of time cleaning your crusher with a toothpick), bad for citrus (too juicy, now there is lemon everywhere).
I realized today that a lot of my personal disconnects with my mother come from the fact that we share one of our life mottos, but interpret it very differently. "Things happen when they happen."
For me, that means "The boat won't wait." It means "If we have ten things to do today and we do each of them in order, we'll get everything done."
For her, it means "things will happen when they were meant to happen, float through life and never be on time for anything, because my choices can't impact when things are meant to be." So I'm a martinet, and she's a flake.
As a social media site, Twitter is functionally feral. We don't have a single agreed-upon set of rules for engagement, which is why you see authors begging people not to tag them in negative reviews, and people railing against snitch-tagging, weekly.
You get to set the rules for your own feed, because no one is forcing me to see it. If all you want to post is nudes of yourself eating sandwiches, that's on you. Twitter T&C might have some words for you, but no other user gets to dictate your content.
When I follow your feed, I am opting-in for that content. I still don't get to dictate it. Now, if it changes dramatically, I may opt-out again, and if we are actual friends, I consider it within the realm of "acceptable" to ask about the change.
Did someone just mail me a giant dick? 
Not quite.
Just a wet floor sign shaped like a banana. As you do.
It's best if fan groups and reading groups are started by, y'know, fans and readers. Authenticity matters. But that means it's a roll of the dice whether you get people operating under your name who are awesome or not so much.
I would like to note that I am intensely lucky in this regard, and the people running my fan page on Facebook are a joy. Especially @MarziesReads, who I interact with more than any of the other admins.
These are kind, thoughtful people doing their absolute best to be welcoming and make sure my work is accessible to new people, and all because of a genuine attachment to that work.
As I try to get my ducks in a row for SDCC (and there are SO MANY DUCKS, they don't want to line up, and I think one of them just stole an airplane), I fondly remember the best bit of harmless opportunism I ever experienced there.
See, they don't have holding rooms for panelists. We tend to congregate near the doors as the previous panel is ending, and talk amongst ourselves. Then, when the doors open, we show our badges and go in.
For bigger panels, this can mean some poor volunteer getting confronted with ten authors, our moderator, our publicists, and our significant others. At a certain point, they just stop asking and let us in.
My Apodolls dino girls are finally fully styled! It took years! This is Claire.
Faceup.
Elle.
A follow-up on yesterday's thread: none of the people who were happy to yell at me for thinking about mermaids when the world's on fire have been willing to promise not to consume any fictional media until things are better.
Honestly, I'm glad. Humans need stories. Needing stories is part of what keeps us human. My cat doesn't need a bedtime story to sleep sweetly. She just sleeps.
But if you're not willing to give up stories, please stop trying to harass storytellers into giving up our ability to tell them. Don't wander into book Twitter and yell at us for worrying about mermaids.
My middle sister is here at the house. She's been semi-estranged for two years, since she hooked up with a grifter who hated her family. My uncle consensually kidnapped her.
Part of why I bought a house that is too big was so my sisters would always be able to come home. Mom fills the space I made for them with junk, like a bee filling its hive with honey, but the intent remains.
I grew up in big, cluttered, tangled, sometimes in desperate need of repair, fannish houses. My idea of safety says "there is always an extra bed."
Mira Grant fans! IN THE SHADOW OF SPINDRIFT HOUSE is shipping now! Copies are still available from @SubPress!
subterraneanpress.com/in-the-shadow-…
subterraneanpress.com/in-the-shadow-…
If $40 is too rich for your blood (which I do understand; budgets come for us all), the ebook is also now available (US only):
subterraneanpress.com/in-the-shadow-…
subterraneanpress.com/in-the-shadow-…
If you're outside the US, or just have a preference, the audio book is also available now:
audible.com/pd/In-the-Shad…
audible.com/pd/In-the-Shad…
Having tweeted once about the people yelling that a magic fish girl is black now, I'm getting a wave of people telling me they're too busy caring about important things to care about this.
If you're so busy caring about the really important things, why do you care what one fantasy novelist with a reputation for writing about mermaids thinks, professionally, about a rare mermaid-related controversy?
Also: if you have creative people in your lives, this is why we're all depressed and squirelly right now. We KNOW there are children in cages. We KNOW the weather is broken. We get up in the morning and call our reps just like you (presumably) do. And then we go to work.
I did sleep--not enough, so I'm exhausted. After talking to some other folks, I don't think this is the first thing stolen. There have been small packages that weren't delivered going back months.
(And since some people like to send me surprises, and wait for me to react to them organically, I don't necessarily know everything that's vanished.)
Most recent was my Walter Day SF & F Trading Cards. I got the big framed "hey! We made you a card!" but none of the actual cards, which would have been in a separate, smaller box.
If anyone feels like I'm overreacting right now, consider:
I am a queer, disabled woman in genre, working in comics. Somehow, the theft of my mail has compromised not only my home address, but my phone number, which I've had for twenty years and don't want to change.
I am a queer, disabled woman in genre, working in comics. Somehow, the theft of my mail has compromised not only my home address, but my phone number, which I've had for twenty years and don't want to change.
My house is on a suburban street, shielded well from passing cars. I don't drive. If someone wanted to come here to do me harm, I would have very few defenses that aren't potentially deadly (IE, a machete or a baseball bat).
That sort of escalation ends badly for me. As does any situation where it's not an escalation. And I don't know how many people have this information, or whether any of them will think it's fun to dox me because they dislike how I write Spider-Man.
A man just called to tell me he'd bought my SDCC badge from a resale site. Apparently the badge came with enough information to track down my personal phone number. I feel...very safe.
Between the theft (because the reseller stole my badges out of the mail), and now the apparent data breach, fuck this week.
In case you want to go to #SDCC in the future, remember that all badges have RFID chips embedded in them: when you buy a badge from a reseller, odds are good the owner (me) has reported it missing. It's dead.
Mom came home Thursday, and announced "I got us something." Well, "something" turns out to be a brand-new stainless steel fridge she bought from a customer at her store. It cost her $50.
She is currently scrubbing out the fridge in my kitchen, so she can move it downstairs to her kitchen. The new fridge is going in up here, and her old fridge, which came with the house, is getting moved out.
New fridge in place and being filled with food. Elsie and Thomas were shut in my room for the duration. They couldn't find Meg. She was asleep in one of the cat trees.
I've noticed a tendency, especially when talking about the marginalization of female writers (it doubtless happens in other places, but this is where I see it), to add non-binary authors to lists of female authors as also needing additional attention.
I see and appreciate the intent--I really do--and non-binary authors are definitely in need of additional attention, since they get misgendering on top of everything else that anyone who's not a cis-male author gets.
But tacking them onto lists of female authors implies that non-binary is just another way of saying "girl." And that's not so. NB is not "girl-lite," or "girl-enhanced." It's non-binary. We don't help one group of marginalized people by conflating them inaccurately with another.
Went to the post office to ask if they'd seen my package. Their geotracking produced a picture of my mailbox, and a promise to check with my neighbors and call me back. No one called me back. Post office closed now.
Have gone and bothered the elderly woman at one of the two possible misdelivery addresses. She was not amused, and does not have my SDCC badges.
Other neighbor, not currently home.
Just took my mother to see YESTERDAY. It's charming, although I hope the author of THE GIRL WHO WAS THE BEATLES got compensated. They flubbed the ending pretty badly.
Just so you know: if you ever fall through a wormhole to a world where I never existed, you have my full permission to present all my works as your own in that specific dimension. No moral qualms, no ethical dilemma. Go out and make that money.
Anyway, I recommend it if you like sweet romantic comedies with charming leads, Indian actors being charismatic leading men, the Beatles, and need a place to take your mother on a date.
I am going to try to articulate something. It's hard, so please hold your shouting until the end, okay?
Urban Fantasy is one of the few subgenres dominated by female authors. There are probably others--if portal fantasy is a subgenre again, it's definitely got a lion's share of women writing it--but UF is the big one everyone has heard about.
And of course anything can write anything they want to, regardless of gender; there are male romance authors and female splatterpunk authors. I'm just talking about the ratios.
Hey, Seattle locals: I'm going to be one of the featured performers at this year's Music Under the Trees! I'll be performing with @vixyandtony, all four members, and it's going to be SO MUCH FUN. musicunderthetrees.com
Tickets have historically sold out, so if this is something you think you might enjoy, I highly recommend getting your ticket soon. The food is great, the venue is beautiful, and the music is going to be rocking!
Being on a bill with Alexander James Adams is basically my life coming full circle, since I used to work merchandise sales for Heather Alexander when I was fourteen and hopelessly in love with her.
