Roundup

You'll all be happy to know I'm less cranky today.

Reasons:

1. Melina Marchetta's Looking for Alibrandi is almost as good as her other YA book, BCCB-award winning Saving Francesca.

2. Similarly, Joan Bauer's Best Foot Forward is a worthy sequel to the shoe sales screwball comedy of Rules of the Road.

3. Season 4 Oz! (Although I have to say, between this and Season 3 Six Feet Under, I've seen more than enough penises for the rest of my life.)

4. Marianne always comes through with cool new music, and this weekend was no exception. Sunday afternoon we went to the Empty Bottle to catch The Wilders. Marianne had seen them live at MerleFest and brought home a CD, which rocked but not nearly as much as the quartet in person. A genuine one-mike country outfit, with bass, fiddle, guitar, mandolin/banjo and serious barn-burning energy--they had the sparse crowd of thirty or so hooting and hollering like three hundred. Three Hank covers, one Jimmie Rodgers, and one Devo. They're touring non-stop (Cambridge, Mass is one of their upcoming destinations), so go see 'em. Yee-haw!

5. Also via Marianne, bluesy country guy Hayes Carll. I've been listening to his album "Flowers and Liquor" and loving it, particularly "Naked Checkers" and "Live Free or Die."

6. New desktop computer means I can play all those computer games that my laptop graphics card wouldn't run, which means I'm staying up too late and my mouse hand is sore, but I am having fun killing all the monsters and saving the world.

7. That doesn't mean I'm not getting anything done; stage two of the three-part revision process on Superpowers is done, with little pain involved. My big concern was a subplot that had gotten dropped a short way in; as it turned out, I decided that it was better for that subplot to just go away. Some chapters required sizeable rewriting, but the majority just needed line editing. Now I just need to go through and make sure that the characters that went away don't get mentioned anywhere, and look over some tonal things, and add in one scene that needs to happen somewhere or other. Soon I may be looking for beta readers (hint, hint).

8. Collaborations! You know who you are. This is fun.

9. As of the moment the contract I sent out this weekend reaches her desk, I am now represented by Shana Cohen of the Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency. I'm very excited about this; Shana is hugely enthusiastic and had me sold on all of her past projects just chatting about them over dinner at WisCon, so I'm happy to have her powers on the side of good. That being my side, of course.

10. All of this kind of boils down to; I should know by now that reading or talking about creating art, especially when it's prescriptive, eventually drives me batty no matter who's talking about it. I'm much happier enjoying other people's creations or working on my own, so I just need to remind myself not to read or listen to such things.

Have a good day, everyone! (See how cheery I am? Isn't it nauseating?)