Another Saturday, another weekend to be cooped up in the apartment. This afternoon, we're supposed to get 1-3 inches of snow and 1/4" of ice, which will most likely immobilize the city again. Fortunately, this is happening again on the weekend, where all it will ruin is our free time. sigh

The work continues on "In Jurong." It's like fighting with a tiger covered in Jell-O. Some days I've got it by the tail and the words flow easily. Other days, I can never get a grip on it, the words just out of reach, slippery, spun around, and I get bitten a lot by the internal editor. Okay, that analogy kind of sucks, but you get the gist. It's very slow going, lots of staring off into the distance. I'm right at 4,000 words now, where our heroes have ascended the great Mother Tree and are getting ready to board a zeppelin for the Undine's Waterfall. Hopefully, being stuck inside again this weekend will help the words along.

Yesterday, after standing up and fixing to leave the office for the afternoon, I was hit with a huge wave of vertigo. It lasted for a few minutes, then I felt more or less okay. No nausea, but it felt like was extremely drunk, the world tilting and spinning around me, my equilibrium shot. I had some lunch at Cup A Joe and tried to write, but was concerned about the vertigo. It was the second occurrence in a month, the first one a few weeks ago while just sitting on the couch watching tv. So I trucked over to the student health center and saw an awesome doctor, Dr. Shea, who was one of the funniest and nicest doctors I've ever gone to, if not the funniest and nicest. She said the dizziness might be a case of post-viral labyrinthitis caused by a sinus infection I had a month ago, though since there was no nausea and it had only happened twice so far, and those two times fairly far apart, she couldn't be sure that was it. She does want me to come in on Monday and do some blood tests, so they can rule out anything more serious.

She also diagnosed a plantar's wart on the ball of my right foot. Yecch. It's been hurting when I walk lately, and I didn't know if it was a blister or corn or what. Nope. Wart. Ewwww. Janet runs screaming from the room when I show it to her, yelling, "Freak! My husband is a freak!" I'm treating it with a salicylic acid patch thing that I cut into a circle and cover it with a band-aid before going to bed. Then I'm supposed to use an emory board to scrub off the dead skin so that the acid can get to the wart itself, and all the nasty virii inside. The other options were to freeze it or to cut it out, but I'll go with the acid patch first.

Okay, enough about the wonders of Jason's body.

We've confirmed an evening of literature and food at Internationalist Books (Chapel Hill, NC) on Saturday, February 26 at 7 p.m., to promote Scattered, Covered, Smothered. Several of our authors will be reading selections from their work and preparing unusual and delicious recipes. Participants include Nora Jemison, Louise Dolan, Luna Black, Elizabeth A. Jasper and Jamie Bishop. If you're in the area, please join us. (The SCS page has been updated to include this info, along with some more fun links in the "Miscellany" section.)

Also in the Carrboro area, but this coming Monday evening, January 31, 6-9 p.m., Off the Map author Daniel Wallace will be participating in Listen Up!, a literary fundraiser for WCOM-FM, along with local authors Hal Crowther, Lee Smith, Allan Gurganus, Haven Kimmel and Alan Shapiro. Tickets are $45 to attend the event at Panzanella, but if you're in the area, you can hear everything on 103.5 FM.

The Clarion Midnight Auction is now open until 11:59 p.m. (EST) tonight. Since they lost most of their funding from MSU, the auction is to help raise money to keep the workshop going. Anyone reading this journal knows how much Clarion has meant to me both professionally and personally, and it's a program that deserves to continue. So go, bid. There's some truly excellent swag you could get, like: a signed, spiral-bound homemade galley for Cory Doctorow's forthcoming novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town; or the Hill House Author's Preferred Limited Edition of Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods; or a signed hardcover of Michael Jasper's collection Gunning for the Buddha; or a bound galley of Jeff VanderMeer's forthcoming novel Shriek: An Afterword, or a fragment of his manuscript The Zamilon File; or a copy of Intracities (including a story by yours truly).

The 2005 Locus Poll & Survey is now online, and you can go vote for your favorite novels, short stories, anthologies, &c. of the works published in 2004. Scattered, Covered, Smothered didn't make the Recommended Reading List (though we did get listed in the New Books for the third week of January), but we were against some pretty heavy competition. However, if you feel that you particularly like the anthology, or any of the stories published within, or my editing skillz, or Janet's artistic skillz, you can do a write-in for any of those categories. I'm not fishing for votes, but if you like the work we did, it would be nice to know that.

Okay, time to write.

Now Reading:
Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & by Anna Tambour

Stories Out to Publishers:
9

Books Read This Year:
4

Zines/Graphic Novels/Fiction Mags Read This Year:
2