Work life after returning from a show tends to be pretty busy. When you've been out of the office for a week, you often have a lot of catching up to do. It's always complicated when warm weather hits because then you have coworkers going on vacation, etc.

So if you're wondering where I've been, now you know--things have been really busy. And it's not much to speak of--deadlines to make, books to get in from the copyeditor and proofreader and send them on to be typeset, books to edit and get feedback to the author, that kind of stuff. The everyday life of an editor which has been covered again and again here. 

In my off time, I've been getting out and enjoying a bit of the lovely Seattle weather we've been having. This is the time of year that I first moved to Seattle--my three-year anniversary at Mirrorstone was just a couple weeks ago, actually--and this is the time of year that sucks you in and makes it worth living in Seattle. I've even been able to get my allergies (mostly) under control the last few weeks, and that bodes well for a summer of outdoor activities. Yesterday some friends and I had a barbecue out on my deck, and I tried yoga for the first time with my friend yesterday morning at a community yoga-thon that left me more relaxed than I think I've felt in a decade. I think I should start taking the yoga class at work! (One nice perk of working at Wizards of the Coast is that we have a gym and a dojo where we can go work out any time, and they offer personal training and classes like yoga, Pilates, and kickboxing for a relatively low fee.) And my friends and I are planning camping trips, canoeing outings, and road trips like mad right now. I think I may just have plans every weekend for the next two months.

So we editors aren't always holed up in our offices reading. Just most of the time. 

And suddenly it's the weekend. I got back Tuesday afternoon but it's been a rush in the short week to get everything done that I needed to. I don't have time this morning to tell you all about L.A. but hopefully I'll find a spare moment later today or sometime this weekend. My doctor has cleared my shoulder for at least non-jarring exercise, though, so I might just take off and go for a hike or something while the weather is still nice. 

One quick note, though. My old friend mistborn just posted that his first children's book, Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians, has shipped to bookstores a month early. (He's the author of three adult fantasy novels, but this is his first middle grade.) It's a fun fantasy story about a boy named Alcatraz and a bag of sand. Yes, a bag of sand. And it's funny. Brandon (the author) doesn't have the site up yet, due to it being a month early, so I can't link you to the Alcatraz site which I hear will be fun, but do check out the book and Brandon's blog.

I just got to give a tour to howardtayler(of Schlock Mercenary) and sandrataylerand their awesome kids. They're in town for the Emerald City Comicon--which is this weekend, if it somehow slipped your memory, so if you're going, stop by the Blank Label booth to talk to them. 

All the kids knew so much about making books that I didn't have to tell them all the boring details--instead we got to the fun stuff. And they all love reading enough that it was gratifying to see how interested they were in our books. The most fun part was bringing them to the desk of our art director, who had a couple sample sketches from A Practical Guide to Monsters on hand and was able to tell them how they ask artists for sketches then comission finished art, and then finally how everything goes into the book. (The kids have A Practical Guide to Dragons, so I hope it was fun for them to see how the next book was progressing.) It looked like it was especially interesting to their nearly-12-year-old daughter (codename Kiki, I think?) who had all sorts of questions about the process. Perhaps a future art director? (Or artist, given her family!)

Of course, the next most fun part is always at the end of the tour when I have free stuff to give away, and today happened to be a good day for that--our receptionist happened to have a whole bunch of NeoPets and DuelMasters, not to mention many handfuls of Magic cards. (Sometimes she gets damaged boxes, that sort of thing.) I also wanted to get some minis to give to Howard and Sandra, but due to the afternoon receptionist being on jury duty the product room was closed. Never fear, the good people of Wizards came to the rescue and I had offers of more minis than I could use, and Howard went away with as big a smile as his kids. I love how the things my company does makes people smile!

So thanks for coming, Taylers! I had a great time showing you around.

Also along for the tours were two Dans--one, a friend of the Taylers with whom they're staying while in town for the Emerald City Comic Con, the other was my friend Fellfrosch, in town coincidentally on the same day because he happened to be interviewing here at Wizards in a different department. My Evil Plan to convince all my friends to move to wherever I live is going to succeed, I just know it! (Okay, so that's just one person and his family so far, and that's if he gets the job. But another friend applied for a job out here recently, too, and several other friends say they want to end up in this area, so you never know--within a few years... :) )

As some of you may know, my friend Brandon Sanderson (mistborn) has a friendly rivalry going with John Scalzi, a remnant of a fun time they had as nominees for the Campbell last year. So it makes seeing this particularly funny, given that over the last  year or so I've been reading Scalzi's blog because of this connection, and have seen all sorts of wacky things from both of them (not really related to each other, just saying they're both kind of wacky guys. In a good way).

That said, Scalzi's run for the SFWA presidency is in earnest, so if you are a SFWA member, you might be interested in his post about why he's running . He's followed up on his blog and on the SFWA election blog with many discussions of those points, so I recommend heading over there to check it out.

(Thanks to Shaken & Stirred for the flag link.)

I must say, there was a reason I loved Romper Room as a kid. I waited and waited, and she never did say she saw Stacy. But I had hope every time.

So if you've been reading this LJ for a while, you know how facinated I am to connect with people all over the world. Well, the next best thing is to connect with people from home. Or is it the other way around? All I know is, I've had a recent visitor from Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and I must say hello, because how could I ignore my alma mater? (Sort of. I spent 4 1/2 years there but ended up graduating from BYU.)

So to you fellow Illinoisans out there, welcome! (Even if you're not an 8th-generation one like me. :D Which of course my being in Seattle makes many a farm-bred relative ask, "What do you need to be all the way out there again for, anyway?" To which I point to my old friend from my Galva High School class who lives in Tacoma and say, "It's not just me!" Which reminds me that spring is coming and I need to make a field trip to the Tacoma Museum of Glass. Can you believe I've lived here nearly two years and never taken my high school friend who works there up on the offer to see it??? I can't.)

Off to read a book, and I'm not sure whether I want to go blast the Marching Illini to embrace "Alma Mater" going through my head (yes, I played mello and LOVED being in the band that Sousa loved) or go find something to take the nostalgia away.

I'm finally home, to a sunny and slightly warm Seattle afternoon. Opened all the windows in my apartment to air it all out, a little disappointed at the mess I left behind in all my hurry to leave for the airport Wednesday morning.

The weekend at LTUE was really great. The committee and all involved in taking me out to meals were just the nicest people and made sure to take care of me. metteharrison  and Rick Walton and a number of great members of local writing groups especially deserve great thanks for feeding me over the course of the three days of the symposium. I had a great time chatting and getting to know everyone.

The other guests of honor also deserve great kudos--I had a great time getting to know howardtayler  , Gloria Skurzinski, and Julie Czerneda. The highlight of my weekend had to have been the gift of a caracature from Howard Tayler, who draws the popular and extremely entertaining webcomic Schlock Mercenary. He offered to do one as I was talking with Mette about editing a book, during which I happened to mention the phrase "killing some darlings": 




Yeah, that's gonna have to become a usericon.

More updates and plenty of blog fodder from the weekend. Welcome to any new readers via LTUE or any linkages via that! I promise to post soon a series from my main address, and I might even possibly have video, which will be a lot of fun--though it was dark and I faltered quite a bit at the beginning for two reasons: 1, not being able to read in the dark (lights were out for the slides) and 2, not being all there due to the sinus infection I've been nursing for a month.

On the bright side, all that time in the lovely dry climate of Utah (I love the sun! I love the sun!) I think helped dry out my sinuses. Hard to tell until I get a nap in this afternoon, which is the next item on my agenda.

I also told several people I'd try to blog about their questions, such as book recommendations for writers, so I'll try to get to those soon too. All these interesting subjects to talk about!

I'm so behind the times. I've seen so many other people post stuff like this on their blogs, and though I've enjoyed it, I haven't bothered to figure out how to do it myself.

Well, that time has ended, because I have a digital camera now! Granted, not much of one, as you'll see, but not bad for having come in a phone.

I've been inspired. I saw Jen Barnes (jenlyn_b ) do a video post and now I have to join in on the fun! Only you're not going to see me (though, come to think of it, I'm thinking about asking a friend to video my keynote at LTUE, an idea I credit to mroctober , that I just saw in an interview over at Strange Horizons). (And psst... note that he has a book coming out this spring! Check it out!) I'm truly going to suggest the idea to the LTUE staff, as a possible resource for later generations--especially the papers, given that it's sponsored by a university that might want archives of the academic side of things.

Story: I have this really funny snowman my grandma gave me last year, one of those Hallmark Christmas knicknacks. Turns out, the cats are fascinated:



I freely admit it's not that interesting a video, but if anyone wants to see my cats in motion, there you go. Now all I need to do is improve my videography skills. I'll start with holding the camera further away from my face so you can't hear me breathe. At least this one has some form of soundtrack at all. The others (which I won't show you) are just the cats batting at the toy I'm holding and me breathing. Now, if someone has suggestions on freeware software I can use to edit music into those videos, that'd be really cool. Then you could be regaled with Tildrum attacking the ball-track. :) (I'm kidding. Really. You can tell me. Please? I promise I won't misuse the power of video editing!)

Thanks for all the SF suggestions a few posts back. Now I'm madly scribbling down all the books I should be reading. Someone mentioned Robin Hobb, which reminds me that I have an ARC of Shaman's Crossing I've been meaning to read because a friend loves her work. (Yes, I know Shaman's Crossing came out long ago. But it's the only one I have on my shelf. Not to hand at the moment, obviously, but anyway!) Wait, though--is Shaman's Crossing the first or the second in that series? Which Robin Hobb should I begin with?

I've arrived safely in Illinois, and am lounging at my grandma's kitchen table borrowing a signal from a neighbor somewhere. It's pretty warm for around here--it's been in the 50s, compared to the normal teens and 20s. No snow. :( Even after watching White Christmas the other day! A train is rolling past--Galesburg is a major train hub for Burlington-Northern. In fact, I took the train here from Chicago this afternoon. So much more relaxing to spend three hours on the train knitting and watching a movie on my laptop than renting a car in Chicago and driving down.

Spent the evening last night with an old roommate in Chicago. I love that city. I get homesick every time I'm there, even though I only lived there about a year and a half. It's just so good to catch up with girlfriends you haven't seen in forever. All sorts of gossiping ensued, of course.

Stopped by the office of the magazine I used to work at, got a chance to chat with my former boss and her daughter about children's books and all sorts of catching-up sorts of things. My former boss was saying that she and her husband are starting to plan what to do with the business when they finally decide to take a less active role (they're both far past retirement age, but their family business is a huge part of their life, and they've stayed dedicated to it for over 30 years now). In the course of the conversation, she told me how her husband (the publisher) suggested that "couldn't we just get Stacy to come back and be a higher editor?" That made me smile. Despite the electromechanical industry not being my life work the way I feel about children's books, the time I spent at that company was a great experience, and they gave me the start I needed. Both Elsie and H.B., the wife and husband who I spoke of above, are long time veterans of journalism and publishing, and they have been dear mentors. I still do a freelance article for them from time to time.

But it was tempting, if but for a moment, to hear her say that, not only because it's a great compliment, but because I love Chicago and I would love to live there again someday. Then of course reality sets in and I think about giving up my current job. No way! Seattle it is. :)

Days and days of knitting and watching movies and playing with my nephews and helping my grandma bake Christmas cookies await. I love this time of year!

And I even have photographic proof, thanks to my cool new (phone) camera. :) I've been playing with it for two days now. I'll have to share my rundown of the company party last night at some other time (they rented out the ENTIRE Space Needle! it was so awesome!), but see how cool this camera hidden in a phone is?



Meet David Farland, Brandon Sanderson (mistborn), and L.E. Modesitt. They're all three on a book tour together up and down the West Coast these last few weeks. They may be published by *cough*competitor's name here*cough*, but they're also all three friends from Utah. Brandon and I went to BYU together--we met on the staff of TLE, now known as Leading Edge Magazine, having dropped the "The." I met both Lee and Dave at Life, the Universe, and Everything, the annual science fiction and fantasy symposium at BYU. (That's the conference at which I'm going to be the Editor Guest of Honor this coming Feb.)

They were in town and wanted to see all the cool stuff at Wizards (plus, Brandon had been bragging about the swag he'd gotten the year before when he and several other friends came to visit), so it was great to catch up with them.

If you're in the Seattle area, and want to see them yourself, drop on by the University Bookstore in the U District tonight. They'll be signing at 7pm.



( Also, behind the cut, more cool stuff about my camera phone )

So I tell ya. The funniest part of today was hearing from Brandon Sanderson, Evil Undead Overlord and harbinger of cool gadget toys, that my phone was cooler than his. Ha!

I just discovered that my friend mistborn's archnemesis has an LJ feed. If you pop over to Brandon Sanderson's (as he's known in real life) LJ or to his site and forums, you'll see that during the recent Hugo Awards, Brandon and John Scalzi were both nominated for the Campbell*. Thus began a playful (yet deep, of course) rivalry that involves tiaras and Legos and Scalzi-summoning and all sorts of things I'm not quite sure of. (I wasn't at WorldCon this year.)

So today I just discovered that Scalzi has an LJ feed, appropriately named scalzifeed. So, he appears to have been on LJ quite a while. Makes me wonder if LJ is the new battleground...

I'm not even a part of the joke, but I find it faintly amusing to see the reaction on the boards every time Brandon discovers another place Scalzi was there first. :)

This is a parentheses-laden post, isn't it?

I haven't read Scalzi's work (as my last post indicates, I'm trying to read my slush pile first, and let's not even get into the to-be-read pile that takes up an entire shelf on my bookcase), but Brandon's got two great books out, so go read Mistborn and Elantris if you haven't already. But not before you read Wayward Wizard. Or Time Spies. Or Practical Guide to Dragons. You can wait to read In the Serpent's Coils, but only because it's not out yet.

*Not a Hugo ;)