(no subject)

And lo, everything was quiet downtown again because fuck no is anyone going out if they don't have to right now. It's supposed to be okay during the day and then start pouring down icky precipitation towards evening, whether that's rain or sleet or snow no one seems to be entirely sure? But any precipitation = slick mountain roads. No.

This doesn't necessarily translate to quiet work back here because people can still call up or place mail orders, and they have, but so far so good?

The only problem with things being deathly winter slow at work is then I have to do the balancing act of focusing and working on writing work, etc, while at my day job and therefore potentially subjectable to day jobligations at any point. And if I were a self-sustaining writer working from home and my brain was in this much of a scramble working at ten different things at once, I could take five minutes and breathe and knock myself down to one task at a time. But since I'm at work I have to be available to answer the phone if it rings, label and stock things, and generally pay ambient attention while I'm trying to cope with some emotional fallout (good fallout! but augh!) juggle which project comes next, kick back the worked up excitement of successfully working another hobby a few minutes ago because I didn't have much else to do while I minded the front of the store, and about ten other things. All jarring their rough edges against each other. Not good.

I suppose the plus side is, I seem to have hit a smooth patch of coasting in the drawing practice? Alternating between tumblr tutorials and Drawspace tutorials, the latter being good for slow, systematic building of skills and the former being good whenever I get impatient and want to jump ahead ten steps to complex objects. Like people. Aheh. This is probably at least partly influenced by the fact that my jazz appreciation class is awesome except for the nonfunctioning software bit. The teacher knows, though, so that's fine. Immunology... is immunology. I need to make sense of it tonight and/or tomorrow though.

Writing, god, I need to make more time for writing and I don't know where the hell I'm going to get it from. Or maybe I just need more realistic due dates? Or something. More focus? I honestly don't know, but I'm looking at everything I'm juggling (three novels at the moment) and going ALL OF THESE ARE LATE WHY. Maybe this is the anxiety fit I didn't have last year when I blew past that deadline. I don't wike it.

Stress. That's what it is, I'm stressed and a lot of the stress is of my own making and I need to calm the fuck down and re-prioritize more than re-schedule. Breathe.

And it's not all terrible. I do have an excellent book I'm reading, I guess I'm a day late for a Wednesday Reads post but I can manage one of them here shortly. I think mostly I just need to stop working myself up over everything that I'm doing, make things more realistic, and calm the hell down. This is entirely self-inflicted, so I can uninflict it if I need to. So let's try that, hmm? Self? With the less pressure and the remembering to take a breath, take it easy, stop trying to do all of the things at once? We remember how to do that, yes?

(No, no we possibly don't, and I told you that forgetting how to take a break now and again would have consequences. Didn't I say? Yes I did.)

All right. Let's see how the rest of this day goes. I feel like there's a joke here, something about I have made the most brilliant courtesan of the modern age / you've fucked up a perfectly good woman that's what you've done, look at her she's got anxiety. You know what, that'll do for now. Let's see if I can undo some of the damage I've done to my poor brain.

ETA: Of course that means today is the day the brother-in-sort-of-law emails me about whatever writing he wanted. Of course. *bangs head on desk* I give up I'm fucking moving to Belize.

(no subject)

So a Thursday Reads post instead of a Wednesday Reads. Despite me taking on way too much work to do, of course, I've been trying to read more this year. Working on 100 books in the year, which averages out to a little more than 8 books a month. This used to be way more doable than it is now. Ah well.

I picked up Kate Elliott's Black Wolves because I went in to the local to buy a calendar and ended up buying a calendar and a book oops. I didn't realize at first (you'd think I would have, I've only followed her on Twitter since she started writing the damn thing) that this was set in the same world as Spirit Gate, and now I have to go get those books from the library again and re-read them. I very much enjoyed it, as much as I did the last series which, perversely, I didn't finish because I enjoyed it so much. Which is to say that I got so attached to one of the characters that I skipped ahead to make sure she had a happy ending, and then when I found out she didn't I very nearly threw the book across the room. Never could bring myself to finish it. Even aside from that, though, Black Wolves stands well enough on its own. Very wonderful epic fantasy.

And then it was on to Tanya Huff, much to my annoyance, two first books in the series when I don't have the second ones, but in one case do have the third and fourth. Sing The Four Quarters and The Enchantment Emporium, both of which I enjoyed, they're fairly typical Tanya Huff in tone and in this case this means POV jumping within a scene. Which irritates me, but it's about the only thing in her writing that does, so I put up with it. I was particularly amused by the Enchantment Emporium, which is so many parts of my life all jumbled up together. Mostly the aunts but also the practical approach to magic, even if in my life they aren't in the same lane. Sing The Four Quarters was a lot of fun, I understand the next one isn't about the same group of people. Aww.

After that it was on to Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher series, because I'd started Flying Too High and inexplicably never finished it. They're not too much like the tv show, for one thing my favorite not-quite-romance isn't in it, but I find them enjoyable all on their own merits. Need to pick up the next one at some point.

Kate Elliott passed on a rec for Matt Wallace's Envy of Angels at some point, and I had it, and he was talking it up, so, sure. It's a novella, and I'm not entirely sure it's internally consistent. It's certainly very chaotic and may overload a person on the bizarre. It was on the verge of overloading meon the bizarre, and that takes some doing. And it was clumsy/awkward in a bit of the way that a first book is, but it wasn't bad, I did enjoy it, and at some point will probably read the next one.

And now I'm on Oliver Potzsch's The Hangman's Daughter which is almost distinctively German-In-Translation, and an engaging historical mystery apparently starring the author's own ancestors. I don't know if it's based on a true family legend, oxymoron intended, but it reads like it could have been. And also fun.

After this... I don't know. Maybe start Kate Elliott's Jaran books, my book budget refreshed so maybe more Enchantment Emporium/Four Quarters. Maybe something else.