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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
AngiePen's LiveJournal:
| Friday, July 10th, 2009 | |
| 12:23 am | San Francisco San Francisco was awesome, as always, but it's good to be home. If nothing else, I heart my main computer, and particularly its full-size keyboard. :) We had a great time, though, and I'm going to babble about some of it. SF is a great place for food, particularly if you're into meat. We were staying at the Hyatt on the Embarcadero, right across from the Ferry Terminal. I've never gone over there before for whatever reason, but a few days before we left to fly up, Jim and I were watching an episode of a Food Network show called The Best Thing I Ever Ate. A bunch of the Food Network people talk about great food they've had in various places, and this was a bacon themed episode, yum! One of the guys talked about a great little butcher shop in the Ferry Terminal called Boccalone; their slogan is "Tasty Salted Pig Parts." Can't beat that, right? They cure their meat right on the premises; there's a glass-doored cabinet off to one side with slabs of bacon and legs of prosciutto and whatever all else hanging there. The "best thing" here was a salumi cone for like $3.50. Salumi seems to be like a superset of salami; it's a variety of cured pork bits, sliced thin and curled up in a paper cone, sort of like a snowcone only with meat instead of ice. We got that a couple of times -- good stuff. It's salty and porky and just fatty enough. ( Read more... ) |
| Friday, July 3rd, 2009 | |
| 3:23 am | Twenty Years Over the 4th of July weekend in 1989, I got on a plane and flew down to Anaheim to meet a guy for the first time ever in realspace. We'd met met in an online fantasy RPG called GemStoneII, on the old GEnie network, and had become close over the previous few months. We were both sort of nervous, but he didn't turn out to be an axe murderer or anything ;D and the trip worked out well. It wasn't a huge, swooping, love-at-first-sight sort of thing, but that was twenty years ago and we're still together. We've been married now for thirteen years come August, so I'd say the gamble of taking that plane trip -- which all the flailing hysterics who are terrified of the evil internet will tell you to Never Ever Do!!! in this fearful age -- was a pretty good gamble. :D In about twelve hours Jim and I'll be getting on a plane and going up to San Francisco, where we'll be touristing around for a week. We've done it before and both love the place; the weather is great and the food is better, and we're just going to hang out and relax and revel in having known the love of our lives for twenty years, which is pretty darned good these days. I'll be taking the laptop but probably won't be reading blogs/journals/etc. all that much. If anything cool happens, or you post something you think I'd be particularly interested in, feel free to e-mail me or leave a link here. Don't crash the internets while I'm gone! ;D [wave] Angie |
| Thursday, June 25th, 2009 | |
| 7:46 pm | GLBT Bookshelf and Some Press Weirdness Mel Keegan has pulled together a site called the GLBT Bookshelf to act as a clearinghouse for independent writers, publishers, artists, editors, reviewers, etc., of GLBT books, so that censorship elsewhere won't have the power to cut us off from the rest of the world again; we'll have our own place out from under the umbrella of any larger organization which might want to shove us back into a corner, or off a cliff. The inspiration was AmazonFail, of course, and the site, which is a wiki, has exploded with pages since it was thrown open for people to join and start building. There are so far a few hundred writers, a bunch of publishers, with lists and categories and cross-links so you can wander around and find whatever you might be into. And it'll only get better as more people come on over and add their info. Here's my main page for anyone who's interested; there are links to pages about each of my published stories, with buy links and links to two free stories, which are sequels to two of my commercial stories. Mel's also planning on adding a Booklover's Lounge too, specifically for readers. I'll let you all know when that happens. The first publicity campaign is starting and we've got a press release out to a few sites, which is pretty cool. Hopefully the site will get a nice wave of people wandering through. The weirdness, though, came just a few minutes ago. Mel Keegan e-mailed all of us who've signed up on the site about the press release, which says in part: Frustrated by the infamous "AmazonFail" fiasco of early 2009, in which the online retail giant was suspected of attempting to deny GLBT literature the benefits of its promotional systems, Keegan conceived of an online community in which all such systems were circumvented -- replaced by "community promotion" with direct links to authors’ and publishers’ pages. There's another mention of "AmazonFail" later on as well. But Mel mentioned that one of the sites to which the press release was submitted, PR.com, would only run the story if the mentions of "AmazonFail" were removed. o_O Umm, excuse me? None of the other sites minded the mention at all; "AmazonFail" was big news a couple of months ago and mention of it will only bring more traffic. So one has to wonder whether Amazon might not own a chunk of PR.com, and be trying to squelch mentions in the news of their more embarassing moments. Only speculation of course, but it's definitely suspicious. Angie |
| Saturday, June 20th, 2009 | |
| 4:42 am | Come Spend the Day I'm driving the bus over on Torquere Social today, so come on over and hang out with me. I'll be posting a series of questions and contests, and collecting names of folks who participate into a hat (well, probably a bowl, but close enough) and drawing a name for a five dollar Torquere gift certificate. (You can get about half my backlist for five dollars, so if you've wanted to try my stories but haven't had the money, this'd be a great opportunity. :D ) I'll be posting throughout the day, so check in whenever you're around. [wave] Angie |
| 12:52 am | To the Person Posting as BUGCHICKLV on Demonoid Thanks for expressing interest in my story, "Learning to Love Yourself," as well as a number of my colleague Mike Shade's stories. It's great to know there are people out there who want to read my stuff. But seriously, dude, it costs $1.29. You can buy a copy right here for, like, a quarter of what a cup of coffee costs these days. Now I'll admit that with the many, many stories which were passed around on that particular Demonoid thread, you If you're really that strapped for cash, there are plenty of legitimately free stories around on the internet. There's some great stuff in fanfic fandom (look for rec lists) plus a lot of published writers have free stories on their web sites. Archives like Nifty are free and specialize in gay erotica. Oh, and there are also places called libraries where you can borrow books for free -- I'll bet there's one near you. But you know, the pirated e-book thing? Please knock it the fuck off. Thank you. Angie |
| Sunday, June 7th, 2009 | |
| 4:04 pm | A Lost Boy, Chapter 32 Title: A Lost Boy Author: AngiePen Pairing: Liam Neeson/Orlando Bloom, minor Liam/Johnny Depp, plus a few other pair-ups among the supporting characters. Rating: NC-17 overall Summary: Slave Orlando's been taken and the kidnappers aren't interested in ransom. And of course Master Liam's thundering rage is only at the personal insult, that someone would disrespect him by daring to touch his property. Disclaimer: I don't own anyone you recognize. I know nothing about their social lives or sexual activities, more's the pity. This is fiction, period. It is done as a labor of love and I make no money from it. Notes: 1) Set in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} poisontaster's Kept Boy universe -- FAQ here. See Chapter 1 for more notes.2) I'm not promising anything regular at this point -- I have some committments with my commercial writing that I couldn't put off any more, and I'm still in the middle of working on those -- but I wanted to get something up for Liam's birthday. Enjoy! Previous Chapters: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Five, Twenty-Six, Twenty-Seven, Twenty-Eight, Twenty-Nine, Thirty, Thirty-One The e-mail came from Parker on Monday, before noon, even. Orlando was in body-slave training, which was... better and worse, both. Liam had to admit that he was selfish enough to want Orlando back completely. He knew that what he should want was what was best for his boy, and that was to be back safe at home as soon as possible, with as little abuse and trauma as possible. And part of him had wished for that, the part that knew Orlando was unusually old for a "new" body-slave, and hoped that he'd be passed over for that reason. ( Read more... ) |
| Friday, May 22nd, 2009 | |
| 8:38 pm | At a Convention So I'm up in Santa Clara at BayCon with my husband. We come every year; I used to live in this area before I got married, I've been to every BayCon and worked the first twenty-some of them. It's a cool con and I get to see friends I don't see anywhere else, which is always great. I was particularly looking forward to this year, though, because Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon are co-Writer Guests of Honor. I've liked their work for twenty-some years, and though I don't fanatically grab every single thing they publish nowadays the way I used to, they've still produced some of my favorite fantasy and urban fantasy books and stories. Misty Lackey and Charles De Lint are the reasons I like and write urban fantasy, in fact. I even brought a book with me -- a hardcover copy of Black Gryphon -- to get autographed, and I hardly ever do that. Well, we just found out at dinner that Misty and Larry aren't actually here. :( Misty has the flu, so they couldn't come after all. Massive suckage. The Fan GOH already couldn't make it, so we're down to the Toastmaster and the Artist GOH. [laugh/flail] Talk about bad luck! And of course it'd have to be one of my favorite writers who gets sick just when I was all jazzed up to meet her. I'm sure I'll still have a great time, just because I always do, but... crud. :/ Angie |
| Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 | |
| 1:09 am | All In One Place For Your Convenience ...we have racism, ablism, classism, plus a Hey, let's all laugh at the fat people! Wow. Check out the WalMart Bingo Card. [eyeroll] Oh, and down in the comments there's someone taking a swipe at those outrageous women who actually breastfeed in public! [exaggerated look of horror] Wow, wouldn't the world be better without them? To say nothing of the people with eyepatches, and the white women with multi-racial kids? [I have to wonder whether women of other races with multi-racial kids are somehow less offensive to whoever made up this bingo card, or whether this person just thinks all brown people look alike and therefore has never noticed a woman of color with multi-racial kids. It's racist and offensive either way.] I guess if nothing else, this is a great example to show that people who are bigoted against one group of people tend to be wide-spectrum, equal-opportunity jerks. Because clearly seeing someone who's missing a limb shopping in the same store as you is just as offensive and objectionable as seeing that someone has left frozen foods thawing on a random shelf somewhere. Good grief. :/ EDIT: Just to be clear, WalMart is not handing these out. Some jerkwad on the net came up with it, and thought it was funny and worth sharing. Angie |
| Sunday, May 17th, 2009 | |
| 9:03 pm | Earthquake Holy sheep, that was big. O_O Unless the epicenter was in our basement, that was definitely a doozy. All the other Southern California people okay? I was downstairs napping on the couch when suddenly everything was moving and rattling. It went on for probably around 20-30 seconds, although it's hard to tell looking back to huddling in a doorway with my husband; once your heartrate goes up, time estimates tend to go kind of off-kilter. [wry smile] EDIT: The USGS entry just came up -- it was a 5.0 right in LA. It felt stronger, but probably because it pretty much was in our basement. [laugh/flail] I hope everyone else is okay. Angie |
| Thursday, May 7th, 2009 | |
| 1:49 pm | Sean Tevis is Back Remember the guy who ran the internet campaign for state representative in Kansas? He lost the election after the opposition spent a record amount to oppose him (according to his web site) and some unknown party voice-spammed voters with a robocaller over the phone claiming to be from his campaign. Someone put in a lot of time and effort to cheat him out of votes. So he wants to run again.   ( Read more... ) |
| Monday, April 13th, 2009 | |
| 3:54 am | Amazon Update Amazon is trying to sidestep the publicity nightmare by claiming that this is all a glitch and that they're working on fixing it. Umm, sure. Jane at Dear Author looked up the metadata for a number of books, both ranked and de-ranked, and it seems the stripping of sales ranks might've been done in accordance with the metadata, looking for "Gay & Lesbian" or "Erotica" in the metadata to choose what to strip. Books like A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality weren't stripped of their ranking because, despite being clearly about homosexuality, they don't have "Gay & Lesbian" in any of their metadata. That explains how this could have been done automatically. There apparently is a consistent keyword-type search which could've been used to strip rankings on books which all had metadata features in common by someone typing in a command. I still don't buy the "glitch" story, though, because that doesn't explain why writers like Mark Probst were told straight out that the de-ranking was done by Amazon, per their policy of removing "Adult" material from searches and listings. Why would anyone have said, "Yes, we do this, it's policy" if it was actually a glitch? Sorry, Amazon -- I'm still not buying it. Note also that someone came up with the tag Amazonfail and people have been applying it on Amazon to books which had their ranking stripped. This isn't something that's going to force Amazon to do the right thing; they can and likely will delete the tag as soon as they notice it. I'm willing to spend some time tagging and confirming tags just to be annoying, though; have fun if you have some free time. I did notice that some of the books which have been used as counter-examples ("Why were those books de-ranked and not these?!") have been included in the Amazonfail tagging. I didn't confirm those; I still think that all the books should have their rankings and be included in searches and listings. No matter what I personally think of some other books (the historical manual on dogfighting, for example) I oppose all censorship and suppression of books and won't even suggest suppressing books I disapprove of, any more than I approve of anyone else censoring books I like. That's just me, though. Angie |
| Sunday, April 12th, 2009 | |
| 6:57 pm | Amazon Is Protecting YOU From Naughtiness! What? You say you're an adult and don't need a nanny when you're shopping for books? Too bad. Someone thinks you do, and whoever that someone is obviously has a lot of pull at Amazon, and has a particular axe to grind when it comes to GLBT books (that's books, not just fiction) and also some het erotica. ( Read more... ) |
| Friday, April 10th, 2009 | |
| 4:29 am | New Column -- Writers' Obligations I have a new column up at Romancing the Blog today. This time I'm talking about what writers owe to their readers. As usual, my take is that it's kind of complicated. :) Drop by and tell me what you think. Angie  PS -- for those of you waiting patiently for the next chunk of A Lost Boy, yes, you can assume that this issue has been weighing heavily on my mind recently. [cough] I am still working on it, but this has gone a lot longer than I expected and I've had some other obligations pop up, so Lost Boy is sharing my writing time with a couple of other stories. Also, I had a development occur at the end of the next chapter which (if I leave it as it is) is going to end up having some severe repercussions in the rest of the story. (You weren't all that fond of Thewlis, right...? [duck]) I actually have about 2.5 chapters done, plus some other disconnected verbage which demanded to be written Right The Bleep NOW, even though I've never written out of order before in my life :/ but I can't actually post any of it until I'm sure the Development is going to work. It'd be tough to change it while staying within the bounds of the verse, but if the rest of the story just doesn't work with it, I'm going to have to figure out some way to make a change fit. Until I know one way or the other, though, I can't commit by posting. [headdesk] Anyway, I appreciate everyone's patience, seriously. Thanks and hugs to all of you. Oh, and seeing Fast and Furious this last weekend makes me want even more to finish the novel so I can give Mark and Paul their own story (probably a lot shorter) and wrap things up for them, 'cause they're hot and pretty and need to get back together. :) Angie |
| Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 | |
| 6:57 pm | Tragedy I'm still sort of out of it, and just heard about Natasha Richardson's death after a skiing accident. All sympathy to Liam and their children. What a horrible thing to have happen. :( ETA: Thanks everyone for commenting. I know most won't see this, but I just can't think of anything to say in response other than, Yes, yes, yes.... :( Angie |
| Saturday, March 7th, 2009 | |
| 3:09 pm | Resurfacing Yes, I'm still alive, although it was a near thing for a while, or at least it felt like a near thing. Last Sunday night I became violently sick and blogging's been the last thing on my mind ever since. I am not, as you might have guessed by now, at EPICon. :( I went to the doctor on Wednesday (which tells you just how bad it was -- it takes a lot of nausea etc. to get me into a doctor's office, since they generally tell you to drink clear liquids, get lots of rest, maybe take something Pepto Bismolish, and wait it out, sending you home with a short list of bland foods you can eat once you can eat anything at all, and in what order to add in more complex kinds of things, none of which advice I need, nor have for many years, thanks anyway) and since it'd been going on for three days at that point, my doctor actually gave me some pills along with the above-mentioned advice. He also gave me a note saying I shouldn't travel for a week, with which we can collect on the travel insurance my husband presciently took out on this trip however many weeks ago when he booked my plane tickets. We're still out a "fee" of about $150, but the tickets were like $280, so it was worth taking my queasy stomach on two very short cab rides, I suppose. Oh, and the diagnosis is gastritis, which seems to mean just "upset stomach." [bemused smile] ( Read more... ) |
| Monday, February 23rd, 2009 | |
| 3:24 am | Newsletter Drama If you've missed it, probably just as well. :/ This is me, though, and I always have an opinion. Which is: ( Read more... ) |
| Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 | |
| 11:50 pm | Alone Again Or mostly. Jim's in Germany for a week so it's just me and his cat again. [eyes grouchy feline] We're saving up airline miles so we can fly business class to Melbourne (and back!) next year for WorldCon. He got a good deal on a trip to Germany -- although not quite as excellent as he got last year -- so he's off touristing around. He brought some liqueur-chocolates back for me and my mom last time, and Mom has put in a request for more this time around 'cause they were the best chocolates she's ever had. And she's not really a sweets-person, so for Mom to get that enthused about candy says a lot. :) Me, I don't like alcohol (can't stand the taste) so my own request was for some booze-less chocolates this time. Hopefully he'll be able to find some. :D I think he wants to ride the monorail again, too. And he was talking about trying to get to Aachen. That'd be awesome (yay, Charlemagne!) but I'm still sufficiently broad across the beam that long plane flights are incredibly uncomfortable for me. When we went to Florence, I was in serious pain for most of the flights, each way. :/ That's one of the reasons he's doing this, so we can afford the Good Seats on the bazillion-hour flight to Australia and back. Let's see, what else? Oh, I ordered business cards today, for the first time ever. :) EPICon is in like two weeks and it finally hit me that I should have cards to give out. It'll look like this:  It was like $25 or so for 250, including shipping, which isn't too bad. The pic is sort of generic, and a lot of m/m writers seem to use hot/naked guys, but 1) I took the picture myself so there aren't any copyright issues, 2) it's the pic I use for my columns on Romancing the Blog, and it's the default on my other LJ, so it helps build a brand image sort of thing, 3) I've written in other genres before and plan to do so again, and although there's a good chance I'll use a different pseud if I start publishing in, say, SF or Fantasy, this way my options are open and I don't have to. Or at least, I won't necessarily need to get a separate set of cards made up, if I decide to publish in other genres under the same pseud. Somehow I can't really see handing out cards with naked dudes on them to editors and agents at World Fantasy, you know? [wry smile] Angie |
| Monday, February 16th, 2009 | |
| 7:49 am | New Column I have a new column up on Romancing the Blog, on the subject of Falling out of Love. I recently came to the sudden realization that a (commercial, professional) writer I really loved up until, well, a few days ago, is actually pretty sucky. :/ It feels exactly like the sudden awakening out of a romantic infatuation, which is a pretty weird feeling to have about a completely different sort of attachment. Has that ever happened to anyone else? (With writers, not partners. [grin]) Angie |
| Thursday, February 12th, 2009 | |
| 4:47 am | Fic: A Lost Boy, Chapter 31 Title: A Lost Boy Author: AngiePen Pairing: Liam Neeson/Orlando Bloom, minor Liam/Johnny Depp, plus a few other pair-ups among the supporting characters. Rating: NC-17 overall Summary: Slave Orlando's been taken and the kidnappers aren't interested in ransom. And of course Master Liam's thundering rage is only at the personal insult, that someone would disrespect him by daring to touch his property. Disclaimer: I don't own anyone you recognize. I know nothing about their social lives or sexual activities, more's the pity. This is fiction, period. It is done as a labor of love and I make no money from it. Notes: 1) Set in poisontaster's Kept Boy universe -- FAQ here. See Chapter 1 for more notes.2) Thanks and hugz to everyone who nominated Lost Boy for Best WIP in the ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} slashy_oscars! Voting runs through 25 Feb.Previous Chapters: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Five, Twenty-Six, Twenty-Seven, Twenty-Eight, Twenty-Nine, Thirty The end of training came without any fanfare, or even an announcement. The lack of ceremony or even a special marker made sense once Orlando thought about it. When Jamie and Paula had finished kindergarten and been promoted to first grade, there'd been a special ceremony at their school, with the graduating students in special caps they'd made themselves out of construction paper, and they'd all gotten a certificate and a hug from the teacher; it'd made the kids feel special and proud of their accomplishment, and eager for the next step to come. Master Liam and Mistress Natasha had been smiling and proud too, and Orlando supposed they'd been happy with the school for the job it was doing educating the children and making them enjoy the process. ( Read more... ) |
| Thursday, February 5th, 2009 | |
| 10:07 am | Trivia Contest! I'm driving the bus at torquere_social today and just posted a trivia contest. The prize is a Torquere gift certificate, so come hang with me today and see how many you can get right!Angie |