A Jetlagged Confession

Things I have done in the past 72 hours:

--taken a shower at a train station (it was lovely, BTW)
--slept on the floor of LaGuardia Airport (it was the opposite of lovely)
--kicked off my first class on LitReactor
--had a collective two-day enthusigasm with 50 of my new best friends at GIFCon - Glasgow International Fantasy Conversations
--enjoyed the best little writers’ conference in Texas, courtesy of the North East Texas Writers' Organization
--signed my first gas station autograph

Things I have not done in the past 72 hours:
--literally any of the things I was supposed to do.

I HATE to admit this, but I need help, y’all. I don’t want to give up the globetrotting I love so much, but I also can’t keep disappointing the people who are waiting on me. (Or being constantly either gone or exhausted, which isn’t fair to that very good man of mine.)

So here is my ask, friendly friends: do we know anybody I might could hire to ride herd on my various email inboxes? It’d be a part-time gig, natch. I would really love to work with somebody you know and trust, who’s done the admin thing before and could maybe train me on how to delegate things. I have never wanted to be one of those people who has *people*, but something’s gotta give.

"Once Upon a Time in the West" - #GIFcon18

Hold my hat and sit me down, y'all. I think I may pass clean out.

Partly cuz it's 2AM and I'm watching the floor-wax zamboni at LaGuardia (and have been awake for pretty close to 24 hours), but mostly because it's been five time zones and 3,000 miles and I am STILL just over the moon about GIFcon (Glasgow International Fantasy Conversations) 2018. Will fill you in after I am sleep!

But before I have to shower and wash the rest of the magic off, here for posterity is baby's first keynote speech: "Once Upon a Time in the West - Fantasy and Identity on the Fictional Frontier" 

(and I'm going to break this up into multiple posts, cuz it's long as hell)

Part 1: the part about building Droughtworld

Part 2: the part about Westerns in general, and fantasy and Westerns in particular

Part 3: the part about fictional identities and cultivating real-world 'protagonism'

In which *my* Hogwarts letter arrives

I haven't said anything previously, cuz in my heart of hearts I just didn't think it could be real. But here it is, in defiance of probability and reason: I'll be keynoting at the University of Glasgow's GIFCon - Glasgow International Fantasy Conversations at the end of April. 

 Dr. Rob Maslen at the U of G has helmed the launch of the world's first master's degree in fantasy literature, and it is a truly 'fabulist' honor to celebrate that in such exceptional company. Registration opens tomorrow, and haggis nachos are on me!

WORDfest Cometh!

I haven't said much about it lately - but man, I am SO proud of everything WORD - Writers Organizations 'Round Dallas is doing and becoming.

We're up past 30 member organizations now (including the brand-new fantastic writers group at The Published Page Bookshop in Cleburne!), WORDfest is about to smash 400 registrations, and Dana Austin and Michelle ONeal have kindly volunteered to help us bury the bodies for our forensic science / crime scene investigation demo at Writers in the Field: Chapter Two :)
 
And if you're going to WORDfest - go check out our updated schedule and exhibitors list right over here. Next weekend is coming up fast, and you do NOT want to miss out!

One Last Stop on the Campaign Trail

I am worlds beyond proud of Allison tonight.

Tremendously glad to have met so many fantastic people through her campaign.

Incredibly grateful to all of you for supporting us from near and far.

Also exhausted, heartbroken, angry, and *incandescent* with righteous resolve. To the Powers That Be: hold on to your asses, ass-holders. We are smarter than you are slick, fiercer than you are rich, and our generation is going to burn your back-patting soft-money country-club scheme to smoking grassroots ashes.

After we take a couch day.

Breaking Through

Look at this video. LOOK AT IT. How is this the same person whose teeth I knocked out when she was five?

And now that I have your attention:

Texans, today is the last day to register to vote in the March 6th primary. In November it's going to be "red versus blue" pretty much straight down the line, just like it always is. And if you are tired of that shit, then this is your golden chance to decide who takes up those colors... because those crooked old parties are going to be forced to throw their money behind whichever candidates YOU choose. You will never, ever have as much game-changing political power as you do in the next 31 days. Don't waste it. Register here.

Personally? I'm making it my mission not to vote for any candidate with a clean car. These cinder-blocks are made for smashing, y'all.

If you need to hear something kind today...

This is *not* what I should be doing right now, but I had the most fantastic conversation with Aaron Glover yesterday, and this is what's coming out of it. If you're desperately out of warranty and struggling to make it, huddle up with me for a sec.

So guys. You know that stuff you have to do, before you can be a functional human? The pills you have to take - the monumental mission it is just to get up and dressed, let alone take a shower - the effort you make on the daily to pour your pain and sadness into a professional person-shape and gingerly slosh your way out the front door? 

Thank you so much for doing that, y'all. I have no concept of how hard that is, or what it costs you. But on behalf of all of us who only get to see you at your painstaking best - thank you so much for making the effort to stay here in the world with us. We may never really 'get it', but we are SO much the better for your presence. And if you need to hear that more personally, hit this post and we will make it so. Because big-kid pants do not put themselves on, and you deserve to hear that yours look good today!

You have cat to be kitten me!

So this incorrigible cutie came to stay with us today. She has a face <3
 
We're going to take it slow and keep her in her own room for a few days, and hope nub-cat and nose-cat will become friends. Anyone got any hot tips for introducing them?

Letter Rip!

I see you, progressively-minded DFW writers. I see you sick at heart about the state of the nation. I see you calling, writing, and patriotically jimmy-rustling our senators and representatives. I see you amping up for November.

And I am here to cheer you on, with a caveat - because it's not about November 6th for us here in Texas. It's about *March* 6th. There are a shedload of brand-new brilliant grassroots candidates who have poured THOUSANDS of hours and dollars into getting their names on the primary ballot for your selection pleasure - and if we don't roll out and support them, we're going to get whichever pre-approved comfortable establishmentarians the Party has chosen for us. 

If we vote like we've always voted, we're going to get what we've always gotten. 

Only 14% of registered voters from *either* major party voted in the Dallas County primaries last year, and the rest of North Texas wasn't much better. That means 86% of our eligible population doesn't know they have a choice, doesn't care, or doesn't have access to the ballot box. If you've read this far, you already know how important this fight is. And as writers, we have a democratic duty to use our story-telling skills to inspire our fellow citizens to act.

And if my little story-telling exercise just here has got you fired up at all, I would like to invite you to lend your penmanship to a righteous cause - as Allison Campolo For Texas Senate District 10 and I undertake to print, sign, date, hand-address, fold, seal, and stamp 12,000 real, actual letters, telling her story, to her first 12,000 voters. Because mailers are cheap and easy, and go straight in the trash. Because this campaign is not about taking the easy, traditional, conventional way out. Because being the scrappy grassroots outsider means that your only infinite resources are love and give-a-damn - and y'all, if you have any damns to contribute to the cause, we would LOVE your company.

You know how it feels to see something like this in your mailbox. You KNOW how it feels to realize that someone cared enough to go the trouble of sending you an honest-to-god real letter. If you can help us bring that attention and care to people who have never felt seen, considered, or truly represented before, I believe we can change the whole game. Our first 'write-in happy hour' is this Thursday night. RSVP here, and we promise not to make you lick stamps!

The Happy Human Game

Well, 2017 is officially in the bag, which means my time spreadsheet for the year is all finished. Final count: average 66 hours worked per week for the past year. Highest was 96.5 hours in one week (the Tornado Alley Tour) and the lowest was 41.5 (the week before Thanksgiving, for some reason).
Y’all, I am not proud of that. I spent a whole lot of that time being wired to the moon and miserable, and not following through on promises I made to people I really care about. I AM proud of the things I accomplished in that time (more on that in the next couple of days) – but I do not want to die of stress and fat. 

So I’m going to start doing things differently – and maybe this will be useful for some of you guys too. This year, instead of making resolutions, I made a new spreadsheet. I’m calling it my Happy Human game, since that's what I'm trying to become. I listed all the stuff I want to make a habit of in 2018, and assigned each one a points value. There’s 365 points possible – funny how that worked out – and for January, I want to see if I can get 50 points a day. I’ll see about ratcheting that up to 100 in February if it goes well, and maybe tinker with point values as certain things get easier.

Anyway, if you want to try making your own Happy Human game, you can download mine and mess with it. (Please do change the entries around; the things there are the things I personally tend to struggle with, and I'm sure yours will be different.) Here is the link!

You might also like to check out Habitica, if this kind of thing sounds appealing - it's a similar idea, but rendered as an actual, playable game, and I've heard good things about it.

Regardless: good luck out there, guys. The year won't stay pristine for long, but I've loved seeing all the can-do-itude on my feed today, and I am so looking forward to meeting your bad-ass future-self!