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Starting with the least pleasant one. Jana has deteriorated a lot in the last few months. She is rapidly becoming nonverbal and is having increasing motor control issues. It is next to impossible to talk to her, at least for me, and it's breaking what's left of my heart in that regard. This disease can absolutely fuck off into the sun.

Okay, that said, I'm doing some things for self-care. My current day job contract is also rife with unpleasantness so this is beyond essential.
  1. I went to a bed store on Lake Street on Sunday and bought a new bed, one both fancy and on sale. It is fabulous and I also got a bed base that can be adjusted at the head and the feet. I have been in constant pain from my hip and leg for over a year now (there are good days and bad days) and I have a more pronounced limp and a harder time getting up if I sit too long. My sleep is wildly irregular. Our bed is nearly 25 years old and the mattress is at least 10 so it was past time. I lay on the sample bed in the store chatting up the sales guy while I played with the controls and for five glorious minutes, nothing hurt. Shows up next weekend and I am very excited.
  2. I acquired an awesome tea pot with a cephalopod on it, also on sale.
  3. I have made time for writing (next werewolf novel has cleared 10k words on this draft) and I am working on a new Joanna Russ-related project that I'll announce soon.
  4. I am walking more and trying to remember to stretch.This worked well last week when my power was out for 2 days and the car was sealed in the garage. I walked a lot of places.
  5. Next up: buying a new, more ergonomic office chair.
  6. Seeing a massage therapist this week and continuing with my weekly online movement class with Cassandra Shore,
  7. Doing some of the end of life planning stuff that I need to tackle. I realize that this isn't self care for everyone, but it is for me.
  8. Calming my schedule where I can so I have more time for rest and friends. I'm going to hear the Tannahill Weavers at the Cedar this week, among other things.
Also this weekend, I tabled at the inaugural Carver County Pride with author Abra Staffin-Wiebe and had a fine time. We even had one of the semi-mythical "I'll take one of everything" book shoppers. It's happened to me once before in person and it is the BEST. Anyway, lovely weather, good event, nice people, would do again.

I put out a new-to-us novella though Queen of Swords Press last week. Point of Knives (Astreiant #2) by Melissa Scott answers the big question: when are Nico and Philip going to get together? Oh, and solve a murder mystery? Great stuff! :-)

Look for Michael Merriam and me at the Queen of Swords Press booth at Pagan Pride at Minnehaha Falls this Saturday, if you're local. And more to come.


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It's late May and I already feel like this has been a year already. Last week's "fun" involved a Denial of Service attack on the Queen of Swords Press website. It took about 4 hours for me to get in and get it stopped because the flood of spam from a server in Moldova kept crashing things, but I did eventually get things locked down. Eventually, I'll fix the Contact Form so it works again, but I thought I'd give it a week or so for things to settle down. The rest of the week was less dramatic, but I'm already behind and scrambling to get caught up, so it didn't help. :-(

This weekend was mostly good. I miss the hell out of being at WisCon and it feels very weird to be in town. I had a lot of ouch (the weather has been exciting), but also a fun couple of short plays with Jody Wurl at the Crane Theater, a delightful trip to the Minnesota Streetcar Museum with Michael Merriam as part of my "do things I've never done locally plan," a lovely breakfast with Caroline Stevermer and a very nice hot beverage with Jennie Goloboy at a new-to-me coffee place. I also visited Jana and she basically told me to leave, so that was fun. She's getting on better with her PCA these days than me so I keep getting her checked on every week. Less frustrating for me and likely more useful for her.

Apart from that, it's all errands and terrifying meetings about Twin Cities Pride. I somehow missed the memo that it's now over 500k attendees and it will be our first year as a vendor. There's so much stuff to deal with! I'm a freaked. But that said, come see us in the Queer Writes tent in Loring Park next to the bridge to the Sculpture Garden! I will have books and such!

June also features a whole lot of other stuff (see pinned post above) so there will be other opportunities to see me and my authors. In other news, Kate Larking, who some of you know from Sirens Con days, has spun up her own marketing and publicity biz. I'm looking to bring her on to help me tackle some things I have dropped the ball on, like juicing up our backlist and getting things linked together more sensibly for cross promotion. Let me know if you need a contact for her - she also helps organize Kickstarters, coaches in person bookselling and sundry other related tasks. In addition to that, I'm applying for the Independent Book Publisher's Association Innovative Voices Program. It's a "leveling up" mentorship and grant program for indie publishers and I'm very pleased that Betsy Miller of Thinking Ink Press, one of last year's recipients, has agreed to recommend us. Now to come up with something more coherent than, "OMG! We're publishing the entire Astreiant Series by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett, plus a new novella this year!" to say about us.

Oh, and hey, the Pride StoryBundle launches on 5/31! Stay tuned!

As always, more soon.



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