Petronia

Uploaded my Yuletide story! Rather, uploaded it yesterday, ran to a dinner party, came back home and did housework, slept, got up and made a PROPER CURRY, ate, and am now blogging while waiting for the dryer to do its thing, as there's no point in starting on the like twenty SSBB stories sitting in my inbox when I'm leaving the house again in 1/2 hr. orz It's a marker of how breakdown-inducing these community challenges are, that my natural misguided optimism only wins out enough to sign me up for them one year out of three. XD; This round was the smoothest-sailing thus far, in that I finished a whole three hours before deadline and while a couple of sections could have stood another edit the thing was basically DONE as opposed to missing chunks or otherwise soul-destroying. (sub_divided was a hero, of course.) Not sure I'll go back for more next year, though; December is not a good time of year for two weeks to disappear into the writerly void.

Speaking of SSBB, I think I might need a pinch hitter for the cover pic. o_o;; The artist in question is reliable; her computer situation is not, and therein lies the rub.

Next up: cheapo movie night has come around again, which means it's time to review last week's (Disney princess meta).

EDIT -- luckykitty, your card arrived! It's adorable. ♥ My first one this year~ XD

It turns out SSBB was in the last Preditors & Editors Reader Poll, which... buh? If I'd known I'd've sent the readership to vote. XD; The main LJ comm's also got a PageRank of 4. DUDE, IT'S LIKE IT'S A REAL ZINE AND EVERYTHING.

(THE MORE YOU KNOW: I'd always assumed PageRank just meant - yanno - the ranking of your web page. But no, it's named after Larry Page.)

OKAY SO this is what I think for 2010:

* February will be FOOD (yr story must come with a recipe, and then we will have a photo post to collect the ensuing foodpr0n, like the ontd_startrek baking posts)
* April will be HISTORICAL ROMANCE
* June will not have a single theme but provide a 31_days-style prompt list compiled by moi
* There may or may not be a f/f special... just cos of too much going on, but if so it'll be in the second half of the year?
* September will be the 5th anniversary issue, f'reals. The theme should probably reflect that, like it should be BIRTHDAYS & ANNIVERSARIES or some sort of back-to-basics operation, like. SCHOOLBOYS!!!1
* I have considered doing a VAMPIRES issue. This may be a bit much, though. XD; Ditto SOULBONDED DRAGONS.

I really want to do a special treeware issue - it'll cost something, but I'm willing to subsidize it and/or commission certain things out of my own pocket, it's not to turn a profit. I also want it to be nicer than just a stack of bound photocopies which is where I hit a wall. XD; Do any of you ppl have experience with putting out comic anthologies and zines and such? The content'll be different from regular SSBB as well but haven't decided exactly how.

( Thoughts are )

Anywayz this will really take a whole year to get off the ground since I have no money and no experience, not even a Paypal merchant account.

Here - sorry for the dreadful delay, though I expect everyone was reading the Halloween yuri issue, right. XD As mentioned in the post I'm going to be more systematic about the schedule in the future, now that there's three different things to juggle (reg'r issues, yuri issues, reader challenges). Will also sit down in December and write that design brief, plus organize the long-promised off-LJ website/archive, plus do some costing of the other stuff.

There's a holiday gift request on this year, as previously mooted. So go ask the ether to do the hard work for you. XDD

You know fst request rounds?

What if we did something like that for SSBB?

Opening signups for the September issue; lining up cover illustrators, which shamefully I always forget to do; scoping out and cold-callingcommenting the people in the author suggestion box while working my nerve up to the LJ luminaries (the MBA works well as a crutch for this sort of social anxiety). Though I'm acquainted with quite a few of the authors mooted, and some of the others write for SSBB already, only the fact isn't common knowledge. XD

Oh, and themes for next year. Three slots to fill at least. Suggestions? There's been a few but they're buried under a pile of email at this point. XD;;

Upcoming posts:

• some music I uploaded ages ago
• book reviews
• more music, this time involving Alex Turner out of the Arctic Monkeys and my dreadful suspicion that the future came to Japan first again
• writeups of six gigs I attended in as many weeks
• I never record it on LJ anymore when people come to visit me??? I DON'T KNOW WHY :/

canis_m, got your postcard from Croatia - lovely, let's make it a theme. XD♥

The only restriction is that they be contactable via what may be considered conventional online means. *g* A note on why would also be helpful, as I'm probably conversant with fewer writers than you'd think.

Comments are screened, so don't be afraid to embarrass yourselves. We may be in the gutter, etc.

EDIT -- dunno why I didn't think of this, but if there are illustrators you'd like to see in SSBB, let me know too. ^^

For the comm's convenience (will be linked shortly). Feel free to respond.

[Poll #1158806]

Why come up with original content when one can meme? XDD

Comment here and ask me ANYTHING about any fandom I'm involved in/have been involved in. Controversial or innocent, silly or serious, ask and you'll get my honest opinion on the subject [to the best of my knowledge/ability].

General fandom questions are also allowed, but nothing about actual people IN fandom, please. Well, you can ask, but I might ask you to take it to chat or something. XD

And:

Give me two characters from different fandoms you know I'm familiar with, and I'll give you a dialogue happening between the two of them. Without justifying how the crossover would work, how their worlds clashed, or how they could even meet each other. Just a silly crossover conversation with no backstory, for fun.

In other news, guess when my Finance mid-term (25% of final grade) is? Award yourself a cookie if your answer was, on the day of the SSBB submission deadline. With an Organizational Behaviour case study (30%) to hand in the day before, and an Operations Management assignment (10%) the day after. It looks like the majority of stories will come in just under the wire, and there probably aren't enough beta readers to go around. DOOMY FEELINGS. XD

1) Hahaha speaking of ethnographic techno, someone finally did it: they made a mnml version of the Ghost In The Shell theme. Vinyl bootleg, biyatches! I'm listening to a rip now and it's ace - kind of Cadenza-style.

2) The signup for getbacksubrosa ends tomorrow! Have about a dozen people on the list right now, looking for more, so pass it on. ♥ Emails will go out Friday.

3) WWNPHD? I'm taking this as conclusive proof I'm not imagining the zeitgeist's recurring theme.

4) Yesterday I went to a talk given by the legendary Mr. Schulich, He Whose Name Is On The Science Library (didn't get to thank him for that before he left, as I'd dorkily wanted to do - though he'll never know why he's a legendary in-joke XD;). Bought a copy of his book for 15$. It's shiny - as in, the cover is gold foil - and basically a collection of salient but randomly ordered aphorisms. The talk was along the same lines.

5) Had another presentation skills workshop. I have to kvetch about this, because while IMO the course content is urgent and key, when it comes to watching classmates give Powerpoint presentations on completely random topics, there are few places and times worse than huddled in a corner of an echoingly empty classroom, with the AC permanently stuck at Sub-Polar, from 6PM to 9PM, on a Tuesday when you've had four hours of sleep. It got pretty gruesome toward the end: there were giggle attacks, and one girl presented on the Spinning Right Or Left Brain? Ballerina. I was so tired I seriously considered giving mine on the topic of JKR Sez Dumbledore Is Gay. Instead I talked about Green Life Montreal and went over the time limit by five minutes. The instructor said I shouldn't have made all the Dumbledore jokes at the beginning but at 8PM anything to get a few lulz from the audience amirite.

6) I wrote more on the Accounting midterm paper to argue why I should get marks back than I did to answer the questions themselves. SAD.

7) I didn't talk much about SSBB this round (no news is good news XD). Now that you're all read the issue, figure that a couple of weeks after the concert I finally scored a copy of Patrick Wolf's Lycanthropy on the wild internets, and sat down to play it through while editing the next submission in the queue. GUESS WHICH ONE.

8) More music to come!

Shousetsu Bang*Bang volume 2, issue 11

Shousetsu Bang*Bang special summer issue 2007

The yuri special is 15 stories and 83,000 words. The regular issue is 28 stories and 220,000 words. I had perforce to give up the idea of squeezing all the names onto the cover, after several tries that looked terrible.

As per usual I had to drop out for lack of time - sorry, Chira! - OTOH I've written more than I'm likely to abandon at this point and the end is in sight if not within reach, so it will probably end up in the December issue. If optimism prevails I might try to finish last December's story for the upcoming October issue, but... yeah. XD I have made the October theme 怪談百物語. PLEASE NOT TO TAKE THIS AS A HINT TO COLLECTIVELY MAKE 100 SUBMISSIONS OK.

It feels like I've been doing nothing but work on SSBB for the past month. Upon consideration, this is because I have been doing nothing but work on SSBB for the past month. XD

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go buy a cake~♥