Where the word things are

Because Amazon is still selling the Wolf House version that I have never gotten any money for whatsoever, my new publisher has been thinking about ways to make the new edition a more attractive prospect to potential purchasers.

At the moment it looks like the route we'll be taking is that each of the new editions of the novellas will include a brand new short story about the characters from yours truly.

I am having huge stressouts that I won't be able to write anything good enough. It's like being faced with fanfic stage fright times a million. What if everyone hates the new stuff OH GOD HELP

La la la here are some Homestuck stories I really love.

Miracle Child by bramblePatch
The worldbuilding and the development of characters and relationships in this story are some of the best I've seen. And the Grand Highblood has a predatory, ancient, layered orneriness that's like everything that's great about vampires mixed up with everything that's great about more savage monsters mixed up with a literal carnivalesque element. Also I adore Arsast kind of a lot.

Scarlet and Bible Black by paraTactician
The way Rose and Sollux are written in this story is nothing short of astonishing. All the easy characterisation shortcuts are burned away and there's nothing left but the pure and brutal truth of who these two kids are, brittle and clever and stubborn.

The Last Hearing Of Gamzee Makara by schellibie and urbanAnchorite
Terezi's voice -- everyone's voice, but this is absolutely Terezi's tale -- is so wonderful here. Devastatingly so. This is the story of a bunch of kids, thrown to places that no kid should ever have to go, and the things they lose there. And a special note has to go to the illustrations with this story, too, because goddamn. You absolutely understand why Terezi feels the way she does, when Gamzee looks like that.

Hold Your Colour by lantadyme
"The game remakes the world when they win. It forgets one thing." This fic is a shot of pure Dave straight to the heart. And if that description doesn't make you brace yourself for pain, then you're about to learn why it should.

dave striders journal alternatively titled why do i listen to my sister alternatively titled how do i hold all these feels alternatively titled god dammit by radicalnothing
Dave and John are at college. Sleep-deprived, Dave accidently emails John his journal when he means to send an assignment. His pretty sexually explicit journal. About how he feels about John. This is everything that's delightful and lovely about these two incurable nerdfaces.

Space Bro by jumpingjacktrash
A really nicely built, bittersweet, moving, post-game humanstuck story. Sollux remembers. Karkat doesn't.

I am sure I have forgotten a MILLION AWESOME STORIES but this is a starter-list at least?

EDIT: OH SHIT I can't believe I forgot reason reason cannot know by minna. Prolly because I always forget that the post-scratch kids are part of the same story as the rest of them because I am an idiot. Autoresponder is a distinct entity with distinct feelings. Poor thing.

Sad Batman wishes everyone a magical holiday season.

E-book now up for sale, paperback coming very soon!

(That photo is one the publisher sent me, and lookit lookit it's a real thing loooooooook I MADE A THING)

If you have read it already, could you please leave a review at Amazon?

If you haven't read it already and can't afford to buy it right now, email me (mizmary@gmail.com)and I'll send it to you -- all I ask in return is that you review it when you're done.

Guuuuuuuuuuuuys I made a booooooook.

haHA well scratch that 'I didn't get sick this year' thing in my resolutions roundup!

After a few days of feeling run down and headachey, on Sunday night I was treated to a migraine of epic, you-now-have-aphasia water-on-your-skin-makes-you-throw-up you-are-still-too-hot-when-literally-blanketed-in-ice proportions.

I tearfully emailed Erinna asking if she could come over in the morning. She and Erin came over immediately, and Audrey heroically put up with near-inocherent texts of pain from me until they got there.

Three hours of semi-conscious crying and moaning and screaming later, Erinna and Erin make the executive decision that it is time for paramedics. The dude who answered the call advised me that I should go to the Williamstown emergency room when it opened in the morning (yes, the emergency room is closed from 11pm-8am. Trust me, this is not the first time this has presented an issue in my life) but that my blood pressure was too low for me to be at risk for a stroke.

Eventually I was conscious enough (and had my eyes completely covered against debilitating light sensitivity) to sit up with Erin and Erinna for a while. Erin read from a Vampire in Waikiki which is probably the only instance of 'Relax' by Frankie Goes To Hollywood being used as the songfic basis for a sex scene that I will ever encounter.

I eventually fell into exhausted sleep at around dawn, and when I woke up we ventured to the emergency room. Cue five more hours of crying and melodrama-ing from yours truly (being super-sick turns me into the most pathetic creature in the world, all I can do is flail and apologise and grumble and cry), a drip to rehydrate me because I hadn't been able to keep down any water, bloodwork and a CT scan to make sure it wasn't anything sinister triggering the migraine, and a final diagnosis of.... a migraine! Likely brought on by stress.

The important part of this whole story is that my friends are fucking champions. Audrey and Erin were both absolute stars putting up with me and being there with a funny word and support when I needed them, and I want to extend special heartfelt love and thanks to Erinna. Not only did she stay with me two nights running, often while I was incoherent and screaming and couldn't stand for her to touch me at all even as I begged for more ice packs, but while the hospital was running tests she collected my mail, dealt with my internet provider when my modem died (thank heaven that didn't happen 12 hours before, god) and bought a temporary replacement prepaid modem so I'd have internet at home while I was recuperating, and stocked my kitchen full of my favourite kind of cereal, vitamins, gatorade, donuts, tofu steaks, and apple juice.

I cannot ever thank you enough, Erinna. You have been every kind of comfort, at a moment when I needed comfort the most. I love you. Thank you.

It's trite for me to blame all the problems I have with writing at the moment on my medication level. There are other factors as well, because there are always other factors. But I knew before I increased the dose that it would be more difficult for me to produce creative work with more effexor in my system.

That's why I started dropping back my dose, back almost two years ago now. I wasn't comfortable with the numbness I felt, and even more than that I hated the way that fiction had become a struggle.

Right now it's not just fiction that's a struggle. I have all these thoughts that I want to articulate but they skitter away when I try to sharped and order them. I don't like this. I don't like it at all. But on the lower dose, I wasn't any more creative than I am now. I was too miserable to be creative.

I wish I knew the answer. I wish I felt more optimistic that there was an answer to know at all.

On brighter topics, last weekend I went up to Sydney to stay with some of my favourite people for a couple of nights. They have a gorgeous chilled-out little home of sunshine and a sort of boho rock-and-roll peacefulness that was absolutely lovely to spend time in. We ate haloumi pizza and stayed up late and slept in late and went to see Breaking Dawn, sitting in the back row so nobody could kick us when we wisecracked and laughed.

That movie is so terrible-fantastic I can't properly explain it. I legitimately enjoy the first film, but... well, a good way to explain the difference between the first film and where the series goes after that is to say that there's a big difference between having a teenage girl do an internet search for vampire mythology because the strange boy in her class seems to fit the symptoms, and having a vampire dude do an internet search for demon babies because his wife is having one. And then he uses the image-search function to look at Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare. Which, uh, isn't actually a picture of a demon baby, Edward, you stupid chump.

Anyway! Yes, so. Breaking Dawn. Then we went to the Harry Potter Exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum, which was wonderful. I really am going to get an Expecto Patronum tattoo, eventually. The feelings I have about the third novel are not feelings I properly express when I try to talk about it, suffice to say I will probably always seek out a little bar of dark chocolate on days when I am feeling especially bleak and unhappy.

We did karaoke that night, which remains a pleasure I will only ever enjoy with this particular bunch of ladies when we get together for nonsense. It takes a particular hue of friendship to sing Adam Lambert and Savage Garden songs at the top of one's lungs with ten other people in a tiny soundproof room full of cupcakes and alcohol.

It was a really, really lovely weekend, and made me appreciate just how full my life is of good, worthwhile things.

The sun's coming up right now, and I can hear the birds outside. Audrey's asleep in the other room and I want to remember how to write things and I'm scared that I won't ever be able to again. I'm so scared. But, for now, most of the other stuff is going pretty okay. I'm glad the higher dose of meds helps me see just how good I've got it, all told.

I have about ten more spaces for advanced readers left for The Devil's Mixtape.

What being an advanced reader means is that sometime in the next couple of weeks, my publisher will email you an electronic copy of the novel, and instead of paying in dollars, you get to pay for it by doing short reviews for Amazon and Goodreads when you've finished reading.

Here's the blurb for the book in question:

In 1999, Ella arrived at school with a cache of weapons and a plan to use them. Years later, she sifts through accounts of other violent young women, writing letters to a little sister who had to grow up in the aftermath of that day.

In 1952, Sally was a runaway, hitch-hiking around Australia with a strange girl named Amy. Each outcasts in their own way, the pair navigated a landscape scarred by old memories and tragedies, searching for a place that felt like safety and home.

And in 2011, Charlotte was a music journalist on tour with a band, listening to their stories of loss and hope as she tried to shape the world into a narrative that made sense.

Demons, heartbreaks and the redemptive power of art are all thrown together one after the other. The result could never be anything but the Devil's mixtape.

And in case you missed it, the cover art looks like this.

Email mizmary@gmail.com to add your name to the list. You'll be doing me a huge favour and you get a free book to read. Everyone wins!

- I saw Darren Hayes in concert last night and I cried and I cheered and it was beautiful. I love him so much. So much.

- Little Star by John Ajvide Lindqvist is one of the best and most horrifying and most touching books I have ever read. It's Let the Right One In meets Judy Bloom meets American Psycho meets American Idol. I am very glad I read it AFTER writing Mixtape.

- Speaking of Mixtape, I have been given permission by my publisher to post the cover and it is fucking coolbeans. Audrey is way better than my books deserve. Heart heart.

- I wrote Homestuck fic. Karkat/FEELINGS is my otp.

Audrey, Erinna and I decided at the last minute to check out the Armageddon convention over the weekend, which meant I had very little time in which to think up and create a very silly costume. Because I am a complete and utter failure at acting like a proper grown up.

I decided to go as a secret unlockable character from Homestuck, since I figure there's no reason to do stupidity by halves. Pictures below the cut!

( Hee hee hee hoo hoo hoo )

All in all, I think I did okay for a no-planning no-budget outfit.

I am super-super behind on my flists on both Dreamwidth and Livejournal, so if something major has happened and I didn't comment I am sincerely sorry and will try to get caught up, uh, someday.

Oh! And while I am camwhoring, here is me from a couple of weeks ago:

( Clicky! )

In conclusion: Yep.

So I know this is a cliche, but that doesn't mean it isn't also true: when you wake up one morning and your higher dose of meds has kicked in, it really is like seeing colour for the first time.

And you don't even realise you were in monochrome until you aren't anymore.

I'd been depressed for so long that I'd genuinely forgotten how good it feels to be not-depressed.

I thought I'd just find it easier to get up in the morning, and not want to hurt myself as much, and have more energy.

I forgot that being not-depressed means waking up and actually being glad that you're alive.

But today I am.

I'm so glad.