This Halloween,
I had a bit of a quandary about how to manage my attire. I typically get home between 6:05 and 6:20, which didn't allow for time to change before the 7 o'clock wedding. But Halloween is a marvelous excuse to dress weird, so I went to work at the Capitol in a black Renaissance dress, sans corset but with bunny ears (I was a pooka), and just swapped one accessory for the other when I got home.
Voila, a costume for all occasions:
The wedding was outdoors, beneath an illuminated arch, next to a river/stream/watercourse thingy. In keeping with the Halloween theme, the beautiful bride wore red, the wedding party wore black, and there was Renaissance, goth, and period garb a-plenty among the guests. The reception was a masked affair, and the bride and groom were toasted with mead and honey wine (yum!). It was a lovely and elegant occasion, and I'm so glad I got to be a part of it. And yes, I got a little sniffly as they were exchanging their vows.
I brought my camera, but it gets petulant in dim light. All of my pictures turned out either dark, blurry, or simply bad. However, a few of the blurry ones reminded me a bit of
Here's the best of them:
Writing Stuff
New Words:
- 1000 on a new dark fantasy: "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast." After all the sweating and agonizing on the last story's title, this one essentially titled itself.
I was spinning my gears on "By Oak, Bramble, and Metro" and this story hit me between the eyes. My muse, she is a fickle whore.
Received:
- Galley proofs for "Nothing of Me" in Aegri Somnia.
- Payment from Writing-World for my November column, "An Interview with Gisele LeBlanc."
- Email from oldcharliebrown. Best New Fantasy
is back from the printer, and I can expect to have my contrib. copy in my hot little hands soon.
- 14-day "I hate to turn this down but . . ." from All Possible Worlds with invite to submit again.
- 49-day "this is one of those ones I really have trouble saying no to" no from Escape Pod on a reprint, with invite to try again.
(While tons better than a kick in the teeth, I'm not gaga about this "really didn't want to pass on your submission, but I'm going to. Got anything else?" trend.)
- 95-day #2 form nope from Asimov's. Urg. I'm losing ground here. The last couple rejections were personal ones from Sheila. Snartleblast.