Wednesday, November 07, 2007

 

How Things Are

Contracts are signed and in the mail, final edits done, brief bio still on the to-do list, so I reckon it's OK to say that I sold a story titled "The L.I.L.I.T.H. System" to EC's anthology, Bound is the Bewitching Lilith. It's a fun piece, and EC pretty much made the whole process painless. Look for the antho at Popcorn Press, and expect to see renewed commitment on my part to completing writing projects and sending them out into the world to find an audience by way of a publisher. (Encouragement on that last part always welcome, of course.)

I was at a work-related conference last week, and I had the opportunity to attend a luncheon where the keynote speaker was Dr. Robert Einterz, and he introduced us to the work of the Academic Model for Prevention and Treatment of HIV/AIDS (AMPATH), under the umbrella of the Indiana-Kenya Partnership. There's some incredible work being done here, building on the foundation of medically treating HIV/AIDS with prevention, education, empowerment, employment. I feel very lucky to have been present to learn about this program and the people whose lives have been touched by it. Determining how to act on this new-found knowledge is at the top of my to-do list. Letting others - even just the few people who read this blog - know about it is a start.

The cats have had a difficult few months, Gracie in particular. We learned that she is diabetic and tried to correct that through diet (a special crunchy cat food with a high-protein, low-carb formula, which is apparently modeled on the nutritional intake a cat would get from eating mice, a fact that always makes me think of Farley Mowat). Her glucose levels were still too high, so we had to learn how to give her shots and she's getting the tiniest bit of insulin twice daily now. We won't know until she's tested again, but she does act like a different cat now. Unfortunately, not long after she started the insulin, she picked up a cold from George the Plaguebearer. He shook it off, but not before she got sick -- to the point where she'd started becoming dehydrated by the time we got her to the vet. For about ten days, we had to pill her, give her nose drops, and do the insulin shots. Let me just say that I'd so much rather give her a shot than a pill: Ed and I are less likely to walk away wounded and bleeding when giving her a shot.

My brother Chris, the sculptor, is getting married next August! His lovely and delightful fiancee, Kristin, is also a sculptor. There's a link to my brother's website on the left, and I'll add this link for Kristin.

Ed's book, Neversfall, comes out at the end of the month! I'm really looking forward to seeing it on shelves. The cover art is gorgeous, and the novel's a fun read -- and I'm not saying that just because he's my husband! :-) (I'd love to tantalize you with teasers about action and intrigue, strategizing and fighting, characters who struggle to uphold their convictions, and enemies who are truly of a different ken, but there's a whole department full of people who are paid by WotC to do that sort of thing and I'd hate to, you know, step on their toes...) He's also given WotC a story featuring a character from the novel, and I assume it will appear here at some point in the not-too-distant future.


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