Free bits

Actual content in awhile, but first:

Most of you know how this works, because you've seen it here or elsewhere on lj: here is a list of stuff I am giving away. If you want it and it hasn't been claimed in the comments, please comment and say you want it. First come, first served within two broad priority categories: first, the greater Twin Cities metro area or visiting it soon (the two conventions here at the end of the month and beginning of next month count as "soon" -- up through May will do), and second, North America in general. (Please note if you are in the first category.) Sorry, but I'm not in a mood to ship bits abroad. Whatever doesn't get taken will get donated to a library, a shelter, or a charitable organization of some other sort.

Most of the stuff this time around is on the list for one of three reasons: 1) it was such a good present to someone in this house that they got another copy of it; 2) it was in the freebie bag at World Fantasy and was either a sequel to something I haven't read or was not my cuppa; 3) we no longer have a VCR. So:

( stuff you can have for your very own )

better all the time

At the end of the first period of the Wild game, I got up and came upstairs and finished the rough draft of "Making Alex Frey," a short SF story. It's my sixth story of the year, the first that's unequivocally SF. ("Uncle Flower's Homecoming Waltz" is the kind of story that could be SF or fantasy depending on your reading, and it doesn't really matter which.)

For comparison purposes, I wrote six short stories in all of 2005. And I didn't finish a novel in 2005, either.

Part of what this means is that I had a lot of stuff sitting around started and unfinished on my harddrive, and now some of it is getting finished. This is good. But that's not most of it, especially as many of these stories are brand-new this year. Most of it is that 2005 was my Year Of Sick, and I'm really doing better now. Lots better. This morning I didn't fall out of Tree Pose when I was doing yoga. (Several months of vertigo will send your balance all to hell even when you're not actively having an episode of vertigo at that moment. One of my goals in doing yoga -- and, to a lesser extent, biking and doing Pilates -- is to strengthen my balance for when I'm not in the middle of a vertigo episode.) This evening, when I was cooking dinner -- real cooking, not pasta and jarred sauce -- I danced absent-mindedly in the kitchen while things were simmering. I mean that I was sort of hanging around the kitchen and found that I'd been dancing without thinking about it much. I used to do that all the time when I was cooking. Lately I've been doing it again, but I hadn't noticed.

And I'm gearing up to write a new book, and I think it's going to be good, but I'll talk more about that later, in a bit, I think.

I also finished the reread of Thermionic Night today, and had something weird happen: I was in a bad mood about it, and my own book won me over. That was just bizarre. But good-bizarre. Definitely good-bizarre.

I'm trying to reduce the number of perpetual entries on my to-do list, things that get moved from week to week with no hope of completion. Several of them are done, handled, taken care of. I'm also trying not to provoke another build-up by running myself ragged and collapsing. And to that end -- hey, I finished the reread, I finished the sixth short story of the year -- I'm going to go back down and watch my Wild keep fighting for a playoffs berth.

Words of wisdom for the evening: doing better is far more fun than doing worse. (And I hear my dad and timprov and Tim Robbins in my head in ragged chorus: "It's, like, better than losing!" Spring training. Soon to be time to watch "Bull Durham" again.)