Getting the Hang of Thursday

I've had my days mixed up all week. Yesterday felt like Thursday all day, and then today turned out to be Thursday. I think part of the problem is that Fox moved its Tuesday lineup to Monday, so after watching House on Monday, Tuesday felt like Wednesday, and so forth. You'd think that would make me even more prepared for Thursday when it really arrived, but it didn't work out that way. This is when the "eek, I've got a book coming out!" stress starts to hit, as I realize there are a lot of things I need to be doing or should have done.

Meanwhile, another deadline has crept up on me and now I'm going to have to go into crunch mode. I think I have most of it written in my head, but I need to organize thoughts and do a little research, and I need a better framework. I wasn't going to take my computer with me to Austin, but I may try to get a little work done in the down time this weekend.

We had another round of storms last night. There doesn't seem to have been quite the same level of damage in my neighborhood, but I need to remember that it's probably best not to be reading Neil Gaiman short stories very late at night when the wind is making that particular howling sound. That is, if you want to sleep at any time during the night. When I walked to the library yesterday, I saw just how bad the damage from the storm a few weeks ago was. There were houses missing chimneys, lots of tree stumps from trees that were blown over or uprooted, and lots of tarps on roofs. Yeah, that was the one I slept through, and then the minor one last night kept me awake. Go figure.

And then tomorrow I head to Austin for the Nebula Awards. Remember, there's a public booksigning Friday evening. I will have to remind myself the whole weekend that I'm there as a professional peer, that I'm also a member of the organization and deserve to be there as much as anyone else, and I am not a teenaged fangirl who has managed to sneak in. Even if that is the way I feel. This weekend is also a chance to impress upon the head honcho at my publisher's sf/f imprint that my books really should be considered fantasy, and they could maybe do more with them than the mainstream side of the house has. I'm still working out the strategy for that. If I go in full geek-goddess mode and impress the fanboys, will that show that I should be marketed better to that audience segment, or will it just reinforce the chick lit image? Yeah, I know, be myself and all that, but the problem is that my true self really does straddle that line. I'm a big-time geek, but I also like being glamorous.

Now I need to go run the pre-travel errands. I've figured out that with the right cable, I can plug my Walkman into my car stereo and have a cassette player, so I don't have to scramble to find driving music for this trip before I get around to getting an iPod. I can use my existing tapes.