While I ate my chili, I read this article in the NYT about Google's add campaign to contact all the authors of all the books in the world currently under copyright.

That's right: ALL the books in the WORLD.

They're taking out adds in places like "the Micronesian island of Niue (the name is roughly translated as Behold the Coconut!), which has one newspaper."

They aren't doing it out of the kindness of their hearts, but because of a suit from the Author's Guild regarding the need for compensation. (Which I, for the record, totally agree with. Some fiction should be free* but it can't all be free, or nobody will be able to write. It's a job. Not a luxury.)

Aside from the legal issues, the idea of all the books ever written being saved on the Internet is brilliant. Brilliant. No more Libraries of Alexandria, thank you! No more not being able to read the only book ever written about the obscure rituals of a death-cult of Odin worshippers in the 6th century because it's out of print and not in any libraries and a copy costs $500 at least. :D

*like all the awesome free fiction at merry_fates! Hey, is it Wednesday? I must have a new story up! /plug

LUDO (the band I'm currently obsessed with) has a CD called "Broken Bride."

It's a 28 minutes rock opera about a man whose wife dies in a car accident, and he jumps in a time machine to try and go back and save her. These are the lyrics to the first song. It's AMAZING.

( Lyrics to Part I: Broken Bride: )

You can go to their website and listen. To the whole thing. Because LUDO is wonderful and likes to, you know, share their stuff. The MP3 is available for $5 through Amazon and iTunes.

There are pterodactyls and zombies.

On Writing:

I was panicking over the weekend about how I'm only going to be in town for less than half of the next two weeks and how it would cut into my writing time when I'm on a major deadline. So I counted up my writing days.

34 guaranteed (as much as anything can be guaranteed).

10 Tuesdays, which have to be dedicated to Merry Fates (for fiction writing and probably both short essay days - yay for having a schedule!) and any other writing things that come up (reading crit partner work, frex)

2 weekend days unscheduled. Holy crap.

I was thinking, omg, only 34 days?!?! But my goal for the first draft is only 60,000 words. And I did the math, that's a mere 1,676 words a day. That is entirely possible! *whew*

On Cons:

I was at Conestoga this past weekend, and I learned something about myself: I hate talking to people. (ok, I relearned this.) At the first panel I attended on Friday, there were so many people I started to feel nauseated. And then a couple asked two of the most annoying questions I've ever heard and my expectations for the weekend took a nose-dive. Happily, the rest of the panels were much, much better!

Probably because I've been doing this for a while, most of the information on your basic-writing-type-things was nothing new to me and I managed to learn very little. I don't think that was the fault of anyone but myself - I've done research, I've had relationships with published authors, I've already asked all these kind of questions and discovered some of the answers for myself. A few of the panels were informative, and it was very interesting to see how they worked on an inter-personal level and to watch various authors conduct themselves in various ways.

Fortunately, I met some very cool people!

First of all, Brenna! Also known as brennayovanoff, one of my fellow Merry Fates. We shared a hotel room and got to hang out and chat about things face to face. Bliss!

The two authors I talked with most were Mark Henry (mdhenry) and Jeri Smith-Ready (jer_bear711). They are fabulous people. Mark was as charming and funny as he is online (seriously, you should all be reading his lj blog, and/or the group blog he shares with several other writers, The League of Reluctant Adults). His first book was out in February: Happy Hour of the Damned, about a zombie socialite eating her way through Seattle. It's hilarious, and I swear I'll review it here soon. In addition to his snarky charm, Mark was kind to the people-hating, antisocial girl in the bar. (Yes, me.)

Jeri is a brand new acquaintance whose blog I've only just now started to read, who shares my pessimistic assessment of airplanes and speeding hulks of metal in general. Her newest book is Wicked Game, about vampire DJs. She's also written a trilogy I've been meaning to pick up for a long while, The Aspect of Crow Trilogy. Best thing about cons? It moves authors way up to the top of my must-read list. (Especially when they think the concept of my current YA novel sounds fab. ;) )

Other way cool people:

Caitlin Kittredge, who writes like a fiend and has pink streaks in her hair. Very fun, cute, and cool.

Rachel Caine, whose book ILL WIND I loved, and have also been meaning to review here. Promise! She was adorable and wonderfully articulate.

Carrie Jones, who is freaking hysterical, and a doll. You know how my muse/death god of writing manifests as Odin? Hers is John Wayne. No joke. Plus, she's running for public office! Go Carrie!

I was going to one more ON, but I've spent too much time on this, and need to get started on today's 1700 words (plus mortgage-paying work!). Happy Monday!