A whole bunch of stuff

Yes, sigh, I missed last week. There's been a ton going on here, most of which I'm about to bore you all with, so here we go.

I've been working my butt off on DEMON POSSESSED, and am generally pretty pleased with it. Last week I wrote a bit that genuinely upset me; it's kind of odd to do that, because on the one hand I hope it affects readers the same way, but on the other hand, not so much that they throw the book across the room. I'm really proud of it, though. One of the things I try to do is make sure my characters, in general, behave like adults. I dislike characters who throw whiny little hissy fits over nothing, or fly off the handle over things normal people would just shrug off. So I'm pleased to have (I think, anyway) accomplished that. And of course since I know what happens next I'm more proud than upset, but...yeah, it's weird thinking of what reaction readers might have. It doesn't change how I work--and this particular story arc has been planned since the very beginning--but it is there. (It also feels both cool and odd to be writing scenes I've had in my head since 2006.)

On top of that, we're moving. In a nutshell, the house next door to my mom's was rented. The tenants left. The owner of the house, who is a friend of my mom's, came down to oversee their moving. Hubs and I wandered around the place, loved it, and took it. So we have a new house. At the moment we're renting, as we haven't been back in the country long enough to buy, but early next year we'll be buying it. Which is very odd. So, I have a new house. Our shipment came Wed from England, which was weird--seeing all of our things again was cool, but it was sad too. (Oh, someone asked in response to the UK rights sale post if we would have left England had this happened while we were there. Probably we would have eventually, yes, but not as soon as we did.) Anyway, getting our belongings back was lovely, but of course, there are always problems. A broken candlestick and mixing bowl weren't that big a deal, but the fact that the movers LOST OUR FUCKING TV STAND is. That stand matches our sideboard; they were the first pieces of furniture we bought in England and remain our only truly "good" pieces; solid walnut and wrought-iron. We paid an outrageous (for us) amount for them because we both fell in love with them, and they are of course no longer available. So we're pretty pissed off about that and are waiting to see what the movers can or will do for us.

Aside from that, though, the house is fucking gorgeous and I'm incredibly excited to move in fully, which we will do as soon as we have mattresses.

More things from the last week: You can imagine what I think about the latest stupid RWA scandal. While I appreciate those who want to Change From Within and blah blah blah, I think it's beating the old gray mare. The RWA has become so irrelevant and useless it's a caricature of itself, and I simply cannot fathom why anyone would want to remain a member of a so-called writer's organization that can't be bothered to study the industry even a tiny bit.

And speaking of things which became irrelevant and a caricature of itself...yeah. Michael Jackson died. I don't know how to feel about this. On the one hand, the guy basically went insane in the last twenty years or so. He became someone unrecognizeable. Someone I couldn't feel comfortable liking even if he had been producing music I enjoyed; by the time "Bad" came out, in fact, I'd pretty much moved beyond pop music and stopped paying attention. And, you know how I feel about people who abuse children, and whether or not sexual misconduct took place, it is not appropriate to sleep with little kids who are not your own.

But the other night hubs and I were watching VH1. And they played "Thriller" in its entirety. And I started to cry. Because that was so much a part of my childhood. I remember sitting eagerly in front of MTV, waiting for the World Premier of that video. I remember recording it. I remember loving it. I remember owning the album and trying to figure out how to moonwalk. I'd forgotten how good it was, how good he was, how young and talented.

And I couldn't stop thinking that the time to mourn the loss of that man was twenty years ago, not now, but we never did. We never had the chance.

And it made me wonder why some of us (and I'm not including myself in the "Michael Jackson" stratosphere of talent, but people who work in the arts in one way or another, as a whole, which apparently does include me. My agent says I'm creative so I guess it's true) try so hard to destroy that talent and to destroy ourselves. Why that element of self-loathing never seems to go away, and why we embrace it so hard and refuse to let it go and feel good about how it eats us from within. Does everyone feel that way, or are we just bizarre in general?

I had something else to discuss, as well, but I don't remember now what it was. So maybe that will have to wait until Thursday.