Morning, munchkins. …

Morning, munchkins. Various projects proceeding apace -- if all goes well, we should be launching the SH Best Of book at World Fantasy (all my travel this summer threw the original schedule all to heck). Sadly, I probably won't make it there unless a pile of money falls in my lap, but Susan and Karen are going, so SH will be ably represented. The plan is to do both our own special tea party, per usual, and a joint book launch party with Intracities, Flytrap, Polyphony 3 -- heck, who knows who else? Should be a blast -- wish I could make it. I'm collecting the last few permissions now; then all I have to do is revise the bio page, revisit my introduction, get Zak to send a cover art image to me (Zak, the designer needs the planet, presumably in black, ideally in the highest resolution we have -- can you send that to me?) so I can send the cover details to Lethe's book designer, and ask Brian if he wants to contribute an Afterword. I know most of y'all don't know who Brian is, but he has strange and secret powers which should not be trifled with. Trust me.

Work on the recipe book also is going well -- I've finished the Meat and Poultry section, the Vegetables, and the Drinks, and Appetizers and Fish and Seafood are only waiting for one recipe each from my mother (which I need to call and ask for, maybe today). Still a fair bit to go, but good progress is being made. And my volunteer cooks have started trying to make these dishes, so that's all good. :-) I've started talking to illustrators about design possibilites.

It's funny -- realizing that there was no way I could make it fit into Cafe Press's 52-page limit for saddle-stitch and that I'd thus have to make it a perfect-bound book has made me feel like I have to do a better job with it. I know lots of people putting out little saddle-stitched chapbooks, and they're charming and I find that in my own head, I don't require much more out of that format other than it be charming. If it's anything else -- bonus! Whereas once it's got a more formal binding, I expect it to do a little more than simply charm. Weird. It's a binding, dangit. Why should it matter? Sometimes my own brain bewilders me.