First person to say 'displacement activity' (or should that be 'work avoidence') gets a smack. :->

So, where are we this week? Slightly calmer than last I posted. Prism came back from the printers Thurs, DH48... has yet to appear. Am hoping it gets delivered to me Monday as the mailing really really does have to go out, like, yesterday. Awards deadline has been officially extended to 15th Aug. So we may just have covered our asses on that one.

The Fcon Reporter mini mag will have to be mailed out in a seperate mailing though, as I've not done it yet. Today and tomorrow is my plan. Which means, it'll be done Weds or Thurs and mailed out the week after, if usual line of things plays true. I should really have learnt by now about optimistic work schedules... they never work.

So next on the list is catching up on Fcon and (at last, at last!) H&N stuff, of which there is many and multiple things.

Fcon: have several fine details to get confirmed, several others to check on. And really, really, really have to update the Fcon blog.
And kicking Cafepress would be nice too. We've been trying to get some Fcon merchandise up on a cafepress store as we thought it would be fun... got the account set up, no problem, but have we been able to do anything else. Have we buggery. 4 different computers with various ISPs and still we get 'sorry, but your connection may have timed out' type messages when we try and set up the products. Gah!

And there's hotel visits with the 2007 potentials that need sorting because we need the date finailised, because it would be really nice to actually have next year details to advertise this year. Oh, and we had one guest confirm that he was free and willing, one guest that he was willing but we're checking on stuff with his publisher (I think... that's the trouble with switching off on one area to get another one done, totally lose track of, oh, everything else...) one guest said the timing was out but he was honoured to be asked (bless) and one guest with no reply, so I think we're assuming it's a no.

Oh, and I've got to interview Juliet McK. for the Fcon mag, which should be fun (and also a little scary as it'll be the first interview I've ever done...) Luckily, I'm a fan of her work so that's one side of the background research done.
(Actually, techinically, the Dave Sutton interview in the upcoming Prism should have been my first interview, but I chickened and appealled to the lovely Pete Coleborn for help so he did the questions....) Sorry, where were we....

H&N then - yes, I really did mean it when I said fiction submissions were now closed (got to update the website...) I've got a block of submissions reading time next week - which means, I hope, that I should be able to get all outstanding submissions cleared in the next 2 or 3 weeks.

Frustrating as it is, this is how I tend to work best, doing these blocks of dedicated [whatever] sessions, so when I finally get my H&N time, it'll be solid, dawn to dusk, nothing but the mag (and the Slow Motion Wars). I've got a bunch of subs that have been read but need a second reading to decide properly on. And there's Issue 8 to put together. And emails to answer. But you know all this already, so I'll shut up and get on it.

Other stuff
...because sometimes you need to switch off before you can switch back on again.. (otherwise known as, feeling guilty about doing things for fun when I know what work still needs doing...)

Actually read a proper book last week. (I know, it's been so long since I've had the time to squeeze it in!) Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts which has been hyped to the hills (pun not intended!) - maybe it's me, but I really couldn't see what all the fuss was about. (Had a similar problem with Jonathon Norrell as well - everybody seems to love it, I don't.)
Ok, there were a couple of good stories in the Joe Hill, but mostly I found the stories to be average to meh. And the endings... oy, the endings. Most of them not very satisfying... either coming to soon, or just too so-what. The Balloon boy story was good up until the last couple of pages. Voluntary Committal (haven't got the book to hand, so my recollection of titles may be a little off) was, I think, probably my favourite one - loved the ideas in it, and the ending wasn't bad.
The telephone one could have done with being longer, building the suspense a bit more. The title story (I think - it was the one about the movie theatre ghost...) was ok, but nothing startling.

So, for the while, I'm butterflying through Juliet McK's Western Shore, 2 pages at time when time allows. Then after that I've got Chaz B's Bridge of Dreams (available from his website or standard places in the US), and then Mark C's Jack of Ravens is out on the 20th! Woohoo!
And apparently Danse Macabre gets even worse for erotica minus plot so I think I can wait a while for that. (Reviews and other comments I've read so far suggest that it suffers from too much setting it up, and too few plot resolutions - more a bridge to the next book.)

Other things I'd love to be able to squeeze in - catching up on Kim Harrison's Dead Witch Walking series - read the first one ages back, would like read the rest. Also the new Justina Robson one (didn't really get on with her earlier stuff, but the last couple she's done look good!)
Stephen King's Cell is also on the list. The latest Jasper Fforde one, cos it's set in Reading! Fun! Also, the 3rd book in the Jonathan Stroud Bartimaeus trilogy; the Mike Carey 'Felix Castor' book that's just come out; that Lies of Locke Lamora thingy that's seems to be on it's way as the latest amazing thing (just like thieves as main characters, meself); the Joe Abercrombie thingy (as you can see, I've got a great memory for names and titles!); and one day I'll get around to picking up the rest of the Simon Green Deathstalker books - read the first one, loved all the political stuff in it, and he's got a cracking sense of humour in his books... I'm a huge fan of the Hawk and Fisher series...
Of course, I'd then need to find a way to read in my sleep to fit them all in...

What else before I leave you...? Gosh, but aren't the BFS forums deader than dead? Someone please go and post something. And TTA are getting that way too... but their problem, I think, is more to do with the constant spam assault they're getting.
Have been having to haunt the SFX boards for my fun. (Actually got around to posting something there, too.)

Enough. There's work to be doing....