January 2012

I am teaching right now and expect to be done by the middle of February. Then I plan to be back to updating. It looks as if we just maybe hope-real-hard might get to keep our home, no thanks to any politician of any stripe whatsoever -- may their teeth rot and their hair fall out -- so I am greatly relieved not to have to think about packing up and moving right now.

I'll be posting a few old Tolkien fics here in the next days or weeks or months or years. My HMC fics will continue at their usual glacial pace.

I am constantly wracked with guilt when I am in a long dry spell between updates and I get reviews, and then I'm so bummed to have gotten reviews or favorites on a story I haven't updated in so long that I forget to thank the kind reader who took the time to send me feedback, whereupon I spiral into a new level of guilt-wrack. The fanfiction community, at least as I see it, is suffused with the spirit of generosity and giving. Creative work, on the other hand, is like a mugger that yanks you away from home and job and the everyday grind, demands everything you have to give, then after taking it drops you unceremoniously on some mean street-corner with nothing in your pockets but flatness and exhaustion. Days, weeks, months, years of it.

But enough of that! Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to review and fave. I'll try to get back to you. If I already did, please excuse me. If you have forgotten all about a story you read three years ago and wonder who this person is who is writing to you, well, please excuse that too.

And please do check out my books-and-writing blog, which enjoys somewhat more frequent updates, and where among other things I'm doing an in-depth reading of Howl's Moving Castle. It's here: http:///.

I'm keeping my list of read-so-far Diana Wynne Jones novels and stories here:

A Tale of Time City
Archer's Goon
Aunt Maria/Black Maria
Believing is Seeing: Seven Stories
Cart and Cwidder
Castle in the Air
Charmed Life
Conrad's Fate
Crown of Dalemark
Dark Lord of Derkholm
Deep Secret
Dogsbody
Drowned Ammet
Eight Days of Luke
Enchanted Glass
Everard's Ride
Fire and Hemlock
The Game
Hexwood
The Homeward Bounders
House of Many Ways
Howl's Moving Castle
The Lives of Christopher Chant
The Magicians of Caprona
The Merlin Conspiracy
Mixed Magics: Four Stories of Chrestomanci
The Ogre Downstairs
The Pinhoe Egg
Power of Three
The Spellcoats
Time of the Ghost
The Tough Guide to Fantasyland
Unexpected Magic
Warlock at the Wheel and Other Stories
Wild Robert
Witch Week
Year of the Griffin

On the matter of writing, I am a relentless line editor, which means I weigh every comma, every phrase, and every word choice. For that reason, I seldom beta-read because I've found too often that new writers don't like having every word challenged; after all, they worked so hard getting each one of the bloody things down in the first place. It doesn't help when I tell them I put my own stuff through the same wringer. I've had a lot of fun working with Caudex, though, and learned a thing or two myself.

I haven't been a terribly frequent updater because of the above, and because I’m a “quilter”—a writer who works in patches of material, all out of sequence, that later have to be pieced together.

Special thanks -- again -- to all who have reviewed my stuff and even (WOW!) favorited me and/or my work. It’s such a pleasure to be able to share a love of a favorite book (or books) with other fans. As you have probably figured out, I am approaching senior citizen-dom. When I was just a teen-aged fangirl (long ago, when the earth was still a bubbling mass) we didn’t have the Internet, and it was very hard to find anyone with whom to share your latest literary obsessions.

My love and best wishes to everyone in 2012!

Iolanthe