Reblog If You Have Made A Friend Online That You Would Love To Hang With, But They Live Far Away.

reminder to:

straighten your back

go pee goddAMN IT STOP HOLDING IT

go take your meds if you need to

drink some water

go get a snack if you havent eaten in a while

maybe wander around the house/stretch a little if you’ve been sat at the computer a while (artists especially: sTRETCH THOSE WRISTS)

reply to that text/message from earlier you’d forgotten about

maybe send a nice lil message to someone having a bad day?

December 20, 2010: The blizzard of the century is on its way.

So are the aliens.

JD 2455550.52 / December 20th, 2010...

It’s five days till Christmas, and the day before the 2010 Winter Solstice. The biggest pre-Christmas blizzard seen for decades is heading straight for the New York metropolitan area. But in one small corner of the Town of Hempstead, everyone’s attention is on other business. That’s because there’s a party tonight at Juan and Marina Rodriguez’s house… and the guest of honor is a being from four hundred light years away who looks a whole lot like a Christmas tree.

The motive force behind the festivities is the redoubtable Carmela Rodriguez, intent on her longtime plan to fulfill one of the great wishes of the wizard known as Filif—to finally get him into a full set of Christmas decorations. The two-day party that ensues (with an epic sleepover in the middle) brings together a cast of old and new friends to eat, drink, exchange presents... and deal with a local holiday-season problem in a very wizardly way.

This 35,000 word novella is a canonical work in the Young Wizards universe and takes place between the events of A Wizard of Mars and Games Wizards Play. ...And at Ebooks Direct, you can now get it in a single package with the How Lovely Are Thy Branches Advent Calendar—a collection of twenty-five "behind the scenes" scenes that don't appear in the original work.

Contains:

Toxic vintage Christmas lights

Tales of why you should always shake the eggnog jug

Examples of finding just the right present

The revelation of unusual kinks

Headhunting for the intergalactic catering industry

Weird musical theater

And the answer to the ever-controversial question: What the heck is a mochteroof?

Get the How Lovely Are Thy Branches Christmas Package at Ebooks Direct for just $2.99!

These works also appear as standalone volumes in the "All The Wizardry" bundle.*

...UK readers: As usual, with regret, please note that due to Brexit, Ebooks Direct can no longer sell directly into the UK. (More details here.) However, if you're UK-based, you can obtain the Kindle print or ebook versions of Interim Errantry—which contains How Lovely Are Thy Branches—from Amazon.co.uk.

Meanwhile, if you've already got these items, or they're not up your alley, would you consider reblogging this so that others who might be interested can see it? Please & thank you!

Legendary U Washington bookseller Duane Wilkins is drowning in medical debt

Nearly every sf writer who's ever toured the west coast knows Duane - he's the encyclopedically knowledgeable sf buyer for the U Washington Bookseller, who has organized some of the best sf signings in Seattle history. He's a force of nature.

He's also broke. A two-week hospital stay left him drowning in medical debt - despite being insured! - and now he's being threatened by a collection agency.

Now, Duane is forced into participating in one of the most barbaric of contemporary American rituals, fundraising to cover his medical debt. He's raised $6k of the $10k he needs (I just pitched in $100).

If you can afford to help out someone who's done so much for our community, please kick Duane whatever you can spare.

Referring to specific phrases as easter eggs instantly reminded me of “Nita nodded” in Young Wizards 😁 It’s just one of those phrases that sticks out to me every single time it happens, whenever I read YW I’m like waiting in anticipation for the next occurrence of it!

so i just googled the phrase “toeing out of his shoes” to make sure it was an actual thing

and the results were:

it’s all fanfiction

which reminds me that i’ve only ever seen the phrase “carding fingers through his hair” and people describing things like “he’s tall, all lean muscle and long fingers,” like that formula of “they’re ____, all ___ and ____” or whatever in fic

idk i just find it interesting that there are certain phrases that just sort of evolve in fandom and become prevalent in fic bc everyone reads each other’s works and then writes their own and certain phrases stick

i wish i knew more about linguistics so i could actually talk about it in an intelligent manner, but yeah i thought that was kinda cool

in b4 95% of all websites in june 2024 announce that "for security" they will only work with browsers that use manifest v3

We’re extending the Ebooks Direct “Get Our Whole Store For $44″ Sale by 5 hours

…Because we can. (And because it looks like some extra people will be wandering in due to an unexpected crossposting on Twitter…)

This means it’ll be closing down at 23:59 Irish time / 12:59 Hawai’ian time, today, 1 September 2022.

For those of you who haven’t seen them before, the details are below:

Just for Tumblr users – for the next 5 hours or so (until 12:59 Hawai’ian time on 1 September 2022), get 20% off the price of the already-discounted package containing the entire contents of our Ebooks Direct store. With the extra discount, that’s $44 for the whole thing!

I had some murmurs in my ask box over the last ten days or so from folks who were sad that they’d missed out on earlier iterations of this sale, for one reason or another. And when I mentioned this to @petermorwood, in his usual direct way he shrugged and said, “Well, why not just do it again?”

…And frankly, that made perfect sense. Some people are getting ready to start one version or another of the New School Year, and might possibly enjoy having some extra reading to distract them. And other people might just want to top up their electronic TBR piles on the relatively-cheap. And who knows how many other reasons people might have. So why not?

Therefore: if you’d like to avail yourself of this genuinely around-the-bend bargain price* on the whole-store 35-book package, just go to this URL, put  one of the “I Want Everything You’ve Got” packages in your shopping  basket (make sure to tell the page which ebook format you want/need:  Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iBooks/Apple or generic .epub), and then proceed to the checkout. (The fully discounted price won’t show until you get there: this is just the way the store behaves when we’ve already got an across-the-board discount running.)

In the checkout page you’ll find the store has applied your extra discount  automatically, like this:

…Then you just make the payment by whatever method you prefer (we do credit cards via Stripe, as well as PayPal), and the store emails you the download links for the files. (If you need assistance with getting the files into your e-reader or app, we’ve got a page at the store with useful advice on that.) And  from over here I will applaud you for your general wonderfulness, and get back to work.

(BTW, in  case anybody accidentally just goes straight to the main product link  [which doesn’t auto-attach the discount], the added-discount code is EVERY24. That way  if it’s missing from the field in the checkout page, you can put it in  yourself.)

Anyway: Enjoy, all! And if this offer’s of no  interest to you, would you kindly consider reblogging it for the attention of others  who might like to know about this? Those reblogs really help.** Please & Thank You! :)

(Oh, by the way—! UK people, one [sad] thing:  we can’t include you in this offer… please forgive us. Due to Brexit  we can no longer sell direct into the UK. Details on that are here. …My apologies for that.)  :(

*Because seriously, $44 for 35 ebooks isn’t too bad…

**Especially since I don’t really care to Blaze posts like this. Properly speaking, Blaze is for shitposts. (Like the Duckie of Light.)  :)

Just a local update

For those who'll be wanting to know how I'm doing: I think right now the line from The Right Stuff is probably apropos. I'm "maintaining an even strain."

I sort of have no choice, because there's a lot of bureaucratic stuff surrounding Peter's loss that has to be dealt with, and there's not really anyone else to fall back on: in terms of local legalities; this burden falls on me. (shrug) So, I'm keepin' on keepin' on. It's not easy, when half your world has ended: but there's nothing else to do.

Just repeating the news that I just edited into the original post about all this: the "funeral expenses" issue is now handled.

And I want to thank EVERYBODY who so incredibly generously has stepped up to assist. You are all, every one of you, in my heart right now... not least due to the many, many kind things you've had to say about Peter. Current events mean I'm going to be backed up on the thank-yous for some days yet. Please bear with me.

For those who feel inclined, the Ko-Fi account here is open as usual for those who might simply want to drop something into the pot tagged "GNU Peter Morwood."* I'm looking into his notes about his preferred charities so that I can split all such donations in those directions. (For example, P. lost a beloved cousin to childhood leukemia, so I'm looking around for appropriate cancer charities. ...But more of that later.)

In local issues: I'm still waiting for word from the coroner as to when Peter's post-mortem will be happening. (I had hoped it might be today, but there's no news yet.) Not much to be said about this except that the sooner that's all handled and resolved, the happier I'll be. Then other adjacent issues can start being dealt with.

At the physical end: I haven't been sleeping terribly well, but that's probably no surprise. My appetite has been almost nonexistent, but that at least is very slowly starting to recover (to the point where at least food is no longer a source of "no interest whatsoever" or of active distaste). Right now it seems I get better results from eating out instead of cooking in: so that's the way things will go in the very short term.

But for now, pretty much all I can do is sit tight, try to keep household business from getting out of hand (why does it suddenly take so much energy just to do the dishes? ...like I don't know perfectly well why), and wait for Forces Beyond My Control to get moving.

Meanwhile, let me take a moment here to thank everybody who's expressed concern about the state of my wellbeing (and that at a time when I care a whole lot less about it than usual). It's heartening, and I very much appreciate it. I promise to do my best to do right by myself, on all of your behalf. (Behalfs? Behalves? Pfft.)

Thanks again, everybody. —D.

*People are also reminding me that the financial health of the household's still-living member in the immediate future is also an issue here. 😏 Heaven forbid I should argue the point. If you want, tag such donations as "DD" and I'll note that. ...And thanks again, all. I can always count on y'all to look after me. ❤️

this is going around twitter and i thought it'd be a fun little thing to bond over

in the tags as usual

ur future nurse is using chapgpt to glide thru school u better take care of urself