I went in for my cholesterol test this morning.  The only thing I hate about that is that they won't even let you have plain black coffee anymore. It used to be that you were fine, so long as you didn't have a froo-froo latte.  Now, they're banning even a regular cup of joe.

I thought I was gonna DIE.

Especially since, I could not immediately go get coffee. Instead, I had to wait for Shawn to finish her appointment. After THAT, we drove to the DMV to get her license renewed... it was only after that that we got coffee. The nice thing, actually, is that Shawn bought me breakfast. I love breakfast out. It is one of my most favorietest things in the whole, wide world.  We went to Day by Day Cafe. Just what the doctor ordered! Oh, no, wait, that was all the blood tests.

At least that's done now.

Normally today I would be at my coffee shop with 'the ladies,' hanging out and talking writing and life, today. But, Mason woke up with the beginnings of a cold. (I think I might be getting it, too, actually.)  Since he's at home, I decided to hang close. I'd been hoping to catch the guy who wants to do an inspection of our house for our new homeowner's insurance, but he texted (of course!) while we were at the doctors' this morning, so that will now have to wait until Monday.  No biggie, and in fact, it gives me a chance to clean around where the fuse box is (he's taking interior pictures of our heating system and electrical.)  The fuse box happens to be in the coal room, which is where we have all of our kitty litter boxes.  They need changing anyway, but now I don't have to dash out to the store RIGHT NOW. 

So, that's a silver lining, I guess.

Meanwhile, I've been doing some fannish things.  There's a bit of a community among the bloggers of anime/manga on WordPress and I've been reading and commenting over there a lot more than usual. That's has, in turn, inspired me to read (and review) a lot more manga so that I can have something of interest to add to the conversation.  

Likewise, someone on Tumblr has organized a "Renji Week" where fans are encouraged to post fan works of any variety on specific themes for a week, starting on April 1.  Since I'm a writer, I've been working ahead. I've got one theme piece "in the can" already, and ideas for at least one more. Now I just have to settle in and write.  Unfortunately, my late start on caffeine has me kind of staring blankly at the wall. Weirdly, because I am such a lark (opposite of 'night owl' = 'morning lark'), I actually faired better earlier.  Now that it's my natural lull time, I'm like: Eyes.. won't... stay..... ooooopen......

zzzzz.

*snort* Wha?  Ugh. Maybe I'll try reading for a little while.  Hopefully, that will wake me up.

I just spent about a half-hour queueing things up on the School for Wayward Demons Tumblr page.  During the process I was chatting with a friend who encouraged me to link to my other Tumblr page (which if you go there RIGHT THIS INSTANT, you'll see I did.)  It's a funny thing, my resistance to... invading this sacred fan space I've made for myself with self-promotional things.  It's REALLY silly when you consider that I have no qualms about posting links on my fan tumblr space to my reviews of manga or my podcast or my fan fic.  She asked me if I was afraid to tarnish my professional reputation with my fan one.  My response?  No, it's the other way 'round.

I'm really protective of my fan spaces.  BUT I don't mind people knowing about them.  In fact, I will happily give out my fan name or my AO3 account handle to anyone who asks me at con.  I'm very, very proud that at CONvergence last year, in the women's bathroom, I had someone shyly ask if it was true that I was "junko from AO3."  It turned out, the woman asking was the person who podfic'd my Bleach/Free! x-over, and, once I confirmed and she told me who she was, we did the dance of squee with each other.

So, it's not like I care if people who are my fan friends find out I write professionally, or vice versa.  

I guess it's strange, but I almost feel like self-promoting my original fiction on my fan sites sullies them somehow.  I mean, I should get over that, because, as my friend said, "The data stream is so fast.  No one will really notice."  Which is VERY, very true.  I used to worry that if people found out I was a professional writer on my AO3 account that the tenor of the conversation would change.  The very last thing I want is for people to stop telling me when I suck because, you know, I guess you know better because you're some kind of pro.  Which is, of course, bull.

I sometimes wonder if that's partly why Rachel and I don't get many comments over on entertheunseen.com or why they're not more critical on either of my Wattpad entries.  (It could be, too, that both those venues require some kind of log-in.)  But, I think, often people are reluctant to tell someone they perceive as a professional that they'd like to see the story go another direction... face-to-face/directly.  Obviously, people are happy to say all sorts of things about professional writing on review sites once a book is done and dusted.  I mean, I can understand this hesitance.  People are afraid of being yelled at.  But, I THRIVE on critique.  I love it.  And fan fiction has been a great place to be treated like a peer by a large number of people again.

At any rate, I suspect I've said all this somewhere before.  It's one of my favorite topics to hold forth on. But, so if you want to tell me what-for (and check out some of the new content that's been added) on Wattpad, there is a new installment of School for Wayward Demons up:  Gabe Runs (into Darkness.

Also, my review of the latest chapter of Ao no Exorcist (#64) is up on MangaKast.

In other news, I finished reading Memory of Water by Emmi Itaranta.  It was the first of the books I've read so far that are on the Philip K. Dick award nomination list that I would call straight-up science fiction.  It's also a very... subtle, quiet book, despite having a LOT of tension woven in throughout.  I found it very interesting.  The story follows a woman who is the tea master's daughter in a future Scandinavia where we've depleted much of the Earth's viable drinking water.  There's been a kind of post-oil apocalypse and the 'past world' is shrouded in mystery, mostly understood by the things recovered in the plastic graveyards on the outskirts of town.  I would totally recommend the book without any reservations, so long as you weren't expecting a rip, roaring, page-turning thriller.  The ending is also very much a downer, and the only sense of hope comes from the prologue and the implication that there might be a second book to continue some of the threads that don't really get answered.  But, I didn't mind that, surprisingly.  

Now I'm waiting for Book of the Unnamed Midwife to show up through Inter-Library Loan.  Then, the last one will be the Jonathan Strahan book (which he seemed to have edited, Reach for Infinity which I'm reading last because I'm not a big fan of short story collections.)  In the meantime, I think I'm going to start a Melissa Scott book that Shawn nabbed off Amazon when the Kindle version when on one of those 99 cent sales.  

Not much else is going on.  I finished up the two seasons of Tiger & Bunny that Hulu had, and have, on recommendation, started watching Zenkyou no Terror/Terror in Resonance while I wash the dishes.  It's quite a shift in tone, I must say.  Zenkyou no Terror follows two very disturbed and unusual young men (who to refer to each other by numbers because they were raised in some kind of horrible orphanage) who are exacting their revenge on society by... well, by being terrorists.  So you know, from heroes to villains.  It's a bit of whiplash, but I'm enjoying Zenkyou no Terror the same way I enjoyed DeathNote.  It's kind of fascinating to go deep into the criminal mind.  Like in DeathNote, there's a smart, vaguely outsider to root for on the other side, on the good-guy side.  So, I've got that to cling to.  I'm very, very worried for the female character in Zenkyou no Terror, but you know... it's early days.  I'm only on the fourth or fifth episode so far.

Like much of fandom, I'm anxiously waiting for the arrival of this month's Shingeki no Kyojin/Attack on Titan.  The things I've seen on Tumblr from the raws make me kind of happy (*anxiously grabs abs*)... I'll have a review up as soon as we see in English.