Not a third book, but it will have to do.

Five years ago this month, my first novel was published, under its original title of Doppelganger.

In celebration of that anniversary, I dusted off -- by which I mean "rewrote from the ground up" -- an old novella related to that series, and sold it to Beneath Ceaseless Skies. The first part of Dancing the Warrior just went live, and the second part will be going up in two weeks, with the next issue.

But wait! There's more!

You can enter to win a signed set of both doppelganger novels (the new edition, wherein they are known as Warrior and Witch). I'll be giving away two sets, one for each half of the story. All you have to do is comment on the story thread, telling me what your Hunter name would be. Full rules are here; the important bit is that you do need to be a registered forum user, so that we can properly identify entrants. But registration is quick and easy.

Five years. Jeebus. Where did they go?

huh . . . upgrades

So you know how sometimes Amazon gets a wrong piece of information into its book database? The wrong format, or release date, or cover copy, or whatever.

That didn't happen here.

With Fate Conspire really is going to be a hardcover.

It's kind of awesome to get that news right after I posted about the celebration of my five-year anniversary of Realio Trulio Being a Novelist. :-) And it prodded me to stop waffling over the lovely, lovely icons you guys made for me and finally pick one, with victory going at last to airo25. (This was a hard decision, y'all. So props to everybody else who made me an icon, too.) airo25, e-mail me your address at marie [dot] brennan [at] gmail [dot] com, and I'll make a note to send you an ARC of Fate when they come in.

My first hardcover. Maybe I can use that to stave off the tedium of the page proofs, which arrived yesterday. :-) Whee!!!!!

borrowed from gollumgollum

This is, hands-down, the weirdest psychology test I've ever taken.

Seriously, half the questions had me going "AAAAAAAGHHHH whut?" They make no sense. And it's all the harder because the instructions tell you not to tie the shapes to "any narrative or storyline," which is like telling me to breathe without using my lungs. But I persevered, wondering sometimes if I was picking answers utterly at random, and then . . . .

Verbally and mentally fluid, you are refreshing and illuminating to those around you. This is occasionally somewhat discounted by the obvious pleasure that you take in exercising your mental acuity. Although generally peaceful you can often take a verbally aggressive tact in relations with the world, which can often be misunderstood by those around you. Innovative in the extreme, you can often think yourself right out of the correct answer to a given problem. Many times you are referred to as your own worst enemy. You tire very quickly of routine and so make poor clerks or administrative help. You also have no respect for authority and little patience for those you regard as inferior, most especially those in charge. Experimentation is your watchword and can occasionally lead to experience for its own sake and shallow decadence. Your thought can sometimes be scattered and disconnected.

. . . which, um, yeah. I wouldn't agree on all counts (I'm not so much about experimentation), but it's close enough to be unnerving. Makes me feel like the test was a bit of flashy misdirection while somebody picked my psychological pocket.

(Especially since I just added, then deleted, a [sic] after "tact" in that diagnosis. It should be "tack." Grumble mutter </pedant>.)

Anyway, if you feel like melting your brain, the test only takes a couple of minutes -- and that's if, like me, you have to wrestle with the tendency to go "well maybe that big triangle is a ship and then the little one is about to ram no dammit I'm not suppposed to make up stories." It probably goes faster without that.

desk query

(Yeah, I'm posty today. It happens.)

I'd like to hear from anybody out there who uses a standing desk, either of the static or adjustable (i.e. sit/stand) type. My present desk is fine, but it probably won't survive another move, so I'm thinking of making a new one my "investment in career" purchase for this new book deal. And there seems to be a growing amount of interest in the notion of standing desks -- claims for their health benefits ranging from the simply logical to the possible snake oil -- so I'm kind of tempted to get one of these, or something similar. If nothing else, it seems pretty well-proven that one of the best ergonomic things you can do is not stay in the same position forever (regardless of how good that position is), so the option to adjust is appealing.

But I've never tried to use a standing desk, beyond brief encounters with computer terminals in libraries, so I don't know if I would like it. Any anecdata on the topic would be appreciated.