2007
I don't tend to do proper year-end posts because I'm always too busy around New Year. This year is no exception -- we have a houseful with redbird and hobbitbabe and rivka and curiousangel and their toddler Alex. But nobody is awake yet, and there's nothing I need to do right now, so why not?

I've remembered why I do all that stuff, by the way. It's because my friends are so great. We had sixteen people here on Saturday night, and they ate all the savoury food and made some serious inroads into the sweet stuff -- and they're such great people, and they got the chance to meet each other. It's very cool to have the opportunity to make that happen. I love having this big appartment so we can fit everyone in with a minimum of stress.

Yesterday we had dim sum and went to the Biodome, and then had sushi for dinner, and it was all lovely. I wish I could sleep later than 5am, but then I've never been good at sleep.


We've had a lot of visitors this year, or perhaps just this autumn. There were lots of people here for Farthing Party of course, including our youngest visitor of the year urielyr. Then rysmiel's uncle stayed on afterwards, and only about a week after he left arranish arrived for a nice long visit. Then marylace was here in November, and stakebait in December. But we have a guest room. We can do it. And if we don't have servants, we do have restaurants -- and some of our guests offer to wash dishes.

2007 hasn't been as momentous as 2006, when we unexpectedly bought our apartment and doubled it. We've been slowly colonising the other side and getting more comfortable with it -- though I admit there are days I don't go beyond the dining room. (But how did we ever manage without a dining room?)

zorinth and I went to Rome. That's the first holiday we've ever taken that wasn't to a con or to visit someone. No, that's not true, we went to Scotland in 2000, but that was for research. (Well, going to Rome was for research too. Never mind!)

Best books read -- well, oddly, the books I most looked forward to tended not to be the books I most enjoyed this year, most of the ones that blew me away were things I wasn't expecting all that much from. So there's Middlemarch -- Gosh, a grown up Victorian novel where I can't predict the plot totally from chapter two, astoundingly well written and with consideration of sex and women as people and why people make awful choices. Where has this been all my life? (It's been on shelves, prominently displayed, marked "boring, boring boring, boooooring borrrrring boring". Gah.) aethereal_girl, thank you for prodding me to read George Eliot, and it's not that I'm deliberately not reading Adam Bede, I just haven't found an edition without footnotes yet. Then there's also Susan Palwick's astonishing Shelter, which I hope is on all the awards lists in 2008; C.J. Cherryh's Deliverer; Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy (thank you darcydodo and fivemack); Ian MacEwen's Atonement (the film is an unusually faithful rendition of the accidents of the book, but the book is about what stories it is possible to tell); Sarah Monette's The Mirador (thank you stakebait, and for that matter, truepenny!), and Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. This is a YA novel due out this May that I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of. It's written in an absolutely pitch-perfect teenage voice, and it's a brilliant book about growing up in the near future where things have kept going on the way they've been going. It's about that, and it's about hacking as a habit of mind, but mostly it's about growing up and changing and looking at the world and asking what you can do about that. I couldn't put it down, and I loved it. This is a very political book, but it's also great fun.

I've had a lot of no-leg days and pain this year, which sucks. I don't post much about it because sympathy pisses me off and advice is useless and counter-productive and talking about it is boring for me. I also don't post about it much because denial is my friend. It really is better for the rest of me ("who when healthy can become a foot" as Auden puts it) not to dwell on it and distract myself.

LJ does well at distracting me, and also at being an online hangout. I tend to do my socialising in brief intense bursts, and the net is pretty much it for the rest of the time.

Talking about brief intense bursts, in August I was Guest of Honour at Recombination. That was a ton of fun. And then I was asked just the other day about being Guest of Honor at Boskone in 2009. I'm really looking forward to that.

Writing: Farthing got a lot of attention and was nominated for a ton of awards and won the Romantic Times thing. Z and I went to New York for the Nebulas, which had some great moments. Ha'Penny came out. I finished Half a Crown and fixed it, I hope. I started working seriously on Our Sea, and I haven't signed the contracts yet, let alone had any money, but it's being listed as being bought, so I guess it is. I did not write or submit any short stories, which I really should. I wrote the usual bursts of poetry and posted them here. I still like some of them.

This morning I'm going to collect a goose, and this afternoon I'm going to cook it and this evening we'll feast.

Happy New Year!