baby it's cold outside!

14 degrees right now, to be exact. At 10 am. Brrr. I'm cozy in the apartment with some sporadic space heater assistance for now, but I've got brunch plans at noon. And you know what? I'm going to walk all the way there and home again after. I'll bundle up. I love a freezing day with wide open blue skies and air so frigid that taking a breath is like a drink of ice-cold water.
I've got a lengthy to-do list for this weekend, as always. But I'm taking time out for me, too. I slept in this morning (until 9:20!), and will do it again tomorrow. I've got a freelance deadline Monday, so we'll see how that goes. But I'm enjoying the project, and looking forward to reading the rest of it.
Lately I've really been craving a simpler life. Just me, a small cottage, some wilderness, and a whole lot of creativity and art. Doesn't that sound lovely? And perfect? Sometimes I just want to crawl into the photos that Terri Windling posts on her blog. She lives in a cottage in Dartmoor. Rima Staines lives in her village. The Frouds and William Todd-Jones live somewhere nearby. It sounds like a dream world, a fantasy land brimming with everything I could ever ask for.
So how do I make that happen for myself? I'm not sure. Ironically, I don't feel like I can afford to live somewhere like that. Literally. I think that maybe the best thing I can do for now is to keep living and loving and creating and reaching out to other creative people. It's a tricky thing, this life we live.
It's time to be off. I do feel that a bigger web presence is important for me to have, but I've got to balance that with everything else. Besides, there's brunch ahead!
Bright blessings!

another friday

I can't believe it's November already! This year has gone by so fast!
I had lunch with a friend today whose book is out on submission with a bunch of publishers. I'm really excited for her! And talking to her about it really just brought home how much I want to get Nor out there. I need to make time to work up a query letter, and a synopsis, so I can get an agent. Soon, soon. I've got a lot of freelancing on my plate because of complicatedness at work, but overall I am really working on balancing my time better. I feel like I'm getting somewhere, slowly but surely!
Neil Gaiman blogged about Argleton, a town that mysteriously seems to exist only online. How intriguing, don't you think? That's just begging for some speculative fiction!
Recently I went to the Spectrum exhibit at The Society of Illustrators here in NYC. I love good fantasy art, and this was two rooms full of really amazing work. Some artists I really like contributed, like John Jude Palencar, Kinuko Craft, and Michael Whelan, as well as a ton I'd never heard of before. I wish I could copy and paste some of the art in, but that's a no-go, so you'll just have to go here instead.
I think that's going to have to be it for now, sadly. It's time to head home and get back to freelancing. The sooner I knock out some work tonight, the sooner I can work on that query letter. . . Have a good night, my sweets!

New Art

I went to the flea market on Saturday. And look what I found! (Okay, props to the friend I was with for seeing it first and insisting I take a look.) Isn't it great? I think I'll hang it in my entryway. (Sorry for the flash spot in the middle, but the picture was too dark without it.)

More soon, today is too busy to ramble on!