resolute

I saw a thing on instagram that is likely false, but it was a post that some guy had been arrested for being a fake tour guide and telling people completely fake histories of paintings, and that is the most Ilya Rozanov coded thing ever. I can 100% see bb!Shane at some museum and getting in an argument with fake!guard Ilya. It would be hilarious. Extra points if Kip's there and trying to get the cops called on Rozanov. He and Shane can go on the lam so Ilya doesn't get arrested.

I did my exercise this week and one of the days I used my walking pad. Friends. Friends. I was apparently walking too fast or something and I stepped on the main part at the top, not the conveyor belt part, and fell. I thought I broke my pinkie but it was just sore and bruised - maybe misaligned? I don't know. It hurt for a couple of days. I also managed to scrape my knee and the heel of one hand, knock a table leg off the coffee table, and bruise my boob. I still managed to walk 2 miles though, so it's 100% a win. The second day I did half elliptical/half bike. I think I have a way to do the walking pad that won't result in me face-down on the rug, so I'll try that next time. I like walking better than the elliptical. I don't know why. Might switch it up every other time though. Another week of 2x a week and then might try for 3. anything is possible, I guess.

Still haven't figured out when there will be road tripping. I might go up to my mom's early and do some local stuff near her. I've got a bunch of things on a list. I shall see. I need to find out what her plans are.

It has somehow gone from 6pm to 11:30 pm and I'm not sure how that happened, but I'm pretty sure it means I should go to bed.
I finished the book "Myra, Beyond Saddleworth" and it was ok. Continued to be not what I wanted, but not bad for what it was. I also just finished another book - "The 7th Day" - and that was pretty good. I was hoping to do more reading this summer, but it doesn't seem like that's happening.

catherineldf

So Queen of Swords Press was a vendor in the Queer Writes Tent at Twin Cities Pride for the third and last time this weekend. Why? Well, because we keep getting screwed over. Year 1, we were over by the bridge to the Sculpture Garden near other artists. But there was no signage whatsoever and some of us had to be outside carnival barking to keep the traffic flow going. And bear in mind that Pride is two days long, plus setup on Friday in summer so we're talking 11-12 hours days on Saturday and Sunday when you factor prep time, travel time, setup, sales time, etc. This is a long time to do carnival barking to get traffic. But despite that, we still cleared about $1200 in sales the first year, which is respectable for an event table for a small press.

Year 2: the Queer Writes Tent got moved to...the medical section. With not a whole lot of signage, nothing called out on the map and an indie author with a giant banner blocking part of the path and line of sight. We weren't near the sidewalks and were blocked in by other unrelated tents, which made us hard to find and traffic slow. Despite that and the rain and a fellow vendor who was, shall we, say, very draining to be around, we soldiered on and pulled in about $900 in sales. So not great, but still profitable and worth it for the visibility. Almost all 15 vendor tables reps spoke to Pride representatives about the problems with the location.

Year 3, this last weekend: Same crappy location, same signage and map problems, but this time, something special! The University of Minnesota had a giant inflatable rectum bouncy house (I'm not kidding, there are photos) that was kept inflated with an incredibly loud generator that spewed fumes into our tent. It started out about 15 feet or so away so we had to scream at people to sell books and that went as well as you would expect. We were completely blocked from the sidewalk so discovery was greatly reduced. Apparently the kind of people who want to go wander through a rectum bouncy house (with polyps!) don't necessarily gravitate toward book purchases, who knew? Sunday, it poured rain in the morning so we got a late start. We had a blissful hour and a half without the rectum, then they inflated it. Several people, including me, asked if they could move the generator over and explained the problem. Which they did for a little bit. Then they moved it CLOSER to our tent! That's right: the U of MN has a giant asshole staffed by giant assholes. At which point, I organized the other vendors to contact Pride accessibility all once to report them. Someone appeared, got the generator moved over a couple of feet and came over to inform me that this was the best we were going to get. Nothing would be moved, the bouncy rectum and generator had to be RIGHT there, because "space was at premium." We were right next to twenty foot length of empty grass and just down the road, several vendors hadn't made it so there were about 4 booths worth of empty space. I was then basically told that we weren't as important as the U. of MN so we should just suck up the asthma attacks several people were having, the migraine someone got and the other issues while we tried to sell some damned books. The entire weekend's take: $417. It takes $500 to cover the expenses of being there, what between parking, help, food, table and stock. Imagine my surprise to learn that "small businesses were the backbone of Pride" in the news on Monday. I am absolutely livid. I have contacted the rectum's sponsoring department at the U. to complain about their representative's behavior. Next up is a letter to both Pride Vendor Services and the Pride Board. I also want to look into city regulations on portable generators. I have been coughing for two days and I want to make enough of an impact so this doesn't happen to anyone else next year and beyond.

So! This would be a great time to get your copy of the 2026 Pride StoryBundle, which ends tomorrow around midnight. 16 books, including my werewolf books which won a lifetime achievement award for me just last year. I am currently 30k words into the draft of Book 3 and am aiming to get it out this year. It also includes Joyce Chng's BSFA finalist collection, Wolf's Path, R. B. Lemberg's World Fantasy Winner Yoke of Stars and M. Christian's Small Spec Book Award Semi-Finalist, Running Dry, amongst other great reads. And we've raised over $700 for Rainbow Railroad so far!

And the Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale has kicked off! Get great deals on Queen of Swords Press titles this month!

Otherwise, I have lots of events coming up, a new story submitted and lots of good things going on too. More news soon!

romantical

More people are posting and it makes me so fucking gleeful. Hello my friends! I have missed you!

Things:

1 - Two of my boys got drafted. One by New Jersey and one by Philly and they're both so far away. I have sad about this. I was hoping one would go to the Kraken so he could play with one of our other guys on the same line (like they currently do for us), but alas. It is not to be.

2 - Apparently a guy who just signed with the Silvertips got drafted too, so that's exciting!

3 - I am currently reading a book that keeps being not what I want it to be. It's called "Myra, Beyond Saddleworth" and it's about Myra Hindley who was a serial killer along with her boyfriend. It's fictional about her being let out of prison and her life then, and I just... I don't know. It's not a bad book, just not what I want/expect I guess.

4 - I actually managed to do stuff on Thursday, and I did my two days of exercise this week, so I know I've done things. It just doesn't feel like I'm doing anything. It's been a week and a half of vacation and I'm still doing the same thing I did when it started.

5 - There has been a little bit of progress on typing up the finished HR fic I have. I think it's ok? I think I like it? I made a comment on someone else's fic and it led to thoughts of a firefighter/EMT AU, and I have an idea for a centuries spanning AU, and potentially a satyr/angel AU, and I don't know. Many thoughts zero writing.

6 - I want to do a mini-road trip, but I have no idea when to fit it in. I was thinking a week, but now I'm thinking three days. I have a huge list of stuff to do where I want to go, and I know it's not all possible, but better to do some than nothing. Maybe if I do all the stuff that's currently on my to-do list, I can arrange it for the beginning of next week.

7 - The end of next week is up at my mom's for her annual "no, it's the last one, I mean it" garage sale. I like doing it, though some of my mom's friends that participate drive me a little bonkers. They talk. All. The. Time. In some ways, I wish it was just me and my mom hanging out.

8 - Today is the never ending cycle of laundry, this week including sheets and towels. It's noon, so I should get started. And then plan to do something that isn't just sitting around.

9 - I keep thinking I should go back to school - not for a degree, but just for fun. It would give me structure, which I like. But money and time play into it, and there's never enough of either.

I was going for 10 things, but I can't think of anything else. Which means it's time for laundry whether I want it to be or not.

were_duck

Hi Dreamwidth, long time no post.

I kind of miss longer-form writing/musing, and some of my Bluesky friends seem like they're trying to reinvigorate their use of this site, so maybe I'll give it a try too?

For all that haven't known what's up with me in the last... decade?... uh well I still own a great bookstore, I still have 2 awesome kids, and I still have 2 wives but not for much longer. One of my partners and I are breaking up with the other due to Many Reasons which I won't get into here, but it's been a long time coming. So I'll be getting divorced then probably getting married? IDK. It sucks. I don't recommend this process but I think it's what needs to happen.

My kids are 10 and 7 and both are neurodivergent with some pretty big support needs. They're brilliant and funny and wild and they take up soooooooo much time and energy. I love them and wouldn't have my life any other way, except I do feel bad for how many of my friendships I've let slide over the course of parenting and my business taking up all my life and time.

Last year I went and saw MCR in August with 3 of my best friends, and uh. I'm so back in this fandom. It's been a bright light during a hard year. We're seeing them again this August, here's hoping this leg of Gerard Way's Fetish Opera is just as thrilling as the previous two legs have been.

I'm now on tumblr for pretty much exclusively MCR reasons (

phasingintooscillation) and on Bluesky (

were-duck.bsky.social [BlueskySocial]) for maintaining broader human connections who occasionally put up with me yelling about Frank Iero.

Sometimes I read books, too? Not so many lately but I'd like to write about reading more, so maybe this is a good place for that?

Anyhow, hi. How're you all. I miss you <3

denise posting in

dw_maintenance

Folks may have noticed that the site has been slow for logged-out users over the last while. This is partly because we separate traffic by logged-in, "logged out but have visited the site before", and "logged out, never visited the site before" and assign the fewest resources to the last category (because we're pretty confident the overwhelming majority of it is bot and scraper traffic, even if it's often impossible to say for sure). The flood of garbage traffic is a plague and a scourge the entire internet is dealing with, and it's hitting small sites the hardest as operators get better and better at cloaking their requests to look like real, authentic use. We long ago hit the point where adding more resources is a possible solution (because they just eat them up as soon as we do), and splitting traffic lets us keep the site usable for our actual users without wasting too much server power on garbage.

We've now, lucky us, reached the point where the "logged out, have never visited the site before" path is just flooded all the time, and the "logged out but have visited the site before" path is suffering some of the overflow. We've made some changes to the routing to try to improve things for logged out users who have visited the site before and keep it at "it may be a little bit slow, but at least it works" instead of "it keeps timing out", and we've seen some improvements, but if you're accustomed to browsing the site while logged out, I'm really sorry but it may continue to be a little miserable.

You will get the fastest page loads and the best performance by browsing the site logged in. If you are having trouble loading the front page to log in, bookmark the direct login page. We can't route the front page to the "more power" server pool, because it's a common target for garbage traffic, but we've switched /login over to "more power" and we'll try to keep it there as long as we can unless it starts getting slammed, too.

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Pride nightmare, book sales and more

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