Welcome to my LiveJournal. I'm a science fiction writer with a growing collection of published short stories, and my collection Unwelcome Bodies is currently available from Apex Publications. It includes, among other stories, "Captive Girl," which was a 2007 Nebula finalist and which made the 2007 Gaylactic Spectrum Awards short list. I started this journal to have a place to talk about writing and the writing life, although you'll probably notice various digressions into belly dance and politics.

Please note that anonymous comments that aren't signed will be deleted.

Those of you who've been reading my LJ for a while will remember the tale of Pumpkin, the lovely little stray cat from my neighborhood that a coworker of mine took in, and who it turned out had Feline Leukemia Virus:

http://jenwrites.livejournal.com/540851.html

She was healthy for a year and a half, but unfortunately, that's come to an end. She has a tumor in her belly, and after a week of "hospice care," as my coworker put it, it's clear that her quality of life has deteriorated to the point where it's time to let her go. So they're putting her to sleep tomorrow.

She's not my cat, and I only was in her life for about a month as a neighborhood stray, but I'm still finding myself crying whenever I think about it.

I've revised the first 2,000 words of my WIP...yeah, the one that's now on its second major rewrite. I've figured out the protagonist's motivation, so this one should work a lot better. With any luck, I'll finish the rewrite by the end of the weekend. No, screw luck. With *diligence*, I'll finish it by the end of the weekend.

Also, my cat Callie appears to be a Manx cat stuck in a tailed cat's body. Callie, that tail has always been stuck to your butt, and barring amputation, will be there until the day you die. Attacking it won't change anything.

I've cracked the 6K word mark. At this rate, I think it's going to cross the boundary into novelette territory, but as a fairly short one. I also think the timescale of the story needs to change. I'd been setting it up to be a two-day arc, but there's no way I've got two days' worth of material. We shall see. It's meandering a bit, but I think it's an interesting meander, so I'll keep going with it for now.

Also, I've put in 1:15 in writing today, which gives me some writing time to bank. I've also put in 1:15 in yoga, so that's banked time as well. And I'm going to do some bellydancing shortly, which will put even more in the bank.

In unrelated news, the cat sleeping at my hip is sleep-suckling, which is adorable.

Callie (the tortoiseshell in the user pic) was taking extra interest in one of the dressers in our bedroom just a little while ago. I wrote it off to her being a curious little cat and thought nothing of it. A few minutes later, she was pawing at a pair of notebooks that I keep leaning up against the wall. At that point, I figured I should see if one of her cat toys had gotten stuck behind them, so I pulled them away and a little gray mouse ran out from behind them and under a larger dresser.

"Mouse!" I yelled.

Callie kept a watchful eye on the dresser while Andy ran to get a towel. We then had to pry Callie away from her new toy so Andy could catch the mouse and toss it outside. Thankfully, the mouse found the towel tunnel he created sufficiently comforting that it ran right into it, so the catching process was very quick.

The last time we had a mouse, I was pretty freaked out. This time, I was much calmer about the whole thing, probably because since that last mouse, I've met and held my brother's pet rats. So little rodents have gone from "eek!" to "aw!" in my brain. And no, we're not going to put out traps. We've only had four mice in the 19 years we've lived here, so clearly, they're coming in from the cold rather than setting up house. In fact, two of them were already dead when we found them. So clearly we don't have a mouse problem so much as we have an "old house that's not hermetically sealed to the outdoors" problem.

Poor Callie. She keeps going back to where she last saw her toy to look for it. Sorry, sweetie. We're not getting you another one.

One of my cats just talked to another of my cats. I don't think I've seen that before. Normally, they only talk to us, and the only noises they make at each other are hisses and growls. But Callie just chirped at Hippolyta.

ETA: And she just did it again.

Happy 10th birthday to my cat Hippolyta (see icon)! She's not the oldest cat we've ever had, but she's the one who's lived with us the longest, by far. May you live another ten, you tough old broad!

(Cliff's Notes for those who haven't known me that long: our first three cats had Feline Leukemia Virus and the longest-lived died at five and a half. After they died, we got Hippolyta and Titania, and five years later, Titania had a heart attack and died. Hippolyta is our tough old broad because she's had her share of health scares, including one that led to a double mastectomy, but is too cranky to let them slow her down.)

Several months back, a lot of writers I knew took pictures of their writing desks and posted them to LiveJournal. I finally managed to get a picture of mine:



This is why I write on the bed -- for the company.

Last night, I pulled out a piece of fabric that I want to use to make a two-panel skirt, and despite my best efforts, some threads fell off of it, and Antiope (the light-colored cat in the icon) ate them. This is potentially lethal, which we knew because mermaidlady's cat had to have emergency surgery after doing the same. We called our vet, who told us to get her to a hospital that could perform an endoscopy ASAP. So we ended up at Tufts Veterinary Hospital, fearing the worst. Thankfully, they were able to get her to barf it all up and no endoscopy or surgery was needed. They get cats to barf by giving them a particular sedative, so she spent the rest of the night being extremely wobbly, but she seems mostly better today.

I'm so mad at myself. I've spent years being super careful with threads, and the one time some escaped me, we had to go to the emergency room. *sigh*

My coworker and her fiancé have decided to take as much time as Pumpkin will give them. She'll be getting a spay/abortion shortly, and will then become a solo indoor cat.

This is where I breathe a huge sigh of relief.

Pumpkin has Feline Leukemia Virus and is pregnant.

Worst case scenario at this point is that she dies quickly and painlessly, which at least is better than she would have gotten on the streets.

I ask you, how could I have left this little fuzzybutt out in the New England cold?

The cat, who my coworker has named Pumpkin, has settled in to her new home nicely and is already snuggling and demanding petting. So that's a huge relief. I'd had nightmares that she would turn into a demon kitty once she got indoors. She's going to the vet on Tuesday, where she will hopefully get a clean bill of health.

And just to be safe, I kept an eye open for "Lost Cat!" posters on my way home from work. Nothing. Whoever got rid of her was a fool. Their loss, my coworker's gain.

There's been a sweet, adorable little orange and white kitty wandering my neighborhood for several weeks. Clearly, she was once someone's pet, because she comes when you cluck at her, she loves to be petted, and tries to come in the house with you if you're not careful. But she has no collar, and there have been no "lost cat" signs around the neighborhood, and if someone owns her, then they're taking terrible care of her, because when we put out food, she wolfs it down like she hasn't seen food in days.

This morning, I sent an email to my local cat rescue place and mentioned so to my officemates. One of them immediately said, "My boyfriend and I would love to have her!" So at lunch, we went back to my place, put out food, waited, and just as we were going to leave, we spotted her behind someone's house. We clucked, she came, we fed her, and then plunked her into the cat carrier.

I'm happy to say that the stray now has a good home with my coworker and isn't going to have to endure a New England winter outside, on her own. Honestly, it had just about gotten to the point where Andy and I were going to take her in and have her live in our back room so as not to potentially infect our other cats with whatever outdoor cat germs she might have. But this works out much better. My coworker has no other pets, so kitty can have free reign of the house even without a clean bill of health. And there's no potential cat fights in her future.

This is such a relief.