IvanEwert.com

I was in a car accident this morning. I’m fine, the young lady in the other car was fine. My car’s currently in the shop awaiting an adjuster tomorrow, I expect it will be declared a total loss based on the damage sustained and age of the car.

Everyone involved has been great, from the officer on the scene in Buffalo Grove to the Farmer’s Insurance folks to the gent at Bestways who towed me 25 miles back home. L has been stellar and supportive as well, which is always nice.

My back and neck hurt from tension and shock, of course; but that’s to be expected. On getting home I was able to grab a burger and hop on a conference call for work before trying to mow the lawn in an attempt to A) get some exercise and B) do something useful. Unfortunately, a winter in the garage has rendered the mower less than compliant.

I suspect my Native American name for the day is “Death to Motors.”

At any rate, there’s an art show to visit tonight and it’s meant to be a nice day tomorrow. I’ve taken it as a vacation day in order to destress and (honestly) because my laptop’s still in the office. Thinking of killing some time with the gaming system now, though I’m a little concerned I might destroy that as well. Superstition for the win!

Sweet fancy everything.

Not only did I complete all my tasks, I did it in a lot less time than I expected.

I saw Benedict’s Friday night for dinner, and set up the meeting for 2 PM today. I was worried about that, in retrospect, it’s perfect. I can get even more taken care of in that direction by meeting today instead of later in the week.

The MCCC site was a good three hours’ work on Saturday morning, but man, it was worthwhile. Lots of WordPress noodling that will help with a number of other sites and opens a lot of possibilities.

The Raue Center took two hours Sunday morning, with a bit still left to do – but the tools I need to complete that are back at the office, so they’ll have to wait until Monday end of day. The part I thought would be trickiest was actually the easiest with a simple Google search. Funny how often that happens.

Glorious Hands was done already, just needed polishing and submittal. That was settled in a half hour this morning, while Solstice took an hour in the afternoon to complete and refine. I’ll still need to edit it, of course, but it’s far ahead of where I would be otherwise.

The Triskele Moon poster was the most difficult. I wrestled for two hours yesterday but nothing was working right. This morning after the Raue work it took just an hour and a half to go from concept to completion, with L giving her thumbs up around lunchtime today.

So … wow. What a great weekend.

Now for the hard part, following through and reaping my reward to myself.

So okay. I’m desperately unmotivated right now, partly because I know how much crap I have sitting around that really needs to get done. The long-term planning thing is not so much my bag.

I’m going to appeal to my basest, most childike nature.

By Sunday night, if I have:

1. Completed the MCCC work for pro-choice site work (edit: done!),
2. Completed the Raue Center work for theatre site work (edit: holy crap, essentially done!),
3. Set up my meeting with Benedict’s for restaurant site work (edit: done!),
4. Done final edits and submitted the short story, Glorious Hands (edit: done!),
5. Completed the drafts for May’s Solstice story (edit: done!), and
6. Finished the poster designs for Triskele Moon Studio’s mother’s day show (edit: done!),…

Then I get this and I don’t let myself talk myself out of it the way I always do when I try to buy myself something fun that is not food or alcohol-based.

Which basically means if you see me fucking around on Facebook, for the love of god, slap me.

“They scream,” she had insisted, “as surely as any hawk soaring upon the thermals. “Whatever their names, whatever their pasts, Mother; they scream and cry and wail in the night, and they keep me from my sleep with the sharp sound of their terrors.” She spoke calmly, though of fright, and while the dark circles spread beneath her eyes they remained as bright and sharp as those of her Mother’s guardians.

Mother considered a moment, eyeing Aramina from behind her yellowing veil before she spoke. “Such girls are coal-strong,” she whispered, “and must burn or turn to diamond. Tell me, Ara, which would you be? Would you give light in your death … or in your power?”

Editors Jennifer Brozek and Amanda Pilar have won the 2009 Australian Horror Writers’ Association Award for Grants Pass!

Judge James Doig said: “Grants Pass is a post-apocalypse anthology with an additional linking theme involving Grants Pass, an Oregan town that has become a symbol of hope to survivors. News clippings and reports of plagues and other catastrophes effectively set the scene and the book is neatly top and tailed with journal entries by Kayley Allard, whose blog entry “When the end of the world comes, meet me in Grants Pass, Oregon“ informs all of the stories. The concept is a strong one-it allows authors full rein to explore ideas, settings and plots, but the connecting links are such that the overall effect is greater than sum of its parts. And some of the parts are very strong indeed; stand out stories for me were “Animal Husbandry” by Seanan McGuire, “Men of Faith” by Ivan Ewert, and “By the Sea” by Shannon Page. What could have been improved? There is quite a lot of collateral-dedications, forewords, story notes, biographies-much of which could have appeared at the back of the book or excised altogether.”

I am frankly stunned to be mentioned in the same breath as Seanan and Shannon, both of whom had stories which I thought were the strongest in the anthology. Seanan is now writing for The Edge of Propinquity with myself and Jennifer, and if you haven’t already read her book Rosemary and Rue, you really should.

All of this would be good enough news, but wait! Jennifer’s now an award-winning editor, and her newest anthology, Close Encounters of the Urban Kind, is now available through Apex Books — including brand-new stories by yours truly and Shannon Page.

The new poster is ready to go! We’re running a little behind, between the site launch and some question in the artist’s mind about whether a Spring Show was a good idea this time around … but with a little sweat and re-creation this morning, I’ve got it ready to go. This design uses the background from Shlomit Wolf, a wonderful artist in Jerusalem. As always, I’ve used his background to overlay the information and photo necessary.

With this one, I felt it was time to break away from the three-image design and put up a single striking image. This was necessary given the amount of detail at the bottom of the illustration, and the amount of block-text taking the right-hand upper quadrant. The greens pop even more nicely on the actual posters.

Triskele Moon Studios - Spring Show 2010

Sometimes … sometimes you just have to write stuff you know is never gonna go anywhere.

He still sits behind a desk of old wood, held together half by tobacco resin and half by threepenny nails made of iron. You could say the same about Emmanuel Chaine, reaching across his desk to take the lead-crystal tumbler from a dead man’s hand.

“Hello, angel,” he says to the woman who threw the knife. “You time these things like other women time a quiche.”

“I’d take that as a compliment if you knew anything about other women.” Carmel waves to the cabinet at his side, pushing the red-velvet curtains of her hair aside with the other other hand. “Pour me one of those while you’re up.”

“I’m not up, angel.”

“Story of my life,” she sighs.