PunkinElf Charms

Well, I bit the bullet and paid for a year's worth of Auctiva services. Mostly so could use the elfin template.

I have a lot of charms to list, a lot of inventory to sell. Ebay has a new listing policy of a free insertion fee for $1.00 & under. Charm price, but I'm going to list a lot under $1.00. I have a lot of inventory.

It also gives me an opportunity to pimp my domain: Punkin'Elf Charms.

So, here's to free enterprise in a lousy economy!

I have to get off the internet

Spring may (or may not, I can't tell) be coming to Vancouver and I have to learn how to walk without pain. Don't tell anyone, but went shopping @ Fred Meyer yesterday and no pain. Unbelievable!



I took this picture, not in Tannersville, but somewhere in upstate NY. I was at a Writers Retreat @ Damas Gracia. They aren't around anymore. Sad.

ETA: "Damas Gracias Writers' Workspace, Allegra Vida, Inc., Grant Rd., Gilboa, NY 12076. (607) 588-9492. Fees charged; some scholarships and work exchange; also offers workshops and readings. (literary arts)" It used to have a website.

Waking up chipper

As in happy, sprightly. Not a dog.

So anyway, just as I had resigned myself NOT to write a script for Script Frenzy, My Love is Like a Red Red Rose decided to index card the first act on Celtx.

I mean, I kinda know the plot (fully open to some happy accidents) but the resolve wasn't there. I want to finish Snaketown to submit to the Hillerman contest June 1st, but I'd also hoped to make the Nichol on May 1st. Here's hoping the script will have this drive all of April.

Shanghai Moon

I have been sussing out the details of Snaketown, while listening to Shanghai Moon by SJ Rozan. SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS



The Shanghai Moon, a fabulous brooch, the MacGuffin all seek, and have sought since WWII, when 20,000 Jews were allowed to emigrate to Shanghai (when America and et al turned their backs on the Jews). The brooch was a made piece of jewelry that was formed to honor the union between the lovely Rosalie and this abandoning Maoist jerk. But there was no Shanghai Moon in the denouement.

Like the thing that dreams are made of there is no jeweled bird, no symbol of the union between two cultures.

I hate that, as a reader, as a writer. It feels a cheat. Only in cheap romance novels are much much desired baubles found and described in rapturous florid prose.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

The dingus is found in Snaketown.

ETA: Ok, I was wrong.

Ya know

It really doesn't matter if I put a blog on a reading list, because I don't read the reading list!

Found one about reading AND s/he's on goodreads! So, check this out: http://tamtambooks-tosh.blogspot.com/

An Icon Virgin

My anagram name.



Went to a Hollywood Video that was closing. Got The Devil's Backbone, Paris, Je T'aime, Tropic Thunder (How did I live without that MTV viral spot? I couldn't stop laughing!) The Proposal, The Pillow Book, Bram Stoker's Dracula and 3 others I've already listed on half.com for sale. My back was killing me, just a little walking. I have to lose weight. I'm too young to feel this old.

Roger Twits

Roger Ebert's twitter has marvelous pictures. I remember Gene & Roger in Now Playing on WTTW, Channel 11, back in the day. Great pic:



I also RSVP'd to classmates.com posting of a mass Siena High reunion, "No, sorry". Favorite notes (more than once): "Is the neighborhood safe?" Austin is the worst neighborhood in Chicago, and Central & Washington was never a great address. Can't wait for the news story.

The Lineup

Just got the first two issues of The Lineup Poems on Crime. In the mid 90s, while I was working on a Masters @ SUNY Buffalo, I had a small chapbook magazine called Word Outa Buffalo. WOB did a special issue, for which I even advertised in Poets & Writers. I still have copies. Anyway, aside from one really crazy guy (something about protecting their white wimmen, I dunno) and one teenage girl with a story that made me reach out to her, even if it wasn't about her. (I protect her still. She came to Word Outa Blfo's reading at... Solid Grounds (no help from google, I guess it's closed.))



Anyway, I did a hard boiled issue Trouble is my Business. It was a very good issue, for what it was. So should I submit some of the old poems I wrote? I also wrote a great little chap called Friday is Payday.

This was one from Trouble is My Business

Been said

Been done, like most made beds
someone always along, even invisible
working the threads to order.
These weavers walk among us-
I picture them singing, that half note
you hear, then turn quick
but it's gone. Trick is, forget it
or finish it yourself. The other way's
crazy-making, purse lipped poised
to join the next sing along. You look
the fool, it's you.

It's like the shimmer in neon
that refracted bit of light you read
from as far away as your deep self
and you walk toward, try to get in it,
because that shard of light
opens a door you locked on yourself,
a wall bricked from within
and you can't get in or out
and the voice you use to call out
gets thinner and weaker each step.

ⓒ1996 Virginia Conn

Script Frenzy

Debated whether or not I'd do it, but registering yesterday, I found out I could do a playscript. So of course, Snaketown isn't finished, isn't edited, isn't ready to submit, but I'm thinking of working on Dead of the Dead a play I've been working on forever.



I even re-read that Scottish play. There are three women in the play, at Halloween, and I have to be ready to deflect a comparison with The Weird Sisters. I also found TERRY PRATCHETT'S. WYRD SISTERS online, and spent too much on We Three: The Mythology of Shakespeare's Weird Sisters , an interesting dissertation by Laura Shamas.

Will I ever finish anything???? Can I work on two disparate works at the same? Stay tuned.

"When shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurlyburly's done, when the battle's lost and won"