This evening preachelectric and I went to hang at the studio where The 7pm Project lives, despite us having nothing resembling tickets to be in the studio audience for said 7pm Project, because we are world-class at talking our way into where we're not meant to be, and what's the point of having a mutant power like that if you don't use it for evil?

And so, from the front row of a teeny studio (seriously, the studio audience was forty people; most live shows on the network have several hundred), dosed up on free sugar, we got to watch as Pete Wentz talked about bushfires and Starbucks and how Wikipedia is wrong about Fall Out Boy being broken up. While he was wearing a Fuck City hoodie on live national television.

His handlers were whisking him out as soon as his segment was done, so all we had time for was me to say "love you, Pete" and do the \m/ rock hands, and for preachelectric to wave gleefully, and for him to smile with his pretty sparkly brown eyes and his wide smiley mouth at us, and oh, I really am so fond of that dude, he makes the world a more entertaining and exciting place to live.

Now I am going to go do some more packing! PS BUY MY BOOK, because I deserve a reward for restraining myself from saying give me the twenty-minute sixteen candles video, Pete in the seconds I had his attention. I think it showed admirable maturity on my part!

First review!

This book is a lot more inner turmoily then the first. It's dealing with several characters who has a lot of mental health issues, and Mary puts you directly into their heads. It's wonderful, and uncomfortable.

Unlike the first book, which is goth punk teenagers get embroiled in vampires, this is teens already soiled and spoiled by vampires dealing with what comes next. And it's good, oh it is good.

It's very raw, and sometimes, when reading it I was a little overwhelmed, because god life can suck for people. But Mary never writes a weak character, a lot like Terry Pratchett, in that respect. Every single one of Mary's characters have steel in their soul, and I love reading about how they continue to fight.

I really recommend this book. I'd do it if I didn't know Mary. I'd do it if I hated Mary and wrote her letters in my own blood and stuck them to her mailbox with thread made of my own hair.

Buy Roads and Crosses here.

The temperature outside has dropped below 35 degrees (that's, um, 95 for Americans, I think?) by a whole 0.2 of a degree now, so I'm going out to purchase much cola in order to stay up all night (when it's marginally cooler) packing, as I didn't do nearly as much as I wanted today due to the heat. Urrrrrgh this is a horrible week to move house, partly because of this ridiculous weather and partly because ( TMI of the female sort ). I bet y'all who clicked that cut are really glad you did so.

This afternoon's plans: go across street, buy all the cola. Go into city this evening to see about annoying that Wentz dude. Come home. Spontaneously somehow become industrious and finish all the remaining packing. Sleep. Wake up in morning, do edits on the proof of the new journal issue for work, die of heatstroke.

... WAIT WAIT NO HANG ON, THAT'S NOT IT. HERE WE GO:



If you have ever thought to yourself "hey, what did happen to those vampire stories Mary wrote with Audrey that time? I mean, she talks about them in Sharpest and she still won't shut the hell up about that fucking Fall Out Boy video, so clearly the stories were fairly special to her, but then she took them all offline, what's up with that?"... then you're probably me, as I can't imagine that anyone else thinks that much about the things I do.

However, if you have ever thought to yourself "GOSH I SURE DO WISH SOMEONE WOULD WRITE A ROAD TRIP NOVEL ABOUT PATRICK FROM THE SIXTEEN CANDLES VIDEO, HIS YOUNGER SISTER WHO IS ROSIE COTTON WITH BLUE HAIR, AND A TEEN GIRL HALF-VAMPIRE RORSCHACH FIGHTING CRIME TOGETHER" then you are clearly an awesome person, and also you might like my new book.

The second Wolf House novel, Roads and Crosses, follows two of the hunters as they navigate the aftermath of the shattering events of Origins and Overtures. Already prone to anger and self-doubt, Lily’s fight has become a fight against her own dark thoughts just as much as it’s a fight against the vampire gangs. And Will’s clinical, detached approach to vampire hunting has always helped him in the past, but now it threatens to cut him off from his emotions and his friends completely. And if they can’t save themselves, what good are they to Jay, Rose, and Bette?

The Wolf House: Punk is dead and it has fangs.

My flat is approaching 'packed'! Kind of. Sorta maybe. I've still got a slog to go but the dust mask is horrible to wear and it's hot and I have no attention span, so I'm updating livejournal as a break. Hullo!

I've tried to hold off updating until the new Wolf House book is ready, but the delays gremlin has its claws in the file-upload system my publisher uses and so it's still not done. Soon, my pretties. Soooon.

BUT! On a related front, look at the new review I got to put up on the site:

"Electrifying. Chilling. Enthralling. Amazing. One of the truest young voices I've ever heard, with a plot that keeps you stuck to the pages and stops the breath in your throat. This is a writer who will go farther than perhaps even she imagines."

And who said that amazingly nice thing? LJ FREAKING SMITH. LJ SMITH. The reason I am a YA vampire fiction writer at all. I am sort of speechless here. Like, okay, The Wolf House is done, we can all go home now. (Except I still have two more books to write, la la)

Oh! And I made a post about Kindred: The Embraced in the site's blog too, ahaha. Because I am so sick of packing, blaaaaah. I need less stuff.

Um what else -- I didn't win the Diva competition, the pink flowery design did. But! JESSICKA ADDAMS (FORMERLY OF JACK OFF JILL. JACK OFF JILL) would love for me to interview her for Kylie's zine. JESSICKA ADDAMS.

LJ SMITH.

TODAY IS PRETTY NEAT.

Now includes my interview with Henry Jenkins, and a new introduction by me with insights like:

How does the mosaic that is Robin’s meanings change shape when we include, for instance, the reality television show American Idol’s eighth season? Adam Lambert, the consistently over-the-top, theatrical, larger-than-life glam rock performer who came second in the competition, was asked “Batman or Superman?” on the social networking site Twitter. His response was:

Batman fo sho. Him and Robin are real hot together. haha.

As well as being a highly visible pop figure in contemporary music, Lambert is openly gay, and so his response reinforces Batman and Robin’s relevancy in the cultural conversation of pop, glam, and camp. But as well as reinforcing, Lambert complicates and adds to Batman and Robin’s meanings: in one video appearance, he explains to the eighth season winner Kris Allen that Kris, due to his smaller stature, is the Robin of the pair, rather than the ‘Batman’ which his winning status might otherwise suggest.

Allen is straight, married to his teenage sweetheart, but both he and Lambert have spoken many times in the media about the deep friendship and respect they share, and often engage in lighthearted, flirtatious banter. This ease within complexly coded cultural dynamics echoes the examples of My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy, which I outline in the main text of this study, but Allen and Lambert’s popularity is more mainstream and occurred within a traditionally culturally conservative text – American Idol – and so the resultant complexities reflected back onto Robin are differently charged.

YEAH, YOU KNOW YOU FUCKING LOVE ME.

Also it is cheaper now, and oh yeah ALSO IT HAS THIS AMAZING NEW COVER, GODDAMN LOOK AT THIS SERIOUSLY FLY SHIT RIGHT HERE:



Download for $4

Get paperback for $13.12

I am so glad I came to Audz's. I have been coddled and given pizza and juice and tea and well-mannered British detective shows.

Thank you so much to all the commenters on my last post. I will respond to each and every one of you when I'm done hiding from reality. For now, know I'm grateful. I love how the internet can create instant affinity groups in times like this. I feel much less lost and alone.

What I ACTUALLY started this post in order to say is, do the popslash alumni remember the story that was a Pern AU wherein Justin had a gold dragon? I THINK THIS NEEDS TO BE AN AMERICAN IDOL STORY. Because because because, you guys, if Adam Lambert had a dragon, there is no way he would have any other dragon than the GOLDIEST OF THE GOLDS. And Kris has a brown, obviously, and then they have the glorious nonsense that is ~*~dragons made them do it~*~ mating-flight sex, and yep.

I want to preorder Adam's album from his site but you can only get it if you're in America. WHY DO YOU HATE MY MONEY, ADAM LAMBERT?

In other news, Grant Morrison is amazing, the end.

I signed the lease on my new flat today! It is sunny and freshly painted and has an actual shower and real walls and stuff. I won't know what to do with myself. Though the pretty clean walls mean I probably can't put up the nine million posters I have from gigs I've gone to, alas and woe. I'll think up some kind of solution eventually, I'm sure.

Now comes the part where I start trundling over everything which doesn't need a professional removalist, woo. The new place is on the third floor, which means I'd feel to guilty to chivvying my friends into doing it like I did last time. I will pay some burly individuals to lug my crap around, but only the big crap I can't possibly do myself.

The old flat and the new flat are only about three blocks apart, and it's a sunny day, so it's not like this is the most awful way to spend a day off I've ever had. It will serve as a lesson to me the next time I want to buy something: Mary, do you like this thing enough that you would carry it for three blocks and up two long flights of stairs? Yes? All right then.

Here is a picture Gracie sent me today:

HOPE JUST SENT ME THE LINK TO THIS SHIRT AND NOW I NEED IT TO LIVE.

I SUSPECT THAT THE SHIRT DEPICTS WHAT HAPPENS ONCE BECKETT FINALLY CONVINCES PETE AND PATRICK THAT EMO VAMPIRES ARE BORING, BITING PEOPLE IS AWESOME.

ALSO, HI.

Edit: this shirt is from the same site and it is TRUE FACTS, okay.

I know excellent people: both Gracie and Bex sent this picture to me during the night, to make sure I saw it:



I LOVE YOU ADAM LAMBERT, PLEASE CONTINUE TO PLAY DRESSUPS AS A ROCKSTAR VAMPIRE FOREVER.

Uh, what else... Erinna won't agree with me on the theory that going to an Insane Clown Posse show is practically obligatory if the opportunity arises in one's life. I pointed out that Thursday all agree with me, and she said that Thursday didn't count which is essentially blasphemy, so she is wrong.

So then I asked HeyChris his opinion on the matter, as we were wandering the city of Melbourne in the same large pack of excellent people as him at the time, in search of food (we ended up at Grill'd, who make the best veggie burgers of all time, even better than Lord of the Fries YEAH I SAID IT WHATCHA GONNA DO ABOUT IT), and Chris agreed with me so suck it, Erinna, being surrounded by juggalos remains a valid future life choice.

Chris was a fantastic speaker, as he was last time, though there's a distressingly high urine content involved in hanging out with that dude (something I also already knew from last time). He and his biffle Pete Wentz originally bonded over their shared love of peeing on the pile of coats found in spare rooms at parties. He keeps my zine Sharpest on his bedside table but, as Megan pointed out, said bedside table also features bottles for him to wee into so he doesn't have to get out of bed at night. You know, I don't feel I say often enough that BOYS ARE GROSS.

Except you, Adam Lambert. I'm sure you don't have piss bottles beside your bed.

It was a lovely weekend, though. I got to see a bunch of friends I don't see nearly often enough, due to distance or to hectic work schedules, and catching up with them always makes me feel brighter.

Today I will put down the bond payment for the new apartment, yaaaaaaaay. Then I'm seeing the not-so-wee babysitting charge briefly before her hip-hop class, as our scheduled hanging out later in the week has to be put off due to me getting the chance to see another bunch of friends I don't see nearly often enough. Social lives are hard! I want an assisstant. Man, being personal assisstant to Mary Borsellino would be the worst job in the world, seriously.

Oh HEY HEY, before I go off to attempt to pack for moving (why oh why oh why do I have so much stuff, ugh), have you voted for me yet? Go do that!

It's kind of funny that I love Ellsworth as much as I do in Deadwood, considering how irritating I find Supernatural's Bobby (in seasons one and two, anyway; haven't caught up on anything since then). He never offers information until the last possible second when it might be useful, preventing any chance the Winchesters have at useful planning! Yes, I do remain vexed about this, years after Devil's Trap first aired! Bobby be more useful! Raaargh! ELLSWORTH ILU. Hope, did you write a fic where they were the same person or did I imagine that?

Thanks to everyone congratulating me on finding somewhere to live. I am SO PLEASED about this, and so grateful that my mother is loaning me the money to pay the tenancy bond on the new place. This whole experience has taught me how quietly and quickly really unstable living situations can creep up on someone -- if I wasn't able to ask for help in scraping the money together for the switch-over, I'd be looking at a month of couch-surfing while I saved up the money for it, since banks aren't able to loan for bonds, and I won't get back the bond on the place I'm moving out of until it's been processed and I've given notice and all that, and while I make enough to always pay my rent in time, I don't make enough to pay a month's rent twice in one month. I'm a professional woman with a permanent part-time job, freelance work, and a disability pension, with a good credit rating, and I'm still only a paycheck's worth away from homelessness at any given time. Yuck.

I get to see lots and lots of friends tomorrow YAAAAAAAAAAAY. HeyChris is speaking in Melbourne and I am going to do my best to not be a brat at him, but that's probably not gonna work out so good.

ALSO I have seen the first three episodes of Torchwood season three finally, and I love Gwen and Rhys so dreadfully much, I really do, GWEN ORDERS A PIE AND CHIPS and it is adorable and they are in a potato truck being adorable and also I love Jack and Iaaaaaaaaaaaaanto, and Jack's daughter and Ianto's sister and just ALL OF THE CHARACTERS ARE NEAT, especially that government spy assassin lady who is basically who the Ninth Doctor and Jack like to think they are but they are both actually fuzzy kittens and she is a panther. AND OH PC ANDY YOU ARE EXCELLENT TOO.

Last night my not-so-wee babysitting charge and I watched the vampire episode of Xena (STILL AWESOME, I LOVE YOU XENA BE MY MEAN WIFE) and a bunch of Futurama, and seriously, Zap and Kif are basically exactly the Kirk and Spock who live in my brain, HOW DOES THE SHOW DO THAT. Leela/Zap is also the closest one can get to Captain Mal/Captain Kirk, which is doubly hilarious every time I think about it.

No, seriously, I love them so much.

... I really love those dudes, you know. Forever and ever.

From Here:

American Idol star Adam Lambert took some time off from recording his new album and hit the party celebrating Star magazine’s 5th Anniversary party.

At the bash Adam was sitting in the corner of the dance floor, holding hands with his boyfriend and laughing with friends. Later on he was spotted checking out Cobra Starship’s performance.

GIMME LOVE STORIES ABOUT ADAM AND DRAKE AND GABE, FANDOM. NOW.

Today the newspaper asks, Is Kanye West a modern day dandy?

Kanye's dress sense is more complex than this definition suggests, though -- it's got roots in 1980s urban black New York appropriation of designer logos in their graffiti and dress, and the visible wealth attributes such as diamonds and expensive clothing worn by rap and r&b performers, and more than a little dash of the avante-garde pop aesthetic which started in the sixties and spontaneously birthed Lady Gaga along the way, and a variety of other influences.

But really, it's a bad idea to get me started on dandies, so I'll just hush now.

Oh, Pete Wentz, why do you always find ways to make me give you all my money? Jerk.

Guys, I know this has been asked many times before, but why hasn't anybody yet written a story in which Frank is an obnoxiously pretty computer hacker in the early 1990s and Gerard is a troubled and beautiful comic-book artist with a lot of feelings? Or, alternately, the one where Ryan Ross chews his way out of his mother's womb and the first thing he sees is the French Quarter, and Pete and Patrick have a random question mark at the end of their band's name.

In actual-writing news, sometime in the near future I have to write my Adam Lambert story for the Bowie challenge, and I am considering writing a time-travel one which is sort of fucked up and which probably nobody but me will like. Woo!

After much deliberation (by which I mean, feeling yucky with a headache and generally grumpy at pretty much the entire world), I have settled the dilemma of which Way brother's former make-out buddy I would rather risk catching herpes from.

In other words, I've decided between going to the rescheduled Used show in Melbourne or the Cobra show in Sydney next March. I am going to go to Cobras in Sydney, because godDAMN if this year doesn't owe me some Gabe Saporta right about now. I love Bert! I do! And Quinn and Dan and Jepha all. But they don't make me happy in the same light-in-the-heart smile-on-the-lips laugh-in-the-chest way that Gabe always does, and I need that even if it's the more complicated option.

I am so tired and headachey and demoralised this morning that it's an actual effort not to crawl under the desk right now.

Apparently there are two interested buyers for my flat. One's an owner/occupier and one is an investor, so depending on who the agent goes with I have a 50-50 chance of having to move or to stay. The whole thing was demoralising and gross. I hate being poor. Claire says I shouldn't stress out until I hear one way or the other, but if there's anything I've been good at it's borrowing trouble.

Yoko Ono does a weekly Q&A on Twitter. I asked what the most beautiful thing she'd seen today was. She answered that it was the sky.

I can't decide whether I want to paint my nails or have a nap. I have tickets for a Cobra show and a Used show on the same night next March. I think I want to go to Cobra but I haven't actually heard 'Hot Mess' yet, but on the other hand I find the cover art on the Used's 'Artwork' really upsetting even though I enjoy the music. Then again, 'Hot Mess' has awful cover art too. Choices are hard. I want to give half my life away to charity and the other half to science and start again from nothing. I have too much stuff, because I can't tell if anything's worth keeping and so I keep it all.

Since last October I have written over two hundred thousand words of the Wolf House series. I guess the moral of this story is that sometimes showing me a music video can have unintended consequences, or maybe that I don't know when to give up on an idea which fascinates me. Still more than a hundred thousand words to go before we're done. Maybe then I'll sleep the night through, though I don't think I'll bet on it.

I apologise to those who haven't got their Wolf House excerpts from me for the recording project (I think there are two or three of you) -- I've been flat out for the last couple of days and haven't had the chance to get them organised for you. Tomorrow I will send them! I try to pick sections which work relatively well without context, and which suit the particular reader I'm sending 'em to, so I need my head in a vaguely useful space before I can get anything done.

I'm up to the scribbling-all-over-a-printout-in-red-pen stage of Book Four. This one, despite its comparatively difficult writing period, is the super-self-indulgent installment in the series, where I get to put kittens and my little ponies and conversations about Oscar Wilde's fairytales in and spend time letting Blake talk (and talk, and talk, and talk) and all that sort of stuff, before the Big Things take over and run the show through books five and six. Thrills! Suspense! Tragedy! Murder! And so forth. And kittens. If nothing else, I enjoy that my books are the trashy YA vampire series with the highest level of kitten content out there.

Oh! I read the first issue of Fall Out Toy Works and I found it charming. I like the little emo robot in the bear suit. That sentence may be the most succinct thing any Fall Out Boy fan can write, actually.

I am so tired that I am going to go to bed now, despite it only being just after eight, which is pretty sad really.

So, okay, as the header image in this journal may suggest, I have pretty much scammed the universe into letting me self-indulgently wallow in my love for the love that is Pete/Patrick.*

But because I have been so fulfilled in being able to write their particular dynamic at such length, I forgot how much I missed reading them as written by others. Document, by Azurejay, has been a sharp reminder of that fact, because holy shit, this is a fucking stunning Patrick voice, made all the more amazing by the fact that this story, while containing Pete/Patrick, is really the story of Patrick Stump's life -- in a world in which Patrick was assigned female sex and gender at birth, but chose to transition to male at adolescence.

This story is honest and brave and sharp and emotionally raw, and apparently originally grew out of part of Patrick's offhand joke in an interview where he said that people editing his Wikipedia page were welcome to make him a transsexual or eighty feet tall so long as they got his musical influences right. Which just goes to show that writers can get amazing ideas from the unlikeliest of sources, as this story is really, really special, and has made me want to go out and hunt down a million other amazing Pete/Patrick stories so I can revel in the love that is them,





*This is the obligatory disclaimer that states that obviously Lily/Will is not simply Pete/Patrick with the numbers filed off because if I wanted to write Pete/Patrick I would do that, like a normal person, instead of the massive existential angst writing Lily/Will has brought along with it, blah blah blah etc and so forth. Also I suspect** that Lily has never drunk her own urine***.

** But cannot confirm.

*** Wolf House 2, AKA the Will-and-Lily-POV book, comes out at the end of this month! And I can even promise there's no urine-drinking in it! Woo!