I don’t tend to do big year-in-review posts, but this year I wanted to take a second.

Behind the scenes, there were ups and downs (family, day job, work-life balance, and the like), but I came out the other side of 2011 all right. I even managed to get out of the house enough to attend some lovely cons where I hung out with some lovely people, and there were no champagne fights or anything!

Writing-wise: I published my first novel, Mechanique! It is a great feeling to hold a novel you wrote in your hands, as it turns out! I had some positive reviews which pleased me greatly (positive reviews tend to do that), and have really enjoyed hearing from people (strangers!) with whom the book resonated. But really, most aspects of it were rewarding in some way, right down to the book launch party, for which some friends (and a family member I tricked!) worked their asses off for nothing more than free snacks.

I also got a nonfiction book under my belt this year! Geek Wisdom, in which my co-authors, Stephen Segal, and I gathered geeky quotes and set out to talk about how being a nerd was like a philosophy course, only with more dice and movies and computers and stuff, was a blast.

Short-fiction-wise, I had a dozen stories come out this year (of which I am perhaps particularly fond of “Demons, Your Body, and You,” “Semiramis,” “The Nearest Thing,” and “Study, for Solo Piano”), and some reprints, of which I am particularly glad for “And in Their Glad Rags” in Happily Ever After, and “Keep Calm and Carillon” in Creatures.

Movie-wise, I saw some really great movies this year and some extremely questionable ones. Drive and Shame might be two of my favorite movies that came out this year; the bad ones seem too numerous to mention and often too painful to recall. I must say that, especially in light of some of the completely shit movies I saw this year, Red Riding Hood seems to be on a lot of people’s Worst Movie Ever Made lists, which I find a little suspicious. Don’t get me wrong, it is definitely a bad movie. However, its biggest crime to many people seems to be that it’s directed by a woman who found commercial success with a blockbuster teen-girl movie that also had a love triangle, and is now condemned to be accused of repeating herself forever for things like having helicopter shots of landscape in two movies in a row, which, seriously. Without defending a movie that is for sure not a good movie, the vitriol and content of the criticism is still a bit eyebrow-raising, I think. (I mean, I saw Beastly this year. BEASTLY.)

Tonight ends a year that was often fun, sometimes tough, often interesting, and awash in coffee. I’m at home for the duration, and have spent the morning cleaning up so that I can spend the evening writing, and start the year as I mean to go on. (I’ll also be honoring my family’s oldest and most hilarious tradition, banging a pan on your doorstep at midnight to keep the devil out. Since I live in an apartment and am not a total jerk, I will be tapping a wooden spoon against a pan for about five seconds and hoping the devil is a pearl-clutching sort and that does the trick.)

Wishing you and yours a happy start to the New Year!

Most of my brain time the last few weeks has vanished into writing, family time, and cleaning house in an attempt to avoid writing.

Sure, there are movies coming up (the mid-90s Beauty and the Phantom homage Rigoletto probably being first on the block, because a movie that disturbing must have been a DOOZY to see as a kid), but before you can blog a movie you have to screencap a mile in its shoes, etc., and somehow I haven’t been able to bring myself to go back and watch the whole movie again. I will! I just…need time. Time in which to test all my pens and throw out the ones that don’t work any more, and then arrange them by color in my pen holder I made from a mug, because I was too lazy to get a real pen holder, and let’s face it, the mug does a perfectly good job. (Before you judge, let me say, if you were sitting through a movie about how a questionable relationship with the close-talker at the top of the hill rockets a preteen to stardom just in time for somebody to be beaten to death only not really because of magical fairy tales about true love that apparently relate to said preteen, you would also be looking for excuses to do something else.)

However, even after all the pens have been tested, there are things left to do, which seems unthinkable, and yet.

First of all, things I am planning on leaving the house for in the near future:

Oct. 14-16: Capclave. I always have fun at this con, with the bonus of getting to see my DC-area family for a little while. (Part of my blog quietness is due to family time, and it’s always nice when the train to DC overlaps family and work.)

Oct. 29.5 – 30: World Fantasy. (This will also be immediately preceded by family time. In fact, as it turns out, I’ll be at the con a little over 36 hours; we’ll see how THAT goes! It will go with vats of coffee, I’m guessing.)

Second of all, things I would LIKE to leave the house for generally include walking the second leg of my trip to and from work, which is usually delightful at this time of year, but because of weather conditions has instead become a self-guided walking tour of a fetid swamp occasionally enhanced with bus fumes. I have continued to make the walk, but it’s so bad that commuters and early-morning joggers all eye each other back and forth as if determining whose fault the humidity is, or who’s more foolish for being out in it. (Joggers.) However, it’s still worth it to get the walk in, especially the morning shift, when there are long lines of judgey pigeons sitting along building ledges, just awake enough to glare at you but not really ready to begin their daily routine of harassing tourists.

Third of all, new fall TV is coming through, but I’m having a little Review Ennui, largely because I have yet to sit through any of the pilots I tried so far and think, “Season Pass!” Or even, in most cases, “I will watch the second half of this episode!” Have I just become a curmudgeon of epic proportions, or is this fall a little watery-gruel in terms of new TV? (This is even excluding obvious comedy gold like Unforgettable, whose tagline is, “She can do anything but forget,” and whose ads all feature her saying, “I can’t forget!” and/or “I remember!”)

I mean, I’m all for avoiding writing by watching TV (I’m all out of pens, I have to do something), but so far all that’s happened is actual writing, which is productive yet mildly disconcerting.

While I think my movie-musical loyalties are well known (spoiler: Astaire and Rogers, every time), my favorite movie-musical character ever might be the incomparable Lina Lamont.

With a face like a Botticelli and a voice like a cheese grater, Lina Lamont is the most amazing thing about Singing in the Rain. She is so amazing that even if you don’t like movie musicals (and I get it, they are weird) or Gene Kelly (ditto), it’s worth watching the movie just for her.

The best scene, bar none, is the agonizing first day of filming of The Duelling Cavalier. (That’s right, the best scene, including all the musical numbers, even the one with Cyd Charisse. I will defend this position.)

The Duelling Cavalier, a perfectly decent silent film that is suddenly being shuttled into the sound era and dragging everyone with it kicking and screaming, is running them ragged. Lina especially is hilariously unsuited to her task (sound appealing), but people are so worried about actually capturing the sound that they leave her to her vocal coach and try to forget about it.

On the first take, they hide the mic in a prop plant and call action, Lina swings her head back and forth in melodramatic torment, and what comes through the line is:

“Oh, PIERRE…..ouldn’t have COME!….irting with DANGER!”

Things don’t improve.

It is a touchstone in my family’s vault-o’-quotes; since I live in a place with a completely oversaturated mobile grid, and my mom likes to put on the speakerphone and then leave the room and talk into a pillow,* we’ve given up on pleasantries. Now we just test the line with, “Oh Pierre, you shouldn’t have come!”

It’s scary how often it sounds like we’re just beginning the age of the talkie.

* Maybe this is not what she actually does, but the sound output is about the same, and you can’t prove this doesn’t happen, so there.

Three things make a post!

1. Alex Bledsoe was kind enough to ask me a few questions about Mechanique over at his blog, …from down in Lucky Town. I geek out around the point where he asks about the cover and interior art, both by the awesome Kiri Moth, and call out this piece of Elena as a particular favorite, because how could it not be? Check out the full interview for more of me nerding out.

2. And oh man, speaking of nerding out, I’m the guest at this week’s Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy!

Mechanique by Genevieve Valentine, developing the idea, researching circuses, the illustrations, parentheses, unpublished novels, short stories, movie costumes, bad movies, Jonah Hex, Sucker Punch, steampunk conventions, The Last Unicorn, Contact by Carl Sagan, Geek Wisdom, Catwoman.

This is basically what my mind looks like at all times, but it is also a list of the topics we covered during my interview!

They also talk amongst themselves, which I was down with until I saw on THEIR topic list that JJA walked out of Equilibrium AND they talk about Batman and Robin. Now, 1) I have questions about why Equilbrium was that bad – I mean, it was bad, but walk-out bad?, 2) I missed a chance to talk about the time my grandmother MADE ME walk out of a movie that is now one of my favorite SF movies I go to the mat for on a regular basis (Strange Days, baby!), and 3) Batman and Robin without me?! There goes any chance to play my favorite game, Complete Nonsense or Actual Line from Batman and Robin? (This game is amazing.)

Still, even without that game, it was a blast to record. Head over to io9 to give it a listen!

3. This has been another of those weeks where you look around and realize it’s already Thursday, you’re too afraid for David Strathairn to watch Alphas in case it’s awful, and your to-do list is so big that Gmail refuses to even open it any more.

The good news is, I’m going to Readercon tomorrow, so I can ignore that list all weekend, which is handy. I’m not on any programming, but I’ll be around!

Okay, for American types, today is 7-11-11. 7-11 stores, not about to let this date get away from them, are celebrating with free Slurpees, and seeing so many little Slurpees dancing across ad banners has made me a little nostalgic.

The Slurpee was a formative icon of my adolescence, which was riddled with low-grade poor decisions. I didn’t drink coffee when I was in high school, but with a school that started classes at 7am (not counting the time it took to wait for the bus and/or find parking in a nearby suburb and walk, which usually meant arriving by 6:20), and a bedtime of about 2am (I was busy with homework, watching movies, and writing truly awful prose), I needed energy in some form, and there was a 7-11 on the way to school.

Here was my breakfast for most of high school:

GENEVIEVE’S VERY HEALTHY VITAMIN BREAKFAST FOR HIGH SCHOOLERS

- One (1) Medium Coca-Cola Slurpee
- One (1) Fun-Size Bag Shock Tarts

If you are reading this and not making a horrible face right now, you are stronger than I am. Just thinking of eating this repeatedly makes me slightly ill. And it’s not as though I thought this was a legitimate meal at the time, either – I obsessively took care of my teeth, knowing I was basically pouring battery acid on them every 24 hours.

However, this combination was the only way I could get my body to produce enough adrenaline to stay awake during classes, so this was what I had.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, I burned out on both those food items in a major way, and have not had either for the better part of a decade, now. However, that little Slurpee cup is giving me a serious case of worst-breakfast-ever nostalgia.