No one from BNC called that morning. I found out later why, when we were nosing around the performance hall, and a guy in jeans and a corduroy jacket came in carrying a briefcase. “You must be Daron,” he said when he saw me.
“Yes.” I took the hand he was offering and shook it.
“I’m Mills, A&R, BNC.”
So they flew this guy all the way out here for this. As if we weren’t playing New York in two weeks, anyway? “Nice to finally talk to you.”
“Likewise. You and I have a lot to discuss.”
Well, cut the preamble and let’s discuss, I was thinking. “Do you want to go somewhere?”
“Actually, I have to take care of some bullshit first, but I’ll be sure I talk to you before the night’s out. Have you seen John…?”
Fine, whatever. I shrugged in the general direction of the seating area. I had to wonder, though. Was he sent out here to bully a signature out of me? To double-check the goods prior to purchase? Because he liked being a jet-setter? Could be all of the above.
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Today's Game/Baseball in Tweets
- A-Rod infield hit and a triple tonight. But the eyes are all on Hughes. #nyy #
- Aww, dammit. Hughes gets hit with a comebacker that ends up an infield hit. His parents are in the stands, though, must be proud. #
- So I guess this kind of quiets the arguments about how Hughes should've stayed in the bullpen, eh? #nyy Now let's win the game, guys. #
- 22 A's Ks in 2 nights. CC tomorrow. What's the record for strikeouts in 3 games? #nyy @YankeesWFAN @Ledger_Yankees @BobKlap @BloggingBombers #
- Ok Joba, now don't blow it for your pal. #nyy #
- Phew! Joba gets out of it, Yankees clinging to a one-run lead. I can haz insurance run nao, plz? kthnxbye #
DGC: Pour Some Sugar on Me
Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron’s Guitar Chronicles.
The buses pulled in to our hotel at about 7 a.m. and we were shuttled into rooms where we went immediately back to sleep. At ten a.m. the phone rang and I noticed that the message light was on. John was asking if I was awake and I told him that I was because the phone rang, but if he wanted to bring the contracts in, fine. He gave me a couple of minutes to get dressed and then knocked on the door. I gave the contracts a cursory eyeballing, and asked him if anything was different from the original one. He pointed out the changes about concessions and I signed them. He gave me my copy of it and after he left I put it into the Ovation’s case, where I figured it would be safe.
The message was from Mills at BNC. I called him back thinking–gee, from this room, it’s on their tab, sort of. He was in a meeting but his secretary assured me he would get back to me ASAP. I tried Charles River next and got Gail.
“Omigod, Daron! I guess you should talk to Watt about this, but he’s on the other line right now.” Gail was Watt’s significant other (if they were married I wasn’t sure of it) and was the person who really ran the day to day biz at CR.
“Gail, can you at least fill me in on what’s up?”
“You mean you don’t know? And here we’ve been thinking you were snubbing us.” Gail was a tough, chain smoking woman who didn’t wear makeup but always had gorgeously styled hair. Go figure.
Jeter the leader
I’ve been feeling very spoiled lately watching Derek Jeter and thinking about how much we’re going to miss him when he’s gone. He’s be “The Man” for so long, it’s hard to remember what it was like in the days before he arrived, since when he arrived in 1996 he and Joe Torre and a World Series win transformed the franchise out of a very moribund phase.
Two media pieces have come up recently worth noting about Jeter. First, Michael Hoban points out at Seamheads.com that ranking Jeter by Win Shares and Core Value (win shares for a player’s top ten seasons), Jeter is #6 on the shortstops since 1920 list. (A-Rod is number one.)
Jeter moved up from 8th to 6th thanks to his outstanding 2009 season. Not too shabby. He still has a way to go though to surpass Cal Ripken:
Read the rest of the entry…
Act now for really cool icon art!
So Tod, of Art by Tod, does something he calls Icon Day every so often. For about 24 hours he takes requests for LJ icons (100×100 pixels) and then spends 1-2 months fulfilling all the requests. You can make a paypal donation to his tip jar to guarantee an icon, and other incentives, as described in today’s Icon Day post from him: https://djinni.livejournal.com/223159.html
In his last Icon Day I went ahead and tipped him to get two icons, one each for Kenet and Jorin of my ongoing web serial THE PRINCE’S BOY, which are here:
Kenet! Sweet, sweet Kenet.
And hardy Jorin. 🙂 Squee!
You can see the whole glorious assortment from Tod’s previous Icon Day and a good range of his style here: https://djinni.livejournal.com/222616.html. He does lots of furries & anthropomorphized figures. I’ve asked him this time around to make an icon of ME with cat ears. 😀
Still some states I haven't visited…
I’ll get to add Wyoming in July! And at some point I’ve got to get out to Portland and Eugene, OR. And I want to do both Hawaii and Alaska at some point…
visited 34 states (68%)
Create your own visited map of The United States
Circlet Press Supporter Party
On Saturday night April 24 (7pm – midnight) we’ll be having a party for Circlet contributors, supporters, family, and friends.
I realize this might be somewhat short notice. That weekend is the first ever Circlet editorial development retreat, and my focus has been on trying to get the program of discussions and workshops together for the staff & attendees. 15 Circlet writers and editors are spending the weekend together doing everything from brainstorming to career development sessions.
I have lost track of whom I have already told/invited to the party portion of the weekend so apologies if you already know this… Please let me know if you can attend, and if you’ll be bringing any guests or significant others, so we can plan how much food to have (We plan to order in bulk from Redbones) — and while we’re at it, let me know if you’re bringing anything food or drink-wise to add to the table!
Cecilia
(Party will be at the house. Usual disclaimers re: cats in residence and the utter lack of childproofing apply.)
Slashy fandom convention-going!
So just a note to all my friends going to Infinitus!
I’m absolutely Slytherin green with envy since I can’t go and the new theme park looks awesome. And I would love to experience it with a few hordes of robed-up fans.
But… here’s the thing. The reason I’m not going?
I got into the LAUNCH PAD writers workshop! This is a NASA-funded program that is a week-long crash course in real astronomy for science fiction writers and editors! This is, simply put, really awesome and exciting. But it means missing Infinitus. *cries*
To satisfy my slashy fandom convention jones, though, I’ve decided to attend CON.TXT. Con.txt will be June 18-20 in Silver Spring, Maryland! It’s a slash con, not strictly HP, but I have no doubt I will meet up with some HP fans there? They have an LJ comm:
Will you be there?
I’ll be selling my slashy HP zines there as well as CD-ROMs and printed books of erotic science fiction published by Circlet Press, which folks may enjoy. I figure I’ll write a slashy drabble for anyone who buys $10 or more of books/zines?
Holler back if you’ll be there!
DGC: The Ever-Popular Tortured Artist Effect
Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron’s Guitar Chronicles.
An hour later, I was doing that. The audience didn’t seem to care much what we did. The place was only about half full and those that were there were indifferent. We adopted a “so what” attitude and drew into ourselves, like a tight rehearsal. Bart and Chris were grooving together and for the first time I thought of them as a rhythm section, not as Bart the rebel-from-conservatory and Christian the hired gun. I hoped Chris decided to stay with us. After the third song Ziggy even stopped playing to the audience and started playing to me. I had to smile a little as I watched him prance and stare at me. Then he shook his hips and his tongue crawled out of the side of his mouth… I played back to him, egging him on with riff after riff, gritting my teeth while my hands did their work. In the chorus of “River” he slid up to me on his knees, sort of like he did that day in the park way back when. When I shook my head sweat flew off and he lifted his face to catch it like rain or a blessing. I closed my eyes as I slipped into the solo there, and from that point on I don’t remember much until there was some polite, obligatory applause coming from the audience and we were leaving the stage.
Backstage the food was pretty much gone and someone had propped a door open, letting chilly air in. I had no urge to sit in one of the folding chairs and paced up and down while the others poked through the trays of wilted lettuce. Ziggy threw himself down into one of the flimsy chairs, but the move lacked dramatic effect because the chair just wouldn’t catch his weight. He blew a damp strand of hair out of his eyes. His face was dark with annoyance. He saw me watching him and said, “Tough fucking crowd.”
“Yeah, I guess. Glad we didn’t do this show first.”
Get on Circlet's email newsletter list!
Okay, after two years of struggling with a mailing list and communications plugin for the Circlet Press website that never really worked, we’ve finally gone with a professional email list service known as AWeber. They integrate with our NEW shopping cart (yes, I finally gave up and jettisoned the old Instinct NZ cart in favor of eStore) and I am working on getting that up and running.
If you’re already a subscriber to circlet.com, you’ll get an email from AWeber/us asking you to opt in to the newsletter.
If you’re not, you can do it with the form below! My plan is to send a newsletter no more than once a week, and include things like subscriber special discounts, special sample preview chapters and excerpts, and other bits of fun and news. You can always opt out again, of course!
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