Mush! Mush you doggies!

(Above are the bills from Canada Post & Staples, respectively from the printing of 2 copies of the old novel AND the cost of mailing it.... :-D)

Hey there compadres, quite a hot day in O-town today. I rarely venture forth into the world if I can avoid, but I had to go to the Post Office to mail my manuscript! I took my jump drive to Staples yesterday, and instead of making me wait a day, they printed it almost immediately :-D Hurray!

The store was a-bustle with about a billion kids and their harried-looking parents. I guess it's back-to-school for all of them. It was nice being able to wend my way through the crowd to the copy desk and retrieve two copies of my... MANUSCRIPT! Haha :-D from the nice girl at the counter. I was trying to explain what the whole 3-day novel thing was to her and she seemed impressed, so that made me feel good. I looked pretty frazzled, but she didn't seem to notice.

Off we went to the Wizard's Tower where Clay found some Palladium stuff and I rooted through the dollar bins... you find interesting things in the ol' dollar bins, discontinued comics, sales etc. I found a copy of Magik #1 for $2.00 or something, but I slid her back in cause I already have it.

Anyway, enough of my thrilling adventures in shopping-land. Here's some pics to describe the fun part of my day, which was fondling my 131 pg baby, trying to ram said-baby into an envelope that was TOO small, giving up, digging up another envelope (way too big), but coping anyway.

I have a few padded envelopes kicking around from MaryAnn Harris, fabric artist and owner of Reclectica, a cool retro jewelery and antique clothing store. She is also the lovely wife of my favourite writer in the whole wide world: Charles de Lint! When I bought 88 vintage sci-fi paperbacks from her in June, the box they arrived in came with a bunch of padded envelopes to protect them (she hadn't know I was picking them up personally and they were all packaged to be mailed!) So, the upshot is, I have a few envelopes with Charles de Lint's name printed on them.

I thought it'd be good luck to use one of his padded envelopes for the transport of my novel to its eventual destination on the West Coast. So, I finally packaged the lil' sucker up, drew a sketch of the main character on the back and trotted off to the the drug store at the Hazeldean Mall to mail it off.
So, now I sit, and plot my next frantic exercise in creative zeal... I recently heard from my buddy Tracy at Abbey Hill Design and will be heading there in October for a week to work on some one-of-a-kind pieces for her. That'll be a blast!

What else? November is National Novel Writing Month, and I feel the stirrings to register for that and throw myself into another fit of passionate creativity. You get an entire month to write, not just 3 days ;-) There isn't a contest fee, and the word count is.. I think 50,000. Might be fun.. though I wouldn't call it a "riot" or "hysterical" (see Troy's Blog!)

Thanks again, everyone who has been behind me all the way, all the great, supportive emails really made the difference. Cheers!
Suzanne.