Zombies and a reading list

This is a clever marketing ploy: CDC disaster preparedness has gotten more discussion today that in the past few months, I’d guess. And you know, it is rather important to be prepared for the zombie apocalypse. Also flood, tornado, earthquake and fire.

And the rapture, since it is happening Saturday. The rest of us may need to have some supplies laid up.

Once you’ve got your canned goods and drinking water (and flamethrowers!) safely stashed away, you’ll need something to do. I’ve got you covered there too: the 2011 Hugo nominees have been announced, and once again there’s a Hugo voter’s packet available, containing most or all of the nominated works.

For reasons I don’t understand, the link to the login page is not on the packet description page. You need a userid and PIN to log in, so why not publish the link. But they didn’t, so I won’t either. The packet page does have an email address to contact for more information.

Edit: I was just ahead of the game, apparently. The login link has now been posted. If you are a member, you can get a packet here. You’ll need your userid and PIN.

And how do you get this bounty of first-rate SFF? You become a member. It’s online, it’s quick, and Worldcon membership entitles you to not only read the packet, but also vote for the best and nominate next year. What a deal! It’s kind of pricy: supporting membership is $50. But how else could you participate in deciding what the best SFF of the year is?

And yes, there are zombies among the nominations.

You can tell from the lack of posting that I’m swamped. This working-for-a-living thing, you know. I got a pile of things submitted, and all were promptly rejected. Dammit. I’m not too bothered, actually. I’ve been writing and submitting scientific journal articles for a long time, and fiction rejections are so much friendlier. Really.

I finished the first draft of my novel in progress quite some time ago. I intentionally set it down for a while, but I didn’t intend for it to sit this long. Oops. I’m really intimidated by the amount of work still to do, and a bit scared to read the whole thing and see concretely how much revision, rewriting, addition it needs. So there it sits.

Last week I figured out the two major things that were missing, things that had been bothering me about the background and structure. I hope that knowing the missing bits will help me settle into the revision process. It gives me a starting place: reread the whole thing with an eye to where those two story-things need to be worked into the existing structure.

Having an entry point is a major part of the struggle on any project of this size.

But notice how I said “the two major things” up there, like I won’t find many more as I work through it. Heh.