(The good kind of) trash day

West Wing fans and wonks all know that Friday is take-out-the-trash day. While none of the below is trash (quite the opposite really), they’re all items that have been prettily littering my desktop that aren’t going to get a full post from me because I’m short on time, words, or possibly both. However, I still want to blog them, and imagine they’ll hold some interest or appeal for you.

My good buddy and spec fic author Christian A. Young has launched a project called Hold Something. For a small monthly fee, you can get a story and images in the mail. You know, stuff you can touch in a world that’s more and more just bits and bytes. One of the awesome potentials of the Internet for artists is the removal of the middleman. That means both that you can be a patron of the arts for less and more artists can get paid for their work.

Lesley Hastings is a friend from fandom and has just published a novella, an M/M romance called The Dream Catcher. I haven’t read it yet, but congratulations are still in order.

Performance artist Justin Bond has written an essay to tell us about v’s name change, preferred prefix and other gender-identity related information. V’s the new pronoun. But it’s really the new prefix for which I link you: Mx. It’s bloody brilliant. As someone who is very, very uncomfortable with the Mr./Ms./Miss./Mrs. choices for both political and accuracy reasons, I am in love with Mx.

In my stats reports I see people keep clicking on my Palatine Crescent link. But I know when you get there you are discovering that there’s no there there. It’s the web page for the work I do with my previously mentioned writing partner Kali. I promise to throw up a placeholder soon. Right now we’re feeling a little more pressed on both our novel and a couple of treatments and a screenplay before I hit LA next month (full disclosure: that trip’s mostly to geek out a Doctor Who convention Gallifrey One, but it’s also the launch for Whedonistas and I’m planning to be doing a little bit of business in town too).

Meanwhile, A chemical in women’s tears dampens male desire, according to a New York Times article about a research study. The article is less offensive than you might initially imagine from this description, and, despite my including it in trash day, I may eventually get to writing something about men, women, tears and our new Speaker of the House.

Finally, no word from Patty yet, but hopefully she’s enjoying Gujarat. I don’t know a lot, but I do know that at least it’s not snowing there.