Long Day

Managed to do a little work this morning, translating a few poems and a rewrite of one of my own poems that an editor had asked for, while waiting for someone to come back from running errands this morning. But it was meeting after meeting about various projects for the rest of the day, trying to crunch numbers, arguing over different bids, trying to figure out what sorts of things to change, etc. Exhausting.

Sara's mother had invited me to lunch with her and Sara, which was a nice bit of calm, except that I was half an hour late because the guy at the printer wasn't back yet (and hadn't had a chance to give us a bid yet for a catalogue of our children's books we need for the Bologna Book Fair and some other stuff). Sigh.

Later, met a poet for drinks at 8pm. He is editing a collection of chapbooks and asked me to do one of them. Of course, the last time someone asked me for some poetry books (one of my own, and two anthologies) he then left the collection and they never happened, so this time I'm a bit more hestiant. Nice if it happens, but if not, no big deal.

Yesterday I collected my contrib copies of the French vampire anthology BAISERS DE SANG from the post office. Only 5 of the 20 stories are translated (one being from J. Sheridan Le Fanu).

Managed to hit the gym every day (or I should say night) so far this week, although tonight and yesterday I was cutting it close, showing up just after 10pm when the gym closes at 11.

Haven't had a chance to really read much lately; have been working through Janet Evanovich's THE ROCKY ROAD TO ROMANCE on the bicycle and while waiting places. It's definitely an early book, and has that annoying habit so typical in romance of switching viewpoint so that you're in both her head and then his head within the same scene, but one can see a lot of the same themes/characters/etc. that she picks up again in her Stephanie Plum novels.

Did I mention that there's a new noodle bar one street away from my apartment? Pretty good, and a major improvement over the typical asian food that one can find in Spain. Went again on Tuesday and was pleased with the rice and veggie wok I had, with an edamame starter. Yum. :-)

Lammies

The list of Lambda Literary Award finalists has been posted over at http://www.lambdalit.org/Lammy/finalists.html

Congrats to all the finalists, especially susanstinson!

I don't know if I should even post this, since I don't know that there is really a way for it to not come off sounding too arrogant, but I can't help feeling a little bit disappointed (in myself) because this is the first year in a while that I have not been a finalist.

I've been a Lammy finalist 10 times under my own name since 1998, the first year I was nominated under my own name, and also won one of the little lucite blocks in 1998 (which was the only year I've had three nominations in a single year; it was a pretty good year for me since I was also a finalist for the Firecracker Alternative Book Award for two different books that year, and I also had three nominations for the Small Press Book Awards, back before they became the ForeWord Book of the Year Awards).

It's all my own fault, of course, because I didn't publish anything (a book, I mean) back in the U.S. in 2004.

Hopefully, that will be the last "fallow" year for a while, though.

FYI (since I did the research for myself anyway):

1998: 3 nominations
1999: 2 nominations
2001: 1 nomination
2002: 2 nominations
2003: 2 nominations
2004: 1 nomination