I'll be part of the late night erotica reading at Orycon 30 here in Portland in November. Darklady (old friend) is organizing the panel and asked me to read. I have NEVER, EVER read ANY of my own fiction out loud, let alone the naughty bits. I'm not sure I'll be able to get through it, and I know I won't be able to get through it without turning bright, bright red and staying that way. But, you know, she asked, and I need to get the story out there.

AAGH! WHAT HAVE I DONE!

*ahem*

You wanna see some Sedra? Well all right, then! Here's some Sedra! Alice is working on the color final right now, and I've sent her the description for Ellika. We'll be seeing Ellika with her "centerpiece hat."

What's on deck:

We have a lot of points stories to get through and I'm having trouble getting a chapter out on Thursdays. And unless you guys start giving me enough money for a regular housekeeper (and no, my perfume budget would not cover a housekeeper), it's going to stay that way.

I am loving swapping. New smellies, no monies! And, wicked author that I am, I've been slipping my business cards in with my swap packages in hopes of luring unsuspecting BPALlers into the serial. I'd feel bad about it, but seriously, this thing is right up the average BPAL fan's alley if I can only get them to try it. (Present BPALlers, back me up here.)

The last of the "baby commemoratives" from the BPAL.org forum, Lady Lilith is based on the Dante Gabriel Rossetti painting, and thus is properly a Salon scent (perfumes based on paintings). The official notes:

Climbing rose, vanilla cream, vanilla flower, white tea, mandarin, red and white musks, opium poppy, Parma violet, and opoponax.

In the bottle: I really pick up the mandarin and the tea, and a slightly decaying smell of violets.

There are times when I sit down and I have no idea what I'm going to do. I know where I'm going, but the route is completely unclear. I have a notes file, just a document where I put all the things I think might be useful in the story--ideas for names, scenes that come to mind and so on. I pulled on some of that for this chapter, but didn't have Macca's story completely in mind until just hours before I posted the finished chapter.

OK, I did up some new ads and hit the bricks at PW. I ended up re-upping at AE's sites, and added modest longterm campaigns at Menage a 3, Penny and Aggie and QC, and kept my campaigns at SPQR Blues and Phoenix Requiem along with a bunch of occasional square ads scattered hither and yon. Watch fer 'em but don't click on 'em, because I want an honest indicator of how they're doing.

After the resounding success of yesterday's Lilith Victoria, I avidly look forward to the other two! Here's the second of the forum-only Lilith fragrances, described as:

Honeyed milk, baby powder, lavender, orris root, sage, carnation, angelica, frankincense, and rose otto.

My ad budget is dwindling and I need to make every dollar count. Do you have suggestions for where I should advertise to find likely suckers, I mean, readers? I currently advertise at Phoenix Requiem (a good source of traffic, but I don't know how well the visitors "stick"), ToMU, Buzzcomix, occasionally at Flipside, Slipshine, Errant Story, Blipcomic and Two Rooks currently, all of them off and on.

Icons, I has dem:

PLEASE TAKE COPIES, don't link to these! And if you use them on LJ, please credit them to user meilin_miranda. Thanks!

Beth an' Ted of BPAL have had their squidling, Lilith Victoria, and of course there was a set of perfumes to herald her arrival. I am as much a fool for babies as I am for BPAL--I love babies, absolutely adore them--and so I got all three. Bad Mei. Well, I've been selling and swapping unloved smellies, so I figger it's okay.

I did some reformatting and now I can offer the paperback edition of Book One for only $12.95! That's $2 less than I could sell it before. So if you've been wanting to buy it, now's the time. The pdf version is still $2.95. And I'd very much appreciate it if you could give me a favorable review at Lulu.com when you go take a look. Thanks!

Some of you may be wondering why I'm so devoted to BPAL. I mean, there are lots of perfume companies that put out lovely scents; why them? This is why. These people are freaking hilarious and they have astonishing noses to boot.

Alice has finished the character study of Allis and Issak, which I'll be posting in the gallery later tonight; kid's bday party today. It's a casual look at them in Temple garb. The expressions on the faces of their body shots makes me think Temmin has just said something particularly bone-headed. The head shots are exactly the way I've always pictured them.

I picked up two Chaos Theories as a result of selling a few bottles at BPAL and boy am I glad I did! Sadly, neither has much stay. But they're so delicious I don't care.

CT IV: DCCCXXXI (831) is LEMON!!!! with the capitals and exclamation points in the bottle. Not sweet, either but tart, whole lemons--peel, pulp, juice, flower. I LOVE IT. My mouth waters when I sniff it. I am a fool for lemon and I so, so wish this had more stay.

Moving to a stronger server. Same host, so DNS will propagate within an hour, but I will be taking the site into maintenance mode so we don't lose any info. If you get the maintenance message, check Twitter; I'll be keeping it updated.

Update: Move accomplished! Welcome to our new home.

I admit it. I'm a comment ho. I'm having a really hard time with ch 28 and I'm demoralized that there are three comments on the bonus story, one of which being my own. LOVE ME, DAMMIT, LOVE ME!

hee.

sorta.

I decided to get into the General Catalog box today and let the Fickle Finger have its way. It picked out Lilium Inter Spinas, which lives in the Ars Amatoria section (which features an NSFW image, btw). It's based on the Song of Solomon:

Hibiscus syriacus, white sandalwood, lily of the valley, apple blossom, and green fig.

In the imp: Fig at first, then sandalwood and hibiscus.

Wet: Lily soap.

Dry: Better, but not better enough to keep. It's gone to trade.

You can see them at BPAL.org, along with my wishlist.

Sometimes, the name of a scent will just put me off trying it until the very end. Such is Pickled Imp. I mean, Pickled Imp. Seriously? They seriously named a perfume Pickled Imp. It didn't sound appetizing, so I left it till very near the end of this set of decants.

And yet, the description, with the unfortunate scholar's notes, is intriguing for a vanilla lover like me:

By God, what floats in this ghastly jar?
Cinnamon, clove, vanilla, and pine sap.

One more week, guys. One more week. I'm going to do one more week of once-a-week updates and then I'll be back to the usual. I am trying to put this thing to bed. It's crunch week.

To tide you over, Alice is really close to finishing the portrait of the twins. I am being ultra-picky with Allis, and Alice is being very patient with me. They're in Temple garb, though at some point I want a picture of them in formal attire, perhaps the outfits they're wearing when they first meet Temmin.

Beth became a mama today! If the forum only scents formulated to celebrate her birth are any indication, I'm sure Lilith Victoria smells amazing.

Alice has been sending me progressively better black-and-white sketches of the twins today. Her timing could not have been better. I'm feeling so down. Sir is cranky, the dog is misbehaving, my body aches from the sudden cool, damp weather, and I'm headachey and tense from working on this paid project. I'm supposed to have this thing done as close to tomorrow as I can and my brain is SO FOGGY. aagh.

I think I'm getting old. I don't respond to erotica the way I used to. Oh sure, I like a good stroke story as much as the next person, but lately they don't do much for me. It all reads a bit too much like "Dear Penthouse, I never thought it could happen to me..."

I've been putting off trying Clemence. Her first note, after all, is patchouli, and that has not worked out well for me among the Grindhouse ladies. All of her notes:

Patchouli, Kashmiri tea, cardamom, black pepper, carnation, and clove.

And now that I've gone to write the review, the imp has gone missing! I'll have to rely on memory and the scent remaining on my wrist.

In the imp: A bright, not unpleasant patchouli, reminiscent of my days in Eugene when patchouli was fresh and new.

Well, not exactly. Sorry to disappoint. But tomorrow is my stop on the virtual blog tour for Rachel Kramer Bussell's latest anthology, "Spanked," which, and stop me if you've guessed, is about the delights of getting whacked on the hinder. Tune in tomorrow for the review.

Here are the other stops on the tour:

I watched Barak Obama's speech tonight. It was a good speech. My friend sitting with me teared up several times, but my eyes stayed dry--until just after the speech was over. The viewpoint moved among the crowds, cutting from one camera to another, and finally settled for a moment on two women. One was black and one was white. The black woman was supporting the white woman on her shoulder, both looking toward the stage with quiet tears streaming down their faces.

That's when I teared up.

Chapter 26, you nearly ended me. I had about half a page written. I didn't like it, but I had so little time left. I showed it to A and she essentially said, yeah, pretty much sucks. In conversation with her I found where I wanted to go with it, and it took me four more attempts to get my feet under me and find the path through the chapter. So here's to A, without whom the chapter wouldn't have gotten written.

Four bottles of squee in the box, four bottles of squeeee...

Yes, I'm down to the last four imps of this batch of CD limited editions. So let's get down to it with Cytherea, shall we? This morceau from the boite de bonbon is:

White sandalwood, patchouli, white amber, orris, bourbon vanilla, champaca flower, and kush.

Sandalwood, amber, vanilla. All promising. Patchouli, champaca and kush foretell of the headshop effect, so we'll see.

Alice the Artist (not Allis the Embodiment) had an equipment malfunction and so is running behind on the character study of Allis and Issak. I'm hoping I'll get the b/w proof some time this week.