Legend fan art, Comic-con, and food poisoning

(Reposted from my deviantArt blog)

Had a rough bout of food poisoning early last weekend, one bad enough to actually give me a minor stomach ulcer. WUT. O___o Not the most comfortable feeling in the world. Anyway, when I went to my local urgent care to get it checked out (to make sure I wasn't dying or something), the male nurse led me to one of their back rooms:

Nurse: "Wait here. The doctor will be in to see you shortly."
Me: "Okay."
Nurse: (hands me a thick wad of that hospital butcher paper) "I'll need you to take off your pants."
Me: "Excuse me?"
Nurse: "You'll need to remove your pants. Wrap this around you when you're done."
(nurse leaves)

In hindsight, I found this hilarious because I'd just recently rewatched that Family Guy episode which makes fun of this, i.e. no matter what you go in for, you have to take off your pants. Turns out they just wanted to poke my stomach without, like, belts in the way or something. But I swear the doctor could tell I was giving him the EVIL EYE the entire time, my hands ready to go into ninja battle chop mode.

Anyway. TMI? Yeah, probably. Whatever. I'll delete this story later.

:)

In other news, I will be on a panel at Comic-con! On Thursday at 4pm, I'll be on the "No Damsels in Distress Here" panel in room 25ABC, talking about Legend. If you're attending, please come by! Other panelists presenting with me include the amazing Kathy Reichs, creator of Bones (the TV series). Here are the panel details:

4:00-5:00 No Damsels in Distress Here— Female voices in sci-fi and fantasy create kick-ass heroines. Danger just might be these girls’ middle name. But no amount of bad guys can keep these ladies from doing what’s right. Whether standing up for friends and family, or just plain kicking some ass, these girls don’t shy away from a fight. Damsels on the panel include Marie Lu (Legend), Kathy Reichs (Bones & Virals series), Chloe Neill (Chicagoland Vampires series), Jeanne Stein (The Anna Strong Chronicles), Merrie deStefano (Feast: Harvest of Dreams), Carrie Vaughn (Kitty Norville series), Seanan McGuire (The October Daye series), and Sherrilyn Kenyon (Dark Hunter novels). Moderated by Maryelizabeth Hart of Mysterious Galaxy. Room 25ABC

And in other very awesome news, check out this BEAUTIFUL fan art of Day, by Dianne Garcia!!!! This is the first official fan art of Day from Legend, and I am so incredibly psyched. Look at all those watercolor details! And the hair! The smug expression! The vest, the background! The posture! I love everything about this. The attitude screams Day. LOVE IT!

Made it (for now)

2,003 words today. Whew! I'm still (sort of) on track for NanoWrimo. This year I decided that I'd participate loosely in Nano, but that I won't beat myself up if I don't get my 1,700+ daily word count. So far I've been doing well for the last 3 days, but that'll change once Thanksgiving week rolls around. I made a deal with myself that my required daily words are 1,000, but that if I can, I'll shoot for more. Let's see how long I can go like this.

Anyway, tonight's chapter starred my boy criminal protag Day and his young friend Tess. Poor Tess. I make her go through so much crap. :) Also, I realized after working on a bit of exposition that I had left an entire state out of the Republic (in other words, the dystopic western U.S. in LEGEND): Wyoming. Whatever happened to Wyoming? It's like Nevada and South Dakota just swallowed it up in my brain and I completely forgot about it. Sorry, Wyoming-ans out there. You're back in. :)