Personal Digest Saturday: September 13 – 19

Life news this week: 

• I got a Starred Review from Library Journal, which is a BIG DEAL! Definitely will help with sales.
  
  
• And speaking of sales, the next day after I got that review, I got an interview appearing in Salon. I was thrilled to get the interview but definitely steeled myself for what I always know will happen with mainstream press. That happened. It's kind of sad that the first time I got interviewed by them was in 2005 and the comments have not changed much at all. Hundreds of invalidating comments appeared, mostly from people who were apparently outraged that an asexual person would ever date a non-asexual person and DEPRIVE THEM so CRUELLY. (One described it as "passive-aggressive at best." Yeah, and I guess the centuries of asexual people feeling forced to submit to sexual demands aren't worth mentioning here; we all know WE, the SEX-DENIERS, are the heartless ones, and people who want to have relationships with us obviously completely lack the usual adult capacities to negotiate compromises!) I even got one angry woman who dug up my personal e-mail and wrote me a short scolding about how I "need help" and must immediately get myself to therapy.
• The Salon piece translated to multiple media requests. I have now been invited on five podcasts and a TV show. Eep.
• I spent part of the past weekend writing another short piece about asexuality, but the person I submitted it to didn't want it. Aw!

• I spent Saturday doing two things: Writing e-mail to Jay and editing three chapters of my alternate's book. Entire. Day. Except for a little reading.
• Relatedly, I read my agent's book; she's also an author. She's a good writer.

• I edited a friend's story this week because he wants to send it to a magazine and it was too long. I know, right? You want something shorter and you ask ME? Well, I have experience with that. Yes, I got it under the word count cap for him. :)
• REALLY busy work week. My company got shortlisted on something and we're trying to prepare for our interview, so lots of work for me--mostly on something I'm not very good at (reading maps and finding intersections) so it took me a long time.
• I ate at Moe's with Jeaux this week. We went to his house to watch the finale of America's Got Talent and listened to Night Vale.

Places featured:

• "You're About as Sexually Attractive to Me as a Turtle: Coming Out as Asexual in a Hypersexual Culture": Me in Salon. The article was also recycled on Alternet.org and on Salon's Tumblr.
• Interesting Article About Asexuality: Author Kristin Cashore wrote about the article I was in.
• Non-fiction versus Fiction part 2: The Literary Engineer posted Part Two of an interview with me about my experience as an author who writes both fiction and non.
• Nerdygirlchique was the winner of my book from the Asexuality Blog's Giveaway.
• I was on the Asexual Agenda's linkspam again with a reference to my Salon article.
• The Anxious Writer plugs the Salon article and claims you should never read the comments on articles about asexuality. (Yep.)

Reviews:

• Library Journal: Starred Review. (It will be on their actual site soon, but this is the text for it.)
• The Invisible Orientation: Kendra Holliday, one of my blurbers, reviewed the book on her blog, in a little more depth than her blurb went. Someone in the comments said Paula Poundstone knows who I am. (Paula is asexual. And apparently is having conversations about me with her colleagues. o_O)
• I know there are a lot of people like me out there who don't understand asexuality: This is Kendra's five-star review on Amazon.
• A GREAT Introduction to Asexuality for the Novice: B. Bergstrom "Dulcet" gave me five stars on Amazon. He also reviewed the book on Goodreads.
• A Great Book On An Unknown Orientation: Eliott Devine "RabidSquirel" gave me five stars on Amazon.

Reading progress:

• Finished Divinity by Michelle L. Johnson. ★★★★ (Four-star review)
• Currently reading The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson.

New singing performances:

I think my answer to the question of "Who Owns My Heart?" is the "art" option. :)




New drawings:

Webcomic Negative One Issue 0488: "Nobody's Mad."

New videos:

None. I'm a little busy right now you know.

New photos:

Well, I did take one silly photo at work while wearing Hello Kitty earmuffs:

And I also have my haircut comparison photos:

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Social media counts:

YouTube subscribers: 3,828 for swankivy (38 new this week), 380 for JulieSondra (5 new). Twitter followers: 547 for swankivy (6 new), 727 for JulieSondra (17 new). Facebook: 269 friends (lost one--apparently the person who re-friend-requested me last week decided to drop me again) and 138 followers (2 new) for swankivy, 431 likes for JulieSondra (33 new--I mentioned that I was close to 400 last week and a bunch of people liked the page), 48 likes for Negative One (no change), 83 likes for So You Write (3 new). Tumblr followers: 1,534 (19 new).