Got a wonderful blurb from the essayist Sonja Livingston.

Blurbs from three writers that I endlessly admire and that all have something to do with the book: Jayne Anne Phillips, Jill Talbot, Sonja Livingston. Two I didn't know personally. I'm very grateful

And I got some amazing news about my very short fiction collection (flash and short stories, just over 100 pages)  that I'm superstitious about posting until I have a contract in my hand. Very unexpected.

Copyedited manuscript of THE LUNATICS' BALL is due today and I'm finished, just looking it over again since this is the final deadline for any changes at all. Managed to do some quotation-checking and fact-checking as I went over the edits, which is a relief to me. A few tweaks there, nothing major, but one to a poem, and ideally there won't be a single error. I hear there are always errors, though.

I just received three wonderful blurbs from Jill Talbot: one short, one long, and third long one specifically for essayists. And an offer to do an interview later, which would be totally great.

Heard also that her ESSAY FORM(S) anthology/textbook won't be coming out with Columbia University Press, which is too bad, since it sounded like a great book. I hope she'll try to place it elsewhere.

What's the term for getting harassed online? More than harassed, really. When someone unleashes a torrent of vitriol. I blocked someone on Facebook who went after me for a post I did on the translators' takedown of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Two vicious long posts in my comments and then another in my private Facebook DMs. I was really shaken for a day or two. But now I can look back and laugh at my new epithet: he called me a "virago"! 

The OED has a great essay on the history and connotations of "virago.," which "is used in two core senses, both referring to women. One meaning is usually positive and refers to a female warrior or a woman who otherwise displays admirable, manly qualities; the other meaning is derogatory, referring to a woman who is overbearing, violent, or bad-tempered." I see that Merriam-Webster also has two definitions for "virago": "a loud overbearing woman" (really it was a pretty mild post, albeit critical) or "a woman of great stature, strength, and courage." I'll take it.