So.

Yesterday, as you might have guessed from my steel-toothed sarcasm, I found six people had copied stories and poems of mine from various online magazines or my own website and pasted them into their blogs. Now, on one hand, I’m tremendously flattered. But on the other, I’m literally a starving writer and I need to be paid for every publication. I don’t think people realize that they are violating copyright and, if they do know, I don’t think they realize they can get caught. Easily.

I’m a bit tired. I’ve been running all over creation, calling anyone and everyone, as I’m trying to leave this Thursday. British Airways is being the devil and making my already 25-hour trip as difficult as possible with all their new regulations. I spent $50 on another laptop bag that met their size requirements. Later, I’ll post an amusing story about how I got a knife on a JetBlue flight last week. Truly, how effective IS all this crap?

But I’m considering that this copyright pursuit might be a waste of my time. I’ve got much bigger issues to wrestle now, and I can’t keep this up. It’s no wonder people give up eventually.

I should be writing, but I’m spending all my free minutes with my astrological charts. My “birthday” chart is particularly striking: five planets in Leo, including a “new moon” in the 5th House (creativity, romance, gambling and children); Pluto in the 9th (long distance travel and publishing); Jupiter in the 7th (partnerships, appearing before the public); and the chart ruler, Mars, basically getting the astro-shit kicked out of it with a square from Pluto and an opposition from Uranus, not to mention it’s in Virgo, one of the most debilitated signs for that planet. That’s my tropical — my precessed (sidereal) chart is positively eye-popping from a career standpoint.

One month ago, my agent sent the proposal for my Top Secret Project to all the top publishers. No news is good news, right? I’m trying not to worry. I’m trying to take this birthday chart as a (mostly) good omen about the coming year. Life in Provence might be incredible on lots of levels. At least, that’s what I’m hoping…