hopeful* Dawn Taylor (
coffeeinhell) is stepping up her Polidori Chocolates production while in between jobs. She makes goooooooooooooood chocolate. I've eaten it and can vouch for it, as can chocolate appreciaters shadesong, yendi, s00j, Rick Emerson, and Cort and Fatboy, and those are just the names off the top of my head.And Dawn's added a new chocolatey weapon to her chocolatey arsenal: S'mores kits. These join her Seven Deadly Sins chocolate assortments and her H.P. Lovecraft truffles. Check out her online shop. (Mom, Dad, seriously, you might want to try Dawn's stuff.)
* Author Catherynne M. Valente (
catvalente) and her fiancé, programmer Dmitri (justbeast), are also in a financial tight spot, one they're trying to get out of by A) finding justbeast a computer programming job and B) a writing-fundraising project. Valente will write a Young Adult novel, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, which she'll publish one chapter at a time online for donations. (Interestingly, it's a novel-within-a-novel that ties into her decidedly Adult novel Palimpsest: so Fairyland is sort of The Sarah Jane Adventures to Palimpsest's Torchwood. (For those like Mom and Dad who don't know what I'm talking about, Torchwood is a Doctor Who spinoff for mature audiences, and The Sarah Jane Adventures is a Doctor Who spinoff for younger audiences.)) I met catvalente and justbeast in April; they're good people.(As a bonus,
justbeast is translating Russian fairy tales and posting them to his journal, starting here.)There. Chorus joined. In both cases, you get somethin', they get somethin'. Very fair.