The groundhog known as Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators, and Weather Prophet Extraordinary (no seriously, that is his full title) has declared winter to be over, and I am simultaneously thrilled, skeptical, and trying desperately not to think about the terrifying changes in our global climate.

I love spring. Spring brings t-shirts and eventually tank tops, trips out to Seattle’s beautiful parks, and the start of convention season. Convention season brings cosplay, (hopefully) press passes, and (again, hopefully) panels! And all of those mean prep work. Lots and lots of prep work. I’ve submitted three panels for Sakura Con – one about abuse in shoujo manga, one about female directors, and one about strong vs. complex female characters – and each one requires a metric fuckton of research. I won’t know for another couple weeks if they’ve actually been accepted, but I figure at least I have a decent shot of getting at least one or two of them in and I won’t get done in time if I wait to hear back before I start work.

So what does this mean? You may have noticed the title of this post: semi-hiatus. That means I’m not going to be keeping up with the twice-weekly update schedule while I work on these because I’m a pretty slow writer and trying to do con prep and write a few thousand words per week is too much for me. I’ll still update when something piques my interest – I have a post about Read or Die in the pipeline – but maybe more like one every two weeks.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to see some of you at Sakura Con!