Stability Underfoot

I just want to stay in bed reading schlock and playing AbyssRium today. Unfortunately, the flu–I’m pretty sure it was flu, I certainly ached all over for it–has abated, which means I’m back to running. One cannot do that while snuggling in bed, and Miss B, in forced leisure while I hacked, coughed, and shivered, is brimming with energy that needs to be worked off. Otherwise she will find herself Jobs Around The House, and they will likely involve Things Mum Does Not Want Done. I won’t be cross with her for them, because she is Dog and Dog Can’t Help It, but I will be rather cross with myself for being a lazy puppy mum and not providing proper work for her.

The snow and freezing rain all melted off. There was a day when I couldn’t tell if it was raining or if the stuff falling from the sky was melting ice from the tree branches. The trunks were lathered with bubbles, there was so much water running everywhere. We live on a hill, and often the only thing keeping us from sliding down it are the fir trees. They take up an amazing amount of water, and when people higher on the hill cut down a lot of their trees I could really tell the difference in the runoff. Idiots. Branches on the roof are a small price to pay for stability underfoot.

I spent the weekend doing a revise on Harmony before sending it off to my agent and writing partner. It’s not going to see publication, I wrote it specifically and only because my agent wanted to read more YA from me and I wanted to give her a gift. Pretty much the only gift I do not suck at giving is my time and stories, so I invested heavily in this one. I hope she likes it. And my writing partner got it because, well, she kept me sane during finding said time to finish it. I agonized over spending time on it instead of a paying project, mostly because after the Steelflower fiasco and the concomitant financial hit things are tight.

I did try to open up the Steelflower 2 file on Sunday, just to see if the physical reaction had gone down. It hasn’t; I shook and dry-heaved into my office rubbish bin. The feeling of violation is as strong as ever, and I am despairing of it ever going away.

Anyway, I have Cormorant Run copyedits to deal with this week, and Afterwar wordcount to get in. There’s no such thing as a day off for the foreseeable future. I’m also contemplating a serial for my Patreon folks once the new year is here. If you’re interested in that sort of thing. I just have to decide which story simmering in the back of my head will do for such a thing.

And now, it’s time to get out the door and run. Gently and easily, but enough to work off Miss B’s fidgets and make her livable again. She knows, since I’m in my running togs, and is being Very Patient while I sit in front of the glowing magic box. The ways of the Hoomin Monkeys are strange to her, and she tries very hard to be patient, indeed. The need for action is twitching and trembling under her skin, and mine as well. Odd Trundles could also do with a constitutional, since it’s been too cold and slipper for his short-haired, clumsy self lately, poor fellow.

Off I go.

Stump Cake

A lot of schools have gotten rid of what we used to call Home Ec–classes that teach all sorts of useful skills, from how to wash a goddamn dish to basic sewing. the replacements have either been nothing, or a variety of class meant to turn kids into effective fast-food workers, mostly by having them work in the lunchroom. Which is all sorts of OMG.

The Princess’s high school, however, actually has quite a good program to teach kids basic kitchen etiquette and use. It was a revelation to her, finding out so many of her classmates had no idea how to handle a knife or clean a stove. She and the Prince have been in the kitchen with me their entire lives, either watching or helping out in whatever age-appropriate fashion they could. My experiments in cooking, once I got over my own childhood fears and angsts, no doubt helped. It was kind of weird, seeing how few kids knew even basic things, like how to cream butter and sugar. There are reasons for that, of course–wage stagnation means cooking at home is more of a time-drain than even many two income households can afford.

One of the interesting things the Princess learned was how to make a variety of Stump Cake. The teacher valiantly tried to instill some aesthetic and pastry-making basics into a group of teenagers, but finicky fondant was (and is) a nonstarter for that age group. However, the basic idea–FOUR LAYERS OF CHOCOLATE CAKE! EAT IT WITH YOUR CHAINSAW FINGERS!–is intriguing enough by itself to make the stump cake a frequent project around these parts.

The Princess had Monday off from work, and had brought home cocoa. Needless to say, after her leisurely lie-in and brekkie, she began mixing, baking, pouring, and making parchment-paper frosting cones to practice her piping. The result was SO. MUCH. CHOCOLATE. CAKE.

I know, I know, a great problem to have. I’m pretty sure my blood’s been replaced by pure syrup. I REGRET NOTHING.

Pendulum, Post

wonder-woman Afterwar continues to fight me. Or more precisely, I continue to keep chipping away at it, my vision of what it should be interfering with what the book actually is, and once again I must learn submission to the shape of that is. I’ve had a good run of bookage I didn’t have to fight myself to carve free, lately, but this one seems fair to break that.

Part of the problem is that 2016 has been a very bad year. Death of loved ones both mine and others’, fascism stalking the land, intense stress, bad luck…the hits just keep on coming, and I keep hoping things will turn around. I am wavering between violent grief and equally violent hope, and both are bad for my nerves.

The other part of the problem is that this book is big and complex, and while I don’t have the entire shape of it, I know it’s larger than anything I’ve done so far. I get damn near paralyzed by the sheer size of the obstacle, forgetting I can break it into small chunks. When I do remember about the small chunks, there are so many of them scattered on the floor around me I get paralyzed by their sheer number. So I oscillate between too much detail and too much big-picture, with spates of furious working when the pendulum is passing between those two points. Once I get the first 50K of the book out of the way, some of the panic will be ameliorated, but…that’s a ways away.

With most books, the fear is, “I’m never going to finish and it will be crap anyway if I manage to do so.” This one is a heaping helping of “Oh, I’ll finish but it will be awful and the publisher will hate it and I’ll have to sell the house and THE SUN WILL GO OUT AND WE’LL ALL DIE.” So, you know, at least it’s something new to be afraid of? Every book is different, they all terrify one in different ways, it’s enough to make me type “why does Wonder Woman even bother” into Google just for a laugh.

Of course, Wonder Woman does bother. She bothers to do superhero things all the time, because it’s who she is. There’s a certain amount of comfort in answering one’s own silly question so definitively. Right now I’m just telling myself that even the worst years end, and at least 2016 isn’t the Year of the Divorce (which was bloody awful), and that I will finish Afterwar because I have no choice and even if it’s horrid, it will not be horrid and unfinished, and I can work with a whole corpse.

It’s not much, but it gets me through daily wordcount.

There is still no snow. There’s a bit of sunshine, which means it’s cold and clear. The hacking cough means I haven’t been running, but perhaps I can venture out for a short walk with Miss B, who is FULL OF ENERGY and does not understand why I am so slow and making such awful sounds at short intervals. She veers between worry and twitchiness, sort of like her owner.

Well. Time to wrap myself in a blanket and get the morning’s wordcount underway. Let’s hope the waning days of 2016 hold no more shocks or bad luck, hm?

Over and out.

Winter Mix

stabbity The weather report was full of breathless almost-promises of snow, but alas, there’s nary a flake to be found. Which is good, really–everyone goes goddamn crazy around here whenever the weather changes at all. Sunny day after a string of rain? Crazed driving. The first real rain after summer parching? Crazy driving. A single snowflake reported by Aunt Betty’s cousin’s friend? SUPER CRAZED DRIVING. So I don’t exactly wish for snow, but it would have been nice to have school canceled and everyone home for the day. There could have been baked goods and hot cocoa.

I mean, there still could be, really. Especially since I just looked out the window and there’s some kind of wintry mix thing happening.

I spent the weekend in a fog of cold meds and physical misery. I’m still not feeling tiptop. I haven’t been on a run for almost a week now, but I don’t feel jumpy or twitchy, which means…yeah, still sick. A box and a half of tissues and a whole lot of Mucinex later, I ended up losing my voice. Upon reflection, I probably should have just stayed in bed for a day or so, but that’s not an option.

So today I’m going to bundle up, make a metric tonne of hot tea–probably use up a lot of lemon verbena, since the Selkie gave me a full tin of it–and try not to cough my lungs out. Fortunately I’m not feeling half-dead, just quarter-dead and congested, and if I have to I can summon up a raspy croak of a voice that could star in a horror movie. (“They call me…THE LARYNX.”) Another bright spot: my hair is long enough, finally, that my nape is kept warm on cold days. Except right after my shower. I don’t care what happens, I am NEVER shaving my head again.

Even Miss B seems to have caught the spirit of the day. She’s curled up next to the heater in my office instead of nosing me to get me out the door to run off some of her energy. She’s been worried, since I’ve been hacking and coughing and croaking. There’s nothing quite like an Australian shepherd insisting on shoving her nose in your face to sniff your breath and your runny nose before informing you with a head tilt and raised fuzzy eyebrows that you’re sick and she plans on herding you to the couch and keeping you there. Odd Trundles, of course, is nesting amid the pillows on my bed, cuddling with a teddy bear.

What? No, it’s not his teddy bear. It’s mine, and no, there’s no picture, he’s paparazzi-shy. I’m just hoping Odd doesn’t take it into his head to eat said comfortable, comforting, plushie toy.

Just glanced out the office window again. Still no snow. Just a pile of work ahead of me on Afterwar, and not enough tissues to last the day.

Over and out.

Soup

stock-without-water

I’m coughing, hacking, spitting, and blowing my nose every five minutes. Sometimes all at once, which is an interesting sensation, let me tell you. So it’s soup, all the soup, all the time.

The Thanksgiving ham has been denuded, stock has been made. Today I simmer the rest of the bone for split-pea soup. There may even be biscuits involved, depending on my energy level. Either way, it will slide easily down into my stomach, and warm me from the inside out.

*shuffles away, coughing*

Not Winning, Winning

I didn’t “win” NaNo this year. Well, I mean, technically I produced 70K in wordage, but 50K of that was spent on finishing the zero of Harmony. Which will never get published, goddammit, and is also not the NaNo goal I set myself.

Ah well. Win some, lose some. November was a hideous fucking month, for obvious reasons.

On the bright side, the zero draft of Harmony is finished, and Afterwar just broke 20K. The characters in the latter are beginning to do just as they please instead of what I’d prefer, so that’s a good sign. And I finally found a volunteer spot! Lots of places were swamped with volunteer candidates after the election, but I managed to find a place where I can do some good. So that gives me a warm fuzzy.

It’s getting chillier, and local squirrels are becoming braver. The Princess has sent me pictures of them crouching on the deck, eyeing the French door balefully. She’s not yet nervous, although I think she should be, because she sends those pictures when she’s at the table. I think the squirrels are trying to figure out how to break through said door and knock her down, preparatory to stealing whatever she’s snacking on at the time. She thinks I’m being ridiculous, and that there is no way a squirrel could break into our house.

Youth and optimism, right?

The library finally got a copy of The Angel of History for me to attempt. I bounced pretty hard off Alameddine’s first book, but I’m hoping this one will be the magic door. I also picked up another translation of Death in Venice, which I should read first while the other is still fresh in my head for the compare/contrast. So that’s my week’s reading sorted. Maybe, if this cold gets worse, I’ll put flannel sheets on my bed and just…retreat, for a day.

HA, WHO AM I KIDDING? I can’t afford to take a day off. Also, we’ve run out of tissues, so I’d be getting up every five minutes to blow my nose with toilet tissue. I refuse to put a roll of the latter next to my bed, for God’s sake. I’m not nearly ill enough for that.

Still, it’s nice to think of flannel sheets, lots of hot tea, and the luxury of simply reading for hours. One day I’ll set aside time just for that.

Right now, though, it’s back to work. I may not have won NaNo, but I still finished something, and that’s a spur to finish more. Winning enough for me, at least.

The State of the (Reading) Lili

Manuscript

It was a long weekend, my friends. The best part was Quasi-Surprise Houseguests, and the kids got to go see Fantastic Beasts. I did not want to go–I’m all Pottered out, I think. Besides, putting Eddie Redmayne (and his lips) in everything is beginning to wear on my nerves a bit. He’s a good actor, but I’ve reached full saturation on him for a while. But hey, the kids liked it! I’m told it’s very visually stunning.

Instead, I spent the movie evening at home with Mann’s Death in Venice, finishing it the next morning as I stood in my office, spellbound. I’d never read any Mann before, and this was the Heim translation, which I’m told differs significantly from an older one. Now I suspect I’ll have to compare/contrast translations. It’s sad that I can’t read it in the original, a German-speaking friend tells me the sentences are marvelous bits of architecture.

I went straight from that into a book on the Korean War, but I bounced off that pretty quickly. There was a passage of breathtaking racism, not from an interview but from the author, and that killed it for me. I’ve moved on to Reza Aslan’s Zealot and Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed; the former is extremely readable and I’m hoping the latter will scratch my itch for something similar to Sir Walter Scott.

My bedtime reading, however, is Schom’s The Eagle and the Rising Sun, which is also eminently readable. Schom has an eye for human details, and though at least one reviewer got snitty about it, I enjoy my history with such little pleats and finishes sprinkled through. I hadn’t quite realized what an asshole MacArthur was in the Second World War. In the First he was a hero, there is no doubt. In the Second, well. Schom is clear about the old-boy network that protected MacArthur from the consequences of his actions, compounding the error and basically spitting on those who died as a direct result of his malfeasance and arrogance.

My Civil War research for Afterwar has reached a bit of a snag. I was halfway through Stampp on slavery in the antebellum South, but I had to lay that aside for a little bit. Current events make it even more stomach-churning than normal. Maybe when I finish the Manzoni I’ll be able to handle it emotionally. I think I have enough stuffed in my head that I just need to let it bubble and start finding my handholds inside the shape of the story itself. Later I’ll research for specifics and work my way through the backlog, but I need a breath or two before the plunge, so to speak.

I started logging my reading in an Excel spreadsheet a couple years back. It sometimes provides a necessary spur, but my inability to make charts of the information is maddening. It’s not Excel’s fault, it’s a function of my own complete non-understanding of even the most basic spreadsheet things, which drives me even crazier. I dislike being awful at things (who doesn’t?) and it would be nice to see, for example, how male and female authors stack up in my yearly reading total. So far this year, I’ve only finished forty-four books, but in my defense, that includes monstrous ones like War & Peace and Foote’s Civil War trilogy. I’d love to go at the moderate pace of a book a week, but life interferes. *sigh*

For now, it’s Monday, and that means a run and the creation of more words. I was able to luxuriate in reading for the past two days, but now it’s back to producing. Fueled, the engine inside my head is already at a high rev. It’s time for Callas singing Medea and some initial wordcount before I run to jar the rest of the day’s work loose.

Over and out.