Insomnia. Again.*
Yes, dear friends and Readers, it’s three AM. The fan is on. And I am so far away from sleep it isn’t funny.
This past weekend I’ve been through the wringer on an emotional level. No, nothing screamingly, physically-dangerous-horrible happened, but last week was unpleasant for a variety of reasons. The thing about having family is that when there is danger, of a physical or emotional sort, the family comes together like raindrops on a window. Or mercury on a flat surface. Or something. But the snap-back from that coming together is hard, especially when one is required to be the Calm Centre, the counterweight around which the Little People, the DHM, and the UnSullen One whirl.
So many of my heroes keep a straight face and a cool head in the middle of crisis. I don’t LIKE my heroes–they’re mostly bastards, and if I don’t outright hate a hero my beta readers start checking me for head trauma–but I sometimes identify with their struggle to protect and their need to keep utterly unemotional when dealing with Crud Happening. One deals with the crisis with as much sangfroid as one can scrape together. Afterwards, one may lock oneself in the loo and shake for a week. Once the danger passes.
The trouble with that is that no matter how hard one tries to be cool, some deconstruction under stress is inevitable. It must be managed. And it is very difficult to let go of the control-freakery so the shaking and the comedown from adrenaline poisoning can occur. I suspect it grows incrementally more difficult each time. Part of the trouble is that it is very easy to slide into believing that one cannot afford to let down the guard even for an instant or Terrible Things will happen. The pressure mounts and mounts, and without a release or at least a relaxation things can get very grim indeed.
A sense of humor and several Monty Python episodes are wonderful antidotes to this. However, the insomnia is, I suspect, a symptom that I have not quite had the release of pressure necessary to make me a reasonable human being again.
The weekend hasn’t been bad, despite the snapback and the lack of internet. (Don’t laugh. I LIVE out of my email, it’s my primary link to the world. Especially since I am phone-phobic. Isn’t that funny.) I discovered Stendhal this past weekend, reading a lovely translation of Scarlet and Black.
Brief aside: HOW DID I LIVE THIS LONG WITHOUT READING STENDHAL? The mind boggles. Finding an author one can adore almost from the first page is a rare and happy occurrence, pursued by every inkstained wretch as ardently as Casanova ever did chase a skirt.
Anyway, the translation was one of those old Penguin editions, a green trade-paper lovely with uncut pages. *shivers with delight* (I really must get a book knife. Using a butterknife feels so…uncouth.) Next I will be trying a newer Penguin translation of The Charterhouse of Parma. I am particularly looking forward to the famous description of Waterloo.
Yes. I’m a nerd. I’m sorry. I just can’t contain it. I just found out I have two copies of a collection of Dryden, too. And I was happy about it. There’s just no hope. I’m a terminal case.
Because the gods love me, not only did I get a copy of The Electric Church** (hahahahaha! There are ADVANTAGES to being in the publishing industry! *evil laugh*) in the mail today, but I also finished reading a new Jack Fleming novel. I love P.N. Elrod’s work and used to shelve her at the very first bookstore I worked at. It was with great pleasure that I read a signed copy of a manuscript.
*happy sigh* Some days it is very, very good to be me. The career, it is marvelous.
I’m going to go take a whack at more Stendhal. If I’m going to be up, I might at least employ my time reasonably well…what’s that?
The writing? Sheesh. Jill’s stuck standing in the entryway to a gang-leader’s house, with a Were and some punk kid named Paquito. Once I figure out what the gang has to do with the story it will be full speed ahead. Until then, though, I’ve been whacking at the current Watcher novel. No, I don’t know when Mindhealer will be out. They tell me nothing, you understand. I just churn out the potboilers and send them, reeking of newborn sludge, to the agent and the editor. After that I have no say in things at all.
No, I’m not bitter. It’s probably best that way, you know. Otherwise I’d be trying to finish five books at once, instead of just three.
Crud. No wonder I can’t sleep.
*This post has been brought to you under circumstances best defined as “trying.” My apologies for incoherency.
**Which Jeff Somers will autograph for me, or I shall be most vexed. And after the incident with the drinking napalm, the sword-swallower, and the shipment of red rubber thongs, we don’t like to see Lili vexed, do we, Monsieur Somers?
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