Lilith Saintcrow

What an interesting weekend.

Saturday I worked, got a lot of busyness done, and then took the Princess to see The Golden Compass. Which was an okay film–the panzerbjorn armor was NOT all it could be, and the book was ever so much better. On the other hand, Daniel Craig is SO PRETTY, the witches were exactly what they were supposed to be, daemons were cool (but not nearly featured enough in every scene) and the kid playing Lyra was all right. She wasn’t the sort of child star one wants to smack. The Princess was mighty happy and cuddled up to Mummy during scary scenes, and she’s still digesting the film. The steam-punkiness of it was a nice visual treat. I’m still waiting to see how they handle the Gay Angels later on in the series.

I also went and took the Princess to spit in the face of the Religious Right. How dare they get all “het up” over the movie without even bloody seeing it or reading the Pullman books? They just have to have a new crusade every once in a while, or they start turning on their own.

But enough of that, we all know my feelings on fanatics.

Behind the cut: a long post including reviews and a Rant.

(more…)

Cross-posted because, well, my brain is once again oatmeal.

I ordered and received a copy of the fifth and final Dante Valentine book, To Hell And Back, from Amazon today. (Well, I ordered it two days ago, and it came today.) I’ve also received independent confirmation from other Readers that it’s shipping through Barnes & Noble as well.

I’m sure some Readers are going to be angry and others are going to be happy, but what I’m feeling right now is huge relief. Once a book goes live, it’s out of my hands. Of course a writer always wants to revise everything, even the printed version; there’s always some way you can make it better. Or so one thinks, as one keeps growing as a writer–which is, after all, the point.

But once the book is on the shelf, I feel a massive relief. The performance anxiety is over, it’s on stage, it’s put up or shut up time. It’s like stepping out under the lights, out from the wings, and having the audience’s attention. All the training in the world won’t stop the butterflies, but there’s nothing you can do now. You’re committed, for better or for worse. You have drawn your sword and made your move.

I thought I would take this moment, having finished a very tight five-book arc, to talk about what it means to say goodbye to those characters.

It’s wrenching.

For five years I was always boiling with the next book, or in the revisions stage, or in the heat of creation. The characters were not only in my head, they were living with me, ordering Chinese food and putting out their cigarettes in my ashtrays. They were always there, a subsonic song under all the other daily noise in my head, and having their story finished and on the shelves is very much like seeing people you’ve lived with finally move all their stuff out. One is left looking at empty spaces and dust bunnies.

There is a grieving process, and I suspect that grieving process was made more intense by the fact that I was under tight deadline for the fifth and final book. It gave me no time to think about what would happen once the blade fell and the story was finished, gone, finito. I would not have traded the experience for anything–it was a tremendous rocketsled ride from beginning to finish, and I enjoyed every goddamn second of it.

I enjoyed the taste of dread and adrenaline, the wondering if anyone would like this crazy tale eating up my brain, the long walks playing music for the characters through my Ipod and plotting out scenes in my head. I enjoyed sleepless nights over revisions and the beat-your-brain-against-the-wall of tying together plot strands. I loved writing those books, dammit. If they have gone wrong, if I have faltered somehow in telling the tale, it was for no other reason than I am a flawed person, and of course the art’s going to be flawed, m’dear. The agony of being a creative is seeing so clearly what one wants to accomplish and failing, sometimes, to capture the details of perfection in one’s head.

That being said, I don’t think I did a half bad job. There’s some things in the books that I reread and I don’t remember writing, gifts the Muse dropped in my lap with her usual nonchalance, scenes that made me cry while I wrote them and still tear me up when I read them. Whatever errors were made, were made with love.

Publishing being what it is, no book is created in a vacuum. There were the people who kept me sane while writing, there was the agent who believed so strongly in the tale and in me, there was the editor who fought for me and cared for the books the way a dedicated gardener cares for a huge garden. There were the copyeditors who went over every word, the editorial assistant who took my frantic calls, the cover artists and art departments and the ever-faithful, unsung heroes of Production, who get the book from egg to quiche. There were the reassurances from friends and family, both blood and chosen, that kept me on the rails. There were gifts from strangers and Readers alike.

So for me it’s time to say goodbye to Dante Valentine. She wasn’t a comfortable person to hang around, but I think we taught each other a few things. I certainly learned a lot. Now I can only hope that the Reader likes it, that the tale will find a kind ear. Or two.

Once one finishes any massive undertaking, there’s a point where one has to sit back, look back at the slope of the mountain just climbed, and think some version of, holy %$#&, I did THAT? I must have been nuts! Which is, I suppose, where I’m at. I put all five of the books together earlier tonight and looked at them. Five books, all in a row. A story told as best as I knew how. Something I can point to and say, my God, I did that.

You know what?

It’s one of the best feelings in the world.

Thank you. Thank you all.

Ever have one of those days when the minutiae of daily life just threatens to drown one? Dishes to be done. Laundry. Really should hoover. Prince needs his reading lesson and Princess…well, if I could get the games I bought to work on her computer life would be just Swell. Ducky, in fact. Not to mention the loos both need scrubbing since five people are using them and the gutters really need those leaves dragged out before the rain comes back and, and, and…

Sometimes I get a little bit tired of being the axle the house turns on. If I don’t do it or insist on it, it doesn’t get done,and two, three, four days down the road someone is panicking because they can’t find _____, when if they just would have PUT IT BACK WHERE THEY FOUND IT or actually, I don’t know, DONE THEIR BLOODY CHORES there would be no hassle.

Enough griping. Suffice to say the next person who wants me to find their socks is going to find a load of laundry shoved somewhere. And it won’t be pleasant.

On to much more pleasant things…

Psst! Cover to Cover Books got in a few copies of To Hell And Back. Amazon says it’s shipping, which would make it the earliest of the books so far to escape into the wild. So we know it’s getting out there. Cover to Cover even does shipping, I’m told.

I’m just sayin’.

Last but not least, last night I read Justin Gustainis’s Black Magic Woman, which I can’t recommend highly enough. Sexy, smart, supernatural, and good crisp clean writing. There was a little bit of infodump here and there, but that’s forgivable when a book is this damn much fun to read. Really, it was awesome, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

So, time to plug my ears against the call of the laundry pile and work on a Certain Short Story I got back from a Certain Wonderful Beta Reader. Housework can wait. There’s writing to be done.

If one is a creative type (and even if one is not) I recommend Bear’s recent Subterranean Press column. There is good advice there, well worth the taking.

It SAYS Amazon and Barnes & Noble are shipping To Hell And Back. Erm, if anyone gets them, can you drop me an email and let me know? I’d like to know if Readers can buy it early.

It is cold here this morning. I got spam in my inbox from “Willa Murray” and of course, translated it straight to “Wilhelmina Murray” and had a laughing fit that would make a hyena proud. But then, I loved the literary in-jokes in The Historian, reading up to page 80 while standing in Borders, catching myself laughing out loud, and deciding to pay for the damn thing in hardback. I wasn’t sorry about it, either.

Plus I’ve had vampires on the brain lately. And zombies. But the zombie book is going to have to wait. It’s vampires right now. Heh.

So off I go for another day of fun and games, dear Reader. I’ve forty thousand words of Jill to read so I can get “back in the groove” with Book 3 and then plunge forward, braiding together all plot strands, and finish the damn thing. Interspersed with that I am going to be reading this, a Quincey Morris Investigation.

I am noting a theme here, dear Reader. Better get out the garlic and the stakes…

Why, oh why, must my father in law send me chocolate-covered Hawaiian Host macadamia nuts? They are DEADLY good. I will be plump as a partridge soon, because the poor man literally does not know what else to send me as a present. I guess I’m hard for a 90-year-old Japanese man to buy for.

Moving on, thank you to everyone who suggested the Burpee and Gurney’s catalogs. They were’s exactly the company I was thinking of, but both will serve my plant fix needs admirably.

And now, the ancient sport of nurdling! I kept waiting for Monty Python to come out of the bushes. But apparently this is for real. And that is AWESOME.

The short story for a Sekrit Projekt (it’s only sekrit because we haven’t signed paperwork yet) just fell out of my head yesterday. It took four hours and a bowl of pho to get out 7K words of Jack Becker, private eye, who wakes up in his own grave. Story is currently resting with beta reader for newborn care and writer is doing fine, though a little stretched and torn in some mental places. This last weekend I also finished a glossary and revisions on the second Jill book. It’s been a busy time around here.

And I love Jonathan Coulton.

*sigh* Sappy love songs make me melt. I am such a girl.

Don’t tell anyone, though.

I have a reputation to maintain.