Lilith Saintcrow

My weekly post at the Midnight Hour is up. It’s about deliberate choices and how a writer must make them.

Some very exciting things are happening that I can’t talk about, but I can give a few pieces of news: two of the Jill Kismet novels, Night Shift and Hunter’s Prayer, are now available for preorder on Amazon. Also available for preorder are two anthologies I’m in, Hotter than Hell and The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance. See, I HAVE been busy. A busy little bee.

There is some good news about a Selene and Nikolai story I have to keep under my hat for a while, and more YA good news that I hope to be able to share very soon. But, as I look up at the paragraph above, I think that maybe I haven’t been the sloth I feel like. That’s the problem with working so hard and having a book come out two years after one finishes it–it feels like one hasn’t done anything in the intervening time.

As for the bureaucracy…well, let’s just say that a certain bureaucrat is discovering that he can blow off anyone else in the world in order to protect his institution’s safety rating. But he can’t blow off my kid, and he certainly can’t blow me off. When I get stubborn I am every bureaucrat’s worst nightmare, not in the least because I insist on getting things in writing and framing the questions so they have to answer them correctly.

Hey, I worked for a bank and in public relations. I know how this bloody well works, and if you think you can roll over the top of one of my kids, buster, you’ve got another think coming. So there. Nyaaaaah.

Nuff said.

There’s errands to run today and a revision to finish, so I’m going to sign off. Have a great weekend, Readers. and a happy Leap Year to you one and all.

First, the seriousness. Preditors & Editors has been sued by two people they exposed as shady operators. P & E is an invaluable reference for writers seeking representation, and it would be a terrible thing if the people they warn new writers against succeed in shutting them down. They’re accepting PayPal donations for legal bills on this page. It’s a good cause, I think.

Now for the seriously amusing. I just received, this morning, proof positive that all the money spent on advertising is not spent in vain. To explain this, I must explain the Little Prince’s nervous stomach.

If the Little Prince doesn’t eat breakfast, his stomach acts up and it’s Vomit Time. But getting him to take some nourishment in the morning is like trying to convince people to get inoculated in the 1700s. In other words, a huge bloody neverending apocalyptic battle. It is made easier by the fact that I give him two choices of things I’d prefer he eats. “Do you want toast or Cheerios?” “Do you want oatmeal or toast?” That gives him an illusion of choice, which is something a five-year-old cherishes.

So last night I went to the grocery store to get milk and other things, and the Teen went with me. Standing in the cereal aisle, I asked him to please for the love of God pick something you’ll eat in the mornings? Because he is another one with a nervous stomach and food issues, and it’s just simpler to have him pick what he wants. He picks Honeycombs and Frosted Flakes, and away we go. With me muttering to myself that I might as well just buy him a bag of sugar and make a cardboard teat for him to suck it through. To which he replies, “Are those pecan-caramel turtles in the basket? Where did those come from? Who’s going to eat those, I wonder?”

Goddamn sarcastic kids.

Cut to this morning. The Little Prince is all cute, rubbing his eyes and blinking sleepily. I start the morning ritual, only this time I am Sooper Sneaky. “Do you want Cheerios or Honeycomb?”

Because it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other, the important thing is that he eats something, for Chrissake. I don’t care if it’s sugary, he just has to have something in the tum-tum so I’m not mopping up bile.

“Honeycomb?” he asks, screwing up his face like I’ve just asked him “Lizards or flies?”

I pull the box out, show him the front. “This is Honeycomb.” His eyes light up. I pull out the Cheerios and show him. “These are Cheerios.”

“Honeycomb!” he says, and stares enraptured at the box as I fill his bowl. The rapture gives way to confusion. “It smaller than box on!” Translation: Hey! It’s smaller than the illustration on the front of the box! I’ve been gypped!

“That’s so you can fit more in your bowl,” I say. I think, Madison Avenue is leading me down the primrose path. I’ve just sold cereal to a five-year-old. I’m going to hell.

“OOOOOOOOh,” he says, serenely, and goes back to staring at the box like it’s a television.

“Now after this you can play with your bubbles,” I say, because we ran out of bubble solution two days ago and it was like the Titanic went down. Major disaster, so the most important purchase last night wasn’t milk, it was a huge container of bubble sauce.

“Mum,” he informs me, “I need to eat Honeycomb. Then I play bubble.” He takes one last longing look at the box, then skips into the other room to wait for his cereal to appear on the table. (I had him carry his own cereal bowl ONCE. Never again. Do you know how hard it is to pick soggy Honey Smacks out of the carpet?)

Would you believe (she asks rhetorically) he ate every damn one of them? Every single loving one. Smacking his lips and saying, “Dis is GOOOOOOOOD,” four or five times.

Welcome to parenthood, Lili. An occupation involving publicity stunts, crafty political maneuvering, Mafia-like indirect enforcement, and pounds of sheer cunning as well as the ability to take a horrendous amount of irony on a daily basis.

I love this job.

Thirty pages away from the end of this revision; I’m considering another pass after this. It’s not quite The Book That Would Not Die, but it’s close.

Many writers get upset over revisions, which is normal. But it’s important to remember that most editors have no personal animus against you the writer, or against your work. It feels awful personal, of course–the work is your baby, of course it feels personal. But it’s not. Most times the editor just wants to make the work the best it can be.

For the writer, revisions are a delicate balancing act. One has to balance between the vision of the work and a fresh pair of eyes seeing what might be flaws or holes. It is rare that the editor just wants to make you suffer. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen–I’m just saying that nine times out of ten, when you think that’s happening, it’s not the case.

A lot of fledgling writers either slavishly take every suggestion of their editor as gospel or resist every comma change. Neither is the correct approach. Somewhere flexibly in-between is best. One has to accept that one’s deathless prose isn’t, well, deathless. It’s hard to keep that in mind after however-many drafts and in the emotional heat of revision, but it’s well worth trying to remember.

And now, to change the subject, a couple of news items that creep me out mightily. First, there’s the news that the Guv’mint is watching you–even when you’re playing World of Warcraft. How bloody invasive is THAT? (Note to self: must quit throwing the apple of discord into Trade chat. No matter HOW fun it is.)

The second piece of news is creeeeeepy. Mark Morford wrote this morning about the Dyatlov Pass Incident. Nine skiers tearing their way out of their tent in the middle of a subzero night and running pell-mell, almost naked, down a moutainside? Radiation? Hair turning gray?

No human footsteps other than the their own?

*shiver* Oooooooh. Weird. Weirder than anything I could come up with. The world is much weirder than human beings like to suppose. It is a constant source of aggravation to me that fiction needs the suspension of disbelief in order to be successful, even when Real Life is so zany and wacked-out nobody would believe it if you wrote it down. Another artistic dilemma.

Hmmm. On the other hand, that would make a good story…if one could keep from being paranoid and creeped-out while writing it. Given how often art informs life, I’d be wary of doing so.

But not too wary.

Possibly not wary enough.

Tomorrow, the world. No, seriously–Angela at Nice Mommy, Evil Editor had a simple-looking recipe for jambalaya and I will be altering it just slightly–no green pepper, since the kids abhor it, and no shrimp (since I have grow to abhor crustacean cockroach of all forms); but some nice apple-chicken sausage and some Australian lamb roast I got at Trader Joe’s.

I know, I feel horrible eating lamb. (But Liiiiiisa, you said you looooooooved me!) But I had a moment of weakness in the frozen section. I generally eat vegetarian–with the notable exception of Guiseppes from La Bottega.

I’m halfway through revisions and in the long dim slog of a book that Needs Work. Which means one pass through for suggested revisions and big changes, then another pass through for fine-tuning. Guh. Thank goodness everything I have planned to make this week is simple.

In other news, I have become fascinated with spam. No, not to eat. In specific, I’ve become fascinated with the spam that purports to be from an “Internet millionaire” who is offering “this one chance” to “make it big!” It’s just a pyramid scheme like any other, but I can’t help chortling over the breathless prose and typos. I have a little teaser of an idea having to do with spam, you see. Hm.

I’ve also become fascinated with this online flash game. I have to set a timer, or I could lose hours messing with it. For some reason it appeals to me mightily. (Damn the Teen for showing it to me.)

All right. Time to do a little work and then put the jambalaya together. Further bulletins as events warrant.

I am attempting split-pea soup. (Wikihow has a good recipe, very simple, with PICTURES. Us cooking-challenged need pretty pitchers.) There’s a bunch of ham in it, and the onion will be caramelized and added later (because I like the taste browned onions give to a soup.) Plus a quartered potato to take some of the salt out.

The Selkie made caramels again this weekend and gave me some. I have the best writing friends ever.

I have been thinking about cooking lately. The Selkie assures me I can cook, since I can read and am reasonably capable of following a recipe. I was told I was a worthless cook so often growing up that I think I believe it. It’s hard going, trying to figure out how to do a week’s menu and get everything thrown together at the proper time. Part of the problem is the stress–I feel as if I’m being graded on a particularly fierce exam, and failure to perform well WILL mean pain.

This is akin to how I feel about a lot of stuff, not just cooking. The echoes of childhood taunting echo for a long time. It is hard to challenge basic assumptions about oneself that were etched in with acid when one was tender and impressionable.

I’ve started reading Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. I suppose I’m on a non-paranormal kick. I generally read non-paranormal fiction and a good deal of history, but I’ve been noticing lately just how much paranormal romance and urban fantasy there is nowadays. This is a good thing–I think it shows that our cultural vision of the world is changing, becoming a little more inclusive of difference.

Or so I like to think. The cynic in me disagrees sometimes, pointing out that most paranormal hero/ines are crippled by their “difference” and gifts, set against the world in a one-person war. However, that’s a step up from the absolute silence about all things even remotely woo-woo that used to reign in fiction, even fantasy and horror (Derleth and Lovecraft and King notwithstanding.) I think the field is undergoing a renaissance, and I’m curious to see how it will all turn out.

Anyway, White Teeth is very engaging. I read the first few chapters about six months ago, during a slow morning at the bookstore, and couldn’t forget it when I had to finally put it down so a customer could buy it. So, now I have a chance to buy it, and I’m enjoying it as much as I thought I would. In particular, Smith’s hilarious little asides and ear for dialogue are very good.

So. It’s revisions for a few more hours, then I think I’ll reward myself with a chapter or two. Rewards are good. The Muse likes rewards.

And so do I.