Lilith Saintcrow

Okay. Get ready for serious weirdsville, kids.

So back in May, near my birthday, I got a card with what appeared to be weird squiggles on it. Looked to be Sumerian, but no dictionary I had access to would make it make sense. So I immediately figured, “Huh. Could be my sister’s stalker. He’s enough of a moron to send actual physical mail as well as electronic hate mail.” and put it in a Ziploc baggie for the next time the moron tried to contact me. The postmark was a Stamps.com number, which isn’t entirely out of the question if you really want to try to cover your tracks.

Couple of weeks ago a plastic bubble-envelope with the same postmark shows up. This time it’s a test tube.

It’s something called TruBlood.

Now I can take a joke just like everybody else. But then there’s the phone calls that started at the end of May when the card showed up. From an unlisted number that seems oddly familiar. When I pick up there’s no answer, just the sound of someone breathing. And it’s the oddest thing, but Squeaker mentioned seeing someone messing around near the tree at the bottom of our yard a couple nights ago, at about one AM. The tree where I hung that mirror.

Hey, it seemed like a reasonable thing to do at the time. I don’t write what I write because I’m NORMAL.

The trouble is, Squeaker swears he saw someone crouching up in the tree. Right before they disappeared.

Of course, the thing to do when any weirdness strikes is to take to the Interwebs. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner.

I found Bloodcopy.com. Apparently I’m not the only one.

Now, some of you may have already guessed that I’m no stranger to weirdness. I’ve sent an email to the Bloodcopy guys to try and start figuring this out. (Like HOW THE HELL someone got my BLOODY ADDRESS, no pun intended, because I don’t give that out to JUST ANYONE.) But there are Other Ways of Finding Out, one of which I’m going to try tonight. It’s waning moon, which isn’t the best for this sort of work…but I didn’t get my stripes by letting a little thing like that get in the way.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

Last night’s dinner was a HUGE success. I slow-cooked some boneless pork ribs, baked and mashed some potatoes, and put together a Caprese salad. Everything came off more-or-less perfectly, and it was really, really easy to do. The trick is to put the potatoes in the oven (on metal shishkabob skewers, then wrapped in foil) two hours before you want to eat. Then, an hour before, put your Caprese together and cover it with plastic wrap, throw it on the table. You should end up with about half an hour to blaze through a bit of kitchen cleanup before you yank the spuds out, chop them up, throw them in a mixer with some butter, milk, salt, and garlic, and voila! Dinner, she is served.

I’m a big fan both of easy recipes and of cleaning while I cook. Since I end up doing most of the cleanup unless I twist someone’s arm, I tend to clean at the same time I cook, just to keep the kitchen from exploding under the weight of sheer chaos. YMMV.

All right, let’s get on to the salad–link salad, that is.

* From the Vintage Crime LJ community, here’s some rules about detective fiction: one set from S. S. Van Dine, the creator of Philo Vance; and one set from Msgr. Ronald Knox.

I find these interesting for two reasons. One, I like seeing genre rules laid out, and I like to see how successful authors talk about their audience. Two, I like seeing these sorts of rules because they are a direct invitation to understand them so one can effectively play with them and break them.

Breaking the rules being, you know, three-quarters of the fun.

* Speaking of breaking the rules, I noticed a theme between these two sets of rules–the absolute set-in-stone denial of any paranormal or supernatural event. Being who I am, I suppose that’s why I’m not writing crime fiction. Well, I am writing a SORT of crime fiction, but it is kind of like the redheaded stepchild of crime fiction.

* OH JOHN RINGO NO T-shirts! They’re for a good cause. Proceeds are donated to the Helen Bamber Foundation.

* And if you’re wondering what the cry “OH JOHN RINGO NO!” means, this blog entry might help. I will warn you, it is Not Safe For Work. It contains words and themes you might find objectionable. If you have problems with pulpy men’s adventure fiction or analysis of pulpy men’s adventure fiction, DO NOT CLICK. And don’t go over there, read half the entry, and fire off some halfass comment about how you’re offended. Just don’t, okay?

There’s a line between exploitative fiction and what I call “purple fiction”–that guilty pleasure reading we all indulge in. While purple fiction probably deals with morally reprehensible subject matter, I feel it is ethically sound in intent. Exploitative fiction is like a snuff film–you know it when you see it, and you’re sickened by the very idea, and it’s pretty obvious that the creator isn’t having tongue-in-cheek fun with themes or cultural notions of sexuality. Exploitative fic is just a joyless, offensive grind, on more than one level.

As with any definition I give here, YMMV. This subject really deserves its own blog post, but I am so not in the mood for that kind of critical analysis right now. I leave it to wiser heads than the one mine is turning out to be this morning.

* I am, instead, in the mood for Cheezburger.

more cat pictures

I should probably watch Labyrinth again. Sometimes a girl just needs a “David Bowie in tight pants” fix.

* Last but not least, I was laying in bed last night reading, and it struck me…goddamn, I’m weird. Because this is my bedtime reading, and I was enjoying the hell out of it. When did literary criticism become ENJOYABLE? How the hell did that happen?

I’m mystified, and I’m even more mystified by my urge, when reading these sorts of things, to get little plastic dinosaurs and act out the book’s assertions with them.

Yes, utterly mystified. But hey, if you can’t have fun with dinosaurs while reading theses, what would be the point of existence?

Over and out.

This time it’s taking a small article I read about the new Indiana Jones movie getting a good reception at Cannes and turning it into a complete screamfest of a nightmare during yesterday’s short nap; and then taking the book on WWI I was reading, translating it to WW2, and dreaming of zeppelin attacks on 1940s London last night.

My head is a strange, strange place.

On another note, it’s nice to go through the CEs of the print version of Steelflower while listening to ES Posthumus. (The second disk of Cartographer, actually, not the first. Which I am kind of frightened to try, given a friend’s review.) It’s good to see something that holds up, though I really have to restrain myself. A copy edit is not a rewrite, no matter how much I want to make it one.

That’s something about being a writer–the urge to polish everything. Hopefully one should be always growing as a writer, refining one’s craft and grasp of the essentials. But publishing is so slow a game, you get manuscripts that were the top of your game six months ago and suddenly start seeing HUGE GAPING HOLES in their craft.

It’s enough to make one beat one’s head against the wall.

In other news, I have movies to go see. I must see Prince Caspian, and Iron Man. I thought of taking the Prince to see Speed Racer but I think I’ll just rent it on DVD and see how he likes it. And we all know I’m going to see Caspian once on my own, once with the Selkie, and once with the Princess. It’s just the way it’s going to play out.

Yeah. It’s a rough life being me, ennit. (remove tongue from cheek)

All right. Back to the grindstone. If I get in several hours’ worth of work, I might get to play hooky tonight. Which may include dinner and a movie.

*thinks about it* Actually, I am an amazingly cheap date. Hm.

Properly humble, I will now go back to copyedits. Have a good Monday, everyone.

Five random and not-so-random things:

* I will never eat homemade banana bread right before bed again. The nightmares, dear God. While I do not blame the banana bread for them, I still was so upset I tasted mostly-digested banana bread at about 3AM. That sort of thing will leave a mark on one.

* To: My subconscious. Re: the nightmares. Look, I know you think they help when I’m writing a book like this. I really, really appreciate all your hard work. But please, f!cking stop. If I have a cardiac arrest from that hospital dream, we’ll both be out of luck.

* Kids are so cool. In the past few minutes the Little Prince has treated me to a trolley sound, several Bionic Man sound effects, two car crashes, and one shootout worthy of John Woo. And the Princess is singing the theme from Neverending Story in the kitchen as she gets her breakfast together.

* The soymilk experiment continueth well. The Muffin got a gallon of cowmilk for pancake and biscuit-making this weekend, and was relieved to find out that the soymilk is just a modification, not a hard and fast change. Several of you have warned me of the plant estrogens in soy. I’m being cautious–but I really can’t think it’s any worse for me or the kids than the bovine growth hormone, antibiotics, and assorted other stuff in cowmilk. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

* The last hundred pages of Redemption Alley are where all the huge architectural revisions need to be made. That’s both good and bad–good because it was a clean edit up until now, and bad because that’s going to take me more time than the previous two hundred pages. *sigh*

And a sixth not-so-random thing: Steelflower is now available for preorder as a paper book! Yippee!

Incidentally, if anyone out there has dealt with the process for putting one’s books into Kindle form, can you please drop me a line about that process and your experience with it? I’m thinking of putting smoke and mirror in Kindle form.

Whew. Ever have such intense nightmares the waking world feels like the dream? Yeah. It’s like that, this morning. I feel physically rested but emotionally drained.

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.