Merry Go Round, Go Round, Round, Round

Today sees the very last of the prep for Atlanta Bound‘s release next week, and also the debut of HOOD. I figure I’ll offer a little of the latter for free, as dealers are wont to do, in order to entice a customer or two in the door. Imagine me in a hoodie on a dark street corner. “Pssst. Hey. Hey, you. Wanna read some Robin Hood in Space?”

True to form, I have a great deal of nervousness about starting a new serial. Roadtrip Z was a ride and a half, and I was (relatively) relaxed since I was doing something new, for me, and able to make a mistake at any time. Now that I (somewhat) know what I’m doing, I’m back in the territory of terror, so to speak.

I should just make friends with the fact that I’m always going to feel that fear. Maybe if I make friends with it, it’ll be a little less sharp.

One can hope.

I finished the skeleton of the Cyborg Alice in Corporate Wonderland yesterday, and will leave that short story in a mental drawer for at least a week before going back to put muscles and skin on said skeleton. Between that and the Hansel & Gretel Kung Fu short story, I feel like I managed to actually work all through the holidays, though to be fair I did spend most of my office time cleaning and reorganizing instead of writing. Physical cleaning helps your brain sort through and clean stories too. Letting things bubble and stew in the subconscious before opening the gate makes for a sense of furious transcription rather than painstaking creation. Building up just enough pressure that the story comes out quickly but doesn’t tear its way free causing injuries is a fine art, and one I doubt I have mastery of even at this late date.

I also managed to get out to Barnes & Noble with the Princess. I had Yule money to spend on books–always a welcome event–and I scored some interesting things.

I’ve been wanting to get into old-timey cowboy romances–I love that genre, as readers of The Damnation Affair no doubt will recognize–and the abridgment of Glantz’s magisterial Stalingrad trilogy was a happy accident. The biography of Stonewall Jackson will be difficult reading; American history is a catalog of genocide and slavery permeating every aspect of society and culture up to the present moment, and nowhere is that more in evidence than in the hagiography of treasonous Confederates. But to understand where we are, we must understand where we come from, and that’s part of it.

Something tells me I’ll need something good as a chaser after the awfulness, and it’s a pity I’ve already finished In Want of a Wife.

In any case, the day’s work beckons, and as soon as I finish this post it will be time for a session with Boxnoggin and Miss B. Tiring them out with pets and wrestling looks to be the most enjoyable part of my day by far, even if I can get bread dough put together before 10am.

In short, it’s a Thursday, we’re all back at work, and the devil’s not after the hindmost only because he has holiday paperwork to catch up on too.

See you around, chickadees.