Lili Saintcrow

Radioactive word maven. A crow for a fetch; I'm your huckleberry.

Lithadora and Good News

I love lithadora, both for its name and its little blue flowers. They’re so cheerful and vibrant, especially in sunshine. This picture has JJ Abrams-level lensflare, but it pleases me to no end, so I’m sharing it with you.

I’m ten chapters into the Chained Knight revise, and there’s good news I can’t share quite yet–nothing is final until the ink is dry on the contract–but I feel a lot better than I have in ages. It’s looking like there will be releases in June (Fall of Waterstone), September (Gamble), next Jan-Feb (will be able to announce it soon), and now that Chained is behaving I’ll probably schedule it for next March or so. It’s a while to wait for another Tale of the Underdark, but that’s all right. Honestly the portal fantasies are a passion project, though I’ve been surprised by the response to Moon’s Knight and am ever so glad I listened when my beta readers insisted the tale was good and would find the readers who needed it.

Go figure, portal fantasies about trauma and healing apparently like to tear themselves out of my head. Weird and painful superpower–if it indeed qualifies as one–but I’ll take it.

Once the revise on Chained is done, there’s the Highlands zero to finish and revisions on Doom of the Elder in the queue. I could go on and list everything after that, but this Friday post is already long enough, I’ll be working through the weekend (as usual), and yesterday’s rain means there will be an explosion of growth to inspect while ambling with a very nosy Boxnoggin.

See you next week!

Thousand Cuts, Downright Vexed

I woke up only mildly tetchy, since the week’s round of needing-to-be-social meetings has meant little time for actual writing. I get itchy-irritable when life attempts to keep me from the page; a few days of mounting discomfort and I’m ready to stab if it means I’ll be left alone with the words. Still, it wasn’t bad when I rolled out of bed, even if the dog decided today was a day to be bratty.

Not his fault, really, the weather has shifted and Any Change is Suspect. So there was walking around the backyard again and again, waiting for him to get over himself. Still, not so awful. Some mornings are simply like that.

But then there’s the tripping over perfectly flat floor, the scoop in the kibble container falling out thrice though it was securely lodged each time, no ground coffee left in the container, a glass jar at the end of the dish drainer just waiting to be knocked down by an innocent elbow, a strange sound from the fridge, the news cycle sudsing like a badly balanced washing machine, and at least three mansplainers on my feeds needing to be muted. And I’m sure there’s hormones swirling around in all this. Normally even a much longer cavalcade of annoyances doesn’t make me feel like screaming and flinging random items into the distance.

But today? Today I have muttered imprecations upon inanimate objects (and the world at large) with venom and verve.

At least I managed to grind coffee without losing a finger, and brew some life-giving java. My thumb got a splash of near-boiling stuff, true, but I got the Moka pot’s lid down in plenty of time to keep the rest of it corralled, and now I have a cup of sweet blissful caffeine. I’ve muted the mansplainers, Boxnoggin has gone back to bed (walkies are going to be a joy) and the dish drainer’s been unloaded. (I was swearing under my breath all the while, true, but now items won’t be knocked down at random.)

No meetings or phone calls today. I am in full-fledged revolt against any sort of administrivia. I am going to get a chunk of revisions done, so help me Murgatroyd, and I might even take a few hours this afternoon to find the first line of The Innkeeper’s War. After gestating inside my skull for seven-ish years, that story now wants to be born and won’t take no for an answer; I am trying to argue it down to a “yes, of course, the instant I get some of these revisions cleared and Highlands zero-drafted.” We’ll see if it takes the bait or if I’ll be forced to hash my wrists over the next few months.

Things aren’t all dire, but so far the morning has been death of a thousand cuts and I am downright vexed. At least it’s finally raining. That will do my mood no end of good; a run in the rain and coming home to warm shower and dry socks can turn around even the worst of pre-noon funks. Thursday got a shot over my bow, yes indeed, but the war is mine.

I am, after all, the one with the baseball bat. And now, plenty of caffeine.

Once more into the breach, dear friends.

Gaming Oneself

Stole a wee bit of a lie-in this morning, since yesterday was busy-busy-busy. Meetings abound for the rest of the week, but today I get an afternoon without, which will be spent swearing internally at revisions. Not that it’s a bad thing to revise–far from, and the overwhelming majority of editors are here to make the book better.

It’s just difficult on an emotional level. One must set aside a certain amount of energy, both to push past resistance in order to make necessary changes and to insulate the editor from one’s own temper. In other words, a writer can rage internally all one wants, but behaving kindly and professionally is non-negotiable. I’ve talked before about setting aside processing time on even the best of edit letters; so much of this career is gaming one’s own responses.

Like adulthood. I keep telling the kids nobody knows what they’re doing, we’re all faking it, and the biggest part of being an adult is figuring out how to game one’s own habits and peccadilloes in order to get the desired result, which is being a reasonable human being.

Anyway. Fell into bed exhausted last night, and kept nodding off while slipping through Pessoa’s prose. It was somewhat agonizing, because I really do want to follow these trails to where they vanish in the undergrowth. The book was put together from posthumous notes and the like, so I know it probably lacks some final polish…but oh, what an effort, what a glorious disorder! It still very much reminds me of Nin’s diaries.

I’ve also been somewhat blown away by kindness and offers of help. Publishing as an industry is absolutely nuts, but the workers in it–authors, editors, production folk, etc.–are overwhelmingly there because they love the art, and when the bat-signal goes up they are overwhelmingly Ready To Ride To Gondor, Right Effing Now, Saddle Up And Let’s Go. It’s both humbling and comforting.

The coffee is down to chewy dregs and Boxnoggin is beginning to stir. He’s very playful this morning and will need a long ramble, no doubt complete with feral rabbit sightings. I don’t mind them hanging out in our yard, especially if they’ll eat the dandelions, but I do wish they wouldn’t taunt him during walkies. I wonder when the coyotes are going to come uphill for the plump pickings, too. Circle of life, nature red in tooth and claw, and all that.

They’re saying rain later in the week, which will suit me very well. I know plenty of folk love the sunshine, but I could do with some water falling from the sky. Climate change will probably bring us a dry summer; I’m not looking forward to that.

Time to edge cautiously into Tuesday and see what the day has hidden behind its back. Let’s hope for a bouquet, or something equally innocuous…

Spy Game Weekend

It was a tremendously restorative weekend. Big changes are afoot for me professionally, and I got the revisions for Gamble out the door Friday afternoon so there was not much to do but wait, and read. While the former is not my favourite, the latter most definitely is. I polished off two Trevanians (Eiger Sanction and Loo Sanction), and decided that while I was there I might as well try some Ian Fleming, which oddly enough I never had. Casino Royale was thus sampled and finished.

It scratched a definite itch. All three bore deep imprints of a certain type of “men’s fiction” (usually from the late 70s-early 80s, but with some exceptions), so occupied with proving “manliness” and “intellectual superiority” the emotional stuntedness of the protagonists is almost ignored save for when a bit of bathos is thought advisable. (Hemlock’s pretensions made me nearly scream with mirth.) Honestly they reminded me of nothing so much as early Clive Cussler novels or a certain type of Western–though I’m not saying that as an insult, I read Cussler like candy growing up since those books were of the few allowed upon the single small bookshelf my adult caregivers thought showed them to be both daring and reasonably well-educated. (There were more books hidden under my mattress than on that particular piece of shelving, but I digress.) They also reminded me, tonally, of MacDonald’s Travis McGee series.

There’s a great deal of misogyny marinating that style of book, but if I waited for misogyny- and fridging-free reads…well, we all know it. It’s tiring; I roll my eyes and move on.

The thing I think saves the genre’s better offerings is the fact that the protagonists are always, without exception, shown to be emotionally stunted and deeply unhappy. I can see why Eastwood wanted to make Eiger into a film, and I think Daniel Craig’s Bond is far more in the style of book-Bond than any other. The urbane wit and suspense is covering up complete paucity in other areas, and Craig really leaned into that. (Some honor must also go to the script, I’m sure.) And I’m forced now to grin ruefully and shake my head at the boys (and even adult men) who breathlessly informed me that Dirk Pitt or Jonathan Hemlock or James Bond or McGee (or or or) were their heroes. (Or role models, which is both pitiable and risible at once.)

I do wonder if the reveal was conscious on the writers’ part.

I could’ve pressed onward with Fleming, but I think the itch is gone. Instead I cracked Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet, which is giving me a certain type of existential feeling. It reminds me of Anais Nin’s diaries, actually; the feel in my head is largely the same with a few outcroppings of different stone to hold. I’m also trying a gothic that is giving me a bit of trouble; I am told it loosens up in the second third but am unsure if I’m gonna make it that far.

This week is full of meetings, plus starting on Chained Knight revisions. I will be forced to be social all the way through Friday, which will bleed off working energy but cannot be helped. I’ve scheduled a lot of administrivia, which can be handled even when I’m exhausted. Silver linings, and all that.

I do wonder why the Muse wanted those particular spy thrillers thrown into the creative mill. It’s interesting grist; we’ll see if anything happens with it. And now a certain Boxnoggin wishes I’d stop muttering while staring at the glowing box, for he has real action to commit upon the pavement of our fair neighbourhood.

Off I go.

Door Watcher

You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but this guy’s a candle. He really didn’t like the idea of being set on fire, so I said fine, how about you guard the foyer for us and he was thrilled. With some of the summers we’ve had I’m surprised he’s not looking ragged, but he’s surprisingly tough.

I do anthropomorphise a lot of stuff; my preference is always for a conscious, animate universe. If it helps me remember to be kind, I don’t think it’s a bad reflex. And muttering a polite greeting every time I pass a certain corner is no hardship.

It’s been an odd, somewhat nerve-scratching week, my friends. See you Monday.

Dilly of a Month

The last cold snap has arrived, and it’s relatively mild. I needn’t have worried about that early-blooming lilac, though I’m sure if I hadn’t things would have gone quite differently. It’s not a question of individual power but of Murphy’s Law; the older I get the more I begin to think ol’ Murph was a sage who knew a thing or two.

There’s a tradescantia needing repotting, and I have to turn the hangers for the airplane plants so tropism will bring them back t’other way. Playing with potting soil sounds far more appetizing than the other work needing to be done today, so I’m keeping it for a reward. Gamble needs one more pass to tuck in or snip stray threads, then it can go back to the editor; there’s business correspondence to be handled and toads to be swallowed.

I’d rather be writing. That’s a constant, though.

Once Gamble is out the door there are revisions on Chained Knight to go through, then that particular Tale of the Underdark will be ready for the next stage in the publishing pipeline. After that Doom of the Elder needs attention so it can be sent to the editor, which I might not be looking forward to since the series has had such a difficult go of it.

At least I can spend time with Highlands War in the mornings. We’re at the raids leading up to the second pitched battle at the crest of the book’s third quarter; I have the rest of it all thought out but dear gods, this one’s a monster. It will easily be 120-150k words, not bad for epic fantasy, yet I weep when I think of the revising and editing it’ll need. I’m nearly at the point where I don’t want to bring it out for wider publication, but that’s a decision I’ll make when I’m not exhausted and nerve-strung.

I knew April would be a dilly of a month and May will likely be worse. Still, I’ve spent significant time planning–yes, no plan ever survives contact with reality, but the very act of getting contingencies together is indispensable. It’s not so much being prepared as being flexible; the latter is far easier when one has set up a framework, no matter how useless said frames turn out to be in practice. Having something to start with and build on makes the whole thing loads less frightening, even if most of that something has to be thrown out. (A lever and a place to stand, as Archimedes muttered.)

Boxnoggin is basking in a bar of spring sunshine, but his ears are up and he would very much like me to stop staring at the glowing box. There are things to sniff and bark at today; that’s his plan, and often matches reality. The dog’s damn near a master of strategy.

See you around.

Version of Wager

Woke up with Loggins & Messina playing in my head, and Boxnoggin startled a young squirrel or rabbit in the predawn grey. I say or because it appeared long like a squirrel, but it had significant trouble scaling the fence and indeed ran along the back of the yard as if it had forgotten (or never knew) such a thing as climbing existed. So the jury’s out–Box could probably tell me on scent alone, but he can’t articulate and in any case he might just smell “rodent” without differentiating.

It will have to remain a mystery. At least the poor thing was able to wriggle under the fence and escape, hopefully a wee bit wiser.

Yesterday proved a bit of a wash. I had so many grand plans, but the day kept getting nibbled by administrivia. However, I did get the monthly newsletter put together–it will go out later today–and opened up edits on a book without screaming, so that’s something. I’ve clearly processed my fee-fees about said edits, so all that remains is the work. I’d rather be producing new stuff, but I have a glut of things needing attention before they can go out into the world.

The week’s subscription drop is formatted and done up as well–serial and Nest Egg folks get something special–so that was another thing ticked off the list. And I got a combat scene started, stealing time while dinner finished cooking to block out a horse-chase which will end badly for everyone except the protagonist. At least, I hope it won’t end badly for her, but there’s always a risk.

The weather app says there’s a frost advisory for tonight; I just knew we’d have one more cold snap. Today’s walk will be spent praying everything flowering is prepared for the event, and listening to what the bees think. I know better than to presume they don’t sense it coming; they’re wiser than Yours Truly. But maybe the sense that I care will help, who knows?

Some people might take comfort in a soulless, clockwork universe; I prefer mine animate and conscious. It’s my version of Pascal’s wager, I suppose.

Anyway, Monday was the kind of day where all the work is invisible; today should see some visible progress. At least that’s the plan, but in order to get there I need a bowl of gruel and Boxnoggin needs walkies. He’s going to want to investigate the corner where he first saw the Mystery Rodent as we head out, on the faint hope that it will have returned.

I’m hoping it will go bother someone else’s yard. We’ll see what happens.