Book Update

Learning Anything

Woke up with P!nk’s True Love playing inside my head–probably a function of thinking about the Valentine series again, since I took yesterday to get the second volume of short stories put together and there’s two Saint City tales in it. I’m going back and forth between having the Cain’s Wife or Hell Wars trilogies as the next serial.

Originally I intended to finish the Valentine series and hop ahead in time a little bit, taking up the story from little Liana Spocarelli’s point of view. The publisher was not into that idea, since secondary character series tend not to do so well, so I shrugged and went on with Jill Kismet. (There’s a couple Kiss stories in the second volume as well.) But I’ve always known To Hell and Back wasn’t the ending–it brings Danny and Japh’s story to a place of equilibrium, yes, but there’s more to the world, you know?

Anyway, that’s a decision for another day. It’s enough that I now have two volumes of short stories to bring out, one this summer and another in December-January, I think. And I have to laugh, because my strategy for recovering from a super intense book hangover was…more work, revising and formatting. Clearly I do not have an off switch. But then, we all knew that.

We’ve almost reached the date I’ve set for beginning the Chained Knight and Gamble revises, too. I’d prefer to just…keep writing, and I will with Highlands War. But I have a glut of stuff that needs to be fixed up for actual publication, so it’s probably best to buckle down and get that done. Putting everything else aside to resuscitate and finish Doom of the Elder was not only intense and health-damaging, but also knocked a great deal of my schedule for the first half of 2024 rather caddywumpus.

Ah well. It’s enough that I’ve renewed my commitment to protecting the work. And honestly what did I expect, making this the Year of the Real? It’s certainly turning into a Learning Experience.

One of the things I used to say when a situation didn’t quite turn out the way one of the kids expected was, “Well, have we learned anything?” The Prince went through a phrase of glowering and nearly shouting, “No!“, and that was about the same time the Princess would simply give me a sarcastic glare. Later, of course, both would quietly admit to indeed learning a great deal, with rueful head-shakes and maybe a laugh.

It’s very difficult to make the parental choice to let a kid FAFO when the stakes are super low, because of course it doesn’t feel low-stakes to them. But now that mine are adults, both are well equipped for certain things because they did indeed Find Out while they were school-age. Working retail puts the finishing touches on such lessons if they’ve been learned before, instead of applying them with ten times the force because there’s money or adult risk involved. All in all it turns out okay, though it wears on both parental and child nerves.

I’ve had to admit that I’m undergoing a few Learning Experiences of my own lately, and the kids find it deeply amusing. Hopefully I’m providing a pattern for them to stay flexible even at an advanced age. (Christ, I feel old these days.)

Today’s for clearing a few bits of correspondence, then turning my attention to an army moving northward into what is properly enemy territory. There’s another pitched battle to set up and a double-cross with a traitor our favourite sellsword is well aware of, that’s going to be fun. And I continue to attempt re-wrapping the insulation on my shattered nerves.

But first, brekkie and walkies. Boxnoggin is rambunctious with the advent of spring, so he requires a longer ramble to wear him out for the rest of the day. Although he is getting older and slightly less enthusiastic–only slightly, mind you. Some dogs go from puppy to dog as they age, others remain pup to the end; he’s of the latter persuasion, with all that entails. Gods love the dopey little furball, because I certainly do.

Off I go.

Spring and a Hot Revision

I’m getting an avalanche of emails and messages from folks wanting me to talk about small and indie presses, more about self-pub, if it’s really so bad in trad, how to get a reputable agent, etc., etc., onward, amen. It’s awful rough out there right now and there is no safe path; there is no magic dingus which will make one a successful author. The idea that there’s a sooper-sekrit handshake or a quick algorithm trick to achieve fame, fortune, and babes on the path of publishing is a poverty tax akin to the lottery–it makes desperate people easier to fleece by holding out a hope that would not be nearly so enticing if our entire society wasn’t straining under the massive, world-eating greed of a few sociopaths. Everything wrong in publishing is a symptom of deeper problems.

The good news is, sunshine and articulation makes solutions a lot more possible; one cannot solve a quandary without knowing its dimensions. The bad news is, it’ll take a lot of collective action to solve a tangle this intractable, and I don’t hold out a lot of hope it’ll happen in any systematic fashion.

I am not pessimistic about publishing, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. (I did Bsky / Mastodon thread on that fact yesterday.) At the same time I mourn for what we’re losing, what we will lose as all this shakes out–whenever that happens. In the end, all I can do is keep working.

Staggering out with Boxnoggin for his first backyard break of the day, I was surprised by the softness of the air. We’re well past the tipping point, it’s abso-tively poso-lutely spring. Maybe the eclipse shook some things loose? We only got twenty percent at totality, and the shadows had funny weight. The birds were going somewhat mad–they knew something was up–and Boxnoggin only settled after the moon had moved to go about its business. The neighborhood cats seemed to be aware of the event as well, quite a few of them prowling in unaccustomed places at unaccustomed hours until ‘it ’twas past.

I can see why ancient folk thought eclipses were celestial anger and anyone who could predict them utterly magical.

Today is probably for cutting an epub of The Highlands War‘s first half for subscribers, as a treat. There’s also a tonne of business correspondence to catch up on and I think I have my rhythm back for the serial. There needs to be another couple dream sequences and then the next battle; soon I’ll be able to move on from this “hot” revision–the type that happens when a book is unfinished but won’t be for long, getting everything in place for the push to the end. Very soon I’ll have another zero draft to my name.

I’m looking forward to it. Of course that will touch off a round of other revisions, since Chained Knight and Gamble were both put on back burners while Doom of the Elder‘s zero got itself settled. And there’s the anthologies to get stuffed through the pipeline as well…

The hell of all this is, I love my job. I was made and born to tell stories, it’s what the gods intended me for. I wish the greed of a few rich folk didn’t make it so bloody difficult. This could be so much easier for everyone–and imagine the explosion of wonderful art we’d have in every direction and format, if that greed were defanged! It would be lovely, wouldn’t it.

In the meantime, I just keep going. There really doesn’t seem much other option, and in any case Boxnoggin wants walkies again so it’s time to grab some toast and get my earbuds.

I’ve got writing to get to.

Barrel of Literary Carrots

The rains have moved back in, or at least the clouds. This pleases me. I was reading yesterday about theories that the sun is conscious and while that makes as much sense as anything else in the universe does, it also makes the big yellow ball fit the description of an Elder God and that’s hardly comforting. Of course the blessed thing powers all life on this whirling rock, so I suppose one can’t complain, but still…I prefer a bit of rain.

I’m in the middle of the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation novels, which The Untamed is based on, and enjoying them roundly. A collection of Haruki Murakami stories, a translation of the Tao Te Ching, and Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey have all been thoroughly enjoyed lately. That last was an Experience–I hadn’t read Odysseus’s adventures since middle school, and Wilson’s an extremely gifted translator.

I did want to smack Telemachus several times, though. Boy needs to keep his manners on while talking to his mother, fa cry-eye. Even Achilles was nicer to his mum.

I might need more Murakami, I can’t tell yet. I read him while in specific moods until the itch is scratched, like listening to Jandek. Then I’m fine for a while, but at certain points I require another dose.

This is the part of book hangover (or snapback, as I call it) when I am irritated that recovery takes so goddamn long. No matter how much I pad out my estimation of time needed to re-wrap my nerves after a zero draft’s finish, it inevitably takes three times as much. It also requires a lot of “filling the well”, as Julia Cameron put it–giving the Muse and the rest of me enough grist for the creative mill. So I’ve been watching series and movies, and diving into the TBR like Bugs Bunny into a barrel of carrots. The massive effort to get a book out under significantly non-ideal circumstances does tell on one.

I mean, no circumstances are ever wholly ideal, but some are less ideal than others, to coin an Orwell-ism. I’m waiting for the swimming-relief phase instead of the merely exhausted-and-blinking bit. Boxnoggin likes that our daily rambles have become a bit slower, though I always let him sniff as long as he pleases at the usual spots. I’m just not moving very quickly otherwise.

However, work on the serial proceeds apace, as well as the short story collection, which has a cover now. (Long story short, the universe itself is conspiring to make me throw this collection out into public.) Other stuff will have to wait for an upcoming deadline; once that’s past I can engage in more and better planning. Of course Chained Knight and Gamble both need revising, and I should check in about Hell’s Acre again…

Ah, the reward for finishing a zero draft: more work. Still, I’m content to have it so. As long as there are more books to read–and to write–the gods can’t take me, right?

Right?

Another Zero Down

Well, I’m back.

I had to shut down–here and on social media–because several 10k+ word days in a row, especially on a project others tried so hard to kill, takes up rather a lot of one’s energy. It’s been a while since I closed off every other avenue and focused all my engines on a single book; normally I work on two-three at a time to keep my brain’s tendency to eat itself in check.

In any case, the zero draft is done. I had reached the point of sincerely doubting I had another book in me, but was disproved in the most elemental of ways. The zero is done, done, done. Of course there’s a fight looming to keep it protected from well-meaning (or not so well-meaning) pettifogging, but the first and hardest step is accomplished. There’s a lot of bracket notes, it’s messy, and I have a couple pages of yet more notes needing to be incorporated in the pass which will turn it into a proper first draft instead of a zero–but it’s finished. It is recognizably a whole-ass book.

There is a period of time after finishing a zero when I am the only person in the world who knows. Usually it’s a short while before an email’s fired off to my writing partner with some version of “oops, I did it again…” Occasionally there’s tears. This time nearly an hour of sobbing–pure emotional release–struck me to the floor of the office before I could share the ?good? news. It wasn’t so much the book’s ending, which is right and bittersweet, but the relief of knowing I prevailed despite all the odds and forces arrayed against the entire bloody series. I have not truckled, nor will I through the rest of the process.

If it’s a swan song, well, it’s a good one. I can be proud.

Of course there’s Highlands War to finish the zero of, which is where my energies will mostly be spent for the next couple weeks until I start revising Chained Knight and Gamble. The former needs a release date–I’m looking at July now, or perhaps August–and the latter mostly needs brush-up, the editor says, before it’s into line edits and the rest of the process. Plus, said editor wants another Ymre, so the process of building that story inside my head needs to begin now; around June-ish I can put it in a working slot on the docket. We’re coming up on submission deadlines and it appears trad wants to leave money on the table, so the Cain’s Wife trilogy will probably be the next serial (I think Danny Valentine fans will like it) and House of the Fan will have to go on the compost heap for a while. I just don’t have the spoons for that kind of epic fantasy without a publisher handling some of the heavy lifting.

Ah well. By the end of this month I’ll have a somewhat final plan for the rest of the year and through 2025. We’re in the very last loops of the holding pattern. Oh, and it’s a new month so the Monthly Sales page has been updated. (Remember to check the dates!)

I honestly feared I could not finish this particular series, but stubbornness (plus the support of beta readers, writing partner, and family) won. I do not have to mourn a slaughtered work; instead I can armour up for the rest of the campaign. No rest for the weary or the wicked, my reward for success is more work, and all that. I’m content to have it so, though I could wish this project had not been so bloody difficult. Anyway, now I am at something resembling peace, plus I have an actual-factual titanium spork on my desk, a gift from a very good Pocket Friend to fend off haters with.

I’ve fought with far less durable weapons. Everything’s going to be fine.

Logjam Broken

I’ve written 30k+ since Monday and all I want to do is go back to it. The Sekrit Projekt is at 110k now, and I suppose it’s not really a secret what I’m working on but I needed to protect the work, keep it covered and safe from the cold breath of contempt, not to mention institutional neglect.

Anyway, I haven’t been around much, either blog-wise or social media-wise. I am at the point where I actively resent anything taking me away from the work, but since a few folk have expressed concern…I’m fine. There’s Stuff Going On, but I’m well-armed and laying about me with all the determination of those used to losing battles. If you’ve missed me, don’t fret, I’ll be back on my usual bullshit as soon as I tear the last few words from my quivering guts and have a zero draft.

See you then.

Morning, Chopped

We made appointments, answered questions, filled out all the paperwork online, got out the door Tuesday morning…and an officious Walgreens “pharmacy tech” refused our entire family the Covid vaccine we qualify for (since we haven’t been boosted since 2022). Which was upsetting in the extreme–I could not sleep the night after, heartsick and vexed. I’m hearing anecdotally that this is happening to a lot of eligible people, being refused lifesaving and disability-fighting vaccines by pharmacists using “religion” as an excuse or who seem genuinely unaware of CDC guidelines and best practices. It’s fucking maddening. Perhaps the reason vaccine uptake is “low” is because our public health infrastructure has completely failed, mostly due to business interests gutting it because they want the serf class–no matter how sick or disabled–back at the mill for exploiting.

Anyway, I’ve filed complaints and we’re making arrangements to go elsewhere. Plus, I’ll never step in another Walgreens again so long as I live. And that’s all I’ve to say about that, because most of what I’d add is unrepeatable blue words.

I don’t know how long it will last, but it looks like the Gallow & Ragged trilogy is discounted in ebook. (I wish I were alerted to these things more consistently.) The first volume, Trailer Park Fae, is $2.99 for Kindle–again, I don’t know for how long, but I thought I’d mention it.

I finished Emily Wilson’s translation of the Iliad and it was marvelous. She makes the Greek sing through the English and her notes are a delight. Next up is her Odyssey translation. I am smacking my lips in anticipation–after a moment spent with Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human, which I first read in a Junji Ito adaptation.

I was in bed this morning with the Dazai as Boxnoggin got his cuddles, and happened across a particular passage where the protagonist talks about how, when people say, “Society won’t stand for it…” what they really mean is “I won’t stand for it.” If someone says, “Society will ostracize you,” what they really mean is, “I will ostracize you.” The force of the passage, addressing a “you” since the book’s in first person, was like a thunderclap. I had to set the book down and think about things for a bit–which Boxnoggin adored since it meant chest-skritches, always a favorite after a long night spent snoring in comfort.

Of course the protagonist is a bit tiresome, but the feeling Dazai describes of being an imposter in one’s own life, of clowning to hold back the despair, of utter alienation beginning in childhood, is extremely familiar. I sought out the book after Ito’s adaptation because of that definite, echoing familiarity–nausea in the Sartre sense, I’d call it. I’ve the urge to watch Breathless afterward, just to see if the existentialist throughlines I’m seeing hold.

It’s good to have some bandwidth for reading again; not-reading is almost as uncomfortable as not-writing. For a short awful while I was so emotionally and physically exhausted by the struggle around a certain series I couldn’t manage more than a paragraph before passing out at night; thankfully, the commitment to protecting the work (and myself) in this Year of the Real is paying off by granting me a little breathing room. Funny how that works out, ennit–when one starts enforcing one’s boundaries, one finds out rather quickly who was taking one’s kindness for weakness, and one acquires far more energy to spend on one’s own affairs.

It’s been a chopped-up sort of morning, as you can see by the separators. I’m about to begin another push to get the Sekrit Projekt past the point of no return, where its own momentum will take it over the finish line…but it’s rough, and various other considerations might intrude. The month of April’s going to hit like a freight train, since I’m rather behind, what with so much time eaten up by health concerns and struggling to get That Particular Series born. At least the stress nausea (I’m detecting a theme, and a rather unpleasant one at that) is receding bit by bit.

It’s not the end of the battle, but I can see it from here. And that is a welcome development indeed, my friends. The relief is damn near depthless.

Stubbornness Roll

Roadtrip Z

I only got 3k words on the Sekrit Projekt yesterday, but on the other hand I tested a butter chicken recipe for the Instant Pot and it turned out well. With a few tweaks it’ll be one of our go-to dinners–not too often, because that’s a lot of butter and heavy cream, but the kids can now request it as a fave.

The Roadtrip Z sale is going on today and tomorrow; Season 1 is $.99USD in ebook and the rest are deeply discounted. There are plenty of other price drops, all listed on the Monthly Sales page. (Don’t forget to check the dates!)

I’ve a chance to get a Covid booster today if the stars align, so that’s…not pleasant, but I’m hopeful. I don’t want to die in the hospital drowning in my own sputum, and I also don’t want to roll the dice on lifelong disability. I mask religiously but I can’t really afford the price-gouging for boosters and vaccines, so I’m crossing my fingers and wishing hard. I want to try to get a morning run in as well, in case the booster wallops me tomorrow.

Along with that, there’s an uncomfortable conversation to be had in the Sekrit Projekt, a bit of tweaking on the upcoming serial chapter, a tranche of correspondence (my inbox is a mess, but when is it not?) and Boxnoggin to walk. All these chainsaws to keep juggled, and if I miss a single one it’ll be unpleasant. Good thing my dexterity modifier is sufficient to most disasters, and when it isn’t my stubbornness rolls come into play.

Those tend to be epic indeed. Is stubbornness a constitution roll? (I wish I could still play D&D, I miss it.)

Of course I’d feel a lot better about this if the Sekrit Projekt didn’t have to be so sooper-sekrit, but I simply can’t risk opening the door yet. Protecting the work has its drawbacks as well as benefits; I’m just glad the latter outweigh the former by several orders of magnitude.

Dawn is a thin line of gold in the east, shading up ombre-style through a pale rose, an almost-white, and into the blue of morning fading through Night’s last veil. It’s gorgeous and makes me conscious that I’m about a hundred pages from the end of the Iliad. Patroclus is dead, Achilles is raging, Scamander is about to be heavily inconvenienced, and I’d love to simply polish off the rest of the poem in a blaze of coffee and birdsong. Maybe I can have it as a lunchtime reward, if I get the booster and clear a bit of wordcount.

Something to look forward to on a Tuesday, at least. Away I go, juggling roaring implements of destruction. At least I’m not on a unicycle; that would be concerning…