Soundtrack Monday: Erase, Rewind

Selene

Monday here is quiet except for the rain, and very cold. I just finished a rather difficult revise on The Poison Prince, book two of what I call Hostage to Empire–the publisher calls it something different, but I don’t let that trouble me. Today, therefore, is somewhat of a two-fer, but not in the usual way.

The Cardigans’ Erase/Rewind figures on not one but two of my book soundtracks. First, it leapt onto the very first book soundtrack I ever did, for smoke. It plays as Rose is frantically scrambling to escape things she can only vaguely sense after the murder that kicks the book into high gear; then it cropped up on Selene‘s soundtrack as she tries so hard to swallow her grief and unravel the mystery of Danny’s death.

Very few songs make it onto two soundtracks; this one was a surprise to me because I rarely listen to the Cardigans at all. But it’s catchy, and it speaks to all of us, trapped as we are in a flow of time only going one way. There’s also a certain sadness in both characters–no matter how hard Rose or Selene wish for it, they can’t go back.

Nobody can.

Enjoy the tunes, dear Readers. I’ll be back on the usual schedule tomorrow.

Leek Iteration

I love potato-leek soup for many reasons, not least of which is this little science experiment. It’s close to magic, and every time I walk by the kitchen window, I am reminded of the deep, abiding fuck you inherent in all earthly life, clinging on the surface or in the crevices of an insignificant rock whirling through space in a backwater galaxy.

The kids are making “Leek 2.0” jokes. I haven’t told them about why leeks figure heavily in fertility magic, though. They can figure that one out on their own.

If you’re reading this, you’ve beaten tremendous odds already, and there will never be another you in all of eternity. Every once in a while, contemplating that–the uniqueness, the fragility, and the deep endless strength of life–makes me feel very small, very awed, and very unreasonably happy.

Not bad for a leek that also gave me soup.

Revisions, Frazzle

HOOD

I long to finish these Poison Prince revisions and then… go straight into revising HOOD‘s Season Two. I’m sure by the time both are finished I’ll be a quivering ball of nerves, and will head straight into the next thing on the to-do list, which escapes me at the moment because checking said list seems overwhelming.

Anyway, the epic fantasy has grown from 113k to 132k, and shows no sign of stopping. It’s good–it means a richer experience for the reader–and at the same moment, extremely time-consuming, since not only am I layering in fresh detail but also adding notes to a pad of paper, to be typed into a series bible later. I used to just keep details in my head, tying them in a. sort of memory palace to the lighting in specific books/series, but nowadays I need that RAM for other things, so to speak.

Also this morning, the Princess had breakfast with me (a semi-rare but always welcome occurrence), I had to send an email I’ve been dreading, and a good-natured semi-prank came to fruition and I’ve been laughing nonstop about it. All in all, it’s been a mixed bag, and I still need to walk the dogs and swallow yet another toad, making an appointment I’ve put off for a long while.

Never rains but it pours, no silver lining without a cloud, and so on. Today is subscription day, so Crow’s Nest and serial subscribers will be getting goodies anon.

It will be somewhat of a relief when Poison Prince revisions are over. The second book in a trilogy is often the most difficult, all the bridging and connective tissue has to be juuuuuust so. It will be nice to shift to a futuristic setting and have some of the deep formality and rhythm drain from my speech; when I write preindustrial-set fantasy, I’ve noticed that I become even more formal and aware of verbal restraint. I don’t quite milady, but it’s close.

In other news, Sir Boxnoggin is overjoyed at the small, slow, preparatory runs we’re doing. He enjoys being out solo with Mum dreadfully much, and bounces along springily, tail held high, eager to defend me from passing cars, falling leaves, and other pedestrians. He’ll learn to differentiate between what’s usual and what’s not with enough outings under his belt, but for right now we go very slowly and there’s a lot of encouragement and direction needed. It does me good to have to talk while moving; it forces me to think of form and plan ahead even more than I usually do during runs. But it also makes them far more exhausting than when I used to take B after she was fully trained in running etiquette.

Miss B is, alas, a little too elderly for running anymore. The daily walks, as well as ceremonial postprandial wrestling with young Boxnoggin, are quite enough for her. The exercise keeps her healthy, but still… she’s getting up there. Losing Trundles was bad enough; when Miss B goes I will be utterly gutted.

They are worth it, these fuzzy little jerks, but I’m not looking forward to that pain.

It’s a day of good things and not-so-good things, happening so close together they blend into a hum of frazzled nerves. Ah well. Time to swallow another toad, then get out the door and walk off the canine fidgets.

I suppose I’ll add Thursdays to the list of days I never quite got the hang of.

…it’s a long list. Upward and onward, I guess.

The (Non)Burning Table

Awake early, but not up then. I set an extra alarm about an hour before get-up time, because I need that hour. I crave the quiet, the solitude, the darkness. When I don’t have that soft, internally focused time, the anxiety mounts daily until I hit the edge of burnout, bare nerves sparking like uninsulated wires.

Now I’m up. I even did the dishes while waiting for the coffee to finish–and I’m already one up on yesterday, because I remembered to put the ground coffee in the Bialetti.

Small mercies.

I need to have a chat with the child who has taken responsibility for cleaning the kitchen, who seems to think I won’t notice if the “cleaning” consists of filling the dishwasher with the least number of bulkiest pans possible and then leaving the rest piled in the sink and on the stove because “it won’t fit.”1 I mean, props for figuring out a way to partially escape the chore, but that’s not how this should be done.

I suppose I’ve put off having that chat for so long because I was beaten as a child if I didn’t clean the kitchen “properly”, including (at intervals best described as “random, and you must be a mind reader to discern them at all”) wrapping a rag around a butterknife to clean carved grooves on the legs and on the border of the dining room table. As you might guess, there are FEELINGS involved with kitchen duty, and I need to be in a place where I’m dealing with what’s actually happening instead of responses to what happened decades ago before I embark on discussing the issue with the young person in question.

…and now I’m thinking about how satisfying it was to “deal with” that table. Before I broke off contact with childhood abusers, they held a “garage sale”, and I ended up taking the table. Guess what I did with it.

Go on, guess.

If you guessed “beat the shit out of it with a hammer, took all the bolts and hardware for scattering alongside a highway, and let it be dumped” you’d be quite right, my friend. My only regret is that I didn’t stage a fiery death for the wooden article in question, but honestly, it was only a table and not responsible for my angst. Not to mention there might have been carcinogens in the varnish, released by hungry flames.

Though dancing in a circle and screaming while it burned would have been intensely therapeutic, cancer chemicals or no.

Anyway, Sir Boxnoggin is almost frantic with desire for a walk, and I think today is the day we start training him for runs. He was too young when we got him2 but now I’m absolutely certain his bones are finished melding and he’s in good shape. Plus, I’m on a program with significant walk breaks while I recover from a few injuries, and there’ll never be a better time to ease him into the manners required. Poor Miss B has become too elderly for even gentle runs; a morning walk tires her out for the entire day.

So that’s my Tuesday, my chickadees. Later this morning a new writing post (three things about characters) will be up on Haggard Feathers, and very soon3 that site will transition to a different model, with one free post a month and other weekly writing posts (as well as a weekly open thread) paid-subscription-only. For right now, though, you can taste-test the NaNoWriMo posts to get an idea.

Off I go. I might even escape the worst of the rain, though honestly, living in the Pacific Northwest, why bother?

Soundtrack Monday: Take Me Out

The Society

It’s a brand-new year, and time for another Soundtrack Monday! Today we’re visiting the Society series–in particular, Hunter, Healer.

I did a fair amount of research on Vegas casinos for the scene where Rowan and Delgado finally see each other again. And while writing their reunion (bullets flying, adrenaline roaring, homemade Molotov cocktails) I listened, over and over again, to Franz Ferdinand’s Take Me Out.

I know I won’t be leaving here… with you.

Delgado is an interesting case; he and Preston (from The Marked) center on the human hunger for touch. Delgado can’t touch anyone mentally without excruciating pain, Press can’t touch anyone at all without draining them. When you find someone who can give that most important, basic thing–sheer simple contact–all of a sudden the world reforms and priorities reshuffle.

It’s probably my massage-therapy training that makes me focus so much on touch. (That, and the fact that human contact was perilous at best for most of my own life.) Anyway, this is the tune that particular shootout in Vegas is set to in my head. The ability to mentally set a casino on fire was, I’m not going to lie, extremely satisfying while I was writing it.

Enjoy!

Monday Capabilities

Well, the holidays are officially officially over and it’s back to work. Which means Miss B has turned her nose up at her brekkie, though I can hear her tummy rumbling from where she lounges resentfully in my office, and further means that I somehow forgot, in my first attempt at making coffee, that I needed to actually put ground coffee in my Bialetti.

In short, it’s a goddamn Monday.

I’m not too worried about B–every once in a while, a dog just doesn’t want to eat kibble at a particular moment. She’s not going to starve and there’s nothing wrong with her, she just wants human food instead of kibble and wet, and she’s not going to get it. Both dogs sometimes disdain breakfast until after walkies.1

I’m looking over the list of Things to Do Today and internally weeping. I think Past Me was extremely generous in her assessment of my Monday capabilities. There’s the top to bottom revision on The Poison Prince to begin now that all the fresh scenes are written, there’s the upcoming “three things about characters” post for Tuesday’s Haggard Feathers, a Soundtrack Monday post to prep, the day’s Latin lesson2 to stamp into the ground, and the ever-popular walkies for said dogs.

Which are going to be fun, since it’s a somewhat stormy day. No lightning, but rain and a bit of wind, so the cedars are tossing their arms with damp glee. Both Sir Boxnoggin and Miss B will be beside themselves the entire way through their walk; neither like the wind’s invisible fingers touching their hindquarters. Miss B will dislike the wind taking liberties with her skirts, Boxnoggin will be verklempt at the rain and prancing to keep his delicate paws high and dry.

In short, they’re both going to be unlivable, and I think I’ll temporarily put off Boxnoggin’s harness training for runs alongside his human. It’s too much to ask him to focus on two things at a time–running properly alongside me and ignoring the rain. Dogs, like very young humans, do better when you set them up to succeed instead of fail.

I woke up with the strange urge to listen to Lucifer Rising, so that’s what’s going to be playing while I work for a little while. When it gets a little brighter, I’ll be out the door, but for right now, there’s coffee (finally! I remembered to put the ground stuff in! a small victory, but victory nonetheless!) and a few more things to do.

Mondays. I never quite get the hang of them until they’re almost over. At least there’s the finish line to look forward to, no matter what else happens today.

We Survived 2019, Early Edition

It’s the eve of the Eve. Yule is past, which means I can relax a bit, but the kids are just ramping up into their yearly excitement. The dogs are settling into the new normal, which is scraps at dinnertime and a big glowing thing sitting in the living room that the humans don’t want them to nose affectionately or, gods forbid, snack upon.

Come the New Year we’ll be back in the regular swing of things, but until then I’m taking it relatively easy.

Relatively, of course, because it’s me–I’m only working eight hour days, and those eight hours are broken up differently than usual. Tomorrow I’ll probably only put about six hours in, on Christmas I’ll be sneaking away from the kitchen and the festivities to work on something that pleases me alone, and Boxing Day will be a non-work day. For whatever value of “non-work” I can manage.

I do need to relax sometime, you know.

I might pop in here and there on social media, and I might do a blog post or two, but if you don’t hear from me until the New Year, don’t worry. It just means I’m sitting on my hands to keep from driving myself into the ground. So , there will be no Soundtrack Monday, Writing Tuesday, or Photo Friday until after January 1.

I wish you a lovely holiday full of good food and low stress, my friends. 2019 was somewhat awful; I have very little hope that its successor will be otherwise but for a few days, I’ll just focus on having survived this year.

It’s a small victory, but I’ll take it. See you in a bit, chickadees.