Pennyworth Advice

Unexpected Directions

I had a run scheduled for today, but both Boxnoggin and I spent a restless night and are somewhat bleary; there’s also a fog advisory on. I suspect he’d like a nice hard run to work the fidgets out and get everything into its place, but I am not made of such stern stuff on this particular Tuesday. Especially with the way most people drive in the neighborhoods around here.

Not with a zero burning my fingers. I have everything but the final eyeballing of the e-proof of HOOD‘s Season Two done, and I really thought I’d also be done with Sons of Ymre by now. But then it went and turned into two books instead of one, and I’m scrambling. I do have about a week to get it either done or so thoroughly stabbed I can split my focus between it and another project (despite not wanting to work on more than one at a time this year, alas) with very little ado.

Bloody novels, always taking unexpected directions.

I had a fit of absolutely murderous irritation last night before I realized I was both hungry and in the throes of the last fifth of a zero draft. the last screaming push for the finish is generally when my temper, never too smooth, frays to the point that the kids roll their eyes and suggest simple dishes for dinner, or even just toast and eggs. It’s quite a relief that they’re both old enough to cook for themselves if I’m late, or if what’s on offer doesn’t please them.

Anyway, I was hangry enough to snarl at my desktop, and it occurred to me I could bring the book to a simple close by just killing everyone in it, in various terrible ways. I decided to wait for food and morning before actually deciding, and I’m glad I did. While satisfying, that would have been wasted work.

Not going to lie, though, it would be incredibly satisfying.

As it is, I have La traviata playing softly, the morning’s caffeine standing ready, and the whole day to make serious progress on stabbing Sons. There is a bit of industry news I want to highlight in Haggard Feathers, but that can wait for an hour or so while I eyeball the day’s work and take the dogs on a walk to get everything settled inside our respective skins. Right now Dame Sutherland is singing Sempre libera and absolutely flowing through the notes like cream. Her voice really is that velvety, that smooth. Wow.

Maybe Tuesday won’t need the machete after all. But I’ll keep it handy just in case.

Hey, the Free Agent February giveaway is still going on for a couple days! You can enter here–and enter daily too, if that moves you.

Which Habits to Toss

It’s the last week of February, so I’m changing things around a bit. By now I know which of the habits I fondly imagined starting in January are going to work, which need a little more tweaking in order to work–and which I can merrily throw out the window, happy that I gave them a good old try and even more satisfied that I can toss ’em.

With extreme prejudice, sometimes.

There’s a full day ahead. I long to be done with Sons of Ymre, and I think I have a shot at it. There’s the Tuesday writing post for Haggard Feathers to get finished and edited–it’ll be on proofreading, part of the “getting your book ready to debut” series. I want to do a series on marketing in March, but honestly most of my advice on that is “don’t, most advertised marketing services exist only to remove money from your pockets.”

So maybe I’ll ask subscribers what they’d like to see in March. Hm.

I’m seeing some people come to my site by searching for my name and “e-piracy,” so let me just put my statement out there: Don’t steal/torrent books. I’m not even going to add a please, I shouldn’t have to beg people not to fucking steal.

Miss B is draped over her memory foam, microfiber-covered office bed, signing heavily each time I shift in my chair. She wants her walkies, having had breakfast–and helped herself to no little part of Boxnoggin’s as well. They tend to switch bowls halfway through a meal, as if they aren’t given pretty much the same thing. B gets a little more wet food in deference to her age and dental status, and Boxnoggin gets more dry crunchies because he enjoys slavering and cracking them, chewing as loudly as possible.

But halfway through breakfast or dinner they mosey to each other’s bowls with the precision of Ziegfield girls switching marks on a brightly lit stage, and all the pleading or scolding in the world won’t stop them. I suppose the grass is always greener and the other bowl always more attractive.

That’s my Monday. I’ve recently had the kind of good news that, while enjoyable, upsets a number of other plans, so I need to spend serious time thinking about the fallout today. Which is going to be just as pleasant as peeling my own fingernails off, I suppose, but at least it’s for a net good.

Some more coffee would also do me a world of good, I suspect. I’m cranky enough this morning to crack the world in half with a sharp word or two.

The Free Agent February giveaway is still going on; there are three days left and you can enter daily. It will be nice to alert the winners once they’re drawn, and brace myself for next month.

Leap years. They never quite sit comfortably, and this one’s no exception. At least after the 29th we’ll feel more synchronized, right?

Don’t tell me if I’m wrong. I’d rather have a little hope.

See you around, Readers.

Spores, Math, Pixies

If you look closely, you can see the fairy ring. Of course I know it’s spores and math… and yet, I can’t help but see pixies dancing, too.

It was the strangest thing; our yard didn’t have visible mushrooms–and certainly never had rings of them–until after I finished writing Gallow & Ragged. Then, as soon as we got some good rain, mycelium circles were fricking everywhere, and the urge to leave a dish of milk out during the nail-paring of a new moon was well-nigh irresistible.

Sometimes I wonder about this career of mine. Whether it’s magic or just plain selective attention is academic, though. The real point is, I’m not going to stop writing–not while I’m breathing. Maybe that commitment catches the gaze of a few things better left alone.

Still… the Folk like the mad, and they love bards. I can’t really sing anymore, but I’ve an endless well of stories to tell. Good enough.

Have a lovely weekend, my dears. And remember, should you hear the click of high heels behind you on a dark road, and the scratch of very large golden hound’s nails…

…don’t look back. Just keep moving. Or if you must look back, remember to be kind, and to ask no questions you don’t truly want answers to.

Flamethrower and Swan

I’m in a Mood today. It might be leftover from last week, which was full of non-optimal stuff; it might be the weather, it might just be generalized anxiety. I’ll decide after coffee and a run.

At least I got all my Sunday housecleaning chores sorted, and I have a list of things to get done today. The attack of the don’t-wannas is deep and toothy, but if I nibble around the edges I might get to evening without feeling like a giant useless lump of pudding. Which is devoutly to be desired.

The Little Prince is reading The Great Gatsby in English class, which means I should probably take a spin through it once I finish the Francis Young I’m working through. So far the Young is really great, except for an assertion that accusations of witchcraft leveled at the marginalized means said accusations are “depoliticized.” Which is a bunch of bullshit, but then again, I don’t think the author is a witch and definitely doesn’t identify as female.

I told the Prince that everyone in Gatsby is awful, and so far he agrees. I don’t think there’s a single reasonable person in the entire novel. The Prince thinks Fitzgerald would really have liked to be Gatsby but sensed on some level how that would go terribly wrong, so he invented the narrator to keep some distance. Not a bad analysis at all; I’m so proud of my young reader I could just about burst.

So there are good things–chief among them the coffee soaking into my tissues and making me much, much less murder-y. I’m not quite sucking on the chewy stuff at the bottom, but it’s close. I should get the dogs out for walkies; Boxnoggin needs a short run to get his fidgets worked out.

Who am I kidding? I need a short run to get my fidgets out, too. Today will be full of proofing, always a fun time, but I have enough else to do that I can switch to other tasks when fatigue hits and go back to the text when I’m renewed. Once the proofing’s done there’ll be incorporating changes in the text, then I can upload, schedule, and call it dusted.

None of that will happen if I don’t bid you a civil adieu, though, my friends, so off I go. Bad mornings can turn into bad days, but this one I think I have a chance to fight off.

It is a Monday, after all. Grab the flamethrowers, get on the swan, and let’s go.

Cherry Tree, Lesson

Spring tree flowers
© Starush | Dreamstime Stock Photos

There’s a cherry tree down the street who doesn’t know it’s still January. It has drawn its fleecy robe out of storage and shrugged into it, branch-fingers stretching out of the sleeves, the dryad inside blinking hazily.

I keep telling her to wait, to be sure, to be safe, that there could be a cold snap at any moment–but she doesn’t listen. She never listens, just laughs each year, always at least a month earlier than any other cherries, and forget the apple trees. They’re late, as far as she’s concerned.

I’m up and have had a bit of broth. My stomach is rolling and roiling like an angry sea. Our neighbor’s Big Cat What Thinks He’s A Dog–the only cat I’ve ever met whose belly was not a furry deathtrap–had to be put to sleep as a result of the saddle thrombosis. It’s usually a complication of invisible heart disease, strikes male cats more than female, and there’s very little that can be done.

Our neighbor’s devastated; Big Cat is her eldest, and she’s already had much grief in the past year and a half. The Little Prince, who found Big Cat after the initial attack, is looking a little pinched, despite me reminding him that he did everything right–in an emergency, the first step is to call Mum, which he did.

So yesterday was full of the arrangements to get Big Cat to his regular vet instead of the animal hospital I took him to on Sunday. He had enough gabapentin from the hospital that he didn’t seem to be in a lot of pain, but his poor back paws were cyanotic. Poor, poor little fellow.

I keep looking at Miss B, who is an Elderly Statesdog, and my eyes begin to prickle. We must do what we can and love as hard as we can; who knows what tomorrow brings?

That’s what the dryad keeps whispering. It’s her job, risky as it is, to take her ceremonial robe out of winter storage early, to remind us all. She’s incapable of caution when she has a task of this stature. Yes, there could be a cold snap at any moment…

…but there’s that cherry tree down the street, reminding us that winter isn’t forever, and to love flagrantly, deeply, often, too early, too much, always.

Even in the dark.

Yeggs

For various reasons, I never used to like my eggs any other way than scrambled.

Fortunately, though, I’m now forty-mumblemumble years old and have cultivated the habit of trying things I never liked every once in a while just to be sure. And I’ve found out that fried eggs with salt and pepper, their yolks maybe not entirely hardened, are great on sourdough toast. And each time I eat them, I say a silent little fuck you to the abusive asshats who tried to rob me of simple joys.

It makes them taste even better.

It’s nice to try new things, it’s nice to try things you once disliked and find out you like them now, and it’s also nice to try things you never liked once in a while and think “Nope, still not for me.” All three are useful, especially to a writer.

Have a lovely weekend, chickadees!

Shillin’ My Wares

I am so close to the end of revisions for HOOD‘s Season Two, I can taste it. Of course, there’ll still be CEs and proofing, but the season has its shape now, and it’s… actually… not a bad book? Which means I’m almost at the final gate.

I go through phases of hating each book. Generally the first one hits in the Slough of Despond from about halfway through the zero draft until four-fifths through, when the gallop to the finish takes me and I have no time for any emotion other than weary focus, then again it strikes midway through the revision into a reasonable first draft, then there’s the point halfway through other revisions when I think I have always been revising this book, I will always be revising this book, and weep.

It gets to where I’m afraid, each time, that I will always hate the book, and that it will go out into the world an unloved child. Which dovetails neatly with the “everyone will hate this, then they’ll hate YOU, then your career will crash and you’ll be homeless and your kids and dogs will starve and then the sun will go out and it’s ALL YOUR FAULT, LILI, ALL OF IT!” that strikes right before Release Day.

But in between those bursts, I have shoals of time where I think, well, this book ain’t perfect, but it’s not totally awful, and I’m grateful for the respite.

This particular burst of “maybe not bad” came when I reached a particular scene, frowned, and realized that the hole I’d sensed in the book was right there, plainly visible. I just needed to let the season rest for a wee bit before I got enough distance to see it. Which meant I could reel back in Scrivener and drop in an extra chapter (hey, I wrote about that earlier this week!) that makes the entire book hang in the shape it needs like a 3D tapestry.

It was a welcome discovery. I knew the hole was there, I just couldn’t see it.

Which reminds me! Some of you are asking about Haggard Feathers, my writing Substack. Come February, one weekly post there will be free and the rest will be subscriber-only. I’m still going back and forth about what’s a reasonable price to charge for it; the Substack will focus on being a working writer as well as refining your craft as a casual hobbyist. I plan on also doing a Thursday Evening Open Thread over there, where subscribers can ask questions, play, and generally interact with each other and me. I’m thinking around $5/mo wouldn’t be too much to ask; I might end up doing subscription tiers if Substack supports that. In any case, it has not changed to subscriber-only yet, and one post a month (probably on the first Tuesday) will be utterly free so you know what you’re getting. Come February, I’ll trot out the subscription option.

Also, if I’m shilling my wares (as one is frequently required to do in order to keep body and soul together) I have a Patreon, and also have subscription options at Gumroad. They fall into three classes: A Latte’s Worth (a once-monthly fiction drop, the price of a cheap but good coffee), Crow’s Nest (weekly fiction drop, generally on Thursdays) and the Nest Egg option, which not only gives you the weekly fiction drop but also gives you access to whatever serial I’m running currently–including the unedited and edited ebooks of said serials, before they go on sale and most times before they can even be preordered. The current serial is my Robin Hood in Space story, of which Season One is available in entirety and Season Two is spiking for a finish involving a ball, assassination attempts, and a GIANT SPACESHIP BLOWING UP because hey, write what you love, right?

I’m trying to maneuver myself into an emotional-mental space where I can have the next serial be The Highlands War–that’s right, the next Steelflower book. But there’s still Season Three of HOOD to get through, so I have time to think about, doodle, dream, and prep to my heart’s content. The next serial might end up being Lightning Bound instead of Highlands War, too. I haven’t decided yet.

Giving yourself enough time to make decisions is a skill that edges into a luxury. But if one can possibly take it, I recommend it. There are very few decisions that are as pressing as the world would like us to believe, especially that slice of the world full of people who (wrongly) think they’re entitled to something from us just because they want it.

Anyway, the dogs need walking, I have a workout to get into, and there’s correspondence to take care of before I can get to what I really want to do–revise this book so I can get to the next stage of the publication process.

See you around, chickadees.