Boo, Yay, and Necessary Experience

I did work through the weekend (boo) but only half-days (yay?), which means I’m not done with loading the revised werelion serial (boo) but, gods willing, I should be today or tomorrow (yay?). Once it’s done I can leave it bloody well alone until June, which will be nice…

…but revisions on the second Ghost Squad book just landed, then there’s Sons of Ymre #2 to finish, Rook’s Rose (season two of Hell’s Acre) to get fully off the ground, and the second Tolkien werewolves book to write. All of that will be fun, but I could probably be forgiven for looking at the previous sentence and reaching blindly for my coffee while muttering something unprintable.

I also finished reading They Were Her Property, which was a difficult but necessary experience. Reading American history is maddening when the realities of slavery are glossed over, and terrifying when they’re not. I prefer the honesty of the latter, since the former is not properly history at all but propaganda–and not very good propaganda at that, since everyone bloody well knows the truth.

So. There are seventeen chapters of werelion to revise, and I probably won’t get them all done today, given how the dogs and my own bodily needs interrupt the work of writing. I am in that peculiar state where I resent anything taking me away from work, and self-care–showers, eating, even sleep–most of all. I just want to write, I just want to finish this. If not for the dogs I would probably ignore my own requirements, such as they are and for as long as possible, until the inevitable crash. Which would set me back quite a bit physically, and rob me of far more working time than just simply holding my nose and caring for my meatsack and self as I should, it’s true, so the dogs are helping more than you’d think.

Which they would be thrilled to hear if they weren’t so focused on waiting for me to get through my coffee so they have a chance of toast scraps. I believe there is a perfectly ripe avocado ready for smearing on my toast proper–don’t worry, the canines never get even a shred of that deliciousness; I know it’s Very Bad For Them. They do get bits of naked crust, though, because I’m a sucker.

There is only a thin scrim of coffee left in my mug, so it’s time to move on to the next task. I just have to keep my teeth and claws buried in the hide of this revision until it realizes it can’t shake me off and gasps its last tortured breath. Then I’ll be able to celebrate like a group of feasting Ewoks.

It’ll be messy, but satisfying. Kind of like the werelion book itself. In any case, Monday calls, and I should make sure the baseball bat is within easy reach. Just in case.

Have a lovely day, my darlings. We’ll get through all this yet.

Counterproductive & Necessary

Woke up with Jackson Wang’s 100 Ways in my head. It’s a legit bop, and mashes very nicely with Paul Simon whenever I take a sip of coffee. It could even be an office dance track; yesterday all my dance breaks were Dolly Parton and Beyoncé.

Today we might get some of the storm wrack cleared, and I have already suffered being on the phone. You’d think “email is the best way to get hold of me” would be music to an insurance company’s ears, but apparently they prefer jabbering over the cell waves. At some point I might well insist on email communications, partly because I suspect the institutional preference for phone calls is to set up a “he said, she said” dynamic if there are later troubles. For all its faults, email does provide a record of precisely what was said, and for that reason I often insist upon it.

In any case, tinkering with the werelion book’s zero draft proceeds. The serial will stay up until June, I think, and that should give me plenty of time to get editing and the like turned around. I should take more time to recover from the massive effort of producing a zero, but apparently I am in a mood to get a second push out the door and then collapse. Which surprises precisely nobody around these parts, being my usual preference anyway. I tend to try staving off burnout with more work, which is counterproductive in the larger sense but necessary (to some degree) for my process.

The trick is in getting just enough of it to satisfy the urge and scratch the itch, but not enough to damage me or end up making other work late. It’s all a balance.

Miss B knows I was on the phone, and that is so unusual she senses more hijinks afoot. She also knows I finished a zero, because one of my recovery methods is just stretching out on the floor and letting the dogs nose at me until satisfied that I am indeed not dead, merely resting, and feel like I might go for a walk.1

Anyway, I should probably get said furry brats walked before the crew arrives to get the massive limbs off our roof and fences and and and. Miss B is expressing her distaste for any break in the daily routine at all, informing all and sundry that change is always bad and should be accompanied by treats. She’s a very elderly dog by now, and I suppose she has a point. Boxnoggin, of course, is taking his cue from her, with the effect that both are becoming rather insufferable. Consequently, I suppose I should finish the dregs of my coffee and stick something breakfast-like in the toaster.

I keep meaning to tell you about Boxnoggin vs the Windchimes, mostly because there was a squirrel2 involved and I ended up screaming3. Maybe once we get all this debris sorted it will be easier.

I also have to get the unedited ebook for Season One of Hell’s Acre sorted, which will be somewhat of a relief to get out the door. The deadline for that is tomorrow, so the more work I get out of the way today, the better that will go.

Everything is terrible and I’m taking refuge in work. I only pray the end product will provide a little relief for others feeling as burned-out, low, and generally hopeless as I currently am.

It’s all I can do. Gods grant it ends up being enough.

Werelions Wrought

How, in the name of the gods, is it Monday again?

I suppose it didn’t help that I finished the werelion book on Saturday. I predicted a weekend spent working; lo and behold, here we are. The book will probably please nobody but me, but it’s done. Or at least, the zero draft is and I can decide how to go on from here. There’ll be a rough polish before it goes fully up as a serial for a couple months, and during that time there’ll be editing and prep for it to release as an actual book. Then it’ll be off the serial platform (this is the best way to fully try said platform) for a couple months, and after that, it can go out into the world and stop bothering me.

Of course, its bother has retreated to a dull whining sound at the back of my head, and now I’m deep in the throes of snapback. I just did a Friday Tea about snapback; I think the next one this upcoming Friday will be a little bit more about how to recover from a zero. Even if one is sure a completed zero draft is terrible and useless, one has still done something only a relatively small proportion of writers have by actually finishing the damn thing, and that’s worth celebration and praise.

I’ve the next slate of projects queued up in a nice little row–the second Hell’s Acre season, the second Sons of Ymre, the second Tolkien Werewolves book, and by then it’ll be time for the next Steelflower, I think. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be doing The Highlands War as a serial when Hell’s Acre is finished, but that’s months out since the second season of the latter is just as long as the first. Plus there’s the third book in the Ghost Squad series to build since the second is resting with the editor.

But all that is for after I recover. Today and tomorrow will probably be picking at the werelion serial’s bones, so to speak, in order to get the flywheel inside my head to spin down. The massive mental and emotional (not to mention physical, my wrists bloody well ache) effort of getting a usable, novel-length chunk of text means that once the damn thing is finished all that energy is suddenly whipping wildly in the wind, throwing sparks, an engine unconnected to a transmission and revving wildly. Learning how to ride that last, bumpy, decelerating portion of the rollercoaster and stagger off towards another rickety carnival contraption is a large part of the writing game.

Doing it during a still-going pandemic and slow-moving fascist coup is a new one for me, though. All things considered, even if the werelion book is crap, creating anything under these conditions is a victory.

So I’ll be taking it relatively easy for the next couple days, surveying what I have wrought and attempting to find some rest from my labours. The last time a book possessed me like this was Moon’s Knight, and I was super unsure that one would get any readers at all. It seems to be doing all right, so I am taught once again to just let the work go and know the readers will find it. Funny how that works.

I hope your weekend was calm and happy, my friends. Easter, Ramadan, and Passover (not to mention a Hindu festival) all on the same weekend–it seems like everyone should be too busy feasting and celebrating to be awful to each other, especially over religion. I mean, I know humans will fight over literally anything, anytime, anywhere, but it’s a nice thought and today there will be a lot of candy on sale.

That’s called looking on the bright side, as we often do here at the Chez. And now I need to watch Life of Brian again. (“Worse things happen at sea, you know.”) Part of the recovery process for me includes movies, so I guess that’s my afternoon or evening sorted.

Just got to get through the rest of the day first. Better get started on that.

See you around.

Wrack and Brooding

No wonder it shook the house.

That’s just a little of the wrack from the snowstorm–several inches of heavy wet snow, in April. I know this is to be expected in some parts of the world, but not here, my beloveds. No, not here. Thanks, climate change!

And due to everyone in the neighborhood having similar problems, we simply can’t get anyone to deal with it until next week. It’s anyone’s guess whether the roof is intact, or whether it will be once all this is lifted away. Who knows?

I’m going to aim for finishing the zero draft of the werelion book this weekend. Might as well, and it’ll keep me occupied and out of trouble. I simply don’t have the strength to shift any of the remaining big branches, even with the kids’ help, and brooding about what might lie beneath the mess isn’t good for me. Plus, I’m at the point in the bookmaking process where I actively resent anything calling me away from the act of creation. (Though I do plan to do a livestream later today, there are things to talk about.)

See you next week, my dears. I’m hoping for no more wild weather, but if some occurs I might end up in the basement, scribbling in a spiral notebook by the light of an ancient flashlight.

It’s good to have a plan…

Ice, Holding Pattern

We have an appointment for the tree people to come out and get rid of the storm wrack, but with hundreds of trees down (trees, not just branches the size of Greek pillars) that appointment isn’t until next week. Everyone with a chainsaw or chipper is able to command a premium at the moment, and is booked solid to boot.

I suppose it will turn out for the best, not least because the weather is still unsettled. Thunder, wintry mix, hail the size of large peas–you name it, it’s swept over us in the past few days. My sinuses feel every shift in atmospheric pressure like a spike driven straight through, which is non-optimal, but at least everything should be out of the way by the time we get the cleanup crew ‘s attention.

I’ve been possessed by the werelion VC Andrews/Cat People mashup. I suppose I’m dealing with burnout and all this house-related stress by writing something gleefully, utterly unpublishable. It’s the equivalent of scenery-chewing, and I’m about to finish the zero draft. Once that’s done, I don’t know what I’ll do with it–though I already have a cover, courtesy of my utterly marvellous cover artist. It might just be something kept for myself, or I could release it under a tight pseudonym. I’m already serializing it as an experiment, but we’ll see.

I could be working on paying projects, but my concentration is shot. (Unless, apparently, I’m writing Something Horrid.) All the stress has driven me into a hole, and the last time I felt like this I was in the throes of finishing Moon’s Knight during the deep uncertainty of First Lockdown. Fortunately, this book isn’t possessing me to the same degree, but it does demand to be finished before I move on to other stuff, like polishing the first season of Hell’s Acre and going back to the second Sons of Ymre book. There’s also the second Tolkien Werewolves book (wolves instead of lions, VERY different) to write as well, but I can’t really talk about that.

The morning is very quiet; the dogs have either turned up their nose at brekkie (Miss B) or chowed down on the high-value bits and left the rest (Boxnoggin) and are now fully engaged with the first nap of the day. In a little while they’ll sense the level of coffee in my mug has gone down to a critical point and they’ll wake, shake themselves, and start reminding me my own breakfast is nigh. Which will mean I have to get up, make toast, share the crust, walk the fuzzy little brats, and get a run in before I can come home, wash up, and settle to trying to finish this zero draft.

If I can get to the big fight against the human hunters, I can write the falling action tomorrow and hopefully be done with the damn thing. I’m increasingly fascinated with telling the story of hunting monsters from the monsters’ point of view (the short story with Eleni and Tarquin in Chicks Kick Butt proves it, I suppose) and it seems some of this book is a variation on that theme. So the hunters in the werelion story are not good people, and they will get exactly what they deserve.

It’s nice to think sometimes that can happen, instead of ugliness and hatred being consistently rewarded. But that’s a whole ‘nother blog post, ennit.

I was reading the other day about how blogs are dead and writers aren’t supposed to have chatty, conversational ones anymore. After looking around my office in genuine surprise, searching for the cameras as if it were a prank, I decided that as long as it keeps working for me it ain’t dead yet. I like doing it, it sets up my working day nicely and my beloved Readers seem to like it too. So we’ll just keep on going as we have been, mmmkay?

Oh, before I go, one of the two sales this month closes tomorrow, so be advised if that’s your jam. I’m about to take the gulp of coffee that will drop the liquid level in my mug below the magical point, and I can already sense the dogs stirring. Today’s run will be an exercise in agility training, since nobody has had the chance to really get all the storm debris up yet. The entire neighborhood seems to be holding its breath, waiting for a fresh disaster.

After the last few years, who can blame us?

I wish you a pleasant and worry-free Thursday, my dears. But I’m keeping the baseball bat handy because the weather report looks like the week might try some more bullshit, and I am so not down with that.

See you around…

After the Snow

We had quite a lot of wet, heavy snow (especially for April, in this part of the world) falling very quickly yesterday morning. It was lovely…until the crashing started all through the neighborhood. The firs around the house lost some huge branches, and as a result there’s a call in to the insurance company. I’m sure there were a rash of similar calls, because even though the deadly silence of snow you could hear the breaking and thudding everywhere.

This fellow could have gone straight through the house, but did not.

This particular limb is hanging across the deck; it landed on the roof crosswise and slid, bending the gutter and punching through the deck’s upright slats. There’s another one just as big lying over it up on the roof proper, and you can see both from the front of the house, over the roof-crest. This is just a sliver of the damage the storm did. You can also see a bit of the leftover slush-ice, which is lingering in shaded patches.

So far the insurance company seems genuinely helpful, but that’s no indication. All my phalanges are crossed, because it’s a lot of fallen crap and we simply can’t get to the roof to figure out if it’s whole. I guess we’ll find out when the thunderstorms move in later today?

Added to that, the faucet in the kids’ loo needs replacing. Fortunately the Princess likes puzzles and home repair, so she’s given Yours Truly a list of supplies, which are wending their way through the supply chain. It’s…very odd, to have someone in the house to rely on. I’m used to doing everything alone, world without end, amen. Learning to loosen my grip a little and accept help is quite a journey.

The zero draft of Hell’s Acre‘s Season One is finished, and the last chapter will probably go out to subscribers this week. I am spiking for the finish of the Sekrit Projekt’s zero, too–the VC Andrews/Cat People thing–and that will be lovely to have off my docket. It’s possessed me for long enough, I think.

They’re saying thunderstorms and wintry mix today, so that’s going to be grand. There’s still snow on the roofs too, though it seems to have largely melted off boughs–which is a mercy, because more rain atop the wet slush is heavy and could bring down even more weakened limbs, and we’ve had quite enough of that, thank you.

And that’s all the news I can think of this morning while my coffee cools. We could have done without this, but if it had to happen, at least the tree-arms didn’t fall point-first. Any one of the fallen could have punched straight through both floors if they’d hit wrong. So we’re fortunate in that respect, and I am thanking every lucky star I can think of.

At least nothing’s hitting the roof this morning. The dogs were quite put out with both the absence of walkies and the constant noise of impacts all through yesterday. Boxnoggin was a nervous wreck and even Miss B got a little tetchy, pressing close to my leg and looking up at me as if to say just make it stop, Mum, why are you doing this? Poor thing, she’s dead convinced I had some sort of control over what was happening. It’s probably too terrifying for her to contemplate otherwise.

Tuesday promises to be busy, but at least I can crawl into work for a short while and escape. (Unless some-damn-thing else happens.) I do have a SquirrelTerror tale to tell you (how Boxnoggin got tangled up in windchimes) but that’ll have to wait for another day.

See you around.

Snow in April

Went to sleep listening to the rain. It changed to snow overnight, and stuck. It stuck so hard, in fact, that several branches have come down–a monster across the driveway (literally all across the driveway, blocking it completely) and a similar monster down over the dining room. As far as I can tell the roof is probably fine, and the window was missed…but a slat on the deck is broken and the fence will never be the same. The honeysuckle and hydrangea are not having a good morning.

The snow is heavy and wet now, and still coming down like blazes. The snapping and groaning of breaking branches echoes all over the neighborhood, and there was just a cascade outside my office window. All the rain weighted everything down, then the additional load of sticky snow is just causing havoc.

Ah well. I knew something else would come along.

I took the last four-five days (pandemic time is stretchy, I’m not entirely sure how many) off social media because I just…couldn’t. I hit the end of my capacity to absorb the world’s pain and felt something snap in my chest. I simply, absolutely could not, so I skipped all social interaction through the weekend. It was marvelously healing. So much so I’m wondering why not just extend it? But I have to be around on the internet to make a living, so…I don’t know.

Regardless, I don’t think I can do two livestreams per week; that’s just a loss of too much working time. They simply destroy me with anxiety. So I’ll cut it down to the Friday ones and hope for the best.

The dogs are a bit nervy at the sudden sounds, and I’m sure my sigh of, “oh, for fuck’s sake” when I viewed the damage in the backyard made them a bit apprehensive. Thing seem to be quieting down a bit–but I shouldn’t say that, should I? It’s just too much of a temptation for 2022 to prove me wrong, wrong, wrong.

At least the snow is pretty, and I won’t be running today. The dogs can wait for walkies because I’m not leaving the house in this bullshit. Boxnoggin would adore the chance to drag me after him Iditarod-style, over hill and under dale. Or however that goes. I could do with some breakfast instead, and maybe I’ll take the day to work on the werelion VC Andrews/Cat People thing. If I’m waiting for disaster I might as well write something that makes me happy in the meantime, even if it’s unpublishable.

Monday is Mondaying hard, and I can do no less.