Choice and Ambiguity

One step forward, half a step back.

I shambled to bed early last night, my head caving in. The sudden changes in barometric pressure kicked off one of my infrequent but very bad headaches–not quite a migraine, just close enough to rob me of any chance at working for the day. I managed to stay up through dinner and feeding the dogs, then downed a couple homemade edibles and slithered into bed. The dogs were not averse to this, since it meant I was flat on my back somewhere they could supervise and “help” me; Boxnoggin in particular wanted to lick my temples since I was clutching at my head and obviously in distress.

Miss B settled for lying across my knees; when I tried to tell her that was not helpful she gave me a look of such wide-eyed doggy surprise I meekly reclined and shut up, attempting to breathe through the pain until relief kicked in. Once it did and I clearly wasn’t going anywhere else she condescended to move aside, taking up half the bed as is her usual wont. She likes a particular space so I can simply throw an arm over her in the middle of the night, mistaking her for a giant teddy bear.

This morning, I’m shaky and nauseous but much better. Even a gentle run isn’t out of the question, and that should shake off any remaining pain though I’ll have trembling fits for the rest of the day as my body tries to sort itself out.


Some people have deliberately consumed and worship nothing but whitebread American sitcoms, and it shows. Playing with other narrative structures or character types often raises a howl of protest from such creatures, who want their familiar line-line-“joke”-canned audience laughter and they want it now, with everything tied up neatly at the end of a half-hour and any female main character safely shackled to their problematic, highly abusive fave. The idea of female characters who prioritize themselves, or prefer people who don’t try to manipulate them, is treated as a deadly insult, as is any ambiguity. I understand these dull, banal elves.

I am simply not the writer for them.

Seriously, folks. There are two men–count ’em, two–in Hostage to Empire who don’t try to manipulate, use, or use-and-kill Komor Yala. One ends up an Emperor and the other…well, that would be telling. But the idea that Yala could finally go against the strictures of her class and culture after an apocalyptic battle in which she literally sacrifices both her life and honor, that she can go on to choose someone who doesn’t lie to her, manipulate her, or attempt to use her as a political game-piece seems to drive some readers into a particular type of baffled fury, much as Dru Anderson‘s refusal to select a boyfriend from the frankly not-so-great options on offer or Robin Ragged‘s preference for freedom seemed to.

Cultural misogyny is a helluva drug.


Perhaps I’m simply tired; my patience for such malignant, deliberate idiocy is at an all-time low. Frankly, my patience for a whole lot of things has been exhausted, partly as a function of hitting my mid-forties and partly from surviving the neverending hell of 2020 and its knock-on years.

Monday’s Tea with Lili was about character names and selecting good writing groups, with bonus knitting. I should talk a little more about good groups and the like on Friday, if I remember it. My performance anxiety over being on camera is not abating, so I’ll give this another month to shake out and then see if I want to continue.

I’m up relatively early but the dogs are certain this only means I will be having breakfast toast early as well, which means they will get crusts. So they are both expectantly crowding my office chair though I haven’t even worked halfway through my coffee yet. Hope springs eternal in the heart of dog, and all that. A heavy grey cloud just covered the newly risen sun, but the birds aren’t fooled–they’ve already sung the dawn chorus and won’t be tempted into encore.

I suppose I should finish my coffee and do some stretching. The dogs will attempt to supervise and “help”, eager to rush me through the morning so they can get to crusts and walkies. I’m pretty sure Boxnoggin will knock me over at one point or another, so I have to be ready to fall the right way, avoiding further injury. It’s good training, at least.

Happy Tuesday, my beloveds. Revel in ambiguity, do not be afraid to choose yourself. It’s nice to have other people along on the ride of life, but it’s not a set-in-stone necessity.

I promise.

Pre-Clean Phase

We had a bit of a breeze last night and a giant limb fell across the lower half of the deck stairs, shattering the trellis for the hop vine. On the bright side, the trellis’s sacrifice means the stairs are fine, so at least there’s that. And the coffee tastes particularly good this morning since I don’t have to do any jackleg carpentry.

One repair per weekend is enough. I know, I know–a house means repairs. But I already did plumbing this weekend, for godsake. Okay, I have to be honest, it was simply replacing a lever on the downstairs loo, but I swore five or six times so it still counts.

I’m contemplating doing a complete Kon-Mari on the kitchen. There are plenty of things we don’t use, and freeing them to fly into the world and find those who need them might mean my daughter can finally fit an air fryer into the cabinets somewhere. We aren’t getting any more appliances until we have room for them, and she’s been eyeing air fryers and griddles with hungry, hungry eyes. I wouldn’t mind a stovetop griddle myself, but we’re positively choked with other kitchen things and besides, the All-Clad lids are very inefficiently organized.

So I’m in the pre-clean phase, where I’m poking around cabinets and making decisions. Eventually I’ll decide what I actually want to do, and then a burst of activity will unnerve the dogs and make the children wish they’d never put the bug in my ear about griddles, of all things. I already have a list of things that need to move on to new homes; I just need to think about how I want to stack things in the freed-up space.

I can’t tell if my mood is a result of pre-coffee branch-wrestling, the attempt I made to slow down and not-work this weekend, or any of a hundred other unpleasant things like taking care of everyone else’s emotional needs and neglecting my own. A run will probably set me right, but in order to get there I have to grab brekkie and walk the dogs. For once, though, I’d like to just do the things that please me.

Wouldn’t we all.

It’s all Monday, I suppose. I have two questions for today’s Tea with Lili and there’s work to be done if I can just get everything else out of the way. I suspect I’m cranky because I haven’t written more than a bare 200 words per day for the weekend, and the itch to simply crawl back into a fictional world is mounting. At least inside a book I know what I’m doing.

I suppose I’d best get started since nothing at all will get done with me sitting around and moaning. I’ve a list, I’ve the dogs, and I’m in my running togs.

See you around, my dears.

Unstuck in Time

Well. Release day has come and gone, it’s the last day of two sales, and I woke up convinced down to my marrow that it was Friday. I have, like Billy Pilgrim, come unstuck in time.

Not that I was ever too firmly nailed into Cronos’s river to begin with, since I step out to enter other universes on a daily basis. And frankly, what with events on this timeline and all, other worlds are looking better and better each moment. Yes, I know it’s terrible to dream of leaving what with all this mess around…but I can’t help it, and it’s a fantasy that has very little chance of being fulfilled so just let me have it, please.

I have already had to apply stinging (though polite) rebukes to two separate businesses involved in hijinks today, and can’t help but think that will set the tone for the entire Thursday, so–

I had to check the date on my desktop once more. Yes. It’s Thursday. How did I forget in the space of two paragraphs?

I know why this is happening: Stress, and successive traumas. Pandemic, ongoing fascist coup (said coup attempt is not over), war, and non-plague-related health issues are all jumping on the bandwagon, and my sense of time has been shoved off to make its way home as best it can. Yet I’ve had the great good fortune to be able to work from home with very little disruption, not to mention the fact that both the kids are out of school now–well, the Prince’s last two years of schooling were interrupted by this, but we fought for and won the remote learning option. Otherwise I’d’ve yanked him out and let him take his GED, and that would be that. But I can’t imagine what it’s like for, say, a few of our neighbors, who have toddlers and elementary-school children.

Pretty sure they’re drifting in time, too.

The sun is out this morning, and the dogs have no idea why I’m so slow, not to mention perturbed. They can sense the stress, whether by smell or simple observation. Miss B sticks to me like glue, attempting to supervise me into peace, and Boxnoggin makes circuits of the house, patrolling the bounds. See, he seems to be saying, I am on guard, you needn’t worry.

They’re trying to help. The kids and I talk about what’s happening at dinnertime, and there are extra hugs and check-ins during the day. It’s somewhat of a comfort that even though adult, neither of them turn down the opportunity to grab a Mum hug. Each time I ask, “Would you like–” they immediately say, “YES.” Maybe they know it soothes me too.

I’m pretty tightly scheduled and have electronic nags on phone, desktop, and tablet keeping me on-track; I find myself obsessively checking my digital calendars, dead convinced I’ve missed something important. If not for to-do lists I wouldn’t get a damn thing done, and maybe that’s why I feel so disjointed; I crossed off everything on yesterday’s list and didn’t immediately make today’s. I should update the master list as well, since I’ve crossed off four zero drafts on it and need to finish four more.

Huh. Maybe I have been working enough lately. It’s weird to think that the persistent sense of not-doing-as-much-as-I-should could be lying to me. I don’t know why I’m surprised, I’m fully aware that feeling is a lying liar who lies, and yet it creeps in with many different forms, poking and tormenting.

In any case, finding out it’s Thursday means I have a completely different set of tasks than the one I was braced for, but also means I feel like I have a whole extra day this week to get things done. Between the release and a couple other things, I’ve been playing catch-up and unable to really work for a few days, and it’s been a torment. I thought I’d have Sons of Ymre #2 finished by now, but…that’s not happening.

I just heaved a giant sigh, and the dogs think that means brekkie-time. I suppose I should go and get that sorted, and walk the beasts. They will be content with their noses buried in hedges for most of it, and I can take some joy in their absolute commitment to the Now.

It’s Thursday, I know it’s Thursday, and yet I just had to check the calendar again. I suspect I’ll be doing it all day. There’s some comfort in knowing I’m not alone in the maneuver, I suppose.

See you around, my friends.

Mental Mustelids

The dogs have turned up their nose at brekkie–“mere kibble, Mother, how dare.” Of course when they arrived from the shelter, even plain kibble was treated like manna. Now they’re spoiled, and they know the dinner-bowl will contain kibble, wet food, and perhaps a scrap or two from the human repast. So they disdain the morning offerings, unless they get just too hungry around midday and snarf it while I’m having lunch, begging all the while for a moiety of my own meal.

Such are dogs. Nothing is as good as what’s in the other’s bowl. Miss B, as an elderly and somewhat demented fur-child, thinks “sneaking” from Boxnoggin’s bowl is putting one over on the entire house. Boxnoggin is a really good sport about it–he can’t understand why she wants what’s in there so badly, but while she’s occupied he’ll wander over to hers and eat. You can see him give the equivalent of a canine shrug each time.

I have just resurrected and am staring blankly at my coffee mug. Someone in the neighborhood has been running a leaf blower for nearly an hour; the sound provoked me out of bed along with the dogs’ bladders. I need caffeine, I would not willingly step away from the slow infusion of java and that is what stops me from going looking for the source of the ruckus. Of course not everyone can keep my schedule, and the world does not exist to please me.

I’m just grumpy.

Yesterday was a good working day. I stripped out and rebuilt that bothersome scene in Hell’s Acre, and the monster hunters in Sons of Ymre #2 are now well and truly caught. The creation of a reasonable amount of text was accompanied by a deep and awful crisis of self-confidence. I suppose Sons #2 is shifting early from the new-and-shiny portion of novel writing to the Slough of Despond part. Hell’s Acre, of course, is having a difficult time because so much of it has been written during pandemic and other awful recent events.

I know where the problems lie, but the quicksand still drags at my feet. I still turn off the light after reading a bit of Nin’s diary and settle into the dark, where the barking of you’ll never be good enough echoes through my interior halls once I’m not distracting myself with actual work. (Or true crime videos.)

I know the only solution is to put my head down and keep working, that it’s most probably the voice of brainweasels and therefore, a lying liar who lies. Yet my defenses are rather thin right now, for a variety of reasons. I wake with the awful seashell song of you’ll never be good enough, you’re a fake, nobody really likes you or your books echoing through my skull, and the only mercy is that there’s usually another piece of music burrowing into my grey matter as a distraction.

Sometimes I wonder if the constant internal music is a self-protective reflex, drowning out the brainweasels. Maybe, maybe not, but either way I value the relief.

In any case, there are the dogs to walk and a run to accomplish. Then it’s back to the word mines–the subscription drop today is going to be lovely, I need to make a few more notes for tomorrow’s Tea with Lili (we’ll be talking about worldbuilding; Part I is now up on YouTube), there’s the return of a favorite character in Hell’s Acre to go back over and tweak, and I need to make some decisions about the structure of Sons #2. It’s a busy day, and I should make a list or nothing will get done. I’d like to do the running-with-werewolves scene in the Sekrit Projekt too, but that may be a step too far in terms of ambition and have to wait for the weekend–always assuming the other Sekrit Projekt via my agent doesn’t suddenly catch fire and rearrange my writing schedule.

…maybe the brainweasels are responding to the sheer amount of work I’ve assigned myself. Which is fine, I’ll lash them to the chariot and make them drag me, if I have to. If I were any good as a graphic artist I’d want to draw that, me in a Boudicca-like vehicle, pulled by a number of mouth-frothing mental mustelids.

Now there’s a fun mental image, and with it I shall bid you adieu, my beloveds. Don’t let Thursday win. If we band together, we can take it down.

Over and out.

Recognizing Hungers

Finally have the ol’ YouTube channel sorted. I don’t know how long I’m going to keep up Tea with Lili–it does cut into my writing time twice a week–but at least the old teas have a place to live now when they drop off the Twitch stream. I have also been experimenting with Streamlabs, which is much better than Twitch Studio and doesn’t cause my desktop to crash, hallelujah. So maybe I’ll stream some gaming or something too, we’ll see.

My agent tells me I’m witty and personable, so this is a good marketing thing. I am not sure–one of the reasons why I write is the solitude. On the other hand, maybe nobody will watch the damn vids, so there’s at least that. And though writing is a lonely, solitary task, bringing a book to publication requires a lot of cooperation, so the writer’s life is a lot less lonely than one might think. At least, now in the age of the internet it is.

How the world has changed. Reading Anaïs Nin’s diaries and thinking about how long it took a letter to get to its recipient in those days fills me with a strange sensation. On the one hand, I wonder what Henry Miller’s emails to her would have been like; on the other, he probably would have sent unsolicited dick pics and she might’ve blocked him. (Good riddance, too.) It’s fun to think about her and Antonin Artaud’s text messages though. Artaud was apparently an experience–no less than Nin herself, I fancy.

I recognize some of my own hungers in her diaries. I am profoundly uncomfortable with small talk–I want to speak about the real, sooner rather than later, and social pleasantries are akin to being slowly peeled. The household I grew up in was aggressively, violently shallow and superficial; that way, the adults could retain control, and they relentlessly mocked and belittled anything to do with art, culture, deep or real feelings. Maybe it was a mercy, since showing any true emotion or letting the adults know what one thought was a recipe for further abuse, beatings, and just general disaster.

I learned to hide, but I never liked it. Being able to play the game–and play it well–even with narcissists is a useful skill, one I can wish it wasn’t so damn necessary.

Anyway. We need groceries. I did run out and get milk over the weekend, but it’s about time for another trip to get, well, everything else. Not looking forward to it–there were far too many naked faces breathing disease while I made the milk run. Each time I see someone unmasked in a public building I feel disgust, nausea, and great sadness. The utter selfishness is stunning, but then again, what did I expect in ‘Murica? The sense of being chained to a seat on a train merrily heading for a cliff-edge is overwhelming, and no matter how I struggle to free myself and others, I can’t halt so many tons of moving metallic catastrophe.

All I can do is mask up myself, encourage others to do so, and keep writing. It doesn’t feel like enough. It probably never will.

And yet…several of you have sent me suggestions for office chairs I can sit cross-legged in. Thank you! Every time I start feeling too down, someone passes along a kindness and I am reminded there’s good in the world, too. We somehow muddle along, one way or another. I’m trying to focus on that rather than the firehose of bad news. Of course the bad news isn’t like it was during 2016-2020, but the successive retraumatizing doesn’t help. A body-and-soul can only absorb so much.

I suppose I’m in a bit of a mood today. A run should set me right–yesterday’s was lovely, between the rain and my body suddenly deciding to slip back into the groove after injury and bad weather dropped my mileage to a pittance. The road back is always thorny, but also always reaches a point where the body decides oh, okay, I remember this and suddenly things become a great deal easier. I was hoping it would happen soon-ish, and it appears yesterday was the day, thank the gods.

There’s a release next week (the third and final Hostage to Empire book) and I’m already feeling the nerves. Submerging into a cave to ignore them and keep writing is the best possible course, and I should get right on that…

…as soon as I walk the dogs, get a run in, and dodge the murderously selfish unmasked in order to get us supplies for another few weeks. There’s a storm in Hell’s Acre and I need to write a certain character’s arrival before going through and braiding in a formerly written scene, and I positively have to get the monster hunters in Sons of Ymre #2 caught. That last has been hanging fire for at least a week, because there’s something the heroine needs to realize before it happens, but I don’t know what. I’m waiting for her to speak.

Sometimes one has to settle outside a character’s mousehole with a bit of lemon candy and wait. There’s nothing for it, especially early in the book when whatever they say will have knock-on effects all the way down the line.

And with that, I’m off. Happy Tuesday, my beloveds. Stay safe out there.

A Nice Thought

I’m not sure if it’s the time change or something else kicking my ass. I could not seem to drag myself out of bed this morning, and only the fact that the dogs needed to unload their bladders managed to move me. It feels a little bit like the massive burnout I had last year, when I physically couldn’t force myself upright and spent a good eighteen hours or so per day asleep and the remaining ones wishing I were unconscious.

The thing about the kind of stress we’re all living under is that it’s cumulative and there’s never enough time to undo the damage. We just keep taking DoT while the raid boss laughs and our healers are all out of mana, not to mention on global cooldown.

…gods, I miss playing WoW. If only Blizzard hadn’t been so rancid. *sigh*

I know precisely what would fix me. The only trouble is the world won’t cooperate. Or, more precisely, a selfish minority won’t mask up, won’t get vaxxed, won’t stop bullying, won’t stop being hideous violent bigots. If people would just fucking get along there would be no bloody problem, but that minority of bullying, racist abusers simply won’t. The powerful will not give up what they believe they’re entitled to. So I’m forced to other methods of preserving my stability and sanity–the only trouble is, individual solutions don’t do much about systemic problems, nor should they be called upon to.

Still, I’ve got to do something to re-wrap my nerves. I’ve been making bespoke chocolate edibles (the current batches are cardamom and pumpkin spice, respectively) and building my running mileage base again. I’m experimenting with the recipe for the first (there’s a slight graininess from using cocoa that I have yet to overcome) and making the second a priority though it cuts into time I would much rather be doing other things with. I also have plans for Hell’s Acre–I was just going to do it as one massive book but I think I can get away with a season break after one of the recent chapters.

I also got the grow light for my office, and the plants seem to be rehabbing under it quite nicely except for the castor, which is unhappy with everything. It might be a failed experiment, but I keep talking to it, encouraging it to tell me what it needs or to just take all the light and do something. The jade plant is super happy and the angel trumpet has visibly grown, so at least there’s that. I might have to repot the hen-and-chick succulent soon too.

I also moved a hop vine volunteer to the northern fence. If it takes off it’ll provide a privacy screen there during the summer. Since the kiwi there gave up the ghost during last summer’s heat dome, I’ve been thinking about a vine there. Hops will do.

The biggest trouble with circling burnout this way is the hit my productivity takes. I need to be engaged on multiple projects or we don’t eat. Our margin is very, very slim here at the Chez and I don’t want it to get any thinner. I would desperately like for the world to calm down a bit so I can just bloody well work.

This is me, heaving a deep sigh. But as my sister pointed out last year, the influenza epidemic that started in 1918 took about three years to be addressed, for people to finally stop being dunderheads and take the steps necessary to actually put it to bed. Maybe this is the year the anti-maskers and ridiculous anti-vax asshats will finally be shouted down by reasonable people sick of their nastiness. Maybe.

Silver linings, I guess. I can’t even talk about the other current events. I am brimful of the world’s pain and it feels like one more drop will split me open like an overripe fruit. My guts will go everywhere and the wasps will feast. And isn’t that a cheerful thought.

There’s work planned for today. I don’t know if I’ll get there. Even walking the dogs seems an impossible task, let alone running my own heavy corpse. I’ll probably feel better after both, so I suppose I’d best get started. There’s brekkie to handle too, except the last thing I want to do is eat.

Meh. That’s the theme of today, I suppose: A resounding meh.

I hope your Tuesday is starting better than mine, beloveds. I keep telling myself things like courage and chin up and could be worse, and even I’m getting tired of hearing it. Maybe I should just dive into the edibles and curl up in bed after I wash off the day’s run, and play a mobile game or something. I probably will not do so, since I feel even worse when I don’t work, but it’s a nice thought.

See you around.

Third Spring, Avoidance

Daffodils and jonquils are blooming, the plum trees and magnolias are sporting a few blooms among their hard reddish buds, the cherry tree down the street is still flowering fitfully (it’s been doing this since early January), and the crocuses are going great guns. The earth is hitting the snooze button, as we all do, but waking up is a foregone conclusion.

Especially on a Monday.

It’s the third spring of plague. Everyone is weary, and the frustration–we could have been done with this by now, if not for the selfishness of a minority. The kids are exhausted by the constant uncertainty, and I’m not far behind. Every fresh WTFery just adds to the load, and the only mercy is that Papaya Pol Pot doesn’t have the nuke button anymore.

I find my silver linings where I can these days.

The time change1 went as well as could be expected. And of course now that we’re an hour earlier I have a thousand video meetings suddenly cropping up like mushrooms after a hard rain. Crawling under my desk with a spiral notebook and simply writing longhand is starting to seem like a good strategy–avoidance par excellence, like the Sekrit Projekt2. At least with said project I’ll have a chunk of text at the end, and I can use that text in various ways.

If I want to.

It was lovely to curl up on the couch with a book yesterday, watching bands of rain and sunshine move through. Trying not to look at the news is incredibly difficult, so I’ve my teeth sunk into a history book and am not letting go, even though it’s slow work. My concentration is shot unless I’m writing werewolves, apparently–or unless I’m trying to explain 80s cartoon openings to my kids.

Man, the animation landscape back then was wild.

…that’s pretty much all I’ve got today, my friends. I’ll be streaming later today, probably still talking about why writing is not like putting together a jigsaw puzzle and the various skills needed to build a story. Big fun, but I guess people are curious just how the sausage gets made, so to speak.

Happy beginning-of-the-week, my beloveds. I’ll have some fun news tomorrow, and don’t forget there’s a sale on HOOD’s Season One until the end of March. Space opera! Intrigue! Pretty dresses! Low-grav shenanigans!

Maybe I’m in a better mood than I thought. I’d better get the dogs walked before it fades.

Over and out.