Relatively Unfiltered

The heat is awful, but there are signs of it breaking. We might even have a temperature crest below 90F today, which will be a distinct relief. None of us are sleeping well except Boxnoggin, who is from Texas so this must feel homelike to him. This morning, however, he is pacing the house whining because I won’t let him chase the neighbor’s cat, and he can hear squirrels in the cedars because all the windows are open to catch some morning breeze.

Poor Lord van der Sploot; his is a life of woe.

Tomorrow the paperback for That Damn Werelion Book releases. The ebook will be out in September, and the soundtrack for writing it is here. I’m nervous, naturally, even if it’s under a different name; I didn’t intend to publish it. But why the hell not–it might sink like a stone anyway and in any case after 2020 I’ve decided life is short, why not in a number of areas. Maybe it’s only a function of hitting my forties and I can’t blame it on a specific (albeit historic) year. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

I meant to spend the weekend doing rereads so I can jump back into new text on the two projects which absolutely must be finished soon. Unfortunately, heat sensitivity meant I could barely drag myself through the usual weekend housework, and that had to take priority. I spent the remainder of the time flat on my back, cursing the weather and my unreliable meatsack while wishing I could bloody well work. Ah well, today is another chance.

Last week’s Tea with Lili is also up on YouTube. It was about the current crop of reboots, reader expectations, and (of all things) Cinderella. I’m not sure if I’m getting this streaming thing down; it’s full of weirdness and I’d much rather not be on camera. But people seem to respond to the conversational format, and to it being relatively unfiltered. And frankly it’s the internet, so if someone doesn’t like it they can hit the back button or close the tab and be done with it. I’m sure there will be those who want to troll instead, but I have a zero-tolerance policy for that bullshit.

At least it hasn’t been too hot for coffee–I don’t know what I’d do without the morning jolt, and I dislike iced caffeine. Cooling to tepid is fine, but sticking ice in it and downing it cold is just not for me. Someone else can have my share of that.

And at least I recognized a plot problem in the last 4k or so I wrote of Sons of Ymre 2; I can fix it on the read-through I’m going to give all my attention to today. It’s best to not make an error at all, of course, but it’s also good to realize one’s in the process of committing it and immediately stop to tear out and fix it. I might even get the zero of this book done this month. Might.

There’s a lovely cool breeze through the window, and my skin is positively bathing in it. Boxnoggin and I will enjoy his morning ramble, but we’d best get out there. I don’t quite trust the weather app saying it won’t be awful today, and should get anything outside done sooner rather than later. A good ten degrees (Fahrenheit, naturally) cooler will make a difference, right? I certainly hope so.

Welcome to Monday, my beloveds. Let’s hope the day behaves itself. If not I may have to reach for the machete–or even the Peace Prize. I’m not quite expecting the day to step out of line…but I’m ready.

See you around.

Preorders and Vexation

It’s too bloody hot. Even Boxnoggin thinks so, and he’s from Texas. Of course, he’s been with us for four years now–we just passed the official anniversary–so by now he’s an honorary Pacific Northwester except for the hating rain bit, but I’m sure a lot of people who otherwise love it here dislike the rain.

It’s odd, but there it is.

We’re lucky in that we can close up the house, shaded by the firs, and turn on the heat pump’s AC function. It manages to keep things on the edge of livable, especially with opening the house in the very early morning to let some cool air in. The mercury just isn’t dipping enough at night to provide the relief we need, though. We should be back to more-reasonable weather by Monday.

Which seems a long way away.

I’m simply hunkering down, trying to ignore the draining lassitude, and taking deep breaths. An edit letter just recently landed, and we all know how those go. I’m in my week-of-processing-feels, and it may extend past seven days proper. I could go on a rant about the things people are getting wrong about this book, but it would serve no purpose. I have the week-plus rule for a good reason; it’s just hard to keep my mouth shut sometimes. When I calm down things will look better, or at least different. And I can’t be sure the bloody weather isn’t part of my ire.

All of this means that instead of three projects I’m now focusing on two, since the third needs to wait for revisions to be done before it can move forward. The silver lining is that Sons of Ymre 2 is going along great guns, 4k written yesterday alone. The heroine is finally at the temple, the hero is figuring out what the hell, and everything’s about to go haywire in the best mounting-tension way. I’m particularly pleased by the damage done to the hero; he deserves every inch of it, and is well on his way to redeeming himself. And I shook loose the next scene in Hell’s Acre, which had been resisting me until I finally threw up my hands and went walking down the hall in frustration.

Sometimes it just takes physical movement to jolt things free. Today’s run, if I don’t expire of heatstroke, will probably provide even more.

At least That Damn Werelion Book has preorder links up for the paperback, finally. (Amazon link here if B&N isn’t your cuppa.) Amazon won’t let indie authors put up preorder links for Kindle if you’re not selling through KDP; it’s one of the ways they attempt to lock us in for better shearing. Gumroad has turned off their preorder function, which is a huge bother because dammit, I needed that, and Payhip is working on theirs but doesn’t have it yet. Although Payhip does say one can do preorders with a placeholder file, as long as one uploads the proper file on release day. I’m still thinking about whether or not I want to work it that way.

You’d think these distribution platforms wanting to profit off a writer’s work would make preorders easier, but unfortunately greed (in the case of Amazon) and whatever-the-hell (in the case of others) seems to win out every time. Eventually things will shake out, I’m sure. But it’s irritating as all get-out.

And again, I can’t be sure how much of my vexation is my body’s sensitivity to heat. Ever since that one horrid episode in San Diego (I should’ve been hospitalized, but who can afford that in America? Not I, my friends…) I’ve been peculiarly vulnerable to temperatures above 80F. This is a misery. Other parts of the country–let alone the world–have it worse, though, so I am counting my (slightly sweat-soaked) blessings.

I suppose I should finish my coffee and get out the door for Boxnoggin’s walk while the temperature is still reasonable. The sooner Lord van der Sploot’s ramble is accomplished, the sooner I can hit the pavement for my own exercise and think about the conversation Lord Cassel is going to have with his pretty, vivacious, terrified, and treacherous (for good reason) wife. I had to cut away from a gangfight for this scene, and it will provide a good structural caesura before coming back. Then the book needs a deep breath before the plunge.

I have the next serial after Hell’s Acre decided upon, and I’m beginning to feel the itch to poke at it. It’s not time yet, but I can think about it, at least. Blocking out some of the combat scenes will help, though they’ll necessarily change when the actual writing happens. All in all, I’ve a lot of work to do.

Which is just the way I like it, no matter the weather. Stay frosty, my beloveds, and be gentle with yourselves.

See you around.

Doldrums, Movement

I have all the windows open to get whatever coolth is possible before the day gathers steam into a scorcher. The meteorologists say we’re not getting the dry east wind from the Gorge but an offshore, western breeze instead, and that raises the humidity significantly. Normally in this weather we’ve got the Gorge breathing on us and it gets super dry. The extra bit of moisture may give us an edge against wildfires, but it also adds a layer of stress to bodily systems already struggling to deal with uncharacteristic heat.

I never do well with this kind of weather. Snow, ice, slush, terrible frigidity? All fine. Days upon gloomy days of grey cloud cover and drizzle? Perfect. But let the clouds clear and the mercury rise, and suddenly I feel a desiccated husk. Everything including my soul shrinks and my body reminds me that ever since that terrible almost-collapse in San Diego it doesn’t like anything above 75F, and will start shutting down to prove it.

A few endemic features of my profession have got me a bit frustrated as well. Publishing is a delayed-gratification game, and it’s furthermore set up to pummel a writer at every step–especially trad, which seems engineered, down to the smallest detail, to reduce the writer to scrap. Funny, the entire industry is built on what we create, and yet we’re treated as the most disposable part of the process, paid last and punished first. It takes a certain amount of strength to survive that, and even more stubbornness.

I often talk about spite being my fuel, and sometimes I feel like even my supply–near-infinite most days–is reaching its dregs. Yes, I’m feeling rather discouraged, my beloveds.

If I can just get through the heatwave things will probably feel less hopeless. At least all three projects are having forward movement. I figured out yesterday that Avery was resisting because Hell’s Acre needs a gangfight instead of the assassination I had planned (and he was anticipating), so as soon as I stopped trying to think through the latter a cork was pulled and the story began moving again. And the second Sons of Ymre took off too, a good 2k written instead of the measly 600 or so I was anticipating. An edit letter dropped for the third project, which means I have to shift gears to revision instead of moving ahead on Book 2, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.

There’s my usual doldrums and fury at processing an edit letter as well. It’s the same each time–first I have to read the letter, get irate, and throw the damn thing in a drawer (physical or electronic) for about a week while I rage internally at the unfairness of not understanding my geeeenyus and how dare you tell me my book baby isn’t perfect? Nobody needs to hear that bitching, much less the editor who is, after all, only doing their job, 100% committed to making the book better, and probably right in 95% of cases. It’s up to me to deal with those feelings and get them out of the way so the work can continue, and I build that Week of Being Mad into my schedule as a matter of course.

It’s still profoundly uncomfortable to endure each time. A whole galaxy of nasty feelings has to be allowed to whirl around and spend themselves. Shoving them down or trying to ignore them does no good; one simply has to breathe through and get them out of the way much like squeezing poison from a wound.

The heat is mounting so I’d best get Boxnoggin walked and my own corpse run–assuming the temperature isn’t unlivable by the time I finish the former, of course. Maybe I’ll feel better after some physical effort, though it will ride the fine sharp edge of heat sensitivity.

I might also end this day hiding under my desk, sucking on a glass of ice water and snarling at any attempt to extract me from my cave. Heaven knows that sounds like a perfectly reasonable response to current conditions. We’ll see.

Happy Tuesday, my dears. Be gentle with yourselves; we’re all creaking at the seams a bit.

Victories, and Yet…

I got 200+ pages of line edits (on Duty, Ghost Squad #2) knocked off yesterday, which should make me feel good. However, the cordless electric mower I just bought is clearly defective, so that’s unhappy. The company (which shall remain nameless for the moment) now has one final chance to make it right. It would certainly help if they bothered to read my support request; I wish corporations would pay their support staff so said staff had time and bandwidth to do so. I hate having to insist.

It’s been an otherwise victorious day/week. I’m making good progress on the line edits–another day of pedal-to-the-metal work should see them done, though that will mean shifting the week’s subscription drop to Friday instead of today. That Damn Werelion Book is finally seeing preorder links propagate in both paperback (non-Amazon paperback here) and ebook, at long last. The roof is finished and seems like it’ll hold up, and a couple other house items are well on their way to being eventually fixed. And yet this whole business with the lawnmower irritates me almost past bearing.

Of course, there was Tuesday’s heartrending worry, which may have thrown the entire bloody week off. No details are necessary, suffice to say it ended well but the wear and tear on my nerves is still resonating. And it’s been 90F+ for a few days as well, which is never happy in this part of the country. We–and our infrastructure–aren’t built for this kind of bullshit. Sadly, it’s going to become more and more usual as climate change mounts.

Still, it’s cooling off at night, which is a boon. I have plenty of work to do and a shot at actually getting it all done, though Sons of Ymre 2 will be late–which I abhor, missing a deadline is one of my least favorite things. Better late than never, though, and the entire edifice of publishing is creaking badly under various stresses and strains so I’m not the only one behind. I keep telling myself that ongoing worldwide pandemic, still-ongoing creeping fascist coup, and a whole planet frying are quite reasonable reasons to be a little bit off-schedule, for godsake.

I’ve also decided on the next serial after Hell’s Acre is finished. Don’t get too excited, my beloveds–it will take almost a year, I think, since serials work chapter by chapter and there are a lot of them in an alt-historical Victorian-era tale that’s a mix of Assassin’s Creed, Da Vinci Code, and a few other things, including a Roman Empire that Christianity never made a dent in. But I think I can perhaps give you a tiny teaser, because I know a lot of fans will be super excited when the actual news drops. My newsletter subscribers already got this peek; now I’ll share it publicly.

Just a little taste.

I know it’s not much, but the cover is so beautiful I just can’t resist. Again, this will be the serial after the current one finishes, so 2023 is the earliest it’ll happen…but I’m already planning. The book is all but complete inside my head, I just need to decide whether I want a certain barbarian to get wounded badly enough for a potential plot tangle. (And, you know, write the damn thing.)

Hm. That’s all the news that’s fit to print, I suppose. Boxnoggin needs a long ramble this morning, and I could probably do with the same while the Great Outside is a livable temperature. I’m kind of excited about a few upcoming books–the damn werelions, of course, and next year’s The Dead God’s Heart duology, which I still don’t have preorder links for but hopefully soon, precious, soon.

The coffee is gone, there’s a cool breeze laden with birdsong through my window, and Boxnoggin is trotting down the hall to fetch me. I’d better get going.

See you around.

Particularly, Blissfully

Some mornings, that first sip of coffee is particularly glorious. I mean, it’s always good, but sometimes it’s more than good. I can almost feel the caffeine molecules jumping across fleshly barriers to kick-start my brain. It could be merely psychological, but caffeine does go straight across the stomach barrier, so…

Monday again, and I may have recovered from the roof replacement. Certainly I’ve been sleeping better, which could be a function of cooler weather. Not to complain–we had perfect conditions for roofing, and the cloudy coolness afterward has been likewise perfect for the amount of gardening I had saved up (since the sprinklers are now working again too, hallelujah).

What I’m not doing this morning is looking at the discourse. Nope, sorry, nerves can’t take it, I can remain blissfully unaware of both news and analysis for a few more days. I’m just too emotionally exhausted. Sure, I’ve been reading Gibbon’s Decline and Fall all my life, I saw this coming, I even wrote a whole goddamn book about it. I don’t have to keep looking, I know perfectly well what’s going on.

I worked furiously ahead before Bailey’s passing, too, knowing the grief would knock me caddywumpus, and it’s time to get back to it. Even thought Sons of Ymre 2 has around 40k words, it’s only a little over halfway done and I’m not going to be able to turn it in on time. I hate that. I don’t mind if publishers/editors fall behind–there are a lot of moving parts for them to corral, and honestly a worldwide pandemic plus fascist coup are good reasons for disruption–but I despise being behind myself. So it’s time to either catch up or just do my best.

All of which means reserving what sanity and energy I have by not looking at the news. I can feel my will to live being sucked away each time I even glance at the mess.

So. Today I rework (again) this goddamn scene in Hell’s Acre, I clear a pile of stuff so I can get Sons of Ymre 2 into the mix, and I open up the Tolkien Viking Werewolves again. Book 2 of that little series needs some attention now too. Closer to the end of the month I have line edits on Ghost Squad 2 to eyeball; I think the book will hold up pretty well to that last real read before copyedits. At least I don’t have to worry about That Damn Werelion Book until after the first of the month; the paperback should be live in early August and the ebook is in September.

And Guilder to frame for it. I’m positively swamped.

Of course, now that I have a plan for attacking the mountain of work looming before me, the Muse wants nothing more than to fool around with the follow-up to Strange Angels. Which will probably never see light of day, but I did tinker with it this past weekend in dribs and drabs, more to keep my hand in than anything else. But it’s Monday now, such things must fall by the wayside, and there’s also the dog to walk. Which I should get to, as soon as this coffee has been finished.

It’s gonna be a busy week, my beloveds. I hope your weekend was restful and that we’re all in fighting trim. I’ve got the machete on one side, the Louisville Slugger on the other, and I’m ready to rumble.

See you around.

Heat, Hose, Happy

It hit the upper 90s yesterday (Fahrenheit, thank goodness for small mercies) and I am still a headache-y puddle despite air conditioning. I just don’t do well with the heat, though the garden is extremely happy. It would be better if I could have gotten the sprinklers turned on, but what with one thing and another that hasn’t happened and I don’t really truck with plumbing or electricity. Best to let the professionals do it, because so much could go wrong.

In any case, I got to the forty-chapter mark in the proofreaders’ changes yesterday; That Damn Werelion Book is ticking along. Another day should see me through, then I can look at global changes, one last circuit through the thing to check for formatting errors…then it’ll be time for the wrap template to go to the cover artist. That’s one of the very last steps before final release scheduling.

I might also do a sale for Moon’s Knight next month; I haven’t decided yet. So many things to think about, and even working through the weekend I haven’t been able to catch up with other stuff. I’m not quite chicken-with-head-cut-off yet…but it’s close.

Birds are yelling outside my office window–wide open to catch what coolth is possible this morning–and the cicada in the Venerable Fir is already droning. Boxnoggin needs to be walked and I should suffer through another run today, too, which means I need to get started very soon indeed. But the coffee isn’t even halfway finished.

It is rather satisfying to go through the proof. There are less errors than I thought, which is always welcome. Any page not bearing marks or highlighting is a gift. I want the paperback out well before the ebook, for obvious reasons, and come September I’ll be glad I set it all up beforehand. Future Me will be thanking Present Me, but Present Me is in a bit of a nasty mood, muttering balefully into a coffee mug.

The high point of yesterday was taking Boxnoggin’s collar off and making him sit in the backyard, then picking up the hose, setting the nozzle to “jet”, and watching him lose his tiny little mind while he chased a spray of water. He loves it. I will never be as happy with anything as that dog is with a water-jet, my gods. A few years ago he could easily go for twenty minutes, but now that he’s safely out of puppyhood (well, at least physically) it only takes about eight to ten before he’s exhausted, happy, soaked, and ready to nap the rest of the day. It’s a nice, easy way to wear him out during hot weather. A tired dog is a well-behaved dog, and all that.

Some canines mature as they get older; Bailey was born old, I suspect. Others remain puppies, at least mentally, all their life. Max was, and Boxnoggin is, the latter. Lord van der Sploot will always be a puppy, mildly baffled when his body doesn’t cooperate. Just this morning he forgot he’s adult-sized and almost rolled off the bed–I wasn’t even giving chest skritches, for heaven’s sake, though he gave me a reproachful look as if I should have telekinetically moved him back from the edge.

Little weirdo.

The sooner I get started on the rest of the day, the sooner I can settle in the cool dark cave of my office and return to folding in proofreader changes. I don’t often talk about this part of the process because I suspect it’s intensely boring for readers to know about, even though it’s crucial. But so many people seem to think books just…appear, without grasping the months (if not years) of hard work that go into them. Or these people pretend not to grasp the truth so they can steal ebooks (that’s what piracy/torrenting is) without consequence.

Thinking about that will only make me upset, and I spent most of yesterday in a hole of “why bother, you should quit this gig anyway, so many asshats are going to steal, it’s a losing game.” I have no desire to return to that mental space.

Off I go to finish coffee, choke down some toast, and take Boxnoggin on a ramble. It’s not chasing the hose, but he loves walkies almost as much, and his joy will dispel some of my sadness. We don’t deserve dogs; it is a miracle they love us so.

Gods grant I become even close to the human he thinks I am. And that’s a good prayer for a Tuesday, indeed.

Werelion Proof

The weekend was spent looking over the proof of That Damn Werelion Book, and now all the changes from that pass (and the proofer’s pass) can be folded in–which should take me a couple days, but at least it’ll mean the paperback will come out relatively soon. After the final changes are done, it will be time to cut a final ebook and a PDF interior proof, then get the wrap cover for the latter. Then I can load everything, set the final pub dates (maybe a little earlier than the October 31 that’s currently scheduled) and…

…go back to other work, probably while there are roofers banging away overhead. Naturally Boxnoggin will be beside himself during the replacing of the Chez’s roof, which will be super fun for all involved. But once that’s done I’ll stop worrying so much about it, especially when autumn rains move in.

That will be a distinct relief, and I can turn my attention to the bloody washing machine afterward. It’s always something.

Maybe I’ll even take a day off afterward. I did take half a day on Saturday, but the itch to get this damn book sorted was well-nigh unendurable and slotting it around other books wasn’t working too well. I sense a spate of furious activity looming, probably as a means of ignoring other things, and I’m only grateful that the social media sabbatical seems to have re-wrapped my nerves to the point that I can work again. I’m still not going to look at the news; I can’t bear it and I have to write or we don’t eat.

That sound you heard in the distance was my heavy, gusty sigh.

At least the werelion book is relatively fun, even if it didn’t do what I wanted. Letting a work take the shape it wants to instead of the shape I think it should have is a constant theme. I do not bemoan it; I’m far more comfortable with letting others do what they need to as long as it’s not hurting anyone. There’s no reason why that shouldn’t extend to books as well.

I should probably mention that last week’s Tea with Lili was about writing dialogue, and ended up with a piece of life advice about testing for toxic people. The life advice at the end of a tea seems to be the direction we’re going, though I don’t think I really have much to give beyond stuff that essentially boils down to “don’t be a dick.” On the other hand, human beings invent so many ways to be dickish I might as well find a multiplicity of ways to encourage people not to be–certainly a thankless and never-ending task, but part of aiming to be a decent person, I suppose.

And with that (and the July sale) I shall be about my business. Boxnoggin needs a walk, my tired corpse needs to be hauled through a run, and thankfully folding in proofreaders’ changes takes far less time than proofing the goddamn book itself. The day’s work is all cut out, as the saying goes. Oh–there was an episode of squirrelterror over the weekend, too. Yes, it ended with me shoeless and screaming; no, not a single arboreal rodent was harmed. Though I do have rug burn, and bruises from tiled floor.

Off I go, then, with a beady-eyed glare in Monday’s direction. It will have to do as a warning shot, since I need both my hands for typing and can’t reach for the machete at the moment.

See you around.