Caesar, Sibilant

More Latin. During the day it’s Caesar’s Gallic War, when I go to bed it’s at least one page of Pliny. Right now, the Belgae are besieging Bibrax, and one of the things I like about reading aloud from a Loeb Classical edition is sometimes I hear a fellow writer using words for effect. Case in point:

Cum finem oppugnandi nox fecisset, Iccius Remus, summa nobilitate et gratia inter suos, qui tum oppido praefuerat, unus ex eis qui legati de pace ad Caesarem venerant, nuntium ad eum mittit, nisi subsidium sibi submittatur, sese diutius sustinere non posse. —The Gallic War, Loeb Classical, p.98

By the time we get to “subsidium” Caesar’s having a bit of fun, and throws the alliterative sibilants down with what I imagine is a languorous dinner-party wave of one manicured (but manly!) hand. The entire page is really a joy, especially once one catches the rhythm. Sentence by sentence, one gets a sense of a man who liked writing almost as much as he liked winning battles.

Walking Away

I’ve walked away from a lot of things in my life. Toxic lovers. “Friends” who weren’t. Bad publishing deals–you get the idea. I used to think never walking away, never giving up, was a point of pride. But then I got older, and I figured out that saving your energy for the things and people that deserve it is a more honorable way to live. You can’t be effective if you’re spending yourself on the black holes of sick systems.

Why am I thinking about this today? Because of the whole Cambridge Analytica/Facebook thing. I’ve known for some time that Facebook is toxic, has bad business practices, and is run by a bro who calls his users “dumb fucks.”

I haven’t checked my Facebook messages for years, because they were always stuffed full of dick pics and strangers assuming they were entitled to my time and attention because some aspects of my author-life are public. (The two overlapped a lot, actually.) I never “liked” things there because of anxiety–the idea that I might upset/hurt someone by not pressing the button for their posts was overwhelming, and that’s turned out to be lucky, since it robbed Facebook of a great deal of information about me. Keeping my fan page from degenerating into a circus took more time than I liked, and it’s grown progressively worse. The fact that I can’t even be sure any of the fans who have signed up for updates will see them was only icing on that shit cake.

So. I’ve deleted my official fan page and deactivated my personal Facebook account. I was going to just straight-up delete the latter, but someone made the excellent point that I don’t want (yet another) impersonator causing trouble on a social media platform, so…yeah. I guess that’s where I’m at, and when the inevitable crash comes and FB becomes Myspace, I can quietly delete it at that point. I had a few moments of Fear Of Missing Out, but really…every time I dealt with FB I disliked it, and I don’t feel safe.

In short, it was time to walk away.

Twitter is a garbage fire, but it doesn’t have the access to my personal info Facebook was so intent on getting and using. Plus, I can just crosspost from my Mastodon instance if I don’t want to log in and see the burning. There’s also my Living Room, which is a much better platform for a fan page.

What I wasn’t prepared for when I hit the “delete” and “deactivate” buttons, though, was…the feeling of liberation. There was a flood of relief that damn near knocked me onto my heels. I wasn’t aware the FB juggernaut was irritating me so much, and the measure of the toxicity is the depth of the release.

That’s today’s news. Whether or not it’ll lead to increased productivity, who can tell? I need to get into Atlanta Bound and cut out a bunch of girlfriend to make way for some roller derby. Ginny, Lee, & the gang are about to have a Very Bad Day.

Over and out.

Unsocial

I just need a few days where I don’t physically speak to anyone other than the kids. Oh, and the dogs. I mean, I do have to go to Goodwill to drop off a huge bag of the Princess’s old clothes and a bunch of stuffed animals the kids don’t want anymore, but that won’t take long. I just…have been very social lately, and I need to lock myself in my office and lunge for the end of Atlanta Bound. It’ll take some time to finish, but I can feel the fourth and final season of Roadtrip Z gathering steam for the race downhill to the end. Unfortunately, we still need a few deaths, at least one zombie bite, the death of a vehicle, and a run-in with some more not-very-nice survivors before we get to Atlanta, let alone the end.

It will be nice to get to the natural resting-place for the story. Roadtrip Z is one of the longer projects I’ve ever attempted, and there’s a certain amount of “Jesus Christ, why won’t this story just DIE?” going on. It’s a step above a traditional series in complexity, mostly because I have the hard deadline of a chapter each week. Because the working timeline is so compressed, I feel like it’s ONE HUGE 200K BOOK instead of four 50-60K books, and the perception of effort is waaaaay different. I don’t have the cooling-off and incubation period between seasons that I generally have between novels in a regular series. Which means everything’s fresh in my head for a longer period, but it also takes up braincycles I could use for things like, I don’t know, showers and remembering to eat? Maybe?

I guess my work’s cut out for me. Before that, though, there’s a run and some ebook formatting to get through.

Last week was full of Socializing In Person; now I need at least two weeks of closing my office door and not really talking to anyone in meatspace unless they’re my kids or writing partner. Online socializing is fine, because I can control my interaction speed and shut down if I get overwhelmed. Right now I’m in a particular sort of introvert hell, twitching while my energy juices replenish. I hope the poor person on duty at Goodwill doesn’t mind me simply grunting “No receipt, thanks,” and basically running away.

On the bright side, spring cleaning means lots of fresh new space downstairs. If more bookcases become necessary (please, dear gods, let it not be necessary) at least there will be space to shoehorn them in.

So. The second jolt of coffee has been downed, Odd Trundles is snoring contentedly, Miss B is eyeing my running clothes and pointing her nose down the hall, snugged across the office door so I can’t possibly attempt to leave without her, and I’ve a little formatting to poke at before I go run as if zombies are chasing me instead of my characters.

Over and out.

Every Music

Used CD stores aren’t as safe as bookstores or libraries, but they’re still good. Still heaven, just a slightly lower circle.

Some days I want silence–or a facsimile thereof I can get with the dogs and kids in the house–for writing. Most days, however, I want music. All the music. Every music. Headphones–and CDs–are a gift.

Lemon Glaze

I did not want to get out of bed today. I mean, I don’t ever want to, but this morning’s wanting was in a class all its own. Fortunately there was lemon poundcake left over from yesterday, which was even better today. Maybe it’s the sort of thing one has to make the day before, stick in the fridge, and try not to eat until the next morning.

The best thing about said cake was the glaze–sugar dissolved and heated in fresh-squeezed Meyer lemon juice, then poured over the hot and toothpick-jabbed poundcake, wait ten minutes, brush remainder of glaze over poundcake surface, let cool. The recipe said to take it out of the pan and brush it all over with the glaze, but I decided “fuck that” for two reasons: one, a tide of lemon syrup all over my counter is just asking for trouble, and two, I doubled the poundcake recipe to make a 13×9.

Because when I poundcake, dammit, I GO FOR GOLD.

Anyway, I can only guess that the glaze soaking in overnight, nestling in nooks and crannies, made for super deliciousness the next morning. For those interested, the recipe’s from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Cake Bible–the basic poundcake recipe, lemon-poppyseed variation, only without the poppy seeds because I hate the little buggers between my teeth.

So, leftover poundcake with eight shots of espresso, I have a run to get in, and three projects on the burners now. Atlanta Bound is heating up; I have all the pieces in place for the season (and Roadtrip Z series) finale. I’m still going gonzo on Hostage of Zhaon–the first half of it is with a sensitivity reader now, so I should hear back soon whether there are giant fucking holes or the whole thing is just a bad idea. If it’s the former it’s probably fixable, but if it’s the latter, well, that’s 60K down the drain. Better that than being an asshole, though.

I’ve also been playing around with Hell’s Acre. I like both the characters, but I think the last scene I wrote needs to have its setting changed out in order to set up Breakbridge the Orphanage Director. Who is a very decent fellow doing his best.

No, I didn’t want to get out of bed today. Since I’m here and caffeinated, though, I might as well work. Miss B is pointed down the hallway, twitching every time I shift in my chair. She knows I have my running togs on, and that means motion.

Over and out.

Iceberg Fiction

It’s raining, just in time for me to get out the door for a run. The garden is already thrilled, Odd Trundles has retreated to his Fancy Bed in protest, Miss B will complain all the way through our soggy sojourn, and at least there won’t be very many people letting their dogs offleash in this weather.

Small mercies.

I blame the sunshine for yesterday’s slowness. I could not settle for the life of me, and as a result only barely got wordcount on Atlanta Bound and only half of what I needed on Hostage. It’s probably the echo from the one really intense scene in the former that robbed both of the requisite pressure for forward impulse, and there’s no cure for that but time and stuffing the artistic well to its accustomed level. Ginny and Juju need to have a talk about grief, Lee needs to suffer some pangs of conscience, and Duncan Harris (a new character) has secrets. Not to mention in Hostage I need to figure out the etiquette for a new crown princess to visit her father-in-law’s concubine.

Even if the etiquette doesn’t make it onto the page, I need to know it. The vast bulk of worldbuilding rests below the surface, like an iceberg. The reader only sees the very tip, but without the mass underneath, it’s merely pasteboard and doesn’t convince.

So if I am a very focused writer and get a scene in Atlanta Bound plus finish the introduction to the lonely concubine in Hostage, I can write the scene in Hell’s Acre where the Rook meets Miss Dove as a reward. And yes, I do reward myself for work with…more work. If I could just download the stories whole and then revise–but no, I have fingers that must translate, and an entire body behind them that needs to be cared for as well.

Which means it’s time for a run to shake all the cobwebs loose and plan out each scene. Or I might just run with my brain tuned to an expectant humming, letting the engines below my conscious floor arrange things to their liking. Whichever happens will be welcome, as will sweating out leftover stress.

Over and out.