Whatever Flavour of Great

Roadtrip Z

Happy Monday! Cotton Crossing is $.99USD in ebook at AmazonBarnes & NobleApple, and Kobo; the entire Roadtrip Z series is deeply discounted in ebook until 3/22. (Details and links are on the Monthly Sales page.) A little bit of madness in March, as they say, and She-Wolf and Cub is still a Kindle deal for the rest of the month as well.

The weekend was…productive, at least. Another couple short stories brushed up and formatted for the anthology, which is coalescing quite nicely, and I even got some serial wordcount in. I managed to detach and spend Sunday afternoon on the couch with Emily Wilson’s Iliad translation, which is absolutely wonderful. Greek is singing through her English, and it’s marvelous. I’m glad I held off on her Odyssey until I could finish this one, which won’t be long. I wish I could find something comparable for the Aeneid, but my Loeb will have to do.

In fact, I’d love to retreat to said couch with the last quarter of the Iliad, but there’s work to be done. I’ve got the protagonist of the Sekrit Projekt in a bit of a pickle, where they’ve been all weekend, and it’s time to get that sorted. I’d love to do a bit more of the serial today, since there’s about to be another knives-in-the-dark moment. I think it’s time for someone other than our favourite sellsword to get wounded, which will scare the stuffing out of her.

Always a good time.

The backyard is quiet; I am uncertain if Deathwish Bunny is the parent of the nest Boxnoggin found in one of the ferns. At first I thought he’d found a rabbit corpse, since it was before dawn and I was pre-caffeine; however, I glimpsed something moving in the depths after dragging his snoot from the hole and realized what was going on. The dog is quite upset that I won’t let him Be Great, for whatever flavour of “great” requires him attempting to eat newborn rodentia. The tender-hearted may rest assured that we’re keeping him away from the nest; if the kits are still in there, they have remained unmolested. I did notice that something or someone covered the hole back up, so I’m assuming Deathwish (or some other bunny) has attended to whatever’s going on inside. In another week or so I’ll check the hole again, hoping to find it vacant.

In the meantime, Boxnoggin will just have to suffer. He also got a bath this weekend since the weather was warm enough to permit him drying in rapid order. We make do with dry or damp-towel scrubs during the winter since he is slick-coated and suffers the shivers if he gets chilled, but climate change has given us a few very warm sunny days so we’ve made the best of it. Of course, he’s quite upset that his familiar stink is missing and doubly put out that I washed the comforter on my bed so he can’t regain said stink from it, but we all have our crosses to bear in these trying times.

…this post has turned into a Doge Report, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. He was an utter goofball this morning, requiring more than the usual cuddling and bellyrubs before deigning to let me get out of bed. Possibly he felt the dual inconvenience of bath and refusal to let him snack on bunny-nests necessitated a great deal of Speaking to the Manager, which would be me. Alas, he will remain unsatisfied upon both points, at least until he reeks of dog instead of the fancy anti-allergy oatmeal shampoo.

I’d better grab some toast and get going. The biggest decision will be which ankle to put the brace on; getting older is full of such quandaries. At least once I return from shambling about there’s a prospect of more coffee, and I can get a few plot twists ironed out while moving.

And awaaaaaay we go.

Dual Garde and Pointe

I suspect today would be trouble, and in fact could have spent an hour or so sunk in a book rather than freeing myself from a warm bed-cocoon, achieving verticality, and staggering for the Moka pot. So far Thursday and I are proceeding in what appears to be a truce. The quiet is not quite ominous, yet I am still en garde and en pointe.

It probably doesn’t help that I’m reading some rather depressing history (as usual) and yesterday was a 7k writing day. The Sekrit Projekt is halfway, near as I can tell, and I was able to hole up in the office, free of administrivia, to concentrate on getting over that mark.

I am cautiously optimistic. That’s all I’ll say, for fear of jinxing it.

Yesterday also saw Boxnoggin bound and determined to catch a rabbit; coincidentally I have found the place in the nor’eastern fence the ferals are slipping through and I have a rather bruised arm. Lord van der Sploot would absolutely adore to break every barrier in his way while chasing Deathwish Bunny (as I have christened this new visitor to our backyard) but so long as I am capable of deterring him from making Extremely Bad Choices his ambition will have to remain (alas!) unfulfilled.

Deathwish Bunny is so named because he seems to have grasped that the dog is strapped to a lumbering biped uninterested in chase, capture, or homicide, and has taken this to mean he is the ruler of the backyard. In fact, Deathwish the Bun-Bun gives me rather filthy looks while sitting by the Venerable Fir, as if to question what the hell I’m doing in his demesnes. All while Boxnoggin quivers at the end of a leash, nearly vibrating inside his harness with the desire to please omg just once, just let me chase it once.

Even one time would be too many. I have a healthy respect for just how silly the dog can be when left to his own devices. Consequently His Majesty Bun-Bun is laboring under the dual misapprehension of inviolability and immortality; as spring advances we’ll see how the squirrels feel about his claims. Of course they can climb, so the ground floor doesn’t matter too much–but if he starts competing for certain resources we might see a bit of jostling. And of course both love taunting a certain square-headed canine.

You know who isn’t taunting him these days, though? The local corvids have discovered that doing so, as well as buzzing me to demand things, does not get them what they want. A system has evolved wherein the crows wait patiently (albeit loudly) at certain points for largesse, and if I am in a giving mood roasted peanuts in the shell are scattered after a two-tone whistle. And before anyone starts bleating about feeding wildlife, the rewards are random and please take it up with those who scatter peanuts for the damn squirrels first, since the crows manage to get a substantial portion of those without my feeble efforts, thankyouverymuch.

…that sounds rather bad-tempered of me, but there’s been a positive plague of Reply Guys and finger-waggers lately. Fortunately they are outweighed by the very nice people, especially those writing to me now about liking A Flame in the North. Thank you, my beloveds–I keep meaning to do a From the Mailbag post, and keep getting sidetracked or having no time because there’s writing to get to.

Speaking of which, I’d best get underway. Boxnoggin is going to adore today’s sunshine even if we both dislike the chill, and I’ve my own corpse to shamble through something approximating exercise as well. I have big dreams for another uninterrupted chunk of writing since there’s a daring escape to pull off and a major character’s demise to plan for. For those of you who just gasped, you know that’s always a risk in my tales. I’m not looking forward to it any more than you are. (I already cried twice yesterday at an imprisoned protagonist’s emotional nadir, fa cry-eye.)

Time to drain the dregs and get some toast. There might even be some blueberry-lemon crumble left, we’ll see. All in all, there’s room for cautious hope.

But I’m still wary.

Blackberry Lesson

Clinging to life, even after ice.

Blackberry brambles (and raspberry canes, to a lesser degree) love the climate here. In spring they don’t grow quite so quickly as kudzu, but sometimes it seems that way. In summer they’re banks of green hiding small animals–maybe larger ones, too–and full of wicked claws just aching for a bit of flesh. As the season turns to autumn the berries are ripe, birds gorging and people with buckets heading for the closest bush uncontaminated by pesticides, dreams of cobbler dancing through their heads.

But I like blackberry bushes best in winter, simply because some absolutely cling to green life through the worst weather imaginable. There’s a beauty to the dormant vines, while their roots sleep safe below frozen ground. Sure, they’ll still take a blood sacrifice, and a lot of gardeners around here hate them almost as much as ivy. (Do not get me started on ivy…)

There’s just something about a plant that shelters so many, feeds so many, and refuses to die even after icepocalypses, that pleases me. If I can be even a fraction as resilient, I will consider it effort well spent.

See you next week, my friends.

A Few Last Blooms


There are autumn crocuses, a few coneflowers hanging around, and late roses just on the edge of blown. But this–a last clematis bloom or two–makes me feel ready for autumn. You can see the heat damage on the leaves; the last few summers have been awful, and upcoming ones will probably be worse. (Let’s not even talk about how the rhododendrons are doing.) I love this vine, especially its greenish flowers. I hope I can keep it alive.

The rains are busy plumping all the leaves out before they fall. I can almost hear the trees sighing with relief under cold showers. Firs and pines are busily dropping old damaged needles, and the cones hitting the roof (not to mention the deck, the shed, and everyone else’s roof, not to mention the road) are another signal. Squirrels are gorging on those pine- and fir-fruit. The rabbits are getting underway with a burst of garden depredations–I saw one amid a neighbor’s tomatoes the other day, and Boxnoggin nearly lost his damn mind–and the crows are very happy indeed with a crop of drowned earthworms. Going from drought to saturation must be hard on those last.

Three books are on deck. (Oh, and I’m over at Tor.com talking about Five (Whole) Mothers.) The rains have arrived. The coffee is still hot this morning.

See you next week.

Energy Freed

With the break in weather, the marine layer’s returned. Dawn is incrementally later because of axial tilt and hides behind cloud-cover to boot, so Boxnoggin and I are out in the dark for his very first loo break of the day. No clearer indication of the season finally turning, and I am ever so ready. The heat is very bad for me.

Coming up the deck stairs we surprised a bat. It fluttered along the roof overhang, very put out by our presence and quite possibly by the porch light as well, before finally veering away, flapping across the yard. I think it took shelter in a neighbor’s very large fir–as tall as our own Venerable–and will have a lovely nap there amid whatever raccoons are also using it for a hide. There may have been a rabbit on the north end of the yard as well, to judge by the rustling, but Boxnoggin was so entranced by the flying rodent he took no notice of the terrestrial one.

Which was a mercy, I don’t want a tug of war with him this morning. I’m finally catching up on sleep and can very well do without a dislocated shoulder. There are reasons why he’s never allowed outside unleashed, even in “safe” and high-fenced spaces.

The dog just does not make good decisions. His enthusiasm is laudable; however, I am duty-bound to keep him from getting injured (or worse) by it.

A hundred pages of copyedit are on the docket today, along with pulling out terms to make the pronunciation guide. If all goes well the second Ymre book will be out in November. I’m in a holding pattern elsewhere, so it’s nice to feel that there’s some damn progress being made in at least one particular direction. I did get 1.5k on Gamble yesterday as well, playing hooky from said copyedits. All part of the process. After finishing so many novels and getting a significant proportion of them through the publishing process, I still have no idea “how to write a book” (writing one only teaches you how to write that particular one) but I am passing acquainted with my usual emotional reactions. Managing one’s internal responses to the work is nearly half the battle.

The other half is harnessing enough sheer spite to reach the finish line. Whatever’s left over changes from day to day.

Making the decision to cut back on streaming has freed up a massive amount of energy I was previously forced to spend doing emotional labour or cleaning out the mod queue. Consequently my dreams have returned, as well as the wherewithal to focus on the entire point of my existence, the goddamn writing. I gave it the old college try, my beloveds, but I am not meant for certain things. For over a year I powered through, swimming against my natural inclination and a tide of progressively worse harassment, but…I’m done. I can see doing fifteen-minute Q&As still, and of course the Great Chapter reads, but enduring death threats because some neckbeard doesn’t like what I said about their favorite Dead White Guy is not and never will be my cuppa.

I’ve still got this microphone and the video editing software, so I might do Reading with Lili in another form for my Patreon/Gumroad subscribers. We’ll see how the schedule shakes out. I do feel liberated having made the decision; I was beginning to resent certain things and that’s not healthy.

I like to live without resentment, insofar as is possible in this world we’ve built.

So, now it’s time to finish the last of the coffee–the new drip machine still hasn’t told me his name, I think he’s waiting for paper filters–and a bit of toast before taking Boxnoggin for his ramble. No matter what else, walkies must needs happen when the doggo’s morning reaches a certain point. We won’t see any bats, since daylight has strengthened, but we might get some rain.

Summer is simply not my season. Thank goodness autumn is nigh.

Keeping Watch

Keeping watch, near dawn.

Earlier this week Carl and one of her brood kindly stayed put long enough for me to get a snap; the rest of the crew (including Sandra and yes, Jerry) are out of frame in a nearby yard looking for delicacies brought to the surface by sprinkler-water. They aren’t frightened of Boxnoggin at all, and flew away laughing when he couldn’t stand it anymore and yelled “HI FRIENDS!”, lunging to the end of the leash.

I’m glad I got the picture.

The heatwave appears to have broken, but now I am very ill from its knock-on effects. I’m going to wait a couple hours to see if I can muster through, but I might have to cancel Friday Night Writes and spend Friday bathing in ice water, not to mention writing longhand in a notebook to at least get some wordcount. It will have to be typed in over the weekend, assuming recovery doesn’t take longer than a day, and I already had that time set aside for proofreader queries.

Bother. The brain proposes, the body disposes, and all that. I feel dreadful about possibly canceling, but given that I can’t be upright for longer than ten minutes without dizziness and cold sweats, it’s probably for the best.

Have a wonderful weekend, my beloveds.

Rip Van Rodent and (Not Tony) Hawk, the Final Battle

So there I was, being dragged a pee-soaked dog, my hand nearly broken because the leash was wrapped around it twice, staggering southward towards what was certainly a tragedy but would only become even weirder if I got involved.

At least I wasn’t shoeless (yet), which is how these things most often end up.

However, my quandary paled in comparison to Rip Van Rodent’s. The lazy little arboreal menace was not sleepy now, no sir. In fact, I would wager he was WIDE AWAKE, for finding oneself under a hawk’s claws upon a sunny summer afternoon will light a fire beneath even the most unrepentantly indolent critter. I still wasn’t sure if I was screaming or if the squirrel was, but one thing was for sure–Boxnoggin had found both his sea legs (so to speak) and his voice.

For the dog was making more than enough noise to cover both that horrified shrieking (honestly, I cannot tell if it was me or Rip, even after a few days’ worth of thinking about things) and the sound of buffeting wings as Not-Tony Hawk attempted to get what he thought was an easy, slothful snack off the ground.

Maybe it was the adrenaline, maybe it was the sudden sonic assault. In any case, Rip Van Rodent’s pride had gone before a helluva fall, and he appeared both panicked and grimly determined. I still don’t know how he avoided being murdered on the first stoop or carried skyward; I can only think a flinch of the sort prey creatures often perform is responsible for the former and sheer dumb good luck for the latter.

I want to take a moment here to fully soak in the situation. There’s a hawk just going about its hawklike business, grabbing something from the corner deli. There’s a usually torpid squirrel whose hubris had been fed to gargantuan proportions, learning that eluding sixty-plus pounds of canine strapped to a resisting human is altogether not the same thing as dealing with a hungry, well-practiced bird of prey. Coming from the northern end of the yard, at the end of a leash and straining every muscle, is said sixty-plus pounds, urine-dripping, drooling, and emitting Hound of the Baskerville howls to boot. And finally, there’s your humble narrator, holding onto the leash for dear life and attempting to dig her heels in somewhere near the Venerable Fir.

The thing that flashed through my head was, I kid you not, I am going to have to think of something once Boxnoggin gets to that bird.

And then, my beloveds, there was a literal bolt from the blue.

Longtime readers (especially on Mastodon) will remember The Jerry Situation during a particular hot, smokey summer evening, in which there was a downed crow in our backyard, I thought I was hallucinating big-band music, and I wished for full protective hockey gear despite the weather. Carl (the reigning crow matriarch) and Sandra (the young juvenile male sticking around to help her with the young ones) often accompany Box and me on morning walkies if we get out the door in time, gravely escorting us to the edge of their murder’s territory–and occasionally taunting the dog, because they’re corvids and that’s good clean fun.

Poor Jerry is…well, he’s kind of special, for a crow. There are always a few family members around to help keep him out of trouble, and he had more than the usual difficulties getting back to flying while his tail was…Christ, whatever had happened to it, I certainly don’t know. (He’s no Bartholomew of the Legion Corvidae, 501st, Neo’s Fist, that’s for sure.) Jerry’s tail is no longer fucked-up, but he still has the pale patch on his side. Which was, at the particular moment I’m telling you about now, very nearly a streak upon the air as he plummeted from heaven.

Backup, in other words, had arrived.

Crows don’t like hawks–though they do not hate them nearly as much as they do owls, which is a whole ‘nother story–and if you remember, they had been setting up a racket warning all and sundry one was in the neighborhood as Box and I sashayed outside. Apparently Not-Tony Hawk’s presence was known unto Carl, Sandra, and the gang, but Jerry was first on the scene. And boy howdy, but that particular corvid makes up for his rather dim intelligence by pure enthusiasm.

“OH NO,” I screamed, and I am 100% certain that particular yell was mine, because it pierced Boxnoggin’s baying and made recognizable words. Plus it was exactly what I was thinking–if Jerry got injured again I was going to have to set up another crow condo in the backyard and deal with Carl and Sandra (not to mention the others) getting snitty with me while I nursed the poor little weirdo back to some variety of health. This fresh fear acted as a tonic, I surmise, because I finally got my heels dug in, my center of gravity dropped, and hauled on the leash like a demented Ahab getting a grip upon a certain white whale.

The leash snapped taut. Boxnoggin was yanked to an unceremonious halt with an ulp! noise that might’ve been funny under other circumstances. At the same moment, Jerry–yes, Jerry the simple, Jerry the weirdo, Jerry of “FUCK YOU JERRY!” fame–began absolutely beating the shit out of Not-Tony Hawk.

We’ve all seen that point in a movie where the plucky underdog starts dancing around, peppering their big, lumbering opponent with mighty blows, right? It was like that. I swear to the gods, if there hadn’t been so much noise (including my own yowls of despair) we might have heard boss music. Because Jerry was kung-fu fighting, his kicks were goddamn fast as lightening–and you know it was, while not exactly a little bit frightening, certainly thought-provoking.

In short, Jerry spanked that hawk. They tumbled into a bank of lemon balm, and as they did a few more bolts descended from the blue, blue sky. There was Carl, sleek and buxom; there was Sandra, who is no longer as lean as he once was and had a businesslike gleam in his eye that day. A couple others–Nasty and Simone, I haven’t had time to tell you lot about them–put in an appearance, and what had started out for Not-Tony as a trip to the corner store ended up with a five-on-one in the lemon balm alley.

I stood, jaw hanging and Boxnoggin still straining at the end of the leash, watching this display with wonder. In short order Not-Tony decided a bag of Rip Van crisps and a forty weren’t worth it, used his wings and claws to good effect, and managed to get some air. Once he was able to clear the fence (buzzing the clematis on the way, I really should trim that shit) he could get a little more height, and he vanished along the side of the house, pursued with great enthusiasm (in Jerry’s case), deadly efficiency (in Carl and Sandra’s), and bright-eyed interest (in Nasty and Simone’s).

Yes, yes, I hear you. What about Rip Van Rodent? I’m getting to that, keep your collective hats on, jeez.

So sudden was the air strike that Rip was just as stunned as Your Humble Narrator. Yes, the squirrel was still alive. No, he did not appear wounded, though at that distance I could not tell. But, my friends and (digital) neighbors, here’s the kicker.

The damn squirrel was luckier than he had any right to be, and maybe he knew it. In any case, the danger had retreated for the moment, and instinct had him in her merciless grip. What does a squirrel do in an unfamiliar, uncomfortable, or simply unappetizing situation? That’s right.

He runs for the nearest tree. Which just happened to be the Venerable Fir.

Which I was standing right next to.

And which, in order to reach, he had to run past a slavering, barking Boxnoggin driven into an ecstasy of excitement by the last few seconds–not even minutes, for it takes far longer to tell you the tale than it did to happen.

Rip Van Rodent was, in fact, hearty and hale enough–or simply adrenaline-soaked enough–to stagger-bolt straight under my poor piss-soaked dog on his way to the Venerable. Upon later reflection I realized he didn’t want to run for the fir near the compost heap, which was the direction the battle’s frontline had audibly moved in. Nor did he want to run for the lilacs, because there were boulders, garden boxes, a giant rosemary, and a statue of Kuan Yin in the way.

No, now that I think about it, the Venerable was the only choice. And if he had to run under a urine-splattered beast to get there, it was a price Rip Van Rodent was willing to pay.

Anyway, he darted under Boxnoggin, zoomed past me so close I near felt the wind of his passing, and scrabbled up the trunk with lightning speed. For once, the little bastard didn’t look sleepy at all.

What did Box think of this, you might ask? Well, he performed a stiff-legged jump like a cat finding a snake or cucumber on the kitchen floor, nearly colliding with me. I staggered back, my ankle turned on a hummock, and I saved myself from a pratfall only by dint of cussing like a sailor finding out shore leave’s canceled.

My beloveds, I painted the air blue with Language Unbecoming, and to top it all off, one of my untied sneakers was left behind. So I ended up half-shoeless but definitely screaming, which is entirely–but entirely–par for the course.


The rest of the afternoon was relatively quiet. Boxnoggin got a session with the hose to clean off his little accident, which he enjoyed–he hates baths but will chase a sprinkler-stream or a hose-blast all damn day and half the night if you’ll let him–and his harness is none the worse for wear. The corvids are back on guard duty; for the time being, I will still be yelling the traditional “fuck you, Jerry” every time I see that little weirdo, but it will be in a highly affectionate tone henceforth, like greeting an old drinking buddy with a hearty hey you, motherfucker!

And no, I have not seen Not-Tony Hawk again. The only remaining evidence of his trip to the corner is a single feather left upon the backyard grass.

There were others, but those got stolen by different backyard denizens.

But really, what of Rip Van Rodent, I hear you ask somewhat anxiously? Oh, don’t fear for him, gentle Readers. I think he’s okay–I’ve glimpsed him upon the back fence, attending to squirrel business. I suppose it’s too much to hope that he was chastened by the entire experience, though, because he’s back to taunting Boxnoggin…

…but that’s (say it with me) a whole ‘nother blog post.

The End

…until some-damn-thing else happens…