An Almost-Bunny Brekkie

“I ALMOST CAUGHT IT, TOO.”

This is the face of a dog who happened across a feral rabbit in our backyard this morning.

I knew it was only a matter of time before the rabbits got up the hill. Their range has been spreading, and we had a comparatively mild winter. They started out on the other side of a major concrete artery, then somehow got across downhill near a watercourse, and it’s been fascinating to see them creep up the hill when I take the dogs on morning walkies. Nonscientific and completely anecdotal field work, you see.

Anyway, uncaffeinated and with my shoes untied, I let the dogs out for their morning evacuations and prancing. It was early enough I didn’t think squirrels were a real risk.

Imagine my surprise when Boxnoggin let out a yelp of excited, pained disbelief and tore across the yard. Imagine my further surprise when I saw Monsieur Lapin (for some reason I always address rabbits in French) hightailing it (literally) across said yard from north to south (south being downhill and, of course, the direction he’d more than likely come from).

You can further imagine my despair when I saw Boxnoggin tearing after him at a speed that seemed unlikely to catch but perfectly likely to overshoot a mark or two and consequently paste him onto the fence. While I could tell there was no danger of a bunny breakfast, Boxnoggin seemed very likely indeed to either hit the fence or attempt to leap the gate.

Upon both those paths lies danger.

I’m not too worried ol’ Boxnoggin will clear the fence, mind you. He has gained a reasonable amount of heft and dignity (such as it is) with the fullness of time and, alas, cannot catch the kind of air he used to. But doing himself some injury by applying himself to said fence at high velocity is entirely possible, and lo I let out a, “WHAT THE FUCK STOP FOR GOD’S SAKE YOU IDIOT,” that shattered the morning quiet.

Of course, he paid no attention. Every fuse inside his doggy skull was blown. The terrier part of his genetic inheritance had burst from confinement like a werewolf’s hunting frenzy, and the tiny cottontail bobbing before him was the sum of all desires.

Fortunately (for Monsieur Lapin) or unfortunately (for poor Boxnoggin), the rabbit had obeyed the number-one rule of reconnaissance: Always know your escape route. (Insert obligatory Princess Bride reference here.) Monsieur was vanishée, and Boxnoggin was désolée. (I had a whole disparue joke here, but it didn’t quite have the ring.)

Ol’ Box did a full circuit of the yard, nose down, while I pressed my hand over my pounding heart and discovered I did not need caffeine to wake up, terror works just fine. Finally, when he had verified that no further rodent snacks were lingering in the ferns, under the redbud tree, among the roses, in the vegetable garden, behind the shed, under the deck, in the shed, under the red wagon, or in any other place belonging to the yard, he consented to come inside and eat his (non-bunny) brekkie.

Miss B watched all this go down with mild interest, being occupied with peeing the whole time. In her younger days she would have added to the circus, but she had a full bladder and contented herself with a single burp-bark of supervision. “YOU’RE NOT GONNA CATCH IT, DUMBASS. MUM, WHERE’S MY KIBBLE?”

So, my Friday started with a dose of exhilarating fear. I hope yours began in a more tranquil fashion. Now that the rabbits have found my yard, of course, no vegetable is safe, and Boxnoggin is going to be searching for more carrot-chewing maniacs as a matter of course every time he’s let outside.

This…will not end well, I’m sure. But it’ll be hilarious.

Have a good weekend!

HELL’S ACRE, In June


It’s June, and you know what that means–Hell’s Acre is now underway! An all-new serial adventure, delivered weekly, and full of stuff Bannon & Clare fans might like–carriages, dresses, a London where the Roman Empire never fell, rooftop battles, assassinations, and the like. There won’t be any magic, per se, but a great deal of semi-combat sorcery Mikal might approve of.

If you’re interested, you can get the first three chapters for free here.

It’s a holiday Monday, so I’m off to walk the dogs before it gets too warm. They’re saying 90F or near it for the next couple days, and I am a pale Pacific Northwest mushroom who shrivels in such temperatures. I plan to work only a half-day today and then retire to the couch to knock off the rest of a book on the Ancient Rome and the silk trade. (It’s all Rome, all the time in here lately.)

I wish you a blessed Memorial Day, my friends. I woke up with Dolly Parton playing inside my head, so I’m hopeful for a good day.

Over and out!

Kindness, Escape

Spent the weekend doing revisions as well as reformatting ebooks and the like; most of those changes should be wending their way downstream. New editions are always a chance to catch the things that didn’t get chased down and thumped before. Even with a million pairs of eyes during the publication process, some stuff slips through. It’s inevitable.

What I did not do was rest. Today it’s back to solely revising the third epic fantasy; all my engines are focused on that. The second year of lockdown is about to start and my ability to focus and push under pressure is beginning to fray at the edges.

Once that’s done it’s on to revising HOOD‘s third season, preparatory to the editing process. I still have to make a final determination on the next serial–it will either be Hell’s Acre, the alt-Victorian trilogy, or Division Seven, the mutant secret agents story. I’m leaning towards Hell’s Acre because I like the language, and I’m not wanting to engage with current-day stuff right now.

I need an escape.

I think we could all do with an escape or two, frankly. I just want to crawl into my stories and never come out. I’m sick of utterly avoidable disasters and broken promises, hatefulness and cruelty. It’s the last that gets to me.

It takes so little effort to be kind. Kindness is the natural state, it’s the lowest energy requirement. It puzzles me: Why do so many people actively choose to stew in violent hate, why do they seek out reasons to be shitty? Why, when it’s so easy to just… not? Imagine what humanity could do if dickwads quit wasting their energy on spewing vileness.

I write because I must, but sometimes I think I also write to try and answer why people do some things. Pouring myself into certain characters’ skins, even if it isn’t on the page–because I have to understand the villains to see how they’re going to act in the story–is an effort to understand.

The dogs are very clingy this morning. I think they can sense my nerves are raw. Or maybe they just want their walkies, since it’s a relatively warm morning. A week ago we were in snowpocalypse (I think? Time has lost all meaning.) and now it’s very mild in the high 40s (Fahrenheit, of course) with crocuses and the like taking advantage of the sudden balm.

Maybe the snow was the last gauntlet to run. It would be nice to have an end to something. Normally I enjoy winter; normally it’s my most productive time. Lately though, I feel like I’ve done nothing for the last winter except sit and stare in deepening horror. I know that isn’t true, but it feels like it.

I’ve blathered long enough. Time to get the dogs walked, my own reluctant corpse run, and then to crawl into the end of a hot, murderous summer in an imaginary land. Getting the third and final book arranged will do me some good, I hope.

Happy Monday, everyone. We made it to another week, yay us. Now let’s see if we can endure through.

Over and out.

See What We’ve Saved

The instant the slush goes down to something below “fall and break my fool neck” proportions, the happier the dogs and I will both be. Boxnoggin is practically going mad without his rambles, and I’m not far behind.

It was a hard weekend, though peaceful because of the snow. Even with the sloppy melt going on, there are still areas of blank white, nice and crisp. Watching the powder fall was soothing; the ice storm a little less so. And I am, truth be told, slightly tired of my feet being numb, even in several layers of socks.

All told, though, I like the cold better than heat. One can always put on another layer or sip something warm. Sweating, though–that leads to chafing, and dear gods how I hate chafing.

I did get a lot of knitting done. The Princess’s best friend and the Prince both have nice new chenille blankets, and I had eight skeins of a chunky wool blend that’s mostly turned into scarves at this point. A great deal of the fun of knitting is giving things away.1

I finished Kieckhefer’s Magic in the Middle Ages recently, which was an enjoyable read; next up is Kelleher’s The Alliance of Pirates. I’m really looking forward to the latter, and maybe it will chase the Viking stuff out of my head so I can focus on the revisions that need to be done without a whole ‘nother epic fantasy series trying to tear and claw its way out.

Some books are possessive. This one, however, needs to wait its turn. I’m pretty sure it’s unsellable, which has never stopped me before but which does mean it has to fill in the gaps and cracks between other working projects. Of course nothing is as delicious as stolen time, and writing in said stolen time is the sweetest fruit there is.

And of course maybe I’ll suddenly get the urge to write something about pirates. I hear Black Sails is really good, so I can possibly distract myself with that.2

It’s hard for a lot of people right now. It’s yet another six-month pandemic anniversary (some of us have been in lockdown for a whole goddamn year) and we could have been done with this before now if reasonable science-based adults had been in charge. A lot of us are grieving, or in holding patterns unable to grieve as well as cut off from necessary contact. And let’s not even talk about the fascist coup and all that bullshit.

At least there are dogs, and the beauty of fresh snow. There’s the secret stealthy sound of melt in the gutters, there are books and quiet and the fact that even if we’re in lockdown, we’re not precisely alone. Every day we’ve spent hunkered at home, every time we put on a mask, we’re Doing A Good. We’ve lost a lot, yes. Who can tell how much we’ve saved because most of us have been doing what we should all through this?

The trouble with the thankless work of saving is that it’s invisible.

It might seem like faint comfort, but I’ll take it. The thing that’s getting me through is caring for those I’m responsible for, and reminding myself that staying in and masking up are ways to show I care. I’m a natural hermit; the isolation doesn’t wear on me. What does is the loneliness and sadness of those I care for.

I know it’s rough. Most of us are quietly doing the best we can; sometimes that gets lost in the noise of the selfish. They are few indeed, but very loud. Of course the sonic assault is one of their primary weapons, to distract us from noticing how tiny and petty they are. Otherwise we might just stop letting their selfish selves ruin things for the rest of us.

Imagine that.

It’s time to play with the canines a little, working off a bit of their energy until we can go rambling and let them stick their snoots in the usual spots. Then a shower, and to the grindstone of revisions. Getting books through publication is akin to cliff-climbing–one handhold at a time, exhale, use your legs, it’s about the whole route not just the next hold.

Best to get started, then. Happy Tuesday, beloveds. Remember, we can’t see what we’ve saved–but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Breathing-Quiet Melt

The melt is underway.

There was at least eleven inches1 of nice dry powder.2 Then the ice storm moved through yesterday afternoon and evening, leaving a coat of clear varnish over every surface.

This morning it’s still cold, and there’s still almost a foot of snow, and the dogs still won’t get a walk. But little bits of half-liquid stuff is coming off the trees, the subtle breathing sound of freeway traffic in the distance has returned, and if you stand on the deck you can hear the creaking under the ice-glaze as the snow underneath melts.

The water is speaking. It’s like being in the throat of massive, dozing creature. I keep listening for a heartbeat.

It was good to have a weekend in. I mean, for over a year all our weekends have been in, because we’re in lockdown trying desperately not to spread infection. The Princess works at a grocer’s so we’re pretty sure at some point the plague will come home to roost, but at least we can be in the habit of not giving it to anyone else and we’re all in low-risk categories.

At least there’s that.

The photo on this post isn’t recent; it’s from the previous time we had snow.3 Generally it melts within a day; I can count on one hand the number of times it’s stayed longer in the, oh, let’s see, almost two decades I’ve lived in this town? I mean, I’ve been in the PNW most of my life at this point, but there’s something to be said for living in one distinct ville for a long while.

The deciduous trees have ice filigree on their branches; the cedars and other evergreens seem to be shaking off the coating first. I wonder how the cherry down the street that was flowering earlier last week is faring. As soon as the melt reaches a certain pitch4 I’ll be able to ramble the dogs. They need it–they’ve been wrestling with each other in the living room to take the edge off, but it’s a strategy with diminishing returns.

Today I start prep for an epic fantasy revision. Which will require stacking the previous books on my desk for reference while I go through and mutter at every instance of square brackets in the manuscript, mostly bearing some form of “look this up later, Future Me.”5

Past Me had a sense of humor. In fairness she wrote most of the damn book during lockdown and fascist coup, which will put a dent in anyone’s cognitive horsepower. Still, every time I see the brackets in the damn book I have to stop and look at my office ceiling, drawing in a deep breath and throttling the urge to scream.

Meanwhile, the dogs will probably be startling at branches and stuff hitting the roof as the melt accelerates. There will, I am sure, be a lot of barking. But with the warming up I can maybe slither out of a few layers, and hopefully by afternoon the street will be clear enough to ramble, if not run.

All in all I am very bruise-tender right now. One can have the thickest of skins, but repeated walloping still hurts. I dislike loving something so much and being so very bad at it that an intervention is suddenly called. Best just to quietly step aside and let others have it.

But that’s (say it with me) another blog post, or probably not. Here’s hoping the melt continues, and that soon the dogs–and I–will have fidgets worked out. I haven’t run in days, and the strain is beginning to mount. It will be nice to get out and think about things while pounding the pavement, just as soon as the weather clears.

Over and out.

Free (Sock) Elf

Earlier this week a package arrived, bearing this wonderful thing. A single sock.

You read that right. One singular hand-knitted sock.

It’s part of a pair knitted by a dear friend, but she thought it would be hysterical to send me one at a time. I promptly, of course, took to Twitter to shout “MISTRESS HAS GIVEN LILI A SOCK; LILI IS NOW A FREE ELF!” Which is exactly what she wanted.

I am a free fuckin’ elf, mofos.

I also finished the zero draft of HOOD‘s final season yesterday. Which means this morning I am cross-eyed, absorbing coffee, and wearing a pair of beautifully hand-knitted slipper socks. They aren’t really socks, of course; they’re a friend saying “I love you.” Like little hugs for my feet.

The feeling is more than reciprocated, and very welcome. I hope you have a little (or a lot) of it in your life as well, my beloveds.

Have a good weekend.

Flakes, Time, and (French) Toast

A lot of you are on the cake train, and I’ve got to say, if that’s my contribution to the rising relief, I’m happy with it. (Bonus for all the “cake wasn’t a lie!” jokes. I knew you were My People.)

However, I have definitely had enough cake, and though the enjoyment of cake is a renewable resource, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to make another one for a while.

The weather feathers are saying snow today. It won’t last–it never does in this temperate part of the world–but it’ll be nice to drink some hot cocoa and watch it come down, even if nobody told me we were out of sandwich bread.

Bloody hell.

I’m not heading out to the grocer’s under these conditions. Everyone will be out panicking through their French toast shopping–eggs, milk, bread. I suppose I could whip up some bread dough and have that be the day’s project along with getting the end of HOOD‘s Season Three arranged. I need this zero draft done, boy howdy.

I had a hot knitting date last night, so I didn’t get in any work on the Viking Elementalist. It’s all right, I still have to figure out what happens on her first night sleeping away from home. I think the werewolves are going to make an appearance, though not in the way the protagonist might expect.

I originally had a huge set-piece chase and stuff planned for the end of HOOD but it just doesn’t make sense. The story wants a different route. I just wish it would have told me before now, but honestly, it was a bad year for both of us and I’m holding no grudges. I have to have faith that the story knows what it’s doing and will bring us all home safely.

Faith in anything else, however, is in somewhat short supply around here lately. (Need I restate, it was a bad year and the January following was a real dilly too, even though it hasn’t even ended yet?) It hasn’t been a full week since the inauguration, but the time feels endless. I don’t know if I’ll ever get back to the pre-pandemic experience of time. I’m reserving judgment on whether that’s a good or bad thing, just like I’m waiting to see if there will be any consequences leveled at violent racist insurrectionists.

I had a whole rant flash through my mind about how we’re all shaky-legged in the first recovery stage after major ongoing abusive trauma, trying to breathe and flinching every time the madness looks like it’s about to start up again. But Boxnoggin is alerting every time a stray gust of wind goes down the street, and I can’t keep a sentence in my head long enough to type while he’s interrupting every other word.

He wants his damn ramble, even though he’s going to pick up his dainty paws and give me many a reproachful glance as soon as he realizes it’s near freezing and yes, we’re bloody well walking even though he’s changed his mind.

You know, I bet I can still have the big chase at the end of Season Three if…

*time passes*

…aaaaaand I managed to get the idea onto a Post-it before Boxnoggin lost his shit again, since a nice lady with a stroller and two well-trained dogs was passing in front of our house, and apparently that Cannot Be Borne. There’s sixty-plus pounds of dopey black boxer-terrier who needs to frickin’ chill, and he won’t until after a ramble.

Wish me luck. It’s cold out there, and maybe I’ll see a flake or two. Atmospheric, though. Not human. (Though our neighborhood has no shortage of the latter…)

Over and out.