chez sweet chez

Useful in the Breach

Instead of leaping out of bed this morning, I spent some time thinking about how each book I’m currently working on needs to go, listening to stray raindrops shaken from branches hit the roof, with Boxnoggin snoring into my armpit. He is quite put out that we have entered the rainy season, but in about a week he’ll forget there was any other state of affairs and will be suspicious of sunlight.

The world is a hushed and dripping wonderland, diaphanous scarves hanging between the trees. It’s not quite mist and not quite cloud, somewhere around mizzle, just hanging about not descending to earth. Boxnoggin picks his paws up very high while wading through the grass, and gives me a long-suffering look when a drop lands on him.

Poor fellow. It’s not so much the wet chill he minds as the change. No alteration in the usual state of affairs is good, saith the canine.

I have the next few scenes in Highlands War and will get the nascent army off the damn plateau soon. Gamble wants to have the big shootout on a mountainside riddled with old mineshafts instead of what I originally had planned, and I think the cop from the second act needs to show back up. (Put it on the mantelpiece and you have to use it, as Chekhov says.) And I got a little bit of the thrown-in-a-pond figured out yesterday in the Ragnarok book, though it was like pulling teeth.

All told, good work was done and I have another tranche of it today. And no queries to send back, though I’m sure some-damn-thing else will land in my inbox. ‘Tis the nature of the beast.

Most of all, I’m happy that the rains have come back. I’m not happy about being driven away from talking about literature, but it does free up time for me to create more of my own. I need the extra productivity if I’m going to feed the mortgage and keep us housed, so here we are. Time is slowly becoming a little less slippery, but I’m not sure how much of that is me simply adapting to the fact that I never had too good a grasp on it anyway.

The (still ongoing) pandemic has just made it official and given my coping mechanisms the imprimatur of being useful in the breach as well as in peacetime. So to speak.

Coffee’s almost done. Boxnoggin wants a long ramble despite the rain today; shoving his nose into wet greenery is highly acceptable despite the change. He might even eat some of his brekkie before we go…but I have to start moving for the door in order to make that happen.

Guess I’d best get started.

Filaments in Soil

Well, we made it through the weekend. I knew if another patch of dry weather came the deck had to be sorted, so there was a festival of pressure-washing and sealing. I am still a little weirded out that I am apparently the type of person to own a pressure washer now.

Not that it’s a bad thing, mind you! I just never thought I’d achieve any sort of permanence in my benighted existence, and it doesn’t get much more permanent than such appliances. An investment in futurity, you could call it; somehow I possess a thing that is only to be used a few times a year (if that). Then again, I suppose living for so long in one place does encourage one to drive down roots. After a childhood spent moving, restless as a military-brat rolling stone, it’s weird to have actual filaments driven into soil.

Not to mention waterproofing deck stain clinging to one’s fingers.

There’s new monthly sales (especially coupon codes for my Smashwords and Payhip stores) and it looks like the second Sons of Ymre book will be out on time in November. Once I have preorder links for that last, don’t worry, you’ll be the first to know. I’ve got copyedit queries to get turned around, a discussion between a sellsword and an adai to write, a Ghost Squad book that wants to be finished and will no doubt take up a lot of my working time today, and I have to figure out what to do with the protagonist of yet another book now that I’ve thrown her in the damn pond.

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

Which is frankly right where I want to be. There’s also some toast to toss down the hatch and the dog to walk. I have to squeeze in a run today too; I will be useless if I don’t.

Off to Monday’s races, then. The week is starting out somewhere between a bang and a whimper.

Boxnoggin’s Beams

Feel the soothing nap beams…

It’s been a bit of a week, hasn’t it? I mean, they’ve all been like that lately, but still. This one seems like it’s been swinging for the bleachers.

Anyway, here’s a soothing snap of a sleepy Boxnoggin who just had at least a quarter-hour of belly rubs, skritches, fussing, and cooing about what a good boy he is. You can see he’s a teensy bit pleased (that’s understatement, a lovely tool in the writer’s little black bag) and ready for a midmorning (or morning, or noon, or midafternoon, or early evening, or evening) snooze.

It’s difficult being a good handsome boi, but Box gives it his all. This photo might even have some curative or sedative powers; contemplation of it is certainly making me yawn.

See you next week, my friends.

Copyedits and Variations

Yesterday was…well. A bad anniversary, copyedits looming, a paucity of good news, all combining in a Voltron of suckitude. It wasn’t the worst day I’ve had in a while, far from. But ’twas not ideal at all, my friends.

Fortunately today started with Boxnoggin demanding more cuddles, belly-scrubbings, and baby talk than usual, so the fur therapy has me in a relatively good place. Plus, I get to run for the first time since getting sick last week. It will only be a short, very easy workout, but I am looking forward to it with a vengeance. The endorphins will do me nothing but good.

At least I opened up the copyedits yesterday, and found them to be much better than the horrid mess made of another book in the series. That’s a gift, and one I will take with both hands. Proof pages for Sons of Ymre 2 just dropped as well. My entire week will probably be spent with that kind of fiddly work and not enough creation, which always puts me in a bit of a sore mood. I just want to write, but this frustration is an integral component of the publishing process.

Without that friction, I might not slow down enough to actually get anything out the door.

I’ve also noticed a bit more Reply Guy bullshit than usual, probably because my follower count has spiked in a couple places. A few bad eggs need to be blocked or muted so they don’t spoil the whole barrel. (Yes, a mixed metaphor–don’t worry, I’m a professional.) The thing that’s irritating me most is randos “just asking questions” answered by the thread or the linked article, beginning the descent into sealion territory. The expectation of emotional or other labour just because I present as female has become one of the top three things I’ll outright block for, right next to ebook theft apologists and full-on harassment.

Perhaps it’s my age. I have no time to spare nor fucks to give.

At least the coughing is only intermittent now, and my sense of smell has long returned. I’m tired, but I don’t feel agonizingly sick anymore. Going to bed early has helped more than anything else. My life has been constrained to work and sleep for a very long while now; I don’t suspect that will change at any point soon. I used to get out more, but then lockdown happened. And honestly, with the pandemic still ongoing, the complete abdication of responsibility shown by public health authorities in the US, and the utter lack of masking in most public places, work and sleep are about my only options for a relatively low-risk life. I’m lucky that my commute is a shuffle down the hall to my office, where the window can be open in all but the worst weather. Most people are not so fortunate and I can’t imagine the stress of knowing one has been abandoned by both authorities and one’s fellow citizens. It’s unreal. The fraying of the social contract disturbs me on many levels.

I still haven’t been able to write a story featuring Covid or lockdown. I know a lot of other writers have, I just…can’t, yet. Perhaps that explains why I’ve turned so hard into epic fantasy these days; between Highlands War and Black Land’s Bane I’m always half in another world. Neither realm is more just or happy than this one, but at least the feeling of pressure relief helps preserve some kind of emotional equilibrium.

I’m also playing with a thought or two spurred by my recent read of all the Elric. Writers, like musicians, also like playing variations and I’ve got a portal fantasy just dying for a few more measures. Of course, this will have to take its place in the queue but it’s nice to have something to look forward to. The anticipation keeps one going.

The coffee is half gone, Boxnoggin is eager for toast and walkies, and I’d best get going so a run can be had before any heat builds. It’s September and the weather is better, but I’m still longing for more rain–as is usual this time of year. The holding pattern has its own comfort.

As does the dog. Imagine, a 60lb+ predator belly-up and outright demanding multiple minutes’ worth of snuggles, raspberries, baby talk, and scrubbing before the day can start. We don’t deserve our wolf-cousins. They are beautiful creatures; I long to be half the person Box clearly thinks I am.

It’s a good goal.

Ambling Strum

I am vertical (sort of) and blinking blearily at the world. Whatever this respiratory bug is, it hit hard indeed; I was laid out for most of the the long weekend, too weak to do much but hydrate, toss fitfully amid fever-drenched sheets, and read whenever I could muster the strength to lift a page. It worked out all right, since I got the copyedits out the door in time, but I could have used a little less coughing.

Perhaps in honor of Labour Day, I surfaced before dawn with Centralia, 1989 playing in my head. (For the curious, it’s about Wesley Everest.) The walking strum reminds me of Guthrie (both père et fils), which is no doubt deliberate. I hadn’t realized Dos Passos mentioned him in the USA Trilogy; I also read a bit of Bukowski over the weekend–sometimes, when one has a certain type of fever, only Hank Chinaski will do–and he liked Dos Passos’s stuff early on. At least, I seem to recall that being mentioned in Ham on Rye.

Speaking of which, I’ve finished my Great Elric Read too. Last night I knocked off the final pages of The White Wolf. I like very much how Moorcock said, “eff it, I’m writing whatever the fuck I want”, and I enjoyed the metaphysics. I can see why so many people imprinted so hard on the last emperor of Melniboné (look, another diacritical, I must be feeling better), and can also see how many of them took exactly the wrong lesson from the adventures.

Anyway, even if physically miserable the engines still throb under the floorboards of a writer’s conscious self. I suppose my body was in full-on revolt against the pace I’ve been driving us both at and has enforced some rest the only way it knows how. Figures I’d land in a meatsuit as stubborn as the rest of me. Can’t really blame it, poor thing has to be a bit pigheaded to keep up.

Today is for dealing with the multiple five-alarms going in my inbox–though fortunately the long weekend meant there’s not as many as usual–and some back cover copy, then getting wordcount on the two usual projects. I was going to add a third, but problems elsewhere mean I’d best hold off on that for the moment. If all goes well I can steal some time after dinner to write on a particular fever-dream that’s been burning a hole in me. It would be nice to get the itch scratched so that story leaves me alone for a while. I have no place to put it, but that’s never stopped the Muse before.

If she didn’t push me so hard…then again, I have no-one to blame, since I force myself at twice the pace. However, today will be an amble at best. Boxnoggin has been very understanding of the extremely short walks taken with a coughing, snot-filled human at the other end of his leash, but I don’t want to press my luck. And I could see my breath this morning when we ventured backyard-ward for his first loo break of the day.

The season has firmly turned and settled in its new track. It’s about damn time.

Languor, Story Jell

The weather folk say our heatwave will break up soon as onshore flow reasserts itself. I hope this is true; I haven’t been able to run since even early morning doesn’t cool down enough. Consequently I’m tetchy and heatsick, a truly marvelous combination. Not making any decisions or answering more than absolutely necessary emails, since the risk of feeling physically poor enough to snarl and claw at a perfectly reasonable request is at an all-time high. Even with air conditioning this bloody weather’s untenable; one can feel the ravenous sunshine pressing against house walls, just aching to reach inside and burn one. Actual sleep is near-impossible. Fitful turning and tossing is all I can achieve; at least our dog days this summer are only about a week long. Given previous years’ excitement (heat dome, wildfire smoke, drought), this is relatively easy to deal with.

Relatively.

At least there’s coffee. The new drip machine is doing stellar duty. It takes a little longer to get my jolt in the morning, but on the bright side I can turn it on and walk away. Then, when I return, voila! Sweet life-giving caffeine.

The good news is, heat languor seems to have forced the projects on deck to finish jelling. I now know the shape of both Gamble and Highlands War with far more certainty, though I’ve had to scrap more than one scene I had fondly hoped for. And I got confirmation from a fellow writer yesterday that the two short stories knocking around–Jolene, Jolene and My Rebbe’s Wife–do not suck, so that’s good. I may do some short fiction submissions in the next month or two, just to see. There’s no money in it, but it’s fun.

Of course, I also have the bright idea to put together an anthology of my short fiction, and I could use these two to sweeten the pot. That will have to wait until after I get the collab story done, but it’s quickly acquiring more focus as a project. I could schedule it for next year, I think. We’ll see if it’s a truly good idea or just a will o’wisp. Those sorts of “collected works” anthologies traditionally don’t sell terribly well, but I do get people asking if I’m going to put one together with some regularity. So…hm. I should also think about a title (I like Haggard Tales), and the cover theme.

Along with that, there are proofreader queries to handle, and a small copyedit (the first chapter of Book 2, which will go into Book 1 of an upcoming trilogy) too. Plenty of time on that particular deadline, if the weather breaks and I can just get some damn sleep. Right now I’m considering throwing rocks at every character until they die, before walking into the sea.

The only person enjoying current conditions is Boxnoggin, and even he is beginning to grow a bit snappish. It could just be that he’s catching my mood, plus the other changes in the household (new jobs, schedules shifting) are giving him a wee bit of uncertainty. For lo, Lord van der Sploot is a creature of habit, familiarity is good and change is very bad even if pleasant or useful. Frex, he really doesn’t like the beeping from the new coffee machine (he tends to yell back at it, in ear-shattering decibel range), but after another week or so I suspect New Machine will become the “normal” and he’ll quiet down.

Unless he thinks New Machine is singing to him and he decides he is honor-bound to return the favor. In that case, my poor ears may well never recover.

The birds are waking up; my office window is open to change out the air though there really isn’t much relief to be found temperature-wise. The birdbath is very popular all day, especially midafternoon when I dump a container of ice cubes in. One cheeky little chickadee almost landed on my shoulder in his hurry to get to the magical cold spot yesterday; Sandra, Carl, Jerry, and the gang prefer to wait until it’s all melted to come sailing in and bust up the convention, hopping about and cawing before taking off for some other sucker’s yard.

They are creatures of habit too.

I don’t want anything approaching brekkie, but forms must be observed and I’ll feel worse later if I don’t choke down some toast. One more day of this nonsense, and tomorrow should be much better.

Can’t wait.

Mashup, Chewed

Woke up with Simply Red’s If You Don’t Know Me By Now melding with Leo Sayer’s When I Need You inside my head, which is actually a pretty fun mashup. Mixed with at least three bluejays screaming in the backyard (I think the fourth has been eaten by something, but time will tell) and the low static of distant traffic from the freeway since the wind is coming from that direction, it’s a quiet morning here at the chez.

I didn’t get half of what I wanted done over the weekend, mostly because I was so exhausted Saturday I fell asleep on the couch not once but twice. It was hard work to drag myself to bed, but Boxnoggin was insistent. He is a dog of very little brain and thus is highly dependent upon ritual, and by the gods the ritual says Mum belongs in bed after a certain point in the evening. I made it just by the skin of my teeth, and proceeded to fall asleep again, but this time face-down in a chapter about the evolution of force multipliers in Europe during WWII.

Apparently at some point during the night I turned my bedside lamp off and also carefully placed the book, still open, atop the TBR pile next to said bed. Which led to waking up Sunday morning with a bookmark in my hair and Boxnoggin’s nose buried in my armpit. Not the worst way to become conscious–there was even some rain, a rarity in August–but I also appear to have chewed the bookmark at some point?

Or maybe that was the dog. Who knows.

I’m gearing up for tomorrow’s release day. My nerves are shot, but at least there’s coffee. Time to get my feet under me and the to-do list wrangled. There’s a lot left over, so it’s off to the races…

…as soon as I get this caffeine down, actually, I’m not ready to move just yet. It is a Monday after all.