chez sweet chez

Life, Slightest Provocation

So today is that most blessed of days. That’s right, my friends, it’s NEW DISHWASHER DAY.

At least, if the installers don’t get caught in traffic or an accident, and if new dishwasher will fit in the space we’ve got–it should, of course, but “should” in appliance replacement is just another word for “ha, you thought you’d actually get this done without a fight?” I suspect we haven’t reached the end of the little gifts the Do-It-Yourself-er who owned the house before us left. I can hope, at least.

All of which means the kitchen needs attending, the rubbish and recycle bins moved and the choke point past the fridge measured–there’s another way into the kitchen, but I think the way past the fridge might work and it’s way shorter–and several cabinets to clean out and stack the contents of on the counters so the installers can get at everything they need. If I’m really ambitious I might even make them biscotti, because I am just. that. excited.

There’s a morning run to get in and the initial revise on another chapter of Atlanta Bound, both before noon. Working on a serial means working ahead, because life can and will happen at the slightest provocation, and one needs a cushion.

Life has been happening to a rather startling degree around here. I’m fine and the kids are great, but people we care about are having Extremely Rough Things happen. It’s gotten to where I wince every time my email notification goes off, since I’m sure it’s more bad news. There’s a special kind of hell called “not being able to help”, there are some things even my stubbornness can’t fix. If I could, I would fling myself on the problems and stab them until they stopped moving, but…they aren’t that sort of problems.

*sigh*

Intellectually I know that offering support and being a safe place for friends to dump their feelings–no matter what those feelings are–is valuable, but it doesn’t feel like I’m doing enough. I mean, I was raised to feel like nothing I did was ever going to be good enough anyway, but…yeah.

I have my own support network in place so I can support the people who need it right now, and I’ve severely retracted a lot of socializing in order to have the emotional energy to support and to write. It’s all I can do. As far as I’m concerned, the entire shitty current month can go die in a fire. Just when I think we’ve hit the worst news yet, more happens along.

My regular sunny optimism (ha!) has taken somewhat of a beating. At least if the new dishwasher ends up installed (and working, let’s not forget working) a rather startling vista of free time will show up. We’ve been washing up by hand for months now, and while it’s just fine, I am looking forward to the convenience of loading a machine and pressing a button.

Mod cons, my friends. Mod cons.

And of course there’s wordcount in Maiden’s Blade to get in today. I revised the length requirement for that project in Scrivener and promptly choked when the daily goal skyrocketed. I know I’ll meet it, but it was still a vertiginous moment. Before publication, chop wood, carry water, write; after publication, chop wood, carry water, write.

Time to get out the door. I hope your April is going better than mine, dear Readers, and I hope every bit of news we all get today is good.

*wanders away, muttering about dishwasher specifications*

Book Synchronicity, Again

Spring Break is over. The Little Prince is back in school, and the Princess tells me her fellow retail workers are kind of thrilled there won’t be kids racing the mobility scooters in the aisles anymore.1 Consequently, the house is very quiet.

Too quiet.

We’ve had a couple days of houseguests to close out the holiday as well, which means the dogs were all excited over the regular routine being broken. So excited, in fact, that Odd Trundles is seriously behind on his napping, and eschewed most of his brekkie today in favor of trundling back to the office and his Super Fancy Dog Bed. Miss B is tired but also a bit frazzled from Constantly Supervising New People, so she’ll accompany me for a gentle half-hour run to work all her fidgets out and wind her down so she can sleep. It’s lovely to have people over, but it’s also lovely to have the house back afterward.

I’m also waiting with various stages of patience for the home warranty company to get in touch with me about NEW DISHWASHER. I fidget whenever I think about it, especially since I did a lot of cooking this past week. The pasta pot needs scrubbing, and so does the giant crock pot. I am willing to make cookies for whoever delivers and installs a new goddamn dishwasher, then shoo them out the door and test-drive said new dishwasher.

In other news, Season 3 of Roadtrip Z releases on April 17, and yes, there will be a paperback, it’s just not dropping until my faithful subscribers get their free ebooks. (Serial subscribers get free ebooks of the unedited AND edited seasons. I try to make it a good deal for my peeps.) And we’re coming up on the release of Afterwar in May, which…you know, I typed “finis” at the end of that zero draft over a year ago, and that book has had such a hard road to publication I’m expecting AWFUL NEWS ABOUT IT every day from now until it actually goes on sale. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, there was just a perfect storm of Things Going Wrong Outside Everyone’s Control, but dear God I have only just recovered from it.

…as I was writing this, my new editor at Orbit tweeted a picture of a stack of Afterwar, so synchronicity is alive and well, AND the printers didn’t burst into flame and sink into a swamp2 which is ALL TO THE GOOD and maybe the book will go out without any further disaster.

I just winced, typing that. I’m sure the gods of publishing are laughing at me. Loudly.

I had other plans for this blog post, but it kind of derailed, and I’ve got to get out for a run. I also got our last houseguest loaded into his car during the writing of this, so any train of thought I had is well and truly derailed. Maybe I’ll do like the dogs and take a nap?

Maybe. But only after I run.

Over and out.

Half-Brain, Dishwasher

Robin Hood
© | Dreamstime Stock Photos
I’m bouncing back and forth between an epic fantasy in a preindustrial world and a sort of Robin Hood in Space thing, where Robin is a sniper home from interplanetary war with PTSD and mecha are a thing. Each half of my brain is fighting with a different story, and I’m left standing on my corpus callosum and looking rather baffled.

As long as I don’t cross the sewage treatment technologies, I’ll probably be fine?

One of the things I want to do in the epic fantasy is show things that were hand waved or glossed over in the fantasy books I read growing up as a kid. How does the water for bathing get there? What happens when a woman has her period? I know there’s a chunk of fantasy out there that answers questions like that, and the chunk has been growing all the time, but I want to come up with my own answers. I want to solve the problems in my own way.

And I can’t read other epic fantasy right now. I can’t read in a genre I’m currently writing in, mostly because I don’t want to poison the well but also because it’s exhausting. The same brain-muscles used for creating would start trying to revise and build in other directions, and I’d end up a pile of exposed wires, sparking and writhing.

On the bright side, I finally got a repairman out to look at the dishwasher. The bad news is that at 15+ years old and with no model number, the poor thing is irretrievably dead. (Cue Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch.) This is not, however, the worst news, because it means the home warranty will (begrudgingly, I can only suppose, but we are all helpless in the face of obsolescence) replace the damn thing.

I am overjoyed at this, but the true beneficiaries are the Little Prince and Princess, for they chose the kitchen as their daily chore and once the dishwasher stopped, were initiated into the great mysteries of Washing Up Completely By Hand, otherwise known as The Entire Reason Dishwashers Were Created. Not that they complain, really, since they chose the kitchen as their chore of choice ages ago.1 They split the work according to whoever has the most time off that day, and largely get along without any trouble at all.

They’ll make good roommates or spousal units someday, I’m sure.

I spent a fair amount of time yesterday looking at dishwashers. I had no idea there were so many options. Basically all I want is a stainless steel tub and a filer that isn’t too bloody difficult to clean; but if you have Dishwasher Advice, now’s the time for it.

Speaking of advice, I had to get rid of Disqus as a commenting system. They updated their plugin and broke syncing as well as started hard-selling ads. I don’t want advertising on my bloody site, dammit–you could make the case that it’s already an advert for my books, but I like to think there’s some value added in other parts. Anyway, the look of the comments section has changed, but it’s still the same old field of sweetness, punning, light, and my comment policy. So hit me up with your Dishwasher Advice, my friends.

Now it’s time to get out the door for a long-is run, and block out the next assassination attempt in each book. Technology may come and go, but murder remains ever the same. *sips drink*

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.

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.

Of Course, At Least

Of course Miss B had to wriggle and push until I was out of bed, despite a very interesting dream I kept longing to go back to involving a spy, a giant old refinished Victorian house, and microfiche. Of course Odd Trundles, bumbling around under the dining table, scared himself with a high-pitched noise from his own nether end and knocked over two chairs, wrenching the table almost sideways and almost, almost knocking a hapless African violet off said table. (It lost a leaf and keeps whispering about earthquakes.)

Of course the Mad Tortie had to try leaping into my lap while I was drinking coffee. She’s fine and the cup didn’t break, but I had to make another four shots because the first four hit the floor. And, and, of course, of course the damn squirrels have found the bird feeders and are gorging themselves.

Of course.

I’ve a middling-long run this morning, which means B will not be accompanying me. She will be quite put out by this, but she’s no longer the sprightly pup she used to be. Rest will do her good, and she can go with me tomorrow. Of course she won’t understand, and will supervise me extra hard upon my return.

At least I got some seeds into a mini-greenhouse, protected from squirrel depredations. I’ll be able to plant the starts when they come up and have a chance of them surviving, if the slugs aren’t too bad this year. I also got another hellebore into the ground, a beautiful deep-flowered one. The milky daffodils are coming up and I see evidence of hyacinths, the hop vine survived the winter and is by all appearances ready to make this the year it grows up the stair-rails with a vengeance.

And at least, if I don’t take B today, all the asshats who let their dogs offleash will only be moderately annoying. Small mercies.

I have hung a cheap bird feeder outside the kitchen window. On tiptoe, getting the hook into the holder, I heard the Princess laughing on the deck behind me. “What?” I tried not to sound aggrieved.

“I’m just thinking,” she said, “that maybe we’ll have more raining squirrels.”

I’m under strict orders to keep her posted.

Over and out.

Alarm, Buffet

I put my alarm clock across the room on my dresser, so I have to get out of bed to turn it off. Both the kids have used this strategy with much success, but it wasn’t necessary for my silly self until this past winter. Even the sunrise function, where the attached lamp starts glowing a half-hour before the alarm and ramps up to simulate dawn, wasn’t helping. I would roll over, turn the damn thing off when it began to glow, and roll back, all without waking. Miss B loved it, because I would also somnolently scratch behind her ears for a little bit before passing out again.

She also hated it, because I wouldn’t get up, even when she put her nose in my face. There’s nothing like feeling whiskers tickle your lip and opening your eyes to see a carnivore’s big sad eyes–and sharp pointy teeth.

Odd, of course, didn’t mind, since it meant his early-morning nap blurred into his mid-morning nap. The only thing he did mind was brekkie being a bit late, but since brekkie happens after he gets up, gets his morning song, and unloads, world without end, amen, that wasn’t a huge problem.

Odd remembers the one and only time he missed breakfast at our house. That was back when he went to the vet as a pup, got an umbilical hernia fixed–and got neutered, too, all in one go. You don’t want to do surgery on bulldogs if you can avoid it, since their airways are already so compromised sedation becomes a hazard. Odd didn’t mind the crate-ride there, and didn’t mind coming home minus a few bits–he was already too roly-poly and corkscrewed to be able to reach his stitches, so he didn’t need a Cone of Shame. What he did mind, and complained LOUDLY about, was the lack of breakfast that one notable morning.

Dogs are mostly Zen creatures of the Now, but he remembers the one day brekkie was not delivered. Miss B, of course, shrugs and yips at him when he starts grousing about it. “BEFORE I CAME HERE, BREAKFAST WAS NEVER CERTAIN,” she informs him, and Odd, aghast, begins running in circles and barking loudly, as if this is a prospect.

“You’re just making it worse,” I tell B, and she looks at me with a certain gleam in her eye.

“HE’S GETTING EXERCISE,” she says, and I rub behind her ears.

Yesterday, since we went on a run, she was reasonably mellow. Which made that afternoon’s Squirrel Antics somewhat easier to handle–the little bastards have awakened after the cold snap, and are digging in the garden to see if I’ve put any more peas down there. (I haven’t. Yet.) Of course, the Mad Tortie sees them, and while they are not birds, she still yearns to nab a specimen. (Despite, I might add, a squirrel being roughly her size if you take off her tail and poufy fur.) It’s one of her great unfulfilled desires, like constant catnip and a door she can lie across the threshold of, neither inside nor out. The damn squirrels, including the new queen of the backyard heap (and Lord, she is a story unto herself) think the garden boxes are a buffet; the Mad Tortie thinks the squirrels are a buffet, Miss B longs to herd them all up, and Odd Trundles knows very well Mum gets mad if you go digging in the boxes but the prospect of New Friends drives what little sense he lays claim to straight out of his capacious, rock-hard noggin.

But that’s another blog post, since I’m nursing three separate burns in three separate places only left hand from the red sauce yesterday. That didn’t happen during the squirrel hijinks, mind you. It was just an added fillip to a very strange day that ended with yet another hilarious scene in the nutless kangaroo shifter story. (Its working title is Scrotum Search, because I can’t help myself, but it will probably be Jozzie & Sugar Belle if I decide to do it as a serial.)

Since I’m up and have taken down a tankard of tea, I might as well go for a run. Maybe today I’ll tire Miss B out enough that she won’t want to herd everything in the newly-unsnowed yard.

I’m not holding my breath.