I write so you don’t have to

Unexpected Directions

I had a run scheduled for today, but both Boxnoggin and I spent a restless night and are somewhat bleary; there’s also a fog advisory on. I suspect he’d like a nice hard run to work the fidgets out and get everything into its place, but I am not made of such stern stuff on this particular Tuesday. Especially with the way most people drive in the neighborhoods around here.

Not with a zero burning my fingers. I have everything but the final eyeballing of the e-proof of HOOD‘s Season Two done, and I really thought I’d also be done with Sons of Ymre by now. But then it went and turned into two books instead of one, and I’m scrambling. I do have about a week to get it either done or so thoroughly stabbed I can split my focus between it and another project (despite not wanting to work on more than one at a time this year, alas) with very little ado.

Bloody novels, always taking unexpected directions.

I had a fit of absolutely murderous irritation last night before I realized I was both hungry and in the throes of the last fifth of a zero draft. the last screaming push for the finish is generally when my temper, never too smooth, frays to the point that the kids roll their eyes and suggest simple dishes for dinner, or even just toast and eggs. It’s quite a relief that they’re both old enough to cook for themselves if I’m late, or if what’s on offer doesn’t please them.

Anyway, I was hangry enough to snarl at my desktop, and it occurred to me I could bring the book to a simple close by just killing everyone in it, in various terrible ways. I decided to wait for food and morning before actually deciding, and I’m glad I did. While satisfying, that would have been wasted work.

Not going to lie, though, it would be incredibly satisfying.

As it is, I have La traviata playing softly, the morning’s caffeine standing ready, and the whole day to make serious progress on stabbing Sons. There is a bit of industry news I want to highlight in Haggard Feathers, but that can wait for an hour or so while I eyeball the day’s work and take the dogs on a walk to get everything settled inside our respective skins. Right now Dame Sutherland is singing Sempre libera and absolutely flowing through the notes like cream. Her voice really is that velvety, that smooth. Wow.

Maybe Tuesday won’t need the machete after all. But I’ll keep it handy just in case.

Hey, the Free Agent February giveaway is still going on for a couple days! You can enter here–and enter daily too, if that moves you.

Which Habits to Toss

It’s the last week of February, so I’m changing things around a bit. By now I know which of the habits I fondly imagined starting in January are going to work, which need a little more tweaking in order to work–and which I can merrily throw out the window, happy that I gave them a good old try and even more satisfied that I can toss ’em.

With extreme prejudice, sometimes.

There’s a full day ahead. I long to be done with Sons of Ymre, and I think I have a shot at it. There’s the Tuesday writing post for Haggard Feathers to get finished and edited–it’ll be on proofreading, part of the “getting your book ready to debut” series. I want to do a series on marketing in March, but honestly most of my advice on that is “don’t, most advertised marketing services exist only to remove money from your pockets.”

So maybe I’ll ask subscribers what they’d like to see in March. Hm.

I’m seeing some people come to my site by searching for my name and “e-piracy,” so let me just put my statement out there: Don’t steal/torrent books. I’m not even going to add a please, I shouldn’t have to beg people not to fucking steal.

Miss B is draped over her memory foam, microfiber-covered office bed, signing heavily each time I shift in my chair. She wants her walkies, having had breakfast–and helped herself to no little part of Boxnoggin’s as well. They tend to switch bowls halfway through a meal, as if they aren’t given pretty much the same thing. B gets a little more wet food in deference to her age and dental status, and Boxnoggin gets more dry crunchies because he enjoys slavering and cracking them, chewing as loudly as possible.

But halfway through breakfast or dinner they mosey to each other’s bowls with the precision of Ziegfield girls switching marks on a brightly lit stage, and all the pleading or scolding in the world won’t stop them. I suppose the grass is always greener and the other bowl always more attractive.

That’s my Monday. I’ve recently had the kind of good news that, while enjoyable, upsets a number of other plans, so I need to spend serious time thinking about the fallout today. Which is going to be just as pleasant as peeling my own fingernails off, I suppose, but at least it’s for a net good.

Some more coffee would also do me a world of good, I suspect. I’m cranky enough this morning to crack the world in half with a sharp word or two.

The Free Agent February giveaway is still going on; there are three days left and you can enter daily. It will be nice to alert the winners once they’re drawn, and brace myself for next month.

Leap years. They never quite sit comfortably, and this one’s no exception. At least after the 29th we’ll feel more synchronized, right?

Don’t tell me if I’m wrong. I’d rather have a little hope.

See you around, Readers.

A Very Interesting Weekend

I have resurrected, bleary and blinking, from a weekend that was extremely… interesting. It got so strange I pulled out the cards during daylight, and that hasn’t happened in a while.

Anyway, I’m home again, and back in the saddle. There’s HOOD‘s Season Two to finish prepping for publication today, which means a blurb and finding a specific code. Last night I got the ISBNs sorted, so that’s good. It’s looking like the release will be mid-April, and now I can turn my attention to other things–once, of course, I get the listing, the blurb, and the rest sorted today.

Today also sees a new post over at Haggard Feathers! This one’s all about formatting, and only for paid subscribers. it should drop about 11am PST, so I’ll be warbling about it from the rooftops once it does.

There’s also the Free Agent February giveaway, still ongoing. I can’t wait to draw the winners near the end of the month and send these bad boys out.

I’m told we’re very near sorting out Finder’s Watcher, and there’s a revision pass on Damage I should get under my belt before moving on to finishing Sons of Ymre‘s zero, working on HOOD’s Season Three, and doing the preliminary work on The Bloody Throne. I’m pretty sure I’ll never get done with everything I need to this year, but then again, that’s usually the feeling in February. The shortest month of the year, but also the one where the needle drops into the groove and starts bringing the music up.

…some time passed since that last paragraph, since I flicked to the Sons of Ymre window open on my desktop and fell into the story again. It’s probably procrastination; gods know I don’t want to squeeze out 40k to finish the zero this week. I have other things to do, the Muse just isn’t listening.

She often ignores me.

Anyway, I’ll be fighting both that siren call and my own stomach’s rolling today. It was a very, very strange holiday weekend, and one I’m glad is over.

I was going to close with a wish that we could all kick Tuesday right in the pants, but I’m sensing the day is just as tired as we are. So instead, I’ll wish for all of us to have some rest. I think we’ve earned it, after the past few days. I wonder if Mercury is retrograde or something.

Be gentle with yourselves today, dear ones. We’re hurtling at almost unimaginable speed through inimical space studded with meteors and other strange things, whirling on a speck of rock around a massive nuclear reactor.

We need all the help–and all the kindness–we can get.

Spores, Math, Pixies

If you look closely, you can see the fairy ring. Of course I know it’s spores and math… and yet, I can’t help but see pixies dancing, too.

It was the strangest thing; our yard didn’t have visible mushrooms–and certainly never had rings of them–until after I finished writing Gallow & Ragged. Then, as soon as we got some good rain, mycelium circles were fricking everywhere, and the urge to leave a dish of milk out during the nail-paring of a new moon was well-nigh irresistible.

Sometimes I wonder about this career of mine. Whether it’s magic or just plain selective attention is academic, though. The real point is, I’m not going to stop writing–not while I’m breathing. Maybe that commitment catches the gaze of a few things better left alone.

Still… the Folk like the mad, and they love bards. I can’t really sing anymore, but I’ve an endless well of stories to tell. Good enough.

Have a lovely weekend, my dears. And remember, should you hear the click of high heels behind you on a dark road, and the scratch of very large golden hound’s nails…

…don’t look back. Just keep moving. Or if you must look back, remember to be kind, and to ask no questions you don’t truly want answers to.

Soundtrack Monday: Perry, in Love

Yesterday, the iTunes algorithm kept trying to force Pink Martini’s Amado Mio on me until I broke down and listened to it. Now, I love Pink Martini with the flame of a thousand suns… but so did Perry from the Kismet series.

The first bars of Let’s Never Stop Falling in Love send a chill up my spine, because I could reliably play it and Perry would lift his head in the Monde, smiling his bland, appreciative smile. It’s what’s playing inside his hellbreed head when he’s strapped into the metal frame and Jill’s at work with the knives.

I suppose it doesn’t help that in my head Perry looks a lot like a young Max Raabe, especially in the short story where he meets Jack Karma. Raabe in a tuxedo with his hair slicked back is exactly what Perry looks like when he’s wanting to impress, look harmless to, or seduce someone. Of course I know Mr Raabe is a nice fellow and Perry only chose that particular form to send a shiver through me…

…but it worked. It worked really well.

Enjoy the music, my friends. I know Hyperion-Pericles-Perry does.

Shillin’ My Wares

I am so close to the end of revisions for HOOD‘s Season Two, I can taste it. Of course, there’ll still be CEs and proofing, but the season has its shape now, and it’s… actually… not a bad book? Which means I’m almost at the final gate.

I go through phases of hating each book. Generally the first one hits in the Slough of Despond from about halfway through the zero draft until four-fifths through, when the gallop to the finish takes me and I have no time for any emotion other than weary focus, then again it strikes midway through the revision into a reasonable first draft, then there’s the point halfway through other revisions when I think I have always been revising this book, I will always be revising this book, and weep.

It gets to where I’m afraid, each time, that I will always hate the book, and that it will go out into the world an unloved child. Which dovetails neatly with the “everyone will hate this, then they’ll hate YOU, then your career will crash and you’ll be homeless and your kids and dogs will starve and then the sun will go out and it’s ALL YOUR FAULT, LILI, ALL OF IT!” that strikes right before Release Day.

But in between those bursts, I have shoals of time where I think, well, this book ain’t perfect, but it’s not totally awful, and I’m grateful for the respite.

This particular burst of “maybe not bad” came when I reached a particular scene, frowned, and realized that the hole I’d sensed in the book was right there, plainly visible. I just needed to let the season rest for a wee bit before I got enough distance to see it. Which meant I could reel back in Scrivener and drop in an extra chapter (hey, I wrote about that earlier this week!) that makes the entire book hang in the shape it needs like a 3D tapestry.

It was a welcome discovery. I knew the hole was there, I just couldn’t see it.

Which reminds me! Some of you are asking about Haggard Feathers, my writing Substack. Come February, one weekly post there will be free and the rest will be subscriber-only. I’m still going back and forth about what’s a reasonable price to charge for it; the Substack will focus on being a working writer as well as refining your craft as a casual hobbyist. I plan on also doing a Thursday Evening Open Thread over there, where subscribers can ask questions, play, and generally interact with each other and me. I’m thinking around $5/mo wouldn’t be too much to ask; I might end up doing subscription tiers if Substack supports that. In any case, it has not changed to subscriber-only yet, and one post a month (probably on the first Tuesday) will be utterly free so you know what you’re getting. Come February, I’ll trot out the subscription option.

Also, if I’m shilling my wares (as one is frequently required to do in order to keep body and soul together) I have a Patreon, and also have subscription options at Gumroad. They fall into three classes: A Latte’s Worth (a once-monthly fiction drop, the price of a cheap but good coffee), Crow’s Nest (weekly fiction drop, generally on Thursdays) and the Nest Egg option, which not only gives you the weekly fiction drop but also gives you access to whatever serial I’m running currently–including the unedited and edited ebooks of said serials, before they go on sale and most times before they can even be preordered. The current serial is my Robin Hood in Space story, of which Season One is available in entirety and Season Two is spiking for a finish involving a ball, assassination attempts, and a GIANT SPACESHIP BLOWING UP because hey, write what you love, right?

I’m trying to maneuver myself into an emotional-mental space where I can have the next serial be The Highlands War–that’s right, the next Steelflower book. But there’s still Season Three of HOOD to get through, so I have time to think about, doodle, dream, and prep to my heart’s content. The next serial might end up being Lightning Bound instead of Highlands War, too. I haven’t decided yet.

Giving yourself enough time to make decisions is a skill that edges into a luxury. But if one can possibly take it, I recommend it. There are very few decisions that are as pressing as the world would like us to believe, especially that slice of the world full of people who (wrongly) think they’re entitled to something from us just because they want it.

Anyway, the dogs need walking, I have a workout to get into, and there’s correspondence to take care of before I can get to what I really want to do–revise this book so I can get to the next stage of the publication process.

See you around, chickadees.

Soundtrack Monday: Take Me Out

The Society

It’s a brand-new year, and time for another Soundtrack Monday! Today we’re visiting the Society series–in particular, Hunter, Healer.

I did a fair amount of research on Vegas casinos for the scene where Rowan and Delgado finally see each other again. And while writing their reunion (bullets flying, adrenaline roaring, homemade Molotov cocktails) I listened, over and over again, to Franz Ferdinand’s Take Me Out.

I know I won’t be leaving here… with you.

Delgado is an interesting case; he and Preston (from The Marked) center on the human hunger for touch. Delgado can’t touch anyone mentally without excruciating pain, Press can’t touch anyone at all without draining them. When you find someone who can give that most important, basic thing–sheer simple contact–all of a sudden the world reforms and priorities reshuffle.

It’s probably my massage-therapy training that makes me focus so much on touch. (That, and the fact that human contact was perilous at best for most of my own life.) Anyway, this is the tune that particular shootout in Vegas is set to in my head. The ability to mentally set a casino on fire was, I’m not going to lie, extremely satisfying while I was writing it.

Enjoy!