musica est Dei donum optimii

Old Things New

I did my best to slither into my cave and pull a giant rock over the opening behind me all weekend; last week was weird and I don’t quite know if i should blame the eclipse. Even Boxnoggin was behaving a bit uncharacteristically, though not when a rabbit could be seen.

No, when such things appear, his response is ever the same, world without end, amen and ouch.

Deathwish BunBun appears to be inviting all their friends, and they are not crepuscular now but brazenly hopping about at high noon. This probably means more coyotes coming uphill, and I’m sure everyone’s gardens are going to be nibbled thoroughly this year. The rabbit burrow Boxnoggin found in a fern is now vacated, its inhabitants presumably reached an age where they can wander out and fend for themselves, and all that’s left is a divot the dog keeps sniffing hopefully at, huffing the fading aroma of cottontail.

I’d love to spend today on writing fanfic, but there’s the monthly newsletter to get out (if I can manage it, April is a bit busy) and today’s the drop-dead for beginning revisions. I think I’ll clear Gamble first, so I’ll address that during half my working time today, and whatever’s left will go toward the serial. Our favourite sellsword is in the middle of a raid right now, and it’s a confusing welter of horses, giant boars, and a whole lotta violence. Slowing it down inside my head to pick out salient details necessitates a lot of staring into the distance, of getting up and pacing the office to block out particular movements.

I spent most of Sunday (after household chores and some yardwork were both done) on the couch reading about Taoism while listening, to the first time in my life, to the Grateful Dead. Sure, I’d heard a song or two of theirs on the classic rock stations growing up, but somehow they never stuck in my head. I was startled into laughter when it occurred to me that I’d never really gotten into the Dead before, despite being such a hippie. It’s good to try new things, or old things which are new to oneself.

I was attempting to listen to podcasts all last week during walkies, but I don’t think that will continue. Apparently I need music during that time, so I can noodle out plot tangles and clean up the inside of my skull. It was nice to feel like I was educating myself during that time, but if it detracts from the work I’m going to have to pass. Maybe just on weekends, and I’ll save the weekdays for strolling along with shuffle-play.

Boxnoggin, of course, gets his shuffle through his nose. He’s nearly drunk with spring, and honestly I can’t blame him. The plum and magnolia blossoms are all but gone, cherries and apples in full swing, and the dogwoods have started to leaf out. Our backyard lilacs have awakened and the hops vine is going great guns; there is a lilac already-blooming on our usual walkies route, tucked in a beautiful little sheltered microbiome and not very fragrant just yet.

No matter, there’s time. All I need now is a little rain. Onward we go into the week then, hopeful as always.

Win Or Sledgehammer

The dog started the day by demanding many a bellyrub and cuddle before he would deign to leave a warm bed–which, honestly, fair play and I did not mind. However, he followed it up by attempting to stamp on every hyacinth and daffodil in the backyard, forcing us to trudge around in circles while he sought the perfect place to pee as the temperature hovers near freezing.

I don’t even know. Then there was the Coffee Grinder Incident and I began to despair of ever getting some goddamn caffeine. Fortunately the Moka pot didn’t make me wait too long and now I am safely in my office, shivering with the aftereffects of Boxnoggin’s frigid bathroom break but grateful for the cup of java I’m finally managing to get down my poor sleepy gullet.

I have Flo Rida’s My House running through my head; it’s a supremely danceable tune. Yesterday it was fighting for supremacy with DNCE’s Cake By the Ocean, which starts out sounding like Uptown Funk to a degree which makes it mash with several other tracks on my skull radio. However, it is also supremely danceable, so I didn’t mind. Still, I’m glad to have just one song plaguing me at the moment–when I get three or four going, it’s usually a sign I need more work to keep the ol’ thinkmeat from consuming itself.

Yesterday was all administrivia and video meetings. Honestly I don’t know why anyone talks to me–I mean, sure, I’m hilarious, but I’m also A Lot and a crotchety misanthropist to boot. I got into publishing because it was a job I could handle from home while caring for toddlers (childcare costs would have eaten the proceeds from any other) and now I’m so used to setting my own schedule and arranging things to suit myself I’m largely unfit for not only any other career but also interacting with what one thinks of as “normal” people.

I get weird early, I stay weird, and it’s not gonna change.

Anyway, the Ides of March are tomorrow and the second tranche of sales and price drops for the month are coming ’round the bend. Today there is a cake to bake, plus wordcount to catch up on since I got barely 400 yesterday and I suspect they all have to be thrown out. I may have to reserve one day per week for goddamn bureaucratic nonsense so I can protect the rest of my working time. I need this book done and if I’m going indie at the rate I suspect (developments are underway) I also need a few other things in place.

My patience for incremental effort is being severely tested. I need a win or two. Maybe I’ll get one during walkies, or today’s run. If that doesn’t work, there’s a sledgehammer sitting to the right of my desk, and I’m sure I can find a way to use it around the yard for a bit.

…honestly, the prospect sounds more and more enticing the longer I think about it. Thursday got the first few hits in, but I’ve got a plan for the war entire.

Time to get swinging.

Novel or Keyhole

This is the first time I’ve ever awakened with a Linkin Park song in my head, so…yeah. I mean, I usually have music playing in my head all the time, whether it’s earthly or otherwise, but that particular band’s never made an appearance before. (Yesterday it was Joesef, and that meant a good day. Today…well, let’s wait and see.)

It was so odd, in fact, that I rolled over and reached for an electronic device in order to find the goddamn track so I could put a name to it and go back to sleep. Unfortunately, while I was doing so my sunrise clock began to warm up, and I decided I might as well just stay awake. There’s a lot to do since I finished a bunch of fiddly faffing tasks yesterday–including figuring out the skeleton of the new novella, which may or may not end up anywhere but it’s fun to work on. (It has a robot donkey named Chicken, fa cry-eye, how could I not finish it?)

I like writing novels more than novellas or short stories, mostly because I’m better at long-term endurance efforts. For anything shorter than a novel, I generally have to have every part of the strike clear–including the return to the sheath–before my hand twitches for the hilt. A novel gives me time and space to explore the entire planet even if I crash with nothing; a novella or shorter means a sliptilting scream-race through broken, possibly enemy-infested territory with only my wits and possibly a stick for company.

I can do it, sure. I can even do it well. But do I prefer it? Not so much.

Still, some stories are too small, intense, or delicate for the novel treatment. Those are overwhelmingly what I call “keyholes”–pieces where the scope is extremely constrained and I only have a small slice of the action. Most of the time I have to fight my natural urge to stretch, extend, and add more. Every story is an entire universe unto itself (or set in one) and I can get lost in the underpinnings if I’m not careful. Readers tend to like that about my work (except for the few who get angry that I didn’t add more or answer their particular personal questions), as it provides the feeling of solidity and heft so often necessary for complete immersion.

How does one tell if a story is a novel or a keyhole? It varies. Sometimes I’m only after a particular vibe, sometimes there are wordcount constraints and I need to pick the one path through an infinity of thickets to provide something that particular size. (This is generally how I make short stories.) After a while I began to sense about how long a story wants to be within the first scene or so, or sometimes even during the initial stage of gathering influences and letting the damn thing bubble in my head. The experience gained by finishing multiple works–not to mention having exponentially more unfinished bits in the compost heap–gives me a sort of spidey-sense in that regard.

There really is no shortcut. One needs enough experience as a writer to figure out one’s own process and preferences. Then it becomes a matter of gaming oneself, as most if not all adulthood turns out to be. Of course, every so often a short story will fall out of my head (like Jolene, Jolene, still unsold but ah well) for no other reason than it wanted to be born, or a novella will present itself at my garden gate in response to the urge to gift a friend something nice (like Fool’s Assassin, which I may yet bring out for your delectation). In the end, each story only teaches one how to write itself, and one has to start almost from scratch on the next one. Sure, some of the processes and habits carry over, but not the other tools.

This is part of the reason why LLMs/”AI” will never be able to give readers what they crave. There’s simply too many lightning-fast intuitive choices to be made at each step of the process, and the acts of distinction are too excruciatingly personal to each complex human artist. But that’s a whole ‘nother blog post.

Today will include a weighty stakes-raising council in one book, the beginning of a pitched battle in another, and if I can get the first two scenes of the novella off the ground I’ll call it a good effort. Plus there’s the weekly/monthly subscription drop to get sorted as well. I don’t like to do those too far in advance, given how things change at a moment’s notice around here. But at least there’s plenty in the cannon for both the serial and everyone else.

January’s finally over (it’s been years) and I’m hopeful time will start to be a little less out of joint. Regardless, the work still has to get done–and Boxnoggin is beginning to stir, sensing that I just downed the coffee-dregs and will be shambling towards brekkie in a hot minute. Round and round and round she goes…

…and where I’ll stop nobody knows.

Waking Up Eager

Have thrice traversed the hall with a relatively full tankard of coffee, and rather feel as if I’m pushing my luck should I attempt even to lift the thing to my lips. However, the siren song of caffeine will force me over the barricades of good sense or burn avoidance, and that quite soon.

The Spring’s Arcana price drop has been added to the Monthly Sales page; tomorrow there will be another sale for a different series to talk about. I suppose it’s just That Time of Year, when trad publishers like to offer deals. Of course I offer them on self-pubbed stuff all year ’round, but September seems to be when a lot of the bigger ones hit. Great good news for readers, especially those with the hardware to use ebooks. (Which is not everyone, let’s remember.)

I do not have Night on Bald Mountain playing inside my head anymore, which is kind of a relief since it stuck around for three-four days. I chased it out with Ellie Goulding’s Love Me Like You Do, but this morning Robot Koch’s Nitesky has burrowed in to make itself at home. I think it’ll go on the Cain’s Wife soundtrack, which I’m already building since I want to get that trilogy planned in my head to a fare-thee-well before I decide if I’m going to do it first-person or third. I’m leaning toward first person for the protagonist and third for everyone else, but we’ll see.

It’s been a long time since I woke up eager to get to things instead of…just braced for enduring another day. I’m not quite sure what to do with myself as a result, and am reluctant to even move quickly lest the feeling evaporate. Today is set entirely aside for the proofs of Sons of Ymre 2; I feel like it’s been a long time for that particular book, though I’m sure it’s just that so many internal changes have occurred it feels like years. Time is never more subjective than during trauma or healing, and gods know we’ve been spending our time in the former state with brief breaks for the most emergency of the latter for quite some while now.

The good mood could be weather-based. Finally reasonable temperatures have set in and the world smells like dry autumn before the rains–crisping, spicy leaves and the last few lawn mowings, things burrowing in and dying off for winter’s long sleep, the trees storing sugar or retracting their leaf-fingertips. I spent most of the summer writing winter books, and now I suppose the tide will shift and it’ll be warmer weather inside my fictional landscapes while I put on a sweater and grin into a hot cuppa or three.

So while I am feeling uncharacteristically cheerful, I might as well get to it. There’s some administrivia cleanup that needs to happen today as well, but that can take second place to getting this little Lovecraft/Chambers-inspired romance scanned and out the door. A deep breath, a pull at the coffee tankard–I have not burned myself, though that is probably a mercy of short duration–and a bit of toast while I get started, and I should have momentum for when Boxnoggin and I return from walkies.

It’s nice to feel ambitious again. Let’s hope Tuesday cooperates.

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.

Leftover Night

Woke up to some “I play a lawyer on the internet” dipshit mansplainer attempting to cape for that Prosecraft jackhole in my mentions, and was about to press “post” on a stinging reply when I realized three things: Firstly, life is short; secondly, there is coffee to drink instead; thirdly, time consumed attempting to reason with the disingenuous is better spent on working.

So I just hit the block button and made the aforementioned coffee. It was 100% the right choice.

There are horizontal brushwork clouds in the eastern sky. It looks like a painting, especially since the fir branches still cling to a bit of leftover night. The birds are sleepy and Boxnoggin has gone back for his early morning nap–distinct from overnight rest, this nap must happen after he’s been taken out to pee for the first time on any particular day and is distinct from the midmorning (after walkies) and the late morning (after waking up to scream out the front window at pedestrians but before lunch) ones. He has a schedule to maintain, dammit, and nothing can be allowed to impair it.

At least I finally crashed last night. After release-day nerves meant sleeplessness, and I am no longer young and tender enough to absorb such damage without trouble. My eyelid was twitching, and that’s always a bad sign. Instead of release days getting easier to bear, I think they might be ending towards incrementally more heart-in-throat anxious with each book, and that’s…interesting. Certainly a blow to the theory of desensitization.

I haven’t even looked at the news yet today. I’m saving that particular pleasure (if that’s the word) for later. Right now I just want to caffeinate in whatever peace can be found while looking over yesterday’s wordcount. Every erg of available Wednesday energy went into finishing two scenes–a rather thorny discussion in Highlands War and a shootout in Gamble. The latter will need intensive polish today since the scene-blocking must be checked before I stick a pin in it and call it good enough for the zero. And there’s the subscription drop to tweak and schedule too.

Looks like the day will be busy. Maybe I should switch to drip instead of espresso, I hear there’s more caffeine in that method and it’s also rather good for one’s liver. Of course, it might give my poor shriveled adrenals yet another reason to complain, but such is life in a complex, quivering meatsack. No good bodily deed ever goes unpunished.

I’m also looking ahead to Cain’s Wife and Innkeeper’s War. The latter has Billy Joel playing in my head this morning, since the shadowmancer is utterly committed to his general. Just had a release, am working on two books, and the rest of me is thinking about stories I’m gonna write–such is the life. If I decide to leave publishing I’ll have to add working a day job to that, and I’m definitely considering it.

The coffee is nearing dregs and I think I hear Boxnoggin stirring. Off to the races, then; maybe I should listen to some Lana del Rey with breakfast.

See you around.

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.