novel madness

Against the Tide

I had a post planned about gender roles, spurred by Cormorant’s release, but I sat here staring at the screen for a little bit and thought, do I really want the concomitant internet kerfuffle today? I mean, there may be no kerfuffle at all, but I just don’t have the energy this close to a release day. I’d rather wait until I have some spoons to deal with potential mansplaining.

That’s a common hidden cost to being female. It makes me wonder how many great things we’d have if women didn’t have to swim against that tide every. damn. day.

Anyway, there’s a weather warning out today, for wind and rain. Just in time for me to go running with B. I lowered my bicycle seat and did 13ish kilometers yesterday, and my knees are protesting a little, but not badly. Fortunately today’s run is short, with walk breaks. Since B is getting older, she appreciates the walking part more and more.

It’s strange to watch her get frustrated. In her head, she’s still a puppy, with a puppy’s boundless enthusiasm and bendy bones. Odd Trundles thinks he is, too, and is constantly surprised that he can’t fit through puppy-sized holes in things. He is so muscle-bound and heavy he just tries to power through, which means he gets stuck a lot. B just overtaxes herself, then gives me an agonized look as if to say, “MOTHER. WHAT IS THIS AGING CRAP? I NEED TO RUN.”

Poor girl. I hear that.

I’m pretty sure the weather will hit when we’re in the middle of our jaunt, and we’ll come home soaked. Might as well just accept it. At least it’ll be warm-ish rain. B’s fur will puff up, so she’ll look like one of those soot-balls in Spirited Away. With four little legs scrabbling madly underneath.

I can hear Odd snoring in my bedroom down the hall. Now it’s time for some Latin, and some hangul practice. And, once the coffee settles in, an easy run. Then it’s wordcount, since the release day nerves have settled somewhat.

Over and out.

Catch-Up Wordage

Well, I’m awake, it’s a Monday, and I have a medium-long run planned. Yesterday was a silly 200-word day, but at least I got a lot of housework done.

I found a new favorite yoga pose this morning–Stargazer. It feels incredibly good to open up the side, and stretch out my ribs. I also came across this Vimeo short, Nano. I’d watch a whole movie of this, and read the books too. Hell, I’d write books about this. (In all my copious spare time, heh.)

So today is catch-up wordage on everything, and bracing for Cormorant Run‘s release day. I’m already feeling the nerves, so I’ll probably have Purple Rain in rotation and dance around my office every time “Let’s Go Crazy” comes up. That is, if I have any nerves left after an 8km run.

The current list of projects is: DEADROAD, Sekrit Projekt, Epic Fantasy, Roadtrip Z, and Damage. The last has taken the place of Dog Days, because the agent wants it. Hopefully I can get the Sekrit Projekt finished before too much longer, so I can throw its zero into the bin and move on. It’s…been a while, for that particular simmering book. I may have to break it up into two, and release the first part as a novella. It depends on the finished length, and how intense the guerrilla war in the latter half of the book gets.

So that’s my Monday. The world is still on fire, I’m still trying desperately to preserve my tiny corner of it. I have a lot of hopes riding on Cormorant–it’s so, so different than anything I’ve done before, and though I know a lot of the early reviewers didn’t “get” it, I have faith in my Readers. Who are, after all, the smartest bunch on the planet.

Smarter than me, that’s for damn sure.

Over and out.

Rain, Busy

It’s raining! And while I wait for my breakfast to settle so I can go on a run, I’m watching Twitter explode over the Comey hearing today.

Comey is no hero. He basically just didn’t want a female president, so he made sure we couldn’t have one…and it blew up in his face. He’s not out for truth, justice, or the American way. He’s out for vengeance, because der Turmper touched the quick of his pride, so to speak. Now, in the current situation, this vengeance happens to be on the side of the angels, but it shouldn’t be treated as heroism. Anyone who thought cooperating with the Mango Mussolini was a good idea does not get a cookie, does not pass Go, does not get benefit-of-the-doubt.

ANYWAY. There’s wordcount to get in today, and a long run to endure. I’ve got to get Ginny out of that wrecked RV and the rest of the group away from the cannibals AND the zombies, there’s a queen and her son to check in on, a post-apocalyptic New York to begin exploring, the heroine of an Angelov Wolves tale to introduce, and a difficult talk between two elvish lovers to begin drafting. Not to mention dogs to wrangle and some Latin to work my way through. It’s gonna be a busy, busy day.

First, though, I really need my stomach to settle. Which means I need to stop watching the Comey hearing.

Wish me luck…

Rest to Conquer

This morning, eating breakfast, I looked at the table, and had the exotic experience of three different words for such a thing–French, Latin, and Spanish–fighting briefly for primacy, while I wondered what the Korean word was and, for the life of me, could not remember the English word for this wooden thing right in front of me. (Even though the French word is spelled the same way, the pronunciation is different, so it might as well be a Whole New Word. Gah.)

I think it’s time to take a day off from language learning, don’t you? I’m slowly going through a couple “learn Hangul” apps; it seems a little easier than Cyrillic. Maybe my brain just isn’t cut out for Russian, who knows? Either way, I’m going to rest a bit, before I start trying to figure out how to say “table” in music, too.

Speaking of music…taking a rest from piano now means that my sight-reading has improved, for some reason. I made it all the way through Scarborough Fair in Dm last night, without needing to annotate. Of course, I’m sure that once I go back to Bach I’ll have to scrawl all over the page like a mofo, but it was nice to have my hands do just what they needed to while at the ivories, for once.

Periodic rest sessions are needed for mental strengthening as well as physical. You’ve got to give the poor overworked neurons time to repair themselves.

I do rather miss my morning Caesar session, though. There’s a certain grim humor to realizing people don’t change much, even over hundreds, thousands of years. I mean, we adapt, but you can still find the same follies in Sumeria, in Rome, and in New York. And, like a certain Miss Bennet, follies delight me, even my own.

So, today is for wordcount, for following up with a couple publishers, and for an easy run, probably with Miss B. She’ll be unlivable if I leave her home, after all. She doesn’t seem to understand that she’s aging, and is honestly baffled when her body won’t obey her puppylike need to jump. It’s a temporal conspiracy, she feels, and looks to me to solve it.

Gods grant me the strength to be the person my dogs think I am. Blessed be.

Exhaust the Brain

Peekaboo.
Well, I’m awake. Poking around with Hangul practice, since I think I’d like to learn a little Korean. It feels like cheating to do French and Spanish with Latin, and how cool would it be to be able to maybe-piece together lyrics from K-pop and the occasional word in K-dramas? PRETTY DAMN COOL, I’m thinking.

Mind you, I am not going to ever claim any kind of fluency, but picking out the occasional word is going to be ultra-satisfying.

The yoga-in-the-morning experiment proceeds apace, too. The old, paid Gaiam app I was using for a quick 15-min session suddenly updated and turned into a subscription-based piece of shite, so I switched to Down Dog. It really annoyed me that an app I’d paid for suddenly bait-and-switched like that, and there goes all my records of the practices I’ve done so far. Ah well, life is change, right? And I think the Down Dog app might be better for me overall. (The music’s definitely nicer.)

All of this, including piano, is to keep my brain from eating itself. Plus, I have a horror of losing mental acuity. I spent so long thinking the only thing I had to recommend myself was a reasonably agile brain, the prospect of losing grey matter gives me the chills. I also think people calcify as they get older if they don’t purposely seek out new experiences and things to love, and I’d like to put off that sclerosis as long as possible. Since I never thought I’d survive much past my early thirties (it is still a daily surprise to me that I have) I’ve started planning for the type of old Amazon I want to be.

So today is for a run, with new socks. (Well, I’ve had them for a while, but my old socks have been worn clear through.) We’ll see if they can handle the strain. Then it’s settling in to explore more of DEADROAD, which is the sequel to AFTERWAR, which is currently with the editor. (Who is on vacation, argh.) There are other projects, including more Roadtrip Z (they finally got out of the county! After almost 100K words!) and a Sooper Sekrit Projekt I want to get damn well finished, and the epic fantasy I’m writing just as an exercise and a gift for a favorite editor. Then there’s the second Angelov Wolves book, tentatively titled Dog Days. I have the sequel to The Marked—Oracle–boiling in the back of my head, too. Preston Marlock really isn’t a very nice guy, and Jude is beginning to understand that about him. And poor, poor Aggie.

Anyway, there’s my day. But first, Caesar is being an asshole to Dumnorix, who has several very good points about the Gauls preferring overlords from among their own cultural set instead of Romans. I get that things aren’t going to turn out well for Dumnorix, and Orgetorix’s daughter seems to have disappeared. *eyeroll* If Caesar were not already long dead, one might want to slap him. I’m sure Cleopatra longed to every once in a while.

Over and out.

CORMORANT Is Almost Here…

It’s June. You know what that means? CORMORANT RUN is almost out!

ARRIVAL meets Under the Dome.

It could have been aliens, it could have been a trans-dimensional rift, nobody knows for sure. What’s known is that there was an Event, the Rifts opened up, and everyone caught inside died.

Since the Event certain people have gone into the drift… and come back, bearing priceless technology that’s almost magical in its advancement. When Ashe the Rat — the best Rifter of her generation — dies, the authorities offer her student, Svinga, a choice: go in and bring out the thing that killed her, or rot in jail.

But Svin, of course, has other plans…

Guys, I am SO EXCITED about this. My loving homage to the Strugatsky brothers and Tarkovsky is ALMOST OUT IN THE WORLD. (You can preorder at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, if you’re so inclined.) I am getting release-day nerves a full two weeks in advance, because I am so nervous about this one. It’s different than anything I’ve done before.

*bites nails* *runs away to make tea*

Much Heat, Many Halp

Day 2 of getting up early to do some yoga is going about as well as can be expected. It didn’t cool off much last night, so sleeping was intermittent at best, especially since Miss B decided that the open window meant OMG PROTECT MAI HOOMIN WIF SNUGGLE. She also decided to “help” me with every. damn. yoga. pose. Not content with that level of supervision, she also tried herding me all the way through our morning run, along with several bees who apparently find my hair extremely fascinating. (It’s not my shampoo, I’ve changed that several times.)

I am reminded of Shel Silverstein–some kind of help is the kind of help that helping’s all about, and then there’s this.

Now, exhausted by her efforts, Miss B’s cast herself onto the office floor next to a snoring Trundles (who has decided my bed is too warm and too soft, Goldilocks) and is eyeing me warily, in case I decide to Do Something Else She Needs To Help With.

At least all the sweaty stuff is done and I won’t have to venture into the heat until after dinner for Odd’s Daily Constitutional. He hates warm weather, and reproaches me about it almost as much as he complains about rain. It’s not really his fault–he’s a walking yeast factory, and with his compromised airways hot days mean he can’t breathe as well. Pretty soon he’ll move out of my office and into the hall, where he’ll find cool spots on the hardwood and move every ten minutes or so, groaning all the while.

That’s all the news from this morning, other than me trying to decide which project goes where in the next six months. I have a list, but I want to depart from it, and I have to find time to write another novella. That was fun, and it makes sense for me to broaden my genres, so to speak.

Maybe a cuppa while I ponder everything, since there’s a nice breeze through the window and it’ll be too hot come afternoon. And before you ask, no, I abhor iced tea and iced coffee. Call it a quirk.

Over and out.