review revue

No More Tied Hands

A very long time ago, I ran across this article by Jenny Crusie, about taking out the garbage and protecting the work. Since then, the phrase “Protect the Work” has been knocking around in my head, on various Post-its stuck to several different laptops and desktops, and is a truth I return to over and over again.

Toxic person throwing a tantrum? Protect the work. Publisher starts behaving nonsensically? Protect the work. Distribution platform enshittifying? Protect the work. Bad-faith reviews, trollery, reviewbombing? Protect the work. Online ruckus? Protect the fucking work.

The fact remains that nobody will protect your books if you do not. Publishing, especially trad, is a business full of exploitation, arcane holdovers from a literal century or two ago, grifting, greed, and ego. Prioritizing your own work, your own health, and your own time is crucial to any sort of success or longevity in the field.

I will be the first to admit that I have let my caretaking instincts and my willingness to bend drive me to deprioritizing my own time, health, and effort to a distinct fault, especially over the last few years with A Certain Series. My commitment to the work itself has never wavered, and at least I can rest assured that I have only very rarely allowed what I knew was best for my own work to be overruled. (My mistakes in that area can be counted on one hand, fortunately.) Yet having to go into battle for my books with one hand tied behind my back has had increasingly deleterious effects on my physical health, and that has been my biggest mistake.

Each time I have finished a fight, I’ve come back to the simple, stark phrase, Protect the work. It’s taken almost two decades in the biz for me to reach the point of snapping, and there will be no more tied hands in battle. Nor will I feel bad about what’s necessary to advocate for my work or my own interests. Our society would prefer women not to do that, publishing would prefer writers not to do that, and exploiters as a whole will use every trick in the book to make you feel bad advocating for yourself, to undercut your confidence so you’re more easily taken advantage of. Perhaps it’s a function of age that I find myself singularly unwilling to entertain that folderol any longer.

Along with this, how I spend my daily time is changing. I can’t be as accessible for certain things during working hours, and I have got to find a way not to feel guilty over the fact. That will be the next life skill I work on.

I’ve once again put PROTECT THE WORK on a Post-it, and stuck it to the desktop. I’ll apply the reminder as many times as it takes.

Moving on! The Chaucer read continues apace. I’m in the weeds of the Merchant’s Tale now, and my loathing of January (who has married poor May) knows very few bounds. I can’t quite tell where the story is heading, and I think it’s marvelous that so much of this corpus hinges on the Wife of Bath’s Tale. It seems like she decided to talk about what she felt was the problem with the Knight’s Tale–indeed, with every tale before she got her chance to speak–and now everyone is reacting to her. She’s driving the entire damn bus, not the Host and certainly not Chaucer himself. The more this goes on, the more I find her the meta-character at the heart of the entire endeavour, and this pleases me even if I sometimes felt she was being a bit long-winded. Of course her culture rarely gave women the chance to speak, and she’s forced to do so through a male writer, so…maybe she had reason to yell while she had the mic.

Seeing the traces of paganism (filtered through Roman versions of Greek classics) throbbing under the constant hum of medieval Catholicism is interesting as well. Plus there are former versions of sayings we use to this day, trapped in amber, smiling like old friends. Now that I have the rhythm of the language–it really is like Shakespeare, teaching one to read it as one goes along–everything is much, much easier.

In fact, I couldn’t wait to get back to it this morning, and stole a little time in bed with Boxnoggin snoring next to me, breathlessly reading Hades and Persephone beginning to argue about January, May, Damian, and the whole situation. I can’t wait for Persephone to bonk her husband on the head and point out he’s certainly no paragon of marital behavior.

And my scheduled time for blogging is over. It’s a wet, icy mess out there, “slicker than gooseshit” as some of the locals say, and the dog might not get the walk he wants unless we set out after more of the hazardous ice-sheets have washed away. But the back of the freeze is broken and it’s disintegrating bit by bit.

Hopefully that’s a sign. Onward to Thursday.

Heal, Guide, and Comfort

I suppose I can be grateful for the recent unpleasantness in some ways. For so long I was thinking I was the problem; getting reassurances from trusted sources that I’m not, that the situation is deeply and genuinely fucked up, is helpful. It’s also a Very Big Thing for me to reach out and ask for any aid at all, since I do not trust easily and my upbringing rather deeply impressed upon me the idea that it is always unsafe to make oneself so vulnerable as to ask for help.

More than All That, though, is a decision that came upon me all at once while writing down a timeline of events. Writing isn’t just for my weird little stories. It also helps one think coherently, arrange, and see patterns. I suppose it’s no surprise I process a lot of stuff by literally writing through it.

In any case, I have come to a conclusion. My physical health has been permanently affected by this particular nonsense taking up years of my time and energy. Consequently I will never, ever allow myself or my work to be treated in this fashion again. I simply will not brook it, and if that means I have to be bitchy and insist instead of attempting to take care of everyone else in a situation at the expense of my own stomach lining, health, sanity, and art…then very well. I shall be a bitch. I shall be the bitchiest bitch who ever bitched a bitching bitch. If people will not listen when I ask politely or signal discreetly, then by the gods I shall kick the door down and demand.

A long time ago, when the kids saw Lilo & Stitch, they joked that I was very like Mr Bubbles. Apparently the line, “So far you have been swimming in the sheltered waters of my patience,” seems tailor-made for their dear Mum. As they’ve grown older, it’s become somewhat of a family phrase. My fuse is long, and even getting it close to the cask of gunpowder is apparently a banner event.

Anyway. I have made up my mind. A number of things are going to change in a hot hurry, that’s all.

On to better news! I managed a little over 900 words yesterday, more than I thought I’d get. (The ruckus has been affecting my daily writing schedule, which cannot happen.) It was such a relief to be back I was provoked to another crying fit. The warrior-woman who’s about to duel a sellsword has started talking, and she’s a fabulous character. I am also relieved House of the Fan isn’t dead, it’s very much showing signs of life and interest now that the nausea is receding a bit.

Yesterday I was talking about not yet getting to the fourth part of the Clerk’s Tale. (Canterbury Tales, for those just joining us.) I could just see the Wife of Bath’s expression during the introduction and the first three parts, but then ol’ Geoffrey pulled the rug out from underneath. The Clerk’s point was actually that Griselda was rare, real and normal women don’t put up with that bullshit, and actually he’d tell wives not to because it is bullshit. Which was a pleasant surprise, made me laugh out loud, and felt rather pointed, as if Geoff was reaching across the centuries with a knowing wink and saying, “Honey, you’re on the right track.”

The power of stories to heal, to guide, and to comfort never ceases to amaze. Next up is the Merchant’s Tale, and I am breathless with anticipation. However, I was too tired to attempt the hill last night. I have also found out that a young Ralph Fiennes, young Toby Stephens, Lena Headey, and Liv Tyler were in a cinema treatment of Eugene Onegin (it’s on YouTube, if you’re interested) and NOBODY TOLD ME. I immediately sent it to my writing partner, who was thrilled. (And quipped, “Once upon a time Voldemort, Arwen, Mr Rochester, and Cersei Lannister all attended a house party…”) I’ve watched a couple clips and am EVER SO READY to glory in the whole thing once I can set aside some uninterrupted time.

It’s lovely to have something pleasant to look forward to. For a while my definitive Onegin has been Dmitri Hvorostovsky, and one particular scene in a Met rendition of Tchaikovsky’s opera (a duet between the Siberian Tiger and the incomparable Renee Fleming) gave me a vampire story I’m goddamn determined to write one day, as soon as I can jam it into the schedule.

Speaking of the schedule, I didn’t realize that I could cross the Chained Knight revise off the master to-do list, which was a dopamine hit I sorely needed. I was so caddywumpus (and frankly so vomitous) that I didn’t even twig I’d reached a major milestone in the year’s schedule already–not even halfway through January, as a matter of fact. Which is frankly amazing and I deserve a cookie.

Toxic situations are not just thieves of joy and time, but also of quite reasonable and healthy estimation of one’s own worth.

It’s still icy and Boxnoggin will again get only a half-block’s worth of walkies, though the projected melt tomorrow will mean we’re back to the regular and not a moment too soon. There’s a lot to get done today; though I’m still feeling the aftershocks at least I’m not trying to force myself into an ulcer.

Onward into Tuesday we go…

Emphasis, Little, Resentfully

After an initial bump of good news we’re back in the “mounting stress” portion of a writer’s career, which…well, it’s not ideal, but it’s far more familiar than anything else so why not? There is some nice stuff, though–Paste Magazine put next month’s A Flame in the North on their list of “most anticipated fantasy books of 2024” (along with a LOT of other good stuff), which is pleasant. And I’m finding out that Chained Knight isn’t a bad little book, which is a giant relief, considering.

Now if just a few other things would break loose I’d be able to breathe a bit more deeply. But alas and alack, that doesn’t seem to be in the offing.

Chaucer continues apace! I knocked off the Miller’s Tale last night, and nearly laughed myself into a fit. I begin to see why ol’ Geoffrey has survived the centuries; I also must admit I haven’t been that hilariously surprised by a fart joke since Moby Dick‘s first chapter (beans in the forecastle!). The change from highfalutin’ Tale of Chivalry to a drunken miller telling a complex cuckolding joke (one small step away from a traveling salesman number) is delicious. Just goes to show that lo, raunchy and highbrow hath always been with us, and the tension between them doesn’t mean one is better, it’s just a zone of highly fertile creativity.

I also loved how the Miller slyly mocked the Knight’s constant emphasis on what everyone was wearing, partly because descriptions of beautiful clothes are fun–spectacle satisfies no few deep aesthetic hungers–and partly because I can just see the shit-eating grin on his face as he pokes fun at the Very Serious Highbrow Guy. Alison the carpenter’s wife was as well-dressed as Princess Emily, and probably happier. Although who knows, we don’t get to hear if she wanted to marry the old jealous carpenter? Maybe she’d’ve preferred to worship Diana too.

The Miller’s Tale went a lot swifter than the Knight’s, partly because I have Geoffrey’s rhythm (and number) now, and partly because I had the bandwidth to focus instead of reading scattershot catch-as-catch-can. For a while I was so exhausted, physically and mentally, that a couple YouTube videos were all I could handle as decompression before falling asleep facedown on the tablet. Thankfully my nerves are a little more re-wrapped now. I might just set myself one tale per night and work through the book that way.

My social media mentions are a bit of a mess. A lot of techbro theft apologists are desperately trying to sealion there. It’s amazing what people will cape for these days. No billionaire is so rancid as to lack bootlickers, and plenty of techbro theft apologists take it as a personal insult that a femme-presenting person will have none of their nonsense. It’s also strange to see how many of the sealions conform to a “type”–95% of them, by avatar or bio, fall into a Certain Category.

It’s also mordantly funny that the Venn diagram of those bleating “copyright is theft”, “piracy is FWEEDOM”, and “writers/artists aren’t working fast enough for me to steal more of my favorite content from them” is a complete circle.

In any case, brekkie looms and Boxnoggin needs walkies. I’m back to running again, and the endorphins are simply marvelous. Recovery is my least favorite phase, but at least the hit when one goes back is a lot more intense by comparison–a little reward for reluctantly and resentfully giving myself enough time to heal. (Emphasis on the “little” and the “resentfully”, natch.) The rest of the day will be spent in developing a pitched battle and revising the portal fantasy, so my docket is full.

It’s good to be back.

Ol’ Geoffrey’s Rhythm

The weather is filthy and likely to remain so for a week or two, which pleases me to no end. Boxnoggin will be far less enamored of the whole deal once we’re outside, but as soon as we get home he’ll forget his dislike and head for a nap.

Must be nice.

Wandering around in my feed this morning is an article on one of the bigger AI grifters openly admitting they can’t train their plagiarism pink sauce without stealing. The grift is reaching its endgame now, with anyone who’s going to profit already escaped with their ill-gotten gains, the rest of us left to deal with the fallout. It seems like the cycle of grifting (NFTs, bitcoin, LLM/”AI”) is getting shorter and shorter as regulation looms. A more compressed timeframe means the initial theft and buy-in has to be bigger and the perpetrators have to leap off the bus more quickly once they’ve gotten their payday; the theft has to be grander and grander in scale in order to provide the thieves with their accustomed payout. You’d think people would learn…but PT Barnum was right, one born every minute and that goes double for the internet.

I spent the weekend refilling the well instead of working as I had planned. The Muse and my own nervous system rose up in revolt, so I had to let both out to play. It meant a lot of action movies for the Muse (including Fist of the Condor, which was everything I’d been told) as well as Chaucer on the couch for the rest of me. I made my way through the Prologue (finally!) and the Knight’s Tale, and all I can think is that Arcite and Palamon should’ve just escaped from jail, gone home, and left Emily alone to worship Diana as she wanted to. Just leave the lady alone, boys!

But of course that wasn’t an option. Next up is the Miller’s Tale, and I think things will go a bit more smoothly now that I have ol’ Geoffrey’s rhythm. It’s like the Shakespeare muscle–each time I read the Bard I have to go slowly for a short while, catching the beat before hopping in to jump rope. I’m looking forward to it.

The best thing about Chaucer is seeing the throughlines. A lot of other phrases and allusions I’ve noticed elsewhere make more sense. I enjoy seeing how “classics” morph in later works; the organic process is fascinating to witness. And no, before some AI-apologist asshat gets it into their head to email me, that is not the same as “training” an “AI”. A human being investing their precious, finite time on earth to read, interact with, and digest a work before creating their own unique art is a thousand percent different, and your false equivalencies and strawmen are not welcome here. Go, thou, with thy tiny gods; fucketh right offe into the sunne.

This week will be all about Highlands War chapters (big set-piece battles looming!) and Chained Knight revisions. Plans for the latter are firming up; I’m thinking June will do for a release date. Which reminds me I’ve got to get the cover sorted soonish. *to-do list chimes as it grows longer*

But that’s a slightly Future Me problem. Right now brekkie is due, walkies must be had, and my own corpse must shamble through wind and rain at a slightly faster pace than walking. I had to take a recovery break from running and it was awful. I need the endorphins liek woah.

And so it goes. Time to swill coffee dregs and be about the business. Happy Monday, everyone.

Scaling Cliffs

It’s chilly enough that the slug population is taking a hit–don’t worry, happens every year, there will be plenty more of them once the spring rains show up. Right now my hellebore and I are both heaving a sigh of relief, even if Boxnoggin is trying to figure out how to get into the northern garden boxes to pee on a few of the former. I don’t know why this is suddenly his ambition, but…I guess I live here now.

A lot of work on the docket today–the agent wants a further sample of Temple of Night, which is what Cain’s Wife #1 has decided it wants to be called. And we just reached the titular temple–or we will as soon as I get this one stitchery scene out of the way, and figure out just how the nasty auction vampire (can’t believe I wrote those three words in juxtaposition, but here we are) tracked them down. Plus my agent wants to see some “romantasy” from me. “With how fast you write, you’ll have no problem!”

I nodded, smiling, and my wrists began to ache just thinking about it. Still, there’s Chained Knight, which is romantasy up the wazoo (after a manner of speaking) and I have a couple other things lying about–Xie’s Shadow, for one, and Magekiller and Source, which I think has the best legs out of all of them. I sort of want to do that assassin-and-swordsman-walk-into-a-bar book, but that will have to take its place in the queue. So maybe I’ll make more than one sample.

Not as irritable as I was yesterday, though plenty still lingers. I realized I was truly cranky when I finally slithered into bed, opened my Norton Critical Tale of Genji (I’m having more success with this edition than with previous ones, I think it’s the footnotes), and snarled, “I hate this protagonist and want to get to the part where he’s suffering.”

Boxnoggin, busy settling on his half of the bed, looked faintly alarmed. It took me a little while of explaining the lady of the cicada husks and the dead lady and Genji’s just all-around assholery before the dog decided it wasn’t worth being anxious about and started snoring, and by then I was wishing I’d picked up Chaucer instead.

There’s another bit of hilarity–me wandering around the library yesterday mumbling “where’s my fuckin’ Chaucer at? COME OUT, GEOFFREY. COME OUT AND FACE ME.”

Anyway, I think this time I have a chance of actually scaling Lady Murasaki’s cliffs, and I am grimly determined. Her sly asides make the journey worth it, indeed. But first I have to get through the day’s work, including walking poor ol’ Box, who does not like the cold but likes staying indoors even less. He will be full of energy and eager to sniff the greenery once it warms up a bit and the frost is turned to water-jewels instead of ice-knives.

At least there’s coffee to be had, and I might even be able to stomach brekkie in a bit. No stale croissants survived yesterday, alas, but not every Tuesday can be perfect…

Patience and Coping, Low

Woke up with Shigeru Umebayashi’s Vendetta March playing in my head; it’s on the Cain’s Wife soundtrack and that book is attempting to claw its way out with a vengeance. Things are escalating, next comes that world’s version of Paris and a train ride that goes terribly wrong. Or maybe I’ll put the train ride first, since the protagonist has to get to Paris. We’ll see.

I did mean to go to the grocer’s today, but so much has interfered with wordcount and I want this book done. Plus there’s the subscription drop and I really oughta get the newsletter sorted. But goddammit I would just like to be left alone to write. The amount of bullshit in the publishing industry right now1 is a distinct impediment to doing the work only I can do, the creation everything else downstream depends on.

You’d think I’d be treated with a modicum of respect by the industry that depends on me as the origin point of everything their own jobs and profit depends on, but that’s not how it is. Anyway.

This month’s reading pace has taken a hit (like last month’s), but I have finished McIntosh’s Beyond the North Wind and Robichaud’s Pan: The Great God’s Modern Return. The latter was far more useful for my purposes, though the former did bolster one or two points for the Viking werewolves. I especially appreciated Robichaud calling out some of the bullshit in the 70s pagan revival; it’s not often one finds such declarative statements and they are most welcome indeed.

My levels of patience and coping are at an all-time low. It might be because of tomorrow’s release day; book hangover (from the portal fantasy) mixed with the white-hot pace of the current work was holding off the worst of the nerves, but it seems that grace was short-term at best. Ah well, if I distract myself with work today I won’t have much time to get more nervous, right?

RIGHT?

The news cycle isn’t helping2 so it’s probably time to submerge until I get this zero draft done. I had a lot more I wanted to say, but it’s going to have to wait. I need to blow up a train and get this witch to Paris with the heist item safely in her luggage. Before that, Boxnoggin would very much like his walkies. I’m sure the corvids down the hill are wondering if I’m going to show with a pocket full o’peanuts today, too.

I think they’ll be pleasantly surprised, once I finish my coffee and get underway…

Predawn, Gatsby

It’s a pretty perfect predawn. While Boxnoggin was snuffling around rabbit-trails in the yard I could stand and breathe, smelling the turn of the season without any promise of awful heat or sickness getting in the way. Being laid out for nearly a week with what might have been plague (public health in the US has been betrayed to a point well past insanity or satire) certainly makes one appreciate being able to simply inhale, let alone let one’s nose work as it should.

For some reason the Muse wanted a reread of The Great Gatsby to finish off the illness. Not that it had any prophylactic or even beneficial effect, mind you; I rather suspect the current historical moment had more to do with the Muse’s insistence than anything else. The excess, the greed, the anomie–all very now indeed. Fitzgerald agreed with Faulkner that the past ain’t dead, and ain’t even past.

The towering achievement of Gatsby is the fact that every single character is utterly loathsome. Even little Pammy, who has every expectation of innocence as she’s well under five years old, is no doubt slated to grow up just as careless and vapid as her mother. I did have a moment of feeling for the gentleman in owl-eyed glasses until I remembered the auto accident in Gatsby’s driveway he was a part of–true, he wasn’t driving, but he certainly didn’t make it any better. And Myrtle’s sister, while she holds her tongue, might have been doing it as a result of a payoff from Tom or the idea that an inadvisable word might somehow interrupt whatever she’s got going on. The overt loathsomeness of Tom is well matched by the shallow, decorated faux-helplessness of Daisy, and Jordan doesn’t have the courage to be even 50% That Bitch, though she’s aiming for it. And our faithful narrator Nick Carraway is a weak, craven little jackass who’s perfectly willing to pat himself on the back for shouting a single compliment in Jay’s direction after vehicular murder, and arranging a funeral in order to salve his own anemic conscience.

Carraway is not an unreliable narrator, by the way. His self-serving attempts at obfuscation and covering his own ass are entirely reliable.

Gatsby’s utterly terrible in his own way, and I suppose it’s Fitzgerald’s genius to make the reader complicit since, after all, Jay’s the only one in the book with the courage of his damn convictions, fruitless and grasping as they are. If Wilson didn’t shoot him one gets the idea Meyer might at some later point; it could even be a mercy that the poor boy made some variety of good ends up dying while still, in strictest fact, bootlegger rich.

Anyway, it takes skill and style to write a book where even a toddler is a nasty piece of work (or will grow into one, I suppose I might be a shade too hard on little Pammy). And the dialogue is an utter joy at every turn. Ol’ F. Scott was a rather nasty piece of stuffing himself and I shall never forgive what he did to poor Zelda; I suppose write what you know is one of the surest routes to genius.

Since we’re in the throes of another Gilded Age (at least economically, the crash is going to be something indeed) it’s interesting–for a certain value of the word–to see some of the same human behavior repeating itself, right down to the pandemic triggering waves of dancing and excess. It makes me wonder what’s being created now that will distill our present into its hideous essence. Of course, whoever writes it will probably die penniless, worn out by heatstroke and exhaustion in an Amazon warehouse.

And so, we are borne ceaselessly back into the past. You’d think we’d learn something eventually, but humanity seems determined not to.

Ah well. Time to finish my coffee and get back to work.