slight pause for station identification

Time Passes

FISH

I would really, really love not to have Wichita Lineman stuck in my head when I wake up. It would be super swell not to hear that song again for a while. It’s not that I don’t like it, I’m just ready for a new record to hit the needle inside my skull.

*time passes*

I had a big long post planned for today, but then I fell into a rabbit hole or two, went for a run, a bee tried to fly inside my mouth twice (or more properly, two bees tried the same thing on two different occasions) and Lord Boxnoggin decided it was too warm for running, so he stopped in the shade and I had to carry him across four lanes of traffic (plus the divider) to convince him we were going home and he could, in fact, walk.

I don’t blame him, we’re still learning where his comfort levels are. I’m heartened that he actually stopped instead of just trying to do what he thought I wanted and hurting himself.

Recovering from the zero of Poison Prince proceeds apace. I was not allowed to work yesterday, so some cleaning I’d been putting off got done, I set up today’s subscription stuff to go out, and I watched some movies I’d been meaning to get around to, like Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther. Both were much better than the Avengers franchise–less stupid, pointless misogyny, better plotting, and I’m interested to see where those directors go next.

Speaking of subscriptions, I should probably shill those a bit, since they take a great deal of worry off my back and also give my darling Readers something nice at the same time. So, if you like the idea of Robin Hood in Space (and free ebooks of each version!) or of weekly fiction drops, head on over to the subscription page and check it out.

This week’s offerings will drop at 2pm PST, and if you sign up to any of my Gumroad offerings you get the latest one sent to you immediately.

Anyway, I should probably get at least a token amount of work done to salve my conscience, but not too much or recovery will be jeopardized. It’s a fine line, and I think I need coffee in order to keep my balance.

Over and out.

Endurance Novel

HOOD

5k on The Poison Prince yesterday, and I can see the shape of the end. All I have to do now is hang on long enough, and it will sort itself out. It’s 85k of epic fantasy, and will only get bigger through the publication process. For right now, though, it’s all mine, and all on me.

I did get to play ES Posthumus’s Kalki several times and write a particular chase scene I’ve had in my head since the series started. So that was pretty awesome. I had to stop before I was absolutely exhausted and done-in for the day, giving myself enough candle to burn today, and I resented every moment of having to feed myself and sleep when what I’d rather be doing is writing, but that’s a given when I get so close to the end of a project. Especially a HUGE one like this.

The third book is going to kick my ass, I can tell. But between then and now, I need to finish the zero of this one, and the zero fo HOOD‘s Season One too. After those two zeroes are in the can and marinating, I can take a look around and think about what I want to do next. Probably Dolls, though I want to write a high fantasy epic with dragonriders and do it right.

What I don’t want to do is write The Highlands War, which was next on the list. Most people have been exceedingly lovely about the format choices for Kaia’s stories, but there’s always the bad apples. It will happen if it’s meant to, I suppose.

I feel like I’ve always been writing Poison Prince, like there’s never been a day I’ve not been writing it, and like I will be writing it for-fucking-ever, world without end, amen. Every novel is an endurance race, this one’s just…longer. If I stay stubborn enough, I’ll eventually get there.

…it occurred to me I have Harmony and Incorruptible to revise, so maybe I’ll do that while the zeroes are marinating and push off the decision about a fresh new world to play in for a little while longer. Getting more work out and before the eyes of the ravenous public would certainly feel better than this hack-slash-cut at a book that refuses to die no matter how many times I stab.

Five more scenes at bare minimum, then I can be done with Poison Prince. I’ll love the book again, probably in revision when I come across bits I don’t remember writing. But for right now it’s just one more enemy to slay.

I’m ready. I think. I mean, I suppose.

*buckles on goggles*
*the goggles do nothing*

Advent Madge, and Clarence, Too

Gallow & Ragged

April was difficult. Between recovering from several birthdays, late celebrations of said birthdays, freaking out over approaching epic fantasy deadline, and worrying about everything under the sun, it’s a wonder I didn’t lose what little sanity remains to me.

I did wake up today with Jody Watley and Glenn Campbell duking it out inside my earworm space, so at least there’s that. And I have, courtesy of a bead show, some new chandeliers to try earring designs with.

There’s also this beautiful lady:

Her name is Madge. I did some work for Dee’s Darlings, and Madge decided to come work for me for a bit as a thank-you. She is adorable and gets along well with Veronica and Isabelle. (You’ve met Veronica the Office Oracle, Isabelle is…difficult to explain. Maybe later this week.) Veronica in particular is happy to have an amanuensis, though Madge’s shorthand is impossible for anyone but her to read.

Veronica: CHICKEN SCRATCHES. AND I’VE NEVER SEEN A CHICKEN.
Madge: YOU CALL IT SCRATCHES, I CALL IT JOB SECURITY.
Isabelle: YOU TWO AREN’T FIGHTING, ARE YOU? WE ALL NEED TO GET ALONG.
Veronica: NOBODY’S FIGHTING, IZZIE.
Madge: *scribbles furiously*
Isabelle: ARE YOU SURE? BECAUSE I COULD BRING YOU SOME FISH–
Madge and Veronica, in tandem: NO FISH.

…yeah, things have been interesting around here lately. I should tell you guys about Clarence the Squirrel. It’s more of a title than an actual name, because Clarence is “the squirrel what’s actually got the peanut, you see,” and dinner hour a la Chez Saintcrow has gotten really strange since the kids love to put out a handful of peanuts while we eat, then wait for developments.

Anyway, the Clarence is the mug what’s got the peanut, and Ralph and Jeff are the mugs what don’t, and the deck has become the scene of a dinnertime drama almost Lynchian in its feverish intensity. (I almost made a Blue Velvet ether-sniffing joke the other night and caught myself just in time.) Clarence constantly wishes to keep their find from Jeff and Ralph, and the instant one of those picks up a peanut they become Clarence. (It’s kind of like Olsen Twins, who, being older no longer vibrates at such a high frequency.) Jeff and Ralph usually team up against the Clarence, and once a squirrel loses a peanut they become a Jeff or Ralph.

Understand? Good, because I didn’t for days and the kids had a sort of “Who’s on first” routine they were running. And poor me, with my head stuffed full of preindustrial technology and travel times, not to mention worrying about the damn mortgage, didn’t quite catch up with the train for a bit.

Parenthood, man. It never stops being a complete and total trip.

I even got some gardening done this weekend, which only brought home how much more there is to do. Maybe I’ll just grow nasturtiums this year instead of turning over the veggie garden.

In any case, it’s time for a run, and if I play my cards right, I can finish the zero of The Poison Prince this week. It would be nice to get that corpse on the table so it can be revision time instead of “I keep stabbing this book and it won’t DIE” time. Of course once I do, it’s time to get the zero of HOOD‘s Season One out. Then there’s revisions on Harmony, and and and…

…so, just as usual, my chickadees, I bid you a fond farewell until tomorrow, and vanish, cackling, in a cloud of scented smoke.

Peanut Blackmail

Yes, your eyes do not deceive you. The Princess brought home a big bag of roasted, unsalted peanuts, and is leaving handfuls on the deck.

For the squirrels.

“Maybe if we’re nice to them the hijinks will stop?” she said, when I raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, my dear sweet springtime child,” I said (for she is), “blackmailers never stop if you give them what they want.”

Time will tell who’s right, but I have a weapon standing ready by the back door.

Just in case.

Reading Weekend

She Wolf & Cub

We had a huge (for us) dinner party Friday that edged towards Saturday morn, which, since I was fighting off the Little Prince’s cold (the one he thoughtfully brought home from school for us) and remain in the status of fighting off said cold, was perhaps not my best move, but what can one do?

Consequently, the rest of the weekend was spent cleaning, coughing, and reading, somewhat in that order. I finished Overy’s The Bombers and the Bombed, which was interesting but extremely difficult to read, then moved on to Lane Moore’s How to Be Alone, which in some places was full of things I’ve been waiting my whole life to hear someone articulate (especially in early chapters) and then…kind of not, but that’s a lot of memoirs. I moved on to An Iron Wind, which was…not what the cover made me think I was getting. I know that’s not the writer’s fault, either, but there was plenty else to side-eye in said writer’s assumptions.

There was one pretty incredible piece in the last, though, which was more than worth the rest of the book. Talking about the Warsaw ghetto, Fritzsche noted:

“Self-help could not ensure collective survival, because the German overlords had expropriated and stolen the resources of the community.

–Peter Fritzsche, An Iron Wind: Europe Under Hitler

Just that single sentence articulated the problem with Republicans’ constant “let charity or the market take care of poor people.” When corporate and rich overlords have expropriated and stolen the resources of the national community, or of marginalized communities (which are part of the national despite every attempt of cruelty-based conservatives to say otherwise), there’s nothing left for those communities to practice self-determination or self-help with. This gets overlooked in propaganda about the “lazy poor” all. the. damn. time.

Afterward, I bounced pretty hard off a first-person present-tense book that was a critical darling last year, and ended up with Murder By the Book: The Crime that Shocked Dickens’s London. It should hav more properly been “a” crime instead of “the” crime; Dickens’s London outright loved to be shocked. The more I read about Dickens, though, the more I realize just what an asshole he was. He basically hung Ainsworth out to dry after using his friendship to edge further into publishing, and let’s not even talk about what he did to his poor wife. Then again, this is the guy who fridged Nancy (and, let’s be real, 95% of all the women in his books, one way or another) and spent a great deal of his later life replaying Nancy’s death for paying customers. Dickens built his career on female bodies

Dude was gross.

Anyway, I needed the hours spent on the couch reading and making notes. It was good to get out of my own head and into other peoples’. And I always forget what a joy it is to spend a day reading. Like Laura in Sleeping With the Enemy (it’s not perfect but it is one of my favorite books), rediscovering days that are wide, and deep, and long as a child’s is enough to satisfy most hungers, and I can crawl out of the dream of a book several hours later, blinking and surprised.

I’m reasonably rested and somewhat reasonably renewed, which is good because I have to shift gears and work on both HOOD and the epic fantasy at once. I can feel the latter gathering for its slide to the end of the zero draft, and may that slide come swiftly.

At least with the dinner party done my social calendar is clear for weeks, which is just how I like it. Staying home and feverishly typing to pay the mortgage is my new vacation, just like my old vacations. I’m ready for a couple of my books to be done so I can move on to writing other things–as well as prepping Harmony for publication and doing a revise on Incorruptible. Never any shortage of work, and that’s how I like it, especially nowadays.

But first there are dogs to run and the day’s work to settle inside my head as I do so, and yoga to get out of the way near lunchtime, and and and. At least I can retreat from the sunshine our part of the world is afflicted with this season, crouch in my cave, and imagine whole worlds.

It’s not a bad life. Not at all.

Tomaters

I have taken to experimenting with my red sauce. This time, after the tomatoes and garlic had enough time to sweat, cook, and reduce, I took out the bay leaves and used a stick blender to puree everything, then added browned meat, mushrooms (raw but rinsed because I wanted all their juiiiiicues and glutamic acids), seasonings, and carrot bits.

Carrots are your friend in tomato sauces. They provide sugar and fiber to soak up the tomatoes’ acidity, buffering what could be a watery, astringent mess. You don’t need to use white sugar if you add chopped-fine or grated carrots, and the result in the finished sauce is ever so subtle but unignorable.

I’ll be using the red sauce to make lasagna in a crock pot today, and I’m looking forward to it. I will not be making the noodles by hand; I do have some limits.

It’s kind of funny, because I hate lasagna…but that’s a story for another day.

Welcome to the weekend, chickadees.

Pondering

Rattlesnake Wind

Here’s a short list of the things I’m wondering about lately:

  • Reading about the bombing of Europe in WWII, I came across a description of the frantic effort to save cultural treasures from the air war. In particular, a Botticelli was spotted on the floor among men drinking tea, and it halted me in my tracks. I know the painting, of course, and I thought about what it would mean if it was lost in a bomb attack before technological advances made the art galleries available to anyone with a few spare bucks a month to pay for electronics.
  • The democratization of media–“highbrow” and “low”–made me think of this Sententiae Antiquae piece on classical learning and how it functioned as a gatekeeper for a long time…until, that is, technological advances opened up access. Nowadays, of course, the rich just pay for their kids to flood schools with the leftover prestige of yesteryear.
  • Nora Roberts is suing that CopyPaste Cris woman. Which is great, but I’d love to see Amazon as a codefendant, because we all know they’re profiting from the book-stuffers and plagiarists. They refuse to take down stuffed or plagiarized books until public outcry reaches a certain pitch, they don’t offer refunds as a matter of course, and if one is so unfortunate as to publish solely through them, their terms and conditions make it difficult if not impossible to get recourse (financial and otherwise) against plagiarizers or against Amazon itself as a bad actor.
  • It’s also very…interesting that the moment Amazon does take any steps to cut down on book-stuffers and plagiarists, the scammers in question already have a back door, one they share through their forums and “author” loops. Some of the scammers even have their own dedicated KU reps. I’m sure those “reps” get bonuses for their pet authors gaining “sales rank.” I am naturally a suspicious type, and I smell something foul in the water.1
  • Gelatin used to be only for the higher castes, which makes me laugh and laugh.

Just little things I ponder, turning them over and over inside my head and examining them from different angles. I think a lot about how the infrastructure for electronic communication isn’t ubiquitous, though it feels like it is when you’ve enough money to get an entry device (even a smartphone). I also think a lot about humanity’s habit of war and what it costs not only in terms of blood spilled but also cultural progress frittered away.2

I ponder and I wonder, and sometimes I find a piece of the puzzle that leads me in a different direction entirely. Such is life. I’ve met people who dislike the sensation of active thinking–there are quite a lot of them–and I don’t understand, finding it quite pleasant.

Right now, though, I’ve got to stop the wondering and get out the door. We took yesterday off, and while the enforced rest did both Boxnoggin and me good, we’re both itchy and a little peevish this morn. Miss B will be extremely peevish at being left home, but she is an Elderly Statesdog now, and is only taken on short jaunts. She gets plenty of exercise playing rough-and-tumble with Boxnoggin, and it’s keeping her young–but after mid-range runs she limps a bit, and while I know she would run her heart out if I asked, I wouldn’t.

What are you thinking about this fine Thursday morn, chickadees?