slight pause for station identification

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.

Combien, Zombie?

The zombies are everywhere these days. Including in Duolinguo, where this fellow greeted me during a “learn the questions!” pack.

I have to admit, I was almost laughing too hard to select the correct word.

“Coooooooom-biiiiieeeeeen?” the zombie groaned, jabbing a rotting finger at the display case. Mary, her accommodating customer-service smile frozen in place, struggled to remember how to say ‘$9.99’ in French.

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.

Fireplug

I used to go out at night and take pictures of gas meters. Sadly, I’m out of the habit now, but I find myself noticing fireplugs these days. Sturdy little morning papers for the dogs, waiting patiently in all weather, quietly holding a force that can save homes.

Every time I see one, I feel like the world might be an all right place after all. And of course, Miss B loves every single one she meets.

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*