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A Few Last Blooms

There are autumn crocuses, a few coneflowers hanging around, and late roses just on the edge of blown. But this–a last clematis bloom or two–makes me feel ready for autumn. You can see the heat damage on the leaves; the last few summers have been awful, and upcoming ones will probably be worse. (Let’s not even talk about how the rhododendrons are doing.) I love this vine, especially its greenish flowers. I hope I can keep it alive.

The rains are busy plumping all the leaves out before they fall. I can almost hear the trees sighing with relief under cold showers. Firs and pines are busily dropping old damaged needles, and the cones hitting the roof (not to mention the deck, the shed, and everyone else’s roof, not to mention the road) are another signal. Squirrels are gorging on those pine- and fir-fruit. The rabbits are getting underway with a burst of garden depredations–I saw one amid a neighbor’s tomatoes the other day, and Boxnoggin nearly lost his damn mind–and the crows are very happy indeed with a crop of drowned earthworms. Going from drought to saturation must be hard on those last.

Three books are on deck. (Oh, and I’m over at Tor.com talking about Five (Whole) Mothers.) The rains have arrived. The coffee is still hot this morning.

See you next week.

Commensurate Dreams

Could not, would not, did not wait for Boris to finish burbling coffee into the carafe this morning. I positively need the jolt.

I went to bed last night with Wisconsin Death Trip, and my dreams were commensurate. Perhaps it’s a version of telling myself I have it good, that my problems are comparatively small. Accumulating the internal pressure to add another book to the round-robin of daily work is taking precedence over just about everything else right now; I suppose reading grim historical accounts is a necessity. There’s also some Junji Ito sitting next to the keyboard for bite-size delectation over the next couple days. After that I think it’ll be back to regular reading.

The assassination in Highlands War did not go the way I thought it would. The protagonist there delights in throwing me off; I just have to lean into it, I guess. And in Gamble I keep trying to get the hero shot but he’s too quick on his feet, like Francis in Mr Right.

That’s okay. I have ricochets, and all sorts of other methods. (Cue evil laugh.)

Yesterday’s big thing was finding the first line of the Ragnarok book. It’s…difficult, swimming against the tide on that particular series. I haven’t seen this marked a bifurcation in responses to a series since Strange Angels. But I persevere, mostly out of stubbornness. I’m too far in to back out now, and I have to believe that maybe there’s some redeeming value to the books I was so excited to write. Maybe I just didn’t execute the vision well enough? I don’t know. Part of me wants to snarl, “It’s not me, they’re wrong!” But on that road lies asshole-dom, so I’ll just buckle down and finish out the whole thing as best I can.

The work does what the work wills, and I have to trust it will find its readers out in the wide world. If nothing else, the whole thing’s given me impetus to make a few other necessary decisions. Silver linings, and all that. I just wish the sick thump of nausea under my breastbone would go away. I know what the problem is–I should not allow myself to hope, and yet the very last thing to escape Pandora’s box keeps flittering around my heart, sinking its tiny fangs in at every slight provocation.

Anyway, I found the first line in one book, got the assassination attempt mostly sorted in another (today I’ll clean it up to make sure), and got the heroine out of the freezer in the third. Not bad for yesterday’s work, and sets me up for success today. If I can get the Highlands army off the plateau, get the hero in Gamble at least winged so we can get to the hurt/comfort trope (one of my faves), and get the protagonist and her Valkyrie to the pond in the Ragnarok book I will count today well spent.

But Boxnoggin needs walkies, I need a run, and the crock pot needs to come out for a giant mass of beef stew. I’m sort of excited about that last bit, since the weather’s turned. If I get exceeding ambitious I’ll also throw together some bread dough. Even if all else fails I can still bake a good loaf.

There’s that, at least. Onward to Tuesday, and damn the torpedoes.

Damp, Incomprehensible

The silver lining is the rain. Tipping, tapping, rushing, slithering through the gutters, covering the trees and perking up the ground cover–everything is taking a long deep drink, grateful for the change.

I should’ve gotten the deck dealt with, but we’ll have a dry week at some point in the next month or so for that particular chore. I spent yesterday making cookies, doing house chores, and basically nesting. It was just what I needed, and when I woke up this morning it was to a different world. Summer is well and truly broken, and my soul is peeking out from its cave, daring to maybe uncurl a fraction.

The cookies were nothing special–the dough base from a Ghirardelli recipe since my daughter and I both like it, but with no chips, just the leftover nuts and nut toppings we accumulated over the summer from various experiments like no-churn ice cream and the like. I judged the amount remaining in three-four bags to be just enough for a single recipe of base dough, and was proved entirely correct. The kids have come around to nuts in cookies as long as they’re warned, and I made no secret of my ambition to use the damn things up the next time I went near the oven.

Next comes bread. It’s a joy to have baking on the cards again.

It also helps that the coffee’s sinking in. I have grown philosophical; I suppose there had to be a point like this sooner or later. A fighting retreat is held to be the most difficult of maneuvers and I am deeply engaged upon one at the moment. It may be arrogance, but I want to at least make a good showing so I’m concentrating on paring down to essentials, letting the pursuers have what is unimportant and protecting what I can. It’s a shame–I had high hopes–but such is the creative life.

There are new shoelaces for my brogans, library books on hold waiting for me, the last of the respiratory illness crud to wash out of my system so I can record another Great Chapters bit (for my sins, I want to read a bit of The Great Gatsby aloud), and the opening to the Ragnarok book to find. It’s that last one I’ll be most concerned with today, especially while running. I know precisely where it starts, I can see it in my head, but I need to find the right opening line before my hand twitches for the hilt.

I mean, I do already have an opening line, but I don’t think it’s the right one. It was a placeholder set down when I finished the book before, to prime the pump as it were. It’s close, but my instincts are warning me no cigar. I suppose this series is teaching me to trust said instincts even when the entire world seems dead set against. One would think, given the proclivities of many of my protagonists, that would be easy for me.

It’s not.

Boxnoggin is beginning to stir. He is displeased with this ‘rain’ nonsense and wishes I would not do such damp, incomprehensible things. It completely escapes him that there are some matters I am not directly in charge of and arranging to suit my whims; I wish I had even a fraction of the power he attributes to his humans. At least he’s correct in assuming I’m the dispenser of toast scraps and other goodies, which I should get on as soon as possible. His collar just jangled, and next comes him padding down the hall to remind me he’s got a bloody schedule, Mother, and even if the rains have moved in nothing must be allowed to stand in its way.

Seats and table trays in the upright position, folks. Monday is about to begin.

Otherwise Aesthetics

Many a crocus shows up in spring, but these fellows are a sign of autumn. I was waiting for their pale shoots to explode and managed to get a snap in the sun before Boxnoggin dragged me on.

He is not interested in many flowers–or at least, not their visual component. His aesthetics are otherwise.

Anyway, the entire world seems waiting for autumn rains–or at least, all of the globe I can see from my particular vantage. After being in constant rounds of CEs or proofs since July, I am tired and longing to get back to the work of actual writing. I know Future Me will be grateful I buckled down and got all this sorted, and yet I am annoyed, my skin is too sensitive, and I am twitching with the need to hole up in my cave and create while falling water sweeps the roof.

Soon. Soon, my beloveds. In the meantime I’ve been cleaning things up and generally getting ready for a protracted period of hermit-ing. It will be lovely to turn inward once more and do the thing I was meant and made for. The anticipation is sweet, and I hope you have something similarly satisfying to look forward to.

See you next week!

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.

Life, Oscillating

A daisy, a Susan, give me your answer, do.

I suppose botanically they might not be daisies at all, but they’re still my favorites.

The first autumn mist is thickening around the firs. It was barely a wisp at dawn, but has clotted as the sun rises. No doubt it will burn off before walkies; still, it makes me happy.

I want to write on The Beggar Princess today, but wordcount on the two paying projects will have to come first. Maybe at Friday Night Writes? Who knows. I had thought to spend the weekend formatting short stories for an anthology, too, but another set of copyedits has landed and I’m not looking forward to them. Ah well. Life is oscillating between what I’d rather not do and what I’m longing for, always and forever. Such is the nature of the thing.

At least there are daisies.

I’ll see you next week, my friends.

Quince and Slight Hyperbole

I like big…quince and I cannot lie.

I do really think this is a quince, though my botany classification skills are deeply mediocre at best. The tree is a real trouper, no matter what it is, and has fruited under the most dire conditions–including the heat dome we had a couple years ago.

It’s raining, though not enough yet. The respiratory bug has reached the stage of postnasal drip meaning I can’t smell anything, which might be a mercy since a local wildfire is apparently filling the area with the aroma of wet campfire ash. Concomitant with the drip is an absolutely ruined voice. I joked this morning that I sound like Kathleen Turner crossed with Orson Welles, and that it’s a shame it has to be accompanied with feeling like death warmed over.

Which is only slight hyperbole. I feel better when I’m horizontal; health seems to be leaking back into my frame drop by drop. The generous use of strong decongestants and expectorants–modern pharmaceutical marvels–has aided the slow feed. Another few days should set me well on the upward path.

All sorts of news is dropping into my inbox, but thankfully there’s nothing that can’t wait until Monday. I’ll be reading Gabino Iglesias’s The Devil Takes You Home through the weekend, and perhaps a book of his short stories as well. It will be luxurious to stretch out on the couch and sink into a book or two while recovering.

See you next week!