Miss B needs more walks these days since she’s getting a little old to take long runs with me. On this one, we came across a dandelion still holding onto to shreds of its sunny face. Or at least, I did, since she was busy searching for something stinkalicious to roll in.
For some reason, the little fellow made me feel better. Hold on, it seemed to be saying. Just hold on.
I’m trying.
Once a month I get mild insomnia; I’m sure it’s hormonal, and I bear it with good grace because now, with the meds, it’s a monthly instead of a nightly occurrence. I settled in bed once everything had cooled off outside–around midnight, really–and read the Lazarillo de Tormes I’d managed to grab as a Norton Critical edition. I love Norton Criticals, and this one doesn’t disappoint, but I’m beginning to note a lot of homonym abuse in academic texts and translations. They can’t all be intentional; it’s just something I’m noticing. My inner editor twitches, and I have to glance up from the page.
Reading for pleasure gets kind of iffy sometimes when you’re in publishing.
Anyway, I dragged myself out of bed, unrested, and have managed a run. Miss B was ecstatic, and we stuck to shaded pavements. Still, we were both glad to get home. Someone up the street has taken out a massive cedar tree; apparently all the neighbors are intent on deforesting this hill so it slides down into the river during the next overly wet winter.1 Added to a new driveway going on, the entire street is full of mechanical noise. Whirring, buzzing, stamping, dropping, engines running. When it gets hot enough, I’ll close up the windows and turn the AC on, and that will provide some relief from the racket.
I also managed a solid 4k words yesterday, mostly in Incorruptible but a significant portion in HOOD. It feels good to be working again, even if I do still catch myself looking for Odd or surfacing from a scene to think that’s strange, he’s really quiet, what’s going on? Moving the furniture helped immensely, I’m not expecting to see him leaning against where the couch used to be or thoughtfully examining trailing geranium leaves from the coffee table.
We even got a lovely card signed by the entire vet office, with condolences for our loss. Once the card comes, I guess, that’s closure. Sometime this week or the next I’ll have to go get his ashes, the last gauntlet to run through.
For now, though, I’m crackling with dried sweat, absorbing coffee, and looking forward to another productive day. I decided to send in the demons early, to get Incorruptible off the ground. I don’t want that book to be a slow burn, I want to write gore, battle, and danger.
As usual, I guess.
Be gentle with yourselves today, dear Readers. The most dangerous time is when you’re feeling a bit better, and you think you’re cured and want to push it. Gently, softly, even when you feel like a tenuous balance has been reached. That’s all my advice for the day, use it as you will.
Over and out.
My mood is perhaps best described as “sharp, don’t touch.” I have shaken off the numbness and now I am firmly in the anger stage. I am filled with fumes, and any spark will do. I am holding myself gingerly, my internal grip strong and severe, so I don’t snap at anyone I care for.
There is no Trundles asking to bask on the deck for fifteen minutes before being ushered inside to flop on cool tile. No Trundles snoring blissfully among my pillows or grousing because it’s too warm and sprawling in the hall. Come dinnertime, he’s not snuffling in corners or underfoot as I cook–Miss B can’t take up all his kitchen space and hers too. I am not in danger of tripping every third step between the two of them, and it’s strange. There is so much room.
I spent yesterday in a blaze of cleaning and rearranging furniture. Apparently grieving fills me with the desire to dust, hoover, rearrange. We also got some more concrete laid in the backyard–with no Trundles underfoot or investigating the humans’ fascinating activity for signs of something edible, it went a little more quickly than usual. His busy self was a part of everything that occurred chez Saintcrow; Miss B is content to supervise from any handy promontory, as long as I’m in sight, but Trundles wanted to be Involved.
His crate is folded up and in the garage. I didn’t have the heart to clean it. His bedding, however, is laundered and neatly folded. At some point, this week or next, I will pick up his ashes and bring them home, settle them among my pillows, and let him sleep on my bed for as long as he likes.
I told myself that if I could just get through yesterday’s cleaning, rearranging, laundry, folding, watering, and everything else, I would be okay. Not okay-okay, but…okay enough.
I’m not quite sure if it was true, but having the furniture moved helps. I am not looking at Odd’s favorite nesting-spots and feeling the black ball of tears rise in my throat. Grief is a ball bouncing in a box. Part of the gauntlet grip I hold myself in is immobility so the pain-button won’t get punched. It only halfway works, but it’s better than nothing.
At least I can settle and write today. I am not staring while my fingers idly work at the keyboard, typing and deleting random, stinking sentences. At least while I’m working I’m thinking of other things. The work is not a panacea, but it is a true companion. Sad? Write. Mad? Write. Grieving? Write. Frightened? Write.
So today, gently, I will. Soon I’ll tell you guys about the new birdfeeders, the pole that holds them, squirrels, and Crisco. It’s a funny story; it would probably have been funnier with Odd around. But squirrels–and time–stop for no man, and no bulldog either.
Over and out.
His name was Herr Maximilian von Schrek, a McSchnorgle on his mother’s side. Here on the internet, he was known (thanks to my writing partner) as Odd Trundles. He loved Cheetos, bare human ankles, New Friends, his fur-mother Miss B, basking in sunshine, his safe cozy little crate, baby carrots, ear rubs, and snuggling on my bed for his early morning, midmorning, late morning, early afternoon, midafternoon, and late afternoon naps.
That is only a fraction of the things he loved. He was full of joy and affection. It slopped out of him with drool and sudden stenches. And even when he had to endure things he did not like–baths, for example, nail clippings, crease greasing–he was endlessly patient with his beloved human mum.
It happened very quickly. A week ago he was fine, wriggling with delight to meet my writing partner as she dropped by, barking at random noises, walking proudly up to the top of the street in his new harness. Then, during the heatwave, he suddenly grew listless, and flesh melted off his heavy frame. The vet listened while I listed symptoms, and then began his examination, and said, “Oh.”
God, what an awful sound.
It was lymphoma, a particularly aggressive form. Invisible in the beginning stages, and then very quick once the nodes begin to swell. I took Odd home with prednisone and an antibiotic, and hope. Then, overnight, the nodes swelled until the ones under his jaw were blocking his poor compromised airways. He spent Tuesday night struggling to breathe, propped on pillows from my bed, occasionally licking my hand. In the morning, he didn’t even want the Cheetos I tried to tempt him with.
It was time.
Yesterday, Odd visited the vet one last time. All three of his beloved humans hugged him, petted him, told him what a good fellow he was. I sang his special morning song while the first needle went in, and continued singing while the sedative took effect. He relaxed with a heavy sigh, ready to go. His poor corkscrewed body had carried him as long as it could. The kids sang along when the barbiturate went in, petting while I hugged him.
He went into the clear rational light of What Comes Next while we sang the song he often demanded before leaving his crate in the mornings. He was not alone. He’s in no more pain, and his bulky, corkscrewed body no longer frustrates him. He is at rest.
I keep getting up to look for him. I keep glancing down as I walk through the house checking to see if he’s at my ankles. I keep listening for his breathing, never quiet even while sleeping. I woke several times last night, panicked because I couldn’t hear him–sleep apnea, and his medical troubles as a puppy, meant that he might need a midnight check to see if he was still taking in air.
I miss him. I miss his funny face and his high-cantled back end going side-to-side when he was excited, his stub of a corkscrew tail doing its best to wag. I miss his grumbling narration of his day, I even miss grabbing a handful of cocoanut oil to grease one of his many creases.
Miss B is unnerved. She wants to know where the puppy she raised is. She keeps checking to herd him from one room to the next, she keeps looking for his food bowl. Even the Mad Tortie keeps circling the house, looking for her loud, fuzzy, favorite pillow on cold days.
He was the best bulldog. He was funny, kind, happy, protective, fierce when it came to defending us from the hoover, delighted to meet New Friends whether squirrel or hoomin. He loved cats, though his big unwieldy loud self often frightened them. Whenever I stood in one place for very long, he would shuffle up, sit, and lean against me, or if he knew I would start moving again soon, he would simply put his squashed face on my calf or ankle, closing his eyes and content to rest next to Mum.
I knew, with all his health problems, that he wasn’t going to be around long. We had six good years of the best bulldog to ever grace this material plane.
It is not enough. He is gone and I am bereft. Selfishly, I want him back.
Please be extra kind to your furbabies for him. If you feel so moved, the Southwest Washington Humane Society could probably use a donation or two in his name. Be kind to yourself, too. Eat good things, take plenty of naps, and schnorgle with joy.
Max would want that.
I was going to talk about the hatemail I’ve received about Afterwar, but I’m a bit cranky this morning. On the bright side, it cooled off overnight and Odd Trundles slept all the way through so I don’t have to worry about his fuzzy ass nearly as much.
It was a busy weekend–we got some concrete laid, and I managed to get a layer of sealant on the freshly-washed deck floor. Of course daubing all the railings will be time-consuming, but the kids can help with that. The big thing was getting at least one layer of sealant on freshly pressure-washed wood. I also caught up on some reading. I’m finally old enough to read Faulkner, I guess–I tore through As I Lay Dying, my heart in my throat, waiting for the next damn thing to happen. I also attempted a translation of Gogol’s Taras Bulba, which was difficult to finish, not least because the misogyny. I also have serious questions about the economics of Cossack raiding as portrayed in that particular romance. After a while, you’d think there was nothing else for them to steal and nobody left to murder.
In any case, I’m glad I read both, and I am setting out my plan of attack for more Faulkner once I finish Jesus the Magician (highly readable) and work through a few books on The Tale of Genji1 and some on classical Chinese literature. Both are research reading for the epic fantasy. I need plenty of material inside the well before I start on book 2.
I also finished Harmony revisions and sent them off, which means I can focus on writing HOOD and getting the scripts for Blood Terraform2 done. Plus, I really want to go back to Imprint, which is just-plain-vampire-erotica. It will be nice to be writing instead of revising for a while. I do need to sit down and think about Blood Terraform, since comic book scripts are different than novels. It’s been a while since I wrote one–I think the last was Serafim? Once that’s out of the way, revisions on the next Steelflower can commence. I’m still on track to release the first half of Kaia’s adventures in Skaialan later in the year.
But first, I think, a run, and eventually I do need to leave the house and pick up more sealant for the deck. It’s always something, and I can always write about the hatemail tomorrow. It’s not like the hatred’s going anywhere, I guess.
Over and out.
The Princess: “Is that the Olsen Twins?”
Me: “I’m not sure…no, the tail isn’t skinny enough.”
Squirrel: *back foot slips*
The Princess: *gasps*
Me: “Oh dear…well, we know it’s a she…”
Squirrel: *slips, falls…does backflip and lands perfectly, twitches tail*
The Princess: *in awe* “It’s Batgirl.”
So now we have a boy squirrel we’ve named the Olsen Twins1 and a girl squirrel acrobat we’ve named Batgirl2. Olsen Twins has been coming back for a week to figure out how to get into the birdfeeders, but it took Batgirl to solve the quandary.
Never a dull moment around here, folks. Never.
I began gathering supplementary materials1 for Afterwar in late 2015; work commenced on the book in earnest in March-April 2016. I knew I was going to write it, but not how it would be received or even if it would ever be sold. It’s too outlandish, I thought. I’ve been saying this is where Fox News and the like is going to end up for a decade and a half, I thought.
Much to my surprise, my editor at Orbit wanted the book with a white-hot passion, and since I trusted her implicitly to have my back–to let me write the book that needed to be written without committee interference from internal groups that would want it watered down–I went for broke. I tore my heart out, and ate the bitter organ whole, retched it free and did it again.
And I pestered. Goodness, how I pestered. Knowing more than a few vets, I bought drinks, bought lunches, went to coffee, peppered them with questions. “So…if you were running an insurgency in the American Southwest…okay, so how successful is asymmetric force really when you’re the boots on the ground…look, I need to know how far a Humvee can actually go in offroad conditions without refueling…so, what did it smell like? Really?…what’s the one thing you were always short of, in combat…?” You get the idea. I’d start out with questions, and then I did what any writer who wants to learn does.
I shut up.
Once people know you’re sincerely interested in them and their lives, they will talk endlessly, and with active listening you will find out more than you ever dreamed. At that point it was simply a question of who had the better bladder, since a loo trip not only breaks conversation but also breaks “the seal” and you have to pee every five seconds afterward. (Or so it seems.)
None of them asked what my book was actually about. Most of the time I had introductions from other people they’d served with, and once word got out that I was trustworthy, gentle, and genuinely interested in their experience I had more contacts than I could ever plumb and the social credit to spend on slightly more outré questions. “Say you’re behind enemy lines and on your period, what’s the planning for that?2 How common is diarrhea in combat?3 If you could only take two weapons with you to operate in unfriendly territory, which would you? What kind of coping mechanisms have you seen others use under combat stress?4”
My other research was not so nice or so enjoyable. I’ve spent years reading about the Eastern Front in WWII, and about the occupations of Ukraine and Poland by several successive totalitarian waves. It’s been an interest of mine since reading Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad because, I thought, there was no way I would ever write about something so brutal and horrific. Having something to read that, even though awful, wasn’t grist for the story-mill, was necessary in order to give my brain a break.
Perhaps the Muse was precognitive, and prepared me well beforehand. Authoritarian and totalitarian regimes follow the same damn playbook, with only small adjustments for culture and territory. Plus, I had taken a bath in American Civil War history, and still picked up logistical and other studies, just on the principle that it’s always good to know how an army will feed itself on your home territory.
Everything I’d been reading and thinking about for years crystallized. Afterwar took on a life of its own.
And then, the election happened.5
I saw the beginning stages of my private nightmares playing out in realtime. I don’t think I’ve quite recovered from that, but I had other problems as well.
Not content to reflect current events, Afterwar was about to get blindsided by publication woes as well.
To be continued…