And this, right here?

Is why I support fanfiction.

Tomato Juice, Worcester Sauce, and Aspirin: A Very Unauthorized Sequel to Blood and Iron

(Spoilers for Blood & Iron. Um. Sortof.)

Some of the meekest people I know are also some of the bravest. I'm reminded of Dorothy Parker's poem, "Penelope," which demonstrates the profound courage of its subject and then famously ends, "They will call him brave."

We don't think of artists as courageous, particularly, but the fact of the matter is that they are. They have to be. Or they are liars, or failures, or both.

Let me explain. Art does not admit of inhibition. It is about best effort, commitment, taking the dive, peeling back the skin. In terms of writing, that's what all those exhortations to write down the bones, bleed on the page, write what you know mean. They mean, if it's safe, it's not art. If it doesn't cost you something to get it on the page, it isn't art. If it's facile, it isn't art.

But there's a risk in that. The risk, of course, is that the artist who commits opens herself to pain. If you hold something back, if you hold something in reserve, you can always say, well, I wasn't trying that hard. If you don't put your back into it, when you wipe out (and you will wipe out) you won't fall as hard.

You won't feel vaguely silly (or more than vaguely silly) when you realize that what you've put down on paper is your honest and naked heart, and some people are going to think its twee or shallow or dumb. They're going to think you're up there making an ass of yourself, as with a drunken but honest confession of love.

So what?

In the early nineties, I took a whale watch out of Provincetown with my then-boyfriend. Part of that experience wound up in the short story "Sounding," which will be up at Strange Horizons sooner or later.

A mother and calf fin whale came up and swam alongside the boat for close to half an hour, cruising around, close enough to mist us with their breath. They rolled on their sides and showed us their long fingerless hands, and stared right back at us with ridiculously tiny eyes. I could barely breathe for much of it, and the staff biologist on the boat was practically in tears with wonder.

There were four or five teenaged boys who were making fun of his emotion, smirking, shoving. And you know what?

That's pathetic. It's armor, and it's fear. And anybody who wants to live that way, as far as I'm concerned, is welcome to it.

Akira Kurosawa said that the duty of the artist was "never to look down."

---

In New York yesterday, we stopped at the bottom of the Empire State Building and looked up. And I was struck by something I am always struck by. In photos, it always seems blocky, ugly, misproportioned. The Chrysler Building is much prettier.

But when you're seeing it the way its meant to be seen, standing underneath it and craning your head back, staring up its height, it's a surging white tower, a line of energy drawn into the sky, every art-deco detail and every window and every angle pulling you up, pulling your head back, until you're balancing on tiptoe and being lifted another fraction of an inch anyway.

It commits to what it's doing, and what it's doing is going up. Perspective makes it balance.

---

lil_shepherd calls Blood & Iron a superior fantasy, but seems to have a lot of problems with it.

Huh. I thought the thing with the braids was demonstrated in the scene where Seeker is getting ready to go see the Mebd, but honestly, it's possible that it got cut. After ten or twelve revisions, you start to lose track of what you've said where in which version. It's true. Now I have to go read that scene again.

For the record, I never did manage to finish The Mists of Avalon, though I tried several times. I suspect if I had to pick just one Morgan as the antecedent to my Morgan, it would have to be Phyllis Ann Karr's. Although I never did get over Helen Mirren.

But then, who would want to?

Mmm. Helen Mirren.

...Yanno, there's probably way more Bernadette Peters in there than I should admit to in public, come to think of it. (I'm not good. I'm not nice. I'm just right.) Oh, I love The Witch with the loff. She is a Harpy I can get behind.

Mostly, though, I think my Morgan (and my Arthur) are all mine--as people, anyway. Rather than archetypes. And archetypes are boring unless there are people to hook them on to.

One of these days I need to figure out where the Promethean magic isn't being adequately demonstrated, because I thought I'd shown enough fragments to build a picture. On the other hand, this may be another iteration of the concrete/inductive/weird brain cognitive pattern thing, and my entire inability to communicate in any meaningful fashion with strongly deductive/linear thinkers. Which I am working on, I promise. My newer books even have transitions in them.

On the other hand, mrissa liked the book pretty good.

Russ Allbery at Eagle's Path nails down exactly what's wrong with Blood & Iron, from my perspective as a writer.

He's absolutely correct. It should have been in omniscient.

I didn't have the chops to do it when I wrote that book, or the balls to try. And frankly, I'm not sure I could have sold it in omni.

Whiskey & Water, on the other hand. I think I pulled it off for that one.

And I suspect Patience & Fortitude needs The Big Gun as well.

ETA And some ambivalence for the San Francisco Chronicle. I think he maybe wanted more horror in his fantasy.

**

the redoubtable razorsmile has an open letter to me over here. It's a bit spoilery. But in general, a fantastic discussion of the book.

I have the most erudite readers. Just saying.

Romantic Times review, quite positive, not spoilery.

Horrorscope reviews Aeon 7, including truepenny-and-my story "Ile of Dogges."

Fantasy Bookspot reviews Hammered

Writer's Weekend is going well, except for a small problem in that HP seems to have broken Ethel's keybone when they serviced her, so random things happen--she's fine while cold, but as soon as she warms up a little, eVeryThing TI Type sTarTS coming ouT like This, which is disconcerTing To say The leasT.

TAnyway, iT's limiTing my abiliTy To do any work on The lapTop, as you can imagine, buT TI was smarT enough To bring prinTouTs of TUnderTow and T"The Tenom TCock,T" so TI haVe acTually rewriTTen TVC inTo a more or less final drafT, and TI'm Through The firsT 220 pages of TUnderTow, which is beTTer and more coherenT Than TI had conVinced myself iT was.

TI sTill haVe some preTTy serious work TO do, buT aT leasT iT's noT compleTely broken.

and ThaT may be a lesson To us allT: iT is noT easy To judge The qualiTy of one's own work.

Three days To The publicaTion of Tlood T& Iron, The TirTu, and The TLies of TLocke TLamora. TIT's sorT of a forTuiTous coincidence.... none of us has To drink alone Tuesday nighT. ;-T

TI'm haVing a grand Time aT TWriTer's TWeekend. TI'm discoVering ThaT TI really like TEaching, Though TI may be sowing mayhem and disorder whereVer TI go. TNoT looking forward to my 4 am deparTure Time Tomorrow, THough. :-T

Chapter Three of Blood & Iron is available online now.

And that will be the last one until the book comes out, about a month and a half from now.

But first ye'll let the black gae by,
And then ye'll let the brown;
Then I'll ride on a milk-white steed,
You'll pull me to the ground.

--Tam Lin, Child Ballad version #39C


So, Liz has given me permission to post the first three chapters of Blood and Iron online. Stealing an idea from truepenny, I'll be posting one chapter this month, one in April, and a final one in May. The book comes out June 27th, to compete as directly as possible with truepenny and scott_lynch, among others.

So, here's chapter one of Blood and Iron, in the more or less final form.

Happy Ides of March.

(If this intrigues you, you might also like to check out the goings-on at elaine_andraste. Because everybody has a livejournal, these days.)

(xposted to elizabethbear)

Hallelujah.

Well, that was like trying to eat my way out of a porridge dungeon with chopsticks. I sure hope this book is more interesting the first time you all read it than it was the 30th time I did.

Blood and Iron, for the record, is my most-rewritten book. The original concept dates from the eighties; the first draft of portions from oh, 1990 or so, the first complete draft from winter 2002. That first complete draft was irretrievably broken. I rewrote it extensively twice (including unpersoning characters and major plot changes) and gave it a pretty thorough line-edit twice before arcaedia saw it. Segue to 2003, when she told me it was still broken. At which point I took it apart, restructured it heavily, cut 40,000 words or so, added 60,000 words or so and two POV characters (and removed one), and rewrote it again, followed by another clean-up pass. At which point we agreed that maybe it wasn't broken any more.

Then we sold it. And I rewrote it again, for Liz.

Another fairly heavy rewrite. Plus spot revisions. And then a clean-up pass. And a CEM. And the page proofs.

I can't even remember what happens in which version of the damned thing any more. But at least most of the story is onscreen now.

So anyway, reading this damned thing is like archeology at this point. It has strata.

You guys are going to have to let me know if it's any good, because I have not the foggiest.

Still.

It's done.

Sometimes, you look at a sentence, and all you can do is smile and pat its little head.

I knelt in the green grass, watching Weyland Smith limp around the massive base of the black iron bridge, sucking his teeth, naked and carrying an iron hammer.

---

Chapter 23 is done. Commencing chapter 24. The bound galleys came today. *pets*

Here, have a Richard Brautigan poem:
(my favorite bit is the bit about the snails)

IT’S RAINING IN LOVE
 
I don’t know what it is,

But I distrust myself

When I start to like a girl

	A lot.

 
It makes me nervous.

I don’t say the right things

Or perhaps I start

	To examine,

		Evaluate,

			Compute

	What I am saying.

 
If I say, "Do you think it’s going to rain?"

and she says, "I don’t know,"

I start thinking: Does she really like me?

 
In other words

I get a little creepy.

 
A friend of mine once said,

"It’s twenty times better to be friends

	with someone

than it is to be in love with them."

 
I think he’s right and besides,

its raining somewhere, programming flowers

and keeping snails happy.

	That’s all taken care of.

		

		BUT

if a girl likes me a lot

and starts getting real nervous

and suddenly begins asking me funny questions

and looks sad if I give the wrong answers

and she says things like,

"Do you think it’s going to rain?"

and I say, "It beats me,"

and she says, "Oh,"

and looks a little sad

at the clear blue California sky,

I think: Thank God, it’s you, baby, this time

	Instead of me.

...and this is the most embarrassingly bad book ever written. What was I thinking? What is wrong with me? Who told me I could write?

Joseph Conrad said that writing was like trying to paint with the Devil jogging your elbow all the time. This is one of those days.

And when I finish these page proofs, I have to get cracking on Undertow. It's a good thing I'm really not fit for doing anything else with my life, or I'd quit writing now and save the world the pain.

That's the problem with Undertow, really. I don't believe in it yet as a story that has to be told, so the suck monkeys are winning.

Stupid suck monkeys.

Home safe from Boskone. In receipt of the page proofs for Blood and Iron.

I think you'll like that about this one. It's pretty.

Paul Youll, my esteemed perpetual cover artist (I'm currently taking bets on whether the cover for Carnival will be Paul's work, too) has posted three different versions of the cover art for Blood & Iron on his website.

This is the final cover, with art direction.

This is cover art #1.

This is #2.

And the final version pre-graphics.

I actually think I like #1 the best. The lion is great, and I love Matthew's jacket in that one. It suits him.

Go figure. Although Matthew's hair is right in #2.

I probably shouldn't tell you that I cam up with a title for the contemplated third book in the Blood & Iron/Whiskey & Water chunk of the Promethean Age timeline, should I? Especially since I have The Stratford Man, The Journeyman Devil, and One-Eyed Jack to sell and then a bunch of other Promethean Age books that are waiting their turn in the barrel. (Balm & Oil, Rag & Bone, Unsuitable Metal, Posthumous Jonson, the Matthias Corvinus book, the India book, et cetera)

Of course, the really embarrassing thing is that the title's been staring me in the face for years and I never twigged to it.

Patience & Fortitude, of course.

You know that thing I mentioned earlier, and quoted Tim Powers on, regarding the creaking freepiness of wandering around through history and finding those weird little connections that make you go "Oh, wow, I'm not making this up (?interrobang!)"

Yeah, well, I just hit one of those, and discovered a gloriously messy collision between the Tam Lin book (Blood and Iron, which is a Tam Lin book, but not a Tam Lin retelling) and the Elizabethan books.

The Stratford Man and The Dead Shepherd just grew a sequel. (They end in 1605, except the epilogue, so thankfully this doesn't require a rewrite.)

If I can figure out how the hell to work this thing with the events in The Stratford Man.

( I forbid you maidens all, that wear gaud in your hair, to come or go by Carterhaugh, for young Tamlane is there. (Which is to say, spoilers for history, and by extension, for Bear.) )

Yeah, Will, we all knew you couldn't keep that promise.

Dick.

This, of course, renews my wondering about whether I can get Tamerlane into this sucker somehow....

Yay! The CEM of Blood and Iron is here. I get to spend the next week or so going through it and making sure it doesn't suck.

Things I love about copy-edited manuscripts include the lists of proper nouns that come with them. They tell you so much about a book.

For example, let me offer you the double-yous:

Weyland Smith, the Weyland Smith
Whiskey - see Kelpie
William Butler Yeats
William the Bastard (aka William the Conqueror)
Wotan

*g*

Now, don't you want to read this book?

Tah dah.

( Art behind cut )


Art by and courtesy of Paul Youll, the same gentleman to whom I owe the covers on the Jenny books. We appear to be on a roll, Paul and me.

That's one damned spiffy looking no-longer-stone lion.

Progress notes for 25 August 2005:

Carnival

New Words: 1085
Total Words: 55,431 / 66,250
Notecards destroyed:  3
Pages: 265

66,250 / 110,000 (60.0%)

Reason for stopping: I've confused myself. The thing I was going to do with the plot didn't work out quite that way, and if I push it, it will feel forced. Which means I need to stare at my notecards for a while and find a better way to do things. Of course, everything in this book is taking longer than I think it should to happen. We're just up to something I initially thought would be the end of the first third of the book, and it turns out it's the beginning of the climax.

And most of what I wrote today comes later in the book, rather than being chapter 15, upon which I am spoda be working.

Mammalian Assistance:  I am slimed by dog!
Stimulants: hazelnut tea, which I made too weak.
Exercise: none
Mail: a rejection from SCIFICTION, and money, lovely money, from Roc. Yay!
Today's words Word don't know: n/a
Words I'm surprised Word do know: n/a
Tyop du jour: he'd set it out loud
Darling du jour: n/a
Books in progress, but not at all quickly: Richard Overy, Russia's War: A History of the Soviet War Effort, 1941-1945;  Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Pashazade
Mean things: I bloodied Vincent's nose. And we won't talk about the ants.
Other writing-related work: packaged up a submission, 68 pages of B&I manuscript read and corrected
Interesting tidbits:  n/a

My editor Liz was kind enough to send along a draft of the cover copy for Blood & Iron today. And since I am a terrible tease, I will share:

Roc, by the way, July 2006.

( preliminary cover copy for Blood & Iron )

Yep. Gettin' some mileage out of that Campbell award.

---

Linkage:

meritahut  cartooning

copperwise with a Wicked Fairy Apologist Poem