• Revise Chill (waiting on editorial input)
• Write A Reckoning of Men (with truepenny) (in co-author's in basket)
• Write Grail (have to finish Chill first)
• Write Smile (working on it in a back-burner sort of way, but since it has no deadline, it's definitely a project for when I find it fun)
• Sell something. Preferably One-Eyed Jack & the Suicide King (waiting on editor)
• Write untitled Mongolrocco novel proposal (have to sell OEJ first)
• Write post-singularity satire novel proposal (have to finish Jacob's Ladder contract first)
• Write "On Safari in R'lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera." (Yeah, still only have one sentence)
• Shadow Unit season 3 (waiting to finish season 2)

Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
         But will they come when you do call for them?

        --William Shakespeare, Henry IV part I, Act III scene i

Revise Chill
Revise The Sea thy Mistress
Revise One-Eyed Jack and The Suicide King
Write either An Apprentice to Elves or A Reckoning of Men (with truepenny) (or at least get healthily started on it.)
Shadow Unit S3
Write Grail
Revise the blind cave mermaid story
Revise "The Horrid Glory of its Wings"
Write "Smile" (Bone Garden) (started)
Write "On Safari in R'lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera."

And it's a draft. Maybe about 500 words on "Lucky Day" today, to complete the story, along with a complete editing pass. Ten days in advance of deadline, even.

Man, that feels good.

Not that my opinion counts, but I think this is one of my favorite Shadow Unit episodes to date.

Oh, the pleasures of the day.  Now to eat something today other than a brownie, and get ready to go climb....

Something new has developed in my ongoing relationship with music while I work. Last year, I pretty much could no longer listen to it. Now, apparently, I have to find one song--often a completely unrelated one--and put it on repeat while I work. For "Lucky Day" it was "Standing In Your Way," as sung by the inimitable Tony Head. For "The Horrid Glory of its Wings," it was Blitzen Trapper's "Black River Killer."

No, I have no idea what aspect of my biochemistry demands it, but there you go.


State of the Honeydew

Revise Chill
Revise The Sea thy Mistress
Write S2 Shadow Unit episode: "Lucky Day" (with </a></b></a>coffeeem)
Revise One-Eyed Jack and The Suicide King
Write either An Apprentice to Elves or A Reckoning of Men (with </a></b></a>truepenny) (or at least get healthily started on it.)
Shadow Unit S3
Write Grail
Write "Smile" (Bone Garden) (started)
Fix "The Horrid Glory of its Wings"
Write "On Safari in R'lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera."
Write the blind cave mermaid story. (started)

Sell some (more) books before I starve.

I'm writing this while waiting for the last of the enchiladas to warm up so I can eat them for breakfast. Yes, breakfast enchiladas. If it horrifies you you don't have to watch. (The green sauce is out of a can, alas: Chaz has been letting the side down, lately.) In a minute, I'm going to go make coffee.

I discovered that there's a bunch of Ellen McIlwaine available as mp3s on Amazon, and have indulged myself in some of the better music of my childhood. Man, that woman can play guitar.

After that, the plan is to meet up with Alisa and The Jeff and head up to New York State to meet a caving friend of theirs to go climbing. I'm still feeling kind of physically bleh, but hey, maybe it will be an easier-rated gym than the home gym, and it's another state I will have climbed in! (Currently: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Minnesota. I hope to add Texas next month. Man, between that, going out dancing, the Andrew Bird concert, and the proposed hiking excusrion, I am going to need so many different pairs of shoes for that trip, it's nonsensical.)

Part of the tired and crabby may be fighting off a bug, and I think part of it may also be blood sugar. I've been having one of those weeks where food seems like an awful lot of work, and I think I haven't been eating enough. So in addition to roadtrippage, today is all about the calories. Roadtrips and calories go well together! It's a win!

Still a bit cold here in the flat part of New England, but it's been a mild winter overall, and we got missed by the Deep Freeze Express that rolled through a bit north. So it's just wool-socks cold, not begging to die cold.

And on that note, I can smell the enchiladas, so it's time to make that coffee....

State of the Honeydew

Revise Chill
Revise The Sea thy Mistress
Write S2 Shadow Unit episode: "Lucky Day" (with coffeeem (started))
Revise One-Eyed Jack and The Suicide King
Write either An Apprentice to Elves or A Reckoning of Men (with truepenny) (or at least get healthily started on it.)
Shadow Unit S3
Write Grail

Write "Smile" (Bone Garden) (started)
Fix "The Horrid Glory of its Wings"
Write "On Safari in R'lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera."
Write the blind cave mermaid story. (started)

Sell some (more) books before I starve.

Honeydew for 2009

Revise Chill
Revise The Sea thy Mistress
Write S2 Shadow Unit episode: "Lucky Day" (with </a></b></a>coffeeem (started))
Revise One-Eyed Jack and The Suicide King
Shadow Unit S3
Write Grail

Write "Smile" (Bone Garden) (started)
Write "The Horrid Glory of its Wings"
Write "On Safari in R'lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera."
Write the blind cave mermaid story. (started)

Sell some books before I starve

Accomplished so far today:

1) 2008 year-in-entertainment review for Green Man Review
1) Short story betaread for truepennyStill to go--thank you notes and return crits on the orkshop, because people have been nice enough to review the rough draft of the snow dragons.

And maybe some work on the harpy, if I can figure out how it goes. I'd like to cross another one off my to-do list. 

Some of you will be pleased to note that last night, I wrote the first sentence of An Apprentice to Elves, and truepenny wrote the second one. Still no promises, mind you, and it's not going on any to-do lists. But there is a file with two sentences in it.


Honeydew for 2009

Revise Chill
Revise The Sea thy Mistress
Write S2 Shadow Unit episode: "Lucky Day" (with coffeeem (started))
Revise One-Eyed Jack and The Suicide King
Shadow Unit S3
Write Grail

Write "Smile" (Bone Garden) (started)
Write "Snow Dragons"
Write "The Horrid Glory of its Wings" (started)
Write "On Safari in R'lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera."
Write the blind cave mermaid story. (started)

Sell some books before I starve

In other, more important news, a poll!

Poll #1326274 foxy!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

The iGoogle/Gmail teahouse fox lives in a grove of:

The sun is melting the frost off the inside of the windows, the cat is complaining, and my toes are cold. And I am really starting to feel the itch to work, though divine inspiration eludes me. Something tells me today is going to be a day of staring at "Lucky Day" and maybe writing some words on it. Begin as you mean to go on, after all. So in a minute here I need to make some coffee and get in the shower.

And find something to eat. And contemplate my work for the day, though I am slow-moving this morning.

The Mongolrocco novel (untitled and unsold) is brewing in there, which is a good feeling. But I refuse to start another novel until this pile of short stories is cleaned up. Maybe I should get a shovel.

I think I need to look into picking up some nonfiction gigs. There aren't a lot of new novels on my schedule for the year (read: none, unless I get Grail done early, which would be awful nice, or unless I sell some more Promethean Age books and have a reason to write Patience and Fortitude) and I need both money and work, as both are vital to my continued well-being.

I guess I should try to find out how I would go about that.

Look for a Shadow-Unit-related announcement later today, by the way.


for 2009

Revise Chill
Revise The Sea thy Mistress
Write S2 Shadow Unit episode: "Lucky Day" (with coffeeem (started))
Revise One-Eyed Jack and The Suicide King
Shadow Unit S3
Sell some books before I starve

for 2010

Write Grail (due April 15)

When they get done:

Write "Smile" (Bone Garden) (started)
Write "Snow Dragons"
Write "The Horrid Glory of its Wings"
Write "On Safari in R'lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera."
Write the blind cave mermaid story.

Rewrite The Sea thy Mistress

for 2009

Revise Chill
Revise The Sea thy Mistress
Write S2 Shadow Unit episode: "Lucky Day" (with </a></b></a>coffeeem (started))
Revise One-Eyed Jack and The Suicide King
Shadow Unit S3
Write Grail
Sell some books before I starve

When they get done:

Write "Smile" (Bone Garden) (started)
Write "Snow Dragons"
Write "The Horrid Glory of its Wings"
Write "On Safari in R'lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera."
Write the blind cave mermaid story.

( 2008 bookkeeping )

And that first line of the month meme....

2008 in review:

January: It's snowing!
February: I have here before me the CEM for Hell & Earth.
March: Progress notes for 1 March 2008
April: So I know what's wrong with my head.
May: Wow. CSI:NY is a really, really, really bad TV show.
June: Somebody jimmied the passenger side door of the Moby Smurfberry last night and made off with my cheap-ass second-hand Pioneer CD player.
July: Today is the pub day for Ink & Steel.
August: Huh.
September: 2474 words to finish the novella, and then I answered a bunch of interview questions.
October: My poem, "Seven Steeds," is live in the current issue of Lone Star Stories.
November: And this is why I love my country.
December: I haven't been doing a lot of writing at the big computer on my desk recently--most of that happens in my comfy chair, with the laptop--though I have been known to resort to it when stuck, or when the laptop (inevitably) dies when I am on deadline.

Rewrite The Sea thy Mistress
Write S2 Shadow Unit episode: "Lucky Day" (with </a></b></a>coffeeem (started));

for 2009

Revise Chill
Revise One-Eyed Jack and The Suicide King
Shadow Unit S3
Write Grail
Sell some books before I starve

When they get done:

Write "Smile" (Bone Garden) (started)
Write "Snow Dragons"
Write "The Horrid Glory of its Wings"
Write "On Safari in R'lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera."
Write the blind cave mermaid story.

Hmm. Apparently, I don't write science fiction anymore. I wonder when that happened. Or maybe all my SF is going into SU. So to speak.

Except apparently Dust is a Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Award Nominee for SF. So maybe I do write SF. *g* (Thank you, RT!)

Happy Darwin Day! In celebration, let's all see if we can't evolve a little.

According to my radio this morning, the legalization of same-sex marriage may bring the great state of Connecticut up to $13 million a year in additional revenue. Apparently, letting gay people get married could be a partial solution to the world economic crisis. Who knew?

I am privileged to live in an era of normalization in the United States of America. Perhaps the greatest benefit, over time, of making an effort to extend social justice to everyone is that it makes it unexceptional to be something other than the quote "mainstream." It widens the mainstream, de-exoticizes, and makes it no stranger, in the public eye, to be gay or a woman or a Jew or in a wheelchair or of Nigerian or Korean or Tuvan descent than to be Ward and June Cleaver.

And that is exactly how it should be. Diversity is beautiful. It is interesting. It makes us a better people, and the world a better place. But part of social progress is that diversity stops being other. The nice couple down the block should not be judged by the color of their skin or the religion to which they subscribe or the details of their chromosomes--or whether they happen to be a couple composed of more than two people, dubious math aside.

They should be judged by whether they keep an eye out on the neighborhood kids, rake the leaves before they blow across the neighbors' yards, and take good care of their dog.

Joe Six-Pack, in other words, isn't what he used to be. And all you have to do is look at the ads on television to see that it's so. I remember when if there was a person of color in an ad, they were there as a second banana, a gesture to inclusivity.

Now, I see an awesome rainbow of car shoppers, and the Ikea commercials look shockingly like my peer group. How long will it be before that Audi target market is middle-aged gay men with two point five kids and a corgi?

Does that mean we've got a prejudice-free society? No, of course not. And we never will. In the immortal words of Jefferson Starship, "There will always be assholes."

But it does mean that we really are getting somewhere. And in fifty years, it's possible that the issues of social justice on everyone's lips will be ones that never even occurred to me as ills that needed addressing.

Or maybe we'll run out of others.

I wonder what the world would be like, if we all dealt with each other as people, rather than categories.

Finish Chill
Revise Chill
Write S2 Shadow Unit episode: "Lucky Day" (with coffeeem (started));

for 2009

Rewrite The Sea thy Mistress
Revise One-Eyed Jack and The Suicide King
Shadow Unit S3
Write Grail
Sell some books before I starve

When they get done:

Write "Smile" (Bone Garden) (started)
Write "Snow Dragons"
Write "The Horrid Glory of her Wings"
Write "On Safari in R'lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera."


Today's honeydew list also includes feeding the cat and eventually running errands. And phone calls, oh dread. And mailing things. And backups. And practicing my much-neglected guitar.

And then going climbing. I didn't blog it last week because I was busy, but Wednesday, I stanked (it was all I could do to show up), and Friday, I actually had a pretty good climbing day--I got an evil 5.7 that I had only succeeded at once before, and I did it with much better style. More technique, less BFI. (It's the one that was unrated when I sent it. I'm exactly the wrong height for it, so I can neither reach the next handhold from any given position nor crunch myself up to get on the footholds.)

Given how much the guilt gorilla has been dragging its heels over getting behind me and helping me write Chill, you would think it would go kick in the hammock for a while. But no, now it wants me to get started on something else right away, nevermind that the various short stories are currently somewhat formless, and January is set aside for revising The Sea thy Mistress. Which may be in better shape than I have been fearing: I just opened it up and peeked, and the writing isn't as bad as I had been afraid. I know it needs a lot of transitions and some character transparency and probably some other stuff--and that first scene is really trying way too hard--but it's not as bad as I worried.

Which means it might be less of a death-grind and more of a cheerful meander around the garden making things pretty and pleasing and harmonious. Like the little teahouse fox in the Gmail themes.

I'm getting very attached to the little teahouse fox in the Gmail themes. He seems to have a pretty nice life. He must be retired, or of independent means, as he spends most of his time puttering around making art and entertaining friends. And the ancestor foxes are really charming, if one manages to stay up that late.

I also think I know what the next few things I'm going to pitch to Tor are. I have three potential books. (One of them is even written. One is set in the same world as Bone & Jewel Creatures and "Love Among the Talus." And one is a followup to the Edda of Burdens.) We'll see what happens after I get The Sea thy Mistress delivered.

If 90% of life is showing up, right now I feel like I should be getting a merit badge. Today, of course, I need to show up more.

After two days off work, it's a little bit of a challenge to get my focus back and return to the coal mines of finishing the book. (Oh, book, why don't you just write yourself?)

I didn't manage to get out for a run at all this week, but I did manage an awful lot of walking, and climbed three times. (Wednesday night hardly counts: I stank on ice.) Hopefully next week I'll do better--I will not be running today, either, as I really need to settle in and write as soon as I am done making tea and feeding the cat and finding something to eat and doing dishes and getting cleaned up and listening to Sunday morning radio. (Something tells me that today will be a work-in-the-afternoon day, because this morning I'm just not settling. NB: I will have the file open and be staring at it, of course, but I plan to listen to Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and I suspect no real productivity will happen until after the distraction ends.)

It was much easier to maintain a consistent drive on work when I was living in a place where I was miserable and had no friends. On the other hand, I suspect this is healthier, even if it does come with social obligations and distractions.

Part of the professional writing gig is having the strength of purpose to set boundaries and make time for yourself and get the work done. It's not always easy.

I did pretty well last week, in terms of productivity. It would be good to do at least as well this week. I'm losing Saturday--there's helping friends move during the day, and an Iron & Wine concert in the evening, neither of which I would miss for anything short of surgery--but other than that I really need to get my act together and get some road under my feet. If I can finish this book by Thanksgiving, then I stand a chance of getting started on the rewrite of The Sea thy Mistress, and maybe finishing it by Vericon, which is the next piece of  business travel on my agenda.

...and then I am novel-draft-free until late 2009, when I have to write Grail. Novel-free and grateful: you should see my pile of things I need to read to keep abreast of the industry and also of research books I need to get through.

for 2008

Finish Chill (started)
Write S2 Shadow Unit episode: "Lucky Day" (with coffeeem (started));

for 2009

Rewrite The Sea thy Mistress
Revise One-Eyed Jack and The Suicide King
Shadow Unit S3
Write Grail
Sell some books before I starve

When they get done:

Write "Smile" (Bone Garden) (started)
Write "Snow Dragons"
Write "The Horrid Glory of its Wings"


304 miles to Rauros. I've come over a thousand miles on foot since I started walking to Mordor. 

Due to some minor gastrointestinal problems that nevertheless make long car rides currently somewhat chancy, I have cancelled my plans for tomorrow. However, I think that this means that tomorrow pretty much has to be an intensive writing day... especially as the house is more or less clean and it's going to be a day off exercise. And I have looming deadlines on "Mongoose," Chill Sanction Chill, and The Sea thy Mistress.

And I really profoundly need Chill out of my life, for psychological reasons, and TStM finished for psychological and financial reasons.

Which means I need to get my rump in gear. Even if I don't know exactly what Tristen's unforgivable offense was. Maybe I can get Dorcas to tell me, since Tristen is clammed up tighter than, well. Tristen. Come on, Bear. It's only another hundred pages. You could do that standing on your head.

Today, there was no writing. There was some proofreading, and there was note-taking for Chill Sanction Chill, and there was erranding and bill-paying and the washing of laundry. All of these are actions of great virtue, it is true. But they are not writing.

And, in fact, there has been no writing for three days, which is not how novels get finished.

...actually, it often is how novels get finished, especially when you hit the sticky bits and have to walk away and kick things. And I am discovering I very badly need my scheduled year of very light work next year--next year I have to write Grail, it's true, and a couple of SU episodes, and find some fantasy to sell to somebody... but other than that, I'm going to try to limit my involvement in weird side projects. My creativity is pretty seriously overstretched right now, and the well needs refilled.

I can tell we're running low, because I no longer have stuff in the well every time I drop a bucket in. Instead, I have to wait for it to refill between buckets, and that's annoying. Gotta let the water table come back up, or dog knows what I'll find myself writing. But still.

So, yeah. I've been working for seven years straight without a real break. I guess it's time for something like a sabbatical.

Fortunately, I've figured out what I want to pitch for fantasies. (And a utility outfielder to be named later.) One of them is written in draft, one is started, and one is in a world I've been meaning to play more with for some time now. So that's a burden of work lifted. I do need to think about what the next SF project might be, but I have time for that.

And maybe somewhere in there I can find my get up and go again, because honestly right now it has got up and went.


for 2008

Finish "Mongoose" (with truepenny (started))
Finish Chill (started)
Write S2 Shadow Unit episode: "Lucky Day" (with coffeeem (started));

for 2009

Rewrite The Sea thy Mistress
Revise One-Eyed Jack and The Suicide King
Shadow Unit S3
Write Grail
Sell some books before I starve

When they get done:

Write "Smile" (Bone Garden) (started)
Write "Snow Dragons"
Write "The Horrid Glory of its Wings"


311 miles to Rauros, if you were wondering.