Tea today: linden chamomileTeacup today: quityerbitchinandwrite
Just finally settling down to get some work done on "The Unicorn Evils," after yoga, weights, grocery shopping, eating something before I fell over, putting the groceries away, and putting all the bones in the freezer into stock pots to become stock so I had room to put away the frozen veggies.
Also, the bread is in the loaf pan. I hope it rises sufficiently to be baked tonight or tomorrow, because I want to eat it. With butter and harissa and sardines, because--god knows why--I am craving sardines lately. And other fish. And fresh orange-carrot juice. And harissa. Maybe I need vitamins and fish oil, to counteract the looming lockdown of winter.
I'm surprisingly pleased with the way TUE is shaping up so far. It's giving me lots of good, juicy ideas and character stuff, and it's only going to be better once Emma gets her teeth into it.
Yay for work we love!
The Complaint Department seems to be adapting to her new pill regimen pretty well so far. At least, no obvious personality change, but she does seem calmer when something mildly stressful happens, like being picked up by her monkey or a Kjitten! Attack! (Which we have with appalling regularity around here.)
(One diazepam for the cat; one for me... nah, they'd catch on to that.)
To-do list shrinking slowly.
- Mood:
tired - Music:Solas - The Poisonjester's mask
Still chugging away at that to-do list. Will be taking a break tonight to go have dinner with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
netcurmudgeon and ashacat.Just about to start invoicing things. If I could have one wish, it would be a paperwork fairy. I could be so much more productive if I didn't have paperwork.
I am minded of Henry in The Lion in Winter, ranting that he could have conquered all of europe if he hadn't had women in his life. I wonder what the women of the world would have accomplished over the years if it hadn't been for men, babies, and paperwork?
Tea today: Upton Chai
Teacup: Teddy bears
In addition, some of
britgeekgrrl's friends are running a charity auction for her. I'm offering a copy of the uber-rare out of print impossible to find limited edition of New Amsterdam (with chapbook). If you wanted one and didn't get it, here's a chance to do a little good and fulfill that acquisitive urge.- Mood:
helpy - Music:Tom Waits - What's He Building In There
Attached please find one (1) very long .mp3 of me reading "The Horrid Glory of its Wings" to my cat.
I think I edited out most of the neighborhood dog noises.
Hope this works.
You know, I kind of like my job.
- Mood:
amused - Music:silence
Radio Paradise has been on a roll this week, I have to say. Stuff I like and stuff I suspect I will grow to like in equal proportions.
Today? More work on "The Unicorn Evils," which stands at 11,400 words, and then eventual climbing. I'm up, fed, showered, yogaed, beteaed, and the dog has been watered, fed, and run around the yard. He's very adamant about being on the sofa today: the floor must be cold. Or maybe he's hoping I will forget that I didn't finish brushing him last night while we were watching Zodiac. (I already knew how it came out, but I enjoyed Robert Downey Jr's pornstache and the incessant seventies porn. I don't think the seventies looked that much like the seventies, if you know what I mean.)
Tea today: Stash Crepe Fair
Teacup today: Gahan Wilson, sometimes the monsters hunt you. (The Jeff and
netcurmudgeon refer to this as the Short Form Cthulhu Game.)In other news,
batwrangler has uploaded photos of the infamous Very Deep Deep Dish Apple Pie to her flickr account. So you can see just how impressive this thing actually was.Here are my photos of its assembly, for context.
I'm afraid I can't offer a recipe, because I used the Boston Cooking School Cookbook pie crust recipe (doubled) and the filling is sort of my own--about six pounds each of Greenings, Northern Spy, and Macoun, cored, peeled, sliced, and par-cooked with limited quantities of brown sugar, vanilla, real (Indonesian) cinnamon, lemon juice, a little butter, and a little salt.
Then I drained off the rendered fluid and reduced it to a syrup, thickening with a few shakes of arrowroot at the end.
Line a springform pan with pie crust, fill with filling, top and seal, bake for over an hour in a medium-slow oven. (call it three hundred degrees, though I bumped it up at the end to get some browning.)
- Mood:
relaxed - Music:Iron & Wine - Boy With a Coin (Radio Paradise - DJ-mixed modern & classic rock, world, electronica &
hawkwing_lb: *shares melted chocolate over vanilla icecream*beatriceeagle: Mmmmmm.hawkwing_lb: (yes, I do plan to die of heart failure before the age of forty, why do you ask?)matociquala: ooomatociquala: Well, it beats cancer.matociquala: Cancer: evolution's last-ditch "You, get the FUCK out of the gene pool!" clause.hawkwing_lb: :-)hawkwing_lb: not fun, that.beatriceeagle: *twitch*hawkwing_lb: (although did you see the article about the research drug from Tel Aviv university?)hawkwing_lb: (one day, they might be able to cure even cancer.)matociquala: So we'll just get older and older and older and never die.matociquala: Wasn't there a cautionary tale about that? *g*beatriceeagle: Tithonus!matociquala: eventually we shall all become cicadasbeatriceeagle: And live in baskets in the corner of heaven.matociquala: You know, I don't really have a lot of places I can come for conversation like this.hawkwing_lb: assuming heaven has corners!hawkwing_lb: it might be a sphere. :Pmatociquala: It might be a hypercube and have LOTS of cornershawkwing_lb: (the one shape heaven shouldn't be is a pyramid)- Mood:
accomplished - Music:Bob Marley - Small Axe
A thousand words last night, and 330 so far this morning. I'm slogging through the 113 pages of this book I do have written, putting things in a logical order, fixing my line of direction, and amending my "think of this later" notes to actual content. It's necessary work for the book to advance, and it feel like progress. When I'm done, the book may have a foundation, which is sort of important for one to be able to build a structure on top.Unfortunately, at this point, I am bogged down trying to think of a coinage that means, roughly, "fanatical loyalty to an ideological meme in the face of conclusive evidence to the contrary." You know, like Oxfordians. Or birthers. Or white supremacists. Or young Earth creationists. Like that.
And the right turn of phrase is just not coming to me.
Yeah, I expect this book is going to piss some people off. But then, what doesn't?
In the meantime, here, have a photo of a cup of tea.
Tea du jour: Upton Russian Caravan
Teacup du jour: pansies
- Mood:
frustrated - Music:Madeleine Peyroux - Dance Me To The End Of Love
In any case, my winter working hibernation has begun. Don't expect to see much of me... well, anywhere... for a while.
# write Grail
# revise The White City and its attendant chapbook, which might be called "The Forty Times Forty."
# revise "The Romance"
#write "The Unicorn Evils" (with
coffeeem)#write "Spell 81a" (with
stillsostrange)#write "Uniform" (ensemble!)
#write "Ligature"
# write A Reckoning of Men (with
truepenny)# write The Steles of the Sky .
# Space opera thingy
# Vampirism thingy
# Noir thingy
# Book reviews and columns as needed
# Maybe write Karen Memory if it sells, or do some more work on it to send back out if it doesn't.
# Continue working on Smile
# Singularity Rent novel
- Mood:sleepy
- Music:Santana - Soul Sacrifice
My workplace today.
I'm not actually one hundred percent sure what I mean to get accomplished today, but I have Grail, The Steles of the Sky, and the Secrit Projekt with
kylecassidy all open simultaneously, and I'm poking at them all distractedly while waiting for genius to strike.I may also attempt to read the next book I am supposed to review, which also qualifies as paying work.
I'm also researching Mongolian megafauna, which is a little too much fun, as it justifies things like watching Walking with Beasts and so forth. Here, have an awesome photo of a model of an Indricothere.
(And in North American megafauna, a fantasy art image of an arctic war brontothere) I want one. Now there is a companion animal fantasy I would buy. I mean, what do you say to WAR BRONTOTHERE except Hellyeah? That's cooler than an Oliphaunt, baby.
Today's tea: Yunan Jig (from Adiago, which is nice tea but way overpriced--like, by a factor of two or three. The packaging isn't that nice, guys)
Today's mug: Pilot Knob Coffee, which my father assures me is the worst coffee known to the North American continent. It's named after a monadnock in North Carolina, Pilot Mountain.
("Monadnock" is your word for the day. You are welcome.)
- Mood:
sleepy - Music:Wait Wait Don't Tell Me
On the job.Breakfast today is sesame steamed buns, and the tea today is coffee, which is technically a tisane. (Later there might be some Bush Tea.)
Today's mug: bats of the Northeast.
Books on the table are Kelly Gay's The Better Part of Darkness and The Ninth Daughter by Barbara Hamilton, a pseudonym for my beloved
barbara_hambly (!!!!) featuring Abigail Adams as a detective. As some of you know, I adore Abigail Adams so much that she's the lead character in the only real alternate history story I will ever write. (That other stuff is contrafactual history, which is easier and more fun. "The Ladies" is six pages long and took me six months to write, and I read the entire Adams-Jefferson letters to do it. In contrafactual history, I don't have to spend six days worrying about what to call a galvanized nail in a world with no Lord Galvan. I just make shit up that sounds good.)
I'm in chapter eleven, and so far I adore this book. *keens and rocks and clutches it close*
- Mood:
worky
Time to get to work, I guess. Today's tea: white tea with peach
Today's tea mug: the wonderful thing about Tiggers! (You can tell it's the Disney Tigger because Pooh is smiling about a 500-pound MALE TIGER on his abdomen. He wouldn't be smiling if that were Shere Khan, I tell you what.)
Bread is in the oven and there will be breaking of the fast as soon as the thermometer beeps.
Om nom nom.
Right. The book's not gonna write itself, though man, if it would, that would be kind of excellent.
- Mood: relaxed
- Music:Mississippi John Hurt - Salty Dog Blues (Radio Paradise - DJ-mixed modern & classic rock, world, ele
Well, it's been a very long day--clothes shopping, baby shower, social things. But I am home and dry at last and commencing my work day.
I have put on my work clothes (green and purple plaid pajama pants with a silver stripe, fuzzy slippers, and purple long johns--with the important protective gear of my wrist braces!), made myself a pot of tea, and with the assistance of my coworker I'm about to start the day's work.
Here's my office.
Today's tea mug is kitty in a filing drawer. Today's tea is vanilla rooibos.
Sometimes this job doesn't suck.
See you in six pages.
- Mood:
tired - Music:Tom Russell - The Pugilist At 59
Also, it's all about the goddamned verbs.
- Mood:
busy
Tomorrow, I start work on the next book thingy. I know you can't wait for the inevitable relentless bitching and cries of dismay that will emanate from my workspace, between intermittent thumping sounds.
I only have to write three books (and a bunch of short stuff) between now and October. Piece of cake, right?
- Mood: busy
That, and I kind of sucked on ice climbing tonight. (Five routes, two of which I said "fuckit" on and rainbowed, one I couldn't send, and two I have climbed before. La.)
But I have a new gig writing book reviews for Realms of Fantasy, and that sounds like it's going to be a whole heck of a lot of fun.
And I've set a date for starting work on Grail. Sunday morning, because I am getting antsy about not having a project going. It's kind of like not being a real writer, when the real writing isn't happening.
- Mood:
excited
First, a trip to the gym. Later, The Jeff and I are going to see Ian Anderson in Wallingford.
The snowpocalypse has turned out to be just another cold rain, which--given it's still mid-October--I have to say I'm not too upset about.
Ahh. New England.
(All right, Bear. Up and at 'em. Those benches aren't going to press themselves... actually, given I'm climbing tomorrow for the first time in two weeks, I suspect today's training would be better handled as running, rowing, and swimming, with maybe a little yoga at the end. Entropy requires no maintenance, but upper body strength sure do.)
- Mood:
apathetic - Music:the cats looking for a window without rain on the other side
To give you an idea of what going over galleys or page proofs is like, here's the list of corrections I am sending my editor and her noble editorial assistant for the first five chapters of Chill:
p 3 line 34 "Holde" should be "holde", please
p 8 line 30 and 31: Please change "The Chief Engineer has already been released. So has Prince Benedict." to "Prince Benedict has already been released. So has the Chief Engineer."
p 12 line 21: please change "to observe how" to "to observe that" please
p 19 line 02: please removed the words "At least" and capitalize the word "failed"
p. 28 line 11: please change "panel" to "controls"
p. 46 line 15: please delete the word "indeed"
...yeah, sounds thrilling, doesn't it? Three hundred more pages to go. After I shower.
TBRE talked me into staying home from climbing today, as I am still coughing and sound like Marlene Dietrich, only not in the good way. Also, my Crippling Pedagogical Injury could probably use some more time to heal before I jam my foot into a climbing shoe**.
So I will be holed up on the sofa with the dog and my page proofs today.
The current Honeydew*:
# Write Grail
# Revise The White City and its attendant chapbook, which might be called "The Forty Times Forty."
Or might not.
# Write A Reckoning of Men (with
truepenny)# Write "The Unicorn Evils" (with
coffeeem)#Write "Spell 81a" (with
stillsostrange)#Write "Uniform" (ensemble!)
# Write "Ligature"
# Maybe write The Steles of the Sky if it sells, or do some more work on it to send back out if it doesn't.
# Maybe write Karen Memory if it sells, or do some more work on it to send back out if it doesn't.
# Continue working on Smile
# Schizophrenic levitation time travel vignette secret project thingy
# Space opera thingy
# Vampirism thingy
# Singularity Rent novel
# Noir thingy
# Carousel thingy (which might also be the noir thingy)
*Not counting small obligations like page proofs and all the things I have to mail to people. The good news is, other than various Go Be A Famus Riter daytrips in October and November and one small camping trip, I have no travel planned until Readercon and Fourth Street next year. Which is a Very Good Thing, because I need the time to work.
Cons, man. Much as I love you all, they kill my momentum and productivity something fierce.
- Mood: contemplative
- Music:WNPR - Morning Edition
And now I kind of know what this next scene is meant to do, and I know the character it is meant to introduce, but omg I do not feel like writing it and I do not know how to get in to it, so I am wandering arould lowing fitfully.
Some on, brain, only another twenty-five pages or so to go and we can call this a proposal.
In other news, Terrence Mann > Rex Smith.
So alive and still aching for more
We had dreams that were worth dying for.
Of course, "Where's the Girl" is a song on the soundtrack of a different writing project, one that's not currently supposed to be on top of the pile (get thee behind me, Shadow Unit!) but what are you gonna do.
Speaking of which, lots of work on Shadow Unit last night and this morning. I should probably log that.
- Mood:
crabby - Music:Terrence Mann - Where's the Girl?
First of all, still can't see out of my right eye, but at least it hurts a lot less. I'll take what I can get. Dear cornea, please grow back now, kthx.
Second, stayed up until three am last night watching the first series of Wire in the Blood. Yeah, I'm in love. And I'm also totally hooked on the idea of Robson Green playing Solomon Todd, now, which works out well, because I have been wanting to make a Todd icon. So I can have two for the priceof one.
Third, yesterday I was solicited for a proposal for a YA SF novel with lesbians (yay!), so I have a kind of secrit project going. Being me, of course, I can't exactly manage to keep is secret, though there is no guarantee it will sell and I can't tell you who it's for--but anyway, sometime this fall, I'll be producing fifty pages and a synop on the Heroic Hookers Of The Steampunk West (a book I have been wanting to write for a while, so yay!) envisioned as a YA novel.
Yeah.
This is me smiling.
Fourth, today was entirely devoted to work on the next episode of Shadow Unit, Holly Black's "Not Alone," and now that I have seen it in a somewhat completed form I can tell you it is going to be awesome. Where by awesome, of course, I mean appalling. And, well. See icon.
Todd always knows what to say.
Anyway, I blew off climbing today (it was sort of a collective blow off, what hey) and got my part of that done.
And now I am going to have a glass of wine (okay, a second glass of wine, on top of the two pots of tea consumed earlier) and I am going to fall over for a while.
Eye doctor appointment tomorrow evening (hopefully he will tell me some good news), and other than that I think I'm declaring the rest of this week TIME OFF, as I appear to have written some 11,000 words in the past week.
Honeydew list for the rest of whenever:
- Write Grail
- Write a proposal for The Heroic Hookers Of The Old West (now! with steampunk teenaged protagonists!) and hey, maybe even think of a title for it
- Revise The White City and its attendant chapbook, which might be called The Forty Times Forty. Or might not. (See, part of the structural problem is that I accidentally write both of them entwined with each other, and have to cut them apart now because they turn otu not to make one story after all.)
- Write A Reckoning of Men
- Write Shadow Unit s3
- Maybe write The Steles of the Sky if it sells, or do some more work on it to send back out if it doesn't.
- Continue working on Smile
- Schizohrenic levitation time travel vignette secret project thingy
- Space opera thingy
- Vampirism thingy
- Singularity Rent novel
See above, sell some books before I starve.
Right. Where's that wine now? Oh, right, have to let the dog out first and feed these starving cats before they eat each other or else maybe me.
- Mood: contemplative
- Music:Garbage - Metal Heart
Monkey: And now, I shall frown and sigh a lot, and drink a good deal of coffee, and think very seriously about my novel!
Kjitten: I shall pounce at your mouse cursor while you play Bejeweled! think very seriously about your novel!
Complaint Department: I say, my good woman, is this a catnip zucchini on the floor beside your chairs?
Kjitten: I shall balance on the back of your chair! I shall walk upon your shoulders! I shall pounce upon your delete key with stunning accuracy!
Monkey: I am patience, and all affronts are as water unto me.
Complaint Department: Surely, this is the finest catnip zucchini ever purveyed by fawning monkeys unto a deserving Cat, here verily upon the floor of this office.
Kjitten: I shall stalk the Old Cat! Stalk! Stalk!
Complaint Department: What a pity is it that I, so aged and crafty, am ignorant of this young upstart who haunts my every step!
Kjitten: Stalk! Stalk!
Complaint Department: What a tragedy is't that age and ingenuity shall ever fall to the obstreperousness of youth!
Kjitten: Stalk! Stalk! Gather....
Monkey: If you do that, the old cat is going to hit you.
Kjitten: Buttwiggle! Stalk! Gather!
Complaint Department: How said it is that I, the picture of naivete, shall here upon this catnip zucchini, all unwitting, this very day meet such an unkind fate!
Monkey: If you do that, the old cat really, really is going to hit you.
Complaint Department: *chalant*
Kjitten: POUNCE!
Complaint Department: *hits*
Kjitten: *skitters*
Kjitten: HEY! YOU SET ME UP!
Complaint Department: *rolls eyes at Monkey*
Monkey: *rolls them back*
Giant Ridiculous Dog: *barks forlornly in his exile downstairs*
Kjitten: Neener neener! If you didn't chase cats, you could be allowed through the baby gate! Neener! I say, neener! YOU SUCK!
Giant Ridiculous Dog: ...I can't work under these conditions.
Monkey: HEY! ...when did you learn to talk?
- Mood: relaxed
- Music:Three Dog Night - Let Me Serenade You
"But after the [Name of Imperial Russian Government Sorcerer's Organization Here] united with democratic revolutionaries to overthrow Ivana III in 1726, it was disbanded, and since then the Imperial family of Mother Russia has... formally discouraged professional organizations for sorcerers."
My contrafactual history with its pants down. Let me show you it.
- Mood:
sneezing - Music:Steeleye Span - Horkstow Grange
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