State of the garden!

Today's bounty includes tiny teeny baaaaby carrots, which are made of deliciousness. I think the radishes may be a loss: they should be cooked by now, and though they are still tiny, they are woody and bitter. They're sure as hell not water-stressed: here in the Temperate Rain Forest* of Central Connecticut, we haven't had a dry day in two weeks. I suspect that the opposite happened, and they didn't get enough sun, because the tops are huge.

Ah well, I'll try again in the autumn.

I also got some more arugula, sorrel, green onions, lettuces, beet greens and a couple of tiny tiny beets, and one radish from the sunnier edge of the patch that was actually edible. The broccoli is nearly there, and the collards need to be eaten before they become leather. I should just get out there and harvest them... I'll do it today when I pull up the radishes. Maybe there's a couple more good ones in there somewhere. The slugs really like the tops, anyway.

So today I will be eating salad, and steamed carrot and beet greens, and collards. My blood is iron-rich! Nom nom. (Actually, I have been craving iron and protein lately, which I suspect is not unrelated to the fact that I went up five pounds on my bench press yesterday. Also, purple hair makes you run faster: I took a second off my mile.)

Yesterday I wrote 758 words on The Steles of the Sky. I'm still waiting for the edited MS of Chill to arrive: that should be here today.

Did not take the dog for a run today. My butt still hurts from the gym yesterday and I have to recover enough to climb tonight. Ouchy.

---

*apparently our New Normal climate is likely to be milder and wetter. Great for mushrooms, anyway....

Either due to air quality, heat, or the fact that I have been a slacker for the past couple of weeks (between houseguests and other obligations), when the GRD and I went for a run this morning I just sucked. Had to walk up all the hills, which is unusual--often, I have to walk up the big one, but it's big, what can I say? Still, I needed to get back on the wagon, and in that regard it was a success. My plan for the rest of the morning is to hit the famer's market in West Hartford and then head on over to the gym and swim. Then come back here and work on some of this reading, since I appear to be still waiting for my brain to regenerate.

However, "Wind-Up Boogeyman" is complete and just waiting for a last round of notes from my Shadow Unit compadres, and I'm beginning to contemplate getting a head start on Grail.

Soon, I need to start lining up the background reading for Smile and for the untitled second-world-fantasy-with-conquering-empire, the one that takes place in the same world as "Love Among the Talus" and Bone & Jewel Creatures. There will be a lot of background reading. I think I had better get some of these other books out of the way first. Like another metric butt-ton of criminology, for example. And maybe some of the WWII stuff.

More writers at work:

[14:06] matociquala: Can I get a suck check on the flap copy?
[14:06] stillsostrange: sure
[14:06] matociquala: +++
[14:06] matociquala: Dark magic is afoot in the City of Jackals.
[14:06] matociquala: Eighty years Bijou the Artificer has been a Wizard of Messaline, building her servants from bone and metal and jewels, living with the memory of a great love that betrayed her. She is ready to rest.
[14:06] matociquala: But now her former apprentice, Brazen the Enchanter, has brought her a speechless feral child poisoned by a sorcerous infection. Now, Messaline is swept by a mysterious plague. Now the seeping corpses of the dead stalk the City of Jackals.
[14:06] matociquala: Now, finally, Bijou's old nemesis--Bijou's old love--Kaulas, the Necromancer, is unveiling his plans.
[14:06] matociquala: --30--
[14:06] matociquala: I think it needs a kicker line.
[14:07] matociquala: but I got nothing.
[14:09] stillnotbored: my mind jumps to something about her rest having to wait
[14:09] matociquala: I thought so maybe too, but everything I came up with sounded dumb.
[14:10] katallen: maybe something with the title involved in it?
[14:11] matociquala: If I take out the bit about her servants above, maybe.
[14:11] cristalia: I'd go with something agentive.
[14:11] cristalia: The necromancer is unveiling his plans, so what're they going to do?
[14:11] matociquala: Yeah, Leah, I think--
[14:11] cristalia: End on action.
[14:11] matociquala: That's a good angle.
[14:11] matociquala: Hurmity
[14:12] matociquala: Bijou and her creatures must/are something something
[14:12] cristalia: (Now, faced with the truth of her unappetizing smell, Leah must shower -- or perish.)
[14:13] katallen: Only Bijou and her bone and jewel creatures can keep Leah smelly
[14:15] matociquala: And only Bijou and her creatures wrought of bone and stone and metal can save the City of Jackals from a terrible half-death.
[14:15] matociquala: You know, this makes me want to write a zombie utopia.
[14:15] matociquala: where the zombie apocalypse happened and now everybody is happy.
[14:15] stillnotbored: that line works, Bear
[14:15] matociquala: Nobody worries about their looks.
[14:16] matociquala: Nobody has to go to a job they hate.
[14:16] matociquala: Nobody has to eat brussels sprouts.
[14:16] matociquala: Or pay taxes.
[14:16] stillnotbored: or rent
[14:16] matociquala: Nobody's feet are ever cold (because they have fallen off).

...and they ask where we get our ideas....

[13:37] matociquala: Okay, writing flap copy.
[13:38] matociquala: "In the City of Jackals, blah de blah blah blah blah.
[13:38] stillsostrange: heee
[13:38] stillsostrange: You should totally write that.
[13:38] katallen: really you just need the keywords
[13:38] matociquala: I've got a 90-year-old wizard, a feral child, and jaylake with a giant clockwork spider.
[13:38] matociquala: How hard can this be?
[13:39] stillnotbored: *g*
[13:39] stillsostrange: "City of Jackals blah blah blah necromancer blah blah blah maggots blah blah blah sloth
[13:39] katallen: In the City of Jackals blah de blah de wizard blah de blah GIANT CLOCKWORK SPIDER
[13:39] matociquala: Blah blah bey is no use blah zombies blah.
[13:39] matociquala: Also zombie raven.
[13:39] matociquala: win!
[13:39] matociquala: (did we mention the sloth?)

Hurmity.

I have to write flap copy for Bone & Jewel Creatures today. And my toes are cold. Maybe I should go take a nice long hot shower and think about the copy I need to be writing.

Flap copy is hard.

But at least I don't have to get back into the Bogey-esque Leech Mines of the Amazon.... I mean, The Sea thy Mistress....

More music I can blame on standuponit.

Yet another thing that's making this revision a living hell is that I feel like all this stuff I'm trying to find space to shoehorn in here is totally knocking the book off its axis. It feels all wrong, and it's affecting the balance, and according to the story engine in my head, it's not supposed to be here. It's making the story the wrong shape, which means my intuition as to how the story should go is useless, because I can't feel it.

Which also makes the writing hard, because all it feels like this stuff is doing is creating an absolute bog of useless information.

I love my job.

laundry
dishes
clean cat box
feed cat
take dinner out to thaw
read recipes and check that we have everything we need for tonight's and tomorrow's dinner
water garden
eat
pay rent
pay bills
sweep floor (including bathroom)
start raspberry canes rooting
plant tomatoes and oregano
soak morning glory seeds (Grandpa Ott's and Heavenly Blue)
make dinner
climb
work on revision

Yep. Any work but the work we should be doing

There. That's 1200 words of essay down, despite scrubbing the kitchen floor and making pancakes and starting bread in a desperate bout of displacement behavior. I'm just making tea, and then I will cowboy up and open the damned bloody miserable TSTM file and start work on it.

Looks like there's a pub date for Chill, for everybody who has been patiently waiting for one. It looks like the MMPB drops on 29 December of 2009, if Amazon has its shoes on. If I get any galleys, there may be an auction to benefit Some Worthy Cause.

I have invited the dog up on the sofa because my feet were cold. He was so excited and happy and wracked with disbelief at his good fortune that he could not actually jump up for thirty seconds; he just had to stand there and wag his whole body.

Also, because he grew up in Florida and is thusly a total sissy about cold, despite the eight inches of hair covering his entire body, I threw my lap robe over him, too. Now he's lying on my feet, sighing with large doggy contentment... nope, spoke too soon. He must have passed out with delight, because he just got 30% heavier.

BEST DAY EVER.

(My mom came to visit over the weekend, and while he was happy to see her--and [eventually] even more happy to see the tiny little nondominant girl dog she brought along so we could work on his PTSD issues--he was very definite that he wanted to stay here, please, and not go home with her. Yes, he's already spoiled rotten.)

((Also, he likes cara cara oranges, but he won't eat canteloupe or watermelon.))

(((The cat is upstairs, tucked under my feather comforter and refusing to come out.)))

I have a yoga dog.

Actually, right now he's circling the living room and library with his giant red stuffed frog in his mouth (particularly hysterical: even funnier than the teddy bear) while my roomie packs up her stuff to go to w!rk. But a few minutes ago, while the tea was brewing, I decided to take a few minutes to stretch out the hell that is my lower back this morning (I'm sure this is the cat's fault, as she was sleeping on my head all night) and he came right over beside me and started demonstrating downward-facing dog, and upward-facing dog, and plank position.

I think his sun salutations are better than mine.

Good climbing night last night. I redpointed the orange 5.8 on the slab that I thrashed my way up last Wednesday (this means I climbed it without falls or breaks, but with previous experience), and I also re-sent two hard 5.7s, one overhung (on a negative pitch, as they say), that I'd done before. And I thrashed my way up a new unrated route on a slight positive pitch, which consensus is is probably a hard 5.7 or a 5.8.

I have, I think, shown improvement. Being lighter helps an awful lot. Also, my joints (including my unstable ankle, my weak wrist, my hinky elbow, my bum finger, and both complainy big toes) are complaining less. Tape works!

You know, NPR can stop telling me about the recession depression now. I know.

In a moment here, I have to heat up some breakfast, then go upstairs and start work on the CEM. Other projects today: get to the gym, and also walk the giant dog, who did not get to go for a walk for the last two days due to humans overscheduling themselves. (He did get to play fetch in the back yard, so he was not entirely without exercise.)

Tomorrow is dog-grooming day. Oh noes! Can he really have been here for ten days already?

But right now, I'm going to read my internets.

129 pages of CEM accomplished. Breaking for dinner before the revision party starts.



Officially, the cutest dog ever.

My review of Criminal Minds 04x18, "Omnivore," is up at Tor.com.

Oy. Okay, it's only 8 am, and I am already mighty.

The dog is still sleeping, so I took advantage of the first hour of my morning to answer an email from the delightful translator of Carnival into French (it's been a week for talking to translators) which I hope has solved her questions about my legion of linguistic idiosyncrasies.

In other news, the edit letter for The Sea thy Mistress has landed, and (as I suspected) it's going to be a lot of work to fix. I tried to do something arty, and apparently it's not working. Still, at least the plot and structure are okay, which are always the hard things for me to fix. (Books, in my head, have very definite shapes, and those I really can'tchange. I can alter all kinds of other things about them, but not the shape.)

Unsurprisingly, casacorona wants me to add massive amounts of exposition and linearity. And those foolish transitions. 

And visual information, pshaw. Who cares what things look like? Nobody notices that stuff! (Okay, so I'm the least visual person around. I guess it matters to other people. I'll make some things up. *g*)

I don't know why you people can't just accept the narrative beamed from my brain...  

But the shape of the book is okay, so it's doable. Just mountains of work.

It's a good thing I never figure out my hourly wage. (Well, there's always sepukku, I guess, which would be easier--especially since as a woman I get to do the girly knee-pushups throat-slitting version--but that seems like an over-reaction, and besides, who would feed the cat?)

In any case, the fun here is that it would be nice to get paid for this book sometime before I and the critters starve in the gutter, since (given the nightmare that writing Chill was) I expect a second probably equally extensive edit letter on the other book I turned in recently. (I also base this on what a dog's breakfast the drafts of both the mermaid story and the harpy story are, right now.)

Apparently, I have lost any slight ability to construct a coherent narrative that I ever had.

Again.

You would hope that writing, as a learned skill, would stick with you, but it never does.

So, If I want to eat and stay housed, I have to get through the CEM of By the Mountain Bound, and I have to finish this revision post-haste. (Also, for psychological reasons, I need both Chill and this book out of my life.)

It's starting to look more and more like now would be a good time to go pick up some temp work, especially since the entire publishing industry is paying even more slowly than it normally does, which is glacial on the best of days.

La.

Well, between dancing on Tuesday and climbing Wednesday, this morning I have bruises on my bruises and a lower back that feels like somebody ran a line of hog-nosed staples from my pelvis to the bottom of my ribcage. Seriously, I have been mean to my meat.

Dog/cat detente is still on the level of demilitarized zones, alas. I hope this improves eventually. He hasn't tried to hurt her, but he's just a little too interested/focused on her, and not backing down when she puffs up and makes teakettle noises. I am nonplussed.

Of course, this means he's back to sleeping in his crate, and the cat is exiled to the upstairs, and everybody's unhappy.

I did just finish the last couple of short scenes I had to write for One-Eyed Jack and the Suicide King, otherwise known as Promethean Age #5, and sent it off to the illustrious and overworked agent so that hopefully it can go out and seek a new home soon, as Ace will no longer be publishing the series. (We've known about that part for six, nine months or so, if not longer--I lose track.

Tomorrow and Sunday, I have to write an editorial letter for an Ideomancer submission I hope we'll be able to buy, and answer an email from the French translator of Carnival. Also, go over a stack of interview transcript for accuracy.

The other major project on my coffee table currently (until I get the editorial letters for The Sea thy Mistress and Chill) is the CEM for By the Mountain Bound, which is even now staring at me from across the room.

I want to talk about CEMs.

It's kind of a mysterious process until you've been through it a couple of times, I guess. Essentially, you send in the manuscript, the editor sends you and editorial letter, you make the changes, the book goes back, hopefully is accepted--and the next time you see it it's got all these blue and red pencil marks all over it. And then your job is to go through and yea or nea all the changes. On every single page. Of the four hundred page (or longer) manuscript.

And as this is your last chance to change anything substantive, and find your own egregious errors, it gets pretty fraught.

So that's what MY project is for the next week or so.

Also, I need to tell people like the DMV and my insurance company that I've moved. :-P And tomorrow, mail those last batch of books, as I did get them packaged and the customs forms filled out, once I found everything. Of course, there's also still more unpacking to do.

Also, I need to get "The Horrid Glory of its Wings" squared away by month's end.

I need to be twins.

Whew.

Thankfully, we have a lot of beer in the house, and a fair supply of chocolate.

---

Honeydew, 2009:

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

I know I've mentioned repeatedly that the Complaint Department builds crop circles and henges out of glitterballs in the night, all around my bed. And she sings and chants to the balls as she's doing so.

I imagine it's either monkey mind control, or she's signalling the mothership.

It finally occurred to me to document this phenomenon. So here's what I woke up to on Tuesday:



And here's today's:



As you can clearly see, the signals are obviously based on a trinary system, and they're growing more complex. I'm pretty sure the blue and purple balls in the second photo are meant to indicate the moon/Earth binary system.

Should I be worried yet?

---

In other news, a box of Seven for a Secret showed up on my doorstep today, and so did a royalty check for Wastelands, edited by johnjosephadams. This is my first ever royalty check for an anthology, and it makes me feel like a Big Kid for realz.

[11:00] matociquala: (they got some magic hoops for jumping through)
[11:01] matociquala: I suppose Chaz's taste for alt-country is better than Michelangelo's bad pop-grunge fixation.
[11:01] matociquala: The lyrics are better, anyway.
[11:01] stillnotbored: they are better lyrics
[11:02] matociquala: It would be cheaper if all my characters had the same taste in music, though.
[11:02] stillnotbored: tell me about it
[11:02] stillnotbored: every book is new music
[11:03] matociquala: Come on guys, at least stick to a genre....

How strange. On a page dated December 8, this notebook appears to have most of the bones of the blind cave mermaid story in it. It's in my handwriting, and I don't recall writing any of it.

Oh, now I do. I wrote it at the Iron Horse, I think, during the Vienna Teng concert. And then forgot all about it.

Some of it is rather good.

Good thing I had the sense to scribble it down.

[01:26] matociquala: Okay. Pat can actually rub words together.
[01:27] matociquala: Not just, you know, create a paragraph I can get through without wincing.
[01:27] matociquala: But build a rhetorical structure.
[01:29] matociquala: "Old Cob tucked away his bowl of stew with the predatory efficiency of a lifelong bachelor."
[01:29] matociquala: That's like a real sentence and everything.
[01:34] stillsostrange: but it's also stew
[01:34] stillsostrange: why's it gotta be stew?
[01:35] matociquala: It's stew in a pub, which is acceptable.
[01:35] matociquala: It's only stew on long trail rides that's unlikely.
[01:36] cristalia: Squirrel stew.
[01:36] cristalia: Someone should do that.
[01:36] matociquala: If it wasn't stew, it would just be pottage, which is stew with oats in it.
[01:36] stillsostrange: I strive to be stew free in my fantasies
[01:36] stillsostrange: Instead it's all curry, all the time. :P
[01:36] cristalia: Actually, I was thinking about good trail food that's not stew?
[01:37] jmeadows: chips!
[01:37] matociquala: You know what curry is, Amanda?
[01:37] cristalia: And now I need an excuse to write the fantasy where they freeze pierogies and carry them around.
[01:37] matociquala: (stew.)

[01:32] matociquala: (Where is the horse and the rider.)
[01:33] matociquala: (No really.)
[01:33] cristalia: hee
[01:34] stillsostrange: where is the subject verb agreement?
[01:34] cristalia: It has passed like commas on the mountain.
[01:34] matociquala: I think it's actually an implied compound sentence.
[01:35] matociquala: Where is the horse and where is the rider?
[01:35] cristalia: Like a semicolon before a nonfiction editor.
[01:35] cristalia: Wiki tells me this is true, and that the original source is an old English poem that had it that way.
[01:35] cristalia: As "Where is the horse gone?  Where the rider?"
[01:35] matociquala: Besides, "Where are the horse and the rider?" sounds kind of odd.
[01:35] stillsostrange: hee
[01:35] matociquala: Which is why we get to STET copyeditors. *g*
[01:36] cristalia: I like it how it is.  It has voice.
[01:36] matociquala: "Where ARE the horse and the rider?"
[01:36] stillsostrange: heee
[01:36] matociquala: "Seriously!" *checks watch*
[01:36] cristalia: Where STET the horse and the rider?
[01:36] matociquala: "We've been at this bus stop ALL DAY!"
[01:36] matociquala: ...okay, blogging this.
[01:38] matociquala: (Of course, I think that the implied compound sentence demands a comma...)
[01:39] cristalia: It's an implied comma.
[01:39] matociquala: *loves best*

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. It used to be that I only used the laptop when away from home. Funny how our patterns change over the years, isn't it? Someday I'll probably swing back in the other direction again. I get a lot of other work done here, too, and it's kind of essential that I have a backup computer.

So last night, I did battle with the forces of Russian malware, and emerged victorious. Today, I slept way late, for me--9 am--and then got up and spent two hours shoveling out my email inbox and dealing with pending issues. Maintenance work, in other words.

I guess I needed that sleep, because normally sleeping that long would leave me feeling stupid and sick all day, and today it seems to have been just about right--although it is nearly noon and I haven't managed to shower or dress or eat anything except a handful of pomegranate arils, all of which are things I should address. I fed my shoggoth last night, but forgot to make the sponge, which means that bread will be delayed until late tonight or tomorrow after my dentist's appointment. But there is other food around, and I could eat some of it. Go figure. I'll get right on that.

I think I'm processing something writing-wise, some deep issues of technique. Part of what I've been thrashing out all this year. I think I've finally gotten my prose to a level where I'm more or less happy with it--I have control of my prosody. Which has been one of my major issues for the past few years. Now, I'm moving back to thinking about how stories get told, and the most effective ways to make them both interesting and challenging--and accessible to the reader. As we have noticed before, most people's brains don't work the way mine does: I hyperintellectualize, and I'm also incredibly nonlinear. So stull that seems like obvious patterns to me isn't always, um, obvious at all to other folks.

I've been reading a lot of really brilliant older stuff lately--I just finished a Barry N. Malzberg collection, and I want to do a bunch more reading before I get back into the coal mines of novel drafting--and one thing I'm realizing is that I want to let some air into my own work. Which is not to say I want to dumb it down, any, but I think I need to keep adding levels to it, opening it up on top. Complexity and accessibility are not antithetical: they're elements that can be brought into balance and harmonized.

It's like cooking--if only one flavor predominates, you haven't made anything very delicious.

I think I got it about right in All the Windwracked Stars, honestly. It's got enough deep levels to keep me happy, and enough surfaces that it can be read entirely as an adevnture novel. And I sort of wonder, why is it that as a culture we have this tendency to assume that if something is bitter and unpleasant, it is far more likely to really be Art than if it's not? I'm not talking about fluffy-bunny stories, here. But realistically, life isn't always all that awful. If it was, no one would do it.

Anyway, for the time being, I have no plans to do any more writing just yet. I need some time off, and I have the luxury of having earned it, and so if you want me I will be under a pile of neglected books on the sofa, reading for pleasure--or what passes for it, these days. Really, it's kind of a busman's holiday. But it's still a holiday. In any case, the backbrain needs time to work out whatever it is that it's working out back there, and when it's done, it will certainly spit out all this stuff that's backlogged, and turn it into stories.

I swear, I've written a lot of posts just like this one over the years. I'm having the most intense sense of deja vu right now. Where's Laurence Fishburne when I need him? (Sorry, having a moment here. Ahem.)

Man, climbing is gonna be fun tonight, given how much my core muscles still hurt. Surprisingly, I'm in better shape than I expected--I guess I'm in pretty good condition--but my lower back is feeling all the walking around hunched over I did on Saturday.

And now I only have one more email left in my inbox, and that will require actual work, so I'd better go shower and eat something and think about the work in question.