Istituto Valorizzazione Salumi Italiani

That's right. The institute for valorizing Italian lunchmeat. Right there in the Internets, for you.

For the best enjoyment of Italian Charcuterie Products and to preserve their organoleptic features it is necessary to follow some simple, though important, preservation rules for each product and, additionally, some helpful advice for slicing.

Never has the subtitle of this blog (it's a great life if you don't weaken) felt more appropriate. Jeepers.

The progress notes will be informal today.

I was going to give myself a day off from running today, but I woke up at 6 am raring to go, so I got up and drank some water and answered my email and put my shoes on. I jogged the entire first mile (at a crawl, mind you) with the exception of the first two blocks, which I walked as a warmup. It was cold out--widget on my taskbar says 28 degrees F--and since I was out there by 7:20, the light was beautiful. Still, a whole mile! My cardio was great at the end of it, too--I took five minutes to stretch and recover, but I didn't really need them. I did make myself stretch for the whole five minutes though, temptations aside.

And then I ran/walked back on fire hydrant intervals (five of them) and took the last three blocks as a cool down. Time out: 16 minutes. Time back: 13 minutes. So when I say that joggy bit was a crawl, it was a crawl.

I was pretty ineffectual at the climbing gym last night--four routes, including a 5.7 I didn't finish. There's a traverse out from under a corner that is killing me. Also, I did a 5.5 with a small overhang that was the first route I ever sent, way back wen, and did not fall off the place where I always fall off. (Yeah, it's only a 5.5, but it's a 5.5 that involves dragging yourself out from under a corner with only one foothold, which is in a bad place.) Scraped up my right arm pretty good falling off a climb on the slab wall, but got back on the horse and finished it. Go team me.

The climbs helped break up the lingering anxiety. Some of it was back this morning, but I'm hoping the run will have taken it out of me. And I have PT today, and ashacat and I are going to see Jonathan Coulton tonight, so--those will also help.

On to the stuff that may actually interest some of you. I talked to my agent last night and got permission to suspend work on Chill for a while. Whether this means I won't make the June 1 deadline or not, I don't know yet. We'll see what happens in May. But I'm giving the book the rest of April to percolate, in the hopes that that will help me work through some of my issues surrounding it.

In further proof that it is, in fact, this damned novel that is killing me, I woke up this morning not only in a mood to write, but with a head full of stuff for the scene in "Ballistic" that I was swearing only yesterday I could in no wise write, for lo I was a burnout case and probably should be taken out behind the chemical sheds and put out of everyone's misery. I also figured out in the car last night (I should really list the Moby Smurfberry as my co-author, I do so much thinking in that buggy) one of the things that is turning Chill into such a fucking nightmare of a novel to write, why I keep glancing off its surface, and why I feel like I can't get into any of the characters at all.

Because the thematic arc that I find myself swearing up and down the book doesn't actually have is there, buried, and it's all about a bunch of people who grew up in a tremendously abusive, exploitive household, and the ways those experiences have affected them.

So here I am, writing all these damaged beauties, and no wonder my subconscious really doesn't want to let me inside their heads right now, considering what the last two years of my own headspace have entailed.

Stupid books as therapy. I dudn't want therapy. I just wanted a nice block of flats rollicking adventure novel.

Permission not to be working on the manuscript feels like somebody pulled a giant wodge of Kleenex out of my brain. Stupid book I am not ready to write yet. Why can't you be more like your brother?

And hey, I only have about 150 pages left to write. When it comes unstuck, I can do that standing on my head, right? :-P

Anyway, I have three sets of page proofs this moth, and two conventions, so It's not like there won't be enough work to keep me busy. And maybe the b&#k can use that time productively, to sort out its issues, so when we try to get back together there's a chance we can make this thing work.

233.9 miles to Lothlorien

And now I am going to go take off this sports bra before it cuts off circulation to my brain, and shower, and practice guitar before I go to PT.

In the last post, several people asked what "industrial musicals" are. (I'm currently researching them for a short story, which I have been calling "Smile," but which I might wind up calling "Smile, Smile, Smile!" because really, that seems more like the kind of title that an industrial musical ought to have.)

Because dude, industrial musicals are like, the oddest cool little thing ever. In their heyday, these things were penned and acted by absolute top-quality talent. Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick (Fiddler on the Roof). Loretta Swit. Hal Linden.

And in my webcrawling, I just hit the motherlode. Twenty original, danceable tunes from industrial musicals of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, available for download from WFMU's "Beware of the Blog."

Seriously, this stuff is awesome. You owe it to yourself to experience this nearly-forgotten flower of capitalist propaganda.

Now at last I felt like a woman
Completely feminine woman
A pampered, satisfied woman--

Ever get the feeling somebody in the Russian secret police reads Martin Cruz Smith novels for ideas?

(News story may contain spoilers for Wolves Eat Dogs)

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Anybody else remember Pickled People?


_

Of course, I had to throttle somebody into unconsciousness to get there.

Yanno, I have a really, really weird job.



Right. Back to Ragnarok.


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His link, to a deep-fried bacon double cheeseburger, inspired a chatroom conversation that lead to a news article on deep-fried Coca Cola. And a Dallas Morning News article that offers the immortal sentence:

"Give a person a good wiener, and you've got them."

---

Oh, and in other news, I sold a story to a new market, "Coyote Wild," today. It was my oldest story still in circulation, "Abjure the Realm," a sort of weird little apologia for Odd-Eyed Wicked Witches and Clubfooted Apolitical Bards the folklore over. It's an unabashed straight swords-and-sorcery riff.

Also, it has made up ballad bits.

And an undead army.

And it's totally unrepentant. *g*

Okay, I'm pretty much a long-time fanfiction apologist/defender.

But am I marking myself as a complete square if I have to ask: what is Harry Potter/CSI mpreg doing on my Tiptree long list?

Juliet gave Snape an anxious look, and then stood aside. "Mr. Snape. This is Nicholas Stokes."

Whatever he'd been expecting, this certainly wasn't it.

The boy -- man, most certainly, this was no boy -- was undeniably masculine. Strong jaw, clean of form, quite handsome. Although Snape could see almost immediately the minuscule flicker of enchantment about him; a glamour, yes, and a deft one. No Muggle, seeing him, would ever suspect the truth.

He met Stokes's eyes and wanted to recoil. Lovely dark eyes, but filled with rage, a cold fire barely held in check as the man stalked into the room.

"You have no RIGHT," he snapped in a voice icy enough to give Snape himself a run for his money. "I won't do it. I will NOT do it."

Snape made himself nod. "In that case we can force you to comply," he returned steadily. "The law requires it."

"FUCK your law!"

"It's yours as well, or have you forgotten that? Living here, so far from the source?"

Stokes paced away from him, glaring at Juliet until she shut the door behind her. With his back turned he hissed, "I don't recognize your law. I don't give a damn about it, or you!"

"Your parents did. Enough that they did what was required."

"I don't care." The man turned his pretty, snapping eyes back in Snape's direction. "I won't do it," he repeated furiously. "You can't make me."

...Not-very-well-written Harry Potter/CSI mpreg, if I may venture a critical comment. Although I guess it captures something of Rowling's style.

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