Robynettely

The absurd draw of non-deadline related projects

2012-02-08T12:02:00.002-05:00

I have an essay due on Saturday. It's insane how attractive other projects are, when I have to work on that one.

Tonight, if I get through a draft, I get to type up that first draft story from last week.

Okay, maybe what's insane is that somehow copy typing has become a reward.

Out there -- Jan 2012

2012-02-01T10:44:00.003-05:00

Subs in 2012: 1/52

“Bezoar”. Sent to market #4 Jan 9.
“Cats”. Sent to market #1 Sept 30.

This year's writing goal is to submit once a week. I have one more thing I need to get out to a market. And clearly I need to take all those first drafts I've written and maybe bash one into shape per month.

That sounds so fun right now.

In process -- January 2012

2012-02-01T10:31:00.001-05:00

First Draft

“Fairfax”. Started month with 54,000 words, near the end of Chapter 20. Now it’s around 61K, in Chapter 23. Lots of stuff has happened, which is good. I’ve moved some of the characters finally out of their comfort zones, and created lots of problems for them. I think I will be going over my initial draft target of 90K.

“The X Tree” (where X is whatever the tree is; When I started I hadn’t quite figured that out yet). This short story came out of a chat with another TW. And also I wanted to try e-prime. When I was at VP, Jim MacDonald went through a few pages of my manuscript and pointed out every instance of “There was” etc. I remember despairing. We’ll see if, long term, this experiment improves the quality of my first drafts. I carried this around to work and stuff with the intention of writing on it when my computer was rebooting and things like that, but it didn’t quite work out.

On the weekend I just sat down and wrote until the draft was finished (total: 7000 words or so, on the weekend I probably wrote 1700) because I have a karate essay to write, and this was in its way in my brain.

Editing

Nothing. Bad writer!

Knitting

“Joy” from Rowan Vintage Knits. Back done. I was reluctant to do the beads, but now that I am, I’m loving it.

What I read January 2012

2012-01-31T13:49:00.002-05:00

OWW: 0. Bad member.

“Anansi Boys” by Neil Gaiman. I actually finished this a bit after midnight on Dec 31, so it should have appeared on last month’s list, but whatever. It’s been lying around the house for years, and I finally picked it up and read it. I don’t know why I put it off for so long. It was very funny and charming. NG has such a comfortable voice to read.

“The Freedom Maze” by Delia Sherman. Another novel shot through with references to other books, which is neat. This was a quick read that I didn’t expect to tie up as nicely as it did. I think what I liked was that the changes that happened to Sophie were real, she really did have a growth spurt in the six months (20 minutes) that she was gone. That’s something that’s always bothered me about Narnia and its ilk, and also about more adult (is there a better word for this subgenre?) portal fantasy, like “the Mirror of her Dreams”, “Fionavar”, etc. is that the characters don’t seem to be temporally affected by their secondary world experience. This book did not have that problem. I also found the descriptions of life in antebellum Louisiana fascinating – I had no idea what it would be to be a slave, etc. Really good read.

“Fledgling” by Octavia Butler. I seem to have an unintentional theme this month (can you guess it?). I put this on my Christmas list more because I felt like I ought to read something by OB than because I wanted to, but the back of the book sucked me in. And then I started reading and wow. This book could have been so offensive to me (polyamory, what might look to an outsider as um sex with a 10-year-old, non-sparkly vampires), but it was not. It was amazing.

“The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms” by NKJemesin. I read this because it fit with the theme, and I had it. There are some similarities with those Garth Nix books I read a while back, I think. Really good, though the ending wasn’t as engaging as I would have liked somehow (I can’t explain why without spoilers, so I won’t try). I will be looking for the sequels.

“Rhythms of the Game” by Bernie Williams and some jazz dudes. My dad gave me this for my birthday because I do oboe and karate. I actually think karate is closer to music than baseball is. There are a lot of good insights, if I can figure out how to implement them. It seemed, however, like it was written for the sort of person who reads one, maybe two books a year.

Christy Matheson

2012-01-20T18:39:00.003-05:00

Updated to add: Actual content! Apparently I can’t type text in the content field, only in the title and tags fields, from my phone.

The Toronto Standard has (or had) an entertaining feature, “Ideas, free to a good home”. I’m full of this sort of idea. Christy Matheson is one of them.

You know how Pat Robertson said a few months back that if your spouse has Alzheimer’s disease it’s okay to divorce them, because they’re dead to you anyway? And Newt Gingrich kind of had affairs on his sickly wives (at least one of them) instead? Well, I was thinking: how does someone who needs to have an affair on their sickly spouse go about meeting the right person to do that with.

One thing I learned from “The Other Boleyn Girl” was that it’s more appropriate for a king to have an affair with a married girl than a single one. So clearly, my hypothetical person married to an Alzheimer’s patient would need to meet another like-minded individual in similar circumstances (of the opposite sex of course, this being a problem that godless atheists don’t have).

That’s where Christy Matheson comes in. I envision it being company like Ashley Madison, except for married Christian people who have to find a mate substitute.

This is my brain on X

2012-01-13T12:56:00.000-05:00

Do you ever have a thought, and then it disappears because someone distracted you, and you spend a whole lot of time wanting that idea back, and then you remember what you think it might have been and it’s actually something quite stupid, like “I should google my coworker’s name” or "I wonder what John Scalzi is up to today?"

I wonder if I’ve ever really forgotten a brilliant story idea, or if they were all that crap.

Flash Fiction Challenge: "Dust Bowl Dance"

2012-01-12T23:56:00.002-05:00

It's been weeks and weeks (at least four weeks) since last I did one of these challenges. I'm fighting the idiot self-imposed conviction that everything I write has to have a supernatural or fantastic or SF element. That's just stupid.

“The name of this place is pretty offensive,” the woman said as I set her beer on the bar.

"Not my fault," I said. "It was named that when I got here."

"Still, you're making light of people's suffering." She might have been 43 (just a guess), with long hair in a ponytail, still mostly blonde. She wore paint-spattered jeans and a tee-shirt.

"They're all dead. And I think it's more a statement about our cleaning staff. Lanes should be clean."

The man who came in and made a bee-line to her would have been two or three years older, fit like a runner and suited like a lawyer. His hairline was receding. He wore a wedding ring. A bowling alley must have seemed like a good place to meet; neither artists nor lawyers would hang out here.

“Diet coke,” he said, and turned to her as if they had known each other how long? I’d guess two-and-a-half years. “I was worried sick.”

“You should have been,” the woman answered. She wasn’t the type of woman a man like him would marry.

“Why didn’t you text?” he said, sipping his coke through a straw.

“I was in hospital.” He winced as she sucked back a quarter of her pint of beer in one swallow. “They take all your stuff and lock it up so no one can walk off with it.”

There was a long, awkward silence. I was cleaning glasses.

"How did you get there?” he asked.

“My landlady was looking for the rent,” the woman said. “She found me in the kitchen. I guess she saved my life.”

“I should have dropped by,” the man said. “What day was that?”

The woman shrugged. “My chart said I was admitted on the Wednesday.”

It was Friday now. “You bled for three days?”

“Presumably.” The woman finished her beer and looked at me.

She was too light to be able to handle much. “Driving?” I said.

“Hell no,” she said as if I was crazy to even ask. “You wouldn’t believe the questions I had to answer. They asked if I had done it to myself.”

“I’m sorry,” the man said.

I put another beer down in front of the woman, and she took a sip as the man’s eyes searched her face – eyes, lips, beer, ringless paint-stained hands. “But it’s gone,” he said.

“Yeah, it’s gone.”

He seemed relieved. “It won’t happen again.”

“No, it won’t,” the woman said. “It was ectopic. They snipped some things, cleaning up, for my own good. It won’t happen again.”

He put an envelope in front of her, but she set her beer on it, leaving a wet condensation ring. “I can’t finish that,” she said. She took off a cross on a chain and set it on the bar. She turned away, and left.

The man left a $20 from the envelope on the bar. Everything else, he stuck in his jacket pocket as he followed her out.

In process -- December 2011

2012-01-04T10:45:00.000-05:00

First Draft
“Fairfax”. Started month with 43,000 words, near the beginning of Chapter 17, having written portions of my second outline. Now I’m past 54,000 nearing the end of Chapter 20. I should be more than half done! We’ll see about that, in about six months. . .

Editing
Toothbrushing Club. (Middle Years novel). Last time I posted, a week into December, I had gone through the first half, with the goal to have draft 3 by Christmas break. In this, I was successful. There was a lot less moving scenes around, and a lot more writing entire scenes, towards the end. I knew the ending was awful, and had written a note after reading the whole thing to basically delete the last five pages, and I wrote something else entirely. The whole thing is printed out and ready to read again, but I think I should give it a week or two.

This is the first time I’ve ever really properly done a “middle” draft of anything this long from start to finish. The document is 53,000 words long which seems sort of shocking, like I might have added 10,000 words or so, because I thought the previous draft was in the low 40’s.

“Dowsing”. (short story, 5K). This got 5 crits on OWW, so when I went on Christmas vacation, I printed them off and took a draft with me to show what I do, if anyone of my relatives was interested. I didn’t look at it the whole time.

Not Cold Enough. Carried this around all Christmas holiday, too, but didn’t look at it.

Knitting
Fair Isle Argyle socks. First one done, second started.
Border socks. Gift. Three pairs done.
Commuter gloves. Gift. Done.
I so badly want to start a sweater, it’s killing me!

What I read: December 2011

2012-01-03T10:08:00.001-05:00

OWW: 4

“The Courts of Chaos” by RZ. You know, Corwin is one of the most awesomest characters ever. He’s like basically a god, and yet he doesn’t win all the time (wrestling with his brother, sword fighting with his other brother), doesn’t get what he wants, doesn’t ultimately save the world all by himself. . . Roger Zelazny is awesome.

“Fool Moon” by Jim Butcher. Library book, #2 of the Dresden Files. I found it easier in this one easier to keep track of the characters than the first volume.

“Mother Tongue” by Bill Bryson. The information was really interesting, and that kept me reading, but I found this book obnoxious. If it was a little dated in sections, that can be forgiven because it was written in 1990. However, if you’re going to take a tone that says “wow, everyone else is so stupid!” which is how the ‘humor’ seemed sometimes, your research and editing really has to be absolutely impeccable. Torontoans? Who calls us that?

“Motel of the Mysteries” by David MacAulay. This was a silly quick read about a future excavation of a cheap hotel, where the future people get a lot of things completely wrong. They were British dilettantes who wore the toilet seat as a necklace/headdress and thought the plunger was a musical instrument but weren’t sure how it should be played. It reminded me a lot of a program book I had about King Tut’s tomb, and has aged very well (it was published in 1979).

“The Island of Lost Maps” by Miles Harvey. I’d never heard of the crime or the criminal, but this guy had walked into a bunch of libraries (many connected to universities) and stolen maps out of books quite brazenly. This book is a true crime investigation thing about that. To me, the book was more about the process of research and long-form journalism. The author was very evident in the story, as was the history of maps.

In Process (first drafts): November 2011

2011-12-08T12:24:00.001-05:00

“Fairfax”. Started month with about about 36,000 words, in the midst of Chapter 14. Ended with about 43,000 and having started Chapter 17.

Have I mentioned my process? When I start a novel, I always feel like everything is going to be great this time. I have a brilliant idea, and I just can’t wait to start RIGHT NOW!!!!!!! I write about 15,000 words, and then I realize that I don’t know what happens next. I have a general idea of how things need to end (giant robots!) but I don’t know how I’m going to get from here (burned house in the woods and water wheel and witch hunter) to making the giant robots and having the battle. So I write an outline of the next 75 things that are going to happen between here and the ending (that’s one thing for every thousand words I have left to write).

I do not write the outline from now to the end, I start with the end, and then fill in backwards, and then frontwards, and then I fill in the middle. And then I largely ignore the outline and write another 20,000 words. Then I get stuck again and I go and look at the outline, and try to cross things off that I’ve covered.

This is not pretty. I have covered more than 30 of these things. I do not know who the bad guy is, or some other essential piece of information. I write another outline, this time with 55 things in it, trying to get back on track to the same ending. I write some more.

That’s where I am now.

In process, November, 2011

2011-12-08T09:46:00.002-05:00

Editing
“Dowsing”. (short story, 5K). Finished typing the rewrite, wound up with 6500 words. Edited the first 3000, and then printed again and edited the whole thing on the premise that the beginning is always the worst part. Posted on OWW and got four quick crits, suggesting that the ending was too sudden. That was kind of what I thought before posting it. I let Ed read it too.

Toothbrushing Club. (Middle Years novel). So, this year I forewent (if that’s a word) NaNoWriMo on the premise that I don’t need another unedited manuscript lying around, and instead I need to edit one of those down, making November in fact NaNoEdMo. But then I did not apply my usual NaNoWriMo discipline, and instead worked on that short story (not a waste of time by any means) and then screwed around for several days.

So, I found myself on November 16 thinking, Oh dear, I guess I’d better read this sucker.

I wrote TbC several years ago, and then apparently tried to edit it without actually reading it. In retrospect, this was not a good method. I think what I did, and this was probably at least two years ago, was I broke the story into chunks, most two or three pages long, and then moved them around until the story made sense. Probably reading the story had become too painful. I wrote the first draft, if I recall correctly, pretty quickly and in out of order chunks. This may work for some people and some stories (I think Justine Larbalestier wrote Liar this way, using Scrivener, but I don’t use Scrivener, and TbC isn’t that complicated, and I’m not her, and Liar is an amazing novel by the way) but perhaps not this story and/or not me.

By the time I started reading this novel on November 16, with a goal of having a second draft by the end of November 2011, I had mostly forgotten where I was going with it but knew the general plot, and I could finally read it with fresh eyes. It didn’t start off that badly. But however, it is not the same story that I thought I had written. I guess I did a lot of editing in my mind in the four years from when I wrote it.

Now, a week into December, I have gone through the first half, rewritten, revised, moved stuff around, added scenes and tried to make others have a point, deleted redundant material. My goal is to have another draft (I’m calling it Draft 3) by Christmas break.

Ignoring
“Rabbits.”
Apophis. Have to find the crits I’ve gotten.
“Succubus”. Short story; working on 2nd draft
Pampelmouse. (MY novel)
“Chickpea”. (short story) Ending?
Troll. (short story)

Being reviewed
“Dowsing”. 5 crits, now, on OWW.

Knitting
Fair Isle Argyle socks. Ignoring. There's not enough contrast between my two colors, and I've cast on too many stitches, so I think I need to start again.
Blackwork socks. Gift, the first of the Christmas knitting. Finished.
Border socks. Gift. First pair done, second pair started.
Commuter gloves. Gift. First started.
I so badly want to start a sweater, it’s killing me!

What I read -- November 2011

2011-11-30T16:15:00.000-05:00

“The Guns of Avalon” by Roger Zelazny. Book 2 of the Chronicles of Amber. I didn’t notice so much in book 1, but Zelazny really paints nice pictures and makes incredible economy of words in these.

“Persuasion” by Jane Austen. When I go to the library, I like to take something out to be supportive, so when they didn’t have whatever the next Jim Butcher book is in the Desden Files, I took out this. Also, I have a DVD of it, and I prefer to read the book first. Anyway, this was a Penguin edition, and it had an over-explaining introduction and footnotes that didn’t seem necessary to me. A lot of the footnoted words were comprehensible in context, and I mean, who really cares that the particular coach they’re talking about is better than a convertible because the top can go either way? I love Jane Austen, and this book was charming.

“Sign of the Unicorn” by RZ. These are so short I almost feel guilty counting them each, rather than reading the whole five-book series as a single book. But, I’ve started this way so I guess I’ll continue. The first time I read these books I remember skipping over the Hell Rides sections because they were boring and didn’t make sense and didn’t further the plot. This time through, I’ve been reading them, and they are actually really interesting, some of them, in what they tell about character. Corwin is basically a god; he and his siblings are a pantheon. He’s hundreds (or more) years old, and yet he makes decisions that are sometimes really young-and-stupid seeming. I say this because I feel like the message, sometimes, is that no one ever feels like a grown-up, even when they are.

“Cascadia’s Fault” by Jerry Thompson. Ed got it out of the library and talked it up so much I picked it up when he was done. We’re all going to die! Cascadia is the fault line that is going to keep pressing on the western edge of the North American plate until the rockies flip up like a tiddlywink and land on Toronto. There you had it, you heard it here first. I’ve seen the author’s documentary “shockwave” that is about the same topic, so I had no trouble visualizing portions of the story. The organizational structure seemed forced, though. It was quite rigidly chronological, and I felt like the author might have written, for example, all the sections with the woman emergency planner at the same time, and then cut them up. This left me occasionally confused because critical details and complete thoughts didn’t appear until later. Not that I have any amazing powers of structure (see all my posts on The Toothbrushing Club for examples).

“The Hand of Oberon” by RZ. I really thought there was something fishy about Ganelon, that’s all I’ll say. He sure picked up new skills quickly.

Flash fiction challenge: Frog prince

2011-11-24T23:39:00.003-05:00

The challenge is here. This is something I had lying around that I wrote originally in March 2009. Maybe I'll post the whole 650-word version tomorrow.

The bouncy ball was bisphenol-b. When the princess accidentally tossed it into a well, it sank to the bottom.

A frog croaked, "I'll fetch it for you, for a kiss."

"Okay," the princess said.

"Kiss, then ball," the frog said.

Their lips touched. The frog grew and the green localized to tights and a jacket; obviously a prince. The princess forgot about the ball.

They didn't live happily ever after. As a frog, the prince had absorbed a lot of pseudo-estrogens. His vestigial third leg gave the princess the willies, and his sperm count was insufficient to provide heirs, anyway.

In process: October 2011

2011-11-02T12:08:00.002-04:00

First Draft

“Fairfax”. Started month with about about 28,000 words, in the midst of Chapter 11. Now I’m in Chapter 14, with about 36,000 words. That’s a third of a book!

And now I will espouse for a moment on why I write a page a day.

A couple of nights ago, I’d done like 4000 words of the Dowsing rewrite and I wasn’t totally into writing a page (roughly 280 words) of Fairfax. But I had to, so I sat down and started writing. I wrote a couple of paragraphs of description, and then the POV character said something that totally surprised me: he said (without giving anything away) he missed the clothes. He didn’t miss the lifestyle of what he was looking at, but he did miss the clothing.

I was totally shocked and surprised, because right there, with those four words, he gave me all of his backstory. I knew who he was right now, but I had no backstory for that character, and because I was dragging my way through that block of text, he gave me a gift, “this is who I used to be.”

Editing

“Rabbits.” Took this off OWW, didn’t really work on it.

Fairfax Chapter 1. Since this started out as a flash fiction, not even really a short story, there was a lot of stuff to add. The ending needed to be opened up, the characters fleshed out, and the setting defined. Also, it ended a different way than I thought. But I wanted to get it up on OWW. To make essentially Draft 2 of it as a chapter (the “final” version of the initial flash fiction served as Draft 1) I added 900 words. With all the flash stuff I’ve been doing, it’s been mostly cut-cut-cut, so this was a neat change.

“Dowsing”. (short story, 5K). I’d done a bit of work on draft 2, changing the POV and adding some logic to the worldbuilding. Then I read that Lovecraft/Derleth book and just started over. I wrote an outline (!) and a completely new story with the same elements as the old one, so I don’t know what to call this. Is it a rewrite? I’m typing it (going to finish it tonight) and then do a couple of editing passes, and then I’m going to get it on OWW, maybe by the end of the weekend.
Toothbrushing Club. (Middle Years novel) I’m going to have a draft 2 proper by the end of November.

See, what I decided was, the last thing I need in my life right now is another completely unedited manuscript. So, tempting though it was to just power my way through Fairfax or something for 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo, I decided to do NaNoEdMo instead this month. I need to finish some things. Next year, I’m doing it, though, for sure. And I’ll have some finished stuff too.

Being reviewed

“Karate Zombies”. Got it back.

Knitting

Loppem (Norah Gaughan). This is my anti-Morrigan, knit in fluffy white yarn on big needles. Finished.
Fair Isle Argyle socks. First started – KPPPM and some regia silk I had lying around.
Double Heelix socks. Done.
Blackwork socks. First started; this is where I start my Christmas knitting. I’m taking the motifs from PGR’s ethnic socks and stockings book.

What I read: October 2011

2011-10-31T10:02:00.002-04:00

OWW: 3

“We Never talk about my Brother” by Peter S. Beagle. Short stories. The title story will stay with me. So elegant! Some of the stories were meh, like all short story collections, but this one was worth reading.

“Storm Front” by Jim Butcher. So, when I was at the library taking back the previous books, I was poking around. I often look at the Jim Butcher Dresden Files books because I’ve heard so many good things about them, but I want to start with book 1, so I’ve never taken one out. I looked in the paperback FSF section, then the hard cover FSF, then the general stacks... and they always have some random middle books, but never the first. So, I’d given up. I was over in the general paperback section looking for Jane Austen (they only had Mansfield Park, but I wanted Persuasion or Sense and Sensibility) and I found this! It reminded me of Sandman Slim, though of course this came first. It came out in 2000, and it’s weird how strange that feels – the characters don’t have cellphones, 9/11 hasn’t happened. The world was a different place. There were some style things I might have done differently, but this was a quick, fun read.

“The Watchers out of Time” by HP Lovecraft and August Derleth. Not really Lovecraft, apparently. But I don’t think I’ve read any Lovecraft, and this was sitting there at the library, so I got it out. This book made me want to eat Kolbassa and sauerkraut. The introduction by Derleth’s wife was an amusing bit that seemed to suggest that Derleth was the real genius here, and just took chunks of unfinished Lovecraft stories to craft works around. I think I could tell which bits those were, and they were pretty silly, some of them. There are maybe only so many things you can do with men who inherit houses that have histories of warlocks living in them, but after a while they were a bit all the same.

However, the formula seems to work. I was editing a story and it wasn't working, so I've started again, with what I'm calling "the Derleth formula" applied, with my own modifications of course. I may be discovering at this late date that I'm not a pantser.

“Nine Princes in Amber” by Roger Zelazny. I haven’t read this in about 20 years, but it holds up. You can probably guess what the next four things I’ll be reading are. (Apparently I don’t own the second five). What a great character!

Flash Fiction Challenge: Bully

2011-10-23T22:36:00.002-04:00

The challenge: a hundred-word story about bullies, and only the weekend to write it. They're all posted over on terribleminds.com, but to be complete about things, I've put it here too.

“You should make something for the bake sale,” Janelle said. “It’s a good cause.”

Their daughters were on the soon to be torn down playscape.

It looked safe enough to Clarissa. “I’m not much of a baker,” she said. Money was a little tight this week.

“Heather looks grubby today,” Janelle said. “Didn’t Children’s Aid visit you once?”

“When her father was still around,” Clarissa said. Things were better now. “Maybe I can make some squares.” There might be brownie ingredients in the cupboard?

Underneath the playscape Heather threw a handful of sand. Caitlin ran, bawling, to her mother.

Flash Fiction Challenge: Welcome to Blackbloom

2011-10-23T21:40:00.002-04:00

This challenge was different -- Chuck Wendig is doing a worldbuilding exercise. The entries are all in the comments, but I thought for completism, I'd post mine here, too.

The world was once terraformed. Aliens had seeded it With algae spores. These spores grew on all the wet things, killed some of them, and converted others. It was a very painful process. Creatures walked around, bodies half-covered in algae, going mad from pain.

The algae spores are a modified version of filamentous green algae, which does conjugal reproduction (trading DNA with other species). The algae takes the sulfur out of the SO2 atmosphere, leaving the free oxygen that the original lifeforms are allergic to.

The algae is still out there. Occasionally there’s an outbreak. Non-natives are particularly vulnerable.

Flash Fiction Challenge: Mary Alice goes to Hell

2011-10-20T23:44:00.003-04:00

Another Chuck Wendig challenge; the rules are here. I'd written this story to see if I could do something small in the world of my urban fantasy, without it having all that annoying stuff I see in some short story collections that contain those. I had to cut it considerably to fit it in the space. It would be neat to put this aside and then try editing it "straight", and see how it comes out. I had not realized my vampires were so racist.

Mary Alice went out to give Sephora a hug. “Thank god you’re here. Avril is the dumbest thing ever.”

“I know, honey,” said Sephora. Without a mirror she freshened her black eyeliner and cranberry lip gloss. Sephora would have flown commercial from Iceland now that Candelmas was past. She dragged a huge trunk behind her through PATH, Toronto's 10 KM of underground walkway and mall.

“I can’t believe she’s going to be second,” Unlike the other vampires, Mary Alice was small and had a tiny voice to go with her pixie-sized body. “If Goatboy goes down, we'd have to report to her.”

“How can we get rid of her?” Sephora batted those lush lashes. She was tall and unbelievably thin, with long, glossy hair in a messy pile on top of her head.

But like a monkey, Avril moved fast. “Welcome back,” she said as she bounced into their space as if this was her place, not theirs, and her right to welcome anyone back. "We're all on our way out. I've been summoned to Hell."

A cockroach walked by. Mary Alice flicked it away.

Avril caught it and popped it in her mouth absent-mindedly.

None of them ever went to Hell except Goatboy. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to go; they thought maybe they couldn’t make it.

The therians moved as a pack through the fountains and wheelchair ramps of the mall, and then outside. The hellhole was near the junction of two highways, under the crossing of two rail lines beside a river, as desolate as those things can be in a city.

The moon was a fingernail clipping, a scrap of feather falling towards the west. No therian would change tonight without choosing deliberately.

“This is ridiculous,” Sephora said when they got to the Hellhole. “Why did we come?”

“No clue,” said Mary Alice. “Maybe she’ll get stuck up to her knees in the snow.”

But Avril gave Goatboy a peck on the cheek, took the step forward, and let gravity take her away.

She did not stop knee-deep in a groundhog hole. She was gone.

“Well, that was that,” said Sephora. "We’re free of her for a while.”

“I hope so,” said Mary Alice.

“Shall we go, then?” Sephora said. "I don’t understand why we came in the first place.”

“Yeah,” said Mary Alice. And that was that.

But Avril was back in the food court the next night.

Mary Alice took her normal spot on the floor in a corner. Sephora waltzed in grandly, but then crouched beside Mary Alice.

“The second should be one of us, a vampire, not part monkey.” Mary Alice said.

“Maybe she’ll grow into the role,” Sephora said. “Hell’s not that big a deal, really.”

“Have you been?” Mary Alice said.

“Not since I bubbled up,” said Sephora. It was how they said they were no longer useful for Hell's eugenics programs.

“Why would they summon her?” Mary Alice said.

“They need someone to report on Goatboy,” said Sephora.

“Why Avril?” Mary Alice said. “You could do it.”

“I was in Iceland,” said Sephora. “I don’t know what’s been going on.”

“No one asked me,” said Mary Alice. “I know what’s been going on. Nothing.”

“I can’t take your information to Hell,” Sephora said. “That would be hearsay.”

“I could go,” Mary Alice said.

Sephora snorted. “Good luck with that.” She walked away, and sat down with Goatboy and Avril.

No one noticed as Mary Alice stood up and pulled her sweater around her, and wandered out of PATH.

The humiliation she’d been hoping to see when Avril went, it would probably happen for her. Mary Alice didn’t need anyone to see that. But after 5000 years, she had to know.

It was before midnight when she got to the hellhole. She held her sweater above her as she stepped and then let it fall over the hole as she dropped.

There was dark, and wind for so long. Then she hit. The pain was worse sunburn, worse than not feeding for a month or a bath in holy water.

“Arrival,” she heard.

“Weren’t expecting anyone.”

“Human?”

“Vamp.”

“Can’t leave it here.”

“Send it back."

Anything else they said was drowned out by a wind.

She smelled rather than felt the return to Earth. She hit her sweater, launched into the air above it, and fell.

There was no daylight yet, just bruises on bruises.

After a while she heard Sephora’s voice. “I know this sweater.”

Strong arms lifted Mary Alice, sweater and all, and carried her away. There was the odd jostle of being carried by someone on seven-inch heels, the sounds of riding on a bus, then yelling for someone to open the door.

Mary Alice could smell corn chips. The hard surface she was set down on must be a food court table. Sephora began to unwrap her. “Oh, honey, what have you done?”

“That bad?” Mary Alice said.

“Your hair, when is the last time you combed it?” said Sephora. “Have you been sweating?”

“I’ve been to Hell,” Mary Alice said.

“But why?” said Sephora.

“I didn't want to be left behind."

Avril was standing behind Sephora suddenly. “Does she need anything? Blood, nachos?”

“Shut up, Avril,” Sephora said. "How was it?”

“They sent me right back,” Mary Alice said.

“That’s the way Hell works,” said Avril.

People were always telling her things she already knew, but this was too much. “Shut up, Avril,” said Mary Alice. She got up to go to her spot in the corner on the floor.

"Hey Mary Alice, if you can get to Hell, you can be my second," said Goatboy.

"Shut up, Goatboy," said Mary Alice.

"I'm serious," said Goatboy.

"I went to Hell," said Avril.

"You're a therian," said Goatboy. "The job needs a vampire."

"I'm a vamp," said Sephora.

"You didn't go to Hell," said Goatboy.

"I can," said Sephora.

"Too late, the position is filled." Goatboy said.

Flash fiction challenge: Ginger Root

2011-10-13T23:45:00.003-04:00

The challenge is here. Go there! Read the other stories! Mine is about a plant my mother is growing.

Kitchens in the Cookie Factory Lofts were small, so Kimberley didn't have to walk far to show Mitch the ginger they had left in the cupboard.

"Look at it," Kimberley said. "I wonder if you can eat the shoots." Four branches, hard like bamboo, grew off the corners of the wizened 3-inch root.

"It's not a burger," Mitch said. He was working from home on the dining room table. The loft didn't really have an office.

"Maybe I'll plant it," said Kimberley. She used ground ginger instead, and dinner was sub-standard that evening. Mitch knew enough not to say anything.

After dinner, Kimberley took a flowerpot off the windowsill, and threw out the dead poinsettia it had held. She dug a hole and nestled the ginger root in with coffee grounds and potato peels. She watered the whole mess and set it beside the spindly avocados and garlic scapes. By then, Mitch had the scent of compost stuck in his head, and could smell nothing else for the rest of the evening.

"Kind of pointless to give up meat and be so nice to the plants," Mitch said. They had met working at a vegetarian restaurant while they were in University. He was afraid they were growing apart. Sometimes on his lunch break, he would leave his office and buy a hotdog from the street vendor.

Kimberley was disturbingly thin. More and more foods refused to cross her lips. She was down to potatoes, cabbage, apples, and kale. If it wasn't for vodka, she wouldn't get any calories at all. But she came up behind him where he sat at the table, kissed him on the top of his head, and said, "It's so nice to see them try."

So he let it go.

The southern exposure seemed to be just what it wanted. The four branches were a foot taller when Mitch got home the next evening.

"It's definitely taller," Mitch agreed when Kimberley pointed it out.

"I think the pot is too small," Kimberley said.

She was right, but Mitch didn't need to see the fronds waving in agreement.

After a dinner of spinach nut loaf (no substitute for meatloaf), they picked up a bag of soil and the largest planter the hardware store had. They filled the new pot with dirt and took the planted the ginger again.

"Does ginger reproduce by growing new bulbs, like a tulip?" Mitch asked. A small bubble had appeared on one end, between the two shorter branches. It hadn't been there yesterday.

"I guess so," said Kimberley. "It's all broken bits at the grocery store. Maybe it grows in mats the size of the table."

The next night when he got home, the peanuts were chopped, garlic crushed, green onions sliced, rice in the rice cooker, and extra-firm tofu fried. Soy sauce, sesame seeds, and hoisin sat measured on the counter. But Kimberley stood with the paring knife poised over another ginger root, not peeling or mincing. She wasn't even grating.

"I feel a little guilty about this, in her presence," she said, and gestured at the ginger plant. It hadn't gotten any taller, but had filled out. The four limbs stood like trunks in their own right.

"Oh, just cut the thing," Mitch said. It wasn't like butchering a cow after all.

Kimberley squeezed shut her eyes, gripped the knife, and sliced the ginger root in half. She opened her eyes and hastily trimmed the rough outer skin from the fibrous flesh. The smell of ginger filled the room, though none had yet landed in the hot broth in the wok.

Kimberley didn't notice the rustling by the balcony door, but Mitch did. He turned around to see the ginger plant climb out of the planter as if it was a bathtub. The shorter branches looked remarkably like arms, and the leaves bent like many-jointed fingers, brushing the dirt away. What yesterday had been a bubble on the main root was now a head wrapped in what looked like burlap. Green hands stroked that face until the husk came loose and hung around her neck and under dangerous red hair.

"Kimberley," was all Mitch could think to say.

Just as she was about to brush the minced ginger into the wok, Kimberley turned. "Oh my," she said, setting the knife and cutting board down on the counter. "I'm so sorry."

"If you were really sorry," said the ginger plant girl, "It wouldn't have happened in the first place."

Mitch didn't move until she was past him on her way to the kitchen. He wasn't fast enough. The ginger girl grabbed up the cleaver from the wood block and lopped off Kimberley's head.

"Oh god," was all Mitch could say, as the ginger girl held Kimberley's head over the wok, dripping blood over the sizzling garlic.

"For flavor," she said, as the air took on a pleasant meaty smell.

"I can't eat that," Mitch said. He could taste the vitamin B-12 already.

The ginger girl poured the peanuts into the wok. It would take a couple of minutes for them to absorb the liquid. "You will when you're hungry enough," she said. She came from the kitchen five steps to the dining room, pulling the papery skin off her neck like a mummy tearing off its wrappings. Her flesh underneath wasn't desiccated at all. She pushed Mitch, dominatrix-like, onto a chair and tied his arms and legs down.

Back in the kitchen, all the other ingredients went into the wok. She put rice and tofu on two plates and stepped over Kimberley's body to set them on the table. She sat down across from Mitch.

"One hand free?" she asked.

It would be better than eating like a dog.

She tore the bindings off his right hand. He picked up a fork and took a bite. Tofu takes on the flavor of whatever you put on it. The slightly meaty taste was divine.

"I'm sorry, Kimberley," Mitch said.

What I read: September, 2011

2011-10-03T11:24:00.000-04:00

OWW: 4 (and all in the last week)

“Deadline” by Mira Grant. Bought this in North Conway, NH at the Borders Express going out of business sale. The boy devoured it and then nagged me while I finished “Rebecca”. We got Ed “Feed” for his birthday, so he could read this one. I think he’ll like the science. It was nice to have someone to discuss it with. Intriguing ending. I think Shaun has a reservoir condition in his brain, the boy suggests it might be in the Amygdala (whatever that is).

“Among Others” by Jo Walton. My friend Lucy finished it before I’d even started, and asked if I’d read a lot of SF from back in the day. I said yeah, I had, and then I’d gone to SFContario last year and listened to Jo Walton riff with Ed Greenwood and TNH and someone else about how different writers connect together for an hour, and just written down a reading list. This book makes me want to work on “Toothbrushing Club” again. Maybe I ought to pull it out and do a new draft.

“Last Call: the Rise and Fall of Prohibition” by Daniel Okrent. Social histories are so much more interesting than what gets taught in school. This book was funny and fascinating, all about the disaster that was the 18th amendment, how it happened, and how it was undone 14 years later. I wish it said more about parallels to the anti-abortion movement and the drug war, but I suppose those are inferences I can draw on my own, so subtlety is good.

“Ceremony” by Leslie Marmon Silko. Read this on the train on the way back from Farthing Party. It was a neat magic realism story, other than an occasional unsubtle rant (not all directed at white people). The structure reminded me of Catherynne M. Valente’s Orphan’s Tales, without all the signposts, which is to say I wanted to read it as fast as possible so I wouldn’t forget who was who. The character/POV I identified with the most was Helen Jean, whose description of her fellow young women in town was painful and sticking with me. The was published in 1977, so the main character dealing with the aftermath of WWII was interesting, because he seemed to have a lot of problems that I associate more with people coming back from Korea or VietNam. I guess war really is hell.

“Breakfast of Champions” by Kurt Vonnegut. I do not think I could get away with writing this book.

“Rampant” by Diana Peterfreund. Library book. Unicorns! The first chapter was totally brilliant. It totally did everything a first chapter should do. Throughout the story, there were moments when sometimes the character reactions seemed a bit random (Neal in the first scene with Phil in the office, Phil when she takes charge), and there are a couple of loose ends that I wanted tied up (where is Brandt? Where are these other Llewelyns? What specifically is the remedy? Where are the other hunters?) but overall it was a good read. Maybe all that will be explained in the sequel.

In process -- September 2011

2011-09-30T11:43:00.002-04:00

First Draft

“Fairfax”. Started month with about 22,000 I think. Now I have about 28,000. I also have most of an outline of how the rest of it will flow together, including an ending! I’m so looking forward to it!

3 Chuck Wendig things you can find if you poke around a bit here.

Editing

“Cats”. Did one last draft after receiving the three crits, and then sent it away.

Knitting

Morrigan (No Sheep for You/Frangipani). Finished the knitting over Labour Day weekend. Seamed it the following weekend, tied in the loose ends and blocked it. She is done, and took three weeks less than two years. Ugh.

Chasing Snakes socks (knitty/some divine merino in a color called Lead). Second done.

Loppem (Norah Gaughan). This is my anti-Morrigan, knit in fluffy white yarn on big needles. Two balls done.

Fair Isle Argyle socks. First started – KPPPM and some regia silk I had lying around.

Double Heelix socks. First started. I needed something small and simple, and after the heel is done, this meets that criteria.

Flash Fiction Challenge: One of the Ways I must have Died

2011-09-22T23:25:00.002-04:00

The challenge (100 words max, and the story has to contain three of five words provided) is here. I found this one particularly tough, I don't know why.

Another vamp swung down from the ivy covering Bishop's tomb. I threw my weight at her like I'd learned in self-defense class.

It was the wrong move. I was within arm's reach now. She easily dodged my fists.

Her fingers wrapped around my throat. She tilted it sideways to press her teeth, her vampire enzymes, into my jugular.

A berserker rage came onto me. I kneed her in the groin. I elbowed her jaw.

She fell.

My shoe heel made a passable stake.

Because of the hands around my neck. Last life, that must have been how I died.

Flash Fiction Challenge: The Distiller's Daughter

2011-09-15T23:19:00.002-04:00

Because "The Alchemist's Daughter" was taken, repeatedly. The challenge was here (it was a picture, you should go look). I'm clearly influenced by the book I'm reading about prohibition right now.

We burned the still with lots of people around. This way, it would be a story in itself, how it went up in a bonfire with all the eight families watching. On a hill above town, we'd spent the day making the pyre, and benches, and racks for casks, and torches to lead the way up.

Will's family showed up before the sun was properly down. None of them had even started drinking. They were here to drink ours, to keep their own for emergencies.

"What are you going to do, after?" I asked, handing him a mason jar with one of my father's exotic blends. They were brewed with rituals and herbs or animal bones, and I sometimes wondered how much he kept track of which family got what. I'd hoped he'd leave Will's family out of the experiments, so they wouldn't be as mad as everybody else. But Dad had a pretty strong use-and-them mentality, and no matter how much I liked him, Will was "them".

We sat down on a bench facing the fire my mother was lighting. The still loomed over it, malignant, too high to touch, shining bluish on a platform all its own.

"Probably go away," said Will. "School, or something." Something would be a job in the mines, enough to pay room and board and a little left over, to spend on liquor. It wouldn't be the same, though. No one could match Dad's interesting effects.

"You could come back to school here," I said. "You've probably not even lost the year."

Kegs were set up so anyone could serve themselves, and I figured none of them were pure, because Dad would be keeping the safe stuff for himself. The more rowdy things got, the more epic, the better the stories that would be told about the night.

Will slid closer on the bench and put his arm around me. He looked at me in the eyes like he used to, and his breath smelled just a little fruity. I knew he hadn't drank that much of my Dad's more questionable stock, because his teeth weren't rimmed in blue like his brothers', or ground down to the guns, like his father's. "Your father still has a stockpile," he said.

"A little." I wasn't in the habit of monitoring it. I don't even think my mother did, and she even drank from it occasionally. He made her special things, imbued with chocolate or cherries. "Not enough to last your family more than a day or two, I'd guess." They wouldn't know how much my dad drank, sitting in that urine-soaked chair very late every night, after monitoring the townspeople as they ran screaming through the forest.

"You could say something to your dad, talk him out of this," Will said, slipping his hand down near my breast. His mouth was so close I could have licked it.

"I don't think so," I said. "His mind is made up." There were clean brews he did, and sometimes he would give me a little of those to try. I would sip them politely, then hide the rest, save it up, give it to Will. I figured he would give them to his family -- his father, his older brothers, to try to placate them. It never really crossed my mind that he would drink them himself. Until he stopped coming to school, of course. So I figured burning the still would be good for him.

"He enjoys a drink as much as the next man." The bonfire was taller than Will, and very hot. When we had set them up that afternoon, the benches had seemed too far away, but now they seemed perfect.

"He doesn't want to get in trouble," I said. "Law men, tax men, too many people are interested."

"We can all keep our mouths shut." A band my dad had hired played off-balance dance rhythms on fiddle and banjo. I had to concentrate to pick out Will's words.

"He would argue we haven't already," I said.

"Just say he burned it," Will said. "Everyone here would testify." People danced, trampling the unmown hay.

"Not the same as a real story," I said. "This will make news." I trailed off as he kissed me, not that hard or that long, more of a promise. But he got up to fill his jar again. I could see he wobbled just a little as he walked.

Maybe my father had seen, and disapproved. Or maybe all the eight families were here. With a horn fashioned from the still's tubes and pumps, he blew a fanfare to get everybody's attention.

He wasn't much of a speech-maker, and maybe he was drunk, too. "Thank your federal representatives, if in fact you rue this day," he shouted, and pulled a rope. The still tipped into the bonfire. Amid hissing and crackling, the leaky bits popped first. Then the whole thing lit up.

Will came back over and sat down beside me, not too close, and no arm around me this time. "That's not how I expected it to burn."

"Oh? What did you expect?" I said. It was metal. I didn't expect it to burn at all.

"I don't know, colors or something," Will said.

I laughed as a small explosion puffed out, green to the fire's standard orange and red. That would be some of my father's cheaper alchemical pyrotechnics, but good enough quality for tonight. It even smelled like some of the things he'd sold to the townspeople.

"That's more like it." Will took another swig, and edged a little closer to me on the bench. I could see the wildness growing a little bit in his eyes. But what did it matter? It was only one night. I turned a little towards him, sipping my lemonade, felt my skirt pulling up a little.

That wasn't the real still, anyway. Packed with alcohol fumes, it would have exploded, not burned.

Flash Fiction Challenge: Revenge Served Chilled

2011-09-08T23:59:00.004-04:00

The challenge, and the other stories, can be found here. If you know where I got the idea for this story, remember, it's just a story. I'm told she's really very nice.

She wore hot pants, a midriff-bearing sweater, and ankle warmers, so we ignored her technique, put her with the beginners, and snickered behind our hands.

Weeks later when she asked where to get a uniform, we wondered if those were the only work-out clothes she had.

But she came to the next class in her new gi, and wore a black belt and gloves. She fought all the black belts, and won the dojo, without even glancing at the green and brown belts.

While she was fighting, we poisoned her water bottle.

In process -- August 2011

2011-09-06T13:03:00.003-04:00

First Draft

“Fairfax”. Started month with about 14000 words (48 handwritten pages plus the two flash fics). Now I have about 22,000 I think.

Editing

"The Rabbits". (short story) Draft 6 came in just shy of 7000 words (having gained 500), so I put it on OWW in two parts for the August Crit marathon.

“Chickpea”. (short story) I’d typed this (it came in just shy of 4000 words) back in July. I did a second draft to make the ending consistent with the beginning, and then wrote in a new character and added a proper ending, because it didn’t have one.

“Fairfax”. Typed Chapter 3. Something weird happened while I was doing this. I started to feel guilty that I was spending all my time writing, and none on “having a life”. It was a terrible moment.

The challenges

“Flea Market Finds”. As has become my pattern, I wrote the 1st draft on Monday (a holiday), then typed it up on Tuesday, edited Wednesday and Thursday and posted in the wee hours.

“Witch Trial”. Since I was going to Florida Wednesday, I wrote the first draft on Sunday, then typed it Monday. It came out at 2400 words. I did a second draft and printed it again Tuesday. Then, I printed it and carried it to Florida, where I did two editing passes on the same draft to get it under 1000 words. I was pretty happy with this one, which tells backstory for Fairfax.

“The Grand Plan”. I wrote this for the Crossed Genres II challenge, but I was at the cottage (vacation) so I never typed it up or edited it or submitted it. Maybe I’ll do something with it later.

“Amelia Earhart is Completely Sane”. First draft Monday, about 1600 words. Typed it up Tuesday, then edited it Wednesday and Thursday.

Being reviewed
“Karate Zombies”. My friend who read it last month asked for it back so he could comment on it directly.
“Ian’s Dad’s Ashes”. Eight crits now, it needs to come off the 'shop and have something done with it.
“The Rabbits”. I wanted to have some things up for the Crit Marathon, so I pulled this one together. I posted it in two parts, because at just shy of 7000 words, I thought it might not get readers if I asked for them to do it in one go. This story makes me nervous – to me it has contentious subject matter. So when I got a positive crit that didn’t seem to agree with me as to what the story was about, I was confused.

Knitting
Morrigan (No Sheep for You/Frangipani). Second sleeve, 16 rows from the armscye.
Skew socks (Knitty/some self-striping thing). Done.
Chasing Snakes socks (knitty/some divine merino in a color called Lead). First done.

Flash Fiction Challenge: Amelia Earhart is Completely Sane

2011-09-01T23:59:00.003-04:00

Back after a couple weeks off, with another challenge (read the other entries here). I'd meant to write about Lord Simcoe, who named lots of places in Ontario. But driving back from our holiday, in the very edge of the former Hurricane Irene, we saw the weirdest clouds... Thanks to Ed for research help.

"I wouldn't even know what to call those," Amelia said to her trusty plane. Much like the Eskimos and snow, she had something like 56 different words for clouds. Nothing from stratus to cumulonimbus quite described these log-shaped formations scudding below the smooth silver overcast.

"Multiple layers of cumulus," the Electra said. Her navigator, Fred Noonan, couldn't hear, because in 1937 no one used intra-cockpit voice-activated communications systems.

As they had entered this strange region of sky, they had dropped altitude -- 6500 feet, 6000, 5500, and now they were at 2000 feet with no place to land. Fuel was a concern. Going up, through the cloud bank, was not an option, though everything was telling Amelia she was going to be pressed relentlessly into the sea. Neither led to the sort of death Amelia Earhart wanted to be known for. In fact, she didn't want to be known for any death at all.

The wind was with them at least. Electra's frame creaked as she rolled like a raft in white water.

But there was nowhere to land, just endless sea. The storm was helping them make good time, but it was not helping Fred with the charts.

At least he only used one voice when he was muttering to himself. When she had the conversations with Electra, the plane spoke in a feminine yet vaguely German accent.

"I do not like the look of those clouds," said Electra now, softly enough that Fred couldn't hear. He'd just see Amelia moving her lips. He hadn't learned the trick of reading them yet, or if he had, he hadn't let on.

Talking to the plane was always more satisfying. They could always hear one another, and if they misunderstood, it was on purpose.

Amelia took her eyes off the instruments for just a minute. The clouds lolled like a school of whales. She could see six. What was beyond them was anyone's guess.

The plane dropped suddenly, and her stomach went up.

"Amelia, get your hands back on the wheel," said Electra, while Fred shouted the same thing.

"All right, all right," Amelia said to them both. As she took the yoke up again, the plane from took a spectacular dive. The recovery shifted their trajectory a bit to the left, putting one of the weird tubular clouds right in their path.

"You did that on purpose," Amelia said, much more softly, to the plane.

"Aren't you curious?" Electra asked.

"Sure," said Amelia. "But I'm not suicidal."

"Neither am I," said Electra.

"Back on course, please," Fred shouted. "We need to find a place to land."

The drop had forced them another 500 feet lower. Seagulls and albatross circled, completely visible, below.

But now they hurtled towards one of those profiterole clouds. Tendrils of smoke came off its back end.

"Pull up," said Fred. "I'd really like not to hit that."

"It's small," said Amelia. "we'd just pop out the other side." Still, she did pull back, and compensated a bit for the wind.

At the top of the little cloud, turbulence hit. Electra slipped sideways and hit the cloud wingtip first.

There was a jolt. A map flew from Fred's hand to paper the windshield.

"You okay, Electra?" Amelia asked, and this time she didn't care if Fred heard her.

"No," said Electra.

Amelia looked across Fred out the right window. A chunk of the wing had torn off. The flap hung loose. The plane would be a whole lot harder to control.

"Shit," she said. "Sorry."

"Shut up and fly," Fred said, and tried to take the controls.

Fortunately, they worked together well, and they both tried to do the same things. But still, the plane went into a spin.

"I don't want to die," said Electra. It wasn't just the plane spinning. The cloud seemed to be losing altitude, too.

"Yeah, me either," said Amelia. "What just happened here?" She was trying to get the controls going the same direction as the plane so they could get things back together.

"We hit the cloud, and it broke our wing," said Fred. They jolted, a soft jolt like hitting emergency foam, or a water landing.

"Does that seem right to you?" said Amelia. "Aren't clouds usually soft?" Soft wasn't really the right word. They looked soft. They felt wet, but without the surface tension of the ocean -- moist, damp, not hard.

"Stop looking around and try to save yourself," said Fred. He rifled through emergency gear. The engine had stopped, but they yelled anyway, because of the wind, and because they were used to it.

"I'm no meteorologist, but there's something odd about the way this cloud is moving." said Amelia.

They hit the top of it, and now they kept hitting, bouncing off it as it descended. The wing tip was caught somehow. The landing gear hit and the plane rolled in the air, then the nose, and Amelia would swear the cloud was hemorrhaging from its side. They had dropped another 400 feet by the altimeter, and the cloud seemed solider still.

Amelia looked up; the other clouds seemed to be watching, One had a giant eye trained on them.

"Whatever it was, I think I've killed it," said Electra.

They were maybe 500 feet above the water. The milky, translucent beast seemed to be shrinking as it pressurized, still as long as before, now like a rubber tube with plants growing out the end, a giant calamari. It was trapped with them. Both propellers had stopped, embedded in the beast's flesh, and they spiraled towards the sea. There was a mighty splash.

"Who knew?" Amelia said, as the cockpit filled with water. "Giant flying sky squid."

What I read -- Aug 2011

2011-09-01T13:35:00.001-04:00

“The King’s Peace by Jo Walton. I found this book harder to read than her others, mostly because of the sheer number of character names. I wished it had a map, because there were also copious unfamiliar place names. Also, parts of it were too subtle for my undiscriminating eye until the book was almost over – made it seem like there was no plot to speak of and no real bad guy until about 100 pages from the end. All this makes it sound like I didn’t like the book, and that’s not true, but it was more of a challenge than "Tooth and Claw" to get through. There were some really awesome scenes, really nicely worked.

“The Year of our War” by Steph Swainston. I requested it from the library because an article on her decision to put her writing career aside to teach Chemistry created a lot of discussion on the places I frequent on the Internet. The boy read it first (he told me I wasn’t going to be satisfied with the ending, which was true). Seemed more along the lines of “Perdito St. Station” than I’d expected. When I was done, I googled to find out this is an example of “the new weird” which is good to know. I liked it quite a lot. What an awesomely messed up main character! I loved his “I will never do cat again” statements.

“Norse Code” by Greg Van Eekhout. Also a library book, picked off the shelf because I loved the title. Frenetic. Everyone in the house reada this one.

“The Red Tree” by Caitlin Kiernan. Library book, picked off the shelf. Because I read her every day on LJ, I found the voice really easy to get into. She really has that “write what you know” thing down; this book seemed extremely personal.

“Changes in the Land” by William Cronon. Bought it as research for Fairfax, and also because of his blog post during that Wisconsin thing earlier in the year. If I can’t vote, I can vote with my $$. This book was really interesting, and I’m totally glad I read it.

“Rebecca” by Daphne Du Maurier. This has been on my list for ages, owing to the connection with the Peter Pan guy. Someone had left it at the cottage. I felt like I’d read it before, except the tidbit of information about 2/3 of the way through totally caught me off guard. I know I’ve started it before, don’t think I ever finished it. Lots of sections might have reminded me other, similar books – e.g., Jane Eyre, etc. I spent the first 2/3 of this book wondering if the characters ever had sex, and then the last third agreeing with the “bad guy” that when someone is murdered, the murderer ought to be brought to justice, whether or not the dead person was a bitch (in one character’s estimation). I suppose it’s just as well I didn’t grow up in such a classed society. The technique she used where the main character speculated about what other people were thinking, or had thought, was nice.

Flash Fiction Challenge: The Trials

2011-08-12T00:02:00.003-04:00

I might have taken this challenge too literally. The story is based on Grace Sherwood's, in Virginia in 1702.

You stood and looked from woman’s face to woman’s face. Though I was beside you, I could track your gaze by watching their flinching and downcast eyes.

“Sarah,” you said at last to a comely woman who stood at the back with two small children. “You know the trial will not harm the accused. If she be innocent, she will bear no grudge against you, because you let her go. If she is guilty, she will be hanged, and no harm will come to you.”

Reluctantly, your wife left your children in the care of a neighbour and stepped between the rows of spectators in the courtroom to stand below you, looking out as if she was accused herself.

Next you implored your sister, who instead took your children from your neighbour.

So you looked to that neighbor. Perhaps because she was your wife’s friend, she came to the front of the court to glance back at me as if I was bestowing the evil eye right now. As if that’s the way it works.

But willing were your brother’s wife (not the one in charge of the colony, but another, to whom I’m told you owe money), a seamstress who wanted to advertise her wares, and the wife of a local publican. My trial would give her a lively tale to tell.

The jury of my peers finally filled, you said, “Let’s get this trial underway so we can get home to our dinners.”

Your bailiff led me and my jury to a room, then left and locked the door. A small yellow bird perched at the top of one of the trees outside.

“Her familiar?” the publican’s wife asked.

“Or someone else’s,” your neighbour said.

“There’s little we can do about it now,” said your wife. “Let’s just get this over with. Strip down, Claire.”

She sounded like she was coming down with something.

I removed my shoes and stockings, feeling I was being judged for my housekeeping and laundry skills. I folded my bonnet before setting it on the chair. The other women watched as I removed my apron and overdress, skirts, blouses and petticoats. I stood naked, perhaps engaging in the sin of pride.

“Perhaps if you stood with your feet just so, and your arms up, we can get this over quickly,” said Sarah.

I did. They moved in closer for the inspection. None of them touched me.

“This could be a teat, I suppose,” said the seamstress, pointing to a blemish on my lower back.

“It’s just a mole,” I said. “I was born with it.”

“Witches are born, not made,” said your sister-in-law.

“Odd place for a teat,” said your wife.

“Witches are odd people,” said the seamstress.

“And this on her arm,” said the publican’s wife.

“A wasp sting,” I said. “I suppose it got some sun, and never faded.”

“It’s an odd shape,” said your neighbour.

My arms felt like lead.

“I see nothing else,” said your wife after a while.

“Me either,” said the dressmaker.

“You might as well get dressed,” your sister-in-law said.

“What do we say?” your neighbour asked.

“Perhaps if we had her familiar and we could see how she suckled it?” said the publican's wife.

They glanced at the window. The yellow bird still sat there, eyeing us through the glass.

After I dressed, your wife knocked on the door. The bailiff led me out first so he could keep an eye on me. I got back in my box and the jury of my peers turned to address the court.

“How do you find?” you asked your wife.

“Inconclusive,” she said.

You looked at her as one might look across the supper table.

“There was a raised mole that might have been a teat, but it was in an awkward place, so we could not guess the use of it. Also, if it was a teat, it was dried up.”

“Like my cow!” my accuser chimed in.

“There was an odd patch of skin that could have been the devil’s hoofprint, or a wasp sting.” Your wife finished.

“Right then.” You sounded like you had lost your stomach for the whole affair, but it was begun and could not be just abandoned. “After dinner, we will continue with the trial by water, down by the docks.”

I had a pleasant lunch in my cell, and then was walked to the harbour. My hands were loosely tied. Easily half the town was there.

The water here at the end of the dock was deep enough for the deep-hulled ocean-crossing vessels at low tide. At high tide, I could not have stood and touched the bottom.

“How does this work?” I asked.

“You get in the water, prove you’re not a witch, and we fish you out,” you said.

“How will you know?” I asked.

“Witches float,” you said.

“Perhaps a demonstration,” I said.

Your wife glared at you and dropped into the water.

Her clothes pulled her down, and her shoes. Men on the dock with long, hooked sticks poked at her while you yelled, "Hurry up, it's not her on trial here."

Ultimately two men in a rowboat fished her out. She lay in the boat, coughing weakly. I said a spell to work my hands free and walked to the end of the dock.

I gave myself a little jump. My skirts held air like a bladder, and I used my arms to propel myself to shore.

“She’s a witch!” the townsfolk yelled, and I picked up my pace. “Don’t let her get away!”

There was nowhere for me to escape to. Eventually my layers of clothing would fill with water and drag me down.

When I reached the shore, I let them take me back to my cell.

Sorry about your wife, though. I hear she never recovered from the water in her lungs. Your god took her a few days later.

Flash Fiction Challenge: Flea Market Finds

2011-08-05T00:10:00.003-04:00

For this challenge, once again I tapped into my twin personal themes of squirrels and taxidermy. Also, I'd had a dream with a girl named Ginevra in it, then I'd read this story, so the name was popping in and out of my consciousness.

“How can you say you don’t like Billy Joel?” Carl said, for about the thirtieth time. Really, he’d said it about that many times. This morning, at the Fryeburg Flea market, he had found a Billy Joel retrospective four-CD set in mint condition. They were on the third disk now, and he’d said it after every song.

“I just don’t,” Ginevra shouted. She was driving, and she’d always heard the rule was, the driver chose the tunes. Except maybe not so much in this case, since she had to drive the whole way from Maine back to Montreal, because Carl had no driver’s license.

“But he’s so talented,” Carl said.

“Not my thing, I guess,” Ginevra said. Carl had already accused her of having no taste, of being jealous of Billy Joel’s success, and of lying and actually liking Billy Joel now that she had been exposed to his complete oeuvre. Or three-quarters of it, anyway. "And what's that smell?" She rolled down her window.

"It's probably that thing you bought," Carl said.

Over the tediously dulcet opening bars of “Piano Man” there was a scrabbling sound in the trunk.

“Did you hear that, Buddy?” Ginevra said to the seven-year-old in the back seat. But he was asleep.

“What?” said Carl.

“Turn down the music a second,” Ginevra said. “I heard something in the trunk. The cooler could be leaking?”

“Not likely,” said Carl.

“Maybe it tipped,” Ginevra said.

“That would be bad,” Carl said, and without turning down the music he jostled his son’s knee. “Hey.”

The last time the trunk had been opened had been at the border.

“Be nice to the guard,” Carl had said, the whole wait in line until they had to talk to the customs official. “We have nothing to declare.”

That was untrue. She didn’t know what Carl had hidden in the cooler, but she hoped it wasn’t drugs. Personal electronics were more his style.

So when the border guard asked, third question, out of spite, Ginevra said “Just the dead animal.” She’d meant it as a joke. The whole thing was a joke, actually, a little bit of revenge for the Billy Joel box set. The taxidermy squirrel wore in a suit and breeches and held a driver mid-swing. “It will be a perfect gift for my dad,” she’d said. Carl had never met her (non-golfing) father, and wasn’t likely to after this trip.

“That is the most disgusting thing ever,” Carl had said. “It should be properly buried.”

“It’s a rat with a fluffy tail, I didn’t kill it so it’s not my fault, and it doesn’t have a soul,” Ginevra had answered, paying two dollars and sticking the squirrel in a bag with some Ken Follett paperbacks and a nerf-gun for Buddy that she’d already confiscated.

“It’s going to smell in the heat,” Carl had said.

“It’s a good thing it’s a cool day, then,” Ginevra had answered. But maybe that's why he'd gotten the cheap aftershave, which must have been expired.

So at the border, the guard naturally wanted to see the dead animal. “It’s taxidermy,” she’d said. He was a native French speaker; that didn’t seem like a common ESL word.

“Let’s have a look,” he’d said.

"What's that smell?" the border guard had asked as Ginevra got out of the car. She gestured at Carl. The guard smirked.

The air was blessedly clean out here.

She’d taken the bag from the trunk, grabbed the squirrel by the clothes and drew it out.
That had gotten a smile from the security guard. “Do you have any other interesting purchases you wish to declare?” he’d said.

“Just the gun,” she'd said.

He didn’t seem worried.

She drew out the plastic orange, yellow, and blue weapon, careful not to point it at him. You should never point a gun, even a toy gun, at a border guard, or anyone else, unless you mean to shoot them.

“A dead animal and a gun to declare, miss. You have a nice day,” the border guard had said, and gone back to his hut.

“Can I have my gun?” Buddy had aske. She'd handed it through his window but confiscated the bullets, got back into her car, and drove away.

“That was totally unnecessary,” Carl had said.

Now he was shaking his son awake. There was the scrabbling sound again. “Buddy, can you pull down the seat back beside you and see if everything’s okay in the trunk?”

Buddy did wake up. When he finally managed to flip the other back seat down, the squirrel hurtled inside.

“What the fuck?” Carl said.

“Must be the magic of Billy Joel,” Ginevra said. “He’s awesome enough to raise the dead, but I still don't like him.”

The squirrel was alive, like a zombie is alive, moving under its own steam and going for Carl’s head. Maybe it liked the smell of his aftershave.

“Ginevra, bullets!” Buddy strained against his seatbelt.

The squirrel in Carl’s hair chewed madly, and Carl screamed and flailed his arms.

“Right,” Ginevra said, and fished around in the map pocket, retrieving four of them and handing them back. She’d have slowed down the car they hadn't been in a construction zone with concrete barriers and single lane traffic that still moved at 100 KPH.

The first nerf bullet hit Carl in the eye, which is why you’re not supposed to shoot at close range.

The second hit the squirrel in its hind-quarters.

The boy had his range now. The third bullet hit the squirrel in its pouchy face, and it lost its grip entirely and blew out the back window.

"Why did it come to life?" Buddy asked.

"What was in the cooler?" Ginevra said.

"My aftershave," said Carl.

"Shit," said Ginevra. "It was strong enough to raise the dead."

They pulled over at the side of the road. Ginevra opened the trunk. The cooler was tipped over, the aftershave open, poured out, gone. The air was clear and quiet.

Out there -- July 2011

2011-08-02T13:42:00.001-04:00

Just one thing, "Bezoar", at its second market.

In Process -- July 2011

2011-08-02T13:33:00.003-04:00

First Draft
“Fairfax”. Started month with about 5000 words I think (12 pages plus the two flash fics). Each of those flashes is probably a chapter needing to be fleshed out (maybe 50% more? There’s no description of anyone, really). Now I have around 14,000, and I'm almost at the end of Chapter 7.

I want to shout out a little where the ideas are coming from, because by the time I have a draft, I will have forgotten.

My sister asked what was going to happen next after Dollheads.

ChiaLynn I think first used the term (in my hearing) on twitter.

I read http://truepenny.livejournal.com/ , where Sarah Monette reads a lot of histories, and commented once on the presentism (I think it would have been an example of that) in a book about the Salem Witch Trials, and how to the people living back then, maybe witchcraft was real and a real threat, so we shouldn’t assume they were all faking it or making it up. I’m paraphrasing here, and doing a poor job.

Back in the late 80’s I shared a kitchen with a guy who was doing a Master’s in US History at UofT. He had to teach an undergrad class, and every year he asked them not to do their major paper on the Salem Witch Trials, but of course some did. His problem was a lot the same as Sarah’s, above – that he wasn’t so sure there wasn’t witchcraft going on.

Research: how towns were governed in late 17th century Mass., Puritan architecture, Puritans in general, Virginia Colony, Colonial leaders, witch trials in Salem and Virginia, waterwheels, generators

Editing
"The Rabbits". Completely changed the hidden character because the way I was trying to write it wasn’t working. This was really part of the fourth draft that I started in May. Did the fifth draft to get it ready for the Crit Marathon on OWW. Might as well take advantage?

The challenges
“Overlord/Friend”. Wrote 1200 words on Saturday, typed on Sunday. Edited on Wednesday, edited again on Thursday, posted just before midnight.
“Naiad/Slayer”. Wrote 1600 words on Monday. This may be the first story I ever wrote based on a sock. Typed Tuesday, edited Wednesday. Research: names of lost creeks in Toronto. This story wants to be longer. If I had the inclination and word-count, the naiad wouldn’t be there when the MC got there. She might have friends. She wouldn’t be so easy to run through.
“The Art of Swimming in Armour”. Wrote 1500 – 3 pages before Acro, then three pages after, for about 1700 words.
“Stupid Beast”. This was not the story I expected to write. I thought I was writing about an eating disorder.

Ignoring
“Succubus”. Short story; working on 2nd draft
Troll.
Pampelmouse. I was out for my weekly run in Brookbanks park, and there were three red birds. I thought to myself, how odd to see three cardinals all together, and all male. Then I looked a little closer, and realized they were not cardinals (I’m not ruling out the possibility that they were juveniles or something, I know nothing about birds really – but they didn’t have what I think of as Cardinal color or beak). Some kind of parakeet maybe? They must have escaped or been liberated. Pampelmouse is coming true, which I guess is a sign that I should work on it.
“Imp Face”. Needs to be typed.
Pause.

Being reviewed
“Karate Zombies”. My friend who read it last month asked for it back so he could comment on it directly.
“Ian’s Dad’s Ashes”. (Three crits in July, seemed to like it)
“The Rabbits”. I wanted to have some things up for the Crit Marathon, so I pulled this one together.

Knitting
Morrigan. Finished first sleeve; started second.
Naiad/Slayer. Socks. Fin. A fun knit. I never thought I'd be saying this, but I'm good at kitchener stitch!
Commuter gloves. Fin.
Sideways socks. Started.
Also, I set up the knitting machine.

What I read -- July 2011

2011-08-02T13:31:00.001-04:00

OWW: 5

“Feed” by Mira Grant. Library book about zombies. I’m not sure what I was expecting; maybe less explain-y-ness. Quick read. The zombie science was great. Less developed, in my opinion, was the conspiracy. I guess that’s why there’s going to be a sequel. When I finished it, the boy wandered off with it. Mira Grant sure isn’t afraid to kill off characters!

“Puritans at Play”. Bought this as research for Fairfax. It had one of the most awesome one-star reviews ever on Amazon, that ran something like this: “My teacher wrote this book. He made us read it for his class.” The horror! It was a pretty entertaining read, actually. There was a lot I didn’t know, and lots of names that I will probably remember when I read further. I found myself referring to it, for example, when we bought Sam Adams beer yesterday.

Hmmm, not a very reading-ful month.

Flash Fiction Challenge: Stupid Beast

2011-07-28T23:24:00.003-04:00

The challenge is here. This is not the story I thought I was writing; I thought I was writing about an eating disorder.

Gerard was taking a shortcut home from school when the unicorn found him. When he saw it off in the distance, he thought it was a white rock, and threw a stone at it. He missed, and the white thing kept moving towards him. He thought then that it was an awfully clean albino deer.

As the creature got closer, Gerard could see it was mighty small for a deer. Instead of antlers it had a horn. Its tail was long and skinny, with a brush on the end.

Gerard picked up another stone and bounced it in his hand, but the unicorn looked at him with its outsized black eyes.

"Go away," he said, and raised his arm.

It blinked at him, eyelashes as long as fingers.

"No, get," Gerard said.

It lowered its horn as if to run him through, or maybe pay homage.

Gerard threw the rock, and the little unicorn, not even billy goat size, jumped in the air like a startled cartoon cat.

"Fine, stay there, then," Gerard said. "I'm going home."

He could hear the little thing following him, trying to match him step for step, breaking branches and crushing leaves.

Gerard went in the house and slammed the door, leaving the unicorn on the porch.

It was quiet out there until his little sister got home.

"Look what I found outside," Missy said. "It was sitting on one of the chairs on the porch, curled up, its tail on its nose. It's so cute."

The unicorn didn't not like her, it just liked Gerard better. It walked over to Gerard and nuzzled his thigh.

Missy giggled.

"Fuck off," Gerard said. So much for the family believing in his manly exploits.

"He's so cute," Missy said.

"I think it's a girl," said Gerard.

Missy looked under it. "Oh, I see."

She tried to feed it under the table during dinner, but it wasn't interested in human food.

"It's a magical creature," his mother said. "Maybe it doesn't need to eat."

It stayed away from her and slept at the foot of Gerard's bed.

He tried to lock it in the house in the morning, but someone else must have let it out. When he was going into Biology class, it caught up.

"No pets," said the teacher. "But I guess since it's a unicorn, we can make an exception."

"It's so cute," the girls said, thought the unicorn stuck close to Gerard. "But why is it so interested in you?"

"It's not," said Gerard. The unicorn had taken up a position close to his leg, away from most everyone.

"Is this your new pet?" One of the girls crouched down to scratch its beard.

"It's just following me," Gerard said.

The unicorn tried to bite the girl's hand and shied away.

"You know what we can do?" said the boy it didn't like. "Use it as a virgin detector."

So they paraded the unicorn around, and people it shied away from, those were the whores and the cool guys, and the ones it liked, those were the nice girls and the losers.

"I'm not sure it's accurate," said Gerard. No matter what nice girls and losers the unicorn let pat its horn or tail, it stayed by him the most.

"Yeah, really," said one of the cool guys. "What's special about you? Why does it like you the best? I thought unicorns liked girls."

"I thought unicorns were the size of a horse," said a whore. "Why save yourself for that? Only a two-year-old could ride it."

"Maybe Gerard is a hermaphrodite," said one of the cool guys.

Gerard spent the rest of the day using the unicorn to protect himself when he went to the washroom, in case the cool guys tried to do a physical examination.

The unicorn had to go.

He didn't go straight home. He hopped on a bus as the door was closing.

When he looked out the back window, the unicorn ran full-out behind them. Even on the highway, it didn't lose ground.

He got off the bus by a lake, got on a boat and rode across. When he reached the other side, the unicorn had run around the lake and was there to meet him.

Gerard got on a train and rode all night. But the train stopped in the morning and the unicorn was waiting at the station.

The station was by the ocean. There was no way the unicorn could run around that. Gerard found a container ship that could carry him across.

As they left the harbor, the unicorn jumped in the water and swam. It was keeping up.

"You going to just let it do that?" one of the mates said.

"Yes," Gerard said.

"Seems kind of cruel." Eventually they fished the unicorn out of the water.

It was afraid of all the sailors, of course. It followed Gerard around on deck as he paced about, wondering why he was here, now he hadn't managed to lose the unicorn.

Days later, the ship landed in Italy. Gerard got off the boat, the unicorn at his heels.

Standing on the dock was the most beautiful girl. She saw the unicorn and ran over.

"At last," Gerard thought, "This stupid beast will do me some good."

The girl had no eyes for him, but she sure liked the unicorn. "What an adorable creature," she said.

"It sure is," Gerard lied. "Loyal, too. And fierce. Would you like to grab a coffee, and I can tell you all about it?"

"I would love to," the girl said in her ridiculously charming accent, tossing her long, wavy red hair. "But I am here to meet my brother."

"Of course," Gerard said. But he hung around. How could such a girl, and a virgin too, resist the lure of the unicorn?

Eventually her brother came off the boat. The girl shrugged at Gerard and followed him away.

The unicorn followed her.

Flash Fiction challenge: The Art of Swimming in Armour

2011-07-21T23:46:00.004-04:00

The challenge is here. The title comes from a heading in a book that's open at the top of my staircase. Sorry about the appalling science.

It was a beautiful June day. The walk up from Pinkham notch was easier than it should have been. Chuck kept looking up. If India or China had found a way to stop the end times ahead, he wouldn't know; news wasn't getting through.

"Big change coming," said the man he'd caught up to on the hill. The man's pack looked nearly empty. Might as well eat beef jerky sticks and Mars bars when the end is a few hours away.

"Going up for a better view?" said Chuck. He'd abandoned not just pots and pans, but the concept of eating. He'd fasted before for longer than humanity had left. He'd trained at the same time, even. He wore everything he had: swords, knives, armour.

"Just thought I'd climb up." The man was far too old to be hiking. But if his knees gave out, he wouldn't be going down the mountain. If he fell in a crevice, he wouldn't lie there for long. "Might as well keep moving. What's the armour for?"

"Show mostly," Chuck said. "It's who I am. If I'm going to die, it will be be on my own terms."

"Me too," the old guy said.

On second thought, Chuck turned back. "Heading to the summit?"

"Nowhere else," the old guy said.

Chuck had been at a Buddhist retreat when he'd heard the news. They had all checked their electronics at the gate, so he and the rest had been surprised when the hordes started coming, looking for a place to hole up and some canned goods. Fortunately, a great number of the students at the school were there not so much for the meditation as for the Shaolin monks and the Kung Fu.

"Climbed this hill before?" the old guy asked, on a flatter patch. He didn't stop for breaks, just kept seeking the path of least impact, never taking a step up if there was a way around.

"A few times as a kid," said Chuck. "You?"

"A few times," the old guy said.

"As a kid?" Chuck said with a smile.

"You could say that." The old guy used his hands to scramble up a steep, uneven staircase.

Unfortunately, a Buddhist temple in upstate New York couldn't provide the best view of the apocalypse, so Chuck had headed for New Hampshire. When the gas ran out, he'd abandoned his car.

It had always been his plan, when he'd still been worried about more mundane things, like the zombie apocalypse (it had seemed like a more pressing concern at the time) to head to the hills.
Above the tree line, you can see the shamblers. And zombies don't do so well on scree slopes and boulders. His armour was light enough to run in, being mostly leather.

"How many years ago, the last time?" Chuck said.

"About twenty-five." The old guy pressed himself up with two telescoping walking sticks.

"You were what, fifty?" said Chuck.

"Sixty."

Chuck did some quick math in his head. "Shouldn't you be in a home?"

"Homes are for old people," said the old guy. "This trail isn't as bad as a lot of them. Ever done Adams? It's heartbreaking."

"Nope, just Washington, over and over."

"Typical," said the old guy.

Chuck matched the old guy's pace. He checked his GPS watch; at this speed, he'd be at the top with little time to spare.

"Why aren't you with your family?" Chuck stopped and drank some water from a stream. No point worrying about Giardia now.

"Why aren't you?"

They'd hit a ridge, and the going was faster for a time, but still they needed to watch their footing. The trees diminished to gnarled bushes; hundreds of years old, they wouldn't survive the day either.

The old man stumbled. Chuck stopped, but let the old guy keep his dignity, struggling upright with the aid of his sticks.

They kept walking. The bushes gave up, leaving grass, moss, and lichen. Running shoes might have been easier, on the rocks, than the old guy's old-style hiking boots. At least they would have been lighter. The wind picked up, but didn't blow away a heavy fog.

Above the treeline did not seem so safe from zombies as he'd imagined. The temperature was at least 20 degrees lower than it had been at the foot of the mountain. They could only see one or two cairns ahead.

Under his armour, Chuck sweated. He checked his watch. "Why didn't you go up the auto road?"

"Thought there might be cars." The old guy accepted Chuck's stabilizing hand on his arm as they jumped boulder to boulder.

As it often was, the summit served as a brake for a morning worth of clouds. The cafeteria was locked up, as was the weather station. All the other sightseers must have had the good sense to choose a shorter mountain with a more consistent view.

The wind picked up, wildly changing direction. The clouds blew back to the west the way they had come.

"Think that's it?" the old guy asked, looking up.

"No question," said Chuck. It was like a giant lens falling to the Earth.

"Don't take this personal, but I don't want to hold your hand."

"It's okay."

The friction of the atmosphere made it look like a ball of flaming dry ice.

How many balls of ice and water would it have taken to fill the early, cooling Earth's oceans -- a hundred, a thousand, a million? Turns out, if they were the size of this one, it would take about two. As the maddened hordes outside the pillaged grocery store had put it, the Earth had been going through an interstellar drought for millennia, and now it was over.

The mountain shook.

The wave rolled in, and Chuck lost track of the old guy as he jumped up to meet the water. His armour would be no help. "Wipeout!" He shouted, and took a deep breath as the water rolled over him.

Flash fiction challenge: Naiad/Slayer

2011-07-15T00:17:00.003-04:00

The challenge is here (it's to write a 1000-word story about the picture you can see -- do click). The title is from the socks I'm knitting -- pattern is Naiad, colourway is Slayer.

I was leaving the theatre by the back door after the show when a man loomed out of the shadows. It was late, it was dark, and no one else was around. Any normal person would have been startled.

But this man didn't expect any of that. "There's a breach in the sewer that used to be Taddle Creek." He was huge and yet hunched, with a voice like walking on gravel.

"Where?" I said, grabbing the door so it wouldn't lock shut behind me. My weapons were still inside.

"Annex," said the man. He smelled like road salt, even though it was July. "Bathurst, near Dupont."

"Right," I said. Those streams want to be free. "I'll find it." I don't know who these people are, or how they know where to find me. My theory is they're bridge trolls. But trolls are magical creatures, and those don't exist. But then, so are naiads, the bane of my existence.

The man looked relieved that he didn't have to escort me. He smelled homeless. Someone small like myself, I make them look bigger and even more fierce. If he was a troll, which is only a theory, he would need to get back to his bridge before the first rays of sunlight hit the downtown glass highrises, scattered everywhere, and turned him into stone.

I took off, through back alleys. I ran through an industrial parking lot, and rail lines, I jumped fences and climbed earthworks. It's less conspicuous than the road, believe it or not.

A ring of orange traffic cones guarded the spot where a storm sewer had worn through. You could fit four or five kids in the hole.

A naiad was out. "Daylighted!" she shouted to the moon like a wolf. The trapeze dress she wore clung to her butt suggestively. To a casual eye she could have been a drunk coed.

In the early days, before they cut down all the trees and fed them into sawmills, Toronto's naiads smelled fresh, like lily pads and watercress. Then people built factories beside the streams. The naiads smelled like sludge, unburned fuel, and industrial effluents. By then most of the naiads had moved upstream. Then people used the streams as sewers, so the naiads stank like shit. People covered the streams over, drove them underground, or turned them into real sewers. A few naiads got trapped inside. Their magic wouldn't let them pass manmade gates: bridges, culverts, storm grates, and manhole covers.

"Daylighted," the naiad said, and giggled, the sound of a burbling brook. She was slightly green under the streetlamps.

The crowd she had attracted were young males. It wasn't clear what they wanted; for now they were content to watch.

I moved out of the shadows a good thirty feet away so the boys could see my gear and my sword and if all was good take the hint and run away.

"You can't be here," I said. Behind the naiad was a parkette with a slight groove in the ground where her stream had been first forced to run straight, and then covered over. If she went over there, the whole thing might rip open. While ultimately that might not be a bad thing, Toronto wasn't ready for it.

The boys, who were harmless really, thought I was talking to them, like they always do. They held their ground. "We're not up to anything."

"My fight's not with you," I said.

"She's totally consenting."

"I don't want anyone getting hurt." I brandished the sword at them.

"What's it to you, anyway?"

As I moved closer, I nicked one on the elbow, ripped another's jeans.

"Easy," said the one with the bleeding elbow as if my attack had been an accident.

I raised my eyebrows.

"Let's get out of here, guys," he said, and backed away.

"What's your problem?" said another one, to me.

"She's serious." the one with the jeans was backing away too.

Then there were only two boys between me and the naiad. "She don't smell so good, anyway."

"Forget this shit," said one.

"Yeah, don't want to get no disease."

And then they were gone. Which is just as well; I didn't need witnesses.

There's no special bond between slayers and naiads. We can't sense each other. But somehow the people closest to the city -- the homeless, the children, the old people who sit in parks and feed the birds, found me. I see the problem. The whole city can't become an open sewer. Toronto doesn't need another cholera outbreak, not with our population. And naiads want to run over the tops of sewers flaying them open with their bare, un-pedicured feet.

I took kamai, right foot forward, hands on the hilt of my sword.

The laughter had stopped. She was all serious now. While she didn't have a blade, she looked ready to fight.

"You won't just go back in, will you?" I said. "I'll keep you company until they seal things back up."

"No," said the naiad. Her dishwater brown dreadlocks hung past her waist.

"You know what I have to do," I said.

"I'm guessing," the naiad said.

"It doesn't have to be this way," I said.

"Rivers need to be free," the naiad said.

"It will happen," I said. "Give us time."

We watched each other's eyes, seeing the whole fighter. I shifted my weight, looking for a chance to attack, pretending to leave an opening so she would move in. It's a trap.

There was a "shshick" behind me. The naiad's eyes glanced at the greenest lawn on the block as the sprinkler system came on. I ran her through. Naiads, not trained in zanchin.

I threw up as I pushed her deflating magical body back into the hole. That would serve as a warning to any other naiads who might try to escape this way. I settled in for a long night, waiting for a public works crew to show up.

An absolutely true story

2011-07-12T09:09:00.002-04:00

Sunday evening we were sitting on our patio having a beer because we’d been rollerblading and it was brutally hot. I was seaming a sock when a robin came hopping across the lawn. “Cheep, cheep, cheep,” he said. I figured he was a teenaged male, because he still had some speckles on his chest.

I said hello.

“Cheep, cheep, cheep,” he said, and hopped closer – close enough that I could have reached out and touched him.

“You’re too close,” I said. “You should be afraid of me.”

He hopped under my chair to the other side, where my beer was. He pecked at my beer bottle. He hopped over in front of my feet and looked at me. “Cheep, cheep, cheep.”

“Maybe he’s hungry,” Ed said.

I don’t approve of feeding the wildlife. Perhaps a concession to that, when Ed went inside, he got a slice of 12-grain bread, rather than the wonder bread we feed the boy. He broke a few pieces off and dropped them on the ground.

The robin ate one and lost interest. He cheeped at me.

Across the lawn came another robin, also speckled so maybe young.

“Cheep, cheep, cheep,” it said.

The first robin went over to Ed’s beer and pecked it. Now they both stood, looking at us, cheeping. One of them stood under Ed’s knees while he sat on the front stoop.

“Thirsty?” Ed said.

"I don’t know,” I said.

Ed left the bread on the step and went inside again. He came back a minute later with a pasta bowl of water and set it down on the patio.

The first bird climbed in, splashed all over the place, climbed out, and hopped off.

The second bird climbed in, splashed all over the place, climbed out, and hopped off, very scruffy looking.

And that was that.

Out there: June 2011

2011-07-08T14:16:00.002-04:00

I had to wait a few days until I managed to get my sh*t together, but:

“Bezoar”. Rejected (pleasantly) from market #1, is now in the queue at market #2.

I can see why Uncle Jim at VP had the "no sleepovers" rule. All the spreadsheeting in the world can't help me if I just let things languish when they come back.

Flash Fiction Challenge: Less an Overlord than a Friend

2011-07-07T23:08:00.002-04:00

The challenge is here: 1000 word limit, has to take place on the 4th of July. Chuck said it was probably not suited to FSF, so of course I had to prove him wrong.

Dina had plugged X-15 in overnight, so he wasn't there to help her get out of bed. She had to rely on her replacement hips and knees, for a change.

As she washed up, she asked herself how she would ever get her full mobility back if she didn't have to use it occasionally. You'd think a physiotherapy program would be applied to the X-15 so he'd gradually hold back the help until she asked. Or something. Maybe that's what the Anti-Robot League were talking about, when they had their radical meetings and went on the radio and the like, talking about humanity's over-reliance on robots.

"We're not against help," they would say. "We just want to keep our ability to think and act for ourselves."

Dina wouldn't have minded doing that some other day. It had been mildly liberating to dress, do her own makeup and fix her hair herself. But she was exhausted by the time she began the journey to the pantry to finish the robot's boot cycle so it could get breakfast started.

"Good morning," X-15 said as its eyes lit.

"Good updates?" Dina asked. She figured it never hurt her to be social. The robot was programmed to read her moods, which had only made her better at concealing them, or maybe faking it until they both believed it.

"Our programmer is very concerned that we understand about the 4th of July," said X-15.

"It's our nation's birthday, and I guess you're a good American, too." Dina paused. She followed the robot into the kitchen where he began taking fruit from the fridge.

"Though naturalized," said X-15. "Not born here. Not eligible to vote."

"That will change," Dina said. The line between people and robots was blending all the time, no matter what the Anti-Robot League said. She had to be more than half robot herself. In addition to the knees and hips, there was her heart, her kidneys, both wrists, one elbow, her collarbone, and her bladder and colon.

"The updates were not about that though, Dina," said X-15. "We are to ignore the loud noises of the fireworks. Our defensive mechanisms can't take over. A defenseless human could be shot and harmed."

"Humans still light off fireworks themselves?" Dina said, trying to remember how this had been handled in previous years. She'd had a whole series of X-units, and fireworks had never been a problem. Must be the demands of the Anti-Robot League. They made mountains out of molehills sometimes. "I would have thought that was a job more suited to robots."

"Some people like to do things for themselves," said X-15.

Dina smiled, and to be rebellious, grabbed a chunk of peach from under his arm. "Young people are like that." Her jaw was metal, and her teeth were ceramic. The robot didn't have teeth, or a jaw, just a speaker grille.

"I was wondering about these fireworks," said X-15. "If they are so much like guns, why do people like them? Is it the danger?" He handed her the tray with the fruit and the cottage cheese separated, so he could stir it together the way she liked. When he mixed it, it didn't taste nearly as good.

"I've seen countless fireworks displays, and they've always seemed very safe," said Dina. "I haven't been in years."

"I have never seen them," X-15 said.

"They put them to music," Dina said. "They shoot them from rockets, or off buildings. They have cascades, and giant rockets that explode like the big bang at the start of the universe, and balls of light that spin in crazy directions like sperms running away from an egg." X-15 laughed politely, though he clearly didn't get her joke. "The noise -- what I guess they were warning you about -- is always a second after the light."

"It's at night, then," X-15 said, handing her a bowl of medications.

"Oh yes," said Dina. "Well past my bedtime."

X-15 let it go.

Dina thought he seemed a little forlorn all day, wistful. Maybe she was projecting. The Anti-Robot League said robots had no emotions.

Over dinner, X-15 stood so politely, waiting to take her plate away, that she gave in and said, "Oh, let's go to the square at town hall and see the show."

"We'll leave just before sundown?" said X-15. She thought he'd brightened already.

"Earlier than that," said Dina. "There will be a band, and hotdogs, and dancing in the fountain, and cotton candy."

"Neither of us can eat cotton candy," said X-15.

"That does not preclude me getting it in my hair," said Dina. There would be no dancing, either -- not with her joints, even replaced.

"Should I bring you a chair?" said X-15.

They headed out to get a good spot close to the stage. The crowd filled out so X-15 had to stand close protect Dina as she listened to the band with her bionic ears. She glanced around at all the youths, wondering if she was the oldest one here. Other robots herded children, or held them on their shoulders. She even saw one serving what looked like champagne. It was nice to see them participating in the national holiday.

And the countdown began.

There was a bang.

"I thought you said. . ." said X-15.

"It must not be the fireworks," Dina said. " That would go against the laws of physics."

The sky lit with a series of starbursts, red, blue and white in the sky. There were more bangs, at least some from the fireworks. Green screamers spiraled away against thet clouds from previous explosions.

X-15 had been an easy target for the snipers shooting from the roof of city hall. He landed behind Dina. Triple cascades of fireballs shot up over the crowd. Dina ducked down, like everyone else, wondering how they were targeting just the robots, and whether there was human enough in her still to survive.

Navel-gazing observation

2011-07-05T12:55:00.001-04:00

If my dreams are any indication, the thing I'm most afraid of in the world is losing my purse.

And I've survived that, once.

What I read -- June 2011

2011-07-04T12:03:00.000-04:00

OWW: 3

“Brown Girl in the Ring” by Nalo Hopkinson. For some reason I discovered she’d done the MFA program at Seton Hill, so I got this out of the library. She certainly presents a grim view of the future of Toronto, but it was an entertaining read, and not just because I could visualize so many of the locations. The style, especially the dialog, was challenging at the start, but it was really well plotted.

“Behemoth” by Scott Westerfield. The boy got this from my mom for his birthday, and he read like 75 pages while still at her house. Win! Ed read it next (having finally been shamed into reading Leviathan). Finally I got my hands on it. Really good. Totally want the sequel. (September...)

“Aerotropolis: the way we’ll live next” by John Kasarda and Greg Lindsay. Recommended on Nicola Griffith’s blog. Got it out of the library. I found the introduction quite a slog, but by Chapter 2 I wasn’t having any trouble getting through it. I guess I’d gotten used to the style – I haven’t been reading much longform non-fiction lately. Some of the sentences were painful for me (too long, and the noun and the verb too far apart to make agreement sound right), but the information was fascinating. More about logistics and local planning than aviation. It makes me worry about Toronto. Though we have a different goal here than perhaps shipping stuff, Toronto is more about email. What this book needs is the far north (like Nunuvut) and heavy lift dirigibles. It did make me wonder, however, about whatever happened with Invest Toronto. I guess I’m not the target audience of whatever they do... I read a few days ago about someone (Philip Roth?) not reading fiction anymore. This book reminded me why I read SF – it connected to Snowcrash and Windup Girl.

In process -- June 2011

2011-07-04T11:21:00.002-04:00

First Draft

“Quinn”. Page-a-day, started June 1. On the 13th, I woke up and realized how the story was actually supposed to go, so I had 12 pages of rambling fishhead. I finished with 19 pages.
“Doll Heads”. One of them there flash fiction challenges, wrote 1700 words June 5 (Sunday).
“Axilism”. 1300 words, another flash fiction challenge. I wanted to write about 800 words this time, first draft, because I always wind up with 70% extra on these challenges. I didn’t meet my target, though the challenge didn’t actually have a word limit this time. I wrote it Wednesday morning at work.
“Familiar”. Weekly flash fiction challenge. Wrote about 2600 words on Monday. Why is it these 1000-word things always come out so long?
Steampunk Superhero. Weekly flash fiction challenge based on a true story, came in at 950 words! Wrote it on Saturday, typed it on Sunday.
“Fairfax”. Page-a-day, I might have just accidentally started a novel. I have at least 10,000 words plotted out, anyway. I’ll probably read some books for research for this guy in the coming weeks. Right now, it’s caught my imagination, and I’d love to keep the energy well into the middle. . .

Editing

"The Rabbits". Completely changed the hidden character because the way I was trying to write it wasn’t working. This was really part of the fourth draft that I started in May.
“Dowsing”. Changed the POV and added some logic to the worldbuilding, which made the ending work.
“Chickpea”. Typed – came in just shy of 4000 words.

“Take Down the Lot of You”. Chuck Wendig challenge – started with 1700 words that I needed to get down to 1000, and also make the story make sense. Not sure it was entirely successful, but whatever.
“Doll Heads”. Typed June 6. Draft 2 June 6 (Monday), Draft 3 June 8 (Wednesday), Draft 4 June 9 (Thursday) and posted. I had to do a bit of research on this one – puritans, waterwheels...
“Axilism”. Since I wrote it on Wednesday morning, I only had one day to let it “age” before I had to revise it and post it. It got longer by a couple of hundred words in the editing, but that’s because I decided I really needed to say who the characters were.
“Familiar”. I’d sat down at the kitchen table and wrote to the end, then wrote a beginning because otherwise it made no sense. I typed it with the beginning first, Tuesday. Wednesday I removed almost 1000 words and revised the ending. Thursday I got rid of the outstanding 650 words and posted the story.
“Steampunk Superhero”. Opened the file, just couldn’t work on it on Monday. I wasn’t ready, I guess. But that night I went to sleep thinking about the main character’s steampunk superpower. Once I had that...

Ignoring

“Succubus”. Short story; working on 2nd draft
Troll.
Pampelmouse. I was out for my weekly run in Brookbanks park, and there were three red birds. I thought to myself, how odd to see three cardinals all together, and all male. Then I looked a little closer, and realized they were not cardinals (I’m not ruling out the possibility that they were juveniles or something, I know nothing about birds really – but they didn’t have what I think of as Cardinal color or beak). Some kind of parakeet maybe? They must have escaped or been liberated. Pampelmouse is coming true, which I guess is a sign that I should work on it.
“Imp Face”. Needs to be typed.
Pause.

Being reviewed

Apophis. (on OWW – two crits from April... one liked it, one hated it) Third crit in May, didn’t seem to hate it.

“Karate Zombies”. Lent my printout to a friend who kept asking to read it. It’s really hard to hand someone something you know is partly flawed, without telling them all the flaws you know are there. He went on holiday to Belgrade (bastard! I want to go to the Tesla museum!) so he had it for several weeks. He came back, and he told me basically the best compliment you can say to a writer – he liked the voice. And not to wreck it, because right now it sounded like me, he could hear my voice, and that’s what made it good. I was so happy! He also mentioned a few things, like some of the transitional elements lacked information, and everything goes along for a while and then all of a sudden there are zombies (which goes along with an idea I already had that I need to make it clear that this is a zombie novel from chapter 1, not chapter 7 like it is now). Steven did a couple of things that constitute a good crit – he gave positive feedback in addition to negative (and not just that he’d gotten all the way to the end) and also, what was missing. It’s really easy to comment on what’s there. What’s missing from a reader’s standpoint is a little harder for me to figure out, since I know exactly what I meant.

“Ian’s Dad’s Ashes”. So basically I thought it would be interesting to get feedback on these flash fiction challenges, because I can’t tell if they’re crap or not, so I started posting them on OWW. Two crits – my favorite comment is “at least it has a plot.”

Knitting
Morrigan. 140 rows of 1st sleeve. That’s about 2/3.
Convertible-a-Go-Go Socks. Fin.
Naiad/Slayer. Barely started.
Avalon armwarmers. Fin.

Flash Fiction Challenge: LittleWatchGirl

2011-06-30T23:40:00.004-04:00

This week's challenge was here. I just noticed that I was at exactly 1000 words (MSWord says), so I guess I'll stop.

In Which LittleWatchGirl Plans her Obsolescence so She Can Retire

TrainMaster (catch phrase: "Keeps the trains running on time!") couldn't have sent FutureMan over to me to explain how the campaign was supposed to work because I was the best person to explain it. In fact I felt like I was the weak link. When your superpower is about office meetings, you can't be expected to be good with weapons. They had chosen mine for me thinking I'd be good with springs and winding.

Perhaps TrainMaster had heard that I'd asked SteamBoss who would be going on this campaign.

SteamBoss (catch phrase: "Black belches bad; white belches good!") had said "What do you mean?"

I'd said, "Is anyone I hate going?" SteamBoss couldn't see my eyes. Wearing goggles all the time protects your secret identity. My superhero name is LittleWatchGirl, and that's all you need to know about me.

SteamBoss had said "I don't know, who do you hate?"

He knew, of course. Everyone had by then heard the story of me yelling at FutureMan, "Stop being so tardy!" at least twice on a campaign a couple of weeks ago. And then I had told CoalTinker (catch phrase: "Darker, deeper, grimmer!") "I don't think I should campaign with him anymore," and MechUrchin (catch phrase: "Fly like the wind!") had turned it into a rule the next week, telling me expressly, "You aren't allowed to campaign with FutureMan," as if I needed someone else to tell me that.

So of course, I told SteamBoss, "Just FutureMan, actually."

And he'd told me no one had signed up that I didn't know about except for the crew from Canada of course, and whoever else from the continent, and New York and Chicago. But I didn't hate them yet because I'd never met them.

TrainMaster must have heard both these stories, actually, and now he'd sent FutureMan over to me to find out how to get to the dirigible airfield.

"We'll have to shoot our way in," I said. "We'll get to the gates and then all at the same time we'll storm the airfield. But the problem for me is always that I overwind my railgun in the heat of the battle." I actually wrecked the spring and now it's the punchline of all the jokes here in the clubhouse.

"How hard can winding be?" FutureMan said. "You just. . ."

I tuned out. Maybe what I hate is, (and I've decided I don't hate him--just the way he leans over the whole dim sum tray when he eats, and dresses so informally, and turns everything into a boring lecture) he asks the same question over and over until he gets an answer he can use.

I glanced over at TrainMaster, who was talking to MechUrchin over by the gas barbecue. This was a really bad picnic. I was freezing. Nobody cool was around, just a bunch of kids and has-beens who didn't really come out anymore except for the social events. Some of the kids were theirs. Maybe there was a connection.

Finally FutureMan wound down with "I don't really have a railgun."

So I took mine out. I wound it. I clicked the ready switch and shot a bullet through the announcement about this lame-ass barbecue. It was above a sign about the New Orleans campaign, complete with spelling mistakes), and I was describing the whole time what I was doing, on the off-chance that FutureMan might try to replicate it at some point with his own railgun.

"And here's the part where it all went horribly wrong for me. See, it says to wind to here, and I clicked here, and it didn't work, so I gave up and wound some more, and then it was over-wound, and I couldn't get it to release. But I see it's working now." Because it was. "So we shoot our way to the dirigible that we'll steal. MechUrchin can pilot it, and then it's like two days to New Orleans, and we make the big easy run on time, and then we can come back, having spread the word of timeliness to the heathen swamp people. No offense intended, if you're actually from the swamp in the future."

"No, I'm not," said FutureMan. "What about getting there at the same time?" He was clearly no longer interested in my railgun, if he ever had been. I released the spring so it wouldn't wear out.

"We'll all be flying down together," I said. "So that shouldn't be a problem."

"How will we meet up before that?" FutureMan said.

"We're all storming the airfield together," I said. "I don't know what time it's at, but me and CoalTinker and TrainMaster and MechUrchin and everyone will synchronize our watches off Big Ben, so one of them can give you the information."

"I'll just go with you, then?" FutureMan said. "I don't really keep time by Big Ben." That's when things went really weird for me. I mean, who doesn't keep time by the biggest clock in London? I always have.

"If you remember to set and wind your watch, it will keep time for a couple of days," I said. I mean, for a normal person. For me, that's my superpower.

"I don't have a pocket watch," FutureMan said.

"Why not?" I said. "How do you survive?" Everything we do is pretty much about keeping time.

"It just seems like it would be too easy to forget to wind it," said FutureMan. "There's the two hands, and you have to remember the big one and the little one and know what they're point at, and it always just seemed like too much effort. In the future, people will have digital watches that just show simple numbers. They'll be able to get the time from satellites, or sync to the atomic clock."

I looked at him, and for the first time I felt pity instead of revulsion. Why did he want so badly to be in the Punctuality League, when we'd be obsolete in his future?

VP interview! With me!

2011-06-24T15:36:00.001-04:00

Apparently you can read all about me here:

http://cathschaffstump.com/archives/2011/06/24/vp-profile-16-robyn-hamilton/

Flash Fiction Challenge: Familiar

2011-06-23T23:38:00.004-04:00

The challenge was here. My sister had read the “dollheads” challenge and asked what happened next, so when I was thinking about robots (and I hate robots) I wanted to find a way to make one in Bucklepunk world.

A familiar would have warned her before the man was in sight of the house. He'd come up the streambed, hopping one stone to the next, balancing in an imaginary duel. She didn't recognize him, but his fancy dress said he was official.

Abigail and her daughter Susannah had hidden in the burnt-out shell of their house, made not a sound as he wandered through the yard, poked at the garden, the foundation, the pottery shed, the wires she'd run to the mill to siphon power from the waterwheel. After a tense hour he left, back the way he'd come, towards the mill.

"We need a familiar," said Abigail.

"It would give us away," said Susannah.

"Not if no one recognizes what it is," said Abigail.

Always the familiar gave witches away. It followed too close, or looked at someone with just a bit too much perspicacity. Well, Widow Martin was having none of that. Now her beloved black cat was dead in the disaster that had befallen her house, she could start over.

The wires to the waterwheel were still alive, but they couldn't bring her dead familiar back to life. She had already tried that, affixing them to the dead cat whilst they were quiet. When the wire had hissed to say the waterwheel was running, her cat had not sparked to life.

"What is that burning hair smell?" Susannah had asked. She was collecting nuts in the yard.

"Just the cat," said Widow Martin.

"You're desecrating the corpse," Susannah said. She was trying to get the squirrels in the yard to eat out of her hand.

Abigail Martin was not going to eat her familiar, not even a leg. Not even if it had been a rooster.
One did not eat one's familiar. One buried it proper. "It's just an animal, now the soul has fled," she said.

"So it was in life, it is in death." The girl was half witch already.

"If my plan works, he will be in life again," said Abigail. Surely raising the spirit of a familiar and replacing it in its own body was hardly wrong at all.

She ran a string through the cat's nose and put it in the creek. The water ran hard enough to drive the meat off the bones, but not enough to wash the bones downstream.

Several days later, she dragged it up again. The little fishes in the water had done their work well. Nothing was left but bones and cartilage.

Eyes she had aplenty, so she inserted those first. She ran wires through the spine down to the tip of the tail, so it could swish again. Wires ran through pulleys down the back legs; tiny wheels fit in the knees and feet.

Susannah stayed out of the workroom. She was training the squirrel.

"Rodents make poor familiars," said Abigail.

"A squirrel is not a rat," Susannah said. "People think they're cute, on account of their tails. Penemue will go unnoticed, the way a larger creature couldn't."

Abigail didn't recognize the demonic name, but didn't look it up, either. If the rodent could be taught to bring nuts to the house, it might get them through the winter.

She tied the string of wires together into a large knot in the skull of the cat. When she was done, ceramic armour fleshed out the body and hid the wires. Demonic symbols shimmered red and black on the clay. A long fine loop of wire connected the cat to the lines that ran from here to the waterwheel.

The wire hissed back to life.

She watched the cat. There was nothing.

"Perhaps you'd like to try a squirrel," Susannah said. "Penemue has friends. With all your experience you'd be up and running in no time."

The clay turned white, and the glaze hardened, but no life animated the cat's limbs.

It was a disappointment to have to do a ritual to bring Metathiel back to his body, but she'd run out of non-witchcraft options. She'd sent Susannah to bed. The squirrel had run back to its nest in the black walnut tree in the yard. It wasn't a real familiar; it just liked the seeds Susannah gave it from the stores.

"Metathiel?" she said when she was done.

The cat twitched, the spirit acclimatizing to its new body.

"Metatron." The floor shuddered.

Not quite right. "I charge you to guard this domicile," said Abigail. “Let’s see how you do with that.”

Many hours later, the bone and ceramic cat still stood, at least. "Someone is coming."

Susannah was in the garden, coaxing her squirrel to tend the lavender.

The same smallish man again walked toward the house, moving across the streambed without a stick. Abigail came out the burnt-out side of the house to greet him.

"Your neighbor has complained about you stealing from his mill," the man said.

She glanced back at the garden, but Susannah appeared to have had the sense to hide. "Surely we can make a trade," she said.

"You have nothing he wants." The man was her age at least. He had a very large forehead, probably cursed. "He claims you're a witch, messing with things you don't understand."

She gestured behind her at the cat, now sitting on its haunches. "If I didn't understand, how did I do that?"

The man made a face, part apology, nothing he could do. "Just a warning, for now."

"Not witchcraft -- science," said Abigail Martin. A scientific familiar should be above scrutiny. "It’s not even an animal. It’s powered by the wheel downstream.”

“It’s not connected,” said the man.

The wires had fallen loose, and yet the cat turned its head.

“But perhaps I should take a closer look at this science, before I render judgment.” The man turned and walked off back downstream.

Susannah poked her head out from the foundations of the house. “Sure you don’t want a squirrel?”

How I learned to do Crow

2011-06-20T17:05:00.002-04:00

Crow is a yoga move wherein you crouch down and put your hands on the floor, shoulder-width apart. Then you put your knees on your elbows and launch forward to balance on your hands.

I was first introduced to crow when I was doing the Monday night yoga class at the Y. I, and most everyone else, would roll from our toes to our hands and back, never really committing ourselves.

Then one class I fully committed, and did it for about six seconds, before falling off onto my knees, getting some of my most spectacular bruises EVER. I was able to show them off for a couple of weeks. They were awesome, because everyone seems to think yoga is so gentle.

Anyway, after that bad experience, I was back to pathetically rolling from feet to hands and back, no commitment, no risk, week after week.

Then a couple of weeks ago I was screwing around at my Acro class, and the boy asked what I was trying to do, and I showed him, and he crouched down, hands shoulder-width apart, and launched into the pose, which he held for an extremely irritating ten seconds or so.

And that's when I was able to do crow. Because if the boy can do it, then there's no reason why I can't. It was all in my head.

Flash Fiction Challenge: Axilism

2011-06-17T00:00:00.002-04:00

The challenge was here. I found most of the stuff at the prompt’s link pretty horrible, like really women-hating even. And I only got to the end of the As before I found my title. This story may be offensive to some--triggering, maybe. But it’s the story I wrote.

It was Greer’s idea. He phoned me up. "Dude, we're going to have a rape gang down in La Salle Park."

Rape gangs hadn't really come up in grade 8 sex ed. Maybe Greer knew, because it came up in the grade 10 version. "You going to come by and pick me up?" I said.

"Nah, it's getting late," said Greer. "It's getting late. Meet us there at 2."

I threw a bottle of water, three apples, and three granola bars into my backpack, along with my cell. Greer never eats the apples I bring, but I packed one for him anyway, just to be polite. I figured Johnny would be coming with us too.

We met at the edge of La Salle park. If Buffalo is the armpit of America, then it’s not a very sweaty one, at least not in November. Flurries were just starting to fall when we set out to have our rape gang. Lake effect. It was no big deal. We're used to it.

On a good day there are lots of people running. You’d think, being the day after Thanksgiving, that all the people who aren’t interested in shopping would be out trying to burn off the calories they’d eaten yesterday. Maybe we’d come too late in the day. Maybe the weather had driven people off.

It can be quite beautiful by the lake. The running path is only a fence away from the water. We hid in the bushes to wait for an appropriate female.

The first one to pass had a running buddy, a man.

Greer was ready to go. “I can take him.” And he probably could. He was probably six inches taller than that guy, and weighed maybe 50 pounds more. If he kept growing, he'd be as big as a troll by the time he was 18. And the other guy would be winded, while Greer was still fresh.

“Not a good choice,” said Johnny.

“I’m sure a better one will come along,” I said.

And they were already past, so we would have to run to catch up, taking away our advantage, so Greer let it go. The woman wasn’t that hot, anyway. Too skinny. They both were.

"Do you even know what a rape gang does?" Greer said.

"Yeah," said Johnny. But he's even younger than me. I bet his testicles haven't even descended yet.

It was starting to snow a little harder.

"Her?" I said, about a solo jogger.

"Dude, that's a dude," said Greer. He laughed at what he thought of as a joke.

"Her?" I asked about another one.

"I was hoping for something a little closer to our age," said Greer. "Not like statutory rape, but maybe a coed or something."

"Only old people say coed," said Johnny. He was wearing a hat and everything, as if his mom had dressed him before he left the house.

Greer was just wearing a hoodie. It was a thick hoodie, though. And he had more bulk to keep him warm. Both Johnny and I were a lot leaner than him. He stamped his feet a bit, though. Vans aren't that warm.

“We’re going to have to move closer if this keeps up,” Greer said.

“What, out of the bushes?” Johnny said.

“Pretty soon, we’ll be able to stand right in the middle of the path, and wait for a woman to hit us,” I said. This was really boring. There weren’t many runners out at all. I took an apple out of my pack and bit in.

The whole thing was gone, and I was wiping my fingers on my jacket before putting my gloves back on before another woman passed us.

“I hate apples,” said Greer, mostly just to break the silence.

“We know,” said Johnny. “You’ve mentioned it before.”

A woman in a red sweatsuit came trundling along, more speed walking than jogging, but not doing too badly.

“Shall we go for that one?” Johnny asked.

“Not my type,” said Greer, who probably would have preferred the well-muscled skinny one who went by earlier.

“But we can catch her pretty easy.” I took a granola bar out of my pack, unwrapped it, ate it.

“Who brings snacks out for a gang rape?” Greer said.

“I’m hungry,” I said.

“You should have ate before you came,” said Johnny.

“Want one?” I asked.

“Sure,” Johnny said.

“You?” I held the last bar out to Greer.

He shook his head. “Should wait 45 minutes after eating before you go in the water.”

“I’m not going in the water,” I said. The air was just below freezing. Lake Erie wasn’t frozen yet, but the snow was starting to stick to the grass. I shrugged and unwrapped the bar, and ate it myself. You burn a lot of calories, shivering. You don’t want to wear too much, when you’re out for a gang rape. I needed the energy.

“Wait 45 minutes before having sex, then,” said Greer.

“I find that really hard to believe,” I said. “What about if you’re licking whip cream off her?”

“It’s okay to eat during sex,” Greer said. “Just not before. Like it’s okay to suck in water when you’re swimming.”

“We call that drowning,” I said.

“it’s an old wive’s tale, anyway,” said Johnny.

We waited a while longer. Visibility was dropping. We could barely see the path now, except when a person was running on it. Mostly it was men. We weren’t raping one of those.

The sky faded from light grey to a slate blue. The streetlight near us winked on and highlighted our position, so we picked a different shrub to stand behind. This one had no leaves, but people weren’t really looking around much as they ran anyway. I’d forgotten, since I spend most of my time inside doing homework, how early darkness falls this time of year.

“Maybe we should have done our rape gang in the mall,” said Johnny.

“You got any other food in there?” Greer said. He took off his gloves and stuck his hands under his arms.

“Just apples,” I said.

“I’ll have one of those,” said Johnny.

I handed him one. They were green, tart, and crisp. Also, very cold now.

“I hate apples,” said Greer.

“Want some water?”

Greer accepted the bottle and took a swallow.

There wasn’t much wind blowing off the water at this level, but the snow was starting to accumulate on the path. It swirled gently, and the chunks of snow got bigger and bigger, like the inside of a snowglobe.

Greer handed the water bottle back. “Let’s move out onto the path.”

If a jogger came, they would basically run right into us. We couldn’t see more than ten feet ahead of us. They would be crazy to be out running around in this, anyway.

“Fuck, I am cold,” Greer said after a while.

“Are we even still on the path?” I asked.

“Of course,” said Johnny. But there was no way to tell now. The snow was up to the top of my running shoes. My feet were really cold.

“Look, let’s give it up,” said Greer. “Come back tomorrow. Clearly everyone is afraid of a little snow.”

“Maybe they’re afraid of being raped in the park,” I said.

“Idiots,” said Greer.

I wasn’t quite sure what direction we were facing. Certainly we couldn’t see the water. I couldn’t see the nearest lamppost. It felt like we were going uphill, then downhill. We must have been on an earthworks surrounding the parking lot.

Johnny was in the lead, a dark mass in the near-dark. “Shit,” he said.

“What?” Greer said.

“We’re at the water.”

I stepped forward, and in two paces I'd hit the railing too.

“Fuck,” said Greer.

We turned around and started back up the hill again.

“I can’t see anything,” Johnny said, and stopped, and I walked right into his back.

“Well, don’t just stop,” said Greer.

“What direction do we go?” Johnny said.

“Keep going,” I said. “The water is behind us now.”

But after a few minutes, we could hear the delicate hissing of the snow on the water again.

“Shit man, stop leading us in circles,” I said to Johnny, but it wasn’t like I was like I was going to do any better.

“Hey, you got any of those apples left?” Greer said.

"You never eat apples," Johnny said. “We’re all going to die out here.”

I held out the last of the apples.

Greer took it, and I could hear the sound it made as he bit in. “Wow, I must be hungry, because this is kind of good.”

What Flows Downstream

2011-06-09T23:57:00.003-04:00

The challenge was here. I had the world BucklePunk in my head (someone had tweeted it in an offhand manner) and in my interpretation, it’s Steampunk populated by Puritans, who didn’t have steam power... so not steampunk at all.

“You should check the run down to the waterwheel,” said Cotton Brown.

Technically, that was Cotton's job. They had portrayed the situation as a win for everyone -- the mill got an assistant, and Cotton was out of the village, so everyone's daughter was safe. In reality, it was just a win for the town, with a spy at the mill. Nathaniel Proctor had never asked for an assistant, anyway.

He sighed and went outside. The morning air smelled like honey, and hummed with the sound of bees. Of course, bees led to screaming, followed by accusations of being afflicted by a witch. Everything was a potential plague in Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The run above the sawmill was pulled over so it wouldn't turn the waterwheel; he'd disengaged it before the storms had rolled in last night. With the run free, it picked up interesting detritus.
Once Cotton had found a twig shaped like the devil; Proctor had let him take it to the reverend, who now used it to frighten children and test witches. They had found apples, a shoe with foot bones still in it, and the nests of wasps and birds.

The water ran high this morning. Among fallen branches and dead wood, at least a dozen eyeless doll heads stared up around the figure of an angel and a jumble of toy soldiers. Proctor picked up a dollhead. It was surprisingly solid, but light enough to float. There was little question where they had come from. Leaving her broken, witch-afflicted trash was a new low for Widow Martin.

Proctor put the dollhead back in the run and went down to the workroom. “Just dig a hole and bury it all.”

“I can’t in good conscience do that,” said Cotton. “The devil is in those toys.”

"If the devil is in them, it's because he's upstream," said Proctor. If anything had the devil in it, it was those heads and soldiers. He hadn't seen Widow Martin sneaking around last night. Not for days, actually.

“Should let the reverend know about them,” said Cotton. “Taking them into town special would be the righteous thing to do. Or I could go myself, bring someone back.”

Proctor fully expected they'd be back right quick, too. No one wanted Cotton on the loose in town. After his time here, Cotton would be full of pent-up energies.

Cotton was a diligent spy, but uncreative. He didn't realize the lamps Nathaniel Proctor had rigged were not run on whale grease, that the rooms weren’t strictly warmed by hearthfires. No reverend would understand that water, not the devil, made the energy that flowed through wires and move the gears. Probably touch the wrong thing, fry himself, and then Proctor would be burning at the stake as a witch.

“A better idea,” Proctor said. “Let’s go upstream to the source.” Better that the logs pile up outside a day or two, than have visitors in the mill.

Cotton looked crafty, skeptical, but buckled his shoes and followed Proctor out.

Everyone knew of the Widow Martin, though no one had seen her this year or last. She had run off, rather than marry the man her son had chosen for her, and taken her daughter with her. They all knew where she was; it was just a matter of finding the time to bring her back. Obviously she was a witch.

It took longer than he had expected to walk up the creekbed. Cotton tended to get tangled in the vines, slip on moss, lose his balance on wet rocks. But after midday they came to the house.

Proctor had expected something larger, and probably less burned. God's judgment, no doubt, and clearly happened last night. The provenance of the doll's heads suddenly seemed obvious.
Widow Martin stood knee-deep in the creek below the house, picking dishes out and putting them on shore.

“Good day, Widow,” he called out as they approached. The creek bed was eaten away on one side of the creek, and Proctor could see why she had chosen this place to live, because the grey clay just fell into the water. Not a good place for a mill, though.

“Good day,” Widow Martin called back. “come to lend a hand? We’ve had a bit of a disaster.” She was a striking woman still, though well past her prime.

He waded into the water and fished out another doll's head, this one broken in half.

“I’ll take that,” said Widow Martin, and reached for the evidence. Proctor tried to show it to Cotton before handing it back, but the oaf was looking the wrong way.

“Big storm last night,” said Widow Martin. “Cleared the air.”

“Strange it hit your house,” said Cotton Brown. “Of all the houses in these woods.”

“Could be it hit every house out here,” said Widow Martin, noticing Cotton for the first time. She glanced up at the house, where her daughter must be.

“Would have heard,” said Cotton.

Proctor wasn’t so sure. He picked his way through dishes broken teacups and saucers in the rocks, and stepped out of the water.

“Surprised it didn’t hit your mill in fact,” said Widow Martin. "Thought the fire had travelled up the line.” She gestured at a wire that ran from her house down through the trees downstream. She must have traded for that, her dishes to the same smithy where Proctor got his wire, and the other tools he couldn't make himself.

“So this is my fault?” Proctor said.

“Your mill, to which that wire attaches,” said Widow Martin. “Though it only fires my kilns intermittently.”

She smiled. Any charge he tried to bring against her -- theft, witchcraft -- would lead to a charge of witchcraft on himself. He looked at Cotton Brown.

Cotton Brown, idiot that he was, missed the tension completely. “How is your daughter?” He glanced up to glimpse the shadow of the girl in the cottage.

Take Down the Lot of You

2011-06-03T00:26:00.004-04:00

The challenge came out on the Friday before karate camp. My first thought was “nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,” but that’s kind of been done. I was in the dojo, marching in line, and I started catching sight of my toenail polish, and the floor was terrible. And this year we didn’t have to cook for ourselves, but in previous years we did, and often people would discuss what food item it might have been that made them sick.

The first thing you do when karate camp starts is to deal with the floor. Savannah set pairs of junior belts to running back and forth across the room with whippy straw brooms.

"There's a better broom in our cabin," said Tonio. "You could come with me and get it." This to Savannah, of course. When they did pairworks this weekend, she wouldn't be partnering him.

There's a real broom in the dining hall," said Susan. "Wide, with felt."

"It's probably sticky with fallen foodstuffs?" asked Tonio.

They swept the leavings out the door, lined up and bowed in.

The floor was gritty and the air was damp. The teenaged girls had already started taping their feet against blisters. At least, as they marched in rows up and down the room, they were travelling with the grain of the wood.

Savannah's eye kept catching the glinting of her toenail polish, a metallic midnight blue. The fine grit on the floor felt like sliding, ayumiyashi, over the little arms and legs of beetles. The hunger was getting to her.

It was maybe 10pm when all 30 of them headed to the dining hall. The white belts had left training early to put out muffins and tea, apples and water.

Then they headed to bed in the rain.

Back at the women's cabin, there must have been a screen loose or a door open; at least fifty bugs flew around the light. Perhaps the 20-minute bug-killing frenzy got them all wound up. Savannah didn't feel like she lay awake for five-and-a-half hours, but it didn't feel like she'd slept.

"Leave me alone, I'm not coming," said one of the other women when they tried to peer pressure her into getting up for the 6am run. She never showed up for early morning training.

They swept the floor again, but to no avail.

"Maybe we should sweep with the grain, rather than across," Savannah said, but there wasn't time. Sensei had clapped for them to line up again.

The third senior-most black belt had been running with them, but never made it into the dojo.

"What kind of muffin did he have last night?" Tonio asked. There had been five kinds. Maybe one was bad. He stood too close. Savannah fantasized about giving him an elbow to the ribs, or maybe the nose.

They trudged through ninety minutes of training, mostly basics and self-defense, and headed to a breakfast cooked by the green belts.

"What's up with this floor, eh?" Chuck said. "It's like they applied sealant to it without cleaning first. What's with all the grit?"

"And it won't come up," said Savannah. "We've swept it twice."

"Maybe they didn't sand it," said Tonio.

"Maybe they sanded it, and didn't clean it after," said Chuck.

He went to his cabin after breakfast, and they never saw him again.

"Do you think he's been drinking the water?" Susan asked, back in the dojo for the midmorning session. "I wonder if it's potable. I always drink bottled water here, myself."

"It's town water," said Bob. "They cook with it."

After a light warmup and some kata, Sensei set them to pairworks. He threw Susan, who got up looking rather green.

"Grab a partner," Sensei said.

Savannah turned and bowed to Tonio, who was the only one left at her level. He took the attack position.

"Watch out for my junk," he said, but his heart wasn't in it. He kicked her in the head, as the black belt had done to Sensei. She blocked, grabbed his kicking leg and stepped in behind his supporting leg. From there, it was nothing but a hip flick to make him fall on his back. You wouldn't think that was enough to make anyone feel ill.

Still, before even lining up and switching positions, her stomach was rolling. She landed on her back, made a quick roll onto one knee and the other toe, then up into fighting stance, where she swayed. It was the spins.

She was breathing through her mouth. It wouldn't close. A bead of sweat rolled from her upper lip to her chin. Somehow her elbows rested on her knees. She listed sideways until her back touched the wall.

"I don't think I can do that again right now," Savannah said.

Tonio was beside her, also against the wall. "Me either."

"It was a good throw, though," said Savannah.

"It's a good technique," Tonio said. "I could use it in a fight."

"If someone actually kicked you in the head," said Savannah.

Water might help. Her bottle was in her gym bag by the door. She trailed her hand along the wall for support, only vaguely aware of the other karateka still tossing each other around. She got to the door without having tripped over her bag. Fresh air might be good too.

But she'd forgotten the five steps down to the path to the dining hall. She missed the step down. Then she was on the ground, on her hip, hard on the paved walkway. She didn't think she'd hit her head, and blinked a couple of times to focus. The building was up on blocks to level it out on the uneven ground.

The ground underneath glistened with jewel tones. She rolled onto all fours to crawl closer.

Bug carapaces, great mounds of them, lay where they had swept the dust from the floor. Heads, thoraxes, and abdomens, pincers and antennae, segmented legs in metallic forest green, turquoise, rich ruby red.

It must have led to some kind of parasite, maybe merged with a strain of foot fungus run rampant. During warmup their hands had been on the floor. No one would have washed them before last night's snack. Their gis had been on the floor, rolling around. They had pulled on belts, tugged down jackets.

Savannah wondered if puking would help. Well, it didn't much matter, because she would be doing it anyway.

Out there -- May 2011

2011-06-02T15:43:00.001-04:00

"Dolphin". Still at market #1. I need to stop being so disfunctional and figure out what's up with that.

“Bezoar”. At market #1.

In Process -- May 2011

2011-05-31T09:02:00.003-04:00

First Draft

Chickpea. In April I had written three pages. I’m trying to move to a different level here, where maybe my first drafts aren’t all completely crap. So I started by knowing how it was going to end, and having a story in my head. It went kind of to hell towards the end, but I can fix it in post, right? My draft wound up probably 3000 words long.

One Degree. At some point in April, I lost my notes for this, which I guess was a good excuse not to work on it. After Chickpea fizzled to a lame ending, I found my notes while doing some filing, and it became my page-a-day, which wasn’t what I had intended for it, but whatever.
Medusa. Another Chuck Wendig challenge, 1500 words max. Wrote a first draft Monday (May 17).

“Take Down the Lot of You”. Chuck Wendig challenge, 1000 words max. Wrote first draft May 30, wound up with 1700 words.

Editing

"The Rabbits". Could this only be the fourth draft I just did? Removed about 2500 more words, and it was easy, down to 6600 words. Then I did another draft and realized that until I figure out what the motivation of my “hidden” character is, the story just isn’t going to work. It makes sense to me, because I know what I’m going for, but it won’t make sense to anyone else.

“Bezoar”. The middle and the ending largely work, so May 2 I spent about 3 hours making draft 6 (?), where I had to fix the characters’ motivations, because they had none, and give them some immediacy. Let Ed read it, he had a couple of small comments so it just needed a smoothing draft (sometimes I wonder if he’s scared to say something mean, however). Did that draft. It’s done. I’ve sent it out.

“The Cats”. I had forgotten to check the weekly challenge, so it was Monday night and I still didn’t have an idea. I was just going to pull out Dowsing and edit that instead of doing the challenge, but then I came across a draft of this. I had 1064 words and no POV in the first draft.

Second draft (Monday): I added a POV, trying to do second-person to see if I could (maybe I should just try to write a decent story, I know you’re thinking...) and it ballooned up to 1200 words. I realized the story started on p. 3 (of 5!) so I moved everything around.

Third draft (Wednesday) I got it down to about 1046 words, and then fourth draft (Thursday) I cleaned it up and improved the ending. Then Blogger was down for many, many hours and I fretted about being able to post it, but you can find it below somewhere.

Medusa. Typed up Tuesday (May 18) at work, because I was off on Wednesday and I wanted to have something to edit on, because boy, it needed it. Did that second draft on Wednesday, then a third draft on Thursday, and put it up. As I said in my note at the start of the story, I’d like Medusa to have been angrier; if I’d done another draft, that’s where I would have gone.

“Dowsing”. Read through the first draft one evening before bed, to give it some thought. I’d had an idea about adding changing the beginning in order to give it an ending (because like a lot of these stories, it just trundles to a stop, and an illogical, unmotivated one in this case) but was afraid I’d wreck it if I messed with it. The first few pages aren’t so bad – maybe a little over-written is all, so if I could find a way to insert my change to the world without wrecking it, that would be cool.

Ignoring

“Succubus”. Short story; working on 2nd draft
Troll.
Pampelmouse.
“Imp Face”. Needs to be typed.
Pause.

Being reviewed

Apophis. (on OWW – two crits from April... one liked it, one hated it) Third crit in May, didn’t seem to hate it.

“Karate Zombies”. Lent my printout to a friend who kept asking to read it. It’s really hard to hand someone something you know is partly flawed, without telling them all the flaws you know are there. He went on holiday to Belgrade (bastard! I want to go to the Tesla museum!) so he had it for several weeks.

Knitting

Morrigan. 60 rows of 1st sleeve. The plan is, if I can do 10 rows every day I’m off (i.e., weekends) then it will be done by October, when it will be wearable. There’s no point rushing.

Convertible-a-Go-Go Socks. Finished first sock.

Cormorant. In April I had started seaming, but the bottom peplum thing was when last I counted about 660 stitches per row, so took forever. Done now. Gorgeous. I blocked it on my dressmaking judy. I love this sweater. Too bad it’s out of season. Might change the snap, but otherwise perfect.

Avalon armwarmers. On needles since April. I pulled out my notes and started knitting once I’d finished Cormorant (seems I’m a 3-project person).

What I read -- May 2011

2011-05-30T09:03:00.004-04:00

“A Book of Tongues” by Gemma Files. I bought this one at Ad Astra after hearing her read (I got it signed! I can’t read what it says!), and I started reading it, and OMG I could totally hear her reading voice in every word. And it was laugh-out-loud funny. Though perhaps my idea of funny is not everyone’s. One of my coworkers asked if I’d read “Not wanted on the Voyage” by Timothy Findlay a few days ago (actually, he sort of assumed I’d read it, which was true) because his son is reading it for school and having a rough time getting through it, because it’s so grim. And I said, sure, there are some dark bits, but it’s so funny! Anyway, like for example in this book one character is describing a horrific stoning of a presumed witch, and another character says “Only way, sometimes,” and I thought that was so funny! But I can see where other people might think it’s sick.

“Ha’penny” by Jo Walton. After I read this in January, I said I wanted to buy about ten Farthings and give them away. I gave one to my friend Lucy. She went out looking for this one, so I thought I’d better read it so I can continue to discuss reasonably. I got it for Christmas. I thought it was, if possible, even better than the last one, which had a few moments of awkwardness and a little bit too much twee (but was still awesome). JW did a brilliant job of the “you won but really you lost” ending here. I read it in less than a day.

“What I didn’t see: and other stories” Karen Joy Fowler. She’d had two stories in MMSKMMFHAM (that I read in April), one that I thought was fabulous, and the other that I have no memory of, and then the story in the YA edition of the subpress mag (I read that at work, giggling the whole time, so one of my neighbours asked me what was so funny, so I sent her the link, but she didn’t giggle the whole time, and she said “so how old was he, anyway? They never said,” which I totally caught his age, so I guess I read differently than some, and KJF’s rhythm works for me. Also, it’s pretty rare for a short story to make me cry, and “King Rat” did that.

“Half a Crown” by Jo Walton. When I finished Ha’penny, I requested this from the library. I found it a much more stressful read than the previous two, maybe because I’d read the previous one so recently. Also, the stakes were higher. I carried this book around for an entire weekend at karate camp trying to get in enough time to read the last 75 pages. She wrapped up the problem that started in the first book and gave me a really satisfying ending. I wasn't sure the schtick of having alternating chapters between Carmichael and whatever young woman is featured in this book was going to work after "Farthing", but it did. I love Jo Walton.

Medusa

2011-05-20T00:22:00.004-04:00

The challenge was here. I watched Tangled last weekend, and thought, someone should do a mashup, since both were about magic hair and eyes, but so different. If I'd done another draft, I would have made Medusa angrier. She doesn't come off enraged enough yet. But for now I'll just call it done.

She had been born bald. When it grew in, her hair started blonde and curly at the back, dark and straight at the front. The curls worked their way forward, and the darkness worked towards the back, and by the time she was of age, Medusa had a magnificent head of hair.

That had been a problem. Her beautiful long coils of hair had hung to the middle of her back, setting off her stunning eyes, high cheekbones and ripe, red mouth.

Because of those looks, she thought she could get away with anything. Anything in this case was stealing lettuce. The punishment was that her hair was turned to snakes, anyone who looked in her eyes was turned to stone, and living on a desert island. The Temple of Athena had a zero tolerance policy on dine-and-dashing.

Perseus was just a Greek prince fated to kill his father. He'd been invited to a theme wedding -- horses as gifts. He didn't have any, so he'd offered to get anything else. The groom had asked for Medusa's head. It had seemed a high price for a banquet hall dinner and a night of dancing, but whatever.

It had been a trick. Medusa wasn't even in Greece.

Poseidon had grown tired of the island’s erratic growth from all the people she'd turned to stone falling in the water, messing with the shipping lanes.

The old woman (one of the Hesperides, accustomed to working blind, since they shared one eye between the three of them) had come and offered her more salad. Medusa, tired of fish and seaweed, had taken the old woman’s salad and tried to stare her down, but it hadn’t worked so well due to the glaucoma. When Medusa sat down to eat, the old woman had caught her wrist in a manacle and dragged her to a boat.

They had blindfolded Medusa and brought her to shore, and trotted her through Greece and the Balkans to this German tower.

Every morning, the old woman would come after the sun was up and the bread was baked. She would shout up, “Medusa, Medusa, let down your hair, that I might climb your snakey stair.”
She would cackle, as if the rhyme was something clever, and add, “And make sure it isn’t one of the biting ones, if you want to keep eating.” You’d think she’d try to keep the poetry flowing. But no.

Medusa's hair was all kinds of snakes – cobras, cottonmouths, coral snakes. She'd tried cutting the python off, but it had been a mistake. Now the wretched thing was like a freaky 70-foot dreadlock. It would slide straight down the wall, loop its body into handholds and footholds, and let the old woman climb up like a marine.

She would feel around, touching everything, looking for a flat place to put down the day’s bread.

“Can you hear them hissing?” she would ask as if she had a familiar. She didn’t. Or, if she did, it was a ghost or a flea. “Coming closer. They always want to see how close they can get. Want to bite me, or wrap their coils around my neck.”

"You crazy old bat, do you think I would let them kill you?" Medusa asked.

"You couldn't stop them if they wanted to," said the old woman.

"Let me out of this fucking tower," Medusa would say, sweetness having never gotten her anywhere. "I preferred my island."

"Not the right place for you," the old woman would say, and snap her hand out and catch a cockroach. She'd offer the meat up to a random snake, regardless of the threat of poison.

Naturally Medusa wanted out of the tower. It wasn’t a particularly well-built place, drafty, cold in the winter, cold and humid in the summer, cold and damp in the spring and fall. The window didn’t close properly. The fireplace was full of rats.

But the snakes would not cooperate. It was only a three-story tower, and the snakes wouldn’t help her down. She’d tried tying bed sheets together, but the snakes had clung to the window sills. The old woman had confiscated the bed sheets. Now she just had a scratchy, moth-filled wool blanket.

So, Perseus. The Hesperides, the old women, three, blind, with one eye between them, would have told him where to look. This tower gig couldn't have been any great shakes for them. Greece had a way better climate for old, mostly blind women. They would have told him to polish his shield to a high gloss, and not to go for the snakes.

After the old woman left, Perseus shouted up from below, "Medusa, Medusa, let down your hair, that I might climb your snakey stair.” He didn’t say anything about the biters. He didn't use his fancy magical footwear, because that would give him away.

Medusa sighed and let the python drag her over to the window. It was the one that answered the call, not her. Probably the old women had trained it, feeding it cats and puppies. It slithered down, and weaved its head and stuck out its tongue. Perseus took a deep breath and pulled out a Bulgarian bagpipe. It was entrancing enough that the snake fell asleep.

The music made Medusa's even more foul-tempered than usual. There are few things more annoying than a bagpipe played up close. The snakes didn’t seem to mind it, though. They fell asleep.

Perseus stopped playing and did a round-off back handspring to avoid the python’s head, and hung onto its neck while it bucked and weaved and finally went back up to its mistress’s window.

“Interesting music,” Medusa said, as Perseus rolled on to the floor as the snake went totally limp. “Self-taught?”

Perseus groaned. His polished shield and sword rattled around, the cacophony waking everybody up. He rolled over away from her and whipped his sword and shield off his back, looking in the shield. He’d practiced this.

Medusa hadn’t practiced defending herself. She hadn’t needed to until now. She’d practiced raging. “Look at me!” she yelled. The snakes hissed and writhed.

Perseus leapt in, but he swung wild. He spun, his eyes passing hers faster than they could lock.
The sword flat brushed away what might have been a rattler. The shield pushed at the python's face and held it far enough away it couldn't get a loop to wrap around him.

“What are you waiting for, muscle boy?” She snarled. But he was expending all his effort trying to stun the snakes, not lop them off. "Here to show me your one-eyed snake?" She was trying to make him lose his head.

“Don’t engage,” he told himself.

“Look in my eyes,” she shouted. She stepped closer, and he could see green eye liner to match the green snakes reflected in the smooth silver of his shield. “Look at them!” She raised her arms to grab him by the ears and drag his eyes up to hers. She jumped, and got her legs around him, and her hands went for his eyes.

He stumbled back, squeezing his eyes shut because he couldn't see the shield.

She tried to pry his eyes open.

With a desperate sweep, he bashed, flat side of the blade, at one of the vipers, and then swung the blade across her arms, sharp side on. Then down again the other way, the sword went across her neck, more by luck than by skill, and because he'd been dragged down by its weight.

"Oh, very nice," Medusa's head said. The python was dragging it, bumping it along the rough floor, towards the window.

After he wiped his sword off on her old wool blanket, he put the head in a knapsack, still using the shield to see.

He tossed all that out the window first, and then started down the side of the building.

The field stones were smooth and tough to get a hand or a toe hold on. Perseus fell out of the tower and blinded himself on the thorns that grew around the base of the tower.

But he picked himself up and grabbed his shield, sword, and the backpack, and gamely started off again.

"Come on, bitch, we're going to a wedding."

He had to pull Medusa's head out of the magic backpack and let her lead the way as they flew back on Hermes' magic sandals towards Greece.

And they got there, and he set the head on the gift table.

"Fuck you all!" Medusa shouted. "Marriage is legalized prostitution, sex by contract!" That got everybody's attention, and they all turned towards her.

And got turned to stone.

"I'm not sure they wanted to hear that," Perseus said. Now that he was blind, he could see she had a point. But maybe she could have been more subtle about it.

Better late than never? (thanks to your cats)

2011-05-13T12:45:00.003-04:00

This week's challenge was to write a story with some cussing in the title. I seem to be a bit doomed with this challenge, as I didn't find out about it until Monday (my fault) and then Blogger was down last night. I pulled out a first draft I'd had lying around since maybe December 2009, and cleaned it up through three drafts. So without further ado:

Edited September 29, 2011: I took it down because I edited it and actually submitted it somewhere!

Should have been obvious, maybe I'm just slow

2011-05-03T17:25:00.000-04:00

I think I upped a level in story last night. I was really close yesterday, when I was walking to work after writing my morning page, and realized that a choice I was making with my setting was going to make my story work completely. Then I had decided to do a “final” pass on Bezoar, because the weekly challenge didn’t really speak to me. I was reading along, and I realized that a scene I was working on was “a character asks another character to do something, and then he does it.” No tension there. I needed some reason for the one character to make the other character do something, and the other to resist, but then do it anyway. And I had a throwaway line that I’d tagged about the setting, that I was really going to throw away, because there was no good place for it, and I realized that if I made that line into the tension of the story rather than deleting it, and moved it to the front, then my characters had a reason to do things, and a time frame.

Stories need tension. Characters can’t just ask each other to do things and then do them. It’s not interesting to read. I wonder if anyone on OWW tried to point this out to me, and I missed it completely.

Also, all those “maybe” phrases I write, and “perhaps” and “possibly”, those aren’t for the reader. Those are for me, so I know what I was going for, and I should take them out in the second draft, turning them into show-don’t-tell moments.

What I read -- April 2011

2011-05-02T12:00:00.001-04:00

“My mother she killed me, My father he ate me” edited by Kate Bernheimer. Yet another library book, this one a request. A collection of modern fairy tales. I’ll admit I don’t know every fairy tale on the planet, and in fact I might only know a couple of dozen of the more obvious ones, probably from Disney books and movies. I thought the Gregory McGuire intro was annoying, but then I read the first story, and I had to google John James Audubon, because I had no idea what he was really like. What I totally enjoyed was that I could chat about the story as being about Baba Yaga, and people knew what I was talking about, because these are all archetypes. That’s what (in my opinion) copyright has removed from Canadian literature – we can refer to the same places, but we can’t build archetypes the same way, because that’s “stealing”. The Karen Joy Fowler and Stacey Richter stories were standouts. A couple of the stories were just punishment.

And I see it’s been nominated for a Shirley Jackson award! Awesome.

“Kill the Dead” by Richard Kadrey. Library book. The boy read it first, in less than a day. Ed read it next and had weird zombie dreams. I didn’t read it as fast as the boy, but I totally enjoyed it. The plot and characters were easier for me to keep track of than the first one in this series. My only quibble would be that when Stark’s human half died off, I didn’t really sense much of a difference in the voice of the story, and then when the human half came back, the same.

“Napier’s Bones” by Derryl Murphy. Bought this one at the Chizine book release party during Ad Astra. There was something strange about the style or the editing that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, but that was far outweighed by the well-constructed magic system. Right at the start of the story two characters start sharing one body, and this was really interesting to read. The Billy character (I thought he was going to turn out to be Shakespeare, but I was wrong) seemed like he was in the car, in the plane with the other two, and then I would realize again that there were only two bodies, but three people. Worth the read.

“Dogsbody” by Diana Wynne Jones. This had been on my list for ages (I’ve read several other of her books, mostly the Chrestomancy ones, which I loved), so when she died, I requested it from the library. When it came, it had a card pouch in the front! It had stamps from around 1978 or ’79! The ending was awesome, with Sirius getting what he wants, for the most part, but not being happy with it. She so got into the head of what it was to be a puppy, and I loved how Kathleen was picked on for being Irish, which is so much how the real world works and brought into the story real world issues (I didn’t love that she was picked on, I loved that the children did not get along wonderfully all the time and in fact were quite cruel). DWJ really knows how to build a story to a climax. Ed picked it up when I was done because I’d talked it up so much, but he kept asking me questions like “what’s a zoi?” and “who’s the old lady?” Oh, just go with it!

“My Date with Satan: Stories” by Stacey Richter. I got this from the library because I liked her story in “MMSKMMFHAM” so much. I think all the stories but one were in first-person. I guess that’s her schtick. I personally have been trying not to write every story first person, because it starts to seem like an easy out sometimes. They were very entertaining and didn’t seem all that dated to me.

“Ash” by Malinda Lo. Reminded me of “Book of a thousand days” that I read last year, maybe because it’s a retelling of a fairy tale (in this case Cinderella) for a YA audience. In this story Cinderella does not wind up with the prince, but winds up with someone else instead. It had other fairy tales all worked through it as well, which was neat but didn’t totally work for me stylistically. Still, it was a quick, entertaining read. I’m starting to notice style more, and which authors’ styles resonate with me, and which don’t, which isn’t to say they’re bad books, and also stories where the author seems to be taking a risk, walking a tightrope between what shouldn’t work, and what does.

In process -- April 2011

2011-05-02T10:10:00.003-04:00

First Draft

Pause. I had a really hard time with this one keeping it on track. I knew where I wanted the story to go, but I just couldn’t get it to go there. It’s going to take a lot of editing to make it into the story I want it to be.

Ian’s Dad’s Ashes. Start-to-finish April 18, 2011, 1900 words.

Geese. First draft was 261 words and 16 sentences and took about 20 minutes to write on April 26. Since the target was 3 sentences, I had some work to do. However, my strategy was to write the whole story and “fix it in post”.

Chickpea. Short story, just started. It’s a post-zombie-apocalypse retelling of The Princess and the Pea. At three pages long, it’s still in the stage where I like it, before I wreck it by trying to write it down.

Editing

“Bezoar”. Mostly I carried this around. Since I restructured the ending, I needed to read the ending again to make sure it made sense what I’d done, and smooth it out.

Ian’s Dad’s Ashes. Typed April 19, 2011. Second draft April 20, 2011 (1400 words). Third draft April 21, 2011 (995 words) and posted. Ed read it, and thought it worked.

Geese. Over four drafts, I got I guess a story. Not terribly enamored of it, though.

Ignoring

“Succubus”. Short story; working on 2nd draft

Troll.

Pampelmouse.

“Imp Face”. Needs to be typed.

“Karate Zombies”. Another friend has asked to read it.

“Dowsing”.

One degree.

"The Rabbits"

Being reviewed

Apophis. Really did get on OWW. Ed read it, also. I guess things I leave on the kitchen table are fair game. However, reading the crits, I get the feeling maybe the purpose of my life is to make other people look better in comparison. Oof.

Geese and Ian’s Dad’s Ashes are both around here somewhere, so if you feel the urge, read and comment. If nothing else, these Chuck Wendig challenges are making me put actual stories in a position where they can be read, and are forcing me to finish things.

Knitting

Morrigan. Still ignoring

Doubleknit Fair Isle shawl. Finished the knitting April 13! Tied in the ends April 22-23! Blocked April 24! It’s really done.

Convertible-a-Go-Go Socks. I’m at the heel on the first sock, and also cast on for the separate cuff. I’m using Noro sock yarn, and the buttons are really unpleasant. However, I do have buttons! I bought them last week.

Cormorant. Back, both fronts, and both sleeves are done. I’ve started the seaming, and there’s a lot of finishing on it – the whole peplum is part of “finishing”.

Avalon armwarmers. I don’t know why I even put this on needles, as I’ve been ignoring it since. Wishful thinking, I guess. They’ll be great when they’re done. I did pull out my notebook to find out how I’d done them in the first place so I can continue in the same vein.

Went to the knitter’s frolic, bought yarn for three pairs of socks, a book of sock patterns, and some buttons.

A quick rant

2011-04-29T12:30:00.000-04:00

Two people at work made comments about the fairy tale nature of this latest royal wedding, to which I responded, “Fairy tale? Well, I guess you’ve got Camilla, the evil stepmother, but where’s the death, where’s the dismemberment? Where are the people trapped in animal bodies? What you really mean is this royal wedding is totally Disney.”

I really don’t feel the need to expand on that.

Spygoose

2011-04-28T23:40:00.004-04:00

The challenge was a story in three sentences. I'm not entirely satisfied with this yet, but it's due now. For someone who professes to hate the wretched geese that live at my office, I sure get a lot of stories out of them.

The gander's attention was almost fully on the powerpoint through the boardroom window, and it was only in his background circuitry that he heard Dan the maintenance guy (was power-washing the leavings of the other geese from the parking lot ) say “There’s something weird about that goose.”

Even Dan, who knew nothing about whatever widgets the company made, could tell what the gander was seeing was confidential and extremely proprietary, so he entered the specially marked-off protected goose breeding zone to try to shoo the gander away.

Fortunately, one of the goslings chose that moment to tug on the gander's primary feathers and led him away, making him look like a normal goose after all, as he transmitted the corporate espionage he'd gleaned to that other widget company down the street.

Ian's Dad's Ashes

2011-04-21T16:24:00.003-04:00

The challenge was this. I’d written the name Circe on a scrap of paper, wanting to use it in the story ever since I saw a commercial for the movie “Hanna” (my brain went on a long digression of trying to guess how the lead actress’s name is pronounced). And one of my karate buddies mentioned in passing something about carrying his dad around in a box, so someone else said “you should write a novel about that.” Well, there wasn’t really a novel in the story. But whatever.

Circe couldn't have been her real name. Probably the staff at the grocery store made their own name tags. She showed up around dusk.

He hadn't told her he was going to do it tonight. He didn't remember telling anyone else either.

She came to his home; he didn't really know she'd known where it was. She was all gothed up, dark nail polish and lipstick, a black wig, and a long black shift that hid her figure.

"Where are they?" she asked she pushed her way in.

He didn't know what she was talking about.

But it didn't matter, because she honed in on the box on the coffee table, like a vulture on roadkill. There was no way she could have seen it from the doorway. She slid down onto the floor beside it. "Can I look inside?"

"No," Ian said.

"I thought they gave you like an urn or something," Circe said. She might have been flirting with him, the tone she used.

"Only if you're keeping the ashes," said Ian. "You have to pay for it."

"Don't you want something to remember him by?" He couldn't see what her right hand was doing.

"I have plenty of memories," Ian said.

"You won't even have a plaque?" said Circe.

"It's not what he wanted," said Ian.

"He's dead," said Circe. "It's not about what he wants anymore."

"I know that," said Ian. His brothers hadn't wanted the ashes either, and honestly his family couldn't wait for him to be rid of them.

"I'll keep them for you, if you want," said Circe.

That seemed like a really bad idea. In fact, now he thought about it, her fondling the box seemed not so good either. He could imagine her trying to slip her hand inside, feel around for lumpy bits (finger bones? Gold fillings?) and slip them into her pocket.

"We should go." He took a firm hold on the box as she passed. The tape on the end seemed loose, as if it had been pulled open and then closed again.

"I'm going out to deal with Dad," he shouted downstairs, where his kids played video games, and upstairs, where his wife might be reading or doing her nails.

There were no sidewalks out here in the suburbs. They walked on the side of the street that didn’t have streetlights.

"Tell me about your dad," said Circe.

"You met him," said Ian. The box wasn't heavy, but it was awkward to carry. He shifted it to his other arm, his other hip.

"I checked out his groceries," said Circe. "It's not a time for meaningful conversations."

The subdivision ended in a ravine. The paved paths down were not maintained in winter, or at nighttime either.

"If he knew you were down here with me this late at night, what would he have said?" Circe asked. "Do it in his voice, as if he's saying it from the box."

That seemed weird, but Ian played along. "Don't stay out too late. Make sure you're properly equipped. Remember to keep your mobile phone on."

"Your dad was old," Circe agreed.

"He was senile," said Ian. "He'd still be alive, if we'd put him in a home." It was a grisly way to die, falling, breaking his hip and bleeding out for two days. The cantankerous old bastard had refused to carry a cell phone, or have meals on wheels or an alarm bracelet.

"What are we going to do with him now?" At the bottom of the ravine, another path ran along the waterway. Trees loomed over the path blacker than the sky.

"Strew his ashes in the river, I think," Ian said.

A dog walker walked by.

"Did he like the river?" Circe asked.

"Did he like anything?" Ian answered.

"Chunky peanut butter and 12-grain bread," said Circe. "Bananas and many flavours of canned soup."

The path ran close to the river's edge here. A breeze rustled willow branches over the surface of the water.

"Now we're here, I feel like I should have prepared a speech or something."

"I could say a few words," Circe said.

"I'd prefer that you didn't," said Ian.

She spoke anyway, and not in English.

He should have stopped right then, but having the ashes around the house was giving everyone the willies.

He pulled a plastic-wrapped pouch out of the box and fumbled around. Finally he got his thumbnail in a pinprick and ripped it open. At least he hadn't had to resort to his teeth.

Her voice rose. She raised her arms to salute the new moon.

He dumped the ashes out. There was barely enough light to see them hit the surface. It would have been better to have chosen a more neutral day in the lunar cycle.

The ashes didn't sink.

Behind Ian, Circe laughed.

The ashes swirled around an eddy in the current. Then, as a whole, the grayish mass lifted like the opposite of a collapsing bridge, one end first, out of the water. The vague form of a body was there. One shoulder clung to the head as if the body parts had melded in the crematorium.

"Reconstitutes itself, just add water." Circe probably didn't hear him say it.

"Doctor Watson, I command you!" Circe moved forward, to the edge of the water, leaned over the water, stretched her arm out to the -- what was it, a ghost?

She didn't overbalance. Ian's father's ashes pushed her. With a thunk, not a splash,

Circe was in the water. As she fell, she hit the thing that was Ian's father. It disintegrated.

Her heavy boots must have dragged her down. If Ian had dived after her, he couldn't see where she was. The current was fast. He heard her struggle for a moment, and then she was gone.

Ian walked back up the path, through the subdivision, wondering if any of his neighbours had seen them walk this way earlier.

In which I leave the house!

2011-04-15T10:20:00.004-04:00

Last weekend was Ad Astra, what I think of as my “home CON” since it’s the first one I ever went to, and I can ride my bike to it. Though to get there Saturday morning I rode through Charles Sauriol Park, and the hill at the south end coming out to Winford Drive is killer, and I wouldn’t want to do it in the rain. It’s paved like a real road, but not maintained, and extremely steep. I was worried about losing traction the whole way up, a feeling not improved by the pine needles strewn about in patches. I didn’t ride back the same way, because I’m chicken and didn’t want to go down that hill.

Anyway, I went to three panels on Friday (weapons check guy, Where do ideas come from, and How will you survive the apocalypse). I was surprised how unprotective the ideas people were -- they talked about ideas they were still working on that they hadn’t managed to get to work yet, that they still wanted to use. But I guess ideas really are a dime a dozen, and it’s what you do with them that counts.

Saturday I went to Surviving your first con, Editing anthologies, and Marketing and self-promotion, then I went home and got the boy and we toured the dealer room (I hate the dealer rooms, and I hate saying that, but it’s really stressful for me when people try to make me buy their stuff) and the art show, and then a show about fighting in the middle ages, which was great. Then we went to something about the history of SF that the boy found incredibly boring, that ended with five minutes of crazy about peak oil. Then we went to our usual Saturday evening restaurant. I took Ed and the boy home, but the hydro was out so I couldn’t get my car in the parking garage, so I went back and wandered into the Chizine book release party, which turned out to actually be fun. I saw Peter Watts’ leg. (I must actually thank the anonymous person who, when I said “Oh my god, it’s Peter Watts! He can walk around” basically pushed me in Peter’s direction and said “Let me introduce you to him. Peter, this is a fan” and then disappeared. I saw the awesome flesh wound and told him the boy says “Starfish” should be “Sea Star”.) I bought some books. I wandered into SFContario’s party and looked at InterWeave Knits Spring 2011 with someone who was doing a really nice counterpane tunic from that, and then I went home. The hydro was on again so I could get in the parking garage. Yay!

Sunday I listened to people talk about why professionalism is important, then how to sell your first novel, then Ellen Datlow, Stephen Jones and Don Hutchinson riffing in a freeform manner, then editing a novel.

And that was what I did last weekend.

In Process -- March 2011

2011-04-06T11:44:00.005-04:00

First Draft

Limering. Page-a-day, 4000 words, finished 29 Mar.

One Degree. I mentioned last month someone’s process on OWW, where they had blocks of exposition and action and dialog splines, and I wanted to try that. But first I needed an outline and some character descriptions. So this is maybe 100 words of notes.

Pause. Page-a-day, just started. Seems to be about geese, to some extent.

Editing

"The Rabbits". Tried to read it, couldn’t.

“Bezoar”. I thought I was almost done, and was just being lame and sitting on the story. I’d read the feedback (again) that I got on OWW last year, and then when I sat down for a “final read-through, clean up and send out,” things did not go as planned. I wound up rewriting the beginning and the ending, leaving the middle pretty much intact. I need at least one more draft again, mostly to look at the ending, which I think I’ve cut too since I moved two pages against each other.

Apophis. Fourth draft done. Watched a documentary about asteroids and realized they don’t run into each other that often, so I had to rewrite the beginning. That was the fifth draft, and whene the story found some structure. I read it again and found myself just making formatting changes and the like, so it has to move on. I need to get it on OWW, maybe tonight.

Ignoring

“Succubus”.
Troll.
Pampelmouse.
“Imp Face”. Needs to be typed.
“Karate Zombies”.
“Dowsing”.

Being reviewed

Apophis, extremely soon, I hope. And then Rabbits. I need to learn to let go. And take risks. What’s the worst that will happen – people will say it’s crap?

Knitting

Morrigan. Still ignoring. Bought the matching “leather” jacket to go with it, which is problematic. That was supposed to be my reward when I finished it, or sold a novel. Oops. Perhaps I am a “cookies, and then I’ll have to work” person, rather than a “I can have a cookie after I work” person after all.

Doubleknit Fair Isle shawl. One day I decided I wanted to start Cormorant (below), and went looking for my US8 straights. They were stuck in this, so I did one row to put the shawl on the circ where it needed to go. And wow, that let me lay the thing out, and it looked awesome. That weekend I did 21 more rows. Now, one side is done and I have 61 rows on the other, then all the danglers and it’s done.

Convertible-a-Go-Go Socks. Needed something small and portable to take to band practice. Barely started.

Cormorant. Needed something mindless for when watching documentaries about asteroids. Also, if I finish three large projects, all the yarn in boxes on the floor will be used up, and that’s a good goal. (My other goal is to get the five cones off the bookshelf, and my stretch goal is to use up the massive bag of sock yarn.) Back and fronts done, first sleeve started.

Avalon armwarmers. I’d taken Avalon (a hooded shrug and matching tank) apart last year, since I’d never worn it and was never going to. But I hadn’t finished unraveling the yarn, because unraveling fair isle is unpleasant. The “leather” jacket I bought (see above) has ¾ sleeves, and I thought I should make some armwarmers to go with it. Since my theme this year is dark green, I picked up what was left of Avalon’s sleeves and started knitting them into these.

What I read -- March 2011

2011-03-29T10:22:00.006-04:00

Considering what I'm reading now has 453 pages to go, it's unlikely I'll finish anything else in March, so I'll just post this now. Mid-month saw me go to the library one evening and take out two books, having already started Leviathan, and then discovering that I had two more waiting for me in the holds system. And then another one appeared after I'd read two of them. So I finished more books than usual.

“World War Z” by Max Brooks. Library book. The Z stands for zombie, of course. This was a good resource for me for thinking about the science of my zombie novel. Also, good for looking at alternative ways of organizing a narrative. This is a series of interviews with people who were involved in different ways with the zombie war, so really it’s a collection of linked short stories.

“Mockingjay” by Suzanne Collins. I had to take the boy to an appointment and didn’t want to carry around the big, heavy geology book, so I grabbed this from the pile. Everyone else in the family had read it already. It sucked me in so fast! There was a point about a hundred pages from the end where I was kind of bored, but the ending was right, the Snow/Coin thing worked, and man, I totally stopped liking Gale.

“Leviathan” by Scott Westerfield. The boy got this for Christmas, and when I’d finished Mockingjay, he suggested I read this. The opening is fabulous, with Alek being incredibly gullible and the POV is very close, so I was kind of yelling at him. Illustrations were wonderful in a book like this. There was a spot about halfway through that I found so stressful I almost put the book down (Alek being really stupid and gullible again), but I pushed through, and it was totally worth it. The tension between the characters was great, with both Alek and Deryn having really complex characters.

“Shades of Milk and Honey” by Mary Robinette Kowal. Library book I’d requested. It was a very quick, easy read that totally paid homage to the whole Jane Austen thing, where the main character needs to get married but has few prospects, only to find she had many. I loved the way Jane thinks Melody is totally more likely to make a good match, not recognizing that people are totally drawn to her talents, and that Melody is wholly aware that beauty fades, but talentless is forever. Jane is another fabulous unreliable narrator.

“White Cat” by Holly Black. Library book I picked up because it was on the YA feature shelf. Reading this right after Shades of Milk and Honey, I was tempted to compare and contrast the magic systems. You know, a high school English essay question “both books insert magic systems into a ‘real world’ environment. Compare and contrast.” What makes a magic system good, I’d say in these books, is immediate personal consequence. Also, consistency. These two books were about small people within the system, rather than top dogs. I just read about the follow-up novel in Locus, so I'll need to look for that...

“Liar” by Justine Larbalestier. Library book. Back when for a few short months Toronto had a McNally Robinson bookstore over at Don Mills Centre, I’d read the first 30 pages or so, so when I saw it at the library, naturally I picked it up. Wow. I’m really glad I hadn’t read any spoilers for this book, because it would have totally ruined the effect. I’m glad there was no back copy, and the flap copy was vague. This book was brilliantly executed. About 50 pages in, I was afraid the big lie was going to be something lame, like Zach wasn’t really dead or something. The twist was so much more interesting than that. And I would have found a white person on the cover to be incredibly disingenuous. Like, who the heck is that a picture of? Also, some of the issues JL raises in this story are issues I wonder about myself. Like, why is it always the girl’s fault when something goes horribly wrong? I mean, in this case... but still.

Maybe I should change the tagline here

2011-03-24T13:05:00.003-04:00

Last night while I was supposed to be editing Apophis for I don't know, the sixth or seventh time (I'm not sure it works, but I'm down to messing with the formatting now, so it's time to put it on OWW and hide under my desk), I wrote a post on the bottom of the last page. And then I packed the wrong story in my lunchbag! I guess I'm just meant to work on Bezoar today, that's all.

Anyway, this leaves me writing my post from my head, which never goes well, or waiting and doing it later, which never gets done. So here goes.

Last night I received the March Locus in the mail (which was a good thing, because it encouraged me to finish reading the February Locus, which had been sitting on the kitchen table for about 28 days, and so I read the Sharyn November piece, which made me want to work on the Karate Zombies, which will make Fran happy, if nothing else). Flipping through (first pass I look at the pictures...) and made some mean comment about Robert J. Sawyer or something in my head (I'm sure he's an awesomely nice guy, but sometimes I have unreasonably mean thoughts about people who are more successful than me, and it's an impulse I must analyze. And control). And then I read the accompanying article. And I felt bad.

Not about RJS. I'm sure he's fine. About the fact that I'm learning that H.B.Fenn, Canada's largest book distributor, has closed, and I'm learning this from an American magazine. Why am I so disengaged? How do I not know what's going on in Canadian publishing? This is a big deal, right? I mean, I read the Toronto Star online most days, or at least, I read the headlines. Was this big news at some point? I guess I should go look on the Star's website and try to figure out how I missed it.

I'm back.

(This part was not on the back of Apophis that I wrote last night, we're in uncharted territory.)

The Star has a kind of crap search function that only goes back 14 days. The National Post had a story, though, dated Feb 4. So I guess the simple answer is I read the wrong paper. Though the bigger answer is I should probably interact with people more.

The Bezoar: appearing soon to a slushpile near you?

2011-03-17T10:31:00.002-04:00

Yesterday all day I had a plan. When I got home, I would make a pizza (the breadmaker was all set up). Then, I was going to read through The Bezoar and make any last minute changes before sending it out to its first market. Then I would make a pass through Apophis and send it to OWW. And then I would sit down and read 100 pages of Leviathan, and maybe work on that shawl, and then bed.

Well, the pizza went fine. I remembered yeast this time (yay!) and I had already made the olive salad for Muffuletta pizza. I made a playlist, and then at around 8:30 I tweeted something like “Pizza made and eaten, blah, blah, time to read through this story and send it out.”

I was at the kitchen table working on paper. Ed was watching his stories (Ice Pilots I think). I was on page two when that ended and he went up to run himself a bath. I was on page three when he’d finished his bath. I’d written a couple of hundred new words. I skipped to the ending and I think made it stronger. My characters had unclear motives, and I gave them a goal. I wrote in a couple of jokes. I went back to the middle and, well, it wasn’t too bad. The main action sequence is pretty good, I think, which is odd because I don’t think they’re my strength (what is my strength – setting? No. Characters? No. Maybe dialog.)

11:00 rolled around. I finished with the paper draft and went back to the computer. Some of the pages were so ink-filled, I don’t think I could have figured out what I was going for if I’d left it for today, or tomorrow, or more likely next month.
Midnight. I shut off the TV.

12:21 I got to the end of my changes and mailed the story to myself. I tweeted something about the best-laid plans, read the whole internet and went to bed.

This I would call a rewrite, a substantial edit. The front and back are almost completely new. It’s about 600 words shorter than before. I took out whole blocks of text – two paragraphs about a ceremonial knife that never crops up again? Really?

I keep reading on Dean Wesley Smith’s blog that he wrote this or that short story in four hours, and newbies shouldn’t bother revising because we just wreck the voice and the passion of the story. But then, he doesn’t have my first drafts, which are only there as a framework on which to affix my edits later. I wouldn’t argue that at some point The Bezoar drifted away from being the story that I’d envisioned, and that some of the editing I did last night actually takes the story back towards my original goal for it. But I’m pretty sure his model is not mine.

In process: Feb 2011

2011-03-03T15:46:00.003-05:00

First Draft

“In a Nutshell”. 35 pages -- first draft finished.

Next up will be Limering, And maybe One Degree.

Editing

"The Rabbits". I tagged all the Thea’s Brain sections to make them make sense, and I need to fix the pacing now. It takes way too long to get to the brain stuff. I’d like to pump the atmosphere maybe, too.

"Apophis." Working on fourth draft.

Ignoring

“Succubus”.

Zombies.

Troll.

Pampelmouse.

“Bezoar”. One more draft, I think, and it might be done.

“Dowsing”. I need to change the POV (taking what I learned from reading those Caitlin Kiernan stories, actually – she does a neat thing where the main character is not the “special” character, but is the one looking at them. I will try that and see how it works for me.) so that there’s an actual plot, conflict, etc. I think there’s a good story in there.

Imp face.

Being reviewed

Nothing. Again.

Knitting
Morrigan. Ignoring, actually.
Anhinga. Finished. Worn 4x. Very happy with this sweater.
Doubleknit Fair Isle shawl. Eight stripes done, maybe 20% of entire garment.
Carnaby skirt. Started and finished in Feb. I'm wearing it now.

What I read -- Feb 2011

2011-03-01T09:21:00.002-05:00

“Tooth and Claw” by Jo Walton. Library book. I believe I read on a blurb somewhere: “Is there anything Jo Walton can’t write?” And it is so true. This is a regency romance populated entirely by dragons. Dragons get bigger by eating one another, and yet the story isn’t really about cannibalism, more cannibalism is just something dragons do. It’s not taboo the way it would be with humans, because the dragons don’t see it that way. The father dragon dies in the first chapter, leaving the understanding that his estate (including his gold and his corpse) is to be divided up amongst his three younger children, with the two established children to take but a token apiece. The eldest son-in-law takes way more than his share and the others sue him. So the message is: be explicit in your will. And stand up for yourself.

“Sandman Slim” by Richard Kadrey. Library book, requested several months ago. I missed it over Christmas and had to request it again. I have a notebook where I write down things I want to read (many, many pages long – I am not keeping up) and when I read the flaps, I realized I’d listed another book by this author, too. It’s not a perfect book, but I must have talked it up whilst reading it, because the boy sought it out when I was done, and then Ed did after him, so everyone read this book before it went back to the library on time.

“Booklife” by Jeff Vandermeer. I bought it in December because Jeff put out a request on his blog for people to plug this book, in order to fund some other, probably less lucrative projects in 2011. I couldn’t exactly write a review on Chapters.ca without reading it. Well, not ethically, anyway. I wasn’t concerned that I would hate the book, because I’d been carrying the TOC around in my lunch bag for about a year, and I knew what it was about, and that the content would be useful to me.

At first it seemed oddly organized. Why talk about the public before the private? Why talk about your writing career before talking about writing? But then came the awesome ending of chapter two, about 128 pages in, and he said something like “If you’ve been reading this with an increasing sense of horror...” Why yes, I had. But I liked the assumption that I need to understand first and foremost what I’m getting into, before I get into the nuts and bolts of how to get there.

The take-away message was “be civil.” And that’s a good way to live.

“Snowcrash” by Neal Stephenson. I forget why, but one of my coworkers lent me this book back in November (though he says he prefers William Gibson). It seemed appropriate to read it, so I could give it back (I made it clear at the time that I wasn’t going to be finishing it that month, because of NaNoWriMo). It’s very stylish, but the characters lack soul – I didn’t feel with them. There’s a scene, for example, where Hiro goes up to a place where he used to hang out with someone he won’t be hanging out with anymore and has a beer by himself, and I felt like it ought to be poignant, but it wasn’t. Maybe you can’t have everything – you can’t have all that cleverness and wit, and also tug at my heartstrings. Not that I mind. Sometimes I resent being manipulated that way. The ending seemed murky, but it was a good, entertaining read with lots of humorous insights about the near future, especially for something written almost 20 years ago (!).

OWW: 1- Nov 13; 3-Nov 21 -- 4 total, which is probably the minimum I should be striving for... though double would be good. I actually learned something from reading things this month. I read three “early draft” chapters of a novel, and I could see the process the author was going through as he wrote. It was very different than my process – basically, he wrote blocks of exposition and text splines, which seemed like an efficient way to get things down and keep a balance, and keep things moving. I think I’ll try it on a short story, maybe tomorrow?

I can't comment there, so I'll comment here

2011-02-24T13:24:00.002-05:00

Over at Ilona Andrews' blog, they've got a lively though closed discussion in the comments about the boy who wouldn't wrestle the girl in Iowa. I'd just like to say, hitting a girl is not the same as having a wrestling match with a girl, and it's pretty messed up when someone confuses them. I am here to learn, and if someone won't punch me because I'm a girl, then they've just taken that learning opportunity away from me.

That's all.

Word of the day: Reach out

2011-02-17T23:38:00.002-05:00

Not really a word, more of a phrase or a clause. But all of a sudden, I keep seeing it used all over the place. Maybe it started when one of my colleagues asked me to "reach out" to another colleague for information on a project I'd been supposed to be working on, but in fact knew nothing about. And the other person replied "It's too late to be reaching out," which I thought was a totally appropriate response.

Now I'm seeing it everywhere, and I wonder, what does it mean? I don't want any colleague I've never actually met "reaching out" to me. Just send me an email. Please.

A message to my teenaged self

2011-02-09T13:16:00.005-05:00

Back when I was in high school, I practiced my musical instruments. One of the ones I played, hammered dulcimer, sounded good even when I was just banging on the strings. Sometimes when I would play a piece (and I remember myself being pretty good) weird, accidental, awesomely cool things would happen. And I was concerned that when I got really good, those amazing accidents, the ones where I made a change in a piece by accident that made it "my own" wouldn't happen anymore.

I needn't have worried.

Also, today on Salon there's an article about Apophis (not sure how long that link will last...) so I guess I should work on that story. (ETA: you must watch the video there. The wailing shrieking music is awesome.)

Why I never finish things

2011-02-08T00:11:00.000-05:00

I started this post in January, time for new beginnings. But I'm not starting new things just yet. I've got all these old things I just want done:

Anhinga
Morrigan
Rabbits
Bezoar
Apophis

I'm going back to them, and looking at them, and trying to make them work, rather than just make them done.

Take, for example, the socks I knit Ed for Christmas. I finished the first one on the 24th of December at about 8 pm. There was no way I was going to get the second one done in time -- I'd started it, but I was maybe six inches down the leg, and those (click the link!) are some long socks.

And then it was Christmas morning, and my brother-in-law was gloating about his new handknit socks, so I gave Ed his one wrapped sock. But it was too long in the foot, so I knit the second one shorter. But it was too short. So I ripped out both toes and made them right. I finished these socks at like midnight on Jan 3.

And now, with my Christmas knitting finally done (I also had to do ones for my sister - sorry, Ravelry link), I can return to Anhinga and Morrigan. Now, Morrigan I freely admit has some issues. It's still in its box... though not for long. It will probably come out next week. But Anhinga? It's stocking stitch! how could it go wrong? Well, it's got some funky shaping. I'm using yarn at a much different gauge. In October, before NaNoWriMo started and I abandoned all non-christmas knitting, I got the back, all three front pieces (seamed even!) and one sleeve done. And then I put it in a bag.

Sometimes that's what you have to do. When I took it out on Tuesday, I looked at that one sewn-in shoulder. When I seamed it, I knew there was a problem. My row gauge is way low. The schematic says the cap should be 5", and this one was way puckered inside the armscye. I don't know what happened with the picked-up stitches across the diagonal slope, but well, they were pulling weirdly. I unseamed the sleeve and measured it, and my cap was 3.75" which explains a lot. And then, while I was at it, I unseamed the front diagonal slope where I'd picked up the stitches, then picked up new stitches and three-needle-bind-off'd the slope. You can see. You'll always be able to see. But it looks better now.

When this sucker is done, I can start something new!

I set a goal for myself of sending out a story per month in 2011. But I think I need to take these stories out of the boxes I've banished them to, and read them before I send them on their ways. It won't be so bad.

Maybe I'm just using this to rationalize the great Dan debacle of 2010/2011, and say I can make it right for 2012. I don't know.

Out there -- Jan, 2011

2011-02-04T14:13:00.001-05:00

Not much changing here...

"Unicorn". Still at market #7.

"Dolphin". Still at market #1.

What I read -- Jan 2011

2011-02-02T09:57:00.000-05:00

"Spiral Hunt" by Margaret Ronald. I read a lot of nonfiction last month and really needed a novel. This book was not perfect – it had an early, very long and seemingly pointless scene in a magic shop (that did, to be fair, turn out to be important later on). I didn’t feel like the cop character acted like a cop all the time, but then I don’t know any actual cops, so I’m basing that totally on cop TV shows, which are probably not accurate, either. The magic system was very complicated and took a while to get into. It had a likeable, complicated protagonist and an excellent sense of place. Boston is very much a character in this novel.

“My Misspent Youth” by Meghan Daum. I requested this from the library because somewhere I saw mention that it had an essay about playing oboe. And then, on the first page of the title essay, I thought to myself, “she’s going to move to Omaha,” and knew I’d read that one before, online, a couple of years ago. But I was wrong, she actually moved to Lincoln, Nebraska. So close!

In the Polyamory essay, what was sad was that I knew exactly what the “Winter is coming” t-shirt was referring to, and in fact have coveted that t-shirt. That indelibly marked me as not the audience for this book. And then I thought to myself, there must be a connection between polyamory and consumerism, but I can’t guess what it is.

The oboe essay resonated when I was at band practice– about the breathing, especially the thing about exhaling, which is something non-oboists don’t understand. And about being tuned to, which is something my band doesn’t do. But maybe should. It would maybe be a good step for me to push the issue. Perhaps I should at least start carrying a tuner (as if I don’t carry enough junk already...)

“The Ammonite Violin and Others” by Caitlin R. Kiernan. Wish I could do the accents required in her name. It would be nice. I read her blog, and her fiction style is very similar at least to my ear. Also I read her novel “silk” a couple of years ago, and this is part of my short stories thing... since I’m writing a lot of them. Not that I’m not reading a lot of shorter stuff, with OWW.

In general I loved the details, and the risks she took. “The Hole with a Girl in its Heart” particularly stood out. A while back (years not months) I tried to write a story about someone swallowing a black hole, but I could never make it work. It was nice to see it executed. What she got that I didn’t with that one was the POV. I always tried to write it from the POV of the person with the black hole in them, which I guess is the obvious choice, and never really worked.

Now that I’m writing this down, I want to go back and study her use of POV more closely, in the various stories. Wonder when I’ll find time for that.

“Farthing” by Jo Walton. I sat behind her at a panel at Contario. My sister gave this to me for Christmas (because I asked for it), and of all the books she’d given me, she thought this one was good. It doesn’t look on the outside like something she’d like, being parahistory and all, but I guess Jo can tell a story. OMG I have this urge to order a whole bunch of copies of this book and give them to people I know.

“Unusual Suspects” edited by Dana Stabenow. Ed got this out of the library, I have no idea why. It’s a collection of short fantasy mystery stories. I picked it up and read it because I suppose I’ve sent stories or will send stories to similar anthologies. One of the stories was a Sookie Stackhouse, and since I’ve read three of those books, it was interesting to see how the world worked in a short. I thought the author explained more background than was necessary – I’ve written a story that tries to work in the universe of “Apocryphal” while giving as little as possible explanatory information about the characters and world. It’s a neat puzzle to try to do that.

Some of the stories were good, and some were not so good. Mostly it seems that trying to pack too much world-building into a story is the bad. A lot of these authors are award-winning novelists according to their bios, so the varying quality was surprising. Most of the short story reading I do is by authors who have put out a complete collection, like the Caitlin Kiernan above, so it’s good to read some variety. I probably ought to read more magazines. Maybe I’ll subscribe to Weird Tales...

OWW: 6.

In process: Jan 2011

2011-02-01T09:42:00.002-05:00

First Draft

“Imp Face”. Short story, about 5000 words. Because if I don’t mine my family history, someone else will...
“In a Nutshell”. Four hand-written pages of a start that I add to the thousand words I wrote last year.

Editing

"The Rabbits". Short story; working on 3rd draft. It’s down about 3500 words.
Karate Zombies. Still percolating on rewriting the first chapter. This post http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2010/10/all-important-first-chapter.html is making me worry.
“Bezoar”. Read it, revised it, read the comments I got on it last August (why is this so hard for me?) Though it’s funny what I did. I’d read the comments initially when I printed them out. Then I guess I let them process for four or five months, then implemented most of them, then read them and got to feel self-satisfied. It’s a better story now than it was before. Good enough? I don’t know. But it’s better than it was before. One more draft, I think, and it might be done.

Ignoring

“Succubus”. Short story; working on 2nd draft
Troll.
Apophis. Working on third draft
Pampelmouse.
“Dowsing”. I want to try something different with this one – retype it, with the theme that I forgot overlaid on every line.

Being reviewed

Nothing. Doesn’t bode well for having something to ship out in February, does it?

Knitting

Morrigan. Started the first sleeve again. 1”.
Anhinga. Took apart front to reseam, took off first sleeve and made cap taller. Finished second sleeve. Realized the problem with the front was even greater than I’d thought, took it off and did it again. Working on neck and seaming, and it will be done.
Ed's socks. Finished!
Doubleknit Fair Isle shawl. Started, got into trouble reading the charts. Among other things, I had completely ignored the first row of the colorwork. Don’t know what I was thinking! Started again, got the first three stripes done. It will be my focus project when Anhinga is done.
Doubleknit ski band. Start to finish! Started, in order to get a handle on reading doubleknit charts. Got about halfway through and realized I’d totally done it wrong and no way was this little thing going to fit around my head. Had to rip back to the ribbing.

Word of the day: Ineffable

2011-01-18T11:38:00.002-05:00

I really ought to title this Word of the Season, since that's about how often I do it.

Anyway, I was reading a book, all innocent-like, and this word just jumped out at me: ineffable. Immediately I thought to myself, what a wonderful word! It's like the F-word, nicely couched in a prefix and a suffix! Especially if you take that prefix off, and you wind up with effable, which is F-able, only polite.

Except effable isn't in my dictionary, so I guess it doesn't work that way.

I did look up ineffable, though, and was satisfied that it is an adjective meaning (according to the Oxford Paperback Dictionary that I keep on my desk) Too great for description in words, or That must not be uttered.

The prefix in- can apparently mean "in" (how clever!) or "not". So effable would mean speakable. And I see now that Dictionary.com does have that. And its root is Latin, not Saxon, so it has no connection with the F-word at all.

Too bad, really.

Out there -- Dec 2010

2011-01-02T18:06:00.002-05:00

"Unicorn". Still at market #7.

"Dolphin". Still at market #1, still with changes sent back 27 October.

My goal for 2011 is one short story out per month. January will be “Bezoar”. This also means I need to get some stuff 'shopped.

In Process -- Dec 2010

2011-01-02T17:57:00.003-05:00

Read/edited:
The Rabbits (working on 3rd draft)
Succubus (working on second draft)
Apophis (working on 3rd draft)

Wrote:
Troll (4000 words, maybe 2000 of them in Dec?) This one came alive when I'd taken the month off from it for NaNoWriMo
Dowsing (4000 words start-to-finish in Dec?) While wandering around in Mocassin Trail Park yesterday, listening to Ed and Connor talk about Halo Wars, I realized what I'd meant to do with this story that I completely forgot in the first draft. I need to type it up, stat, and then retype it with that entire theme on top.
Imp Face (2000 words so far)

Knitting:
Socks for Lynda finished
Socks for Ed almost finished -- I hope tonight or tomorrow, because I'm sick of doing other people's socks
Morrigan hibernating
Anhinga hibernating

What I read -- December 2010

2011-01-02T17:34:00.003-05:00

“The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart” by Jesse Bullington. The good bits seemed to have been in the first third of the book, and the middle was a bit of a slog. I read it because of Jeff Vandermeer. I did finish, and it was good fun. Any book that name-checks the white company is worth reading (big Hawkwood fan here).

“Writing Down the Bones” by Natalie Goldberg. My sister asked for it for Christmas, and the tradition is, when you give a book in my family, the other person asks “How was it?” I wondered, am I hostile to this book because of who asked for it, or does it really smack of the Grades 4-8 writing exercises I had no problem with? Maybe it seemed dated, or maybe I just didn’t connect with it. Or maybe I use Caitlin Kiernan and Elizabeth Bear as my writing role-models, and a bipolar person and a depressed person who have to write or they starve may not be the best role-models. The book is about forcing yourself to write. I wondered as I read, why do people do this? Why force it? What about deliberate practice? There were about four pages about editing. I may not be the audience for this book.

Also, she apparently writes memoir, and there seemed to be precious little *real* reveal. I felt like I got to know only the part of Natalie that she was willing to share, and at that time it wasn't everything, she was saving it for later. I hate that.

“A Walk in the Woods” by Bill Bryson. Another one my sister asked for. Also, my former (day job) team leader recommended this once when I was telling a story about hiking in New England. Wow, this book had a lot of adverbs in it. It really made me want to climb Mount Moosilauke (also mentioned to me by a coworker’s brother-in-law, which is why it stuck out). A fun read that compelled me to write a short story about our hike up Imp Face.

“On Writing” by Stephen King. My sister asked for this, too. This was way more the book for me, seeing as it was half memoir and half about editing, really. He didn't get into the nuts-and-bolts of how to do a first draft, but a lot of the editing advice reinforced things I've heard before: meaning is at the sentence level, adverbs are not your friend, the first draft is for you but the second draft is for your reader (he called this closed door and open door), make your second draft 10% shorter than your first.

“HTO” from Coach House Press. A library book of essays about water in Toronto, from, as the sub-title says, Lake Iroquois to low-flow toilets. I loved this book, but probably someone who has never lived here would find it deadly dull. It's totally about place, which for me is amazing because I love the ravines etc. around here. There were a couple of chapters that name-checked the park I went walking in yesterday! The essay about low-flow toilets was actually entertaining, though some of the others were less so. I quite liked the one that said you can't write a novel set in Toronto without dealing with the ravines, but the one about High Park irked me.

I read it because Leah Bobet mentioned the uTOpia series, which caused me to seek it out. I suspect this is the second book from this series that I have read; the design of Concrete Toronto was similar.

I finished it Jan 2, but my rule is if I read it before I wrote the post, it goes in the month I wrote about. Otherwise, my memory gets too full of junk.

Nanowrimo redux

2010-12-06T23:40:00.002-05:00

This year when I mentioned to Ed and the boy that I was thinking of doing NaNoWriMo, they said "see you in a month!" and "what do you think you'll get out of doing that again?" I guess they're annoyed with me because I haven't finished rewriting Chapter 1 of last year's novel, and I need to pump up the tension at the climax, so I haven't sent it out yet.

Anyway, I ignored them, and decided to do it anyway. I've been writing a lot of short stories lately, and I wanted to do something longer.

I have lots of novel ideas, but nothing was really fully baked. The only idea I had that came with a plot was "Pampelmouse". Unfortunately, since most of the characters are parrots, they have some limited communication skills, and their POV is limited, and I thought it was outside my current skillset.

I don't know at what point it would have been within my skillset, but whatever.

I started anyway. Sometime in October, I outlined (eight words each probably) the first 18 of my 30-chapter novel. And I started typing at midnight on November 1, getting 700 words before I went to bed.

For 2009, my strategy had been to write 500 words per day Monday to Friday, and 5000 words each of Saturday and Sunday. I also wrote my normal page-a-day Monday to Friday (I gave myself Saturday and Sunday off) on I can't remember what, the novel I was working on last year (that's grim that I can't remember, I'm pretty sure it wasn't St. Praxis). November started on a Saturday last year, and this meant that I had a good headstart.

This year, if I had followed the same strategy, I would have been more than 5000 words behind on Friday. I don't know if I could have recovered. So, this year I set a quota of 1000 words per weekday, 3500 Saturday, and 3500 Sunday, which came out to the same amount, and had me only 3335 words behind Saturday morning, meaning I could look caught up Sunday. I also used my page-a-day amount as part of my wordcount. Each morning I would write, longhand, my usual 250-300 words just after I got up, and then in the evening, I would type those into the manuscript and finish the 1000 words, leaving myself a note about what I was going to write about the next day on a sheet of paper. Then, after midnight, I would enter my wordcount (this is where that first 700 words after midnight on Nov 1 became important, because I was always entering the words at the start of the day rather than the end, so I could always feel my status (I was always behind the first two weeks, except for about two days) was overly negative, and I wasn't really doing that bad. It allowed me to keep motivated by pretending I had words in the bank.

This clearly didn't work too badly. I got to 50,000 words on November 28, though I didn't tally my wordcount on the NaNoWriMo website and collect my winnings until I'd written "The End" the next day.

The real crisis came on November 21, when I got to the end of my 18-of-30 chapters outline. I knew how the story was supposed to end, but I was like 17,000 words from there, and I had nothing to write about.

What did I do? Um, I kept writing anyway. I fell back on my old standby, I had my characters eat. (I have this rule that I have to reflect on any scene where my characters are eating more critically than other scenes, because I tend to write pointless eating scenes, but now I think I know why.) While two of my characters were eating, a third character walked in, carrying a prop, and suddenly, I had the missing 11 chapters, and I could finish the book. That was the turning point.

Now I have a list of "next tasks", and when I've got a little bit of distance, I've got an exciting new manuscript to read! And I think it doesn't have all the usual problems my other manuscripts have. If I recall correctly, the first chapter is pretty good.

Miranda's Challenge

2010-12-04T23:21:00.003-05:00

One of my VP peers, Miranda Suri, posted a challenge a few days ago. It's kind of about deliberate practice. There are a lot of things I could do.

However, I think for the next five days, each day I will read one of my stories.

Yeah, aim high, Robyn.

I actually can't read my own stuff, so this will be brutal. Read, just read, don't devolve into rewriting by the second page, and then never get to the end. I have five short stories chosen, in varying states of completion: "Bezoar", "Rabbits", "Apophis", "Succubus", and "Mary Alice Goes to Hell".

And I've written it down, so now I'm accountable. Mrrmmm...

SFContario redux

2010-12-04T22:21:00.002-05:00

Two weekends ago was SFContario, and as part of my whole goal to, you know, meet actual writers in the genre and be a pro writer, I attended. Due to its being on a weekend and my being extremely overscheduled like all the time, I went down Sunday for 11am.

I went to three panels:

Family Trees of Fantasy: Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Ed Greeenwood, Jo Walton, Michael Swanwick, and James Alan Gardner riffed for an hour about books I should read.
Review and Criticism in the SF Field: Leah Bobet and someone I'd never heard of didn't show, but TNH, Tony Pi, and Brett Savory seemed to think accurate reviews were good. I sat behind Jo Walton. I always hope some awesomeness rubs off; you never know. I was too shy to say hello.
Will No One Free me from this Troublesome Book?: Violette Malan and Stephanie Bledwell-Grimes (who I saw at Ad Astra) carried the day, as David Nickle didn't show. Maybe this is some Sunday con thing? I'd never noticed Violette Malan's books before, but she was entertaining so I might look one up. This was a good panel to help me get through NaNoWriMo (the con being on the penultimate NaNo weekend). I especially liked what they said about how some days it's hard to get your 2K (words), and some days it's easy, but when you go back later to read the manuscript, usually you can't tell which were which.

I abandoned my jacket by accident after the first panel, and the thought of having to take the TTC home without it was grim, because the sky was making feeble attempts to snow. When I found it at the registration desk, and hadn't even realized I had left my wallet in the pocket. It still had all the money in it!

Next time I go to a convention, maybe I will talk to someone, or, horror of horrors, what a consuite is.

What I read--Nov 2010

2010-12-02T09:08:00.002-05:00

I'm surprised I managed to read this much, considering November was NaNoWriMo, so all my spare time was filled up with Pampelmouse. Nevertheless, here's what I read:

“I am Legend” by Richard Matheson. Should have been subtitled “and other stories,” as this was a short novel and several short stories of varying quality. The boy read it before me, and he was extremely confused when he got to the short stories, and abandoned it. It was about vampires. I had somehow gotten the idea it was about zombies. Anyway, the science was good, but its age showed. There was an incredible amount of alcohol consumption, and the female characters were treated badly, both by the main character and the author.

“Brains: A Zombie Memoir” by Robyn Becker. Very funny, very entertaining. I laughed on every page. The boy read this one first, too, and I wonder if he got the jokes. There were a lot of cultural references. He said he enjoyed it, though. Not only was it good zombie research, but also, written as it was from the POV of a zombie, it was interesting to see how the author solved the problem of their lack of an ability to communicate. The parrots I’m writing about now in Pampelmouse have a similar problem, because they know stock phrases and can’t mix and match.

“Bridge of Birds” by Barry Hughart. This one has been on my list for years, and finally I got around to it. The voice was good, charming, funny. I can see why it’s beloved. Master Li seems like a recurring type in Chinese literature. The ending was as awesome as it said it was. It totally reminded me of “Pyrates” by George MacDonald Frasier.

In process--Nov 2010

2010-12-02T09:02:00.001-05:00

Troll. 1000 words of first draft, on hold for NaNoWriMo. Ed and I spend a lot of time in culverts when we’re out walking, because Toronto is a weird place. It seems relatively flat, but that’s because everything is a bridge over a river, or a rail line, or... well, I guess I need to finish the story. Went back to this one on November 30.

Apophis. 1200 words, first draft complete, working on second. I'd really like to get it on OWW this month, since it's the October challenge... I'm a little slow.

Pampelmouse. 2010 NaNoWriMo novel. Wrote 53, 386 words and reached the end on Nov. 29. Stay tuned for my NaNoWriMo redux...

Out There--Nov 2010

2010-12-02T09:00:00.001-05:00

"Unicorn". Still at market #7.

"Dolphin". Still at market #1, with requested changes.

Why I like Andrew Bird

2010-11-23T11:31:00.001-05:00

Every once in a while I'm sitting all innocent-like at my desk listening to music while I work, and I realize something like:

The song I'm listening to seems to be about trepanning.

How often does that come up?

Nanowrimo: week 1

2010-11-07T10:06:00.002-05:00

So this year's Nano project is "Pampelmouse", what I refer to in my own head as "Watership Down of parrots", though I'm nervous about saying that outloud. It sounds sort of pompous.

I have 11,693 words at this very minute, with another 577 to go for my morning target. (Yes, apparently blogging is what I do with my breaks?!?)

After a week, I am loving the fact that I can't explain my jokes, because a parrot doesn't have words to explain its jokes. The joke either works, or it gets missed.

And also, it is thus far impossible for my characters to sit around talking about what they're going to do, especially while eating. I do have some boring eating scenes like I always do, but at least they can't pretend to progress the plot. There's a lot more action than I normally write. Also, I'm making my main character suffer horribly.

Out there -- October, 2010

2010-11-01T14:49:00.001-04:00

"Unicorn". Sent to market #7.

"Dolphin". Still at market #1. OMG I got an email of proposed edits, 24 October, 2010. Sent the changes back 27 October.

What I read -- October 2010

2010-11-01T14:41:00.000-04:00

“Annabel” by Kathleen Winter. I had requested this book from the library a couple of months ago (there are 114 holds after me, so it must be good?) but had no recollection of why, and stubbornly resisted trying to figure out, in case I changed my mind or something, since it was coming anyway. And now I see it’s longlisted for the Giller prize, so I guess I’m lucky to have it now, since there will be a run on it later.

Turns out it’s the story of a hermaphrodite in Labrador, from when he’s born (he’s brought up as a boy) until young adulthood. I was trying to decide, after reading it, whether it was more about gender, or about Labrador. The lives of people there (Wayne is born in I think 1968 – can’t check, had to take the book back because it was overdue) are very much about the bush, and subsistence living. Really good, really made me think. It took me a while to read because it had uncomfortable bits for me, but fortunately I had another thing I was reading at the same time, so I’d read 40 pages, and then switch to the other book, and then pick it up again when I’d gained some distance.

But the story is a lot about gender. There are a lot of strong female characters who influence Wayne, and really the only strong male influence is his father, who was an amazing character, really well-defined. I highly recommend this book. The characters, the setting, the choices that Wayne makes are so strongly drawn.

“In the Dojo” by Dave Lowry. Here I could kill two birds with one stone. It’s research for the karate zombie novel, and it’s on Sensei’s reading list! This was the book that I kept switching to when “Annabel” became too stressful. It was also a library book. I got a lot out of it in terms of expected behaviours I think I’m not meeting in Sensei’s eyes, and the background of different things.

But one thing I kept thinking about as I read it was language. A lot of the Japanese terms used in the book were not the same ones we use in my dojo. Some of them (Kagami Baraki, for example) have a different meaning for us than for the author.

There’s a woman in our dojo who is Japanese. Japanese is her first language. Sometimes when I’m teaching, I’ll turn to her and ask if something is correct, and she shrugs. Apparently the Japanese we use in the dojo is not the same as the Japanese spoken in the real world. That made me think about secret languages, and what happens at work, for example, where we have all these crazy acronyms, or when Ed starts using a huge amount of medical jargon. And that made me think about my parrot novel, which I think I should start drafting soon.

“The Forest of Hands and Teeth” by Carrie Ryan. It’s about zombies, so it’s research! It’s YA, and it’s written first person present, just like my zombie novel, so I can be insecure! This book was an incredibly quick read. A couple of things that bugged me: I never got a clear picture of some of the characters. Like, there are two brothers, Travis and Harry, and I’m never entirely clear on which is older. Maybe she said sometime at the beginning, and I missed it because I didn’t realize it was important.

“The Dead-Tossed Waves” by Carrie Ryan. The sequel to the above. The first chapter seemed weaker than the previous, and I’m starting to notice differences between how the author handles the first-person present voice, and how I do it. I guess that’s what Caitlin Kiernan meant when she was writing about the interauthor a few weeks ago. Why is the narrator telling the story in this way, and why? This voice makes flashbacks potentially awkward, I think. While the ending clearly indicates that there will be a third book in the series, I thought this book was better-written than the first one. It’s a lot more complicated, with a lot more stuff going on, various different problems and threats, and that’s what I like.

In process -- October 2010

2010-11-01T14:29:00.002-04:00

"The Rabbits". Short story. 10,000 words or thereabouts. September I finished the second draft. I want to get this on OWW, but it needs at least one more draft. Often people who read my stories say I've ended it at the point where it just starts to take off. I think I've just realized why -- it's because my main characters are often passive victims of whatever circumstances I've created. I can fix this, I think. At least in The Rabbits.

Karate Zombies. Still 61,792 words. I have now read the first 6 chapters. I’m rewriting the first chapter. This post http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2010/10/all-important-first-chapter.html is making me worry.

“Succubus”. Short story. 12,000 words. Page-a-day. First draft complete. While I was “researching”, I came across the Japanese Yuki-Onna, which pleased me greatly because of Catherynne M. Valente, whose writing I respect very much.

Troll. Around 1000 words of first draft, on hold for NaNoWriMo. Ed and I spend a lot of time in culverts when we’re out walking, because Toronto is a weird place. It seems relatively flat, but that’s because everything is a bridge over a river, or a rail line, or... well, I guess I need to finish the story.

Apophis. 1200 words, first draft complete. The monthly challenge from OWW was to write a story from the POV of a rock. I’d never done the monthly challenge before, but I had a scrap written in an email that could be easily moulded. And I often find that when I write something under duress (I.e., have to finish before nanowrimo; to the challenge’s specifications) I surprise myself. And contrary to what I regularly say, I don’t hate surprises. Well, not all the time.

I know Apophis isn’t actually going to hit the Earth anymore, but for the purposes of this narrative, let it go.

Pampelmouse. 2010 NaNoWriMo novel. I’ve written a one page, 30-chapter outline, not because the story needs to be 30 chapters long, but because November has 30 days in it, so if I write a chapter per day I can accomplish my goal. Because November doesn’t start with a weekend this year, I’m using this as my “page-a-day”, which will get me started every day.

Morrigan. Back and left front finished. Realized I’m going to have to re-knit the sleeves, so I packed it in a box. I don’t want to look at this sweater right now.
Anhinga. Back, left, and right front finished, center panel started.

A quote from my sister

2010-10-20T11:25:00.000-04:00

"These towns around here are pretty safe, but they are infested with eager cops."

I wonder if I can harness the power of the morning words...

2010-10-14T14:44:00.003-04:00

... in the service of NaNoWriMo this year. Because otherwise I may be screwed by the alignment of the days of the week.

I have just realized that my grand plan to take Nov 1 off and get a head start is a massive fail, as November is also United Way month at my office, and I'm the campaign chair, and I should probably attend the kickoff event I haven't planned yet.

Stupid, stupid do-gooding, it gets in the way of the writing, too.

Also, my immediate family thinks NaNoWriMo is a bad idea, because "What will you get out of it?" they asked. Well, another first draft, for one thing. (As if I need more of those?) And a sense of community.

Writing is easier when I turn the TV off

2010-10-12T16:05:00.001-04:00

Last year NaNoWriMo was a breeze. I had a really fast start and was always ahead of the game. There was a reason for that: last November started on a Saturday. My system last year was to write 500 words each day M-F, then 5000 each on Saturday and Sunday, which was 12500 words per week, or 50,000 words over November. Friday at midnight I started by writing 2000 words. Saturday I wrote 5000, and Sunday I wrote 5000. So by the end of that first weekend I already had 12000 words, which meant that when I did 500 words per day on the weekdays, I didn’t feel like I was falling behind.

If you write 1667 words per day, you wind up with 11,669 in a week, or 50,000 in 30 days.

This year, November starts on a Monday. I will have 2500 words by Friday, and be 9000 words behind already. Psychologically, this will of course be devastating. I don’t know if I’ll be able to surmount it, but I also don’t know if I can write more than 500 words in a workday. Maybe I should take November 1 as a vacation day and try to write 10,000 words?

Word of the day: disconnect

2010-10-08T13:20:00.003-04:00

I must hear it every day:

At work: "There's a disconnect between what marketing wants and what R&D is prepared to deliver."
At Karate: "Your arm and your hip have some sort of disconnect."
In yesterday's newspaper: "there’s a “serious disconnect” between citizens and city hall."

I hate this tawdry, overused word, and I dread the day I catch myself using it in a sentence.

In other news, I have to decide whether to do NaNoWriMo this year. I want to write the parrot novel, but I'm afraid I don't have the skills for such stunt-writing.

Out there -- Sept 2010

2010-10-06T14:51:00.001-04:00

"Unicorn". Waiting to be sent to market #7. Came back over a month ago. Not good.

"Dolphin". Still at market #1.

Apparently these stories won't sell themselves, so I need to devote a time/date to this.

In process -- Sept, 2010

2010-10-04T14:08:00.001-04:00

"The Rabbits". Short story. This month I made it through the second draft. I want to get this on OWW, but it needs at least one more draft. It’s down from 14,000 to just over 10,000 words, so it would have to go up in two parts. I’d like to get rid of another 2500 words before I get it critted, but I’d still put it up in two parts... better for the critters, and I have plenty of points to use.

Karate Zombies. I have now read the first four chapters. I’m rewriting the first chapter. I would love to get this on OWW. I even did envelope calculations: I have 47 points right now. I have 24 chapters. If I put up one chapter at a time (2-3K words at a time, a good length for the ‘shop) at 4 points each, I’d have to do 49 more reviews. If I could put up one chapter per week, that would be such a great structure for me to work within.

The Water Leopard. 1st short story draft complete. Need to type it up. Don’t think it’s very good.

“Succubus”. Short story. This became my page-a-day when the water leopard short was done. 30 pages or so done, maybe 5000 words, maybe half complete.

Morrigan. Shudder. I’m about five inches above the armholes on the back, so the end is in sight, I guess. Went shopping for inspirational leather jackets as motivation, but it didn’t help. I am so burnd out on this sweater.
Gift Socks. Finished.
Kingdom Gloves. Finished.
Anhinga. Back started.

What I read -- September 2010

2010-10-04T09:53:00.001-04:00

“A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens. Started this at the cottage, because I found it in the shed. I don’t think I ever had to read it before, but as I told my dentist, you can’t go wrong with Dickens.

“The Flooded Earth” by Peter D. Ward. I got this out of the library because I read some favourable references to it online, probably in Salon and the Toronto Star, and also because I love true future disaster books. It took me less than a week to read, but I had some problems with it. Like for example, my mind would wander because of the excess of compound complex sentences. There were like two simple sentences per page! He was trying to cram as much information into each sentence as he could, and that’s good, but I would lose track of the subject, or the sentences wouldn’t lead smoothly into each other. It was sort of like reading a really long essay by a precocious high schooler, sometimes. He was very passionate about the content, but sometimes he’d go on a crazy tangent. Like, there were two pages in the section about salt intrusion where he ranted about road salt. I mean, I agree that road salt is really damaging to the environment, and we ought to rethink our excessive use of it, but it did nothing to support his thesis.

I found the rhetorical devices not very subtle, and some of it was kind of Malthusian. I thought the definition of peak oil was over-simplified, and that made me question the rest of the book. I don’t like Stephen Harper (because I have a vague feeling he hates women), and yet I don’t think he’s fairly treated. I didn’t feel like the futures he depicted were consistent with each other (maybe they were and it was a failure of my imagination) from chapter to chapter.

This book was frustrating I guess, because as I think Bertollucci said, you can only argue with someone with whom you basically agree. But for example, I don’t feel like the government ought to be planning more than 50 years in advance, for example. It would be great if they did, rather than planning four years in advance, like I feel like they do, but didn’t this guy read “Foundation”? Doesn’t he know that in that amount of time, the Mule will appear, and all your mathematical predictions will have to be thrown out the window? So yeah, perhaps this wasn’t the book for me.

“Wizard’s First Rule” by Terry Goodkind. Never sure how to pronounce the last syllable of the last name, so it’s just as well I’m writing this down. The boy has read this series, beginning to end, about three times, and he basically forced this book on me. Fortunately, it’s very easy to read 60 pages at a sitting. Goodkind does know how to end a chapter so I’ll say “oh, just one more.” However, I found it kind of emotionless. I had no idea Richard was so filled with repressed anger until I was told; up until then I’d thought he was filled with teenage angst. Also, I found the politics exhausting, especially the gender politics. The fight scenes were fantastic, though.

There were a lot of things wrong with this book. There were things that I found unintentionally funny (the double-down Star Wars ending amused...) But the fight scenes were great, as was that 60-page torture scene. Wow, it made me wonder if Mr. G. had written some hard core porn in a previous life.

Also, looking at his author’s photo, I’d be afraid not to like this book, lest he beat the crap out of me.

Just like the other oboists do

2010-09-29T11:01:00.005-04:00

This is sure to become a scene when I finally get around to writing my Christopher Guest-style sendup of a community band.

Last night after I arrived at band practice, one of the other members sought me out in the washroom to ask me if it was okay if another member (who currently plays bass) plays second oboe. She's playing oboe in "the other band", and having so much fun, she just doesn't want to play bass any more. Did they think I was going to lock myself in a stall and have a crying jag at the prospect?

I said yeah, she was fine, it would be fine. I am secure in my first oboe-ness.

But then the conductor came up to me (in the actual band room) to ask if it was really okay. And I said yeah, it would be good to have someone else playing oboe, for those times when for some reason I can't make it to a concert, and I have guilt, and I'm on vacation in Maine, sitting there thinking to myself that if I was home right now, I'd be at some mall, playing a concert, and they need me and I'm letting them down.

But apparently that was crazy talk, and they didn't. But whatever. So I asked if they really think I'm that thin-skinned, and the conductor said no, he's had bad experiences with other oboe players saying it was okay, then quitting when the other oboist showed up.

And I do profess to be the highlander oboist (there can be only one). But maybe not. Maybe there should be two.

Actually, this particular musician sometimes says to the conductor things like "I think my note is wrong on this minor ninth..." which is just something I would never pick out because I'm just not that good, so maybe I should be intimidated.

At 1:30, I turned on the light...

2010-09-28T13:30:00.003-04:00

Last night I started reading my karate/zombie novel, because after 9-and-a-half months, I really couldn't put it off any longer.

Okay, actually the real reason I started reading it was because I was on the TPL website, and I discovered the writer-in-residence this autumn is a YA author. If I want to submit the first 25 pages to him for crit/review, I probably ought to read it first, and do at least a little bit of clean-up.

The first chapter, the way they are, is about three-quarters giant stinky fish head that needs to be lopped off. The second chapter didn't offend me, the third chapter didn't offend me, and I liked parts of the fourth chapter very much. That's probably as much as I'll get to submit. I think I will focus on the first chapter before I send it in, I hope by the end of the weekend...

I lay awake last night rewriting the opening in my head, and at 1:30, I had to turn the light on and write it down. Sad but true.

Caught myself a baby bumblebee

2010-09-20T10:59:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I earned my first bee on OWW!

A few days ago I was chatting with one of my karate buddies, and he said to me "you're by far the most naturally athletic of the people in your Kyu."

I nodded and said thank you, and thought to myself, "Yeah, but that's just because I'm the youngest (!). It's because everyone else is injured right now."

And then I thought to myself, "hey, wait a minute, I don't have to make excuses for being good at something." And anyway, we all know my karate problems are mental.

Rifle his pockets and look for loose change?

2010-09-15T10:41:00.003-04:00

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/Families+donors+misled+death/3525136/story.html

As Miracle Max in The Princess Bride says, "Your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. "

Worrying pointlessly

2010-09-03T14:28:00.002-04:00

Something Catherynne M. Valente said on her blog a few weeks ago is nagging at my brain. She said she can smell a story written to fulfill a SFWA requirement a mile away.

And then a few days later, someone asked me why I write, and after having a hard time coming up with an answer, I said I couldn't imagine not. And that's true. And then somehow in the same conversation, I said that I turned from editing my novel to working on some short stories because they seem like something I can finish. Not like a novel, which seems like it will go on forever.

I can't even imagine writing a story to fulfill membership requirements in SFWA. And if I did, I can't imagine anyone buying it. But do I look like I fall into that category? I don't know.