Robynettely

Wind/Water/Salt  Chapters 29 -30:  Took up comments. It took hours! Which I guess is why I put it off for (checks notes) 8 months. How embarrassing.  Chapters 31-51:  Need to take up comments and revise.  Synopsis: Maybe I should post it for comments.  Persephone  (probably not its real name):  Short Stories:  Wrote one, edited one.   Critted  11  Got back  4  Submissions  0  Out there  0  Rejects  0 Knitting Ballet Wrap (IK Spring 2005).  Finished the right front and both sleeves, seamed and done! The seaming was something else.  Penzance Mittens. Started the first one.  Ed and Prusa made me a grommet setter and we have a press, so I could finish that dress I started months ago. I still need to make ties for it.  

LHC #123: "The Monster of Elendhaven" by Jennifer Giesbrecht. Enormously fun. This read like the best kind of fanfic.  LHC #124:  "Absolutely nothing to get alarmed about: The complete novels of Charles Wright" by , shockingly enough, Charles Wright. Is it three novels? Kind of. Somehow I got the idea in my head that the library website was lying and the book was 624 pages, not 387, and was intimidated. The language is so rich and dense, to tally worth the effort.   LHC #125: "Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach" by Kelly Robson.  Shorter than I expected, and quite charming.  LHC #126: "Invisible Countries" by Joshua Keating. He's an editor at Slate, so that's probably how I heard of this book. I read a lot more on Slate before they limited me to a few articles a month at about the same time I lost my job, and now I'm just bitter.  The chapter on Akwesasne seemed really important, considering how Canada is dealing with repercussions ...

Wind/Water/Salt  Chapters 29 -50 :  Need to take up comments and revise.  Chapter 51:  Finished and posted.  I really ought to buy myself a reward.  Persephone  (probably not its real name): Continued writing series of infill scenes. This is very non-linear.  Short Stories:  Outlined something I've been writing. Pulled out something I drafted a long time ago because I was reading the news and had thoughts.  Critted  10  Got back   16 (!!  I must owe some crits to someone) Submissions  0  Out there  0  Rejects  1 Knitting Penzance mittens.  Finished.  Ballet Wrap (IK Spring 2005). Finished the damn sash, the back, and the left front.  Finished the sewing on that jumper. Now I just need a grommet setter and anvil and I'm good to go. Oh, and I need to make ties for it.  

LHC#119: "How to listen to Jazz" by Ted Gioia. I guess this came from my self-improvement phase of requests. It was published in 2016, so not that old, but its pre-pandemic publication shows. There's a whole long section where he discusses the concept of virality as if the medical sense would be new to people. Interesting, though.  I might have gone a little too hard on this one. I listened to a ton of jazz while reading it, and discovered a couple of tracks I loved, and some whole subgenres I apparently loathe. Eeew, cool jazz is so not for me.  LHC#120: "The Country Girls Trilogy" by Edna O'Brien. Not sure if this should be one or three, but it's one volume so for here I'll count it as one. In my annual tally of books read (maintained elsewhere) I'll count it as three. Very much worth reading. It's pretty clear why it would have been banned a lot though. Wow.  LHC #121: "The Memento" by Christy Ann Conlin. The voice in this is gr...

After last month's disappointing progress, this month I made some changes. I have tons of stuff that can just be typed. If I do some of that, it counts. And of course I need to push ahead with WWS.   Wind/Water/Salt  Chapters 29 - 48:  Need to take up comments and revise.  Chapter 49-50:  Finished and posted.   Chapter 51:  It was nothing but a little heap of bones but I filled it in a lot.  Persephone  (probably not its real name): Madeline Ashby said something really useful on Twitter about blackmail, and I think I can finish a draft now. I wrote eight scenes that run a thread from beginning to end. Now I need a bunch more of those!  Short Stories:  I almost made an outline of one I started, but that never quite happened.  Critted  10  Got back  15 (seems backwards, doesn't it?)  Submissions    Out there  1  Rejects  1 Knitting Penzance socks #2. Out of time-out, finished. I h...

LHC #115: "Confederates in the Attic" by Tony Horowitz. Written in 1998, but still very relevant. I didn't realize until I was 20% in that I was reading this during Confederate Heritage month. What a fluke.  This book gave me an odd moment of rooting for Disney. If, in the early 90's, they had succeeded in building a theme park near Manassas, then maybe they would have made the Disney version of the civil war that could unite America.  LHC #116: "How Music Works" by David Byrne. So much of this book could just as easily be about writing.  LHC #117: "Someone who will Love you in all your Damaged Glory" by Raphael Bob-Waksberg. I'm sure it was recommended by someone. I dream of someday catching up to the books on this list, so I can remember when I asked for them, but I feel like it's never going to happen. Some of these were awesome (the one about going to see your brother's play) and some were meh. It's a short story collection, t...

This month I got a job, which had a substantial impact on my schedule. After a year of freedom, I need to find a better way to work my own projects back into my time.  Wind/Water/Salt  Chapters 29-46:  Need to take up comments and revise.    Chapter 47-48:  Finished and posted.  I messed a lot with the POVs of both these chapters.  Chapter 49-51:  Read and revised. Did you notice what I did there? It used to be 50. This book just keeps getting longer and longer. This month I had to write a complete new chapter!  Persephone  (probably not its real name): Notes, as usual.  Short Stories:  Scratched at one a bit.  Critted  9  Got back  6 Submissions  0  Out there  2  Rejects 1, but it was a nice rejection!  Knitting Penzance socks (me).  Started the month with the cuff of the first sock. Finished. Penzance socks #2. In time-out.  Penzance socks #3.  Finished. Penzan...

"The Kingdom of Copper" by S.A. Chakraborty.  I meant toto ordered it when I finished the first one? But the spoilers at the end were somehow for book 3, so I ordered that one instead, and then it was coming in four weeks, so I had to read this one in a rush.  I felt like the author saw much more in Nahri than I did. I found it too stressful to be able to properly enjoy.   "The Empire of Gold" by S.A. Chakraborty.  And here we are.  One time this woman was making all sorts of accusations against me and one of them was that I had called her a crocodile. I thought it was the most... bizarre thing at the time. Maybe this book explained that?  I found it much more relaxing to read than the previous volumes, because the characters (some of them) were in a position to be kind to one another occasionally. Though Chapter 42 wasn't my favorite. It felt like she ran out of time. I  LHC #113: "Ruined by Design" by Mike Monteiro. Hard copy. The library has 4...

  Wind/Water/Salt  Chapters 29-44:  Need to take up comments and revise.    Chapter 45-46:  Finished and posted.  45 wasn't in really bad shape, but one day I added 900 words to 46 after deleting a large chunk, because it was nonsense. I had glossed over the capturing of Susannah completely.  Chapter 47-50:  Read and revised.  Persephone  (probably not its real name): I was reading that book about the Panama canal, as research for Vinterlys, when I realized how this ends. Dark.  Short Stories:   I started the month with a little of list of places that would be open for small periods because I need to get more serious about this, and I need to finish short things because I can't finish WWS because it's too damn big. And I need to prove to myself that I am serious.  I started editing two stories because I finished about one last year and that's pathetic.  I sent something from the back catalog for the first deadlin...

  "Daisy Jones and the Six" by Taylor Jenkins Reid.  audio book. Recommended by someone in Toronto Life magazine. The weird thing is that it has nothing to do with Drake.  The audio book was probably a mistake, I found it too slow.  LHC #110: "Babel: around the world in 20 languages" by Gaston Doren.  This book was totally my jam.  LHC #111: "The City of Brass" by S.A. Chakraborty. Recommended in so many places, including by Ali A. Olomi, who tweets about Islamic astrology and Jinns and stuff. He'd probably also mentioned that book about the Arabian Nights that I read last month, which in turn mentioned a story about The City of Brass. So. Marie Brennan said in her capsule review of book 2 (this is book 1 of a trilogy) that it lacks a sense of humor. I'm not so sure. I found the first 10% a little tiresome, but when all the characters lie to each other so much, it got tremendously fun.  LHC # 112: "The path between the Seas: The creation of th...

Wind/Water/Salt  Chapters 29-43:  Need to take up comments and revise.    Chapter 43.2, 44:  Finished and posted.   Chapter 45-(end):  Read and revised.  Persephone  (probably not its real name): nothing to speak of. Short Stories:  Worked on a first draft of one.   Critted  10  Got back 12 Highlights of the month (there were two): Someone who read a lot of the early part of WWS came back to the workshop! And I got into another workshop, this one looking a bit more goal-oriented (if the goal is to get published).  Submissions  0  Out there  1  Rejects  0 Knitting Tee (me).  I'm almost at the bottom rib. Knit most of it while watching The Boys and Queens Gambit. Good shows.  Venezia Pullover (Interweave W2006). Finished.  Never Stressed Schweater (me).  Started Jan 1, did body and both sleeves to armscye, joined it all up.  Practice hoodie (me). Started the ribbi...

LHC #107: "Certain Dark Things" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Audio book. I finished a sweater while listening to it. It's about Mexican vampires. I found Domingo pretty annoying.  LHC #108: "Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights" by Marina Warner. Hard copy. Worth the effort.  LHC #109: "Wild Milk" by Sabrina Orah Mark. eBook. I had no recollection of requesting this back in 2019, but when it bubbled to the top of the list and I read the description, I was like "yeah, that's my jam." I wish the library's website had a notes field in the Holds interface! Also that it listed the length of the book, because this one is unintimidating, even if the cover is kind of weird. Oh, and it's published by the Dorothy Project, which I'm a fan of.  If I wrote stories like this people would get mad at me.  "The Tower and the Fox" by Tim Susman.  Free eBook because book 4 just came out. This is book 1. Kinda Hogwarts in...

Wind/Water/Salt While editing Chapter 43, I realized there was no way to explain from where Preston (POV character) was what Abigail was up to, and how she managed to do it, so I broke that chapter in half and stuck another chapter in the middle. So then I had 50 chapters, maybe 51? Then I read to the end, and deleted Chapter 46, and broke 47 into three. This made it possible for the characters to behave in anything like a consistent way. I don't even know how many chapters there really are anymore. Maybe 53?  Chapters 26-27: Took up comments.   Chapters 29-42:  Need to take up comments and revise.    Chapter 43 (including 43.1):  Finished and posted.   Chapter 44-(end):  Read and revised.  Persephone  (probably not its real name): I got to the part of my library reading list that had a lot of research books for this, which put me in the headspace again. This is the most musically motivated thing I've written, I think. Other people post ...

  LHC #104: "Gingerbread" by Helen Oyoyemi.  I actually remember wanting to read this when I put it on the list. I made gingerbread in its honor, and the boy asked if he could take some for his girlfriend, but it contained eggs and she's allergic, so I had to make another one... This book was worth every minute.  LHC #105: "To Say Nothing of the Dog" by Connie Willis. I got it out because it was the highest item on the list that didn't have a wait. Apparently it's book 2 of a series. I wish that had been clear on the synopsis on the library website? It's part of the description on Overdrive, but not on the main TPL site. And it was on my list because it was the only thing they had in hard copy by Connie Willis, which seems wrong somehow. I just looked, and the situation is better now.  Anyway, I think my dad would have loved Connie Willis. The science fictional time travel blended with the Wodehouse-style humor and energy would totally have been his...

Wind/Water/Salt:  Sometimes it's afternoon and I think to myself, "well, I guess I should work on my novel now" and then I think "or I could just apply for a job." Because writing cover letters is less arduous than trying to fix this mess.  Chapters 26-27, 29-40: Need to take up comments and revise.   Chapter 41-42: Finished and posted. I was sort of stuck on Chapter 42 and tried to skip ahead to chapter 43, but it didn't work. Without motivating the different characters to do whatever they were doing, I couldn't figure anything out. So I went back. And forward. And back again.  Chapter 43-45 (of 48): Read and revised. Persephone (probably not its real name):  Opened the file, added a few words here and there.  Short Story:  Finally finished one (i.e., polished). Made the first draft of another, edited a third.  Critted 14    Got back   11 Submitted 1  Out there 0  Rejects 1  Knitting Tee (me). Started the...

"Crooked Kingdom" by Leigh Bardugo.   I read book 1 in September, and it took this long for Book 2 to arrive. It was a race between hard and e-copies, and they kind of tied. I guess that means the system is working correctly?  There were tons of flashbacks, and they were awesome. So whatever people say about "don't do flashbacks" is BS. Also, tons of past perfect tense because of the flashbacks. On OWW I'm constantly suggesting PP tense to people.  The other lesson here is characters are their relationships. The six are all such flawed people, but such interesting relationships. If I had to kill anyone, I... oh.    LHC #101: "The Song of All" by Tina LeCount Myers. I probably requested this one because of something about Finland. Not available on Overdrive, so I read it in hard copy. I... found it a little slow. I wanted more detail especially in the worldbuilding, and sometimes I was confused about which character was which.  LHC #102: "Borde...

Wind/Water/Salt Chapter 25/28:  Took up.   Chapters 26, 27, 29 - 38:  Need to be taken up.    Chapter 39 - 40:  Finished and posted.  Chapter 41 - 44 (of 48):  Read and revised.  Persephone (probably not its real name)  I had a scene I wanted to write, and I needed to know where it fell in my chronology, so I dated a whole bunch of scenes. I also drew a setting.  Short Story Started one, worked on another.  Connecting Critted  12  Got back 9      Subs  0  Out there  0  Rejects   1 Knitting Masquerade (Louisa Harding).  Dealt with about 400 loose ends and blocked. Took the whole month. Tee (me).  It's a classic with set in sleeves, knit top down out of sock yarn. Last month I put this in time-out because I needed to rip back to just below the neckline (front) because the sleeve short rows weren't beautiful. I did the ripping out and started back, but didn't get far, bec...

LHC #98: "Jade City" by Fonda Lee.  I loved this book, but I worry I'm never going to know what was in that letter from Enyi that Lan put in his desk for later.  "Exit Strategy" by Martha Wells.   In the library race between eBook and hard copy, this time hard copy won.  "Akira Book 6" by Katsuhiro Otomo. Finished the series! Worth the effort even if I didn't completely understand it.  LHC #99: "Alice Payne Arrives" by Kate Heartfield. Long ago when I put this on my list I sent a note to the library letting them know the title had a typo.  "Alice Payne Rides" by Kate Heartfield. I might have gotten this one out because I didn't quite understand the ending of the previous. And the first one was such a quick read, so the time cost is low. I feel like these two could have been one book and it would have made more sense.  "Wear, Repair, Repurpose" by Lily Fulop. A little more basic than I wanted and not nearly long e...

Wind/Water/Salt Chapter 25  - 36:  Need to be taken up.    Chapter 37 - 38:  Finished and posted.  Chapter 39 - 41:  Read and revised.  Persephone (probably not its real name)  Became suddenly unstuck around labor day not because I read a pandemic story or anything (though I did that) but because I was thinking about mobsters and psychopomps of all things.  Short Story The one that I worked so hard on last month, I set it aside for maybe 10 days to rethink its life, and since it wasn't quite working anyway I chose a different market with a different theme and a slightly longer target length. Then I smashed it until it met the story criteria for that market, and now it was 1750 words over length for that market too! So I took out 840 words then tried to make its character have growth. Now I think as a story it works.  Added last month's short to that list of things worth finishing.  Connecting Critted  15 It all went wrong ...

  "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism" by Cory Doctorow.  This is very relevant to a lot of the jobs I apply for these days. Basically, interoperability! Anti-trust!  "Rogue Protocol" by Martha Wells.  I wasn't done with book 2 (last month) when I requested this one on Overdrive. The wait purported to be 16 weeks. So I requested the hard copy too, and made it a race. The hard copy won.  LHC #95: "Things we lost in the fire: Stories" by Mariana Enriquez. Probably another in the "girls behaving badly" genre I seem to have been mad about in Jan of 2019. Except it's from Argentina and translated into English, so not the same at all. Really good. I need to read more lit in translation, and also maybe I would love to know a language well enough to translate out of it.  LHC #96: "An Ocean of Minutes" by Thea Lim. It's a pandemic story that I requested back in Jan of 2019, when I didn't know how much fun pandemics were. I ...