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Day Five: In which I am diverted, entertainingly

It’s hard to make myself take it easy. Despite my best efforts, I fail to sleep in; once I wake up, that’s it, there’s no going back. But my appointment isn’t until 11:15, so I sit around the hotel being glad I have Steam’s King’s Quest package on my laptop, because that gives me something to do that isn’t wandering around. If my respiratory system and ankle were in full working order, I’d probably saddle up and walk to Kensington again, but given the circumstances, that would be dumb. (If I could brain at that hour of the morning, I would write — but I can’t, so.)

What I Did With My Day, by Swan Tower, Age 29

Day Four: In which I do not re-tear a ligament

So apparently, coming down with a cold isn’t enough back luck for one trip. This morning, I did the one thing I must not do:

I twisted my ankle.

Yes, THAT ankle. On my way to the Tower Gateway for the DLR, I stepped on the edge of one of the shallow gutters along the footpath and overturned my foot, in exactly the direction it needs to not go. While it’s probably fair to say I did more damage to my nerves than to my foot, that isn’t to say it escaped completely unscathed; it is a bit twingy. Still, “a bit twingy” is much less than I feared, in that first instant of blind unreasoning horror. As soon as I could think, I dropped my bag and downed some Advil, and put my foot up on on the seat on the ride out to the West India Quay, and fortunately, the Museum in Docklands is abundantly supplied with portable folding stools. (Also, while I’m sure it’s possible to walk out there — heck, I’m not surprised to see Google tell me it’s closer than Chelsea, less than four miles — no way on God’s paved earth was I going to do that, even before the ankle incident.)

So I’m largely okay, more rattled than hurt. But definitely rattled, I must admit.

Not that I let that stop me.

Science-y query (another non-trip post)

If you’re a math-and-science type person, please read this and give me your thoughts.

***

Tonight I thought up a question that really shouldn’t wait until after my trip is done, because depending on the answer, I may end up working it into the revision I’m trying to do while I’m here.

Before the question, though, the background: Charles Babbage designed two devices, the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine. The former is essentially a calculator, doing polynomial functions; the latter (had it been built) would have been an early computer, capable of being programmed to do several different mathematical jobs.

So imagine you’re reading a book set in 1884, and it tells you that faeries got hold of those ideas and built them, But Better — for values of “better” that involve extrapolating this design in a magical direction. My question to you all is twofold. First, what extrapolations would you consider reasonable, given the parameters? Second, what extrapolations would make you say “Oh please” and put the book down? Example: “It would be cool if it could do calculations using imaginary numbers, but dumb if it could run World of Warcraft.” Or whatever. In essence, I want this to be interesting, but I don’t want it to be interesting in a way that’s totally divorced from the original purpose of the design.

I’m soliticing feedback because this is, among other things, a matter of the boundary between “suspension of disbelief” and “excruciating torture of disbelief.” Which varies from person to person, though math-and-science type people are likely to have a much firmer boundary than those who don’t know Babbage from Byron. Also, thanks in part to a declining series of math teachers in my education, I no longer have much love for the subject; ergo, if I ask my brain to think about “math magic,” it pulls up images of workbooks designed to make third-graders believe math is fun. So I am ill-suited to judging what I can get away with designing. Would it bother you if the faeries’ Analytical Engine performed non-numerical calculations of some kind? What if its function was predictive, analyzing a situation to make semi-divinatory, pseudo-statistical descriptions of the future? Would something like that bother you? What wouldn’t bother you, that also isn’t so mundane that it wouldn’t add much to the story? (The other ideas I’ve come up with so far all fall into that latter camp.)

Feel free to respond however you like — brainstorm, talk amongst yourselves, go off onto wild digressions about nineteenth-century math. I know some of you have thought about math + magic, so I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Day Two: In which battle plans do not survive contact with the enemy

I dawdle a little this morning because I have to wait for the Bank of England to open at 9:30, so I can go exchange some old pound notes I brought with me. On the way back from that, I detour on impulse to the Guildhall library, where I waste half an hour waiting for a book that turns out to have gone missing. But the visit itself is not a waste, as the helpful librarian (I’ve yet to meet a non-helpful librarian at the Guildhall, or indeed at most libraries) tells me the king of thing I’m looking for — a survey map of London’s Victorian sewers — has been moved to the London Metropolitan Archives. Particularly alert readers will recognize that name from my Ashes-trip adventures in secretary hand. The archives, of course, are in Clerkenwell, and it turns out that on Thursdays they’re open until 7:30. I may also be able to get the info I want at Abbey Mills, but it’s worth trying this first, because it’s closer, and I have a catalogue reference that looks promising. So much for the quiet evening I had planned, eh?

Actually, my whole plan for today is a bit borked. Which turns out to be a bit of a theme.

Day One: In which the gimpy feet are put to the test

The verdict so far: they’re holding up pretty well.

But before I get to that — happy 90 days (or so) to the publication of A Star Shall Fall! I’m going to semi-cheat and say your pre-pub goodie is the commencement of another round of trip-blogging (since this is something I know several of you enjoy), but since research notes about another book entirely don’t quite qualify on their own, you can also have just a teensy bit more of excerpt. (Or start at the beginning, if you missed the prologue before.)

Anyway. London. Victorian period.

You know the opening drill.

We’ll call that “finit.”

Well, that was unexpected.

Approximately two minutes before I started typing on tonight’s work, I decided the scene in question was going to be about a disturbance in the Onyx Hall. (Prior to that, I had no freaking clue what I was going to write.) Now I have 2,071 new words, and I’m going to say Part One is done.

It isn’t really done. For starters, Dead Rick needs another scene before the one I just wrote — only I’m not sure what it is, which is how I ended up writing this one instead — and even once I take care of that, Part One will still be running a few thousand words short of what I intended. But the reason we’re in this position is that I’m pretty sure I need to replace a few of Eliza’s scenes (AGAIN), and I’m hoping that will help me figure out just where I’ve gone wrong with Dead Rick’s plotline, and (more importantly) what I need to do to fix it.

So why say Part One is finished? Because the goal was to be done with it before I left for London, and then to poke at revising it while I’m away, so that I come back (theoretically) bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to start Part Two. And this weekend is going to be moderately busy on several fronts. So making this declaration allows me to say, okay; for the next three days I should do what revision I can, but I don’t have to make progress toward the end of Part One, because I’m already there. If I spend tomorrow afternoon replacing an Eliza scene, that does not in any way set me back from my goal. And if I need to spend more time chewing on Dead Rick’s problems before I find their solution, that’s okay, because that’s “revision work” — even if I’m adding an entirely new scene to the story.

In other words, it’s semantics. But it gets the job done.

Word count: 38,372
LBR quota: Dead Rick stepped on somebody who was trampled by a crowd, so it’s definitely blood.
Authorial sadism: This is what you get for being the one decent guy in the Goblin Market, hon.

getting ready to go

It’s odd, watching my brain ricochet around on the things I Have To Get Done before I go to London. Some of them are entirely practical: buy contact lens solution. Some of them are ongoing: do my writing each day. Some could be delayed, but are better off being done now: mail books to people who have been promised them.

Some? Are just a function of how my brain works. Clean my office. Because I hate coming back from a trip and finding my desk buried under all the crap I didn’t deal with before I left. Buy a new lamp. Because we moved the stand-lamp from my office downstairs to improve the lighting there, which had the unfortunate side-effect of worsening the lighting in here, and that’s making it hard to get work done at night. Move the convertible chair-thing out to the front hall, and find a place for the tiny shelving whose place it’s taking. Why? Because I thought of it while driving back from buying the lamp, and having thought of it, had to do it immediately upon getting home, even if as priorities go it isn’t all that high.

I’m not too concerned about getting the absolutely critical things done in time. But I’d like to get the little things done too, if I can, and those are what are making me twitch. Will I have time to get a back massage? Not sure. Maybe I should bump that up from the “nice, but not necessary” list to “critical requirement.” It might even be true.

Her Majesty Not Appearing in This Folklore

Most of the Robin Hood stories I’ve seen have put him sometime in the reign of Richard the Lionheart, with mentions of how John is scheming in his brother’s absence.

How come Eleanor of Aquitaine never shows up in those stories?

I mean, she was still alive, and at various points she seems to have been left in charge of England while Richard was off on his own business (i.e. Crusade). Why have I never seen a Robin Hood story that makes use of this? Is there one out there I should know about?

Jim Hines Explains It All

Many years ago, I remember hearing an incredibly vague story about some fanfic writer who sued a professional author for writing a book they claimed was too similar to a pre-existing fanfic.

I suspect that was the product of this story going through a game of Telephone, with details being dropped at every turn. Jim Hines, Hero of the Revolution, has dug through the dustbin of the Internets to try and ascertain the actual facts of an incident in the early 90’s, involving Marion Zimmer Bradley and the fanfic writer Jean Lamb. Why? Because when arguments come up concerning fanfic, sooner or later somebody ends up trotting out this particular tale, often in moderately warped form (though rarely as warped as the version I heard). So it’s worth taking a step back and asking, what actually happened there?

We’ll never know for sure — particularly since, as Opusculus points out in one of the posts Jim links to, the incident almost certainly involved one of MZB’s ghostwriters, and none of the likely candidates has given a detailed account of the events. (Neither has Lamb, possibly — as suggested somewhere in the comment threads — on advise of counsel.) But if you’re interested in the boundary between fanfic and profic, and what kinds of legal issues can arise when something wanders across that boundary, definitely read Jim’s post, and follow the links if you have the time. At the very least, the story is not quite what folklore has made it out to be, and so the lessons to be taken away from it are not necessarily what you think.

Or at least what I thought, since I was operating from a very warped version of the facts. So I owe thanks to Jim for the breakdown.

adding to the list of reasons the FBI is watching me

Tonight, for writing purposes, I have been googling information on what happens when you smoke opium.

This goes onto a list including items like “once looked up how to transport firearms to Hungary” and “published a story in an anthology called Glorifying Terrorism” that I’m pretty sure have me on an FBI watch list somewhere. Writers: we’re suspicious types, always curious about how to commit crimes.

ARC giveaway winner!

Congrats, landofnowhere; you’re the winner of an ARC of A Star Shall Fall!

(No, it isn’t Harvard bias. I rolled a d30. Yes, I am enough of a gamer geek that I own a d30.)

E-mail me at marie[dot]brennan[at]gmail[dot]com with your address, and I’ll send the books along! Everybody else, stay tuned; I still have a stupid number of ARCs, and will be finding a variety of creative ways to get rid of them.

what I crave

Catching up on Supernatural made me realize that, when all is said and done, there is a particular flavor of story I love above all others — a flavor I haven’t been getting enough of lately.

To whit: the dramatic serialized arc.

Unpacking that . . . I want a dramatic story (as opposed to a comedic one, though using comedy as the jab to set up the impact of the subsequent dramatic cross is even better) — which for me, by the way, means really strong character development; I cannot live on plot alone. I also want the story to be told in installments, whether those are novels of a series or episodes of a TV show. And finally, I want the installments to form an over-arching narrative shape: I want there to be an endpoint the story is trending toward, that helps define that shape, rather than it being created wholly on the fly.

I realized this because of a discussion over on Fangs, Fur, and Fey, and as I said there, this form has a downside: it really has to stick the landing. If you give me an awesome series that whiffs in the final installment, it’s often worse than a standalone novel or film that whiffs the final chapter, if only because I’ve invested so much more time and energy into it. But that investment is also why serialized narratives can affect me so powerfully — and the closer you come to getting it right, the more I will thank you for having pulled my guts out and played cat’s-cradle with them.

(When I said I wanted drama? I meant it.)

This is why I love the Lymond Chronicles. It’s why I love Supernatural — they’ve done a better job of the multi-season metaplot thing than most comparable shows. It’s why I love the anime series X, cracktastic as it is. Some seasons of Buffy pulled it off; George R. R. Martin might do the same, thirty years from now when his series is finally done. But I haven’t tried any new TV lately that’s done it for me, and I’ve had so little time for fiction reading that I’m coming up short there, too. So I throw this open to the peanut gallery: what stories — in whatever medium — do you think would hit all three of those buttons? Dramatic, serialized, and closed-arc, delivering a satisfying macro-level experience as well as good moments along the way. What should I be reading/watching, in my oh-so-copious spare time?

Victorian Book Report: The Rise of Scotland Yard, by Douglas G. Browne

This book is a bit dated, having been written in the early 1950s, but it’s one of only two I could conveniently get that addressed the early years of policing in London. As far as readability goes, it’s on the dull side of the middle of the road; not too much of a slog, but not a shining example of nonfiction entertainment, either. (Which is a pity, because I expect this history would bear a much livelier retelling.)

Its virtue, though, is that it begins by summarizing the systems that preceded the Metropolitan Police — and not just the Bow Street Runners. Chapter 1 covers 1050 to 1600, talking about sheriffs, Justices of the Peace, watchmen, constables, etc. Then there’s a chapter about corruption among magistrates, that led to the Fieldings and Bow Street, then some very useful information about the Runners if (like me) you’re thinking about writing a short story in that period; then it dives into the politics of founding and developing a police force in London.

It still isn’t what I really need, which is a book that will give me details about how the Special Irish Branch went about dealing with Fenian conspirators in the 1880s. But I’ve e-mailed the Metropolitan Police Archives to see if I can get help there, and in the meantime, this at least gives me some background to work from.

bookbookbooksiesBOOK

Ahem. What I meant to say was, I have ARCs of A Star Shall Fall, and I am doing my very best not to hug them and squeeze them and call them George, but it’s hard, because you put in months and months and months of work, and this is the first point at which it really starts to seem like that thing you poured your brain into is actually going to be a book.

In honor of that, I’ll jump the gun by three days and give you what I planned to post one hundred days before the street date: the prologue. More excerpts will come later, and other goodies too; and if you leave a comment to this post, I’ll put your name into the hat for a drawing, the winner to receive a signed ARC of A Star Shall Fall. (With bonus copy of In Ashes Lie, if the winner doesn’t already own it; I’ve ended up with an absurd number of those, and need to send them to good homes.)

So. Enjoy the prologue, comment here if you want an ARC, and while you’re at it, think about bidding on a piece of Onyx Court history.

Edit: this particular giveaway is now closed. But stay tuned; there will be others.