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.

30K!

Got today’s writing done early, largely by dint of putting back in a half-finished scene I’d cut at the beginning of the month. Had to redo various bits of it, of course, but at least half of today’s wordage only required polishing, not invention from scratch. And this means I can run game tonight with a clear conscience, and not have to drag my brain to London after the session is done.

Word count: 30,006
LBR quota: We’re back to the Fenians, so it’s definitely rhetoric, with a forecast of blood.
Authorial sadism: No, Eliza, you still don’t get to talk to Miss Kittering.

translation question

I don’t suppose anyone reading this journal speaks Castilian Spanish? (i.e. the Spanish of Spain, not Latin America.) I could use some help with incidental words of a casual variety, like endearments and insults, that probably vary from culture to culture (and therefore shouldn’t just be pulled from a dictionary).

In which the Cat preaches it, again

Cat Valente on Lost:

But here’s the thing, guys. If you don’t want to get tarred with the SF brush, you don’t get to play with our toys, either. That means you do not get any of the following exciting action figures: monsters, immortal beings, time travel, alternate universes, glowcaves, Egyptian mythology, electromagnetic magic, insta-healing, psychic powers, Dark Lords, Lords of Light, magical touched by an angel fatecakes, teleportation, mystical islands, or bodily possession. Get your sticky hands off them–you’ll only break them. Make a sitcom and shut up, if you want to howl about not being SF. Make a gritty procedural. Make Thirty-Something, I don’t know. But don’t make an SF show and then prance around telling everyone it’s SUPER REALISTIC while trying to conceal your painful giant quantum rabbit erection. You can’t trot out all those shiny SF baubles and then refuse to develop them or treat them seriously.

And while we’re on the topic of TV and not respecting stuff? I’m at a point where I would like to ban all shows from touching the topic of sf/f community, including but not limited to: comic book fans, LARPers, Renfest folk, players of video games, and anything else of a remotely geeky stripe. Just leave them alone, TV people. You don’t understand those groups, and what’s worse, you don’t want to understand them; you just want to toss them in because you’ve decided to do an episode about people who are totally detached from reality and can’t keep their non-fantasy lives in balance with anything else. And you’ve decided we are those people. Kindly piss off, leave the geeks out of your police procedural or whatever it is you’re making, and stick with things you actually have respect for.

It’s not what Cat was ranting about, but it was on my mind, so I decided to kill two birds with one ineffectual blog post. After all, that’s what the internets are for.

The List (mostly)

For those who have been following the Adventure of the Book I’m Totally Not Working On, I Swear, here is the present list of knightly names:

  • Audacia (Courage)
  • Castimonia (Purity)
  • Justitia (Justice)
  • Misericordia (Mercy)
  • Obedentia (Obedience)
  • Patientia (Patience)
  • Reverentia (Reverence)
  • Sollertia (Skill)
  • Sophia (Wisdom)
  • Temperantia (Temperance)
  • Valentia (Strength)
  • Vigilantia (Vigilance)

I may end up tweaking it, but for now, that’s the set.

Now I’m off to see if I can convince myself to do my Victorian writing now, making my evening simpler, and also leaving me time to play with this . . . .

Victorian Book Report: The Victorian House Explained, by Trevor Yorke

I never wrote up a report on the first book I read out of this series, Georgian and Regency Houses Explained, but this can stand for both; they’re pretty similar works. Skinny little books with a lot of pictures, seemingly intended for a market consisting of people who occupy or otherwise have an interest in the houses of different periods: there’s a timeline at the back, showing when different features came into and went out of fashion, so you can try to ID your house (or renovations thereof) by time period.

But in the course of serving this need, Yorke does two very useful things: first, he gives an overview of how styles changed over time (between the Georgian and Regency periods, or throughout the loooooong Victorian period), and second, he breaks the houses down by class of room, giving sample floorplans, and talking about how those rooms would be decorated. He’s much more interested in fixtures than furniture — with this book in hand, I could probably date a coal grate to within about twenty years — but where the actual structure is concerned, his books are a minor goldmine. (The Victorian book of this series lacks the stultifyingly boring section showing different kinds of drainpipes and door styles that the G&R book had; I tried to pay attention to that bit last time, but really, unless you’re trying to date the house you live in by the depth of the window-box, its use is limited.)

He’s done a whole series of these things — “England’s Living History” — not just for houses but also bridges, churches, even narrowboats. They’re all fairly small, but based on the data sample I have so far, clear and useful for the topics they cover.