You didn’t *really* need that sleep schedule, did you?

I was about ready to head off to bed at 3 a.m. last night (my usual time, for those not aware).

By the time I actually got there, it was nearly 5.

The reason? I was working on revising “And Blow Them at the Moon” last night, which requires at least two pieces of heavy lifting, completely replacing a pair of scenes. The first one was like pulling teeth, and I’m not sure what percentage of that was the difficulty of the scene, what percentage was me just not committing my brain to the task. But I finished it. And then, of all things, a Facebook application handed me some motivation: I was very close to regenerating enough stamina in this little monster-killing thing to go kill monsters one more time before going to bed, so I told myself that while I waited for that to be ready, I would poke at the second scene.

Then it was nearly 5 a.m. and I’d replaced both scenes.

And I think, more than anything, this is what I love about being a full-time writer. They say, and it’s true, that you can’t wait for the muse to strike if you want to have a career (full-time or otherwise) — but sometimes it does strike. When it does, having the freedom to say, “eh, I can just sleep in tomorrow” is a glorious thing. There was a point at which I knew I could kill monsters and go to bed, but I didn’t want to; I wanted to keep writing Magrat doing something very brave and rather stupid, and so I did. (Whoever knew Facebook could be good for productivity?)

Of course, that meant I slept until 1 p.m. today — which is still only eight hours, but some of them are at a time even I don’t consider to be reasonable for sleeping. So now I go eat something (god, I haven’t had food since about 9:30 last night), and trundle through the requisite 50 pages of my page proofs for Star, and then probably read more about the Underground.

And hope I can go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight.

Now if only this meant *I* had more time.

Hmmmm.

I think I may push the start date of the Victorian book from 1870 to 1884, or thereabouts.

It all has to do with the Underground. Blackfriars station opened May 1870, and that was originally going to be the impending threat at the heart of this book. (Because of what it means for the Onyx Hall.) But I’m thinking that I may instead want to center the story around the completion of what became the Circle Line, when they connected Aldgate and Mansion House — partly because of the Cannon Street station (which might look significant to those who remember their Onyx Hall geography), and partly because it is a circle: an iron ring around and through the palace. That seems significant to me, even if it goes around a heck of a lot more than just the City of London.

Fortunately, this doesn’t mean huge changes elsewhere in the story — not like it would if I moved, say, Ashes by fourteen years. Some social differences, yes, but the politics in this one are going to be much more internal to the cast, which means I can transplant them around the later Victorian period without too much trouble. (I hope.)

Now if only pushing it back fourteen years meant I got some extra time on my end.

more auctioning

The Carl Brandon Society is sponsoring a fundraiser to help people of color attend Wiscon, a well-respected feminist SF convention. I’m auctioning off a signed set of the first two Onyx Court novels. There are a lot more goodies on offer; details about how to offer, browse, bid, donate, or request assistance here.

ankle update

Surgery at the end of March, after ICFA (which means I can swim in the pool there, yay!) Between now and then, I make friends with Mr. Brace, who is my best guard against sudden catastrophic ankle failure.

Not that I think such a thing is likely to happen — but you really, really don’t want to be proven wrong about something like that.

Sadly, I must also swear off kumite (sparring) between now and my recovery, since it occurred to me that probably falls under the umbrella of “basketball and other activities involving sudden changes of motion, especially lateral ones” that I was told would be hazardous. Since I’m supposed to wait until twelve weeks after surgery to do those things (I can go back to karate after eight), that means I won’t be sparring again until mid-June at the earliest.

Well, at least my kata will get really good.

woot!

It doesn’t have the right ending, I don’t think, but right now I don’t care, because I’ve completed “The Wives of Paris” — three days after I came up with the idea.

Mind you, this doesn’t actually reduce the list of Stories What Need Finishing, but I’ll take it anyway. Especially because this, in conjunction with “Two Pretenders,” is the second short story this month, which I haven’t done since <checks the records> June 2006. Sure, they’re both pretty slim — 2900 words and 1800 words, respectively — but it’s a nice feeling of accomplishment anyway.

And as it’s taken me far too long to compose this post, I think that’s a sign my brain has shut down, and I should go to bed. Where I shall sleep the sleep of the virtuous.

I *know* there’s at least one more.

Who in Greek mythology, besides Paris and Oedipus, was prophecied to cause trouble and therefore abandoned on a mountainside? (Or otherwise disposed of in a way that was intended to prevent the prophecy from coming true.)

I’m sure there’s at least one more, but my knowledge of mythology has sadly declined from its heyday.

ETA: hmmm, it deleted my first edit. I was going to say, Romulus and Remus appear to fit the bill, but I welcome other suggestions.

Two links make an insufficient post

1) If you’re interested in Sirens (where I’ll be a Guest of Honor this fall), they’ve put up a post about programming, to give you a sense of how it works. The approach is along the lines of an academic conference, but you don’t have to be an academic; they actively want a good mix of people — readers, writers, critics, librarians, etc.

2) Should have put this one up before, but better late than never: Help the Project. Charity auction for the Virginia Avenue Project, “a free afterschool arts and academics program” that mentors kids in a disadvantaged neighborhood. Like many such programs, they’re hurting for funding right now, and in danger of closing down. Auction ends March 1st; details here.

Visiting the twentieth century

. . . it has been a remarkably long time since I printed out and mailed a short story somewhere.

Partly this is because I’ve put so few stories into submission the last two years. (And of that half-dozen, three have sold to the first place I sent them. Another sold on Try #2.) But it’s also because so few markets these days insist on paper submissions. They’ve mostly either gone digital, or gone away. Which phrasing makes it seem like I think there’s a connection; I don’t. But all the new markets I can think of take electronic submissions. And bit by bit, the paper places slip further down my priority list.

Yeah, I’m part of that generation. Make me walk to the post office, and odds improve that I’ll try somebody else first. There’s other places that pay as well, don’t require printouts and envelopes and paper clips and stamps, and frequently respond faster to boot. And by such means does the new crop of writers drift away from the old guard of magazines.

Son of a *bitch*.

I find myself reluctant to post about this, as I have several friends right now dealing with medical complaints of a much more serious nature. But I also know those friends would tell me that their difficulties do not mean I should somehow be happy about my own, and I’m going to have to bring this up sooner or later. So:

I’m having ankle surgery.

Again.

Details within.

I’m supposed to be *finishing* stories, not *starting* them

zellandyne, I have 1,059 words of “The Wives of Paris” and it’s all your fault.

Not sure whose fault it is that I seem to be channeling yuki_onna-lite with this thing, though. It was supposed to be, I don’t know, like “Once a Goddess” or something. Instead I have a semi-bitter, self-aware narrative that’s already referenced Morgan le Fay and Hallgerðr, and narrowly missed having the Queen of Sheba join the party. (Lamia took her place.) It feels bizarrely like my story idea fell into somebody else’s paint can and came out the most unexpected color, not my usual look at all.

But hey. 1,059 words, and I’d probably stay up to write more (it’s almost time for Penthesilea to show up, unless I decide to really embrace the whole culture-mash thing and make it Scáthach instead), but I do have to get up at a reasonable hour tomorrow. So I’ll let this sit, and pray the paint can hasn’t vanished by the time I come back.

narrative space

Using my gaming icon for this post, for reasons that will shortly become obvious, but this is as much about writing as RPGs.

Tonight — presuming none of my players manage to contract ebola or something in the next eight hours — I’ll start running Once Upon a Time in the West, my oh-so-cleverly titled frontier Scion game. This is the second tabletop game I’ve run, with Memento being the first. (No, I don’t expect this one to turn into a novel, much less a series. Then again, I didn’t expect it with Memento, either. But this one will be more heavily based on game materials, so I’d say it’s unlikely.) As a result, I’ve been thinking about games and how I plot them.

I’ll take pity on your flists, since I was wordier than I expected.

research request: the Great Exhibition

Does anybody know of a good book about the Great Exhibition of 1851, and/or the Crystal Palace? (That’s almost twenty years before this novel will take place, but I think I’d like to make use of it in the backstory.)

email outage

If you’re accustomed to contacting me via my personal e-mail address (i.e. NOT the Gmail one), then there will be a delay in my responses. A small-plane crash, of all things, has taken out power to the server in question, and until that issue is resolved, I will be incommunicado.

(This also includes replies to LJ posts or comments, since that’s where my notifications are sent.)

If you really need to get ahold of me asap, marie [dot] brennan [at] gmail [dot] com will still work.

because they’re cluttering up Firefox

I meant to offer these with more commentary, but I don’t think I’m going to get around to it. Two last links on the Amazon vs. Macmillan thing, both from Making Light:

1) An explanation of the “agency model” that Macmillan’s pushing and Amazon’s fighting, in case you’re wondering just what the fight is actually about, and,

2) Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s commentary on a post (which she links) by a music industry executive, talking about what happens when you let retailers start calling the shots in your line of work. Fascinating material in there about what happened to the music industry, and then Teresa relates it to publishing in some very enlightening ways.

Enjoy.

Victorian Book Report: Victorian People and Ideas, Richard D. Altick

The subtitle of this book is, “A companion for the modern reader of Victorian Literature.” If it were either a work of literary criticism, or a work of historical analysis, I’d be more concerned about the fact that it was published in 1973; but as it turns out, it’s instead the sort of work that doesn’t become dated very badly at all — and precisely the sort of work I needed to be reading right now.

Because it is, in essence, a simple overview of historical events and movements in the Victorian period, as selected under the rubric of “what things were major Victorian poets and novelists inspired by and/or arguing with?” So it tells you about the Reform Bills and the Chartist movement and Utilitarianism and a whole bunch of other things that I’d encountered in passing while reading other books, and then it provides examples of characters or events or whatever in Dickens or Tennyson or whoever that seem connected to those things. Occasionally the result is dry, and it’s entirely possible some of the finer points have been changed or complicated since Altick wrote this book, but on the whole I found it extraordinarily useful for my purposes.

And I definitely picked the perfect time to read it. I now feel much better-grounded in certain issues of the period, and therefore better prepared to tackle some of the other books on my list.

Victorian Book Report: The Essential Handbook of Victorian Etiquette

Point in this book’s favor: it’s a reprint compliation of material dating to 1873-1890. Ergo, genuine Victorian-period advice on how to behave.

Point against this book’s favor: it’s American advice, which I was not able to tell when I ordered it.

Still, I find it helpful; Hill, the original writer, describes certain scenarios in ways that jibe with my impressions for the other side of the pond, while fleshing them out such that I can better understand the proper (or improper) behavior. So I feel I can use it, with caution.

Much to my surprise, he even gets a few random proto-feminist brownie points. I was highly entertained that “Professor Hill’s Guide to Love and Marriage” begins with a few paragraphs reassuring the reader that there’s nothing wrong in these modern days with being an “old maid” — indeed, women’s opportunities nowadays are so diverse that there’s really no reason to get married unless you actually find someone suitable that you like. (Professor Hill’s Guide to Love and Marriage: don’t do it!) He also claims that when the financial failure of a marriage is blamed on the wife’s imprudent spending, it’s usually because the husband never told the wife they were in monetary straits; properly informed wives, he (rather optimistically) says, will always keep within the family’s means. I frowned a bit when he advised wives that some nights their husbands may come home from a hard day at the office and carry on in the same autocratic manner they use with their employees, and it’s just best to suck it up — but then he went on to advise husbands that sometimes their wives’ “variable condition of health” may put her in a bad mood, and then it’s just best to overlook it and carry on. The sauce which is good for the goose is, indeed, also good for the gander, and that pleases me.

(In fact, the only place I caught him being noticeably one-sided, he did so in favor of women: husbands should, he recommends, keep their wives well-informed as to their business affairs, and take their prudent advice — but stay the hell out of affairs of household management.)

It’s a small book, half taken up with illustrations, but some of those go with the text: a dinner scene, for example, illustrating a bunch of examples of What Not To Do, with helpful annotations. Not a hugely informative resource, but entertaining and quick to read.