If I have a daughter, I’m naming her Jael.

From Slacktivist’s list of 7 biblical women’s names that deserve wider usage:

2. Jael. You meet plenty of people named after Mary, the other biblical character praised as “most blessed of women,” but I’ve never met or even heard of anyone named after Jael. Maybe it’s because the name translates, literally, as “mountain goat.” Or maybe it’s because “bad-ass” isn’t what most parents are looking for in a name for their baby girl. Jael was bad-ass. She took out Sisera, the general in charge of the invading army:

Barak came by in pursuit of Sisera, and Jael went out to meet him. “Come,” she said, “I will show you the man you’re looking for.” So he went in with her, and there lay Sisera with the tent peg through his temple — dead.

Don’t mess with Jael.

I need to read the more interesting parts of the Old Testament someday.

I R LERNIN’

If I had the time, I’d post a picture of the thing I’m currently wearing. Not because it’s pretty — far, far from it — but because it is the result of my first-ever attempt to draft a piece of clothing completely from scratch, with nothing more than my dress form, some muslin, and lots of pins and markers.

I doubt I’ve done a very efficient job, mind you; there’s been a lot of wasted muslin along the way, as I reinvented the wheel of things like arm holes and Redesigning Men’s Garments For People What Have Breasts. It would have been easier had I used darts, but weirdly I decided to avoid them, as they were not used in the days of doublets. I say “weirdly” because I’ve got another design element in here that is likewise not period, but that decision was made long after I’d progressed beyond the darts decision, so oh well.

It doesn’t have to be period. It just has to be functional. When I get time to work on it next, I’ll be cutting it out of some leftover taffeta from another project, to see if it still hangs okay when rendered in a stiffer fabric. If that works, then the next step is to take both the taffeta and the brocade I’m ultimately going to use and have them punch-tested, because y’see, what we are making here is a fencing doublet. (Or two, if the taffeta works out acceptably.)

And once we know whether I’m safe from being skewered, then we make the final version. And then I will have a hood and a jacket, and if I stick underarm patches on some old shirt the only loaner-wear I’ll still need is a gorget.

Which I can’t make myself. But I can make pretty-please eyes at other people, and think about buying my own blade (since I’m not using the ones I have), and then I will be loaner-gear free. Huzzah!

Return of the Book Bloggery!

Once upon a time (a time known as “last summer”, I embarked upon a project to re-read the Lymond Chronicles and blog my way through, performing a craft-oriented close reading as I went. I made it a goodly way through The Game of Kings before I discovered that I couldn’t write one sixteenth-century novel while reading another, and then after that there was the wedding and all, and what with one thing and another it ground to a halt.

Now it’s starting up again.

For those of you who have borne with me all this time, I’m most grateful; thank you for your patience. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, follow that link and you’ll see. For those newcomers to this journal who have read all the books, or those who have in the meantime finished the books, comment here if you want in on the action, and I’ll add you to the special Lymond filter, so you can see what’s gone before and join in the discussion as we go on forward.

hello, middle

I think that may be my pivot point, right there. I’m in the middle zone — 30K to 37.5K, depending on where the book falls in 60 to 75K — and today’s writing, which more than made up for yesterday’s lack, puts me right at a neat 33,333 words.

(Okay, it was 33,334 words. I deleted one to make the number pretty. It didn’t need to be in there, I promise.)

And this chunk of writing — this whole chapter, really, which was all tonight’s writing — may very well be that pivot point at the center of a book, when you stop moving away from the beginning and start moving toward the end. Things get a lot worse for Val from here on out. But she knows most of the major pieces now, at least about herself; the second half is what she decides to do about it.

I’d been wondering what my pivot point would be. Or if this book would have one. But all is well; I think I found it.

an open letter to my fencing teacher

Dear Barry,

You remember how you tried to teach us Olympic-style foil? And how you failed miserably to get us to attend to right-of-way, stay linear, and leave our off hands out of it? Until you just gave up and taught us rapier and dagger instead?

Well now, ten years later, I’m fighting rapier again — and I’m staying linear, forgetting I have an off hand, and behaving as if right-of-way somehow protects me.

Apparently your lessons just kicked in late.

But I’m sure that if you faced me and kurayami_hime off against each other, we’d still launch the exact same attack at the exact same instant and stab each other in the guard again, just like we used to. So the world hasn’t flipped totally on its head.

Hugs and kisses,
Your Token Righty

Screw it. This scene is just not happening tonight.

Nor is any other scene, apparently, despite my attempt to skip past it. Unless I want to write something totally disconnected that I’ll probably have to replace completely anyway when I get there. And I don’t actually want to do that, as I’d be pulling teeth and then throwing them out.

As much as I hate missing a day outright, I think that’s the better part of valor, here.

book improvery

I only just recently remembered that this is supposed to be my icon for stories-in-progress. So out it comes, even though it’s less apropos for this YA book than it was for MNC. (Said YA is shambling towards a title, btw, though it hasn’t settled on one yet.)

I had an epiphany while long-distance driving yesterday. Gotta agree with Bear on this one; drives really are the bomb for story pondering. Anyway, I realized that I could probably reduce the suck in the early part of the book by taking three scenes whose intended purpose was to postpone a certain event by developing a different part of the plot, but which never quite justified their existence like they were supposed to, and moving them to just after the bit I’m writing now. Not only does this work (I think), it also looks like it will solve several unrelated ancillary problems. In fact, it feels kind of like this is the way it was always supposed to go, and I was just too dumb to realize before.

My hindbrain is smarter than I am, nine times out of ten.

So the scenes are relocated, though there are still Frankenstein seams where they got cut out and where they got pasted in that need fixing. Oh, but I just realized there was supposed to be [redacted] in the scene I wrote today, to set up the lead-in for the relocated scenes. Well, that can be tomorrow’s work. I’ve put in a good day’s effort inflicting pure, unadulterated high school trauma on Val; the physical blood, instead of the social kind, will have to wait.

your question for the day

Why is my brain so messed up?

Why, as I was toasting frozen waffles, did it randomly start trying to map Jesus and King Arthur onto each other? Why did it start trying to work up a Sekrit Truth of Jesus wherein Mary Magdalene was in the Guinevere role and Judas was probably Lancelot unless he was Mordred or maybe both?

What is wrong with my brain?

truly done

Well, that’s it. Page proofs are in the mail, headed back to the publisher.

It isn’t exactly true to say I’m washing my hands of this book until June, because of course I’ll need to do things to promote it. But work on the book itself is done.

And so, at last, the giant map of Elizabethan London has come down off the wall in the upstairs hallway . . . to be replaced by a new one, of course. I have a partial 1828 map, which is about forty years on the early side, but it might go up for now (once I get it flattened out). Especially since I’m not sure how best to go about getting a more contemporary one.

I just hope I can find some method that doesn’t involve three hours at Kinko’s with a bunch of tape again.

Tonight’s writing revelation: I keep trying to pretend I will somehow trick my readers into not noticing the obvious. When instead I should embrace the obvious (since they’ll notice it anyway) and move on with the story.

So yes, hypothetical readers, that subplot you think is there? Is there. And yes, I know it’s a standard-issue subplot. I have faith that I’m going interesting places with it, but I will not get there by pretending I’m not going anywhere.

did you notice?

I’m far from the first person to say this, but it bears repeating, from sea to shining sea.

An African-American won the first Democratic primary this year.

A woman won the second primary.

Also, you didn’t have to dig too far down into the lower tier of candidates to find a Latino.

Let’s take a moment and lay aside all the finer points of issues and electability and all that other very important crap, and give this the notice it deserves. I am proud of the Democratic Party for its slate this cycle. This isn’t a mere nod to political correctness; we have two, almost three strong candidates for the presidency that aren’t white guys.

This is a victory for our country.

If Obama or Clinton wins the nomination, it will be another victory. If one of them wins the presidency, it will be a huge victory. Because it is long past time for that particular wall to get knocked down; that it’s taken us this long is a national disgrace.

I’m not going to get into details of policies, voting records, or any of that stuff right now. We can save that for later. For now, I’m going to cheer both of them on.

Aaaaand done.

Sigh. It’s so clear — now that it’s too late — that I needed two more paragraphs in that novel. One in this scene and one in that scene, to give a particular aspect of the story a bit of the punch it’s lacking.

But it’s way too late for that.

Oh well. I have finished the page proofs, listening to my soundtrack all the way, and at the very end text and music lined up perfectly, and I sniffled a bit. If I can still be moved at all by this thing, after having read it so very many times, there’s hope for it yet.

Even if it is two paragraphs short.

Top Ten Signs a Story Was Written by Me

This is going around as a meme for the contributors on , and I had fun writing it up. So I thought I’d cross-post it here, for the entertainment of those who know me and my writing. (Especially those of you who have seen the unpublished stuff, as you have a broader sample in which to see patterns.)

Top ten signs a story was written by me . . . .

1. Names are somehow important. Seriously, I don’t know if it’s because my own legal name is so unmanageable or what, but it comes up again and again. Sometimes it’s as small as a married woman who’s left her husband choosing to abandon his surname; sometimes it’s Blatantly Meaningful Nomenclature or somebody getting their name from a god. But names keep on being important, again and again.

2. So are siblings. Or quasi-sibling entities. I have a perfectly normal relationship with my own brother, so I have no idea where this comes from. Siblings, evil twins, or just really good friends who might as well be related.

3. Also religion. Which is so not a reflection of me. But fantasy deals with the supernatural, and I can’t seem to think about the supernatural without the divine coming into it, too. And really, when you get down to it, most human societies in most time periods have believed in some manner of godlike being(s). So it’s true of the worlds I build, too. (I’m probably the only person who thinks of Jacqueline Carey’s work as “those books with all the neat religion stuff” instead of “those books with all the kinky sex.”)

4. Characters surrender themselves to things. Sometimes the thing they’re surrendering to is the divine. Other times it’s fate, or their powers, or just The Inevitable, in whatever form it’s taken. But I seem to have a thing for that moment of letting go, and having that be some kind of turning point.

5. If I’m making up the setting, the names look like they come from some real-world language. This is because it’s an old trick of mine for creating the illusion of depth in my worldbuilding. If you look at Europe historically, you could generally tell Germans from Spaniards from Turks just based on their names; why shouldn’t that be true in a fantasy setting, as well? So now it’s become standard practice for me. (Though the practice was instituted after I’d written Doppelganger, so the only place you can clearly see it there is in the witches’ names.)

6. Yay art! Singing. Dancing. I reeeeeally want to publish my novel about a playwright in a fantasy world. I just published a story about a minstrel in Intergalactic Medicine Show, and I have a half-finished story about a sculptor sitting on my computer. I gravitate more toward what I know (which is probably why the sculptor’s story is floundering), but in general, I likes me some artistic expression. I like it even better when it has some magical component to it.

7. I’ll never give anyone a Fate. I’m far more interested in people who choose to step up and do something, rather than being destined to do it. If there’s a prophecy, it’ll be more of a conditional statement: “if this happens, then this will happen,” or “someday somebody will do this, but it isn’t pre-determined who.” There is one exception to this rule in the compost heap at the back of my head, but it’s a story that is going to examine the entire concept of fate very directly.

8. Romance might happen, but it isn’t guaranteed. Many of my characters are too busy to really think about that. Or so hung up on various issues that, while by the end of the story they may be ready to consider it, the actual lovey-dovey developments are more left to the reader’s imagination than played out onstage. At most, it’s a B plot trying to make space for itself in the A plot that’s busy trying to kill everybody. I would make a terrible romance author . . . .

9. I know my folklore. Several of my published or soon-to-be-published short stories are built off fairy tales, ballads, or other traditional narratives. Bits and pieces also show up in things that aren’t as directly related. It’s an endless source of material for me.

10. You can always tell I’m an anthropologist. In fact, I even have a “Cultural Fantasy Manifesto” posted on my site. I like worldbuilding, and I like building worlds that do new and interesting things. And then my stories are always tied closely into their setting, with the culture shaping how the characters think and what choices they make, so that you couldn’t possibly transplant them into a different world without the story just falling apart.

new story up!

I know a lot of you don’t necessarily go out and buy an issue of a magazine just because I have a story in it, but in this case, it’s very easy. “Lost Soul” is posted now at the Intergalactic Medicine Show, which means it’s online. You can access the whole issue for only $2.50, and it provides quite a substantial amount of content for that price.

My backlog of sold-but-not-yet-published stories is finally shrinking back down to a reasonable size. Mind you, that means I should sell more stories. Which means I should submit more. Which means I should write more.

Maybe tonight. First, I’m going to go have dinner and watch some TV.

gyargh

And then sometimes, even though you read your copy-edited manuscript out loud, even though you had the online OED open in a tab almost the entire time you were writing your book, you get to the page proofs — the stage when alterations can have expensive consequences — and you realize your Elizabethan novel has the word “thug” in it.

Which comes from the Thuggee cult in India, and didn’t enter English until the nineteenth century.

Here’s the thing about this kind of work, the obsessive checking of word histories to root out any glaring anachronisms. It’s like being the CIA. Nobody will notice when you do your job right. Nobody will look at a paragraph and say, “Good on her! She didn’t refer to this character as paranoid, because we didn’t have that word until Sigmund Freud* came along!” Success is utterly invisible. They’ll only notice when you screw up, when you call someone a thug two hundred and twenty-five years too soon.

This is one heck of a thankless job.

—

*Yes, I know the word didn’t actually originate with him. Remember, I have the OED. It just sounded better that way.

things you don’t think about

One of the changes I’ve noticed with Warner turning into Orbit is that now my CEM and page proofs come with cover sheets that explain those parts of the process in more detail. (Page proofs arrived yesterday.) I always knew changes at this stage were expensive, and that if I made too many I’d have to pay for them myself, but this time around I’ve got concrete info: the allowance for author changes is generally somewhere between $200 and $800 dollars, depending on the book, and changes cost about $1.50 a line.

Which led to me noticing something. Thanks to the way I chose to structure it, MNC has a grand total of (I think) seven hard page breaks in the text. Things like the act openings with their epigraphs get their own pages, but the narrative itself leaves white space at the end of a page only seven times — at the end of each act, plus the prologue and epilogue.

Why does this matter? Because changing at the page-proof stage has a ripple effect. If the alteration I’d like to make in the first para of the prologue shortens it by one line, that will pull a line from page 2 onto page 1, and so on back until you hit a hard page break.

Of which there are only seven in the entire book.

There are many reasons to ponder things like chapter structure — how many, how long, etc — but this is a new one by me. Building the book this way means I have to be even more economical with my page-proof-stage changes, or next thing I know they’ll have to reset the entirety of Act Four. So I’m very glad I made myself read the entire CEM out loud, to catch as many verbal infelicities as possible; now is not the time to fix broken sentences. But even so, I find myself wanting to delete two words from the first paragraph, and I have to be really careful about that.

Note to self: chapter breaks are your friend.