I’M GOING TO ENGLAND!!!!!

London, mostly. But also a jaunt up to Derbyshire to see Hardwick House. There’s probably an Elizabethan manor closer to London, but I’m not sure I can pass up the chance to see Bess of Hardwick’s actual house.

I’M GOING TO ENGLAND!!!!!

I realized a moment ago that I haven’t been out of the country since 2002. Which necessitates the world’s smallest violin playing for me — oh, woe is her; she’s twenty-six and she’s only been to the British Virgin Islands, Costa Rica, England, Ireland, Israel, and Japan — but it’s a bit sad to trade approximately once-a-year overseas trips for multiple-times-a-year domestic trips, especially when the domestic trips mostly mean the hotel the conference or convention is in.

So, yeah. May 22nd to May 29th, flying out of Chicago, so buzzermccain, if you’ve got Internet access again, be warned that I’ll be taking you up on that crash space.

I’M GOING TO ENGLAND!!!!!

Edited to add: Okay, so, trying to type a post while on the phone with kurayami_hime doesn’t work so well. I should clarify that I am going to England as research for Midnight Never Come, not that you all probably didn’t guess that anyway. I’m going for a week, and will spend most of the time in Central London, Westminster, and Southwark, with the aforementioned jaunt to Bess of Hardwick’s house, and things like a riverboat trip to Hampton Court Palace, which still has some Tudor-period architecture left, though not much. (On the other hand, it means I get to float down the Thames. Yay!) Anyway, I’ll post more details about my exact plans when I have them more concretely formed. Right now, I’m still giddy. ^_^

I’M GOING TO ENGLAND!!!!!

art in context

First, go read this article, about an experiment the Washington Post conducted on the D.C. Metro.

No, really — go read it. The entire thing, if you can, and watch the video clips. There’s some good stuff in there. Not just the incident they staged, but the variety of things they learned from it.

Have you done that? Okay. Then come inside the cut. I want to discuss this, but not out in the open, where people will be tempted to read my comments before they’ve read the article.

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that whole resolution thing

At the beginning of the year, I set myself the challenge of writing a short story a month.

First off, I need to remind myself that I didn’t challenge myself to write a good, saleable story a month; sometimes one produces a clunker, after all. So I am hereby officially accepting the fact that I didn’t actually finish “Kingspeaker” until the beginning of March, and my February short story was “Schrodinger’s Crone.” Doesn’t matter that SC actually needs to be a poem; I wrote it first as a story, and if it’s a bad story, oh well.

Which is me telling myself that I can officially not kick myself over the fact that “Once a Goddess” (theoretically my March story) isn’t done. “Kingspeaker” was my March story. This is my April story.

But the real issue is on the horizon: Midnight Never Come. (And the wedding.) I don’t know if I’ll be able to write a short story a month while also writing a historical novel with lots of research. (And planning a wedding).

I might be able to, were it not for the fact that many of the short story ideas on hand also require research. “Hannibal of the Rockies” (which is technically on ice at the moment) requires me to know about elephants, Siam, the Civil War, and nineteenth-century mountaineering. “Mad Maudlin” needs research into mental health care. “The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots” might pass, since half of it’s the same research I’m doing for MNC anyway, but “Xie Meng Lu Goes on Pilgrimage” and all the subsequent stories I want to write for it require me to learn about imperial China, and what I presently know about imperial China would fit comfortably in a thimble. Etc. The stories that don’t need research mostly aren’t developed enough to be written yet.

I had a secondary goal for this year, though, which was to get a new story out the door each month. This isn’t the same thing as writing a good, saleable story a month because I have a small backlog of things I’ve written but not revised. So I think I’m revising my intentions: the submissions will be the real priority, and the writing will be something to aim for but not freak out if I fail to achieve it. I have two non-researchy things I can write in May and June, and then I can let myself slide in July, August, and September if I need to, picking myself back up in the fall, after the novel’s turned in and I’m officially hitched.

This sounds wise. Whether or not it will happen remains to be seen. But ultimately, the point is to aim for it; any progress I make toward the goal(s) means I have more short story production than I’ve had in the last year or two, and that is a Good Thing.

the story behind the story

When I announced Midnight Never Come as my next novel, I made some allusions that, for some of you, need expansion.

Or, to put it a different way, I need to apologize for (on the surface of it) committing one of the cardinal sins of fantasy writing: I’m writing up a role-playing game.

Generally, of course, that phrase indicates something along the lines of “an elf, a dwarf, and a ranger walk into a dungeon . . .,” and in such cases it is rightly despised; god only knows how many bad queries agents and editors see that are thinly-disguised writeups of D&D campaigns, even when they aren’t working on the Forgotten Realms. But of course game systems have come a long way since D&D debuted, as have the uses to which people put them, and this particular instance is about as far away from the dungeon scenario as one can get.

Last year I ran my first RPG, a one-year (okay, ten-and-a-half-month) tabletop game based on White Wolf’s system Changeling: The Dreaming. In a very tiny nutshell, the idea of the system is that faerie souls have survived into modern times by taking refuge in mortal bodies, and that when the mortal host dies, they reincarnate. So I ran a game that went through 650 years of English history — backwards — going from 2006 to 1916 and so on back to about 1350, and then back to 2006 to finish up the plot. For structural reasons, I called it Memento, after the very intriguing Guy Pearce movie.

The 1589 segment of the game grew like kudzu. It didn’t run any longer than the others (three sessions), but by the time I was done, its background and consequences stretched the entire length of the game, from the time of the Black Death through to nearly the last of our 2006 sessions. And at the heart of that web of action and reaction, folly and consequence, was Invidiana, Queen of the Onyx Court, who ruled the fae of Albion for a period of time mostly overlapping Elizabeth’s reign.

Midnight Never Come is not really a Memento novel; the overarching plot that spanned all that time (which was basically a 650-year alchemical experiment) will be absent, and many of the outlying tendrils of Invidiana’s plot will be pulled in, to make a more compact story. But she wouldn’t leave my head, and neither would a lot of the characters surrounding her, and I gradually came to realize that it wouldn’t be all that hard to file off the Changeling-specific serial numbers and make it an independent story about curses and dark pacts, lost memories and betrayed loves, Machiavellian intrigues and faerie/mortal politics. And while the proprietary ideas that belonged to White Wolf will be gone, those were never the central part of it anyway; the most important bits will still be there, and that’s why I can make it a novel. It was very nearly standing on its own two feet to begin with. (Hell, I’d thrown in so many things that violated White Wolf canon, half of it was hardly recognizable as Changeling anyway.)

So there you have it: I am committing RPG novelization. I pray you all forgive me.

I would adore this weather, were it not for three things: 1) the hail may have damaged my car, 2) the hail nearly damaged me, and 3) tomorrow the temperature is dropping straight into the pits of hell.

Norse hell. The frozen one. (Because hell, apparently, is like home.)

the awesomeness of friends

I have several things I’ve been meaning to post about, and lucky me, they share a theme: how awesome my friends are.

Let’s take them in chronological order, shall we?

First up: khet_tcheba. Some time ago, she created the mask you can see in my LARPing icon, plus a mask for kniedzw, because I wanted something very particular for the White Court game and suspected she would have the costuming-fu to create it for me (and then my boy jumped on the bandwagon, too). The results were spectacular. So, like a bad person, I e-mail her a month or so ago and ask whether she can make me a fore-and-aft bicorn for the Regency LARP, ’cause the only ones I can find for sale online cost several hundred dollars (I can only assume they’re vintage pieces, not replicas). The photo of me from the game doesn’t show it all that well, but keep an eye out for an upcoming post with links to other people’s pics and you’ll get a better idea. (The thing is freaking ridiculous, but the fault for that lies with history, not Khet.) So the Swan Tower Millinery Award goes to her, for adventures in felting.

Second: tooth_and_claw. Back when I was running Memento, she made a number of awesome sketches for the game, and I commissioned from her a portrait of Invidiana. I ended up getting two: a headshot and a full-length portrait. So if you want to have an idea of what the fae queen in Midnight Never Come looks like, there you go. (I’m hoping she’ll end up on the cover, but I have next to no control over that; all I can do is suggest it to my editor.) The Swan Tower Illustration Award goes to her — as if she hadn’t already earned it with the Memento cast painting.

Third: unforth. I have a hardcover copy of Doppelganger! Y’see, she’s a librarian, and she knows how to bind books. A while back she mentioned that she was looking for suggested rebinding projects. Until she delivered it into my hands, I had no idea she’d decided to make her first project a hardcover rebinding of my very own novel, complete with a wrap-around paper cover replicating the front, spine, and back of the original. Unless there’s somebody else out there with her skills and deranged enthusiasm, this will probably be the only hardcover edition there ever is — certainly the only hardcover of the first edition. For her, the Swan Tower Bookbinding Award.

So there you have it: I have awesome friends. Seriously, you all (not just those three) have a stunning array of knowledges and skills, and if I occasionally get depressed that there are a million and one things I’ll never learn to do, I cheer up when I remember that I might know people who do. Keep up the random hobbies, folks; they make me proud to know you.

Regency LARP

I got shot. It was one of the best things that happened all game.

I love it when I can say something like that, and mean it as a sincere statement of fun. ^_^

It’s easier to post about one-off games in a way that’s comprehensible (and, dare I hope, interesting?) to outside audiences, since they’re designed to be self-contained, so if you’re curious about how I got shot and why this was such a fabulous thing, look no further than beneath the cut.

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today

Today, I think I shall set aside research for Midnight Never Come (partly because the next thing on my plate is More Than I Ever Wanted to Know About Elizabethan London, Vols. 1 and 2 — oh, wait, misread the title, that would be John Stow’s A Survey of London, Vols. 1 and 2), and let myself loll around with Patrick O’Brian instead. I can only watch Master and Commander so many times in a limited span, and I’ve gone through all the Hornblower movies; since I don’t need to be sewing at the same time anymore, it’s time for a book.

And things like laundry, maybe. But not until later.

I think I need a day just to relax.

nearly there

I’ll quit posting costuming updates pretty soon, I promise. Some of you will be disappointed. More of you, I suspect, will be relieved.

Accomplished yesterday: four more buttons, seven pair hooks and eyes (actually eight pair, as I had to take one set off and sew it back on), lots of topstitching my coat, and the waistband of my pants. Still to do: pants buttons (which will finish the waistband; may or may not involve buttonholes), vest collar, topstitching the armholes of the vest if I have the time.

And ironing the thing, so it will look good.

This may be the only complex project I’ve ever done entirely on my own. My mother assisted with the sleeves of the Morwen dress while she was here last year, and kitsune_zen saved me from the zipper on its skirt; other things I’ve done on my own, but they weren’t this complicated.

At least I get to watch a lot of movies while I work.

buttons

Twenty-three down, six to go.

And seven or so hooks and eyes.

And finishing the waistband and cuffs on my pants.

And topstitching the edge of my coat.

And figuring out a collar for my vest.

. . . and probably ironing the whole mess so it looks good.

I’d intended to do my last four coat buttons tonight, but my button-sewing skills went sharply downward all of a sudden, and I decided it was time to stop.

But it’s a good accomplishment for one day. Twenty-three buttons, and seven buttonholes. I have successfully committed buttonhole: it’s a first for me. (The first attempt was during the original Boggan Deathmatch, when moonandserpent‘s velvet vest foiled me utterly. Man, that was a night full of failures for me.)

Sleepytime now. Who wants to bet I dream of buttons?

sigh

I’m learning to expect that, when the thing I’m sewing becomes recognizably the thing I’m trying to sew, I may still be nowhere near done. When I last worked on this costume (circa March 11th), my coat looked like a naval coat, minus collar, cuffs, and buttons. Many hours of work later, it has a collar and cuffs, no buttons — because a fair bit of that time was spent on the fiddly little finishing details, like stitching down the edges so they’ll lie flat and the lining won’t peek out. (And I’m not even done with that.) This is the crap that takes forever for little noticeable result, but the garment just looks better with it done.

Buttons will be my next priority, since the coat will look dumb without them, but once they’re on, it will be back to stitching all the rest of the edges I haven’t gotten to yet, finishing my pants, and retrofitting a collar onto the vest; the pattern doesn’t give it one, but in period they had ’em, and like an idiot I forgot I was going to add that on until the vest was done.

Game’s Sunday. Will I be done in time? I had better be. Here’s hoping this doesn’t turn into a Saturday night button-sewing marathon.

At least there aren’t any zippers in my immediate future. It would be a shame to torch my costume, so close to game date.

Oh, and? khet_tcheba is the awesome, yet again. You’ll see why, on Sunday.

MNC Webpage Report: “Elizabeth’s Household,” Sara Batty

Not a book, but very useful: this website, which appears to be more or less the text of someone’s bachelor’s thesis. (I say “more or less” because it’s rather lacking in citations for its quotes.)

. . . okay, I suppose it’s only useful (let alone interesting) if one might have a need for knowing what the acatry was, where it fit in the hierarchy of Elizabeth’s household, and how many people it employed. (Except that the acatry is one of the few departments for which Batty doesn’t give that last detail. Bad example, I guess.)

In other words, this is a highly tedious website I mention only because it might be of use to anybody else planning to write historical fiction set in Elizabeth’s reign and involving the daily life of her Court.

Which might be precisely none of you. At best, it is very few.

Carry on.

Swan Tower facelift

All right, folks. Courtesy of the inestimable sapphohestia, Swan Tower is getting a facelift to its CSS. I would very much appreciate it if some of you could take a look at the pages she’s mocked up with the new style, and let me know what you think. Is it readable? Does the page layout feel balanced? How does it work in other browsers, or with other sizes of screen? Etc. (Don’t bother pointing out busted links; we’ve only got three pages set up. When the change happens for real, we’ll just be pasting in the new CSS; all the links will work as they normally do.)

The three pages to look at are:
Introduction
Doppelganger
Midnight Never Come

There are two changes I still intend to make, though they haven’t happened yet. One is that I’m trying to get a proper site logo designed, which would replace the current image in the upper left-hand corner. The other is that I intend to have a bit of padding around images (the example here is the Doppelganger cover image) so the text doesn’t run right up against the border like it does now. But other than that, what changes, if any, would you folks suggest?

Now I have it right.

With a nice bit of distance between me and the story, I finally went back to “Kingspeaker” and got it right. It is the story I thought it was; I just needed to put an omen here, chop out that bit of awkwardness there, and play around a bit with the horses.

I think it works now.

If the folks at Sword & Sorceress decide they don’t like “The Waking of Angantyr” (which is in their hands right now), then I’ll send them this. Otherwise, it will be off to F&SF in the nearish future. Either way, I’m happy.

Mind you, this doesn’t finish “Once a Goddess,” which is supposed to be done this month. I really ought to have made notes of the ideas that were in my head when I set it down a while ago, but I was distracted by other things. My bad, and now I’m paying for it. But I’ll get some dinner, and then see what I can do.

MNC Book Report: Her Majesty’s Spymaster, Stephen Budiansky

The major criticism I’ve seen of this book online is that in its efforts to canonize Sir Francis Walsingham as the founder of English espionage, it gives too short shrift to Cecil, who apparently used (or invented?) many of the same techniques credited here to Walsingham. Which might be true, but for my purposes it’s irrelevant; the point is that Walsingham did use them, around the time period I’m going to be writing about, and therefore I can wreak whatever havoc with them I like.

But oh, is this book full of tasty espionage. (Espionage, and political backbiting; god, I never knew educated Renaissance gentlemen could be so damn catty.) Maybe Budiansky is novelizing his subjects a little too much, but there’s a good sense of personality in a lot of the incidents, some of it reassuringly backed up by genuine quotes from period documents. Until this book, I had no idea Walsingham had a sense of humour; one wouldn’t have expected it, given the Puritanism and the espionage, but it seems to have been true.

It’s very readable, though a touch novelistic in places, which makes me a little wary that Budiansky might be interpreting events to make them fit his story, but I don’t see any glaring evidence of that. I’d give it a thumbs-up as both a short bio of Walsingham and an example of Renaissance spy-work (which I want for other purposes besides Midnight Never Come) — he gives good, detailed accounts of the diplomatic and covert work that went on around the St. Bartholomew massacre, the Ridolfi plot, the Babington plot, and the Armada.

My complaint from this book is directed at Mr. Secretary Walsingham himself. He was so very adroit in the matter of the Babington plot, and moreover kept such very good records of it, that I’m left with far less wiggle room than I would like in which to have Other Stuff Going On. C’mon — couldn’t he oblige me by being less good at his job? It would make my job so much easier.

Oh. Right. Nobody ever promised this would be easy.

also, gip

I couldn’t find a portrait of Elizabeth that was quite what I wanted in an icon, but she did have a lovely signature.

So this can be my Elizabethan-love icon.

And now I think I need to flop down on the couch like I’ve been meaning to since I got home. (Morning workout + most-of-the-day trip to Indy = tired kitten.)

shiny

Today’s trip to Indy resulted (quite randomly) in the purchase of a lovely new fountain pen.

Now I have a burning desire to write something with it . . . but I don’t know what.

Maybe if I can settle on the tack I want to take with the Bluebeard story, I can write that. It ought to be short. All of my dark-and-twisted fairy-tale stories are pretty short, and this would be a good pen to write one with.

Evil BAPA

I’ve fallen out of the habit of making post-game posts (which is probably a good thing, since these days a large percentage of the people reading this journal aren’t involved in the games, and therefore probably don’t care), but yesterday’s Bloomington Angel Post-Apocalyptic (BAPA) game was fuuuuuuuun.

(Short description of the game in general: Buffyverse, set in Bloomington, demon apocalypse happened about a year ago, we’re some of the few free humans left.)

In the fine tradition of Joss Whedon Buffyverse stuff, this was the Evil Game, the alternate universe in which we were all bad guys instead of good. (Well, most of us, though I didn’t learn that until later.) It was interesting to see the ways that people re-imagined their characters; since there are a lot of people I almost never interact with in that game, in some cases this gave me much more insight into who and what they are normally. In contrast with them, I think my own tack was pretty tame: I was just the Dr. Mengele of enchantresses, a cold-blooded experimenter, more interested in the question of how something could be done, and whether I could do it, than the consequences. (But honestly, I tend to find those people creepier, since they’re a lot more common in real life than the out-and-out psychotics.)

I must confess, though — I suspected that when the game ended, our normal characters were going to remember their evil lives (’cause that’s always more fun, right?) and so I took the opportunity to prod certain things for my character. Like, say, putting her in a position where she wasn’t terrified of Anastasia, though I admit I hadn’t expected to take direct action to bump her off during the game. (Still, it’s the one action Sess isn’t sure she regrets from her time being evil. I mean, there comes a time when you just have to put a bullet between your aunt’s eyes, and for once she had the guts to do it — though not entirely with success, alas.)

It’s sloppy character development to just magically gift a person with something they were lacking before, but to give it to them and then take it away again, so they have to earn it back the right way — now, that can be fun. (I had a spine, really I did; now where did I put it . . . .?)

Though I didn’t except to end up under a curse. That’s going to complicate things a bitsy. (Like they do.)

And I had a chance to put together a fun costume for once in this game. Normally it’s just jeans and a fleece; Sess is such a boring character to dress.

So yay, fun. Yay, evil. (Or not.) I suspect it will be very interesting to see what flavors of trauma the other characters have ended up with — those who didn’t just blow their brains out on the spot. (I’m looking at you, d_c_m.)