oh dear

You remember when, a little while ago, I referred to John Stow’s A Survey of London, Vols. 1 and 2 as More Than I Ever Wanted to Know About Elizabethan London, Vols. 1 and 2?

Looks like I should amend that to More Than I Ever Wanted to Know About Elizabethan London and Printed With Unmodernized Spelling to Boot, Vols. 1 and 2.

Sample:

Thames the most famous riuer of this Iland, beginneth a little aboue a village called Winchcombe in Oxfordshire, and still increasing passeth first by the university of Oxford, and so with a maruelous quiet course to London, and thence breaketh into the French Ocean by maine tides, which twice in 24. howers space doth eb and flow, more than 60. miles in length, to the great commoditie of Trauellers, by which all kind of Marchandise bee easily conueyed to London, the principall store house, and Staple of all commodities within this Realme, so that omitting to speake of great ships, and other vessels of burden, there pertayneth to the Citties of London, Westminster, and Borrough of Southwarke, aboue the number is supposed of 2000.

It isn’t impenetrable . . . but it will be slow going.

good starts to a D&D game

My first roll of the entire campaign: natural 20.

My first roll in combat: confirmed crit.

Our first kill: a (young) green dragon.

Our first loot: omgawesome.

I love killing dragons. ^_^

oy, research.

As I just said to the boy, I feel like I’ve e-mailed half the population of London now with research inquiries. So far we’ve contacted Hardwick Hall (okay, not in London), Hampton Court Palace, the Globe, the Worshipful Company of Armourers and Brasiers, and the Tower of London, though that last one bounced and I need to figure out why. I’ve also made my hostel reservation. The Museum of London I don’t have any questions for; I probably don’t need a reservation for the Thames River Boat to Hampton Court; Lambeth Palace appears to be almost never open to the public (since the Archbishop of Canterbury still lives there), so I will only be photographing the exterior of the Tudor brick gatehouse.

Oy, research.

If the Londoners who specialize in the Elizabethan period hang out together, I suspect they will make jokes about the crazy American novelist who’s been querying all of them.

I still need to look into Westminster Abbey, Whitehall, and various things in Southwark. And yes, this is well in advance of my trip, but I figure the people I’m hoping to ask questions of will be happier if I contact them early.

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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?