meme from Mris

I’m not sure this was designed as a meme, but I ran off with the questions anyway, because I’m in a mood to be moderately introspective.

1. If you’re a novelist, how many books have you finished at least first drafts of?

Seven. Two of which are on their way to print.

2. How many of these are books you want to pretend don’t exist (so your teenage angst-tastic stories DO count, people!)?

I didn’t actually finish my teenage angst-tastic stories, though I wrote quite a bit on them. I wouldn’t quite deny their existence, but neither The Kestori Hawks nor Sunlight and Storm (numbers three and four, respectively) is fit to be seen at present, and may never be so. TKH would require obscene amounts of rebuilding, and I’m not sure I have sufficient enthusiasm to do so — though every so often, Eleanor pokes her head up and asks me to. (The fact that Eleanor, and secondarily Luke, are the characters who make me want to go back and work on it, is a telling point. Neither of them is technically the protagonist. Leonard, I mostly want to kick in the head. And at present I am not, like Dunnett, able to make you love a protagonist while simultaneously wanting to kick him in the head.) S&S I may revisit some day. I’m not sure. I think there’s something there, but in two radically different drafts, I haven’t yet found it.

3. How many do you especially like?

Depends on my mood, but generally two or three. The Vengeance of Trees (number five) is quirky fun; I wrote it in seven weeks flat, which says something about it. The Waking of Angantyr (number six) is tougher to love, but something about its grittiness and mythiness pleases me immensely. And then there’s the urban fantasy I’m trying to not call by its title because I’m working on coming up with a new one, which is the first one I wrote, and the next one I hope to sell, once I’ve given it another rewrite. That will always have a particularly treasured place in my heart.

4. How many do you have starts of (like, frex, you started, then got a better idea, so went somewhere else)?

I’ve got bits of . . . let’s see . . . twelve that I can think of. Four Winds (the S&S sequel), Manifestation (urban fantasy prequel), a title-less urban fantasy sequel, The Iron Rose (several beginnings for that one), The Changing Sea, the “Second Troy” and exploration SF novel bits, the Book-of-Kells-esque thing, the Nine Lands thing, the really old dragons thing and polarization thing and shadow-side thing . . . .

5. How many novel first drafts are you working on currently?

Actively working on? None. Noodling around with? Mostly the urban fantasy sequel, or at least that’s what I intend to noodle around with soon. My attention’s been on short stories, and on revising the first one (again).

6. How many are polished? Like you don’t think you can look at them again or you’ll explode finished?

scene three

I’ve posted a third scene to the Doppelganger excerpt. Someone asked me about this recently, so I’ll clarify: all of the scenes are contiguous, and they start from the beginning of the novel, so you needn’t worry about spoilers. I should and will put in anchor tags at some point, so I can link people directly to the new material each week, but that’s not happening tonight.

a slightly belated announcement

Hark, all ye commitment-shy types, to my tale, and learn ye from my example, that ye not cause yourselves the problems I did.

Kyle and I started dating in February of 1999. (On the 12th, perhaps, or the 16th. “Averaging” these two dates to make our anniversary Valentine’s Day is not correct, no matter what he says — especially when he deliberately avoided asking me out on Valentine’s Day at the time.) Within about three years or so, he made it clear that he was happy with me and more or less ready to propose. I, on the other hand, being twitchy and commitment-shy, made it clear that I was not ready to be proposed to. Thus began a half-unspoken agreement wherein he would not propose until I was ready for it.

This went on for about four years.

I realized some months ago that I’d put myself in a bind. Assuming I was ready — which I wasn’t sure of — then telling him so would be tantamount to telling him to propose. Telling him to propose would (assuming I wasn’t a truly sadistic bitch) be tantamount to telling him my answer. So the minute I said I was ready, whether I passed it through intermediaries or not (as was suggested to me), I would feel like I had a target painted on my forehead, waiting for him to ask.

This was awkward.

So then I got it into my head that I could circumvent the problem by proposing to him myself, thereby avoiding the “sitting duck” stage of the process.

Which I did. On Thursday. (The 16th.)

Let the record show that he spent about three minutes laughing hysterically before he got around to answering me. (He accepted.) He then asked me if I had a ring for him, so I took off the one I was wearing (which he gave to me several years ago) and put it on his pinkie finger (the only one it would fit on). He has also pointed out to me repeatedly that he hasn’t proposed to me, so I haven’t technically agreed to marry him. There might be a proposal in my future yet. But any way you slice it, we are now engaged.

It amuses me that it’s apparently family tradition on both sides: my mother proposed to my father, and so did Kyle’s mother to his father. Of couse, he’s just vexed that I ruined all of his plans, since he’d pretty much decided to propose to me in the next six months whether I wanted him to or not.

The delay in posting this came about because, halfway through telling people, Kyle decided that he wanted to wait to tell people here in town until Saturday night, when there would be a party at which we could announce the news. I agreed that this would be preferable to letting all our local friends find out via LJ, hence the delay. But now it’s as public as it gets: I am engaged, after seven years of dating.

And no, we haven’t set a date yet. If people keep asking me that, I may just have to deck somebody.

back into the usual groove

Given that I had about zero enthusiasm for yesterday’s game going into it, I had a pleasingly good time. Started off by chatting with Eleanor-Elise about nobility, segued to convincing Mantokele not to flip out and kill people (well, certain people, anyway — he can kill others), then got sucked into the vortex of “did we mention the world’s coming to an end?” chaoticness. Enjoyed the Areopagos trial (did I even spell that right?), since it gave Ree a chance to express certain aspects of herself that haven’t really been given much of a workout since she came back.

Now I have papers to grade, e-mails to answer, short stories to write, a game to prep — all that fun stuff. (Okay, so only some of it is fun.) I just hope I’m not coming down with the cold/flu-thing that seemed to be plaguing a couple of people at the game (and yes, I use that word deliberately). Because I don’t need that right now.

returning to work

The boy is watching a movie I have no particular interest in seeing, and I’d rather stab myself through the hands than grade today, so instead I’m writing.

“A Mask of Flesh”

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meterZokutou word meter
1,758 /
6,000
(28.0%)

I’m experimenting with a word meter to see if a visual indication of my progress helps promote a feeling of accomplishment. Of course, I haven’t the faintest clue how long the story’s really going to be — I believe the Zokutou meter was created for NaNoWriMo writers aiming for a set goal — so that 6000 is totally a guess. I know that Neniza is cooling her heels in the petitioners’ plaza, and the lord is about to show up, so I might be more like halfway through.

Or not, depending on how much description I find myself indulging in. This is a lush-description kind of story, and I haven’t even gotten to the lord.

Anyway, time to break, since I haven’t yet decided by which of two routes Neniza’s going to get to her goal. And besides, I’m hungry.

next scene up

In honor of the impending publication of Doppelganger (goodgodsit’scomingoutsoon), I’ve posted a second scene from the novel on my site. (Didn’t know I’d posted a first scene? That’s because I was busy and did a very bad job of mentioning it anywhere.) My intent is to go on posting a scene every week until I hit the limit of what I’m allowed to put online, which should happen around the time that the novel itself hits the shelves.

(And yes, that would be a new icon, there. I counteract my embarrassment about having an icon of my own novel cover by telling myself I’ll only use it for posts specifically related to said novel. It just barely works.)

Now, if you’ll pardon me, I think it’s time for me to go twitch and hide under the bed some more.

In Which There Are Many Stories

I sent in Warrior and Witch today, following a marathon of revision that turned my brain to mush. (It would have been nice if my brain had had all those good ideas about how to rewrite it earlier than the last minute — though I suppose it’s nicer than not having any good ideas at all.) My plan for the next few days involves lying around like a dead thing and doing as little work as I can get away with, but after that, what next?

First of all, I have five stories or so that have been awaiting revision — some of them for more than a year. I’ll probably ramble about them more in another post, but for posterity’s sake, on this list are “The Memories Rise to Hunt,” “Sciatha Reborn,” “On the Feast of the Firewife,” “Games in the Dark,” and “Apply Now,” which really needs a better title. I should do something with those.

I should also do something with the stories sitting around in various states of progress. “A Mask of Flesh” is probably the most likely to get itself finished soon, at which point I can think about turning the abortive mess of “Ink, Like Blood” into a related story for that one. There’s also “Even in Decline,” if I can figure out just where it’s going, though I refuse to work on that one until I get “Sciatha Reborn” out there (again, a related story — I like working in a setting multiple times). Then I blame for getting my brain back onto “The Deaths of Christopher Marlowe,” though that will certainly have to wait until I can do some reasearch for it. Similarly research-intensive will be “Hannibal of the Rockies” — I need to get back in touch with the relevant people on that one. (Hi, .) The Goddess Triumphant story to go along with “On the Feast of the Firewife” and its friends has a title now (“Kingspeaker”), but I’m not sure what exactly it thinks it’s about. Then there are older bits: “Once a Goddess” (I refuse to give up on that one), two different Driftwood story openings, another Twilight story, the “faerie trouble” story . . . .

Here’s the plan. Every two weeks, I’ll aim to get one of my completed stories revised and out the door. (Discussion of just what kind of effort that will take can wait for that other post.) Also, every week, I’ll aim to finish writing something. Not necessarily a short story; I know I don’t have the kind of time for that at the moment. It can be an essay for my website, or my ICFA paper, or my Pushing Boundaries paper if it gets accepted. But something. Every week.

And, in the meantime — yes, I’m delusional; why do you ask? — playing around with the next novel project. Which means revision of SotS-that-needs-a-new-title, and noodling with its sequel, which frankly I can’t wait to get started on. We’ll see what kind of schedule I put myself on for those.

But first, lying around like a dead thing. I feel I’ve earned it.

Criminy. The last time I flexed my mythology muscles this much was . . . .

. . . um . . .

Let’s start that one over.

Criminy, I’ve never flexed my mythology muscles that much before. From trying to dredge up enough underworld/death/destruction/evil gods to cast a 40-person LARP, to remembering what all their stories are, to figuring out what kinds of plot they might have with each other, and then crowning it all by gear-shifting continuously throughout the game itself — do you have any idea how brain-breaking it is to explain Sumerian me to someone, turn around, decide what to do about Odin’s eyeball getting passed to a mortal, turn around, and answer a question on Hindu metaphysics? (Hindu metaphysics can melt your brain all on their own; they don’t need help.)

But the Parliament of the Apocalypse game appears to have gone well. At least, everybody who came to Chili’s seemed reasonably happy ranging up to giddy with residual glee. Costuming was fan-frickin-tastic — as usual, which is one of the reasons I love LARPing with this group. With the high-dress Concordia game just two weeks ago, people still managed to show up with some truly phenomenal stuff. I was pleased by such depictions as the Thoroughly Modern Morrigan (think Irish war goddess as IRA extremist), but I gotta admit, my anthropological snobbery pretty much drooled itself into oblivion over tour de forces like our seaweedy Sedna, Mictlantecuhtli’s regalia, the 11-layer Heian-period junihitoe of Izanami, and more.

What, you want pictures? You may find some here and some here. The former are more posed shots that show costumes clearly, while many of the latter are in-game shots that show the atmosphere of the game. Oh yeah, and though you can’t see it clearly, set crew blew us away, turning the IMU Kiva into our cavern setting, with black tablecloths covering the walls and roots dangling from the ceiling. It’s just a pity that I don’t think anyone got a photo of the anchor of reality that was sitting in the middle.

I’ll stop burbling now. It was my Very First LARP that I’ve co-run, and while putting it together in what functionally speaking was about three weeks was really not the smartest thing I’ve ever agreed to, it was too tempting of a mythology challenge to turn down.

GIP/update

A scruffy old guy in a van did indeed show up yesterday with my bag, so all’s well on that front.

In other news, I have a new icon, courtesy of my friendly not-so-neighborhood Singaporean assassin cook. (I just couldn’t resist calling him that.) As with my Long Room academic icon, I’m not sure it looks quite as cool when shrunk down to LJ icon-size, but it will certainly do for now.

Inspiration Has Its Own Timetable

Ah, the beloved and detested tendency of inspiration to strike when I really don’t have time for it.

In less than twenty-four hours, I’ve gone from revisiting the thought that I should rip out the Changeling-specific and Earth-specific aspects of the Central American stuff I cooked up for the Changeling game and use it as the basis for some kind of fiction, straight to two hundred some-odd words of a story that really, really wants to get out of my head RIGHT NOW. Nevermind, of course, that I’m working on Warrior and Witch, and really need to be focusing on that, not questions like how many Nahuatl terms I can get away with before my readers will quit in despair. The point is, having passed very rapidly through the stage of “well, I’ve got a setting, sure, but no particular story ideas,” I’m having to push at this bitchy little tz’ite in my head (huh, should I go on using the term tz’ite, or find something else? NO NO NOT TIME FOR THAT RIGHT NOW) to get her to shut up.

This will only encourage her, but I figured I’d share the beginning of the story.

Sitting alone in the green heat of the forest, far from the road and any observing eyes, Neniza began to craft her mask of flesh.

She began with her toes, for the face would be the hardest part. She would have dearly loved to shape herself into the slender, delicate form of an amanatl, but it would never work. Oh, she could take the form easy enough, but the amanah were not common caste, and she could never hope to mimic the ways of court folk well enough to pass. Instead she crafted for herself the petite, pretty form of a young alux peasant. The lord took his amusements often enough with such. It would suffice.

Her father had taught her this work, their art, after her horrified mother saw what she had birthed and left it in the woods. He would have preferred a son, Neniza knew. Daughters were dangerous things. She had not told him where she was going, what she intended to do. He believed they should stay out of sight, accept their exile to the forests — nevermind that he himself went to town all too often, to court the women of other castes and sire more children for them to fear. It was all right for him.

But not for her. She was too dangerous.

That means I’m powerful, Neniza thought, and began to work on her face.

Now I’m going to put her away and go back to work on the novel at hand.

Revision Thoughts

As I trundle along on the revision of Warrior and Witch, I find myself reflecting in certain ways that I was less inclined to, back when I wasn’t actually paid to do this stuff.

It’s easier to get scared, these days. I know people are going to read this. In the past, if I botched a work (and yes, I did, more than once, the most painful example being the first draft of Sunlight and Storm), then I could shelve it for a while until I knew how to make it better. More to the point, I was more willing to gamble in those days, because if I aimed high and missed, no one had to know.

To put it quite bluntly, I got very ambitious with certain aspects of Warrior and Witch, and a few of them blew up in my face. Now I’m sorting through the pieces, deciding which ones I can attack again and thereby make work, and which ones need to be excised as failed experiments, things I’m not ready to pull off just yet. I’m learning many valuable lessons in the process, of course. Spent some time tonight doing statistical analysis, since one of the gripes was that a particular character was getting too much screen time over another. Turns out to not be true, not by a long shot (the supposedly neglected character’s getting more than half again as much wordage, in terms of pov scenes, than the supposedly excessive character), but from this I learn that (duh) wordcount isn’t everything. So now I’m experimenting whether I can, through jiggery-pokery, bump up the prominence of the “neglected” character without actually ripping out half the “excessive” character’s scenes. I might have been better off agreeing to a third book, and splitting the plot of this one so it spanned two volumes, but I’m still glad of the decision I made; I fear my enthusiasm for this project wouldn’t have sustained me through a third book.

The problem is, there’s an easy way out of the problem: stop being so ambitious. I wouldn’t be in this situation if I hadn’t tried to write a sequel that would be noticeably larger in scope and complexity than its predecessor. And honestly, there are plenty of authors who do exactly that, and sell well, and have fans, and sometimes I myself am on of those fans. I can enjoy more of the same, if it’s competently done.

But I wasn’t willing to take that way out. And let me state here and now — since, in my own personal psychological calendar, January is the month I dedicate to ambition (in place of New Year’s Resolutions) — that I vow never to give up on ambition. Even if it means I find myself choking on indigestible tangles of political intrigue the day I decide finally to tackle The Iron Rose, I’ll still give it a shot.

Because I refuse to settle for just treading water, however comfortable it may be.

Photography Envy

Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve just been turned green with photography envy. The Coyote’s pictures from the Concordia game remind me just how much difference there is between the kind of photography I do (quick shots snapped off, sometimes with thought given to composition, but little to no understanding of light and other such matters) and the kind of photography you get with a good camera and knowledge of how to work it to the best advantage in the circumstances.

Case in point, three pictures of me from the Concordia game.

I’d link to the whole album of pictures if the Coyote hadn’t requested we keep the password private. Suffice to say that the compositions he directed his subjects into go a long way towards capturing us-as-characters, rather than us-as-players-in-funny-clothes, and that the colors come through with wonderful richness. Coyote, I may hire you someday as my photographer for research purposes, since once of my recurring questions has been, how the hell can I show photos of what I’m working on, without them looking flat to an outside eye?

And yes, that would be the dress which ate my life lately. I’ll have to find other excuses to wear it. (Once I replace the now-destroyed sleeves. And either get a new crinoline, or widen the waistband of mine so it stops pinching a nerve in my back.) ) You can see more detail of the fabrics, and also what I did to my hair, in this shot, but watch out for the blinding glare of flash off satin — I was shiny that day.

Methinks I might photoshop these shots a bit — with permission, Coyote — to get rid of the scars and weirdnesses like that inexplicable patch of red on my neck. They’re fantastic pictures, and I’m thrilled to have them.

‘Twas Late After All

Stupid half-updated websites (though, to be fair, I can totally sympathize with the difficulty of hunting down and updating every spot on a series of websites where a particular piece of information is given). Turns out that, contrary to whatever webpage I was reading, the deadline for expedited HSC forms is Friday at 5 these days, not Monday at 5 like it used to be. Though she kindly told me that I probably wouldn’t have gotten reviewed this Wednesday anyway, since they have a lot of applications piling up to review. So I won’t know the results of my application until some time after Wednesday of next week.

I also want to hire myself out to the HSC people for the purpose of rewriting their forms. Not the wording, per se — at least some of that stuff is federally mandated to be the way it is — but to reorganize its presentation so that it, y’know, makes sense. For starters, the paginations are a bleeding mess, such that (for example) page 3 of the form is page 6 of the document, and when it tells you to do a particular thing involving page 3, you have to be sure you’re looking at the right one. Second, they don’t get around to giving you the nice instruction packet that tells you which forms you need to pay attention to depending on what you’re doing until page five. But I think the one that takes the cake for me is the fact that an addendum to the form (the “Conflict of Interest” question, regarding whether or not anybody involved stands to make money off the research results) — an addendum which, mind you, has been in effect for more than three years — is on page two. Which is not part of the form. You have to go add it onto the form. The “Reminder of New Procedures” bit on page 3 is still giving you updates from 1999. One of the women in the HSC office told me the Conflict of Interest question was still up at the front because people keep forgetting to include it, and I had to bite my tongue not to suggest that people might be more likely to remember it if it were actually on the form it belongs with.

Gah.

But I managed to notice that question, and add it in, and the woman in the office who took my form (not the one with the dumb answer) gave me a big thumbs-up for having caught it. Apparently that’s Reason #1 people’s applications get rejected on the first round; they fail their Perception rolls and don’t notice they need to put something from page two on page fourteen.

So now I twiddle my thumbs and wait to hear back.

Post-Concordia Post

Wow — I haven’t had a game hangover this intense in quite some time.

Yesterday (for those of you not involved) was the Concordia game for Changeling, wherein Faerilyth got crowned High Queen and I, as Morwen, sat in a room playing the part of Condemned Traitor Awaiting Judgement. Which was not nearly so tedious as I feared it might be.

My heartfelt thanks to everyone who came and talked to me during that time. Partly, of course, because that would have been one hella boring game if you hadn’t, but even more because those were a bunch of truly fantastic scenes. No doubt I’ll forget some people (that was a long game), but I recall having conversations with: Queen Mary Elizabeth, Queen Mab, Queen Morganna, Faerilyth before her coronation, High Lord Varich, High Lord Eleanor, Princess Lenore, Sir Seif, Duke Topaz, Duke Firedrake, Duchess Igrania, Duke Dray, Duke Kelodin, Duke Aeon, Countess Anne, Baron Weyland, Lord Mu, Sir Rowena, Sir Danwyn, Dame Airmed, Sir Ranulf, Adama, Ochun, and Vincent Cross. Plus a few others who wandered into the room in company with someone else but didn’t really talk to me, like High Lord Donovan, High Lord Eleanor’s consort Sir Tairngrim, Lady Ayame, and Midir, Adama’s faceless assassin.

In other words, damn, I was a popular traitor.

I’m glad the scenes were so good, since Mab gave me her favor before I could even ask her, thereby rendering unnecessary the hours of trying to finagle a favor out of somebody I had expected to go through. And it was an interesting experience, spending 99% of the game sequestered in a single room, leaving it only long enough to a) do my level best to commit political (and very nearly literal) suicide and b) find out what the consequences of that would be. During the periods when everyone assembled for court and I was left alone, I stayed in my room instead of going to eavesdrop OOC, whereupon I paced back and forth and planned my speech of accusation. (That, for the record, was an idea I’d come up with at 2 a.m. the night before while trying to fix the sleeves of my dress so I could bend my arms, so that I would actually have something to do at the game, some goal to actually strive for. After all, politicking needs to be spiced up with a few Grand Gestures. Even if mine then got eclipsed by the Crazy Cold Iron Suicide). My one regret is that for OOC player reasons, Duke Rococco was not there when I did it, since I was later told second-hand that he might have taken up my challenge to Meilge. And wouldn’t that have been interesting.

As for the dress, well, I didn’t get all of the detailing done on it that I wanted to (the beaded chains for the sleeves and skirt got made, but not attached), and the organza proved too delicate for sleeves (the seams ripped out on both sides by the end), but on the whole, I think it was a success. If I can replace the sleeves with something a little sturdier, I should have quite a lovely dress, if one that requires about ten minutes of help to be laced into (thank you again, Prosewitch!).

Now, having made my post-game post, maybe I can get my head out of game space and start working on other things.

EDIT: Oh, and extra mad props to Sapphohestia, who ended up spending much of the game playing the part of my lady’s maid, coordinating the lineup of people waiting to talk to me (a surprisingly necessary service), and bringing me water and food when I started to die.

One Hurdle Down

Took the Human Subjects Research Test tonight, and passed it with 100%. I’d have been rather ashamed of myself if I hadn’t, seeing as how it’s a self-administered online test where you can have the tutorial open in another browser tab and check your answers as you go. But in a weird way that makes sense — the point is that you correctly ID how the procedures for Human Subjects approval go, and those aren’t the kinds of things you necessarily need to have memorized. You need to know how to look them up.

If you’re not familiar with it, this whole shebang has to do with the institutions now set up to monitor any federally-funded research (including any research conducted by members of federally-funded universities) that concerns living, breathing human beings. Think of things like the Tuskegee syphilis study, for an egregious example of the kinds of abuses it’s intended to prevent. The procedures get a little bit crazy (frex, you have to submit for approval any questionnaire you intend to use, and if you later decide to drop some questions from it, you have to get that approved, too — let alone adding some), but oh well. It’s the price of doing business in my field.

So I passed the test; now I get to whip up an application for research approval, to be submitted on Monday, reviewed by the comittee on Wednesday, and returned by (probably) Friday. The goal is to jump that hurdle in one go, but it may not happen, as the comittee often has some quibble they want you to amend before they sign off on it. But once I get approved, then I can begin my first actual, official, real-live-anthropologist research.