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Posts Tagged ‘with fate conspire’

allowance for period

It is not fair of me to want to punch the author of English Women’s Clothing in the Nineteenth Century in the throat. After all, one must remember, it was 1937 when he wrote:

The distinctive feature of a woman’s shape is the disproportionate width of the hip-line, producing an inward slope to the legs, so that in the erect posture the outline of the body is wide at the middle and tapering toward the extremities. Such a shape imparts to the eye a sense of unbalance. Indeed, if the bias of sex-attraction could be set aside, such a shape would be unpleasing, because we have an instinctive dislike of objects that look top-heavy. Instinctively woman is conscious of this, and from the earliest times has attempted to conceal her hip-line. We are told that her first effort was by an apron of fig leaves, applied, no doubt, for that reason. Since then the main function of woman’s dress has been to conceal the bad proportions of her body. (emphasis added)

That’s right, ladies — you know, deep down, by instinct alone, that your body is Shaped Wrong. Your hips are disproportionate, because of course the right proportion is that of a man. Eve knew that in the Garden, without the benefit a mirror to look in! (Maybe Adam told her she had a fat ass.) And human beings hate top-heavy things, which is why, of course, we find it so unattractive when a man has well-muscled shoulders, right?

It is also not fair of me to want to punch him in the throat for the brief mention, in passing, that all the line drawings of hats and hairstyles, and all the notations for them, were done by his wife — who doesn’t get her name on or in the book, nosirree. He’s the only one who did any real work, after all.

1937. This was written in 1937. I have to bear that in mind. <breathes>

and so the help requests begin

This one perhaps goes out to my British readers more than others, but in theory anybody’s capable of answering it for me.

What authors — ideally spec fic, just because of my reading preferences, but not necessarily — have done a good job of representing cockney speech? I need authors, not media sources, because I’m curious about the methods people have used for showing it on the page. Like any dialect or accent, it’s really easy to fall into the territory of “really annoying and borderline unreadable,” and I’m keen to avoid that, while still conveying the distinct flavor of the pattern. Probably I’ll rely more on phrasing and quirks of word choice than phonetic representation, but I’d like to see how other people have tackled this issue.

So who’s writing good cockey-centric fiction? Bonus points if it’s Victorian, but since my concern is on the sound more than the vagaries of rhyming slang, modern-day stories are also acceptable.

there’s always more you don’t know

These two threads on Making Light?

Are why I have my “help me o internets” posts.

Because some of the bad books can be spotted a mile off — but not all. Some of them you’ve got to look at to identify. Some of them have to be read through. And some of them you can read through and still not know they’re untrustworthy resources, because you don’t know that field well enough to spot where the facts are wrong or there’s evidence being overlooked or whatever.

And at that point, you have two choices. You can either read a lot about the topic, so you become well-informed enough to spot the bad stuff on your own; or you can ask around and get the benefit of other people’s wisdom.

Since I have this terrible habit of being interested in lots of different things, rather than sticking with one and making it my stomping ground, I’m dependent on the assistance of others. So thank you all for your suggestions, and stay tuned for more cries for help. For this next book, I’m going to need to research topics ranging from the history of the London Underground to Chinese folklore, and many other things besides.

I really am deranged.

I’ve composed many an odd research query for the Onyx Court books, but the one I just sent off takes the cake.

No, you don’t get to know what it is. Not yet. (Aside from the fact that has to do with the Victorian period — duh.) I’ll let you know once it succeeds or fails, either way.

Poll time!

I am debating a small point of spelling in my copy-edits, brought about by the change in English spelling standards over the centuries*. In this particular case, it is the variation between faerie and fairy (and also faery and fairie, but those are less common and I haven’t messed with them). The possibility on the table is that, as belief in the aforementioned creatures declines, I’ll use the “fairy” spelling when the speaker is talking about them as superstition, and “faerie” when talking about the real thing. But I can’t make up my mind whether I want to do that or not, and so you get a poll.

This will also have relevance for the Victorian book, by which point “fairy” had far surpassed “faerie” as the most commonly-used spelling for the word (and belief had also sharply declined, at least in urban areas).

*This has been an unexpected problem for me, in the Onyx Court books. For example, the general pattern is to spell the surname of the Queen of Scots as Stewart, but the surname of her grandson Charles as Stuart. Etc. And nobody, so far as I’m aware, formally changed the name of Candlewick Street to Cannon Street; it just kind of cruised along being one but occasionally the other until eventually it was the other all the time. Which are issues I didn’t consider when I wrote what I thought was going to be a standalone Elizabethan book.

Edit: So I’m leaning toward deferring the problem. The poll results so far have “pleased” winning by a noticeable margin, but a lot of “confused” votes as well, with a good discussion down in the comments of how this could be resolved by drawing attention to the difference up front. Unfortunately, there’s no graceful way to do that in my narrative as it stands — I’d have to a) horribly interrupt the first relevant scene or b) stick an out-of-narrative note at the front of the book. Neither of which sits well with me. But it doesn’t become a real issue until the Victorian period, when their rampant fairy obsession makes the use of a decidedly non-Victorian form distracting, and so I think for now I’ll stick with my usual spelling. Then, once I start drafting the next book, I’ll see if I can’t build in something that addresses the difference properly.

Edit 2: To give you an idea of why this issue sticks in my brain like a burr — the Onyx Court books are edited to American spelling, except in cases where I’m referencing something British. So ships are in the harbor but Henry Ware got murdered in Coldharbour, and the characters are looking at colors when talking about Newton’s essay “Of Colours.” Despite the fact that the entire thing is in Britain, with British characters. This annoys the snot out of me, but short of strong-arming my publisher into giving me a UK copy-edit (my preference), I can’t do much about it.

FYI

I’m still pondering the icon issue, so feel free to go on adding suggestions to that post. (The problem is not with the pictures I’ve been given already, but rather with my subconscious, which just doesn’t want to play ball. I don’t know what it’s looking for — that it hasn’t been given already — or whether it’s just being cranky. Quite possibly the latter.)

a spoiler (of sorts)

Want to know how the Victorian book is going to end?

Here you go:

So there’s a funny story behind this. We’re in India, going from (I think) Mysore to Bangalore, and I’m staring out the window listening to music. My iPod’s on shuffle, and this song comes up. And the following mental conversation ensues.

SUBCONSCIOUS: We’re totally putting this on the soundtrack for the Victorian book.
ME: What?
SUBCONSCIOUS: For the end. Or rather, the Climactic Moment.
ME: Self, we don’t know what the Climactic Moment is going to be. Because we don’t know how the book is going to end.
SUBCONSCIOUS: It’s going to end like this, of course!
ME: It doesn’t work that way. We fit the music to the book, not the book to the music.
SUBCONSCIOUS: Uh-huh. That’s why the second half of Doppelganger maps perfectly to “Amazonia.”
ME: That’s different.
SUBCONSCIOUS: How?
ME: Listening to the song gave me plot ideas. You’re saying I have to generate plot ideas to fit the song.
SUBCONSCIOUS: Exactly. Now get to work.

The subconscious always wins these fights. I gave it some thought, and realized that of the two-three very vague ways I had thought of ending the book, one of them fit much better with the mood of the piece than the others did — specifically the last minute. (It’s instrumental, if you haven’t listened to it yet; hence not really a spoiler.) Odds are rather good that we’ll be going down that path.

Now I just have to figure out why the book will end that way . . . .

the impossible favor

Back when I decided to spend 2008 writing In Ashes Lie rather than the Victorian Onyx Court book, the rightness of that decision was encapsulated by two things: I had both a title and an LJ icon for Ashes, and I had neither for the Victorian book.

Now it’s almost 2010, and I realio trulio am writing the Victorian book, and I still need those two things. I’m working on the title issue at the moment; I have possibilities, though all of the ones assembled so far have flaws.

But I don’t have an icon. And the problem there is, I’m not sure what I want for an icon. Midnight had Elizabeth, Ashes had the Fire, Star had the comet, but I don’t quite feel like there’s the same kind of central object in this book — except London itself, really, and it’s hard to pack the “monster city” with all its smog and townhouses and gentlemen and beggars into 100×100 pixels. The best I can think of is some pic of a Victorian-era train, especially an Underground train, but my attempts to find such on the Internet have not turned up anything that leaps out at me. This is the closest I’ve come, but it doesn’t crop to icon size very well.

So here’s the favor I’m asking. Make me some icons — no text needed, just an image that evokes gritty nineteenth-century industrial London. If I use your icon, you’ll get a prize. Most likely prospect for said prize, if you’re willing to wait, is an advance copy of A Star Shall Fall; if you’re more impatient, I’ll come up with something else. A magazine with a story of mine in, maybe. But some kind of prize for saving me from having no icon with which to post about this book.

It’s hard to ask for something like that when I’m not even sure what I want. But I figured I’d toss the net out there, and see what it pulls in.

it begins

Okay, so, researching the Victorian book. I’ve decided my first priority is to come up with something to call it other than “the Victorian book.”

The simultaneous convenience and inconvenience of the Onyx Court books is that I know where to go looking for a title (period literature), but I have to go look. I can’t just make one up. We therefore come to the first Request for Help of this round: what mid-Victorian literature should I read in search of a title?

My preference is for poetry over prose, because it’s more likely to have a short, evocative phrase that I can spin out; fiction (especially in the Victorian era) is rather too fond of going on at length. The book will probably start circa 1870, so I’d like material no later than that. No specific limit on how early it could be, but I’m trying to avoid going as early as the Romantics. So who was writing good (and preferably non-pastoral) poetry around 1840-1870?

State of the Swan

I don’t have to report for jury duty today — yay! So here’s an update on where I stand work-wise, in the wake of the India trip and A Star Shall Fall.

1) I do, of course, have to deal with copy-edits and page proofs for Star. Not sure yet when those will show up, though, so for the time being that work is in limbo.

2) Next after that one is the Victorian book. Due to the vagaries of my last few years, this, the fourth Onyx Court novel, will be the first one where I’ve had more than a month or two of lead time in which to do my research before I put words on the page. You have no idea how wonderful that feels. In order to give myself more time for the actual drafting, I plan to start that at the beginning of April, but that still leaves me five months for a leisurely, low-pressure campaign of prep reading. Look for various “help me o internets” posts as I figure out what I want to pick up first.

3) Writing full-time means I need to hold myself to a higher standard of productivity than I did while teaching or taking classes. Ergo, I’m also starting work on a pure spec project. For those not familiar with the term, writing “on spec,” i.e. “on speculation,” means you’re doing it on your own time, without a contract promising money when you’re done. This project, code-named TLT, is a just-for-me novel; if I don’t finish it, or if I do finish it and then decide it isn’t really for publication, then that’s okay. I’m doing it because I want to, because I think it’ll be fun. And “having fun” is an important part of this job, for the preservation of sanity. Anyway, the plan for this is to aim for 5K a week, with weekends off, and if I don’t make my goal then I won’t beat myself up over it.

4) I also have another sekrit projekt on the back burner, code-named FY. No wordcount goals for this one; I just want to play around with it and see what happens.

5) Short stories. I’m beginning to accept that short stories aren’t likely to happen while I’m drafting Onyx Court books, but the result is that my pipeline of stories has gotten fairly empty at every stage — very few upcoming publications, because very few sales, because very few submissions, because very few stories prepared, because very few stories awaiting revision. Between now and April, I’d like to make some progress in fixing that. The tentative goal is to finish both Edward’s untitled story and “Serpent, Wolf, and Half-Dead Thing” before the end of the month; we’ll see if I can manage it or not.

Now I head up to the city for errands and the Borderlands signing tonight. India pictures later — hopefully tonight or tomorrow.