Cat Rambo's Blog, page 47

Finetuning Patreon

One of my favorites is the First Pages workshop – come find out where to take your novel!

As some of you know, I started a Patreon campaign about a year ago. It’s worked pretty well, although I still need to put together the first year’s worth in ebook form to send to people.

I’m going to stick with it, particularly given that I get new ideas for short stories all the time (and generate a lot in the course of teaching), but I’m thinking about making some changes.

The most important is making it so paid content isn’t just restricted to patrons. I’m going back and forth about this. Right now it feels like a subscription model, but if I go to public content, it seems less so. But what paid patrons would get along with the public posts are sneak peeks at drafts for outside markets, which would be free but accessible only to people supporting the paid stories. The drafts would be early ones, rather than late, and they also wouldn’t be getting paid for, which seems to be the main criteria editors apply to Patreon stories when ruling them out for acceptance. (This is a whole ‘nother long and interesting discussion, I think.)
I recently switched from two stories a month to one and I’m going back to two.
I need to remove the postcard incentive because I keep forgetting to send them, and figure out something else. Suggestions?

Today’s wordcount: 5476

Current Hearts of Tabat wordcount: 112800

Total word count for the week so far (day 2): 11487

Total word count for this retreat: 42856

Worked on Hearts of Tabat, finished “California Ghosts” and “I am Scrooge”

Time spent on SFWA email, discussion boards, other stuff: an hour

Classes that are coming up soon and still have room! All times are Pacific Time.

July 15 (Wednesday), 7-9 PM – First Pages Workshop Section 1
July 17 (Friday), 2-4 PM – Writing Your Way Into Your Novel, Section 2
July 19 (Sunday), 9:30-11:30 AM – First Pages Workshop Section 2

Retreat, Day 12 or 13: Back in the Groove

Sourdough bread. Was way too dense and bland.

Today’s wordcount: 6011

Current Hearts of Tabat wordcount: 108569

Total word count for the week so far (day 1): 6011

Total word count for this retreat: 37380

Worked on Hearts of Tabat, “Poppy”

Time spent on SFWA email, discussion boards, other stuff: an hour

Classes that are coming up soon and still have room! All times are Pacific Time.

July 15 (Wednesday), 7-9 PM – First Pages Workshop Section 1
July 17 (Friday), 2-4 PM – Writing Your Way Into Your Novel, Section 2
July 19 (Sunday), 9:30-11:30 AM – First Pages Workshop Section 2

Got up early, fed the chickens, ate my yogurt and drank my (overly-trendy kombucha). For those following along with interest regarding the sourdough adventures, the pancakes were divine but the bread was densely textured to the point where it sat in one’s stomach like wet gravel. I do know what I did wrong — I tried to adapt my no-knead bread recipe to use sourdough starter and I need to go back to square one and try a traditional recipe like this one or this one.

Those pancakes were awesome though. Here’s the recipe I used.

Here’s today’s excerpt, taken from Hearts of Tabat:

The Duke’s bedroom has pieces in it that are over 300 years old, imported from the Old Continent on the original Duke’s ship, so long ago, and were old even then. There is a little cabinet made of silver and a dark wood that no longer grows anywhere in this world, for sorcerers eradicated it. There is a table inlaid with opals and in its center a great crystal, once used by the sorcerer Baltazar to spy on his enemies, and looped around it the crystal Baltazar’s general and queen, Aiofe, had worn until the day she was destroyed by grinding the bones that were all that were left of her between two great millstones. That dust had been released far out to sea, and no one had ever heard of Aiofe again, so perhaps her soul was at rest now.

There is a single armchair, a great brooding red thing of velvet, with gilded arms, its echo of a throne not at all accidental. There is no accompanying armchair, just a little stool onto which someone could sink if necessary, but the message is clear that one stands in the Duke’s presence. This room is an entire floor of the south-east tower — above it is only storage, and things that he prefers stay hidden. The windows on the floor above have been blocked off, secured against entrance, and where they are physically stoppered, the windows here, on all sides of the chamber, are spell-warded, invisible barriers that will halt any intruder, strong enough for even the most intrusive magic.

On the floor is a medley of beast skins: manticore and hydra leather seven-timed tanned into a buttery suppleness, the splotched palomino hindquarters of a Centaur (its human section elsewhere), a Unicorn’s pearly hide, the curls of its mane like sea foam; pelts dark-furred and light, enough of them that the stone floor is not visible. They are cleaned whenever his Grace is not in his chambers, a hurried cleaning, beating the hides out in an inner courtyard and combing out the long-pelted ones, stroking the undersides with sandalwood incense and then putting down a layer of sweetgrass below the layer of hides, so they gave underfoot.

The aetheric light hanging in the center of the chamber is one-of-a kind, a chandelier of liquid light, flowing back and forth between the arms of the light, the light the clean crisp blue-light of the lanterns lining the streets of the city far below. Most spell work cand be seen in that light, and that is another layer of protection for the cautious Duke.

The bed itself is like a massive shelf, also pelt-covered, a zoo’s worth of spotted and speckled, striped and solid, the barest hint of hair over hide next to shaggy mats of black and moonlight. A canopy hangs over the mass, swagged in Tabat’s blue and gold, both shades darkened past the norm, to navy and amber, and sagging downward as though to caress and envelop the sleeper.

On either side of the bed, in narrow vases made of slanted angles of crystal, are sprays of jasmine, hot-house forced and luxuriant as only a plant that has never known insect can be. Perfume seeps from them, and contained by the canopy and back curtains, is contained so the sleeper lies in a pool of scent.

There are shelves of things, trophies and ornaments, little demonstration machines created by the College of Mages, which this Duke has sponsored more heavily than any Duke before him.

There is not a single book in the room. Nothing of paper, not even a map, though there are pictures on the wall, heavy oil canvases, all of the Duke, in a variety of attitudes, all of them flattering. There is a common tone to all these pictures, a palpable obsequiousness and eagerness to please that deepens the eyes, making them see wiser, and clefts the chin just a notch, in the way that is currently fashionable. There are six of these portraits.

Retreat, Days 9, 10 and 11 (Fermenting)

The SCOBY (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast) that makes the kombucha.

I spent the last couple of days wrestling with the plot more than actual writing, but I have gotten some done. Will start posting totals again tomorrow.

My kombucha SCOBY, packed meticulously for the trip in Tupperware and three layers of ziplock bags and packing tape, has recovered fully from its journey and produced two batches of kombucha for second ferments each time. I have mainly blackberry, because there’s a gazillion blackberries out back, but I am going to try some lavender and mint as well. I’ve found the store down at Santa Cruz full of kombucha varieties, go figure. My favorite so far is a lovely lavender melon that I am going to try to replicate.

I’ve also got a loaf of sourdough bread about to come out of the oven, and will proof some starter tonight for sourdough pancakes in the morning. I’ve never done any sourdough stuff other than Herman, so I’ll be curious, particularly since I tried using sourdough with this no-knead bread recipe. Exciting times here on writing retreat.

From “Poppy” (working title)

Poppy’s arms were strong and brawny, and as big around as a young birch tree, and capable of swinging the rosewood truncheon she kept behind the Amethyst’s bar with a solid thunk that would stop a belligerent drunk in his tracks, usually at the first blow, always by the second.

She’d inherited the wayside inn – “twice as far as the back of beyond” one traveler had called it – when her own parents were slain in the Shadow Wars and she’d taken over from old Dad, her mother’s father at the tender age of seventeen. By a quarter of a century later, old Dad was old indeed, and Poppy knew everything there was to know about the art of running an inn located somewhat remotely, it was true, but at least located on the lesser of the two main routes between the capital and Pickering-on-the-Beach.

Her hair was colored henna and brass, and she was a big woman, with a bigger laugh, one you could hear echoing down the road at night when you were tired of walking and heard her laughter, letting you know the inn was within shouting distance. A dozen bards had tried to teach her one musical instrument or another and she had taken to none but the pat-a-pat drums, and even then did not like to perform before others. While she’d taken lovers enough, she’d never cared to kindle with child, and then one thing happened and another, and before too long, she realized she was no longer capable of having a child in the usual way.

The way she learned it was this: she was on her way to the wellhouse in order fetch a pound of butter when a bear came shuffling out of the woods, rubbing its fur against the pines as it went, as shedding summer wool as it went, with the thicker, darker winter fur coming in underneath.

She paused and looked at it, unafraid but wary, and the bear looked back. Then it reared to its hind legs, pointed a paw at her, and growled out, the words barely understandable through bearish lips, “Woe to you, fruitless woman. With your womb dies the last of your grandfather’s line, and I have come to claim my curse.”

Poppy blinked.

“What?” she said, and dropped the butter.

Retreat, Day 8 (Stuff about Plotting Novels)

Yesterday I got very little writing done, and instead worked on plotting. Ugh. I’ve reached that stage of the manuscript where I feel like I’m herding cats, and it seemed like time to make things make more sense.

Major Ingredients for Plotting

In starting, I had the following:

a strong idea of each major character’s story arc
the first book, which has some chronological overlap with volume 2
a lot of scenes in various stages — some complete, some partial, some only notes, all contained in Scrivener
a somewhat ragged and incomplete synopsis

And some things that made the process of plotting more complicated:

Complication #1 to plotting: multiple POVs, including some episodes that overlap in time. Arranging these is much harder than you would think.
Complication #2 to plotting: a couple of readers complained that the 1st book started slow. I wanted this one to grab and go.
Complication #3 to plotting: a feeling that the POVs must be balanced to some extent.

Figuring Out the Overall Structure: the Sketchbook Method

So I printed out the synopsis and got out my big sketchpad. I wrote the three chronological points that were most important from the first book on the page, roughly where I thought they’d fall in the book: one at the very beginning, one about a quarter way through, and one about half the way through.

At first I divided the page into three sections for three acts, but by the time I was done, there were five sections total. I think of them as “acts” in that I want them to begin at an interesting point, have the right mix of scenes from the different POVs, and finish in a way that feels like a mini-ending, a chance to think about what’s gone before and to prepare for what’s coming up.

Overall Outline

As you can see, that first page eventually ended up looking like a bit of a mess (and right now the image keeps showing up sideways, for some inexplicable reason that I cannot figure out at the moment), but it let me figure out where some things had to happen and realize that I had to nail down where a particular character from the first book is at all times.

I started working with colored pencils in order to track the different main characters, but that fell away as I began arranging what I already had. But it’s handy to be able to see the story from a high altitude, the 10,000 foot view, so to speak, particularly in terms of making the story make sense. Because while the writer can — and probably should deviate from a straightforward chronology for anything but the least complicated of stories — every time they do it, they place a demand on the reader to jump the hurdle and bounce along into the next scene with them.

As far as what’s been written, I have it in Scrivener, that most indispensable of tools. My process lately has been to work on individual scenes in nothing at all like chronological order, but more in the order of ones that really will be fun to write first (this approach has the drawback of inevitably arriving at a final sludge of scenes you didn’t want to write, but you will find at that point that at least half of them are actually not necessary.) So I began splitting up the pieces that were actually multiple scenes crammed in one document because they’d all been part of the same writing sprint, and numbering each one.

Some of the numbered scenes

Breaking Things Down: Individual Acts

Taking my big sheet, I created a new one for each of the first four sections, and with each, tried to figure out the structure as far as the alternating voices went. I realized that what I had were two main points of view (Adelina and Sebastiano) and then a third one consisting of a brother and a sister (Eloquence and Obedience).

As I went through the manuscript, I began to sort the scenes into order, creating folders for the different POVs. While the scenes may not happen in the exact order they do in the folder, this gets me started putting scenes that will be close together into a single chunk.

Dividing acts into POV chunks

And the main reason I want to have chunks like that, with multiple scenes from a single POV, rather than alternating POV every time I switch scenes, is that every time you move from one head to another, you bump the reader out of the story a little and remind them that they are reading, which is a cardinal sin.

Here are the individual act pages. As you can see, they’re messy and inexact, but they’re helping me sort out what goes where in a way that will then let me compile what I have into a document and start looking for the major holes, since filling them in is the next step.

Once I have those holes filled in, I’ll begin wrestling each chunk into a smooth form, and imposing a story arc of one kind or another on it.

Someone asked how I use Tarot cards in plotting. I use them as a way to figure out the major points and considerations for a scene or a chunk, by doing a simple Celtic Cross reading for the main character in that scene. If you’re not familiar with Tarot cards and that configuration for reading them, here’s better information on the spread, and I’ll blog sometime in the next couple days with a sample reading for a scene (but right now I should put in some actual ficiton wordcount).

Some SFWA and Class-related Stuff

In SFWA news, Todd Vandemark has put up the 1st of the videos he filmed at this year’s Nebulas, Steven Gould and I talking about joining SFWA. There will be new content on the channel released on a regular basis throughout the coming year, and I’m pleased to see that idea finally taking solid form.

Maggie Hogarth is onboard as the new Vice President and already hard at work. Look for some cool stuff coming up over the new year.

Finally, I’ve been doing some teaching from retreat and finding out that the wireless works fine. The Writing Your Way Into Your Novel class was terrific and gave me lots of ideas. This Saturday the 6 week Writing F&SF Stories starts. I’ve still got slots in that (as well as most of the other classes) and would be willing to talk about sliding scale or barter if you’re interested. If you’re interested, check out the list of classes here.

Retreat, Day 7

Today’s wordcount:5006

Current Hearts of Tabat wordcount: 99942

Total word count for the week: 10014

Total word count for this retreat: 27091

Worked on Hearts of Tabat, story “Days of Sweetness, Days of Want”

Time spent on SFWA email, discussion boards, other stuff: 30 minutes

According to Fitbit, 11646 steps, 85 flights of stairs, 5.26 miles

From Hearts of Tabat:

The journey upward was full of splinters and soot, but both girls made it. They wandered through the rooms here, which were lower-ceilinged but just as once richly appointed as the downstairs had been. Here too, though, looters had stripped away most of the valuable things other than the built in furniture and even there, the shelves that had once held drawers gaped openly. Bales of paper, blackened on the outside, fell aside at the touch to reveal white internals, blank and ready for words that would never come.

There were two separate suites, both facing out over Printers Row, and in one, rather than looting, someone had smashed: a mass of crockery, and a number of terra-cotta house dolls, every Trade God in the house, it seemed. Revelation picked through the fragments, taking out the faces where she could find them, accumulating them into a little heap of smiles and eyes and pointed noses.

“What are you doing?” Grace said irritably. “Those aren’t worth anything.”

Revelation bit her lip and kept down on her knees, sorting through the fragments. She thought to herself, they have value because I want them, even if someone else might think they’re worthless. Anger smoldered in her like a damp match.

“Do you think they’ll have some power, because they’re Trade Gods?” Grace persisted. “That’s foolish. Only the moons are real.”

“I know that,” Revelation said. “I’m not a heretic.”

“Then why are you sorting those out? Do you think you can put one back together?”

Revelation shook her head. Grace pulled at her shoulder. Reluctantly, she swept the faces she had found, two handfuls worth, into her pockets and let Grace move her along.

The fire’s touch had manifested in every room, charring walls, blackening fabrics. It smelled overwhelmingly of burned things, which was not a smell that Revelation had considered unpleasant before this day, but now pressed at her nose until she found herself dipping her face into her shoulder, trying to breathe through the fabric of her cloak. Grace seemed unaffected by the smell, moving quickly to anything she thought might yield some value, and forcing her gleanings on Revelation, whose load grew heavier and heavier as they sorted through the rooms: a brass lantern; half a picture frame, the edges gilded; a small glass jar full of an unknown white paste; a handful of yellowy-gold feathers, so bright that she thought they must be painted at first.

They both froze when they heard the noise from below.

Retreat, Day 6

Today’s wordcount:5008

Current Hearts of Tabat wordcount: 95071

Total word count for the week: 5008

Total word count for this retreat: 22085

Worked on Hearts of Tabat, story “District of Brass”

Time spent on SFWA email, discussion boards, other stuff: 30 minutes

10263 steps, 67 flights of stairs

From today, the beginning of a Serendib story, “District of Brass”

In Serendib, there is the District of Brass, and there the traveler can find marvelous machines, made not just of that metal, but many of the lesser metals, like iron and aluminum and the first degree of steel. The tinkerers of the District of Brass can make any machine, but always after their fashion, which is cogs and gears and wheels within wheels, not the crystals and lights of other lands.

Once there was a tinkerer there, who had not come from elsewhere, but was native to the city, which meant that anything could happen with her. Her name was Pye and she was a clever girl, who loved to puzzle things out, and by the time she was six, she had created mechanisms that performed not only all her own chores, but those of her slower siblings. She was an innovator, and many disliked her intensely for her habit of looking at a design and saying, in the most reasonable of tones, “Yes, that’s clever enough, but what if you did it this way?” before pointing out any number of improvements.

This dislike was exacerbated by her main failing, which was that she was incapable of puzzling out people as expertly as she did machines – in fact, people were mysteries to her, always saying one thing and then acting another way. There were rules to existence, and they seemed to change so often, or at least be conditional and dependent to the point where there was no telling what to do at any given moment without standing and thinking for a good ten minutes about it.

While her family was fond enough of her, though most preferred not to spend too much time in her company, since the designs she was improving were so often their own, Pye had no friends, only acquaintances among her age-mates and other school friends, and the nurse who had raised her between the ages of eight and fourteen, and now lived in an elderquarter of a more advanced age, where the medical care was far better.

Pye would have liked to have said that she didn’t care about her lack of friends, but the truth is that she cared in two ways: one, she would have liked to have had friends, and two, she thought it an abnormality in herself not to have accumulated such things already.

Retreat, Day 5

Today’s wordcount:4006 (teaching day)

Current Hearts of Tabat wordcount: 92212

Total word count for the week: 17073

Total word count for this retreat: 17073

Worked on Hearts of Tabat, story “Days of Sweetness, Days of Want”

Time spent on SFWA email, discussion boards, other stuff: 30 minutes

Other stuff: Taught Character Building class, did some e-mailings

Steps: 6351

From today’s, part of Hearts of Tabat

The Red Moon’s Sugar Tea House had a flimsy and unfinished look to it — one door had a (0 of tiles half laid around it, ending at a shoulder-high mark where either tiles or energy had given out. The tables were all-of-a-kind but second-hand, marked with stripes and weather stresses, but the chairs were a mismatched conglomeration that could, upon study, be sorted into four groups: a set once marked with a noble signet, all chiseled away; a few basket-woven chairs, looking flimsy but more comfortable than the rest; a set of plain chairs, crude in construction and made of pine planking, and one rocking chair, set in the corner. The floor underfoot was unfinished planking, marked with spills and splotches and a winter’s worth of grime in the grooves between the planking. The narrow windows were half-shuttered, their lower reaches clad in gray slats, while their naked uppers admitted winter’s chill light.

A fat-bellied stove sat cold in the back of the room, while chal steamed in a vast samovar/vat near the till. A skinny boy sat there, reading a penny-wide and paying no attention to the room whatsoever.

Sebastiano paid the boy a couple of copper skiffs and received a ceramic mug. The samovar smelled as though it had not been cleaned in a while, but the chal was hot and surprisingly peppery. Sebastiano chose not to contemplate what the spice might be masking. He found a basket-woven chair with a low table beside it that was cleaner than the rest of them and sank down into it with a sigh. It creaked and murmured under his weight but held.

No one else was in the tea house, which was not a good sign. It had the feeling of a stage set, of something erected more for show than for purpose, and it made his encounter in the flower shop seem all the odder, as though he’d been catapulted into the pages of a penny-wide, something lurid and full of spies and secret words.

He sighed and slouched back a little in the chair, sipping at his mug. Was that the sort of story he had wanted for his life? He would prefer a love story, something simple and not too complicated, ending up happily in a way that promised for a good life, with love and family and friendship and at least moderate wealth.

That was, he thought, not the story he had told himself ten years ago, when he had first come to the College of Mages. That had been a younger man’s story, one of devoting himself to his craft, discovering things that no one had ever learned before, adding to the store of Human knowledge. That had been a worthy enough ambition but he was no longer sure that was what he wanted.

Surely this was not the normal state. Surely people usually knew what it was that they wanted of life — everyone at the college of mages seemed to, at least.

Shadows flickered past the door as passersby went down the street. The boy turned a page and kept reading. His lips moved a little as he read, sounding out words.

Sebastiano felt dissatisfied, at odds with himself. Thoughts of the oread still rankled at him. Why had she thought he would do her harm? The thought came to him that she wished him harm, and that was why she had feared it from him, but he discarded it. Oreads were simple creatures, and no danger to Humans.

Retreat, Day 4

Words achieved today: 3045 (letting myself get away with less because it’s a teaching day, but maybe I’ll get in a few more tonight)

Current Hearts of Tabat wordcount: 87687

Total word count for the week: 13067

Total word count for this retreat: 13067

Worked on Hearts of Tabat, Exiles of Tabat, short story (“You Remind Me of Summer”)

Time spent on SFWA email, discussion boards, other stuff: 30 minutes, plus whatever I do tonight

Other stuff: Taught the first section of “Writing Your Way Into Your Novel”, prepped for Sunday’s class

Steps: 6410

From Hearts of Tabat:

Adelina paused by Serafina’s desk. She studied the secretary, who looked up. She wore her usual plainly cut clothes, one of the signs of a worshipper of the Moon Temples. That was, as far as Adelina could, Serafina’s only similarity with Eloquence, but most of what Adelina had ever known of the temples previously had been via the instruction or example of her secretary.

She asked now, “Serafina, how does the Temple handle marriages?”

“The priests arrange them, when people are ready,” Serafina said.

“How does the priest know when they are ready?”

“They come and ask the priest to find them someone, and they prove in conversation that they are ready to be with someone in that way, and to begin to raise a family.”

“Is that the point of the alliance, the family?” Adelina said, intrigued. “Are there Triad marriages, as there are among the merchants?”

She felt foolish as Serafina eyed her. I am treating her as though she were some sort of menagerie creature, she thought, and that is unkind. Shame twitched at her even harder when Serafina patiently said, “No, our marriages are not about economic alliances in the way that merchant marriages are. Such alliances would be reckoned a little sinful because they are apart from the norm, truth be told.”

“What is their purpose then?”

“To create children, who will spread the faith.”

“Should the faith not spread it, if it is good enough?” Adelina asked, fascinated, and realized her misstep when she saw Serafina’s frown. “I beg your pardon,” she said quickly. “It is only that…”

“It is only that the Moon Temples are not much regarded among the merchants and the nobles because it is a religion of the poor,” Serafina said frankly. “To speak of things that are not reckoned in profit or loss is thought a little shameful among the merchants, and the nobles do not like talk of doing good for its own sake.”

That startled a laugh out of Adelina, who had never heard her clerk be so cynical. “What has flushed all this truth from you, then?”

“You should not pay attention to Eloquence Seaborn,” Serafina said severely. “It is not a match the Temples would approve of, and he is a fine young man, with a good future in them ahead of him.”

“Is he to become a priest?”

Serafina shook her head, then nodded. “A layman’s priest, someone who does not live in the Temples and do as the Priests do, but lives among other people and acts as a go between and an example. That is a special role, and it is the one that has been prepared for Eloquence.”

It occurred to Adelina that the Temples were a relatively small gathering and so Serafina had known Eloquence and his family all her life. She said, “I am thinking of taking an apprentice, one of Eloquence’s sisters.”

“That,” Serafina said slowly, “could be a good or bad notion, depending on which you mean to do so with.”

“The youngest one. Perseverance.”

“Ah.” Serafina’s frown cleared a little. “She gets picked on by the rest of them, I think. To be out from under all of that would be a good thing for her, let her shine a little and come into her own. But I thought she was apprenticed to the tanner?”

“She is, but she says she hates it. I found her crying over it.”

Serafina pursed her lips. “It is not for the child to determine her own apprenticeship. That is for her elders to do, with the Temples’ advice, in order to place her where she will be best prepared for life.”

“But at the time she was apprenticed to the tanner, this opportunity was not available to her for the Temples or her elders to know about,” Adelina pointed out.

“That is true.” Serafina wavered. “You should consult her brother,” she said finally.

“I will,” Adelina said. She did not mention her earlier conversation with Perseverance or the fact that she had already promised the girl an apprenticeship. There was no need for Serafina to know the exact timeline.

Retreat, Day 3

I haven’t written here yet.

Words achieved today: 5022

Current Hearts of Tabat wordcount: 85264

Total word count for the week: 10022

Total word count for this retreat: 10022

Worked on Hearts of Tabat, Christmas story for anthology (“My Name is Scrooge”)

Time spent on SFWA email, discussion boards, other stuff: 10 minutes, but I’ll give it an hour this evening

Other stuff: prep for Saturday’s class

Steps: 10410

Excerpt from today’s work, part of Hearts of Tabat:

At the head of the Tumbril Stair is a landing, stone-bannistered, which overlooks all of the city. From that central point, one can look right and see the Duke’s castle far atop the cliffs overlooking the city, and then fifteen terraces down, shelf after shelf, flat lines broken by avenues of flowering trees and other staircases small and large and immediately at hand the oily black iron lines of the Great Tram with its basket cars swinging up and down, laden with those who had the pennies to spend on such transport.

At the edge of the water lies the Winter Garden and then the bay. Retreat inward a little, and the gaze encounters the docks and warehouses that are the center of the city’s industry. Keep traveling leftward for more shelves, and the great clots of smoke that mark the Slumpers, and then the salt-marshes, planted thick with purple and green reeds, a single channel leading through them to allow ships to come down from the Northstretch river and reach the sea.

The five terraces closest to the water were the saltwater neighborhoods; above them lay the freshwater. In Tabat, one distinguished between saltwater and freshwater, from matters such as foodstuffs to professions (for pilots it was the most important distinction, and the most bitterly fought). Even the markets were separated by that division, with the Saltmarket hosting only wares that knew the sea’s touch: dried fish for chal (which always must be made with salt fish), and bushels of seaweed, dried and fresh, smelling tangy sharp and green, and the woven reed-ware — baskets and hats, parasols and stiff caplets, tight woven and rain-repellent — that everyone wore once the summer heat started, until time to burn them in autumn’s bonfires.

Saltwater tailors dealt with fabrics from elsewhere — silks and petals from the Rose Kingdom, cheap bright cottons from the Southern Isles — and freshwater with homegrown, wools and flaxy linens, stiff and glossy but prone to wrinkling and expensive to maintain.

The Nittlescents were saltwater merchants, their house built on trade, perfumes and attars. Adelina had done her turns in the manufacturing side of the house, but her nose was not keen enough to be a perfumer, and she preferred the numbered side of things, the flow of revenue and payments that was the ledger reflection of that industry.

Retreat, Day 2

Lemons. Cat provided for scale

I’m holing up and working hard on the sequel to Beasts of Tabat. I let myself have July 1 off because that was a travel day, but yesterday I managed 5k words, though that last half was like pulling teeth. This morning I got up and sat down without checking e-mail and got 1000 out of the way. My goal is 25k each week until the middle of August, which should see me with Hearts of Tabat in a decent final draft, several stories I’ve promised to people completed, the YA novel further along down the road, and perhaps even some more of Exiles of Tabat (book 3) drafted. I will be teaching while here — tomorrow is the first section of Writing Your Way into Your Novel.

To keep myself honest, I’ll be posting word count and WIP excerpts.

So, yesterday:

Word count – 5k

Hearts of Tabat current word count – 82184

SFWA time – hour and a half on call plus e-mail plus skim thru discussion boards

From Hearts of Tabat, an early chapter, still in rough draft form.

This is what a riot looked like. Pink velvet darkened to plum by spilled punch, and flickers of angry firelight glistening on the sticky surface. Two shattered windows, broken glass spiderwbs in reverse, light from the aetheric lamps hanging over the street outside washing in, acitinic blue white over the parquet floor that had been Benarda’s pride, two hundred and thirty different kinds of wood, each dedicated to a different Trade God, zebra-striped bits of southern wood like dappled petals around her boots, as though she trod on clots of dirt-streaked snow, chips of mammoth ivory salting the petals in tiny white freckles.

A punch bowl, shattered by the first brick that had come in, landing soundly in the middle beside the overturned table, sending punch and bits of curved luster-glass everywhere, a great puddle of liquid changing the colors of the woods beneath them, tinting them dark and rose.

Two paintings askew on the walls, others lying on the floor in a jumble that drew the eye as much as their subject matter, impious and arresting, the torches that had set the rioters outside afire. Someone must have known what the paintings would be like, must have tipped people off, organized the crowd.

There. Marta’s eyes, glittering hate at Adelina across the room. Gods, even now the woman would rather hold her grudge against Bella rather than worry about keeping herself alive.

This is what a riot sounded like: angry shouts coming in through the windows, drowning out the frightened whispers all around Adelina (“Was that Bella Kanto who just went out? Of course I knew she’d be here.) Benarda somewhere behind the scenes, ordering someone else to do something, it was unclear what. The woman’s best chances of keeping her gallery further intact had just walked out the door in order to stand down the crowd, which had grown from the few dozen that had been here when she and Bella had first arrived, immediately after the now-absent Duke’s speech

This is what a riot smelled like: smoke and sweat and alcohol and all the mingled pomades and perfumes – who was still wearing vetiver, that went out last season? And what was that intriguing cinnamon and musk blend, was that an actual edge of rum in it or some remnant of the punch?

That was what a riot felt like: Leona’s small fingers in Adelina’s own, Bella’s tiny cousin and the center of all this clamor breathing hard, the gasps and gulps of air she took in when stressed.

Adelina’s own pulse beat fists against the hollow of her throat, pressed tight fingers behind her brows every time the streetlight struck her eyes, hammered at the pit of her belly, unnerving her.