Barbara Hambly's Blog, page 55

Ocean mist before sunrise; air that smells of the tropics...

Ocean mist before sunrise; air that smells of the tropics. The Pineapple Express is back in town.

Bad kitties are acting like bad kitties.

A quiet afternoon - I hope - wrapping up the last of Draft 2 of Blood Maidens - vexing to be roaring through the First Draft and find a cryptic note at the end of a very short chapter, "scene Lydia/Ysidro". Oh, yeah? And what do they say to one another?

I'm pleased that ASSIDUOUS practice of nightly yoga seems to be working on my frozen left shoulder...

Classics Reclassified

Well, I got the videogame of Dante's Inferno and of course, the disk seemed to have a major glitch on it that prevented me from getting into the main portion of the game, even though I had successfully (or rather, Dante had successfully) beaten Death in a stand-up battle on an asteroid floating in space and taken his scythe away from him. I don't remember that being in the original book. Nor was the part about Dante being able to save souls and later trade them in to upgrade his equipment...

Opening Day

Whew. First day of SPring Semester, with classes drastically cut and an "enrollement cap" on the classes that remain. I handle this by lottery: there are always students who pre-enroll who don't bother to show up for the class. If they haven't e-mailed me, their seats get raffled off to those hopefuls who HAVE showed up. The classroom was jammed with people trying to get into ANYTHING to fill requirements - one enterprising would-be student sneaked THREE slips with his name on it into the lot...

Idiot kitty

Yesterday Gus - who is, as I've said, an acrobatic boy - got himself trapped down the 9"x9" chimney of dead-space between the bookcases in my study (which was covered, by the way, but not, apparently, securely enough - I had no idea he could get up there) - a 7-foot fall and no room to twist around to land on his feet, I think. I was working and didn't see him fall, though I'd seen him walking on top of the bookcases a moment before (and thought, "Hm, didn't think he could get up THAT high......

Restaurant review

Well, I guess the salmon-flavored "classic pate" cat-food gets two thumbs down from Gus. He is making scratching motions all around the dish as if to bury it. Laurie refers to this as "The restaurant review." ("Sure smells like something that needs to be buried in the box...")

A lovely afternoon at the Family Birthday: Boys - Dad, brother, brother's grandson all have birthdays within a week of each other. Cheap out, get 'em one cake. A beautiful drive - snow on the mountains is down almost to ...

Pouring Down Rain

And will continue to be pouring down rain all week, allegedly.

This is the first time I've worked on two books simultaneously - first draft in the daytime, second draft of another book in the evening - and aside from the physical problems it's going well so far. Particularly with the evening work I seem to settle into a kind of overdrive, and I'm extremely pleased with it, but I suspect I'm going to have to take a break one night this week and play Tomb Raider just to clear my brain. (Scheduli...

Big Ol' Rant

rant-rant-rant-rant-rant-rant-rant-rant-rant

Grocery store. Me in line; clerk I've said Hi to for years now.

Me: Hi, how are things with you?

Clerk: [three-minute graphic description of her new cat's bowel movements:]

Me [thought-balloon:]: *let's not ask that question of anyone again ever*

Have I become hyper-fastidious in my old age, or was I just working on a story the day they changed the rule about what is Too Much Information? Is this an effect of blogging? Of Reality TV? Of Jack Black and Ada...

WoW

Thursday night as usual? I just made my way to Darnassus to do some shopping, and got back to Honor Hold all by myself - sort of like the first time I went anywhere on the New York subways.

Vexingly, LJ is still not notifying me of posts. I've changed my LJ-to-email address, in the hopes that this will work better, but it means I check LJ a number of times: always awkward. And the nice folks at LJ say they haven't got the slightest idea what the problem is.

Meanwhile, plowing ahead on The Shi...

Beat With the Chair Stick

One thing about working with the nice people at Severn House: their word-count demands force concision, and I'm very pleased at the process of making every word count. It quickens the pace, never bad in a mystery.

I'm happy to report that we have achieved Corpse by the end of chapter two. (Actually the first corpse - Shaw's younger brother - is dead at the opening of the book).

I'm also happy to report that the horrendous stress symptoms I've been experiencing ARE only stress-symptoms, and not ...

Woof

I won't say I got MUCH done of Chapter One of January # 10 - The Shirt On His Back - but the closest thing I have to a New Year's resolution was to get it started today. Today I also finished the first draft of Blood Maidens - Asher & Ysidro #3. (Which I'm really pleased with, by the way, even though my first drafts are truly awful).

And miles to go before I sleep.

MASSIVE stress-symptoms... or maybe it was food-poisoning from something I ate at the party last night. (I left early, as I try to ...