Lilith Saintcrow's Blog, page 149

She Wolf Is Zero

Yesterday I finished the zero draft of the upcoming Fireside Fiction serial, provisionally titled She Wolf and Cub. The tale takes off where my previous Fireside short, Maternal Type, ended. It was a mad scramble to get to the zero draft finish line, partly because the story wanted to tear itself out of my head bloody, whole, and raw.

Consequently, I was completely useless last night, but it ended up being all right since someone else cooked dinner. I didn’t have to do much beyond stare into space, eat a bit, and maybe grunt once or twice when the conversation turned my way. The dogs, well used to my periodic spells of “FINISH STORY BRANE PORRIDGE,” were completely thrilled that instead of moving about the house cleaning or doing Similar Unnecessary Things, I settled right where they could see me without having to get up.

Of such small things are canine joys made.

So, today I don’t have a lot to say. I’m giving myself a day or two to let the zero draft rest, then it’s straight into revising, perhaps taking another whack at Rattlesnake Wind, and Lammas is my drop-dead date for starting the next Jeremy Gallow book. In between now and then, there’s also revisions on the first Gallow book to take care of.

Guh. My brain hurts just thinking about it. Time for me to go stare at a wall for a bit, play some piano, drag out a trunk novel and pick at it.

See you around the bend, chickadees.

photo by:


Renee Silverman

Summer Tangle

The serial just took another unexpected turn. It’s fine, but now I have to finish the zero draft of it, then go back and weave in a hideous amount of other stuff. I knew it would happen, but it’s like climbing a mountain and reaching what you think is the top…then looking up, and up, and up at another climb more grueling than the one you just finished.

But it’s going to be awesome, so there’s that.

Summer has finally arrived in all her golden glory. I left the house in shorts (to walk Miss B) for the first time in years this morning. It’s amazing what getting older and having someone who thinks you’re pretty will do. The former reduces the load of caring what other people might think, and the latter is a welcome boost to self-confidence.

So, I’m lunging for the end of the zero draft of the serial today. I have ice water, the dogs have been walked, and my head is full of nanos, genetic restructuring, restraint tanks, cyborg assassins, and gunslinging.

Aw yeah. Summer, you da best.

photo by:

Fimbrethil and Fireworks

I know she was probably a birch, but in my own heart, Fimbrethil will always be a rowan. Poor Treebeard, holding out hope for so many thousands of years.

In other news, here’s how fireworks get their pretty colours! Stay safe out there, my dears.

Preparing To Fire

Today the bipedal residents of Chez Saintcrow go forth to slay dragons, pillage villages, and–

*is handed slip of paper*

–oh. Um. Okay. I mean, today is the day we go in search of supplies for the Glorious Fourth, including some gunpowder-related packets. There will be no huge booming issuing forth from our cannons this year. There’s no point, really, since there are several in the neighborhood who celebrate vaunted independence by blowing up a piece of said independent soil. Sparklers and smoke bombs are about it. Of far more importance are the fixings for dinner on that day–the children have requested franks, and cucumber salad, and bags and bags of crisps. My own humble need for a bottle of wine to take the edge off the artillery fusillade that will ensue once dusk falls a couple days from now is no less urgent.

Plus, I either need a bigger hatchet or a full-blown axe. A larger handsaw wouldn’t be amiss either. Nothing petrol-powered, although I’m sure I can hurt myself just as handily with an axe as I could with a chainsaw.

I’m talented like that.

This is my current hatchet–it has a knife hidden in the handle, too, which is no doubt an incredibly bad idea, but one I was unable to resist. (Look, when the zombies come, I WILL BE READY.) I do think something a touch bigger will be needed to get rid of the stumps from my recent brush-clearing–two diseased burning bush shrubs, a rhododendron similarly diseased, and a lovely Japanese maple seedling that would no doubt love to crawl under my foundation and crack things in half. The rhododendron flowered pink in spring, but that’s not the reason I took it out; it pained me to take the maple down.

*sigh*

Anyway, the burning bush shrubs had central stems easily 4-5in thick, and that’s just too much for my small hedge clippers. Hence my hungering for a larger handsaw, or hell, an axe. If I chop my own foot off it will no doubt be amusingly ironic.

As irritating as it will be to sally forth today when all I want to do is write (I am two chapters and the coda away from the end of the serial) I will console myself with the thought that at least I won’t have to leave the house tomorrow–or on the Fourth itself.

Small mercies.

I’m also working on a SquirrelTerror story. I have to tell you guys about Bluto!Squirrel and how exactly Miss B got squirrel-shite all over herself…but that’s, say it with me, another blog post.

photo by:


Miia Ranta

Creative Subversion

Chapter 9 of the serial proceeds apace. There’s a certain fight scene I want to write, and it requires me to listen to Aerosmith’s Rag Doll over and over again. The cyborg has to fight off a whole hell of a lot of other cyborgs, and things are going to get a little unpleasant for her.

There comes a point, sometimes midway, sometimes a little earlier or later, when stories–even the ones you know the “beats” and the form of pretty thoroughly going in–take on a life of their own. They decide where they’re going, how long it’s going to take them to get there, and all associated things, and all one can do is throw up one’s hands and hope. Submission to the story, and faith that it’s going to turn out all right.

I’d forgotten how fun it is to write serial-structure, too. How tightly it forces one to focus on the “beats” within each scene and chapter, and how one has to arrange all the pieces in order to make them fall the way they need to in the end. Like writing on spec, or writing within a genre with really tight confines, it makes you get creative with subverting your tropes and whatnot.

In other words, hellaciously good fun.

Now I’ve got to get that damn scene finished so I can leave the chapter behind and stop playing that song…

The Blue Man

This is the Blue Man. My friend Kev painted him a while back; I’ve always loved this piece. He sent it to me a little while ago, and I found the perfect place to hang it.

Kev and I met over a decade ago, I think. (Time blurs.) We were both in difficult situations. For a while, we’d go to the Seattle Art Museum every Thursday. We didn’t speak much about anything other than the paintings, but it was enough. There was a Kuan Yin on the third or fourth floor we used to talk to.

You never know how much your silent presence may comfort another. Being present is a gift you can give, and he gave it freely.

Thanks, Kev. *hugs*

Sol

The Size of Sol

We’ve gone out past the Moon in Pliny’s universe. He regards the Moon as being on the edge between atmosphere (though I’m not sure he would understand that term in the sense we use it) and into the “regions of clear light” he imagines the other heavenly bodies reside in. He’s more concerned, however, with what he can state definitively about the Sun. He spends a careful few paragraphs laying out why one can say with absolute certainty that the Sun is EFFING GINORMOUS. (Note: not his words.)

Carefully, logically, he lays out that the shadows of a miles-and-miles-long row of trees are the same size, that the sun reaches the vertical on the equinox at the same time for everyone in the “southern regions,” and something about the Tropic of Cancer. I confess I can’t parse that bit of Latin quite as well.

…item qua circa solstitialem circulum habitantum meridie ad septentrionem umbrae cadent, orto vero ad occasum, quae fieri nullo modo possent nisi multo quam terra maior esset…p200

“Meridie ad septentrionem” is Tropic of Cancer, right? And not the Henry Miller version. One rather thinks Pliny would think Henry Miller a bit debauched. (Gee, you think?) Then again, there were Ovid and Catullus, and either of them could blow the doors off Miller in style.

Ahem. Anyway. Catullus is for another day.

Pliny goes on to detail why the eclipse of the moon proves that the sun is OMGHUGE. At the very end, he waxes a bit rhetorical and informs us that the sun retreats in winter when:

“…otherwise it would unquestionably scorch up the earth, and even as it is does so in a certain part, so great is its magnitude.p203“

I rather like that bit of the translation–”scorch up the earth” for “exusturus haut dubie, et sic quoque exurens quadam in parte…p202” A good translation obeys the spirit as well as the letter, I think, and Rackham does pretty well.

Our stop here at the Sun is a short one (rather uncomfortably warm, isn’t it? Just a moment longer…) and please do keep your arms and legs inside the Train. Ice and various drinks are being dispensed, and the lights are about to go down as we speed from the celestial realms back to the more human country of History. Next, Pliny is going to tell us about eclipses and war.

Theory and Teeth

My piano teacher is moving, so I’ll be falling back upon my own stubbornness and a few exercise books to continue. I signed up for a music theory course, too–I want to know why. My perennial plaint, I suppose. I feel fortunate to be Living In The Future, where I can Google up answers to weird musical questions all day.

The Princess had her wisdom teeth taken out on Monday. The dentist said he’d never seen a finer set–white and straight, lovely picture-perfect roots, nothing wrapped around the nerves or fused into the jaw. They were crowding the rest of her teeth, though, and that would only get worse. So out they came. By far the most intense part of the whole procedure was the numbing. It was fascinating to see it happen; since I’m not likely to faint or interrupt, I stayed in the room with her the whole time. I recited Where the Wild Things Are from memory while we were waiting for the nitrous oxide to take effect. I was ready to recite all sorts of other stuff, but she was fine after Max got home and his supper was still hot.

Her recovery has been extremely smooth. Very little pain, and she’s already nibbling at solid food. I’m actually surprised she hasn’t had more need of painkillers, but she insists she’s not feeling anything other than slight discomfort. She slept most of Monday and Tuesday, and the ravelled sleave of care seems to be quite done up.

We’re having guests for dinner tonight, so I’m trying this Dijon and cognac beef stew. It will either be awesome…or I’ll be ordering pizza once it goes horridly wrong. Either way, a win.

And now, a little more work on the serial before the rest of the day starts. Over and out.

photo by:


arquera

Soundtrack Monday: HUNTER’S PRAYER

This was the Kismet book I wrote first. Much like Dante Valentine came from a whisper in my ear (“My working relationship with Lucifer began on a rainy Monday…”), Jill Kismet did too. In Jill’s case, it was her walking into the Monde Nuit. “It’s not the type of work you can put on a business card.”

I was very tired, by that point, of urban fantasy/paranormal books where the protagonist had an adversarial relationship with the police. I thought, well, if there were paranormal predators, the cops and first responders would know–and they’d be glad of the backup. This led me to think about the paperwork Montaigne is always moaning about, and (more to the point) what kind of person would find this sort of law enforcement to be a viable career.

And then Jill started telling me her story, in a level, quiet tone. She doesn’t believe in raising her voice much.

There were so many things in Hunter’s Prayer she insisted be left in that I didn’t know would come full circle later in the series. She always knew where we were heading, I just had to transcribe. Funny how that happens.

Anyway, here’s the soundtrack. Enjoy!

Santa Luz Surface Of The Moon, Del Amitri

The Monde/Business Card Boom Swagger Boom, The Murder City Devils

Melisande Belisa Sugar Water, Cibo Matto

Saul Black is the Colour, Nina Simone (There is a Corrs version that I’d set a Jill/Saul love scene to as well.)

Lucado Street/Flesh Gallery Everybody Got Their Something, Nikka Costa

These Are The Rules Furious Angel, Rob Dougan

Perry/Eventually, Kiss Lullaby, The Cure

Our Very Own Kiss Follow You Home, Nickelback

Ricky’s Girl Hope/The One Who Bought Us Stopwatch Hearts, Delerium

The Dragon Staff Teahouse, Juno Reactor

The Sorrows/Evocation Transylvanian Concubine, Rasputina

I Am The Fucking Law In This Town Clubbed To Death (Kurayamino Mix), Rob Dougan

Not Nice, But Good/Cleanse The Night Shape of My Heart, Sting

Saturday Prompt

Your limit: 200 words.

Your prompt: The fingers on the windowpane…

Go.