Lilith Saintcrow's Blog, page 158

Editing and WAYFARER

So. There’s news.

I’m now offering ebooks through my site, and have integrated my editing waitlist and packages as well. The transition has been pretty painless, thanks in no small part to Skyla Dawn Cameron, who is quickly becoming my go-to minion for everything from tarp-and-shovel to website maintenance. She has big dreams for a fan forum here at Ragged Feathers, so look out for that! If you have an ebook that needs formatting, a decent cover for your book, or help navigating self-pubbing with Lightning Source, etc., she’s patient, thorough, reasonably priced, and very communicative with her clients. I can’t recommend her enough.

Behold!

Also, Wayfarer is coming out in March!

The Charmer’s Ball. Midnight. And one glass slipper…

Newly orphaned, increasingly isolated from her friends, and terrified of her violent stepmother, Ellen Sinder still believes she’ll be okay. She has a plan for surviving and getting through high school, which includes keeping her head down and saving any credits she can earn or steal. But when a train arrives from over the Waste beyond New Haven, carrying a golden boy and a new stepsister, all of Ellie’s plans begin to unravel, one by one.

Just when all hope is lost, Ellie meets an odd old woman with a warm hearth and a heavenly garden. Auntie’s kindness is intoxicating, and Ellie finally has a home again. Yet when the clock strikes twelve on the night of the annual Charmer’s Ball, Ellie realizes that no charm is strong enough to make her past disappear…

In a city where Twisted minotaurs and shifty fey live alongside diplomats and charmers, a teenage girl can disappear through the cracks into safety–or into something much more dangerous. So what happens when the only safety you can find wants to consume you as well?

Now available for preorder at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and independent bookstores.

I don’t often say this, but…there’s a lot riding on this book, including whether or not I’ll continue writing YA. So, if you’ve been meaning to try out some of my YA, now would be a most excellent time to do so. Preorders count in publishing, folks. It’s almost ridiculous how much they count.

There are a couple other things boiling, including a Selene ebook, but these are the only ones I can talk about. Speaking of Selene, it will be taken down around the 15th of February, so if you haven’t finished the serial and would like to, click on over and get it while you can! The ebook will contain not only the Brother’s Keeper prequel, but also Just Ask, the short story about how and why Selene returns to Saint City…and Nikolai.

First, though, there’s a bit of work to be done, so I’m submerging again. See you around…

Lucia, Uneven but Worth It

My Evenings At The Opera continue apace. Actually, they’re more like afternoons at the opera, but to me opera is always an evening. With my trusty Moleskine open and shiny bobby pins in my braids (as close to dressing up as I ever get, nowadays) I ventured forth, and saw the Portland Opera’s Sunday matinee of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor.

Donizetti was acclaimed as a lion of Italian opera, though he got flack for being entertaining and musical rather than Wagner-ponderous. Lucia is sung in Italian about Scottish feuding families as written by Sir Walter Scott. (And that’s just the first bit of OMGWTF in the story, which could have been daytime drama if television was around in 1835.) Of course, Donizetti had to condense several characters and omit others to fit the whole damn thing on the stage, and the “real” story with its bloodshed, accidental deaths and hints of malign spirits is a historical moment of “Jesus Christ, people, why can’t anyone just get along?”

The lights went down and the timpani started, and we were off.

For my second opera, it wasn’t bad. Act I was a little uneven. The set designer had chosen to nod to the Scottish crags with huge pieces of moveable backdrop scored with vertical lines. In order to be light enough, it was probably cloth, and it felt like the folds and valleys were swallowing most of the voices. When the sets changed and there were flats behind the singers, the sound quality measurably improved. The stage direction made it very physical, with the Scots shoving each other about the stage and waving their swords at the slightest provocation. The costuming was…rather odd, really, and I was a bit taken aback by everything except Lucia’s simple but stunning wardrobe. Hitting Lucia out of the park was frankly the only thing the costumes had going for them. (And, to be fair, the one pair of leather pants.) The scarlet-dressed female members of the chorus were a nice (if odd) touch, and the movement of the chorus was fluid–the chorus had to hit a number of marks, and did so with well-timed precision that managed to overcome some of the stranger choices made.

Carl Halvorson‘s Normanno was lynxlike and very gorgeously present; the eye follows him wherever he goes, even when we’re supposed to focus on more principal characters. Weston Hurt‘s Enrico was played with cool, calculating cruelty. Enrico’s a weird character, his obsession with revenge and avoiding his own ruin can be paired with a sort of incestuous vibe for Lucia, but Hurt chose instead to show a brother who really never liked his sister much anyway. Hurt was in fine voice, too, carrying his part with aplomb and fierceness. His bulk was magisterial and believable in more ways than one.

Peter Volpe‘s Father Raimondo, after being shoved around the stage by the Furious Scotsmen With Swords, came into his own in Act II. One of the interesting pieces of the opera is the culpability of the priest/pastor, who encourages Lucia to sign the marriage contract and then sees the whole spectacle of madness and blood unfold. His grief was palpable in the final scene, and he played off Ramsay’s Edgardo very well. You could feel Father Raimondo trying to halt the juggernaut and seeing it roll on its intended course without swerving.

Speaking of the marriage contract, Ian Jose Ramirez as Arturo did very well, though his costume was a little…unfortunate. Normally I’m all for men in leather pants, and he looked quite fetching in them, but the costumer needed to either go big or go home on this one and sadly decided to go only halfway to Loch Lomond, so to speak, with everything but Lucia’s dresses and the leather pants. One gets the feeling the costumer was rooting for Arturo and Lucia all along, and thought Edgardo was comic relief.

Still, Arturo was well played. I’d've frankly liked to see more of Ramirez, but his part was small. He’s a resident artist with the Portland Opera, and like Melissa Fajardo, the type of presence that keeps an entire scene from going off the rails. Both of them deserve bigger roles.

And what of the star-crossed lovers, Edgardo and Lucia? Scott Ramsay as Edgardo has a full, rich, round, passionate voice, but he was also costumed…unfortunately, in a pale wallowing ill-cut coat that made him a little farcical during his most tragic moments. If you closed your eyes during his duets with Elizabeth Futral‘s Lucia you could very well believe him her passionate consort. His death scene, I am sad to say, needs a blood pack, and that coat tries to rob it of all its terrifying auditory grandeur.

Lucia herself was radiant. I’d listened to an EMI recording of Callas in Milan for a week or so to prepare, so I was foggily aware of the demands the role places on a soprano, even a coloratura. It was Futral’s lyricism and powerhouse of a voice that glossed over the unevenness in Act I, and once she took the stage for the mad scene in Act II the audience was firmly on her side. The mad scene (always an acid test, I joked beforehand that I would be expecting the Diva Dance to bust out during) was utterly fabulous. There was one bad note, but you could believe it was insanity that cracked that gorgeous voice deliberately, a testament to Futral’s incandescent, riveting presence and skill. Wide-eyed, blood-spattered, fey and childlike one moment and a furious angel the next, Futral deserves every accolade and brava that was flung at the stage. You could have heard a pin drop right after she fell and died, the audience was stunned. The mad scene is a monster of technical proficiency and demands the utmost from a soprano, and Futral delivered in spades. Even when the backdrop tried to swallow half her notes she projected right over the top of it with marvellous ease. Her duet with–I think it was a flute, or two flutes–sounded like a bird and a princess in a Disney movie singing back and forth, playing with liquid music. (Someone give those flautists a box of choco and some roses, too, that was excellent.)

All in all, it wasn’t bad for my second in-person opera. It wasn’t quite as transcendent as Salome, but that was through no fault of the singers. All in all, it was an enjoyable three hours, and I feel lucky to have heard Futral sing. The rest of the cast deserves a medal for attempting to be heard over the backdrop, and I could have wished for a little less flinging around of dress swords and a little more kilt action (sadly, the only kilt I saw was in the audience) but all in all, a very solid offering from Portland Opera. Their next season looks great, too, if I can scrape together enough for tickets.

photo by:


PhillipC

Arch

Taken at the Maryhill Stonehenge. The winery near there is very nice, and the museum worth a trip if only for the Rodins. And the peacocks.

Home, Ruled

I survived Home Depot this morning. As usual, I got asked if I needed help.

As usual, I lied and said I didn’t. Because I didn’t want to intrude on anyone’s day, and also because I was determined to do it myself, and and and.

So I got home and discovered the two blank plate covers don’t fit. It’s not worth the gas to return them, but I wish I was better at figuring out what I needed. I measured the boxes before I left–2.25in by 3.5in, all right, that should be easy to find–only to find out when I got there that…well, no, they weren’t easy to find, and I ended up bringing home 2.25inX4in. *weeps a little* For all I know the ones I need aren’t a standard size anymore, which I don’t rule out because of the sheer amount of DIY WTFery present in This Auld House.

On the bright side, I got a refrigerator filter that fits just fine, plus some drywall patches. I now have to decide whether I will go on a Quest to get blank covers for the two boxes I need to close up.

What? Oh, no, I’m not doing my own electrical work. (That’s a dumb way to die.) I took out two hardwired smoke detectors, replacing them with Nests. (Now Google will be able to peer inside my house even MOAR.) Instead of dealing with the wires inside, I thought, well, close up the boxes with blank covers, then patch and Spackle and repaint when you get around to it, Lili.

I should have known it would never be this easy. At least there are no damn squirrels wreaking havoc in there.

But…

Coming home, I turned onto a side street and hit the brakes. There was a squirrel prancing in the middle of the roadway, and I would have hit it if not for the blessings of quick reflexes and new brake pads. It pirouetted, then dashed for the other side of the street. Hyperventilating and clutching the steering wheel, I shook all the way home. It reminded me of the car accident in December ’06, I think it was, trying to avoid a deer, and the hefty, graying State Patrol officer whose calm assurance made me stop struggling with the EMTs who wanted me to keep lying down on the backboard.

“Honey,” he said, patting my hand kindly, “next time, hit the damn deer.”

He’d probably shake his head if he knew that my instincts just don’t run that way. *sigh*

Anyway, it’s time to go change a couple doorknobs while I think about Emma Bannon’s introduction to yet another ruling spirit. See you ’round.

photo by:


mamnaimie

The Escape of Chickenhead Crankyduck

NOT CrankyDuck.

So. The cat had a chicken on its head, and ended up in the bathtub. By this point the chicken was more of an Elizabethan ruff instead of a helmet, which meant that as well as smearing chicken grease everywhere, the damn cat was shedding bits of meat and bone.

And the front door opened.

Say what you will about my ex-husband (I frequently have), but the man possessed a great deal of calm aplomb. The cat was quacking excitedly, and I was swearing in a breathless song of irritation and exertion. The Princess, somewhat delighted by the hue and cry, met him at the door. “The cat is being bad,” she informed him, and pointed into the kitchen.

Now, CrankyDuck!Cat had heard the arrival of the other Huge Human in the Household, and since the bathtub left a little to be desired as an escape route, he made an amazing, desperate leap. Chicken scattered, my cursing rose in volume and also in creativity, and he squeezed past me as I made a fruitless grab, somehow banging my head on the loo door. (Don’t ask.) He zoomed down the hall, scrambled past the Princess, darted between my ex’s shins (hammering him on one with the remains of the chicken ruff) and escaped into the hall beyond.

I arrived a few seconds afterward, fire in my eyes, my hair wild, my shirt torn (I do not even know when that happened) and a cascade of obscenities falling from my lips.

My ex prudently flattened himself against the wall, I darted past him and out into the hall, and chased the damn cat all the way down to the fire door. Whereupon I cornered and dove for him, and he probably would have escaped had not the chicken tripped him again.

The poor chicken, merely a ragged shadow of its former glory, shed even more bits of itself as I carried the clawing, biting cat back to our apartment. I stalked in through the door, holding him by ruff, chicken ruff, and hind end, my arms stiff to keep him from taking chunks of skin out of my tender person.

My ex swept the door closed, I tore the chicken free of the cat and dropped him. He bolted again, into the Princess’s room, where he squeezed under her bed and spent the next three hours growling balefully and cleaning the results of the whole episode from his fur. I am not sure whether he considered the entire event a victory or a crushing defeat.

So it was that I stood there, still swearing, clutching the remains of the chicken and hyperventilating. Finally, when my heartrate calmed down, I found both the Princess and my ex staring at me.

I stared back, beyond words.

Finally, my ex cleared his throat a little. “I’d, uh, ask how your day was, but…”

That did it. I sank down onto the floor, still holding one much-abused chicken, and started to laugh helplessly. The Princess began to laugh too, more out of sympathy than anything else, I guess, and she came up and patted at my wild hair, her version of putting me to rights. My ex glanced in the kitchen, took in the explosion of chicken everywhere, shook his head slightly, and sat down on the floor too amid the wreckage, so as not to be left out.

When the laughter ended, I held up the poor chicken. “This, um, was dinner. But he got stuck in it.”

My ex nodded. “I’ll call for pizza,” he said, looking a bit perplexed. “Lili?”

“Hm?”

“Do you know you’re bleeding?”

Not only had CrankyDuck punctured me a couple times, but I also had a scalp wound from diving under the table or running into the bathroom door. I nodded, a bit breathless, and fixed him with a mock glare. “Your cat,” I said. “Your damn cat. I am not picking up chicken in the hall, goddammit.”

He began to laugh, which set me off again, and the adventures of Chickenhead ended with all three of us helplessly giggling on the floor. Ever afterward, our code for “I am just not even dealing with that” became “I am not picking up chicken in the hall, goddammit.”

To this day I’ll mutter it to myself, though the ex is nowhere around to hear me. I guess divorce closes off a whole country of shared catchphrases. And writing this now, I realize something else.

I was in sock feet the whole time. This, my friends, is probably where “shoeless and screaming” started. With a chicken-headed cat.

Go figure.

photo by:


barbourians

Cartman Conjunction

Last night’s homework for the Little Prince was correlative conjunctions. This morning, I found the ones I’d written down for him…and his artwork, probably expressing how he feels about grammar.

Heh.

Old Gags

This morning:

ME: That’s an old gag. Like, Buster Keaton old. Like vaudeville old.

HER: Isn’t Buster Keaton dead?

ME: BUSTER KEATON LIVES. Incidentally, so does vaudeville.

HER: You need more coffee.

Serial Finish, And More

The Selene serial is now finished! The last chapter and epilogue went up yesterday. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. It will remain up for a couple weeks, and once I have a firm date for the book release I’ll also announce it. I originally planned to take the serial down once the paper book was queued and ready to go, and I may still do that. Not sure yet.

I start out each week intending to blog more, but then life rears up and bites in assorted places. Part of it is no longer having a quiet space or time in the morning–since the Little Prince’s school burned down, getting him to the places he needs to be requires daily attention. In other words, he used to take the bus, but now he doesn’t for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the fact that we got him a boundary exception when we moved so he could stay with the teachers and kids he loves so much. Next year things will be back to normal (or whatever passes for it) where school transportation is concerned, and we’re lucky that we have the resources to get him there and home by private means every day.

Anyway, between that, putting out SquirrelTerror and Selene, piano practice, and research, my schedule’s taken a bit of a hit. I’m hard at work on the fourth Bannon & Clare, my fairytale retelling Wayfarer comes out in the upcoming months, and I’m looking at the shape of my career changing rather quickly this year, so…yeah. Publishing requires one to be a shark–keep swimming to avoid suffocation, and always smile.

With that charming thought, I shall vanish in a cloud of bubbles…

Research, Reviews

The sun’s coming up pink as I start this. It’s cold, so after sniffing his bowl and finding nothing but boring plain kibble in it, Odd Trundles proceeded to trundle into my bedroom and hop up on the bed, where he usually sleeps while I take my morning run with Miss B. I imagine him saying “FUCK THIS, I’M GOING BACK TO SLEEP.” Which, you know, really, I can’t blame him.

We haven’t had rain in a bit, and my hair is full of static. It probably matches the rest of me. Applications of cocoanut oil are in order, as usual. The no-shampoo thing hasn’t stopped that, at least. The transition part of waxy, oily hair seems to have halted too. It’s interesting to note how hair texture changes at different parts of the process.

The current project is the next Bannon & Clare book, since the Ripper Affair proofs have been turned in. To that end I’m trying Daryl Gregory’s Spreadsheet of Shame, since my output has fallen off a bit recently. (Of course, the fic I was writing to order for Mel Sterling might have had something to do with that.)

Anyway, we’ll see if I can be shamed by a spreadsheet.

I thought I’d list the books I’ve finished in 2014 so far, as well as my current reading. This might force me to get more non-research reading done–another thing that’s fallen off recently.

* Satantango, Laszlo Krasnahorkai. Part of last year’s “works in translation” reading binge. A weird, circular, incredibly tactile work. I could almost feel the world falling apart all around me as I read. Structurally it’s pretty robust, craftwise there’s a lot of headhopping but Krasznahorkai is a master, so I was never at a loss to determine who was speaking. My favourite character is probably Futaki, just because he’s so contrary and helpless at the same time. Anyway, if you want a mindbender and a good challenging read, highly recommended.

* Between Two Fires, Christopher Buehlman. I read Buehlman’s Those Across the River recently too, and while it was an okay first effort I had some qualms. There’s a great deal to like about his second book, set during the Great Plague–some of the scene-setting is genuinely chilling, and Buehlman has an eye for detail and a willingness to sometimes hurt his characters. Unfortunately, Thomas the male hero is a bit of a Gary Stu, and the girl Delphine is a prime example of a female character whose body is used to transact between the various males that the story is really about, including God. (See Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, whose Between Men was a revelation in literary criticism for me.) The book missed greatness by a narrow margin, but it held me all the way through, had no major structural problems, and had genuinely horrific as well as funny and tender moments. In all, a keeper.

* The History of the Taiping Revolution, Augustus Lindley. Research reading for the next Bannon & Clare book. Lindley was involved with some of the leaders of the Taiping Rebellion, and I figured I’d start with the small bit of contemporary coverage I could find on that historical era. It’s interesting to see his Eurocentrism and Victorian British colonialism intersecting with his sympathy for the rebels, especially since he was diametrically and vociferously opposed to the British lending aid to the Qing dynasty to keep it in power against the rebellion.

* Ada, or Ardor, Vladimir Nabokov. I usually do a reread of this or Invitation to a Beheading almost-yearly. Invitation remains my favourite Nabokov book, but Ada is a glut of sheer pleasure, and every time I read it I find something new. I have some lit crit of Nabokov lying around I should plow through soon, too.

* God’s Chinese Son, Jonathan Spence. Again, research reading. This focuses on Hong Xiuquan, the leader of the Taiping Rebellion, who had what can be described as a classic shamanistic vision–including a protracted illness, a seeming death, and a particular bit of the vision where he was split open and organs were taken out, then new, “stainless” organs were put in and he was closed up by the spirits attending him. (Which is incredibly common in the visions that precipitate a shaman, I’ve seen similar accounts all over.) Hong came “back to life” and realized later that a collection of Baptist missionary tracts translated into Chinese and given to him on the street (he averred that he only glanced through them at the time and set them on his bookshelf) gave him a framework for the rest of his vision. He called Jesus his “Elder Brother”, a term of high reverence in his culture that was sadly misinterpreted by Westerners afterward, and began preaching at and baptizing his fellows. I’m only midway through this one, and I have to say that Spence’s decision to use present tense, while no doubt intended to add immediacy, is distracting and hamfisted. Plus, I get the idea Spence is trying to “sex up” the story in various ways, to make Hong fit into a Western “cult leader” narrative. I’m not finished, like I said, so I’m not sure where this will end up, and reading Lindley’s paean to the Taipings has probably colored my viewpoint.

* Grimoires, Owen Davies. Again, research, but of the occult variety. I love the idea of magic books and this particular history got a good Spiral Nature review, so I figured I’d give it a shot. This is my bedtime read, and as such, slow going.

I’ve been meaning to do this sort of post ever since the New Year, so here it is. I should have a report when I finish the Spence, and also the Davies. I have more research books on the Taiping and Boxer rebellions en route, which should be fun.

And now, the sun is well up–it’s taken me a while to finish this, what with the usual morning crazy around here. It’s time for a run now that the ice has probably melted off, and

photo by:


State Library of Victoria Collections

Po’ Poe

I STINK OF ROSES.

This was a lovely Yule gift from my youngest sister–an Edgar Allan Poe air freshener, which I decided must immediately be placed upon the tree. From then until we took down the Yule decorations, disturbing wafts of rose scent drifted through the living room.