Greer Gilman's Blog, page 63

Moon and stars! Whip him, Fellowes

A late-night conversation.  (Warning:  contains adulterated Shakespeare.)

sovay :

Don't worry, nobody died; but if Mercutio hadn't, this'd've killed him.
 
nineweaving :

Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgggghhhhh!

“From the greatest playwright ever known.”

Reminds me of Murder Must Advertise:  "If you say ‘Our perry is made from fresh-plucked pears only,’ then it’s got to be made from pears only, or the statement is actionable; if you just say it is made ‘from pears,’ without the ‘only,’ the betting is that it is probably made chiefly of pears; but if you say, ‘made with pears,’ you generally mean that you use a peck of pears to a ton of turnips, and the law cannot touch you.”

I wonder how much of his Shakespeare is turnips.

sovay :

"If your heart like mine is full, then tell the joy that awaits us this night."

Don't insult turnips,
      
nineweaving :

I want to hollow him out and put a tallow candle in him.

Feh.

-----

Shakespeare has a few words for this upstart:

"Is not this a strange Fellowes, my lord, that so confidently seems to undertake this business, which he knows is not to be done; damns himself to do and dares better be damned than to do’t?"

"Whip him, Fellowes.  Till, like a boy, you see him cringe his face, And whine aloud for mercy: take him hence."

"Here’s a Fellowes frights English out of his wits."

"Has this Fellowes no feeling of his business?"

"A whoreson mad Fellowes."

"A paltry, insolent Fellowes!"

"Abominable Fellowes."

"Go to, go to, thou art a foolish Fellowes."

Nine

Ghost leaf

Third Apparition: a Child crowned, with a tree in his hand.

He wore a garland of these.

Nine

Almaine

Napping, I dreamed I dreamed the perfect twists and turnings of the story I was writing in the outward dream.  They were figured in a courtly dance:  which language I found (on waking in my upward sleep) I knew.

Nine

Exit, pursued by a bear (26 July-15 August 2013)

And there is a story.  A second Ben Jonson mystery--a thriller this time—involving Inigo Jones, Queen Mab, Kit Marlowe's ghost, and the succession.

Three weeks, 14631 words.  Dear gods.

It's pretty damn good, I think.

Nine

O my!

What a month I've been having!

Sarah Frost at And the Pilcrow ¶ writes:

What did you just finish reading?

Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter's Tales by Greer Gilman. What a beautiful book! I had my doubts at the beginning -- the first two stories are very difficult, bordering on incomprehensable, but they are there for a reason. They set the stage for the third story, which is all about myth and magic and the desire to know, and the ability of human compassion to change the fundamental nature of the world.

This is not an easy novel. Much of it is written in dialect -- in different dialects, as there are noticeable class differences in the way people speak. This book made me wish that I was reading it on my tablet, so I could look up words like "virginals" (a tabletop harpsichord) or "lief" (which in this context meant "beloved"). I had to do a lot of guessing from context and reading aloud... gressops for grasshoppers, for example, or ribands for ribbons. But I am glad that I did -- this book was worth the work. The way everything spirals to a close is gorgeous, and the end...! I won't spoil it.

"The desire to know"--yes!  Yes!

Earlier in her reading, she noted, "Except... it's a fantasy story in which the hero invents a telescope and discovers the moons of Jupiter. At this point in the story, I cringe whenever she sneaks out to go stargazing, because a young man has shown up and taken an interest in her. This is a book that remembers to show a pregnant woman's teeth falling out as her body devours itself to build her baby's bones. I don't expect it to shy away from anything."

Readers like this are why I write.

Nine

Impassioned Amateurs of Melpomene

"Though TUH is within less than a chapter of completion, Mr. Earbrass has felt it his cultural and civic duty, and a source of possible edification, to attend a performance at Lying-in-the-Way of Prawne's The Nephew's Tragedy. It is being put on, for the first time since the early seventeenth century, by the West Mortshire Impassioned Amateurs of Melpomene. Unfortunately, Mr. Earbrass is unable to take in even one of its five plots because he cannot get those few unwritten pages out of his mind."

                                                                                                                                                --Edward Gorey, The Unstrung Harp

I offer this as an apology to csecooney , whose performance this evening will be a source of undoubted wonder and delight to others.

The last few days have been somewhat astonishing.  Every new twist I've thought of, the story itself--sometimes the history itself--has already set up for me.  It's all there in the cupboard.  Spooky.

Yesterday I woke up way too early and just wrote the climax—whoosh, like that.  Right now, I'm part way through a rather tricky afterpiece.  And after that, I need a final rocket.

I'm not safe in traffic.

Nine

First review!

On the "marvellous"* Oxfraud website. And it's Excellent!

"When the role of Jonson is being cast in the film version, the studio will want Harrison Ford, the producers will think about Liam Neeson but the director, who has read the book more carefully, will want Roger Allam before being forced to settle for Michael Fassbender." I want Simon Russell Beale.

Last line: "Please, sir! Can I have some more?"

Nine

*Says Jonathan Bate.

Gallop apace

Over 10,000 words!  And I know how it ends.  I hope.

I only thought of this story three weeks ago.  rushthatspeaks and tilivenn were having tea to celebrate Cry Murder!  and the mantel for the blue-and-white, and it came to me—whoosh!—like a falling star, between bites of a strawberry (with brown sugar and crème fraîche).

May a piano not fall on me.

Nine

"For the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall..."

This is crazy.  Another 1987 words done by seven this morning; then I slept until 3 pm, and woke and wrote 921 more.  I haven't a clue where this is coming from.  Unless the garden is enchanted?  On Monday, there was a nymph turning cartwheels on the lawn; yesterday, a figure (I didn't see whether woman or man) playing softly on a mandolin); today, a small child bent on leaping into the fountain, as if it needed living statuary.

And as if my cup weren't overflowing, I just found a lovely post by Kathleen Jennings on her cover art for Cry Murder!:

"I wound up basing Proserpina on the Vincenzo de Rossi sculpture (in which Pluto appears to be engaged in some Olympian goddess-tossing competition) – I imagined that when she was cut out to make a puppet, Pluto was omitted but his arm remains around her hips."

Nine

Words, words, words

Somewhat dazed, having just written 2,267 words of second Ben in like two days—which is just about the top of my bent.*  This never happens at the start of a project:  I'm a slow crank, a millstone writer, ponderous, perfectionist.  I hope this doesn't flare up like phosphorus and crash.  I did a fair number of these words on an iPad (try it!—it’s like cooking on a fairy light), sitting by the fountain in the Radcliffe Garden, and hooting like a loon whenever something fit together unexpectedly.  (A crucial thread of this new story sprang from a terrible pun in the first scene; but I do that--"Jack Daw's Pack" arose from one throwaway sentence:  "Diggory's fiddle playing would wake the dead.")  It came on to rain this afternoon, quite suddenly, great fat drops, and I ran home through tabbied bands of sun and shower, in through my doorway, and round and round the stairs to the roof:  where a rainbow was waiting for me.

Nine

*For count-sizers:  my best month ever was 13,672, and I've only topped 10,000 five other times in the twenty years I've had a computer.  It was slower on typewriters.