Robin McKinley's Blog, page 16

The ebook announcement you’ve been waiting for, with supplementary arrrrrgh

 

Well of course I knew this was coming. I signed a contract, right?  Months ago.  But I was fallen on in body by everyone involved and FORBIDDEN to announce the news before time.*  And then at the last possible minute, of course, because that’s how these things go, MAJOR FAILURE IN COMMUNICATION OCCURRED, so not only did I not see the final of anything, the frelling press release went out two days ago and the only reason I knew about it was because I started getting deluged by emails (and one or two tweets) from people saying FINALLY!!  FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY YOUR BACKLIST IS COMING OUT ON EBOOK!!!!!!

Arrrrrrrrrrgh.

So here’s a link to the press release:

http://www.openroadmedia.com/blog/2014-10-14/newbery-medal-winner-i-the-hero-and-the-crown-i-by-robin-mckinley-available-as-an-ebook-for-the-first-time-along-with-seven-other-beloved-fantasy-titles

. . . But you might want to check it again in a few days when certain details have been AHEM tidied up a little.**

* * *

* And very frustrating it has been too with the increasing numbers of emails pleading for me to produce or permit ebook editions of my backlist. IT’S NOT UP TO ME.  IF I COULD WAVE THE ABRACADABRA WAND I’D’VE DONE IT YEARS AGO.^  The problem with a lot of us old people is that we were writing books long before ebooks existed and renegotiating terms as the ebook revolution scampers around us and our elderly text-only contracts going nanny nanny boo boo hahahahahahaha is kind of a drag.  Not to mention complicated.  And before you send me a list of 1,000,000 authors even older than I am who got their backlists out on ebooks decades ago^^ yeah, well, that’s them, okay?  See:  ‘clever’, below.  It also depends on your publisher or publishers;  some divisions of some publishers are farther into the twenty-first century than others.^^^

^ No I don’t personally love ebooks, but I certainly read them, and I totally understand the comfort of having a vast bursting library on a skinny little tablet in your knapsack.

And anything I like a lot I then have to buy in hard copy. Those cheap ebook come-ons from amazon unfortunately work a treat on me;  I generally only buy stuff in e- that I don’t know and might not otherwise get around to.  So this totally generates more income for other writers from this out-of-control reader.

^^ Before ebooks existed. But that’s not going to bother a bunch of clever SF&F writers.  Please note I specify clever.

^^^ And just by the way you emailers who think it is funny or okay or persuasive to tell me that if I don’t produce legitimate ebooks you will be forced to buy evil pirated editions . . . this is not funny or okay or persuasive.  Pirate editions are illegal, and every one you either buy or download free is another kick in the teeth to writers who are trying to earn a living.  Don’t do it.  If the ebook edition—of any author’s book—is not available, live with it. Worse things happen at sea.

You might also keep in mind that begging the author to do something about the nonexistence of ebooks only makes the author miserable because she can’t. If you want to harass the whatsit out of someone, try the original edition hard copy publisher.

** And before you ask, BLUE SWORD belongs to another publisher. Communication has failed on that front too but it will be available as an ebook.  Soon.  I’ll try to remember to post here when I know.  But, hey, you may hear about it before I do.^

^ xxxx****&^%$£”!!!!!!!!!!!

Niall, the evil ratbag

 

I haven’t seen much of Niall in quite some time because I haven’t been ringing bells. I’m aware that I miss ringing but there’s been a lot going on including all the major life change stuff and I’m so boring I keep getting tired.  We’ve stayed in touch by text* which in Niall’s case is chiefly offers of handbell opportunities which I mostly rebuff although he’s caught me once or twice by being pathetic, when they really really really need a third person or they can’t ring.  Sob.  But we also occasionally exchange fascinating information like that fresh brownies have just come out of the oven** or that there are mushrooms growing on the dashboard*** since the torrential rain that broke our early autumn drought last week with an unnecessarily extended HURRAH.  The seasonal river at the bottom of our hill is now in places pretty much up to the hellterror’s little evil eyes since of course the storm drains are blocked up again because that’s what storm drains do.  Ask any local council.

But Penelope has been ill so I’ve been going round their house to see her with Niall in attendance and it’s a lot harder to blow off someone bringing you cups of tea and fresh brownies† on a tray and staring at you with beady, meaningful eyes†† while ‘handbells’ forms in a thought bubble over his head.

Arrrrgh. So last night I had late duty††† which ran over time because that’s what it does, and when I get home I still have me and a hellmob to feed, and the hellmob needs a final relieving hurtle and I need a bath in which I will fall asleep and then not be able to sleep in my bed.‡  So I was staggering around this morning on even less sleep than usual wondering where the teakettle was‡‡ when Pooka chirruped.  I just about got her open and on and . . . Niall.  Wanting to know if I might come along before Old Eden tower practise tonight to be a steady pair of hands to ring handbells with his new beginner.‡‡‡  No.  Next question.  I scowled at the screen.  Poor earnest hopeful Niall§, wishing for a mere half an hour of my time, and even in my present condition I can (probably) ring plain hunt on handbells, in fact it’s probably one of the few things I am capable of so it would be half an hour of this bleary day that would not be wasted.  Think of the next pan of brownies§§.

Okay, I texted back. But I’m too tired for tower bells;  it’s been too long and the Old Eden bells are possessed by demons anyway.  Thank you, replied Niall politely.

You see where this is going. I successfully rang handbells with Niall’s very nice beginner.§§§  My basic handbell autopilot is still alive and well even if the rest of me is mushroom compost.  The tower bell ringers began trickling in and . . . stopped.  There were at final count six of us, including the very new beginner and one less new beginner.  And Niall and Vicky.  And Monty.  And me.  I stayed.  Obviously.  I rang. I enjoyed it.#

I MISS MY BELLS. DRAT YOU NIALL. HOW AM I GOING TO FIT TOWER BELLS BACK INTO MY LIFE?

* * *

* Old people. Texting.  You youngsters^ may need to avert your eyes.

^ I know there are youngsters who read the blog.  They email me sometimes.  Hi, I’m sixteen, and your blog makes me laugh.  —Oh good.  I think.

** Niall retired about a year ago and has learnt to bake. Clearly I should be cultivating this connection.

*** All right I don’t really have mushrooms growing on the dashboard.  But I will soon. It’s a little-known fact that commercial mushroom compost is made of compressed dog hair.

† Okay, they’re not really brownies. He thinks they’re brownies, but he’s a bloke. They haven’t got enough chocolate in them. They are totally superlative cake, dense and moist and studded with cranberries and raisins and other redeeming social values and with a faint pleasant haze of chocolate just discernible in the background.  THESE ARE NOT BROWNIES.  Brownies must be so saturated, so rampant with chocolate that they suck all the light out of their immediate surroundings except for a faint seductive gleam on their enigmatic darkest dark brown almost-black surfaces.  Redeeming social values wither and die in the vicinity of true brownies.  Penelope however, is no fool. Darling, she says, these are excellent. And has another one.

†† Almost hellterrorish, Niall, staring at you.

††† And anyone who is wondering why I haven’t mentioned the Samaritans by name on the blog in months, it’s because the admin asked me not to. Oh.  Ah.  I know they are pathological about confidentiality—which is a GOOD THING!!!!—but, um.  I may try to renegotiate the absoluteness of the ban some day in future but at the moment, while I’m still a frelling beginner, is not the time.  I will however risk mentioning that I’m out of the initial clueless wonder apprenticeship period and into the second, theoretically not quite so clueless^ apprenticeship period and yaaaaay. But the main thing is, yes, I’m certainly continuing with it.  I hope that joining is proving to be one of my better ideas—and yes, one of the new time and energy holes in this blog, as I anticipated when I stopped posting every day, is/are my Samaritan duty shifts and various relateds.  And if anyone reading this has been wondering if volunteering for the Samaritans is for them—find out where your local is and go along to an information evening.  No, it’s not easy work, but yes it is rewarding, and like pretty much every other worthwhile organization in this world, they can always use more bodies.

Shutting up now.

^ I would cross my fingers but that makes it harder to answer the phone.

‡ I swear if I could figure out a way to keep the water effectively hot I’d just sleep in the bath.^ Although as soon as this became official I’m sure the demons would say SHE’S SLEEPING IN THE BATH. RELOCATE. YOU’RE NOT AFRAID OF A LITTLE WATER ARE YOU?

^ No a waterbed is NOT the same thing.

‡‡ On the counter. Where it always is.  I have a relationship with my electric kettle and my large bag(s) of loose leaf tea and various necessary accoutrements not unlike my relationship with my glasses.  I can’t see anything till I find my glasses, including where I put them.  I can’t possibly get a couple of handfuls of those tiny black shreddy things into that ridiculously narrow-mouthed sieve and then accurately pour just-off-boiling water into it and over them . . . till I’ve had my caffeine.  I can almost see why tea bags caught on.

‡‡‡ Niall has this hilarious idea that handbells help you learn tower bells. Well, yes, they do, after several years of hard graft and when you’re getting used to the sensation of your brain melting and running out of your ears every time you ring a method.  Not so much when you’re in the early not-strangling-yourself-in-your-rope phase, when ‘plain hunt’ sounds like ‘nuclear physics’.

§ You frelling manipulative ratbag

§§ Cake

§§§ I hope she stays.

# With two beginners it’s not like we rang anything demanding. And when I folded half an hour early the others were ready to pack it in too:  ringing bells possessed by demons nonstop because there are only five or six of you is taxing even if you don’t have ME and a complicated life.

KES, 143

 

ONE FORTY THREE

I gave one thought—one very very brief thought—to Persephone and pomegranate seeds, and nearly dove into the bowl on my lap.  Except that unless your spine is made out of rubber or Jello or Silly Putty this is not actually possible.  My trembling hands discovered a perfectly recognisable spoon thrust into the—ahem—gloop in the bowl.  I think I may have made small whimpering noises like a starving puppy.  I had no idea what the gloop was—presumably boiled field rations;  as I doubted this was an era that featured tin cans, maybe some kind of jerky.  It was certainly salty enough to burn my tongue. This may have been a blessing in disguise since it meant I had no idea what the original meat was.  But it was undoubtedly meat, it was protein and it was calories, and it was hot—it was also lumpy and gristly, but never mind.  That it was hot had a further benefit beyond helping disguise its origins:  it made me feel that while I might be lost in a hostile universe at least I was lost in a hostile universe among a well-organised company.  Someone must have hit the floor running to have hot food this soon after we stopped the hacking and hewing thing.  Supposing it was soon.  Supposing that the time I’d been out was no longer than it took for someone to put a few stitches in a leg.

There were tiny white lumps in the (rapidly decreasing) brown-grey sludge in my bowl. Maggots, I thought, don’t think about it, fresh protein is good, keep chewing.  And then I realised they were tiny bits of dried apple.  A world that grew apples couldn’t be all bad.  Unless they were called mrgfllmf here and if you ate too many of them you grew extra legs and a chitinous overcoat, which might be very popular among the soldiery but I’d rather pass, thanks.  There were also long stringy things like trying to chew rope that were clearly vegetables by the bitter-green taste of them.  Oh good.  Even out here somewhere in a hostile universe my five a day were being catered for.  It all tasted, surprisingly, pretty good.  Although I was so hungry I would probably have eaten ball bearings and pencil stubs and old socks without complaint.  Or maybe it was just I was relieved about the maggots.

I could feel a kind of personal dawn breaking over body and mind as the reality of food sank in and various enzymes and whatevers got going on digestion. My hands stopped trembling.  It was possible to imagine putting up with the pain in my leg till it healed—because it was going to heal.  The platelets were spinning their sticky webs.  The white blood cells were rampaging around sucking up evil opportunists and abseiling invaders (briefly I wondered which side the Spirits of the Black Lagoon were on).  The doohickeys—fibroblasts—were bulging themselves up like itty-bitty Stay-Puft Marshmellow Men to fill the gaps in my flesh.  There might even be an interesting scar.  Although if there was one it was going to be a little hard to explain.  Oh yes, that was when I led a cavalry charge wearing only a nightgown, a sword and Merlin’s impenetrable shield, which was pretending to be a bracelet at the time . . .  I looked up.

Murac was sitting cross-legged on the ground (on the ground—ewww) addressing his own bowl with profound concentration, and Tulamaro, sitting on something that might have been a pile of tack, was also eating.  All around us was a churn and seethe of people and horses;  the small smiling person had disappeared, to bring hope and nourishment to some other wounded veteran perhaps;  or to sit down and eat something him/herself.  Where was Monster?  What did this cavalry feed its horses under battlefield conditions?  I knew taking them for a graze round the perimeter wasn’t practical.  Maybe I could learn something I could use for FLOWERHAIR THE DEMENTED.

I stared at Tulamaro who, with his guard down, looked grim and sad and determined. I wondered where the other guy—Golgotha or Gorgonzola or whoever—the other company leader Murac had mentioned was, and why I should prefer Tulamaro.  If Gorgonzola didn’t throw cold water over me I might like him better.

I was aware that someone carrying a miscellaneous armful was approaching—it wasn’t food and I was sure enough it wasn’t a transporter that could beam me home I didn’t pay a lot of attention. But the someone stopped, said, “Defender,” knelt with bowed head—stop with the kneeling, you guys, you’re freaking me out—and laid the miscellaneous armful at my feet.  My eyes focussed.  Clothing.  Some stuff that looked like maybe linen.  Something or somethings that was clearly leather—and slithering out from under the linen shirt or smock or whatever it was something that was even more clearly chain mail.

“For Defender,” said Murac, whose (presumably empty) bowl had been taken away, as had mine (definitely empty).

I lifted the chain mail—which, just by the way, weighed. “Now?” I said in disbelief.  “You let me go into battle effectively naked, and since that didn’t kill me, now you’re going to let me have some protective gear?”

Murac nodded. The lines in his face deepened, the scar in his cheek pulling down the corner of his eye in that dangerous-creepy-rogue look, but he didn’t quite smile.  “We couldna before.  But tha has shed blood on our earth and eaten our food.  Tha belongs to us now.  We claim tha, Defender.”

Life Sentence

 

 

Let me get this over with.

I won’t be at Boskone next February. I’ve written to the Boskone admin and asked Blogmom to take the sidebar down.

I’m extremely sorry. I don’t like screwing people over and . . . and I wanted to go.

I’ve also known this was coming for a while but I have been trying to pretend not to know it.  I’ve been putting off talking to my vet for . . . probably two months, because by two months ago I knew that his Miracle Cure for the hellhounds’ digestion, while it has certainly improved matters for which I am very grateful indeed, it hasn’t been quite the miracle cure we’d been hoping for.  One of the possibilities is that the other dogs he’s cured (and admittedly there are only a few of them because it’s kind of a new and experimental as well as last-ditch treatment) are all half the hellhounds’ age or less, and my hellhounds may just have permanent unfixable damage. . . .

Last Friday I finally talked to my vet.

The bottom line is, the hellhounds are a life sentence, of which I’ve already served eight years while trying not to think about it in those terms. A kennels won’t take them and I wouldn’t inflict them on a pet sitter* and my few certifiably deranged-ly doggy friends who could and would cope are all hundreds to thousands of miles away.

And this is just the way it is. Fortunately I’ve turned into something of a homebody in my old age, and while there is a needs-must aspect to it, still, I don’t exactly sit around twiddling my thumbs, do I?  And have I mentioned I’m going back to homeopathy college?  Speaking of sitting at home not twiddling.**  I discovered rather by accident recently that since I dropped out of the face-to-face, classroom, commuting kind of college***, on-line courses have come a long way.  I’ve been poking around the corners of this intriguing information the last few weeks, and about a fortnight ago, when I finally made the appointment to talk to my vet, I thought, okay, when the vet tells me what I already know he’s going to tell me, I’ll get serious about college.  Because I have so much spare time now that I’m not writing a blog post every night.

Who knows. Maybe I’ll find a cure for the hellhounds.  But it won’t be before next February.

* * *

* This aside from the fact that after my interesting acquaintance with a downward spiral of dog minders and my one DISASTROUS even by my standards experience with a national pet sitting company, I wouldn’t be likely to inflict a pet sitter on the hellmob anyway.^

^ Although I could just tell the hellterror that if he/she gets out of line, eat them.

** Except knitting needles, of course.

*** For the given reason of my ME-afflicted energy level not being up to it, but the hellhounds had something to do with it too.

 

KES, 142

ONE FORTY TWO

Ah-eee-eh, said Murac, and the insta-translate didn’t have to bother telling me that this was a kind of ‘yo, douchebag’ exclamation.  I could feel it groping anxiously for an acceptable casual usage for ‘unpleasant person whom the speaker scorns’.  It’s okay, I said to it.  I get it.

Sah, said Murac, a short, sharp syllable, and this was a spitting noise.  —And you will tell Defender (he continued) that the water initiated her into our company and the acceptance and assent of the Lady?  Then you have bound me to her more closely still, as close as the sword in a warrior’s hand.

My insta-translate had been really embarrassingly well brought up. I heard this more along the lines of ‘as close as the manky hair grows on your ass’.

I will tell her what Defender needs to know, said Tulamaro, and then I will cut your lying tongue out of your ugly head.

The insta-translate let this pass, with relief, I thought, but I also thought that Tulamaro hadn’t stopped with Murac’s tongue.

Murac laughed.

I am still commander here, said Tulamaro, and you are a common soldier promoted past your merits and your paltry skills.

Or, I rule a troop of overweight geldings of whom you are the hindmost.  And tying a red ribbon around your missing balls changes nothing.

I thought I heard the insta-translate weeping. Honey, it’s okay, I said.  You were trained for tea parties and got sent to war.  I’d’ve chosen the tea parties myself.  Cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off, I thought.  Scones.  Bread and butter and treacle.  Dormouse tea. Food.  I was so hungry I was imagining . . . But at that moment I did the stiffening like a sighthound sighting a rabbit thing because I wasn’t imagining it—I smelled food (oh, Sid, is anyone remembering to feed you? How long have I been gone?) and (nearly) everything else (except Sid) spilled out of my brain like pouring last night’s flat champagne down the drain—a disheartening and melancholy process in a life where such things occasionally happened. Oh for a life where the most disheartening and melancholy activity is pouring flat champagne down a drain.  I was dizzy and my leg hurt, and sequential reasoning has never been a strong point.  Ask my high school algebra teacher, who I believe had a midlife career change to stunt driving after my class graduated.  Furthermore it wasn’t alarming enough that I had an insta-translate with a vocabulary like a Victorian governess who had read more Sir Walter Scott than was good for her, I could hear it weeping.

A small scruffy androgynous and possibly familiar person in leather and chain mail, who might have been the same one who had led Monster through the murk toward our first meeting, appeared in front of me, holding a bowl. Food. At this urgently desired but unexpected felicity my synapses all fired simultaneously and in the ensuing dazzle I went paralytic.  I had no idea what to do nor how to do it, beginning with which hand to release to make a grab for this desideratum.  Maybe I could just tip forward and slurp it up like a dog. . . .  I stood there motionless for a second or two, my mouth having dropped open disguising my chattering teeth—and then snapping shut again to swallow all the drool—

And to my horror the small scruffy androgynous and possibly familiar person dropped to one knee, bowed its head and held the bowl up to me to the full reach of its arms.

“Oh, no,” I said, and unwisely let go both hands to snatch the bowl and yank the person back to its feet.  If I’d had two working legs and/or wasn’t half dead with cold and hunger and battle fatigue and recent surgery this might have worked.  I could remember in times past doing two different things with two hands:  I could remember not that long ago feeding bits of muffin or sandwich or whatever was on offer to both myself and my dog simultaneously. . . .

As it was, I fell over. Mostly this was just me falling over, but I also got rather tangled up in my blanket.  I had just time enough to think—don’t let me knock the bowl over, and dump the food on the ground—even I’m not that hungry—I don’t think—

When my arnehgh caught me.  Fire and water and earth, I thought.  Whatever.  Maybe the stones chose him for his great reflexes.

I hung in his arms, too demoralised even to protest. What was there to protest?  I was this feeble.

There was a growl, presumably from Tulamaro, and I thought faintly, oh, stow it, you thumping great lout—but there was a low reverberant thud just behind me and then Murac was easing me down on something like a box—a big wooden box—something I could sit on. The small person with the bowl was standing to one side, and as I sat down, came forward again, and placed the bowl gently on my lap.  He—or she—bent low enough that he (or she) could look up into my face.  And smiled.

It was a nice smile. I still couldn’t tell if it was a man’s smile or a woman’s.  “Defender,” said the small smiling person.  “We greet thee.  We are glad of thee.  Please now eat.”

Blocked at every turn

 

The charity gang that were taking away all our surplus furniture finally came today. Either they’re a very popular charity or their lorries break down a lot.*  Or both, I suppose.  But the situation was made unnecessarily exciting by my penchant for living on cul de sacs.  I’d asked the lorry guys to ring me fifteen minutes before they arrived to give me time to get down to the mews and let them in.  They rang.  Fifteen minutes, they said.  I stuffed the hellhounds in their harnesses, shoved the hellterror’s breakfast, ready made against this moment, into her crate and her after it, not that the shoving of a hellterror toward foooooood is required, and the hellhounds and I bolted up to Third House to fetch Wolfgang . . . and found the end of the cul de sac comprehensively full of large flatbed lorry delivering pallet after pallet after pallet of . . . I don’t know, buildery stuff, with reference to the fact that the row of Tiny But Desirable Cottages that abut the churchyard seem to be in a state of permanent renovation.  The one on the end had barely swept up its last skip’s worth of brick and cement dust when one of the ones in the middle ripped out all its insides and started over.  Arrrgh.

So I spun round the footpath corner toward my driveway and AAAAAAAUGH.  I rushed up to the bloke overseeing the latest pallet swaying earthwards on its giant hoist and said in a frantic voice, I HAVE TO GET MY CAR OUT!!!!  And he looked at me and said, We’ll move, ma’am—perhaps there are advantages to being a little old lady:  blokes don’t like to see us cry—and they did. Mind you, getting something that carries 1,000,000,000 pallets and a giant hoist doesn’t move very fast, and I was a few minutes late . . . but so was the charity lorry.  And we were all somewhat bemused by the labyrinth of scaffolding we had to make our way through because they’re painting the Big Pink Blot again**.

While the two guys from the charity were wrestling furniture that must come out since it certainly went in I prepared to load up Wolfgang, around the hellhounds, for a quick sprint to the dump, since empty houses extrude junk and a corner you perfectly well know was empty the last time you had a sweep (so to speak) through has six boxes and a broken lamp in it this time.  The charity guys eventually solved their problems of practical geometry and went their way two double beds and some miscellaneous doodads the better and the hellhounds and I went ours to the dump . . . where the way was BLOCKED by an even MORE gigantic lorry with an even MORE gigantic hoist, lifting in one of those massive small-country-sized skips that town dumps use.  ARRRRRRRRRGH.  I hadn’t packed Wolfgang at all carefully—for one thing I’m a little cross about the empty-house-extrusion thing—and I didn’t think it was going to matter for long that when I opened the passenger door there would be an avalanche . . . or that the hellterror’s travelling crate is full of superfluous kitchen gear for the dump shop.

So in this cranky and unalleviated state we went back to the cottage long enough to . . . NO WE DIDN’T. BECAUSE THERE WAS ANOTHER FRELLING LORRY UNLOADING MORE BUILDERY STUFF FOR ANOTHER RENOVATION PROJECT THAT IS GOING ON FOREVER ON THE COTTAGE CUL DE SAC AND SAID LORRY AND ITS LOAD WERE ENTIRELY BLOCKING THE WAY.

Some days you should just stay in bed with a few good books and some knitting.***

* * *

* This may be part of their training programme. They offer apprenticeships to street people to learn money-earning skills.  I think mechanics is one of the choices.  So maybe the trainers sneak into the lorry-fleet garage in dark of night and yank a few wires and drill a few holes and put antifreeze in the petrol tanks to make sure their course will be popular.

** Since it was a four-hour slot I would not have made her wait that long if they’d come at the end instead of the beginning.  But the domestic fauna are not having a good time right now because Pav is in bloody [sic] season so she’s locked up more than usual and the hellhounds . . . have stopped eating again.^  She’s in her second week which is usually when the hellhounds start moaning. I had PLANNED that when the moaning became tedious^^ I’d stash hellhounds in the sitting room or the attic at Third House and leave her to emit hormonal fug in her crate in the dining room,  and probably leave her there overnight since they’re all in the kitchen at the cottage.^^^ But we are also having the absolute worst season for fleas I’ve seen in a quarter century so while I’m frantically trying to get it under control there’s not as much wandering about the house(s) as normal as a kind of despairing attempt at damage control.  I won’t use the standard chemicals, they’re frelling poisonous, they make some dogs sick—ask me how I know this—and they don’t even always frelling work.  If I’m going to fail to eradicate fleas I’d rather do it without toxic side-effects.  Meanwhile the list of ‘natural’ flea extermination methods, thanks to in depth on line research, gets longer and longer and longer and longer and more and more time-consuming and expensive# . . . and we still have fleas.  So the ways in which the indoor wildlife and their hellgoddess are currently not having a good time are many-splendored.  Remind me why I have dogs?##

^ Fifty percent is a good average.  I try not to complain if they eat one and a half of their three meals.  I start losing the will to live (again) when they stop altogether.

^^ This takes about seven minutes.

^^^ If the hellhounds’ sexual appetite rates with their interest level in food this probably explains why I’m getting away with having three entire creatures of two genders in a relatively small space at all.+ But simply putting them in separate rooms stops the moaning++ and while I’m very grateful I’m also surprised since, you know, dogs have a tediously discerning sense of smell and can nail the precise location of that dead hedgehog/rat/squirrel while you’re only just registering ‘ew—dead thing somewhere in the vicinity.’  I’d’ve thought hormonal fug would be fairly penetrating, if you’ll forgive the term.

+ Although Pav is not noticeably more besotted with the hellhounds than she ever is—which is extremely, just by the way—and her interest in FOOOOOOOOD is in no doubt whatsoever.

++Mostly.

# The only thing that slows them down from chewing holes in themselves is a neem-oil based salve that costs £20 for a tiny little pot.

## And the NOISE the hellterror makes while she is Slurping Her Inflamed Parts is enough to . . . enough to . . . ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH.

** What’s it going to be this go? Maroon?  Mint green?  Why don’t they just leave it pink?  I think the co-op admin doesn’t have enough to do with its time or its AGMs.

*** KNITTING. ARRRRRRGH. No, I’ll tell you about it some other post. . . . ^

^ But Fiona and I did have a lovely yarn adventure yesterday. And I haven’t told her this yet but if you count the yarn I bought last night off the internet I did spend more money than she did.  The thing is, there’s this line . . . never mind which line . . . that I’m quite fond of for reasons of EXTREME AND LURID COLOUR, and this shop had a lot of it, so I fondled a great deal of it and bought some, but was Juiced Up with Desire for More by this tactile experience+ and, while we were sitting around knitting over supper, my mind would keep reverting to the knowledge that several of the more intense colourways were on sale on one of my deplorably regular yarn sites . . . colourways that were in fact not available in the shop we’d been to.  I hope you can follow my thought (?) processes here.  BECAUSE I had SUPPORTED MY LYS++ I therefore deserved to buy some of what they hadn’t had that was on sale. You get that, right?  Yes.

+ LIKE I NEED MORE YARN.  LIKE I FRELLING NEED MORE YARN.

++ Local Yarn Shop/Store, for those of you unafflicated by the knitting mania

KES, 141

ONE FORTY ONE

 

I blinked. And there was Murac with water dripping off the end of his nose.  I’d imagined all that, hadn’t I?  The castle and the banner and the . . . Lady?  Wearing Glosinda and greeting me by name?  My hand wanted to touch Glosinda on my arm, but both hands were occupied:  one holding my blanket closed and the other forcing my bad leg straight.

Just as I’d imagined all that about a black tower and a company of riders and a hovering kestrel.  Right?  Maybe the Spirits of the Black Lagoon had some hallucinatory qualities—aside from the non-specific impression that your brain has just exploded if you drink any.  Maybe there were magic mushrooms growing in my leg after it having been topically applied there.  And that had been the same Lady I’d seen when I’d been imagining all those other things?  Hadn’t it?  I’d been too dazzled by her dress—her gown—to remember much past the dazzle—deep jewel colors, lace, long sweeping skirts, blue?, red?, something that went well with a golden sighthound—and never mind the Lady’s clean combed shining hair and bright clear eyes not red and puffy from exhaustion and weeping.  And total lack of visible bruises.

If a psychiatrist were assessing me for entry into the locked ward of the local laughing academy would my consistency of hallucination be in my favor or against me? Although how was I defining ‘against’ here?  If they could guarantee that I’d find life genuinely humorous from inside the rubber room I’d go quietly.

I felt even smaller and shabbier and more beat up, trying to remember anything specific about the Lady. Maybe it was just sensory overload.  After you’ve been fighting off the enemy with your enchanted sword while wearing a dirty pink cotton nightgown and you are suddenly presented with a graceful vision in radiant velvet your neurons rebel.  I couldn’t remember her face—I couldn’t remember what color her eyes were—blue?  Hazel?—or all that flawless hair—blonde?  Grey? —Green?  Purple?  No, I’d probably remember green or purple.

Funny though. I could remember her pen.  The feather was reddish-brown, russet or chestnut, and barred with dark brown or black.  I couldn’t remember ever having seen a quill pen that wasn’t white or dyed, not that quill pens were a much of an item in twenty-first-century America, but I went to fantasy cons where they sometimes were.  This particular feather looked like it had come straight off the bird.  My knowledge of birds big enough to produce quills for pens was limited.  Domestic geese came in spots and stripes as well as white, didn’t they?  I couldn’t remember any tawny-red ones though.  What else was there?  Great Auburn Vulture?  I wasn’t in a good position to borrow my mother’s Raptors of the World book to check the colored plates.

“ . . . We knew,” Murac said, “New Defender coming.”

I tried to focus on what Murac was saying. They had known they had a new Defender coming.  How did they know?  And did they know in advance that their new Defender was a useless mare?  If I had to characterise those first minutes in Murac’s world I would have said they were not expecting, um, me.  They’d have decided the terrified non-babe in the big metal box with wheels was part of Borcaithna’s hand slipping and nothing to do with the Defender they had wanted a look at.  In that case how did they know I was who they were expecting?

I was not going to ask.  Asking questions was always a mistake here.   Furthermore with Tulamaro behind me rumbling like a surly volcano I wanted to keep the provocation level low.

I didn’t want to think I already knew that answer. That it might have been where I had come from.  From not being killed by the black thing.  Supposing there was a ‘where’ about the black thing.  When a scuzzy old bounty hunter rides in from the north, it’s good news.  When a handsome young lieutenant rides in from the south, it’s bad news.  Unfortunately the good news comes with the team member you don’t want.

When—when—I saw Watermelon Shoulders again he so had explaining to do. He was responsible for Silverheart and Glosinda.  Okay, they had saved my life with the black thing—but if I’d just been recently-divorced middle-aged genre-writer Kes Macfarquhar I bet the black thing wouldn’t have noticed me.  I wouldn’t have been dropped into that STAR TREK reject plot in the first place.  Never mind all the introductory flimflam at Rose Manor. . . .

Watermelon Shoulders was responsible for parting me from my dog.  He’d better be taking excellent care of her.  No, I wasn’t going to start leaking tears again, just because I was wet and hungry and cold and the only warm part of me was my throbbing leg.  And possibly my overheating brain.  I wondered if the black thing and the black tower had anything to do with each other.

Murac wiped his hand across his face and dripping hair and dropped what looked like a good handful of water onto the ground. It went splat anyway.

“Hey,” I said suddenly, before I could stop myself—my question-asking compulsion, foiled of asking anything important, was at least going to ask something stupid or break itself trying—“who—or what—threw all that water? And why?”

Astur laughed.

An attic full of books

THERE’S TOO MUCH GOING ON* including various bits of news** both good and bad that I haven’t entirely got my head around yet*** although when I do some of them will make it onto the blog.

Meanwhile I thought I might at least post some photos of an attic full of book boxes as requested by some strange person on the forum.

AAAAAAUGH

This is what greets you at the top of the stairs.   That’s the corner of my old double bed from Maine on the left, hard up against the end wall, pretending to be a Guest Room.  When I get it made up again it will be a very good place for Lying with the Hellmob.  The hellhounds and I had begun to explore this interesting possibility back when Third House was still Third House.  And a double bed is enough bigger than a sofa I may be able to trap the hellterror in place more effectively.

But this is what I mean about lack of impressiveness–although you may be dazzled by my colour sense–you’re looking at nineteen or twenty boxes wedged into that corner, but since you can only see the outside rows it’s a big meh.

YEEEEEEEEP

You’re now standing with the bed behind you and the yellow filing cabinet to your left, looking down the length of the attic.  This is the long kitchen table, worth £1.79, built out of bits Peter had found in rubbish tips, that when we moved out of the old house I REFUSED TO GIVE UP.  And I was right.  It is perfect as a long skinny attic table.  That’s the notorious dormer window that has produced those interesting ceiling angles, some of which you can see.  And those are avocadoes on the window sill, in case you’re wondering, ripening in the sunlight that blasts in during the day.  If you peer into the murk to the far end of the attic you may just about be able to make out EMPTY SHELVES.  Yes.  I keep putting stuff on them and then taking it off again because how am I supposed to choose?  Although Peter’s 1,000,000,000 bound annuals of PUNCH take up a good deal of the space you can’t see, and my encyclopaedia will go on those shelves too when I find the rest of it.

And that architectural feature in the upper right-hand corner is the boxed-in, so to speak, chimney.  Why it has a sort of hoop skirt built out from it halfway down (or up) I have no idea, but all shelves to pile books and book boxes on are good shelves.

UUUUUNNNNNNNGH

This is the left-hand far corner, so what is beyond the table on the same side of the attic.  And again . . . not so impressive.  But you’re looking at nearly thirty boxes you just can’t see most of them.  What you are seeing at the bottom of the picture in the open box is the limited edition illustrated ROSE DAUGHTER.

BLAAAAAAAAAARGGGGH

 

This is now behind the chimney.  Peter’s gazillion PUNCHES are immediately to your left;  the corner with the unimpressive thirty boxes is now behind you . . . more or less.  You’re a bit crowded back here.

I am particularly pleased with the table.  It’s one of the few pieces of furniture that came over with me from Maine, with the bed and the blue velvet sofa, and it was for the chop this move;  there was nowhere to put it.  I’m a little nostalgic about the stuff I brought over with me because barring the 1,000,000,000 books there isn’t a lot of it–and I did have to get rid of my baby grand piano.   This table has been sitting at the mews waiting for the axe to fall since like the kitchen table it isn’t worth anything BUT IT’S A PERFECTLY GOOD TABLE.  And then I thought, wait a minute, I can use it a Mediating Structure to make the wrangling of book boxes marginally less appalling.  So it’s shoved up against the back of the chimney and there are and/or will be stacks of two boxes below it and stacks of two boxes on top of it . . . instead of stacks of four boxes of books.  Hurrah.  Yessssss.

MOOOOOOOAAAAAAN

The view from above.  Just by the way, don’t get too excited by any labels you may see.  Most of them are wrong.  Well, most of the ones on Peter’s backlist are wrong.  My backlist, on the other hand, is 99% gorgeously and specifically accurate because I have a secret weapon named Fiona.

WHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE

And, when appropriate, I get books out of their boxes and pile them interestingly in available gaps, available being another of those mutable concepts.  I’ve got a lot of Peter’s piled up on the chimney shelf just out of frame in the long shot of the ex-kitchen table.  And just by another way, I have no idea where SHADOWS is.  I haven’t seen it at all.  I hope it’s hiding somewhere at the cottage.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

And because I am hopelessly neurotic, I’ve saved a few empty boxes . . . just in case I need them later.  Yes, that’s a sink on your right.  I have them piled in the loo because there isn’t anywhere else.

* * *

* Well how unusual

** No, no, not the kind you want

*** Although I HAD MY FIRST VOICE LESSON IN FOREVER on Monday YAAAAAAAY.  It wasn’t even as bad as feared^ but I still have a good deal of lost ground to make up.  AND BOTH MY PIANO AND I SOUND DIFFERENT IN THIRD HOUSE’S SITTING ROOM.

^ Although if it had been as bad as feared it would have involved alien abduction and earthquakes and a recount in Scotland that demonstrated that they’d left the UK after all, which leaves quite a lot of room for a voice lesson still to be pretty bad in.

 

 

KES, 140

 

ONE FORTY

“WHAT?” I said again. I tried to lower my voice.  “What hasn’t happened in a long time?”  I wanted to know, but I wanted to get away from the armful of naked woman remark as fast as possible too.  I was shivering harder, in spite of the blanket (or cape), shivering hard enough that my wounded leg was threatening to give way again.  You are not going to cave on me, I said to it—telepathy ought to be possible with your own body parts—and tried surreptitiously to press one hand against the thigh of that leg to stop the knee buckling.  I didn’t want Murac diving for me.  I didn’t want Murac anywhere near me ever again.

“That Defender can understand us,” said Murac, and I thought he sounded wary. I doubted that the tenets of modern feminism were well-known in Murac’s world but if there were women soldiers inclined toward the, um, filleting of insolent men there might be a practical similarity.  Gender politics.  They are everywhere there are genders.  I had spent a good deal of my professional career performing a kind of metaphorical filleting.  But that was in my own world where I occasionally had a clue what was going on.  I felt tears pricking at the corners of my eyes again.  I was so tired.  And confused.  And cold.  And my teeth were missing Murac’s shoulder.

And the pain in my leg seemed to be occupying most of my brain. There must be something I could usefully be thinking about.  If I had a brain available.

Murac wasn’t exactly standing with his hands over his groin but it seemed to me he was standing the way an old soldier might who was expecting to have to protect himself from sudden assault. I wondered how much force someone was allowed to use against his Defender.  Even if she was threatening to fillet him.

“I’ve been understanding you right along,” I said. Barring the occasional azogging and giztimi.

Murac shook his head. “Na so much,” he said.  “When the stones choose you, eh . . .”

You saw the stones roll. . . .   You saw Lorag put them through fire and water and earth.  “Lorag,” I said.  “Who is Lorag?”

Now Murac definitely looked wary. There was a rumble behind me that was probably Tulamaro.  It was a negative sort of rumble.

But Murac straightened out of his slight warding crouch and his face dropped wary and became determined. “Should na have mentioned her,” he said.  “She . . .” he hesitated.

Louder negative rumble from Tulamaro.

But Murac shook his head. “Na.  Here is Defender.   And the stones chose me.” He grinned unexpectedly.  The grin was still creepy but there was an edge to it I hadn’t noticed before.   “Giztimi, eh? Arnehgh.” Arnehgh ended with a glottal stop like a body blow.  And my new insta-translate function told me that giztimi was more runs with scissors than strictly moron—which had been my first guess an eon or two ago—and arnehgh was more loose cannon with the fuse burning than weasel which would probably have been my first guess if Murac was about to say something that would piss off Tulamaro.

There was a low nasty laugh from somewhere behind me. Astur, I guessed.  The naked-woman remark had sounded like his voice.  He was the weasel. I was pretty sure he’d be out to do Silverheart’s bearer what mischief he could but I wasn’t going to turn around and check his position.  Tulamaro didn’t like me but I was pretty sure he thought I was this Defender, and would probably stop the likes of Astur from accidentally killing me—‘so sorry, my hand slipped’.

We’re all going to die . . . drifted unpleasantly across my memory.  I banished it.  I went on staring at Murac, willing him to say what he was poised on the brink of saying.  I stood up as straight as my leg would let me, and tried to look as fierce and Defendery as possible.  A blanket was less embarrassing than a rosebud-embellished nightgown but I doubted it was any more authoritative.

“Lorag is our zhulmgwlda,” said Murac, and my insta-translate heaved and fumbled, like someone who has just caught a hot potato and it’s a lot hotter than they were expecting.  Random syllables bounced around inside my head, caroming off the skull and going squish splat thud through my ex-brain. Ra lah dlah cors fa mor un ta fat grue blee storn. . . .

I saw a castle on a hill and a banner divided into quarters by two swords, containing a hawk, a sighthound, a horse and a rose. I saw a woman in a high tower with a silky golden sighthound at her feet.

Lady, said the insta-translate. Try harder, I answered.

The woman had been writing. But she now laid her pen down with a sigh, and for a moment she slumped forward, elbows on the table, like any tired, written-out person.  I’d done that slump many times, with my elbows either side of my keyboard.  Then she straightened and turned toward . . . well, turned toward where my point of view was coming from.  As if she saw me.

“Kestrel Macfarquhar,” she said. As she turned, the sleeve on her left arm rucked up, and on her wrist she wore Glosinda’s twin.

Shaman, said the insta-translate.

Backlist, addendum

 

PamAdams

‘Pavlova, drag these boxes of books up the stairs for Mommy, please.’

::falls down laughing:: Now why didn’t I think of that?  She’s got both the legs sprung of extra-supreme-alloy and the jaws of death.*  We could have done it together. It could have been a bonding experience.**

However. It wasn’t.  And at least this means there are no teeth marks on the books. And yes, I finished carrying the last monster boxes upstairs yesterday although I admit I unpacked the three heaviest*** and took them up in armfuls.

ME is a weird disease. I have no idea why I was allowed to heave a hundred book boxes† around without serious repercussions.  Because—so far anyway—there have been no repercussions.††  I am inevitably reasonably fit because of all the frelling hurtling I do although on bad days it tends to be more like dawdling but the ME means that I have to assume I have No Stamina Whatsoever because I frequently don’t, often with diabolical suddenness, especially when we’re a couple of miles from where we left Wolfgang.  You live like this for fourteen years and you start thinking of yourself as rather flimsy. I feel a bit like I’ve had an unexpected body transplant†††.  No doubt the old familiar rickety one will be returned soon.  And then I’ll fall over.

This isn’t the first time the ME has let me cope with something that I REALLY NEED TO COPE WITH‡—moving day itself, for example, when I was a lot thinner on the ground generally than I appear to be at the moment—but it seems to me unlikely that I’m really going to get away with this.  Presumably one day soon, when I’m planting autumn pansies, say, or putting endless dog bedding into the washing machine or taking endless dog bedding out of the washing machine . . . I will suddenly need to sit down for thirty-six hours.  Never mind.  The backlist is in the attic. ‡‡

* * *

* Someone in the forum said, after I posted the photos of Pav on her birthday, that she found the Jaws of Death photo a little anxious-making. I HAD TO WORK REALLY HARD TO GET A JAWS OF DEATH PHOTO AT ALL.  Pav is not naturally a Jaws of Death kind of dog.  She just happens to be a bull terrier and the mythology around them is very jaws-of-death-y.  If you push the lips of any dog back you get pretty much the same view:  short front teeth framed with fangs.  Pav is mouthy—if you play with her you’ll probably find yourself with your hand in her mouth at some point^—but she hasn’t bitten me since she was an infant and hadn’t quite got it that you can’t chew on humans the way you can your littermates.  She was actually easier to get this point across to than the hellhounds had been because she’d been socialised very very very well before she came to me.  She may yet grow out of being mouthy.  Chaos, the eternal puppy, was mouthy for years.

^ I think I’ve also told you she’s a licker and a nibbler. The licking is fine, she’s not at all drooly+, but the nibbling is a little exciting since she favours places where the skin is thin, like necks and the insides of elbows.

+ Except in her water bowl. Ew.  Which I have to change about four times a day.  She has the most extraordinary drinking style.  She’ll stand there going SLURP SLURP SLURP SLURP for, like, minutes, and when she comes away the water level hasn’t gone down at all, there’s just this—ew—churned up FOAM on the top.  Good thing she gets a lot of wet food or she might die of not actually swallowing any of the water that passes through her mouth.

** The hellhounds would have opened one eye, gone, Eh?, and closed the eye again.^ The hellhounds had originally been Rather Interested in the new Alp in the garden . . . PEE ON THAT, GUYS, AND YOU WILL NOT LIVE TO PEE AGAIN.  One of the things about having a proper garden is having your hellmob in it but things can get a little out of control when you’re also in the centre of town.  When we got back from the second and FINAL book box run on Monday I let Pav out of Wolfgang because that’s what you do, you turn off the engine and let the critter(s) out but because of the size of Atlas’ trailer the gate was still open.  Which Pav shot through and disappeared . . . while I was letting the hellhounds out of the house and discouraging their interest in the Alp.  I heard Atlas calling her, thought OH GHASTLY AWFUL END OF THE UNIVERSE TYPE THINGS, ran out into the street and called her . . . and she came.  Noble Pav.

*** One of encyclopaedias, and no I haven’t found the missing box yet^, one of MERLIN DREAMS and one of the illustrated ROSE DAUGHTER. Any one of these three weighed nearly as much as rather-large-box-shaped Wolfgang.

^ It would be encyclopaedias, you know?  If it were one of my gazillion boxes of out of print editions of books I’ve forgotten writing I would never have noticed.  In fact, I may be missing a few boxes of my gazillions of out of print editions of books I’ve forgotten writing and haven’t noticed.

† And I did break a hundred. I’d forgotten about the half dozen I left in Peter’s office, two of which because they were labelled ‘files’ and ‘mss’, and the others because he still has some empty bookshelves in there.  But I didn’t carry these upstairs.

Also if you count the twenty or so boxes of his backlist from Peter’s office and bedroom at the mews that Nina and Ignatius packed and brought over THAT’S EVEN MORE BOXES OF BACKLIST TOWARD A TERRIFYING TOTAL.^

^ I notice that Peter has more copies of his recent books. This may just be the exigencies of publishing but I suspect there may be some malign influence from his second wife.  THEY’RE OFFERING YOU MORE COPIES? TAKE THEM. SOMETHING IS GOING OUT OF PRINT AND THEY’LL LET YOU HAVE 1,000,000,000 COPIES FOR 7P PER? TAKE THEM. Let it be recorded that I have suffered for my sins.

†† Although the arnica will have helped. Arnica the Wonder Drug.

††† I wish they’d given me more hair and fewer wrinkles. Ah well, if they had, it would be harder giving this body back.

‡ I wonder a bit about late-onset ME. I don’t know that many other people who have had it long-term^ but my vague unreliable impression is that the younger you are the bigger and more unpredictable a rat bastard it is.  My first eighteen months of it were entirely horrible but it mostly only knocks me over badly any more when I haven’t been behaving like a person who knows very well she has ME and had better stop with the shot-putting and the mixed martial arts.  And it will usually let me pull myself together if it’s urgent, although it may make me pay and pay and pay and pay and pay for it afterward.

^ I’m also not convinced that people who get over it really had ME, although since I also believe it’s a continuum or a syndrome and not a single disease, they may just be at the far end of the range. That or it’ll be back when they least expect it.  LIE DOWN NOW. BECAUSE I SAID SO.

‡‡ poodleydoo

Pictures? I would love to see pictures of the books. Even books in boxes. I’m just so curious to see what 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 books looks like. You know, in a house, or rather, an attic.

Hmm. I was looking the attic with this request in mind today.  I’m not sure it’s really all that obviously impressive.  I’ve done my BEST to wedge things around the edges—and there’s a chimney in the way—and it’s a long thin attic with peculiar corners, see previous blog on the subject of the ceiling.^  I’ll have a go at photographing the chief ramparts and see if I can make them look amusing.

^ I only hit my head ONCE. Of course now that the dramatic bit is over with I’ll forget to be careful again. Ow.