Robin McKinley's Blog, page 36

KES, 109

 

ONE HUNDRED NINE

“Oh, Lady, well done,” said Watermelon Shoulders.  And added:  “If thou wouldst take stand with us, we wouldst make great service of thy valiancy.”

He seemed to be looking at the saluting shadow.   Huh?

But I wasn’t going to ask.  I wasn’t going to ask.  I was about to swear a blood oath—there being so much blood available—that I would never, ever ask a leading question of anyone ever again.  Ever.  I’d had practise.  When Gelasio told me he wanted a divorce I did not ask why.  He told me he’d met somebody else.  But I think usually some kind of ‘why’ creeps into the discussion at some point.  I didn’t need to know any more.  That he’d asked was enough.  I didn’t need to know if she had blue eyes (mine were hazelly green) or creative ways with whipped cream and/or handcuffs or that he was merely tired of paying all the big bills.

I hadn’t wanted to know.  And now I didn’t want to know why I was holding a sword—a real sword.  A real! sword!—that had been leaning against the wall next to the front door—next to my front door.  I didn’t want to know why there was a dead guy lying in a lake of his own blood a few feet from that door.  I didn’t want to know why a lot of the air in my house—my house—had gone all snaky and opaque.

Not asking leading questions didn’t seem to be working.  Was there some other more effective oath I could swear (pity to waste all the blood.  Possibly also a well-sworn oath would suck a lot of it up and get it away from my books)?

I didn’t want to know why there was a big black forsoothly guy standing next to me carrying the (much bigger) sword he’d just used to off the guy in the front room.

I didn’t want to know why there was a tall thin shadow that looked like bolted-together small-gauge piping vellicating in a corner of the window seat in the—in my—parlour.  Very tall and very thin:  taller than a human and not much bigger around than a broom handle.  Next to six rose-bushes in pots, five of which were . . . whatever it was they were.

I wanted to run away.  Although that hadn’t turned out so well for me so far either.  No, wait, I hadn’t run away from Manhattan.  I’d taken a mature, rational decision to leave because I couldn’t afford to live there under circumstances that did not involve a close personal relationship with cockroaches and other undesirables in an apartment whose square footage was slightly smaller than a double bed and a bookcase.  The sticking a pin in a map plan for relocation however had perhaps not been so mature and rational.   Although I could have opened my old paper atlas to the Florida page.  Alligators would have been better than this.

I didn’t want to know why the sword-hilt I was holding was beginning to feel as if it fit my hand rather well.  The handle was faintly rough, as if to give better purchase.  It might have been leather, like a good pair of gloves.  I didn’t want to know that some time between seeing Watermelon Shoulders’ sword appear in the middle of the dead guy’s chest and now, my own hand had gone from paralysed to gripping.  Grip it! Watermelon Shoulders had said.  Fine.  Great.  Then what?  The only reason the dead guy hadn’t killed me first was because of Watermelon Shoulders—and my dog—and the rose bracelet.  I’d probably only managed to lift my sword against the not-yet-dead guy the first time because of the adrenaline rush, and I’d probably only managed to parry his first blow because he was not expecting someone in a pink nightgown to raise any sword any how.

I shook back the nightgown sleeve and looked down at my left forearm.  The looping twists of darkness didn’t obscure the bracelet and it, like the sword had done, seemed to glow with its own faint light.  Usually when you shove a big fat wide bracelet up your arm and it sticks, it sticks because it’s digging into your flesh or adhering to your smothered skin’s sweat.  Which is why I didn’t wear big fat wide bracelets.  This one just seemed to . . . hold on.  Like a hand resting on my arm, fingers gently curled to keep its place.  When I flicked the pebble with a finger and the muscles in my forearm moved, the bracelet glittered.

Sid had her chin on the table.  Mustn’t let your dog put her chin on the kitchen table.  There was something funny about her collar, the way it had rucked up the hair on the back of her neck.  I flicked the pebble again and watched my bracelet glitter.  My bracelet.  Sid pricked her ears.  I reached out to smooth her fur down, and push the collar back where it belonged.

It wasn’t the red nylon collar.  It was the fancy leather one out of the Book of Kells.  Which I hadn’t put on her.  What with one thing and another I hadn’t noticed it had disappeared from the table.  The little gold beads sparkled in the dull light.  When I had a minute I’d find my magnifying glass—the one that came with the old hard-copy compact version of the OED—and look at them more closely.

In this light, and in my less than reliable state of mind, they looked as if they might be roses.

 

Good and bad. But the good wins.

 

Hellhounds ate lunch.  This hasn’t happened in WEEKS.*  And they followed this up by eating dinner**.

Almost everything else has gone awry but my priorities are clear.  Hellhounds who eat are crucial to my mental and emotional health.  Which you can therefore imagine have been a little thin on the ground lately.***

I was supposed to sing today, and I got a laconic text from Oisin at about noon, saying that he’d forgotten about another (better paid) accompanist gig later in the afternoon and could I make it early?  —Erm.  No.  I had a bad night even by my standards† and was still in the mainlining caffeine, how does this strange grey†† clamshell box with a keyboard on one side work exactly?, stage.  Singing was hours away.

About two hours later I got a text from Niall asking if I wanted a lift to handbells at Gemma’s.  HANDBELLS?  NOBODY TOLD ME THERE WERE HANDBELLS SCHEDULED TODAY.

I didn’t make that either.  However, I have hauled Kes through some further (metaphorical) hedgerows today.  And the hellhounds have eaten TWO MEALS IN A ROW.  YAAAAAAAAAY.

Nat

Why do they never ask ‘How do you winnow down all the thousands of ideas you have into ones that ring true for you?’

Well, and that ring loudly enough and to a melody you have some chance of learning—to stretch an analogy till it whines and wriggles and begs for mercy †††.  It’s not just the ideas, as you say:  it’s finding the one(s) that you can do something with.  SHADOWS, for example, would be likelier to be provided with a sequel if I knew more quantum physics and were fluent in Japanese.  It’s not usually that straightforward—and I daresay I could find people to tutor me—but the fit between writer and idea, however good the idea is in an absolute sense, is also frelling CRITICAL.  Think of Rudyard Kipling writing one of Jane Austen’s stories.  Or JRR Tolkien one of Diana Wynne Jones’.  Or Peter one of mine or me one of Peter’s.

Surely there’s only so many times you can write variants of ‘I stare blankly into space and try to remember not to drool’ to the dreaded ‘Where do your ideas come from?’.

Yes.  And I passed it years ago.  . . . Furthermore I don’t even bother trying to remember not to drool any more.  I have dogs;  everything I own is washable.

Jmeadows

That list. . . .

*shovels chocolate into face*

Most of these have happened to me and I’ve only been published for a couple of years. I’m trying to imagine what it must be like after *mumble* years and all I want to do is eat more chocolate.

Yes.  Well.  I stay home a lot.  I might also recommend weaning yourself onto carrots.  Excellent things, carrots.  I eat a lot of them.  Arrrrgh.

PamAdams

Sigh. I think I’d boycott the bookstore as well–perhaps we could sic the hellterror on it.

WHAT A GOOD IDEA.  SHE’D HAVE A GREAT TIME.  Pity it’s kind of far away.  But I am much attracted to a vision of the hellterror whacking the ankles of Clerk of Infamy with the long hard plastic wand that is her present favourite toy and—ow—being invited to play hurts.  Also, everything in range is destroyed.  Who bought this blasted toy anyway?  —Oh.  I did.

Blondviolinist

Reading that list? Chucking stones at wild cats sounds safer. A tiger isn’t going to spend time thinking up a thousand horrible ways for you to die.

It’s not the thinking you need to worry about.  It’s other aspects of applied creativity you might want to consider.

Gwyn_sully

springlight wrote on Fri, 13 December 2013 09:51


  some books just deserve bookshelf space.

This is true… of course it implies that I have any bookshelf space to give it. I am forbidden from buying more books unless I first buy more bookshelves. And since I currently have no space for more bookshelves, this is an issue.

‘Forbidden’?  By whom?  Tell them that the hellgoddess is looking at them in a hard and meaningful manner and that, furthermore, you’re a member of her personal forum and it is RUDE not to own all her books in hard copy.

3rdragon

Okay, now I’m REALLY curious to know who Author X is. Just to know.

I suppose it could be just about anyone, really, depending on which of Robin’s books one starts with. Or the pool of anyones who write well enough that *someone* thinks their writing is awesome. Which, given the range of people in the world, doesn’t limit the field very much.

Yes.  Or no.  Apologies.  I shouldn’t tease you like this but I obviously can’t tell you who.  It’s just SUCH a SPECTACULAR story of what morons people can be.  And as for which book of mine . . . other people who have read both X and Y scratch their heads and say they don’t see any particular similarity, beyond fantasy and girls who do things.

Ajlr

No, no, no, no. Not to worry. This is a McKinley story, right? Can you   possibly imagine that I would let anything dreadful happen to Sid?

There are some things in life that one has total confidence in.

Oh good.  It’s not that I won’t kill off major characters if the story totally MAKES me.‡  Just . . . for someone with as PROFOUND A CASE OF CRANKY as I have, I write awfully warm and fuzzy stories.  It’s a curse.

* * *

* There is a God.  Er.^

^Have I told you Peter’s heresy?  (Peter who is not a Christian, and doesn’t mind Nicky Gumbel as much as I do because he wasn’t expecting much.+)  Peter suggests that God is both omnipotent and omniscient . . . but not at the same time.  You have to admit it would explain a lot.

+ Now that it’s too late, DOZENS of people are coming out of the woodwork, including a few on the forum, and saying, Oh, I never got on with Nicky Gumbel either!  —Oh.  Well.  The most useful thing anyone has said to me is to remember that it’s not merely that his lowest-common-denominator delivery is getting on my nerves, what he is presenting is only one take on Christianity.  I’m allowed to think ‘um, er, no,’ not merely ‘stop talking about your frelling squash game, okay?’

I wonder if I could get out my knitting?  I have a genuine reason for not wanting to look at the screen;  the backdrop is this vivid swirly orangey pink, which I would like fine in a cardigan but as your speaker’s background it starts to make me feel queasy.  That could be the presentation . . . but I think it’s the colours on a TV screen.

** There’s still supper to go wrong but we can live in hope for a few hours.

*** May I just bore you a minute by mentioning again how much I hate force feeding?  It beats their not eating by a big fat^ margin—if hellhounds miss a meal they will absolutely, guaranteed refuse the next one, and the one after that:  and by the third missed meal in a row they are lying listlessly in their bed and refusing to come out—but I HATE.  IT.  I had given up on lunch for the moment—hellhound digestion moves in enigmatic cycles;  lunch would become possible again some unknown time in the future—beyond a couple of dragooned mouthfuls so their stomachs aren’t empty and there’s some hope therefore they’ll eat dinner.  But I have to go LA LA LA LA LA LA very loudly and think about something else.  And Darkness’ latest placatory ritual to some other dark gods, since it’s certainly not me he’s trying to get on the good side of with this behaviour, is that he will ONLY eat, supposing he eats at all, if I force the first mouthful down his throat.  AAAAAAAAAAUGH.  He will actually lie there staring at me, waiting for me to do my part in ENABLING him to eat.

Moan.

^ ::Hollow laughter::

† Well, I’d had what I thought was this clever idea of getting all my tender plants outdoors the night before, since it was now mmph o’clock and the thermometer wasn’t going anywhere threatening, and I sleep, or anyway ‘sleep’, through all those early morning prime photosynthesizing hours, but during the ferrying process in the dark I had an Unfortunate Encounter with some hellterror crap . . . tiny turds that roll away from the main event look a lot like the courtyard gravel and are sometimes missed on pick-up even in daylight . . .  adrenaline is never your friend at mmph o’clock when there are faeces involved.

†† The moment I was most tempted to swap my PC for a Mac, with the unimaginable technological horror this would produce, was when they started making pink Macs.  Sigh.  Sanity prevailed, which is to say my computer angels support PCs, not Macs.

††† Not unlike hellhounds presented with food and a grim, determined hellgoddess.

‡ I still occasionally get furious mail from people who thought I’d’ve written a nice Robin Hood retelling, about the aftermath of the battle with Guy of Gisbourne in OUTLAWS.  I didn’t like it either, okay?  Just keep reminding yourself that even though I don’t get that far, I promise my Robin does not die through the treachery of a WOMAN.

Writerly stuff (much of it revisited)

 

I’ve just spent my blog-writing time hacking at an interview with http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/ which is reprinting Hellhound—which I will attempt to remember to link to when it comes on line.  Although all of you have OF COURSE already read Hellhound in Peter’s and my FIRE stories a few years ago . . . and the truth of the matter is that you’ll also have read everything I have to say in any possible interview some time in the last six years on this blog, in most cases several times, if you’re one of the stoics that have either been here from the beginning or, on insomniac nights, read back to the beginning.  But it might amuse you to reread some of it.  I think I’m getting harder to interview as I get older.  I HAVE NO CLUE WHERE MY INSPIRATION FOR A STORY COMES FROM.  I HAVE NEVER HAD ANY CLUE WHERE STORY INSPIRATION COMES FROM.  But the frantic desire to say something remotely responsive to some nice person who is paying you money* to reprint an old story may result in some rather strange non-answers.

And speaking of how totally hopeless I am as a self-publicist, and of links . . . the UK ebook of SHADOWS became available over a week ago.  Have I . . . erm . . . mentioned this?  Maybe I did and I’ve just forgotten.  I can’t give you a link—you’ll have to go strive with amazon.co.uk yourselves—first because I do not go near my own pages on amazon, Goodreads or any other site where readers congregate and talk about books and never will, unless someone holds a gun to my head, which I would be very, very grateful if they did not.  Secondly because I do use amazon, cautiously and guardedly, and I haven’t had any trouble with its denying my existence and cancelling my credit card lately and I would like this happy conjunction to continue.  It’s one of those oppressively clever sites that recognises you the minute you sign on however—so far as I can tell wherever you sign on from:  it took your virtual fingerprints with your name and address back in the day—so if I send you a link, I’ll be linking you to my account.  I don’t want to log out to do it because I guarantee we would go through the you-do-not-exist-your-password-does-not-exist-and-your-credit-card-is-a-hellterror-chewtoy experience when I tried to log back in again—I’ve been through this—and I would find this wearisome.  Just as I found it wearisome the last time it happened.

But the SHADOWS UK ebook came out on 5 December.  So any of you foolish enough to be waiting for me to tell you it’s there waiting for you—this is how I keep eating:  you would be forgiven for assuming I would tell you in an expeditious manner that a book of mine is available for purchase—IT’S WAITING FOR YOU.  Go and buy several copies.  Good Christmas present.**

And now for the piece de resistance:

http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/14-ways-to-tick-off-a-writer/?utm_content=bufferafe6d&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

Some splendid person on Twitter posted this and because I am a moron I forgot to write down who it was.  If it is someone who reads this blog THANK YOU SPLENDID PERSON.  I laughed and laughed and laughed . . . and then I went and punched a few holes in the wall because it is so true.  It is so true it’s almost not funny.

For example, there’s a variation to number two, where the person the author is talking to says, oh, have you read X?  You must read it!  It’s just like your book Y, ONLY BETTER!!!  —I still cannot begin to imagine what this person was thinking of.  Since it happened to me***, and the person who told me to read X because it was like my Y only better, was a bookseller in a bookstore.  Quite a large and famous bookstore in fact.  And . . . I have as a result never read ANY of the novels of the author of X.   Because I am a cow, and an easily traumatised, unfair-grudge-holding cow.  Mooo.†

Number four also includes that the person is going to offer to split with you sixty/forty if you write up their great idea because the idea is the important thing (which is why they’re retaining the sixty percent) and you already know how the writing thing works so they don’t have to bother.  There are advantages to living in a small unidentified town.††

And number seven:  ARRRGLE ARRRRRRRRRRGH ARRRRRRRRGLE.  Possibly my pet peeve of pet peeves:  readers that do your book down because it isn’t the book they wanted to read.

Number fourteen:  I came in from trying to answer an interview question about my writing process. . . .

* * *

* Sure it’s a modest sum.  The point is it’s any sum.

** There is a way to send ebooks as Christmas presents, right?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_rel_topic?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200555070 ^

Oh.  Cool.  I might even be able to do this.

^ I have NO IDEA why this isn’t appearing within my account.  Amazon just likes yanking me around.  I knew that.

*** And this is one of those stories long-term blog readers have read before.  It haunts me.  Well it would.

† Also, you know, life is short and there are a lot of books I’m never going to read.  I judge books by their covers too.  Do I want to have to look at this cover in my house?  No?  Great.  Don’t buy it.  I have too many frelling books already.

†† And yes, it would take you about thirty seconds to break my alias, if you really wanted to.  But that I alias everything does suggest that I don’t want to be found, doesn’t it?^  So don’t bother to email me and suggest coffee.  No.  I don’t drink coffee anyway.

^ It’s also fun.  How else would I get to invent town names like Sagging Dormouse or Smedley-on-Cucumber?  They’d never let me put it in my fiction.

Easy Ways a Day Can Go Wrong Really Fast

 

I got to bed too late.*  I had Raphael coming in the morning so I had to get out of bed before the middle of the afternoon.**

I had a list for Raphael.  I always have a list.

There is apparently no way to turn OFF the wretched monster photos that have taken over everyone’s Twitter feed.  I’ll click on the photos I want to see, you know?  Stop frelling trying to make clawing my way through the last twenty-four hours even more of a ratbag.***

There is apparently no way to tell Windows 7 NO I FRELLING DO NOT WANT TO HANG AROUND ANOTHER TWENTY MINUTES WHILE YOU DO A FRELLING UPDATE, I WANT TO CLOSE DOWN, PUT MY LAPTOP IN MY KNAPSACK AND GO HOME.  You could on XP.  You could tell it, no, later, and it said, okay, you’re the boss, and shut down.

My email is a NIGHTMARE and there isn’t much Raphael can do about it.†  The settings all sit there sniggering behind their half-eaten address books and whimsical spam filters  saying, We’re all optimally configured!  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

When I finally got the poor patient hellhounds out†† there was not one but two off lead dogs in the churchyard, being ignored by two different irresponsible humanoid-shaped ratbags.  And the middle of town was jammed solid††† because Father Bloody Christmas had arrived and his grotto was open for business.

Maybe I’ll go to bed what passes for me as early with a good book or twelve.  Maybe I’ll even sleep.  That would make a change.

* * *

* Duuh.  In this case partly because I had loaded up my FABULOUS NEW EFFECTIVELY-IF-NOT-LITERALLY WIRELESS PRINTER with second-side paper and ran off a lot of knitting patterns.^  And when I pulled them out, having enjoyed the sound of a printer printing—no pings, no dings, no mysterious stoppages, no flashing lights, no screaming.  Just printing—I discovered that my new printer wants paper loaded with the already used side up.  Rather than down.  Oh.  My last several printers have wanted one-sided paper loaded BLANK side UP.

There was screaming after all.

And of course I had to do it all over again right then.  It couldn’t wait till morning^^.  A dozen knitting patterns I may never get to at all and certainly not any time soon since I have . . . um . . . several projects on needles already.  BUT I HAD TO PRINT THEM OFF LAST NIGHT.  YES.

^ Can some clever knitter person tell me if I could knit these on circular needles rather than DPNs?  http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/f163-cleckheaton-country-silk-fingerless-gloves

I don’t do circulars+ but I really REALLY don’t do DPNs.  Just looking at them makes me think of deep puncture wounds and the TOTAL FAILURE I was at cat’s-cradle.

+ Have I told you this story?  After I started my big plain square JUST KEEP KNITTING winter scarf out of mind-blowingly gorgeous wool and silk yarn on circulars, thinking that it would be easier to manage that way and in less danger of spilling off too-short needles—broomstick-length needles don’t fit in your knapsack, and they probably won’t let you on public transport or in the bell tower where you’re a hazard to the already somewhat risky flying ropes—AND INSTEAD the wretched rows jammed every time they had to come back off the cable again and onto the working needle tips.  The needle tips also needed screwing back on every time I got the fabric shoved onto the cable again.  AND THEN, ONE DAY, ONE OF THE NEEDLE TIPS UNSCREWED ANYWAY.  MID ROW.  KNITTING ALL OVER THE LANDSCAPE.  There was screaming.

I gave up circulars forever that day.#  Interchangeable ones anyway.  I still have a few basic bamboo-and-plastic fixed ones that Fiona gave me early on, saying to me in soothing tones that I would like circulars once I’d tried them.  HA.  HA.  I’m sure the Romans told the Christians that the lions they were about to throw them to were pussycats really.  But I could try knitting a glove on fixed circulars.  You only cast on forty stitches, instead of a hundred and forty.##  And I’d quite like to try this seamless deal.

The interchangeables came as a Yaaay!  You SUBSCRIBED!### bonus from a knitting magazine.  Moral:  don’t subscribe to knitting magazines.

# And yes, I lost the two and a half or so inches of knitting I’d managed to wrench out of those ratblasted needles.  Which is when I found out that my beautiful yarn doesn’t rip back very well.

## Arrrrrrgh.

### Suckerrrrrrrrrrr.

^^ Or, you know, afternoon.

** I sent him a text at umph-plus o’clock asking him if he could please Not Be Early.  I hope he turns his phone off when he goes to bed.  Although he has three little kids:  he may never sleep at all.  Nadia has only two little kids and she never sleeps at all.

*** On the other hand I asked Twitter if there was a programme that would let me have more than one Twitter account open simultaneously and lovely Twitter people answered and I am now the more or less proud owner of a copy of Tweetdeck, which is already massively to be preferred in all the ways I can figure out. 

Speaking of the kindness of computer nerd strangers, has anyone reading this ever had their Word 7 randomly turn blocks of text into italic?  IT DRIVES ME FRELLING BANANACAKES.  ALSO CREAM PIES.  AND SOME COCONUT ONES WHILE WE’RE AT IT.  COCONUT IS RELIABLY BONKERS.  Sometimes it won’t turn off again:  you highlight it, click, and it judders sideways and back and . . . stays italic.  Sometimes it turns normal again as soon as you highlight it.  Sometimes this block goes normal and then you flick up a page and discover a different block of text has gone italic.  You tend to need a biggish block of text to set off whatever this is:  it doesn’t happen (yet) to individual blog entries, but it’s really REALLY bad with KES, which I keep in files of a dozen or so eps per, because single words of italic seem to set off the gremlin and there’s kind of a lot of italic in KES.^

Anyone else seen this?  Raphael looks at me warily when I tell him about it since (of course) I’ve never managed to reproduce it for him.

^ For some reason.

† Except maybe help me look at real estate ads for houses in areas with better broadband.

†† They don’t want to use the courtyard any more, even if they’re DESPERATE.  WE’RE NOT THAT DESPERATE, they say, crossing their legs harder.  The courtyard now belongs to the hellterror.

And, speaking of things going wrong, Raphael showed up before she was finished with her breakfast kong.  By the time she is finished, she, her bedding, the crate and the kong are METICULOUSLY FREE OF ANY SUBATOMIC PARTICLE OF FOOD.  But it’s a little messy on the journey.  I don’t like keeping her crated when there are Exciting Visitors, it doesn’t seem to me fair, so I got her out and clutched her frantically to my bosom as I let Raphael in and shooed him (and hellhounds) hastily upstairs.  I didn’t quite need a bath by the time I shut her back up with the remains of her breakfast.  Quite.

Hellterror has had a good day however.  After poor Raphael finally left to go attend to some normal, corporate client, we all went out to Warm Upford to put petrol in Wolfgang, and had a sprint around an empty sheep field before we came home.  Hellterror doesn’t get out to deep country all that often and she was ECSTATIC.  And I have two dislocated shoulders.  One from an ecstatic hellterror, and one from two hellhounds trying to elude the ecstatic hellterror.^

^ The next field over was not empty so I didn’t dare let them off lead to sort it out among themselves.

††† Mind you this is easy to do in a town this size

Book rec: The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia

 

I seem to need a night semi-off.*  So I thought I’d give you a book rec.  I should do this more often.  All this frelling reading should be GOOD for something, shouldn’t it?

I read this quite recently—on Astarte.  On the Kindle app on my iPad.  There have been various outbursts on the forum about the far greater desirability of old-fashioned hard-copy books with ink and pages and covers you open and close over and against the virtual screen pages you swipe with a finger on your e-reader of choice.  Most of us acknowledge, more or less reluctantly, that e-readers have their place, however, especially the carrying your entire library with you in one slim electronic package aspect.  When the next 7,000 flights are cancelled at Heathrow/O’Hare/Kuala Lumpur/Mars Central at least you have plenty to read.**

There’s another reason for e-readers as most of you know although it’s not so much discussed.  I think it unsettles us Luddites.  Which is that sometimes an e-book version is the only one available.  And then you’re very glad to have it.

I don’t remember when I first started tripping over intriguing references to ALCHEMY OF STONE.  It finally got on my amazon wish list when it was merely out of stock, and I wasted some time looking around for it elsewhere while waiting for it to come back into stock.  I think there was a spell there when it wasn’t available anyway, anyhow—except for £3,612,007 on eBay—so when I accidentally discovered, some time later, that it was available on Kindle, I grabbed it.

There’s a certain justice to reading it as an e-book however;  the central character is an automaton named Mattie.  She was created by a clever, but damaged both physically and morally, human man;  and given by him partial autonomy.  Their society is divided into Mechanics and Alchemists.  He is a Mechanic;  he grants her freedom to study alchemy, become an alchemist, live apart from him and stop ministering to his whims—much;  but he retains the key that winds her heart.  That keeps her alive.  Or ‘alive’.

Of course the basic story tension is between Mattie, who is far more human than Loharri is, even if he is the one made of flesh and she is the one made of springs and clockwork—by him.  But it’s also about the balance, or lack of it, in their society.  The status quo is unravelling as the book opens, and things start going badly wrong. . . .

There is so much to like in this book, starting with the gargoyles on page one, who come to Mattie for alchemical help.  Mattie herself is a spectacular piece of story-telling;  you never for a moment forget she’s not human and yet every reference to ‘the bronzed wheel-bearings of her joints squeak their mechanical greeting’ or ‘Her frame clicks as she leans forward. . . . Her dress is low-cut, and . . . there is a small transparent window in her chest, where a clockwork heart is ticking along steadily’ or ‘She extended her hand, the slender copper springs of her fingers grasping a phial of blue glass’ only makes her more human.

And I liked this book a lot.  Sedia writes so well.  Real style is far rarer than one might wish it were.  Than I wish it were.  Now, truth in advertising:  this is not the most cheerful and optimistic book you’ll ever read.  But I prefer to read the ambiguous ending as hopeful. 

* * *

* Probably because we’ve had bad news about someone close to us and it casts a long shadow. . . . Dear bleeding Christ on the cross dying for our sins why is life LIKE THIS?

** Although a back-up battery and a universal^ mains charger would be a good plan.

^ I guarantee that when they start laying power cables in the red dirt of Mars your travelling mains charger/power adapter will need another lobe.  Every frelling country on Earth seems to have its own unique idea about electricity delivery.  Think of the rampant pioneering possibilities of an entire fresh planet.

Opera and Christianity. Who wins?

 

Radio 3 was running Verdi’s RIGOLETTO, one of my favourite old war horses*, tonight, from the New York Metropolitan, and not only that, but one of my FAVOURITEST singers, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, was in the title role.  Be still my heart.**

AND WE HAD TO GO TO THE SECOND SESSION OF FRELLING*** ALPHA.†

We heard like the last five minutes of the opera, which is certainly a good five minutes for listening to the bloke singing Rigoletto . . . but it misses out the previous three hours.††  AAAAAAUGH.  And the Met broadcasts are never available for replay . . .

. . . and then there was an announcement that Rigoletto WOULD BE AVAILABLE for seven days on the Radio 3 iplayer.  Suddenly the world is a brighter place.

EXCEPT THAT IT’S NOT AVAILABLE.  Usually stuff goes up within a couple of hours after it’s gone out over the air.  Not tonight.  You go and click on it and it says ‘try again later.’  AAAAAAAUGH.  Tenterhooks.  Tenterhooks.  Will I be able to hear my favourite contemporary baritone††† sing one of my favourite baritone roles?  Stay tuned.

Meanwhile . . . another voice lesson when I had a voice to play with today.  I’m trying to enjoy this phase for as long as possible because I can feel myself starting to make up a fresh new list of things I can’t do and must therefore become totally frustrated and hopeless about.‡  Also known as moving the goalposts.  That I have any voice is still a frelling miracle.‡‡  And it means I get to sing really cool stuff!  We were looking at new pieces for me to have a bash at over the Christmas hols—another Dring from the Five Betjeman Songs cycle that my beloved Hotel Proprietress comes from, and the Schubert song that he then went on to write the famous Trout Quintet from—but the song came first.  I have one more lesson before Christmas, next Monday, when Nadia will attempt to drag me through the German so I can play with it over the holidays without breaking anything.

* * *

* There’s an ancient author-answering-questions-about-her-life-outside-of-writing^ piece on my web site about opera, in which I mention that the somewhat less famous trio after the famous quartet, when Gilda bangs on the bad guys’ door, knowing that this is going to get her killed, and the storm is breaking up the action from the orchestra, is one of my favourite bits in all opera.  Verdi is The Man as far as I’m concerned because of the way he could write music that is the absolute aural definition of the emotion he’s describing.  Wagner, blah blah blah, Puccini, blah blah blah, anybody else you want to mention, blah blah blah.  Nope.  Verdi—for me.^^

^ Ie LONG BEFORE THE BLOG.

^^ Now I’m trying to decide what to say about Mozart, who is the pinnacle of a different mountain.  No, no, it’s too late at night, it’s been a long day, I can’t tackle it.  I’ll say this though:  Verdi is deepest darkest red, and Mozart is clear pure green.

** Granted this was on radio, but that Hvorostovsky is cute is secondary to the fact that he can sing.  Also this was the Las Vegas brat-pack production and I think it would probably annoy me.^

^ This is one of those ‘do squirrels eat all the birdseed out of the bird feeders/ do menopausal women crave chocolate /is McKinley still pissed off about that stupid FAUST production she saw a couple of years ago when Faust commits suicide at the end’ questions.

*** Look at the psalms.  People have been cranky about God and the validity of religious commitment and expression for thousands of years.

† If I were getting along with Nicky Gumbel’s anecdotal style better I might be less . . . um . . . cranky.^  I don’t think I’m a natural member of his target audience—whatever his target audience is.^^  Maybe my ignorance of most of the basic tenets of Christianity^^^ is the problem . . . except I thought the point of Alpha is that it’s for people who feel they don’t know enough.  Although I suppose not knowing enough is a variable concept.

It may be a long ten weeks.  Although we now have a break till after Christmas . . . additionally useful for those of us with composure to regain.  I like our group#:  unfortunately we talk less than Gumbel does.

^ The set up seems to be that you watch a video presentation by some Alpha admin person and then your own live group discusses it.  I think Gumbel began the whole show, but he’s not the only presenter.  St Margaret’s is running an Alpha with live streaming from London and Gumbel is taking only one or two of the series, but we’re watching recordings on TV in a private sitting-room and they’re all Gumbel.

^^ But it requires knowledge of national sporting figures and recent TV programmes.  FAIL.

^^^ I’ve got it that Jesus Christ is the human incarnation of God.  After that it starts getting blurry.

# One of the other women tonight was talking about Julian of Norwich, who is on my reading list but I haven’t got there yet.  I’m about to move her up near the front of the queue.

†† I heard about ten minutes of the early sashaying around in the duke’s court—missed O Questo O Quella^ of course—while I was bringing my geraniums in.  I was a few minutes late to Alpha because I shot back to the cottage first to get the PLANTS IN because the temperature, having been a really pleasant sunny mild-for-December day, was busy plunging, and while the local weather said no, no, no, no, definitely no frost tonight, I know what happened last time.  Tonight, of course, there will be no frost.  Because I got my tender stuff indoors.  Unless of course in the dark I missed something.  In which case there will be a frost, and whatever it is it will be dead by morning.

Being able to foretell the future isn’t all it’s chalked up to be.

^ The first fabulous old war horse aria in this fabulous old war horse opera.

††† Unless you want to count Placido Domingo.  No, Placido Domingo goes in the Can Do Anything category.  He and Daniel Barenboim.  Oh well, probably neither of them can write fantasy with strong female characters.^  But probably neither of them has ever tried.

^ And critters.  And Cinnamon Rolls as Big as Your Head.

‡ There are drawbacks to singing more advanced stuff:  the more you get the more you know you haven’t got.  To some extent this is just the amateur experience, but there are better amateurs and . . . less good amateurs.  I am listening to my gorgeous operas and favourite singers with a whole extra layer of awareness and appreciation the last couple of months or so since I made my surprising little burst of progress in my own practise.  But this inevitably includes a greater, more detailed and exact awareness and appreciation of how much I don’t sound like Joyce Di Donato.  I want worse than ever to go sit in^ on some top-flight singer’s master class because I’ll get so much more out of it . . . but I may also crawl home after and burn all my music.

^ NOT perform, please note.  I doubt I’ll ever reach that standard.

‡‡ Yaay Nadia, miracle-worker.

Ah the festive season

 

CHRISTMAS!  YAAAAAAH!  CHRISTMAS!  No, wait, I’m a Christian now, I have to go all holy and worshipful and transcendent and whatever.  THIS IS HARD WHEN THE CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS HAVE BEEN UP FOR WEEKS AND EVERY SHOP WINDOW IS TELLING YOU HERE IS WHERE YOU WILL FIND THE PERFECT PRESENTS FOR THE SIX HUNDRED AND FORTY-SIX PEOPLE ON YOUR CHRISTMAS LIST* AND FURTHERMORE HERE’S A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR YOU AS WELL.**

I’ve had a hard weekend*** of alternately clicking on yet another web site and weeping in a desperate and abandoned manner.  But I now have several half-reasonable presents for my hideous and abominable husband.†  After twenty-two years I still haven’t adjusted to being married to someone who not only is FRELLING IMPOSSIBLE to buy gifts for—and he’s getting worse as he gets older—BUT WHOSE BIRTHDAY IS TEN FRIGGLEWHACKING DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS.  This really should not be allowed.  If you’re going to be hard to buy stuff for, have the decency to be born in the summer.  Give your nearest and dearest a dingdoramping break.

Now the presents had just better frelling arrive and none of this Out of Stock nonsense.  Or I’ll revert to the desperate and abandoned weeping.

* * *

* Note:  they’re lying.

** A nice little snort of pure white powder.  Finest customer service.  It may kill you when your heart explodes but you’ll die really happy.  And you won’t have to wrap any Christmas presents.

*** And that was after being out with the Street Pastors on Friday, including staying out extra-late looking for a missing person.  Who was found, but by that time we were all thrumming with adrenaline.  I got to bed finally after dawn . . . and you know how late dawn is at this latitude in December.

My heated waistcoat did its weird trick of being brilliant for two hours on one-third power and then signing off.  I added the heated socks this unpleasantly gelid duty watch and spent the first half hour thinking these blasted things are useless, they’re not giving off any heat at all . . . till it occurred to me that my feet weren’t cold.  The socks produce no discernable heat but apparently they wrap your lower extremities in an intangible cold-resistant force field.  Hey.  Whatever works.

. . . Although that was with me upright and moving.^  I wore them again to Saturday evening contemplation at the monks’ AND JUST ABOUT DIED OF THE COLD.  It’s been inconveniently cold a lot of this week^^ and while yesterday and today have been warmer this amelioration had not found its way into the monks’ chapel by last night and you could see your breath.  I swear my hair had turned to icicles by the time I limped back to Wolfgang and turned the heater on.  Next week I may bring two blankets.

^ Llewellyn is on Maxine’s team# and he is also skinny and long-legged—and a lot taller than I am—and we bonded over the fact that we’re both fast walkers and we hate the Street Pastor stroll.  But you have to stroll:  it’s how you have time to look around and see stuff:  our remit includes looking out for bottles, which are harder to spot than people, and which we empty down gratings [the bottles that is] and put tidily in rubbish bins.##

# Those of you who are having trouble following the playlist . . . you are not alone.  But this Friday was my first turn at swapping with Maxine, so it was her team.  My schedule will not usually be this chaotic:  henceforward I should be going out once a month, either the second, or occasionally the first, Friday.~

~ Although they are looking for extra bodies for a team on New Year’s Eve.  It would make a change from ringing bells, not that I’m tired of ringing bells.  But I was assuming the Street Pastors would be looking for people with some experience—and I like ringing bells.  But I saw Jonas at church tonight and he said he was on New Year’s Eve duty and they were still short-handed, and he laughed when I said they’d be looking for experience.  Just tell Llewellyn you’re available, okay? he said.  Um.  Well, I can tear open a packet of hot chocolate and pour hot water over it and stir as well as the next person wearing a Street Pastors hat.

Where I was also asked if I could come early to the carol service and pass around the mulled wine?  I think this is known as the thin edge of the wedge.  I said yes.

Note that we carry both hot chocolate and soup, and requests run about nine to one in favour of hot chocolate.  I suppose if you’re homeless and can perhaps be assumed not in the best of moods as a result, your first thought, when some bozo with a knapsack% and a reflective logo ambles up to you and says hello, is probably not for nutrition but a hit of something fun.  That would be the hot chocolate.  You can usually get a Twix or a lollipop or—at the moment—a candy cane to go with it.  A balanced and healthful repast.

% Our second bloke went home at the break, which left all us retirement-age girls looking at each other shiftily about carrying the second knapsack after the break.  I lost.  But I felt better about my aching shoulders when even Llewellyn admitted he was glad to be getting rid of his by the end of the evening.  It makes you extra enthusiastic about offering stuff to the people on the street however:  HERE.  LET ME GIVE YOU SOMETHING.  THEN MY KNAPSACK WILL WEIGH LESS.

^^ Which includes the night that the local weather report said, oh, there may be a light frost in outlying districts, but there will certainly be no frost in the TOWNS!  WRONG.  I got home that night to a hard frost and a lot of half-dead tender geraniums—which are usually tougher than are given credit for—AND I WAS CROSS.  I’ve certainly lost a couple for good, but I think most of them will come through although they are not going to be things of beauty till we start getting heat and sunlight again, which means I will have to keep them in a sort of compound out back for the rest of the winter where they can’t offend the neighbours—but the hellterror can’t dismantle them.#  ARRRGH.  If the winter turns severe and I have to keep them seriously indoors . . . I may have to move out and sleep in Peter’s spare room.  There isn’t space for plants, the overflow from Third House and three hellcritters and a hellgoddess in what was a small cottage when I had a Third House and only two hellhounds.  Feh.

# She likes smelly plants too.^  And a lot of my geraniums are the scented-leaf variety.

^ It should be nice to have things in common with other members of your household.  But . . .

† Who reads the blog.  Yes.

KES, 108

ONE HUNDRED EIGHT

We?  Need?  I wanted to burst into tears or possibly throw up.  If I tried to take a step I would fall down.  Especially if the point of my sword was stuck in the floor.  And there was this . . . corpse in the way.  If I stepped in the blood I would throw up and there was so much of it and I was in no shape for gazelle-like leaping.  How was I going to explain a corpse to my real estate agent at dinner tomorrow night?  There was a sudden, strangely comforting weight on one foot, and a shaking thing leaning against my leg.  I looked down.  Sid was standing next to me, one paw on my foot, panting.  Panting is an expression of anxiety.  She didn’t like dead guys either.

In an attempt to focus my rapidly deliquescing brain on something other than corpses and blood and stands and swords and throwing up, so that I could hold it together for my dog, it occurred to me that he’d called me Lady Kestrel.  He knew my . . .

Another gigantic BANG and a flash of fire visible through the door into the kitchen.  That would be the where we were supposed to be making our stand, I thought, moving into that murky grey disassociation head space like someone on a bad drug trip.  I was rapidly getting lost in the murky grey and offered no resistance when Watermelon Shoulders slid an arm around my waist and hustled me toward the scene of the action.  My legs seemed to be working again.  How very surprising.  I took a moment to appreciate the sense of my legs and feet doing their bending and stretching job and making me move forward.  Although I was maybe leaning on Watermelon Shoulders a little hard, Sid was leaning on me pretty hard from the other side.  I don’t want to be burnt up doing this stand thing, I thought, all grey and dissociative.

Some still almost-there part of my brain was waiting for my bare feet to touch something wet and sticky.  When this happened I would instantly become the madwoman in the attic.  If there was one occupying the premises already she’d just have to move on.

It didn’t happen.  Maybe Watermelon Shoulders had a charm for beguiling blood away from the bare feet of his . . . um.  What was I?  Ally?  Poor Watermelon Shoulders.  Could he make the blood stay away from my books?  If I could remember how to speak I would ask him.

To the extent that I could see it the kitchen still almost looked like a kitchen when we reached it.  The looms and shadows looked more like appliances than like Yog-Sothoth and his poker buddies.  My brain started to produce a but. . . . No.  Stop right there.  Stop.  Right.  There.  Watermelon Shoulders let go of me and I leaned on the table, carefully not thinking about anything.  My leaning hand—the one that didn’t still have a sword in it—bumped into Sid’s pebble.  There, I could think about the pebble.  It was just a pebble that had used to live in the Friendly Campfire’s parking lot.  Completely ordinary, that pebble.  I rolled it back and forth a little with one finger.  Pebble.  Possibly unusually round for a parking-lot pebble, but still . . . just a pebble.

Whatever the bang and flash of fire had been, it had swallowed itself up again until . . . until . . . no, that was another thought I wasn’t going to think.  I didn’t like the dark swirling whatever—also it made me queasy, but dead guys bleeding all over your floor may perhaps make you kind of prone to queasiness—but when I glanced (still fiddling with Sid’s pebble) in what should have been the direction of the upstairs hall I could see a faint glow, like a hall light left on.  It looked several miles farther away than it should but at least it was there.

Perhaps my eyes were adjusting to this unpleasantly lively dark, because I could make out the greyness that was the windows—as opposed to what was going on in my brain—and someone seemed to have left the door of Caedmon’s firebox open, because there was a small but intense orange flicker that made the outline of the stove visible, a blacker blackness.  Caedmon looked bigger than I remembered.  On the whole I thought this was a good thing.

The chairs had been pushed aside, and our nice comfortable bedding scattered.  By what?  I didn’t remember the pre-corpse throwing stuff around.  Suddenly sleeping on the floor next to a wood stove in an almost empty strange house seemed the epitome of safety and well-being.  Emphasis on the empty.  Funny about that.  You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, like the song says.

I looked the other way again, through the door into the parlour.  The greyness of those windows silhouetted my rose bushes and in the corner near the door, where the hob’s bowl had sat on the window seat next to them . . . there was a very odd shadow.  Very odd.  Tall.  Thin.  Positively spiky.  Those might almost be limbs.  I was trying to convince myself that a pile of book boxes could make a shadow like that . . . when it moved.  As if it was turning to look back at me.

If those were limbs, it was offering something that might almost have been a salute.

Street Pastors yea verily again

 

I am glad I’m not doing this EVERY Friday.  Although there’s something to be said for getting your first few nights on the street over with in relatively quick succession so you can batter your way through the Very Early Utterly Clueless stage a little faster.  I will still be mostly clueless by the end of tonight, my third official night, but I won’t be UTTERLY clueless.  Er.  I hope.  So maybe by next month, when the schedule should settle down into something more nearly resembling one night a month which is what the official commitment is supposed to be, I can maybe not spend the day before duty night hyperventilating and feeling too overwrought to eat.  You’re going to be on your feet for most of six hours, you ridiculous woman.  You need calories.  Feh.  I like eating.  But not when my jaws are clamped together in anxiety.  Tension level is re-ratcheted up for tonight when I meet my alternate team for the first time—Maxine’s team—this being one of the months when her free weekends don’t fit with the Street Pastors’ rota.

. . . The jaws-clamped-together thing was especially awkward today when I FINALLY got to Oisin’s for a slash and bang at singing with accompaniment for the first frelling time in several frelling months.  I wouldn’t ordinarily have sought a Street Pastors duty night for this extremely threatening additional activity, but first Oisin was on holiday for several weeks—the nerve of the man—and then our diaries have been bad-tempered with each other since he’s been home again and I was anxious (there I go being anxious again) to get Oisin back in the system especially now that I have a little more voice to play with and WOULD LIKE TO MAKE ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO GET USED TO THE IDEA—INDEED THE PRACTISE—OF AN ACCOMPANIST.

And then I managed to forget to make copies of the moderately death-defying new stuff I wanted to sing.  So he had the music on the piano and I sang ee—oo—aaah over his shoulder because I can’t read the lyrics from several feet away, although at least, squinting, I had some idea when the accompaniment went up or down and where my entries might be.  Ugh.  Need to work on those entries. . . .

But it wasn’t a disaster.  I don’t think.  Maybe I was just preoccupied by the evening to come.

And now I have to hurtle hellcritters and feed them what they will consider disgracefully early and then GO OFF AND LEAVE THEM FOR HOURS AND HOURS.  I’m not sure they’re too with ideas of Christianity and social responsibility when there might have been a sofa instead.  What about responsibility to hellcritters?

My feet are already cold. . . .

* * *

Maren

While the Bechdel Test is useful in the aggregate (and I liked Bechdel’s Fun Home, which had the honor of being challenged not at the high school level but in two different COLLEGES), I do not like to see it institutionalized. I know Sweden means well, but the ultimate effect of content ratings is often that writers/directors end up artificially altering the story in order to get a more inclusive rating. If this were applied the same way MPAA ratings are here, I guarantee we’d start seeing movies where two women talk to each other for 10 seconds just to pass the test.

And as you mentioned, the setting of whatever story is being told does not always lend itself to multiple female characters. The one that’s coming immediately to mind is 12 Angry Men.  And hooboy, that film prof is right about The Help. I should say no more…

 ETA: Oh yeah. Parents and other adults who are disturbed by certain things in books frequently ask why they can’t have an age rating system like movies. Well, that’s why. Even though ratings are applied to finished products, it would lead to (some) authors and publishers self-censoring before the fact. Never mind the question of who would actually apply the ratings!

All of this is true.  But humans remain the list-making and test-creating animal and as long as they’re going to make lists and apply tests I want to see something like this one—even if it institutionalises something that is much better uninstitutionalised, and yes, I’m a Bechdel fan too—out there making people think about what gets left out of the standard tests.  Like women.  The film industry is still overwhelmingly male and male-oriented.  Anything that shakes that cage is worth considering.  I’m not sure but what forcing directors to insert a wholly superfluous ten seconds of two women talking to each other is better than the fact that at the moment they don’t feel they need women characters who, you know, just talk to each other because that’s what people, including women, do.

* * *

Arrgh.  I’m late.  Story of my life. . . .

Even more KES comments. And a little ranting and raving.

 

I was running late this morning.  Well.  So surprising.  Not.  And I came blasting into the courtyard at the mews about mid-afternoon, didn’t quite spurt gravel into West Sussex as I spun Wolfgang into his corner, flung open the door and . . . almost stepped in a Gigantic Pile of Dog Crap.

I attained orbit a whole lot faster than those slow rockety things from Cape Canaveral ever did.  ARRRRRRRGH.

Among other things I get so frelling tired of feeling that I’m permanently bent over in a posture of abject apology for having dogs at all.*  And I believe there aren’t any full-time dogs at the mews/Big Pink Blot—which is run as a kind of Grangerford/Shepherdson cooperative—I think dogs may not be allowed in the articles of whatsit.  But there’s at least one other regular canine visitor . . . whom I’ve yet to see on a lead . . .

ARRRRRRRRGH.

And of course everyone around here gives me the hairy eyeball, because our multi-legged (and hairy) comings and goings are extremely conspicuous.  I PICK UP AFTER MY HELLCRITTERS.  AND THEY’RE NEVER, EVER OFF LEAD EXCEPT UNDER MY [EXTREMELY HAIRY] EYEBALL IMMEDIATELY OUTSIDE THE FRONT DOOR FOR A PEE BEFORE THEY GET BACK IN THE CAR.

People are slime.  Make a note.**

On the other hand I had a rush of blood to the head and had a look at bobs and singles for St Clements minor and Colin and Niall and I had an Amusing Time this evening trying to ring touches of something besides plain bob minor. Of course Colin had to louse this up by splicing in plain courses of plain bob when I’m trying to grapple with the essential horror of ringing any bobs and singles on handbells.  I don’t need any additional abominations of random courses, however plain, of some other frelling method.  I am meanwhile welded to the St Clements trebles*** till further notice.

Kalimeg

Yes. One might ask “Where is Kes going to sleep? Not even Cademon can guard against such antics as these!”

SLEEP?  You think anyone is thinking of SLEEP in current circumstances?†

And WHERE is she? Is this really taking place in a house she rents? In the same world as the motel and the truck? Really?

Oh, now, let’s not get all literal here.  Is Sunnydale any less Sunnydale just because the hellmouth happens to yawn evilly on a corner near you?

I also wouldn’t count on Merry being . . . normal.

Julia

There’s a corpse on the floor and a man speaking High Forsoothly, but I, like Kes, am most immediately concerned about bloodstains on her books.

Yep.  Under stress we revert to type.  Me too.

Oh wait, why didn’t we see Sid next to the body? Did she move out of the way in time? Last thing from last week was Sid biting the shadowy attacker’s arm, and now our shadowy attacker is bleeding all over the floor, dead.

No, no, no, no.  Not to worry.  This is a McKinley story, right?  Can you possibly imagine that I would let anything dreadful happen to Sid?  If I would defy the Story Council to give Kes a dressing-gown if she wasn’t wearing a nightgown, do you really think I’d let them do anything nasty to Sid?

Although this is another example of the weirdness of tiny-chunk serials.  You’ll see Sid again this Saturday.  I couldn’t get her and the books into last Saturday’s.

Watermelon Shoulders really isn’t terribly good at explaining, is he?

Well, High Forsoothly is very bad for the mental processes.  Think of all the drivel Gandalf could spout when he reverted to Ancient Mage mode.

Dear me… poor Kes. If she knows how much blood is in the human body, she’s doubtless well aware of what it means when your sword has a name.

Yep.  After all she writes that stuff.

And what a place to stop! “We have need of thee”!? … Can’t wait for Saturday!

Kes, on the other hand, would be very grateful to hide under the bed.  If she had a bed to hide under.

Diane in MN

doing a serial in tiny chunks like this

No problem with tiny chunks. Big problem with tiny MEMORY!

Yes.  Now try and imagine what it’s like being the author with a tiny memory.  No—wait—no—wasn’t it urglfwiddy in ep 4012?  Didn’t the attack mushrooms eat Gelasio’s new inamorata?  Was Serena’s to-die-for crumble pear, plum, peach or rambutan?

There will probably be quite a lot of tidying-up to be done for the hard-copy version . . .

This is, of course, not the author’s fault. But I am quite looking forward to some future date when Kes will be available in one BIG chunk

. . . toward that BIG chunk we are ALL looking forward to.††

Katinseattle

I’ll also just add here that while forum members don’t rank in the millions or anything, if I posted a birthday KES for every forum member who had a birthday . . . I WOULD BE VERY BUSY WRITING KES.

Helpful comment: No matter how many millions of readers you get, you’d still only have 365 KES episodes to write.

Oh, another frelling literalist.  In the first place there are weird odds and statistics about people’s birthdays:  http://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-22978,00.html

Never mind the logic of how you get there, twenty-three people doesn’t seem anything like enough to produce two with the same birthday.  These odds however were made vivid to me in junior-high chemistry [sic] and there weren’t even quite twenty-three of us in that class—but another girl and I had the same birthday.  So what’s the other end of that—how many forum members would we need to produce birthdays EVERY DAY of the year?  And if there are more than one birthday person on a given day, will one episode satisfy them?  Or if person x got an episode this year, would person y—with the same birthday—expect their episode that day the next year?

I prefer to reject the whole birthday-ep notion unilaterally.  It’s so much easier.  For me.

Dhudson

1. I am going to start calling someone, anyone, really, “Watermelon Shoulders”, cause it cracks me up.

Assuming that you will apply this to someone whose physique includes large powerful shoulders I hope you will tactfully ascertain in advance if the cognomen will be appreciated in a positive manner.

2. I am not sure whether to be glad or upset that I will never have strange apparitions in my house as I have not one, but two techies.

I’d go for grateful.  Kes is not going to be having a good time for a while.

 3. I am saying this quietly as to not get hurt, while I love Kes, I just recently reread Pegasus and the ending is a killer and I would really love to read Pegasus II. So please, Robin, please, keep writing both!

Hey.  I want to keep eating.  I have a desire so overwhelming to read PEG II—and PEG III—in their perfect, finished entirety that your mere readerly longing is comparatively speaking a rose petal drifting in the bottomless ravine.

* * *

* Let alone three dogs, which anyone but Southdowner might find excessive.

** Pav took against someone for the first time in weeks the other day.  This jerk has three or four working-hunter type dogs, spaniels.^  Because he is a working-hunter type bloke he is clearly superior to the rest of us with our wispy pet dogs, and while his dogs do obey him, they are always off lead and he clearly doesn’t feel any great need to curtail their fun in terrorising the riff-raff.  His big male thug doesn’t like my hellhounds, and they return the sentiment.

I saw this delightful crew coming toward us and I picked Pav up.  I don’t need the hassle and she doesn’t need to be intimidated by testosterone-poisoned idiots.  The human jerk sauntered up to me and said, in as sneering a tone as humanly possible, Are we frightened?  I said in as neutral a tone as possible, There are rather a lot of you.

I think it was probably because he stank of ciggies, and Pav is passionately anti-smoking^^, but it may have been that I didn’t sound as neutral as I wanted to.  But she went ballistic, which Jerkface, fortunately, found amusing.  He sauntered off . . . and I staggered, with my ballistic bullie, to the nearest bench^^^, where we sat for a long time before she finally morphed back into my Pav and we could continue our hurtle.  Meanwhile we’d lost the last of the daylight.  I think Parliament might pass a law ordering more daylight in December.  Christmas is fine# but I want daylight.

^ In his case this is definitely too many.

^^ Passionately enough I wonder if something happened with a cigarette-stinking human when I wasn’t around.

^^^ This only works if your exploding critter weighs under thirty-five pounds.  I’m glad I don’t have to try and Hold a . . . Great Dane, say.

# Sort of.  Christmas, for this still-new Christian, starts the countdown to Easter again.  I know I got through Easter last year—and I know about the resurrection, thank you—but it still scares the frzzlmp out of me.

*** In the first big fat tier of ordinary methods, the treble only goes straight out to the back and straight down to the front again with none of the jiggy bits that make inside ringing so . . . entertaining.  So if you’re ringing the one-two on handbells, the amount of mayhem that bobs and singles can cause is limited because only the two is affected;  the one just keeps on truckin’.  It’s still bad enough that the two goes doolally, because that changes the relationship between your two bells.

† Granted that the author/recorder’s difficulties with the whole concept of sleep may be muddying the ground here.  OH LOOK.  AN INARGUABLE REASON NOT TO BE ABLE TO SLEEP.  MODIFIED RAPTURE.

†† Well, I hope many of us are looking forward to.  Please.^

^ See:  keep eating.