Robin McKinley's Blog, page 44

Yaaaaaaaaaah I have to get up eeeeeaaaaaaarly tomorrow morning

 

Whose idea was this frelling Street Pastors deal?  Oh.  Yeah.  God’s.  I guess I have to put up with it then.*  I am crazily short on sleep, even for me.  Both Maxine—who’s doing the driving—and I left tonight for the Friday evening session wanting to do anything but pay attention to anything remotely important and there were a lot of us trainees dragging in to the church hall looking very Friday-evening-after-a-long-week-ish.  But Corey, who I don’t think believes in ‘tired’, was Fearless Seminar Leader again tonight and she’s so terrific I think all of us woke up again.  Maxine and I did anyway.

But tomorrow is a LONG DAY and STARTS VERY EARLY and we have to drive to Fartledread, which was not on the original training schedule, what a very good thing Maxine has SatNav.  But that doesn’t make Fartledread any closer, and you’ll excuse me if I go to bed.  My mind can whirr relentlessly while the rest of me is disposed comfortably horizontally, with lots of pillows.

* * *

* As blondviolinist said:   Just keep repeating to yourself: “At least this isn’t a church committee. At least this isn’t a church committee. At least….” (Etc.)  If that doesn’t work, try the words “church BUDGET committee,” and suddenly SPs will seem absolutely splendid.

Yep.  What she said.  With knobs on.  I would actually be curious to know some percentages of how many Street Pastors do what—what kind of thing—in their day jobs.  I hate hate HATE committee work anyway—all that sitting around doodling cartoons of each other^ and folding for compromises nobody likes because you’re tired, you’re hungry for something that didn’t come out of a plastic packet, and you’re not going to do any better.  Okay.  I have a bad attitude.  But I also sit indoors at a computer most of the day every frelling day, seven days a week, trying to think creatively.  The LAST thing I want to do in my time away from my computer . . . is sit around some other multiply-blasted table, indoors, and think creatively^^ . . . and with a bunch of other people.  The horror.  The horror.

But if you’re a Christian, uneasily casting about for an outlet for the ‘service’ part of your charter . . . well, if God suddenly says, Yo, do this, you say, Yes sir/madam/Your Sacrednesses, and that’s what you do.  But somewhere between the lightning-bolt from head office and you making a list of all the things you don’t want to do, there’s some wiggle room.^^^  Do fantasy writers want to hand out lollipops and bottles of water to real people rather the worse for their night on the tiles?  Do car mechanics want to relate to spluttering, misfiring people?  Or do Street Pastors mostly sign on to do what they think they already do well?  Do insurance adjustors want to bring a different kind of balance to a different kind of volatile situation?  Do social workers want a chance to empathise with people that doesn’t involve telling them the government won’t find them a house/help them get job training/subsidize child care?

I’ll have to ask.

^ There are some very good drawing programmes for your friendly tablet computer I believe.  I’m still a hard-copy doodler.+

+ Yes I am still grinding through the Bell Fund backlog.  But slowly.

^^ If it’s budgetary, maybe not too creatively

^^^ I know God always knows best.  But the comms system is flawed.

And the winners are…! Guest mini-blog from Blogmom

Carla C.     Sylvia C.     Nancy W.

Thanks to everyone who participated for helping us publicize SHADOWS!

For those of you who pre-ordered from Amazon and are receiving your copies, if you feel inspired to write a review, that would be lovely.

Read a sample! Order from Amazon. Order from Amazon UK.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!  Congratulations Carla, Sylvia and Nancy!   And thank you everyone!  –ed.

Publication Day

 

I almost never drink any more and I am sloshed.  But in a good way.

There are some occasions when perfectly nice fizz won’t do. It must be CHAMPAGNE.

 

CLINK. Notice the dewy glasses. I insist on my champagne being REALLY COLD.

I mean, the glasses are dewy.  It’s not just the photo is out of focus.  (You try taking a shot one-handed with your overspecified so-called point and shoot with the too many buttons while you’re clinking a champagne glass with the other.  Hand, I mean, not camera.  But the manual focus button takes a seventh or a ninety-sixth extra-jointed finger and the autofocus invariably chooses the wrong thing.)

Really serious brownie. The only acceptable brownie for a publication day.*

What else?  Who cares about what else?  Oh, all right, chicken liver pate and duck leg confit.  There was a little spinach hiding under the duck leg but as someone who spends most of her life 80% rabbit and eating mixing bowls full of raw salad every day nights like tonight are depraved.  After such debauchery what’s next?  Orgies?

Celebratory All Stars.

There’s a time for lady shoes and there’s a time for celebratory All Stars.

ONE of those ridiculously teeny bottles was NOT ENOUGH.

Well so what’s a woman in major bliss-blast from her first hit of REAL champagne in yonks and yonks to do, especially when she has a gently smiling, enabling husband with a credit card sitting on the other side of the table?  (Who doesn’t actually like champagne all that well, had half a glass to be companionable and moved on to red wine.)  The wait staff whisked the first bottle away in a tidy and attentive manner and when we left and I was inebriated enough not to care I asked the nice young man who had been our chief server if he could by any chance FIND THE FIRST BOTTLE so I could take it home?  Peter had already tipped him, he didn’t lose anything by grinning so hard his face was distinctly beginning to crack at the ears . . . but he produced the desired empty.  I think it probably wasn’t hard to find, I doubt that your average village pub has a whole lot of call for baby Moets.  So three cheers that they have them at all.

I need to go to bed.  I need sleep.  I will then need lots of caffeine tomorrow morning:  Street Pastors Training Weekend #2 begins.

* * *

*  Peter had the vanilla ice cream.  Also, this is the token footnote so I don’t get complaints.

 

As I post this it’s already tomorrow. It’s ALREADY PUBLICATION DAY.

 

So, just in case anyone is vacillating about rushing out and buying a copy of SHADOWS or putting their name urgently on their library’s waiting list*, how about a couple more pages after what’s in the on-line sample (see left-hand side bar) as encouragement**:

CHAPTER TWO***

I phoned Mom the next day after we were already most of the way to Longiron.  (In a house with five guys who were all machineheads, there were always spare cars.)  My excuse was that you didn’t ring the honeymoon couple early in the morning but I should have gone home first and taken Mongo for a walk.  But I was having trouble with the Mrs. Val concept and Mongo did occasionally miss his morning walk (now that he was a calm, mature adult dog) and all that meant was that I’d have to pick up the back yard as well as the sidewalk.  And we’d work extra-hard on herding at the shelter this afternoon to make up.  He probably wouldn’t do any worse indoors than eat a curtain.  He was still kind of a perpetual mouth machine.  I didn’t like the kitchen curtains much anyway.

The noise the car was making (some cars were past saving, even by Jill’s brothers) was a good excuse to keep the conversation short.  Mom sounded a little distracted, which was fine, and she agreed to give Mongo breakfast, and she and Val were going out in the afternoon, which was finer, because they wouldn’t be there when I got back.  The reprieve was only for a few hours, but I’d take what I could get.

The silverbugs were even more amazing than they’d been in June.  A big outbreak takes a while to reach its peak and the army posts observers to calculate when that’s going to be because that’s when they want to take it out.  The big zapper was just rolling off its flatbed transport when we arrived.  The area had been cordoned off with the orange-striped rope that meant “cobey units” to the rest of us—that and the big orange cobey logo on trucks and uniforms.  But there were quite a few people already in an advanced state of hilarity, which was probably the result of stamping too many silverbugs.  I recognised several kids from our class . . . including Eddie.  Which was probably why Jill parked on the far side of the green.

A mob of silverbugs tends to like an open space, which they’ll fill up like a gigantic swarm of glittering silver bees.  Longiron had a town green with a bandstand and a wishing well at one end and softball field taking up most of the rest.  The silverbugs were curled up, or maybe I mean spread out, over about three-quarters of the available area, hanging in the air like a kind of self-perpetuating firework only a lot more confusing.  I couldn’t look at a big silverbug display for long or I started getting sick and dizzy, but that first thirty seconds of staring was exhilarating in a way that was almost frightening—your mood rushed upward with the swirl of the silverbugs, and you felt like you were about to be told the ultimate secret of the universe, or at least how to fly by turning your feet into rocket blasters.  “Come on,” said Jill.  “Don’t sit here.  I’ll protect you,” meaning she wouldn’t let me step on any bugs.  Reluctantly I climbed out of the car, but I was having a kind of f-word moment myself, which was that Jill’s was bothering her.

We made our way slowly toward the orange rope.  There were other cars and other people, but they were mostly (sober) grownups on this side.  The bug center was toward the other end of the green from us—silverbugs like open areas, but they always collect off center.  They were looking rather galactic today, with long, slowly spinning arms like your science textbook’s artist’s conception of the Milky Way.  But the way the light reflected off them made me start to forget which way was up and which way was down. . . .

I looked away.  There was a tree and I put my hand on it.  I was seeing a kind of after-image, like a tiny checkerboard, where the black squares were pinholes into nowhere.  “I think I’d better go back to the car,” I said.

“I’ve seen enough too,” said Jill.

“You okay?” I said.  I’d’ve expected Jill to want to watch the light show a while longer.  When they turned the zapper on, the air would tighten up like your skin when you get goose bumps and then there were great jagged anti-flashes—I don’t know what else to call them, if you’ve never seen it, and lots of people in Newworld have never seen a silverbug mob—as the bugs popped or squished or whatever it was they did in great sweeping swathes.  (We’d been there when they turned it on at Hyderabad in June.  But our moms didn’t know that one of Jill’s brothers had also taken us to the last big outbreak in Birdhill four years ago.)  They were moving the zapper into position now.  I wanted to be back in the car when they flipped the switch.  The silverbugs that didn’t get zapped would dart out through the crowd of onlookers, almost like they were deliberately fleeing annihilation.  Almost like they were alive.

* * *

* If you talk enough of your friends into doing the same the library will buy more copies.

** Not to say electric cattle prod.

*** You’ll have to imagine the little origami header.  See?  You need to get your hands on a copy of this book.

Random goodness and badness

 

If the thrice-blasted hellhounds would eat their food,* I might be feeling almost cheerful.**  After a fairly disastrous practise last Wednesday, Sunday afternoon at Forza there were only six of us so we all had to ring all the time, I am, siiiiiiigh, better on six***, and being necessary is always good for morale.  Yesterday’s voice lesson went almost too well . . . although if I were normal it would just have been a good lesson, you know?  Arrrrrrgh.  After several traumatic, squeaky weeks when I’ve mainly been going in for Nadia to reset me, so I can sing at all, yesterday I went in with almost enough voice to do something with before Nadia winkled a little more of it out from under the bed or behind the piano or among the towels in the linen cupboard or wherever it is it hides with the result that once or twice I made a real noise and scared myself silly.†  Please.  I have voice lessons so I can learn to sing.  You know, better.  So I can become a singer a choir might actually want rather than grimly put up with.  So . . . I appear to make some progress and all of my body parts, especially the mind, morale and superego ones, go into full reverse:  no no no, we can’t have that, we can’t make a real noise.  Eeeeeep.  —In a minute I get to find out what is going to happen when I try to sing today, at home, without Nadia on winkle alert.  I can hardly frelling wait.

Also, there was that interesting delivery yesterday.

And then tonight I rang at Fustian†† and we were only six again—a different six, I hasten to add—and so all of us had to ring all the time and I wasn’t too bad.†††

So as not to interrupt this uncharacteristic glow of (relative) self-worth I thought I’d torture you with a few more non-responses to forum comments. . . .

Angelia

“the thousand young of the Black Goat of the Woods”

I laughed so hard at this that I think I did myself an injury!

Once an H P Lovecraft reader, always scarred for life.  I admit I worry a little that Kes’ knowledge of pop culture is as dire as . . . um, mine.  Lovecraft, MR James, Tolkien and . . . Buffy.  Maybe I should hang out at Forbidden Planet more and pick up a smattering of current.

Shalea

And me with no dog currently.

Aww.  ::Hugs.::  Is it still too soon?  Are you waiting for the right dog to appear Almost As If By Magic?  Or are you investigating possible new breeds?

Libby Gorman

I was particularly pleased with the mention of “Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad,” since I had to read it last year for a YA lit course online. It’s great when you get to apply new knowledge!

YA?  MR James?  He must be spinning in his grave.  I’m sure he felt he saw quite enough of the little perishers in his day job.

Dhudson

Why turn off the engine? Scary things mean you NEVER turn off the car engine and get out!

B_twin

EXACTLY!!!

Snork.  It all depends on your particular paranoia profile.  I did think about this but I’m a vehicle turner-offer, and as I’ve mentioned (many times) before, Kes is more nearly than usual one of my alternate-me heroines.  Unless she or the story demands otherwise (which in fact necessarily happens a lot) she reacts the way I would.  I’d turn Merry—or Wolfgang—off.  I’m much more worried that the handbrake will fail and the vehicle will RUN AWAY not merely leaving me STRANDED but probably self-destructing in collision with a Large Tree inconveniently near the road.  At least in a vehicle that won’t START you can roll up all the windows and stay inside.  In these days of mobile phones you can even ring for help.

Abigailmm

You know, back when Kes was new, you used to post her twice a week. *wheedles* … maybe again??? You’ve got two month’s eps in the bag even at that rate, according to the evil chuckles a few blog-nights ago. Please? Just so your loyal fans don’t expire? It would work fine for ‘short Wednesdays’.

*hazza hopeful*

Back when the [KES] world was new I was ripping eps off faster too.  Now that the story has settled down and become a story I’m writing eps at more ordinary story-writing speed which is to say slow.‡  Also . . . I’m planning on taking at least a brief break when I get to the end of part one:  I have to think about presenting what we have so far in a manner that Merrilee can work with Toward Eventual Hard Copy.  I also want to take a deeeeeeep breath about which of several directions the story is going to plunge forward into in part two.  I should also focus on PEG II uninterrupted for a bit.  So the faster we get through the eps in hand the sooner you’re going to be KESless for a little while.

All of that said, I may very well give you the last few twice a week.  You’ll still want to kill me, but you’ll only want to kill me half as badly.  Presumably.

The WoobDog

[wordless howls of rage]

Yes, exactly.

Bratsche

What happens when a   twenty-five-hundred pound horse

I was astonished to see this number go by! I read it twice to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. Golly those are some big horses! I’m looking forward to seeing more of them (someday). I wonder if Kes ever ends up riding a horse…surely she must, I just hope she gets to start with a smaller one!

Remember these guys are supposed to be BIG.  These are great big horses carrying great big blokes.  If you figure a Shire, the biggest horse going, weighs in at around 3000 pounds—well, these are big burly weight-bearing slightly-sub-Shires.  As for Kes’ horse. . . .

Well, we have to end on a Mwa hahahahahahahaha, don’t we?  Mwa hahahahahahahahaha.

* * *

* We’re having a major food-is-the-enemy attack and it’s making me CRAAAAAAAAAZY.  Pav watches in astonishment from her crate and occasionally offers to deal with those distressing full bowls.^

^ Southdowner, reading this, with the potential prospect of showing a slim, svelte, unfashionable hellterror in a class of fashionable wobbly sausages on legs, is going yeah, yeah, great idea.  —I do understand the problem.  And if Southdowner does eventually talk me into this—I’m still resisting—there will be VIOLENCE from an owner with poor impulse control if Pav is marked down for not being a wobbly sausage on legs.

** Only almost.  I got my treatment plan from dentist from R’yleh today.  Moan.  I need a best-seller.  I need it NOW.  Buy some extra copies of SHADOWS for the cousin you haven’t spoken to in twenty years because peace offerings are good and the old friend who only reads FINANCIAL TIMES and clearly needs broader horizons and your colleague you never have anything to talk to about and your dog.  Especially your dog.

*** It’s still what I’m frelling USED TO.  I frelling joined Forza because it’s my best local chance to learn something more than the three or four basic five and six bell methods AND TO LEARN ANYTHING AT ALL ON SEVEN AND EIGHT BELLS.  But I am a very, very, very, very, very slow learner.

† I also suddenly went sharp.  Keeping to the wretched tune is not usually one of my biggest problems.  Nadia said, I don’t mind sharp.  Sharp means what you’re doing has suddenly become easier.  We can work with that.

†† After the Treatment Plan I REALLY NEEDED distraction.

††† Hey, I rang a touch of Stedman—only doubles, but even so—casually.  Devlin called for Stedman and I grabbed a rope—because I had to:  only six ringers—and he said, are you all right for singles?  Oh yes, I said, crisply, and not thinking about how I had duffed it up that gruesome night at New Arcadia^ a few weeks back when I couldn’t ring anything . . . and then tonight I rang my horrible coathanger single beautifully.  I should say again that the Fustian band is so deplorably superb that all you really have to do is NOT go horribly wrong and they’ll float you the rest of the way.  Still.  Stedman is Stedman and it counts.

^ I know.  My own fault for ringing there.

‡  SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH.  I’d write faster if I could.  I’d be delighted to write faster.  If I could.

Letting sleeping hellhounds lie

 

Zzzzzzzzzz

 

 

Do you ever have the feeling we’re being, I don’t know, WATCHED?

 

Oh . . . I suppose I might give it a try. . . . Right after I finish my nap.

 

This is a VERY inadequate blanket.

 

AND THEN TODAY’S POST ARRIVED.

 

 

Oh yes, that’s MUCH better. Maybe a little nobbly though . . .

 

 

YEEEESSSSSSSSSS,

 

 

Oh, and how about fabulous little origami chapter head ornaments? Yes?

So I had it all planned, what I was going to do this week, assuming that the BOOKS would arrive in time for some kind of Big Ta-Da on Thursday.  And then the books did arrive, um, today, and I totally LOST IT and had to POST IT RIGHT AWAY.  RIGHT NOW.  TODAY.*

And Peter and I are going out to dinner on the 26th.  I’ll take a photo of a glass of champagne, okay?

YOU’RE GETTING ALL YOUR CONTEST ENTRIES IN, RIGHT?

* * *

* And yes, Pav was going entirely mental while I was doing stuff to/with the hellhounds and not to/with her.  But it’s all in the prepositions.  I haven’t the energy to discuss posing politely accompanied by a book to/with a hellterror.  I was gardening with her this afternoon and then we swept the floor TOGETHER and . . . THAT’S ENOUGH.^

^ Also, recent photos have tended to favour the hellterror.  This imbalance must be redressed.

Pet blessing

 

The hellgoddess did what?

Note rejected dinner.  Siiiiiiiigh. *

* * *

* There was a pet-blessing service at St Radegund today.^  Southdowner had been muttering about coming down again one of these weekends so I suggested this one and we could get blessed.  Of course there was then a whole Keystone Kops thing of signalless mobile phones and disappearing texts and one gang coming in the wrong door of the church as the other was exiting by some other seemingly door-like opening and so on.  But it all worked out eventually.

Because life is supposed to be complex^^ I was up too late last night reading another unexpectedly good book^^^ which is to say the beginning was eh and I was just dutifully reading a few more chapters before I threw it across the room and then—OH.  So I had to finish it.  Besides, there was a happy mostly-asleep hellterror in my lap.#

This meant that getting everyone hurtled and fed—especially since hellhounds are in a Not Eating## phase again—in time for me to hurtle off to ring at Forza for afternoon service today was a trifle more challenging than strictly desirable.  And then my usual car park was closed.  Curses.  I came panting up that last horrible flight of prehistoric stairs at last### and said to the assembled that I needed to leave a few minutes early because I wanted to go to a pet blessing service . . . and I could see everyone (not a pet owner in the lot) trying not to laugh.

And the car park I got Wolfgang into never has a mobile signal.  I don’t remember this from one emergency car park situation to the next, of course, because one of the reasons I like my usual car park is because it usually has a mobile signal.~

I ended up sending poor Southdowner about four messages, the original, a resend of the original, and one or two that were one letter each, which was me trying to juggle the beastly phone—and then a fifth one once I was home again saying ignore all previous, I’ll meet you at the church . . . and that one seems never to have arrived at all.

The hellhounds and I~~ got there and . . . no Southdowner.  Who was there however was the thrice-rat-frelling-blasted terrier that lives next door to Third House and craps in my driveway and who objects to our presence in our garden from his side of the fence.  And he RECOGNISED the hellhounds and there was near murder done—and the ruckus he was making set all the other dogs off . . . except my hellhounds who did their best bemused, disdainful ‘why are the peasants revolting’ shtick.  I retreated several pews further back—so we could see the terrier coming when he escaped his owner—and Darkness, bless his little cotton socks, lay down in the aisle with his back to the rest of the critters in the best nanny-nanny-boo-boo mime I’ve seen in a long time.  Chaos, however, was in full drama queen mode, staring at me with huge tragic eyes, making tiny pathetic noises deep in his throat and trying to creep for the door. . . .

We eventually found Southdowner, Ahab and Mississippi Mud Pie, aka Missy, Lavvy’s sister and Pav’s auntie, standing in front of the cottage—with Pav indoors making even more noise than that nasty little Jack Russell—and all six of us went off and deserted her ~~~. . . and went back to the church to see if our nice vicar was still there and he was and we got OUR VERY OWN PERSONAL BLESSING, which was particularly pleasing because I’m sure that nasty little terrier had blocked the first one from getting as far as the hellhounds and me.=

* * *

^ I’ve been to church—three different churches in fact—three times in the last twenty-four hours.  I’m such a wild thing.

^^ This is in the Scriptures somewhere.  I’m sure it is.  Give me a minute.

^^^ Yes, you’re right, it’s been way too long since my last book rec.

# Our last thing at night ritual needs work.  At the moment I’m sitting on the floor on spare dog bedding to protect my seatbones from Increasing Weight of Hellterror, next to the hellhound crate so that Chaos can be a part of whatever the deal is.  Darkness is delighted to be upstairs alone in the hellhound bed in my office but Chaos is pretty much attached at the hip.  My hip that is.+  After about an hour of this arrangement I can’t get up.

+ He will do anything for me but eat.

## With random geysering.  Sigh.

### They’re not just Neanderthal, they’re Neanderthal beta.

~ I remind myself that not that long ago mobiles hadn’t been invented yet.  True.  But in the first place you laid your plans more carefully in advance and in the second place when things went wrong nobody blamed you for not sending them a TEXT.

~~ No, no Pav.  I decided that more dogs than I had hands was not going to be a good idea on this occasion.  I was right.

~~~ It’s okay, we came back and took the three bullies up to Third House’s garden for a RAMPAGE and if the gods are kind+ we may have a Hellterror Rioting video later in the week.

+ And/or God the Parent tells them to behave

= It was the monks last night, and then of course I went to St Margaret’s tonight, where Maxine had had her observation night with the Street Pastors and it was WAY TOO EXCITING and I’ve changed my mind, I think my way into holiness and Christian community is knitting kneeler cushion covers. . . .

Shadows is coming!

Publication day is September 26, 2013!

Don’t forget to Blog it, tweet it, Facebook it by September 25 and enter to win a signed copy of SHADOWS. Read a sample!

Available for pre-order from Amazon.

KES, 97

 

NINETY SEVEN

I was weeping.  It went from a tactful little dripping to the kind of violent spastic sobbing where you can’t get your breath and your chest hurts like someone with a jackhammer has mistaken you for a mean bit of pavement.  Go on, despise me.  I don’t care.  But think about it—starting with the fact that the divorce hadn’t been my idea.  I didn’t know if I’d still loved Gelasio or not, but I was used to him.  I liked having someone else around and it had been fine that it was Gelasio.  I liked knowing which was his favorite coffee mug and that I’d die if I ever touched it.  I liked going to films with him because I liked talking about what we’d seen afterwards.  I liked that we both preferred deep-dish pizza with extra cheese and then fought about what else to put on it.

I had thought we were still pretty good in bed together.  Including when it wasn’t in bed.  I’d thought that making love in the shower, in the roof garden, on my mother’s dining room table when we occasionally terrier-sat (that table is the only flat place in her apartment high enough for you not to be joined by interested, wanting-to-be-part-of-whatever-was-going-on Ghastlies, and you still have to move the chairs first.  Before you ask, every generation of Mom’s Ghastlies learns to open doors) was a sign of a healthy, resilient relationship.

I’d been wrong.

I had already lost my husband.  Now I had apparently also lost my mind.

I cried harder.  There was a large black dog in the way.  So I cried on her.  Nothing I could snivel on her would make that situation any worse.  First on the list tomorrow:  Sid.  Never mind unpacking.  Never mind nine hundred and three book boxes.  Brush Sid.  A bath would be better but I doubted I was up for negotiating a bath, never high on the list of a dog’s favorite activities, with something Sid’s size.

At the moment I didn’t feel I was up for anything.  Anything ever again.  I hugged my dog.  I had dog hair up my nose and in my mouth.  I probably had it in my eyes too but I was crying it right back out again.

Tomorrow.  Think about tomorrow.  Think about the fact that there had to be a tomorrow because I had a dog to take care of.  She’d only just come in off the street.  She’d only slept warm for the first time last night.  She’d only had a day and a half of remedial feeding.  Remember your dog.  You can’t disintegrate or run off into the blue or fall terminally into the lake.  You have a dog.  She chose you.  She chose you.

As the convulsive sobbing began to ease I became aware that some exceptionally bony bit of Sid was digging a painful hole in my thigh.  “Oof,” I said.  I let go of her.  She slithered off my lap again, taking her bony bits with her.

I was still shivering with shock and didn’t feel like driving yet.  Sid and I leaned against each other and stared out through Merry’s windshield.  There was enough moonlight to silver the fields—at least I assumed that was moonlight and not actual frost.  These were the Willendorf fields, I was reasonably sure (although I wasn’t reasonably sure of anything after recent alleged events), but I didn’t see any cows (or trolls).  Presumably the cows were all tucked up under their blankets with the central heating on back at the barn.  Trolls are, I believe, more weather resistant.

There was a thought growing in the back of my mind.  I tried to make it go away, but it wouldn’t.  It got larger and started trudging determinedly toward the front of my mind.  No.  No.  No.

Yes.  I sighed.  I unlocked the door and slid out.  It seemed a long, long way before my feet touched ground.  I stood, swaying, hanging onto the door.  Sid whined.  “I’m not going far,” I said.  “I’m just going to look for . . .”  I should have a flashlight.  I’m not going to see anything without a flashlight.  There was usually one lost somewhere in the torn lining of my jacket.  As I groped for it Sid whined again.  “Whatever,” I said.  I found my flashlight.  I reached for the end of Sid’s lead and unwound it from the seatbelt.  She jumped down with perfect aplomb.  My dog.

I turned the flashlight on and shined it around us but there was nothing to see.  Black tarmac road.  Big deal.  We walked back a little way toward town, the way the horsemen (or horseamazons and Murac) had been going.  It was still a paved road.  It didn’t take hoofprints.

In the end we didn’t need the flashlight.  We didn’t go far.  Sid noticed before I did:  her tail came up and I saw her focus on a black blob in the road.  I carefully did not think about what the blob might be.  We walked up to it and stopped.  I shone the flashlight on it, but my nose had already told me what it was:  a very fresh pile of horse dung.

 

Peter Dickinson talks to Sara Paretsky. And vice versa

 

http://crimespreemag.com/a-conversation-between-peter-dickinson-and-sara-paretsky/ *

And because of course you’ll immediately want to read (or reread) THE POISON ORACLE, yaaaaaay, because Small Beer Press has just reissued it, both hard copy and ebook:

http://smallbeerpress.com/books/2013/09/10/the-poison-oracle/ **

* * *

* I’ve met her^ and . . . ahem . . . this is not a good photo.  Say I.^^

^ She ran a panel that Peter was on at some murder-con thing a million years ago.

^^ Author photos!  AAAAAAAAAAAUGH!!  –I hope they at least asked her permission.+

+ I think the one of Peter is pretty cute.  But I may be biased.

** And if you read the fine print carefully you’ll see that it’s coming out on audible too.  I can’t get it to show as either available or pending on audible, but that may just be me.  I tend to listen to theology out hurtling lately.  This’ll make a change.