Robin McKinley's Blog, page 61

Boston

 

You’ll forgive me if I don’t witter on in my standard manner tonight.  I came indoors from moving (slowly) around the cottage garden this afternoon and (naturally) checked email and Twitter feed . . . and discovered the latter unrolling in a long awful list of what’s going on in Boston.

I’m cross-eyed from clicking on links and reading the same bad news:  two explosions at the finish line of the marathon, at least two dead and ‘many’ injured.  If you’ve been out in the garden too and then have come indoors to feed your critters and your family and put your feet up and have a nice restful evening, and therefore haven’t immediately turned on the news or checked your Twitter feed:  Google it for yourself, and I’m sorry about your restful evening.  Any link I post will be out of date by the time you read this.

I am, of course, thinking of 9/11, sitting on the sofa clutching a pillow and three whippets, watching the BBC banner streaming across the bottom of the TV screen—I never saw the towers falling, there was just (just!) a still photo of the first airplane striking, and I’ve never wanted to look at archive footage since.  All my friends were okay—Hannah and Merrilee and my editors and various other mostly publishing people—but they were all fearfully shaken and they all knew someone who wasn’t okay.

I lived in downtown Boston for two years right after BEAUTY, my first book, came out.  I was in my mid-twenties and in some ways discovering the world for the first time.  Boston was a lovely place to do that discovering in.

Two of my oldest friends live in Boston:  friends from those days.  I’ve emailed both—the news keeps telling you to text, the bandwidth is better, but my friends and are old and I don’t even have text numbers for them, although I’ve just about learnt to text—and, bless the email angels and my friends, I got answers pretty quickly:  they’re fine.  Our own mod Gryphyn is fine;  Jodi’s agent is fine.

But there are people who very much aren’t fine.

Someone RT’d a tweet reminding us to remember this, happening at home or close to home for a lot of us, the next time we read of something similar happening somewhere else in the world, which is home to those people, even if we don’t know any of them.  Yes.  Absolutely.  But tonight I’m thinking of Boston.

What a world.

How not to build a garden – guest post by Ithilien

 

Five years ago, I told Faramir that we had to buy a house with a garden big enough to grow lots of lovely fruits and veggies. And it had to be a proper in-ground garden, not just a collection of pots.* So we bought a house.

Four and a half years later, we started work on our new garden.**

It seemed like a really simple project. It was a tiny patch of lawn. All we had to do was remove the grass, put down gravel on the paths, and build some simple raised beds. I figured it would take about a month, working every weekend. We’d start in mid-winter so that we’d be ready to plant in spring.

And we decided that we should do it all ourselves and save some money. It would be a wonderful bonding experience for us to build it together.

You can stop laughing now.

————————–

First, we dug up the lawn. The well-established lawn on heavy, wet clay soil.

This is what it used to look like.

It was obviously too small a job to justify hiring any machinery.***

Ten weeks later, we started to build the paths. First, we laid down weed mat between the beds.+

Then it was time to cover the paths with gravel. (The newspaper shows the shape of the beds. More or less.)

Did you know that gravel is very heavy?++ #

Faramir thought the result looked rather like a car park. Our neighbours tried to make encouraging noises.

I pointed out that we’d done all the hard labour. Putting together the garden beds would much quicker and easier.

Of course, I didn’t want any chemicals around my organic, sustainable garden, so I ordered the latest eco-friendly, sustainable, termite-resistant wood.

There was a minor problem with the wood.

There was a small delay in obtaining more wood from the sawmill.

The next challenge was high school geometry.

How hard could it be to build some simple boxes? We’re both engineers!

Actually, don’t answer that…

Did I mention how very grateful we were to the cousin who lent us a wheelbarrow?

The exciting part! Planting!

Ta-da!

——————————————-

* Even if it was a rapidly growing collection of pots. Pots are great because there’s no commitment. You can always move things around.^

^ Yep.  And if all the plumbing in your town runs under your garden you have the perfect excuse to stay confused and indecisive forever.

** It took some time to agree on a design. I wanted this. Or this. Or this. Faramir wanted something that would fit on a 5 x 5 metre lawn.

*** Halfway through the lawn excavation, I put my hands on my hips and glared at Faramir. “Who wanted this stupid garden anyway?” But we persisted. And it only took two and a half months.

+ www.weedgunnel.com.au  -  water and air permeable, kills weeds by blocking out light. And it’s biodegradable, so it doesn’t disintegrate into nasty little plastic strips over the  years.

++ We didn’t have a wheelbarrow at first, so we tried carrying the gravel in buckets. That bright idea lasted about ten minutes. Then we rang my handyman cousin and begged him for a loaner.

#  Yes.  And eventually the BOTTOM FELL OUT of my heavy-duty, guaranteed-just-as-good-as-metal-but-eighty-six-times-lighter plastic wheelbarrow.

KES, 74

 

SEVENTY FOUR

“Well, I don’t live in it yet,” I replied, possibly with asperity.  I’d wasted five whole minutes chatting.

“That’s what I’m here for,” he said.  “You got something to prop the door open?  I’ll just bring stuff up and stack it inside, yeah?”

“Er,” I said.  I’d closed the door against the draft.  I moved one of the few pathetic boxes I’d brought up back in front of the door, by which time Mike was halfway up the stairs again with a book box and some dangerously-teetering dog food balanced on top of it.  I hadn’t realised garage work gave you that kind of stamina.  He set them down and turned back to the stairs.  “Um,” I said.

He looked at me, eyebrows raised.

“Um,” I said again.  “Why are you here?”

An expression it took me a moment to translate crept over his face.  Sheepish.  He looked sheepish.  It made him look about eighteen.  No, sixteen.  “Serena likes you,” he said.  “And I like Serena.”

“Ah,” I said, but he was gone down the stairs again.

Things went a lot faster after that.  Boxes seemed to be steaming up the stairs by themselves, although I heard the tramp of human feet often enough not to get too worried about this possibility.  (If one of them broke open revealing cascades of burgundy velvet and cream lace, then I’d worry.)  Mike was booming along at such a rate that I’d only get in his way if I tried to help, so I settled cravenly for moving the boxes he heaved through the door a little further toward their eventual location, kitchen, parlour, bed, books.  I did pelt down the stairs to the van once, avoiding Mike like Jason and Gwen dodging the chompers, with a box I’d emptied, and scooped up all the freshly-revealed loose plastic bags of underwear and t-shirts and a few pairs of All-Stars that hadn’t fit into the All-Stars box, and a few odds and ends I couldn’t remember ever having seen before, let alone expending valuable van space on, like the little silky bag of what looked like hair ribbons.  Hair ribbons?  I hadn’t held still for a hair ribbon since my mother had a brief spasm of pigtails when I was about six.  Flowerhair had been known to indulge in hair ribbons.  Not me.  Well, little silky bags of what might be hair ribbons don’t take up much space.

By the time I’d tottered up the stairs again with my feeble addition to the mêlée there was a wall of boxes inside the front door.  Between it and the house wall I could see something tall and narrow;  I’d decided at the last minute to save my cheap but nicely framed Burne-Jones and Margaret MacDonald repro prints.  I put my minimal contribution at the foot of the stairs to the second floor with the two other boxes of clothing and headed for the kitchen.  I wanted my cup of tea and I wanted to offer Mike a sandwich, which meant I needed to take inventory of what had come out this trip that you could make a sandwich with.  In light of Mike’s heroism I was even willing to sacrifice Eats’ muffins.

Sid reappeared from wherever she had been, terrorising the indoor vermin or possibly making friends with the madwoman in the attic.  I wondered if she recognised a kitchen as a Place Where Food Happens (although her previous owner didn’t sound like the kind of person who would want a dog just hanging out being a dog) or whether she was learning the rustle of a biodegradable Godzilla Food grocery bag.  I was holding a bag containing the end of a loaf of bread that Sid had had most of already, a can of parsnip soup and a tin of what should be rather good ham.  She caught my eye and sat.  Busted.

“You just ate,” I said.  She gave me a that was dog food look and remained sitting.

“I don’t approve of feeding dogs ham,” I said.  “But there might be more dog food.”   I rummaged, and came up with a bag of Supa-Vit Chickee Deelite and a can of Blood and Chrome (“Make Your Dog a Galactic Hero!”).  I rinsed out the brownie pan.  I might still have my old brownie pan.  It was green china with white polka dots and I could remember trying to decide whether it reminded me too much of late nights with Gelasio watching Galaxy Quest and Red Sonja and Serenity and eating brownies, but I couldn’t remember what I’d decided.

When I set it down Sid looked at it a minute, and then looked at me.    “Yes,” I said.  “It’s more dog food.  It’s good for you.  Muffins are not good for you.”  Sid gave me a I would dispute that look, but she did then deign to eat her dog food.  I put more water in her bowl and went to find Mike.

I found him setting another book box down.  When he straightened up and spoke I was relieved that he was a little out of breath.  “Your neighbors are here,” he said.  “I thought I’d warn you.”

“They are?” I said in surprise.  “Hayley said they’re never here.  Uh . . . warn me?”

“Yeah,” he said.

La la la la September la la la la

 

And the end of September, what’s more.

B_twin_1

*may the editors not rely on spellcheck*

Yes.  Well.  Ahem.  The really frustrating thing is that I’d had this conversation with both my editor’s assistant and, through her, the copyeditor, about my little retro peculiarities, including that ‘any more’ is two words, as is ‘some day’ and ‘any time’, and that single nouns ending in ‘s’ take an apostrophe only, not an apostrophe-s, thus:  princess’, not princess’s.  One of SHADOWS’ main characters has a nickname ending in s.

The final manuscript file undoubtedly had errors, because all final manuscripts have errors, and some of those errors may even conceivably include an ‘anymore’ and an s’s.  But the style sheet was right.

So.  Guess what.  In the ARCs, modern style ravages the landscape.  My landscape.  Some button-pressing twit didn’t read the notes, and either did or did not press the right button or buttons, and therefore ARCs were produced in which ‘anymore’ hideously reigns.  Arrrgh.  Poor Zandria has toiled through the blasted book yet again, putting these right again, and I’m slashing them with a large red marking pencil as I go through . . . again.

I did realise one slightly bizarre thing.  It is not news that I do not enjoy reading galleys.  It’s another philosophical, or possibly quantum-physical, level of the way when the finished book finally arrives and you the author tremblingly take it out of its padded envelope and look at it . . . it will fall open on a page with a more or less severe typo on it.*  This is a law of the universe.  Reading galleys all you can ever see is the bits you didn’t fix, the things you made the wrong choices about . . . and it’s too late to change.  These are page proofs.  The only things you can alter now are actual printers’ errors.  Like ‘anymore’.

I am ENDLESSLY distracted by second, third, and ninety-sixth guessing myself about all those things it is too late to change.  With scraping the puppy off the ceiling, having flu and—up to two nights ago—bringing indoors increasing numbers of little green trying-to-grow things and taking them out again in the morning, I have not been having a good time with the galley pages of SHADOWS.  To the extent that when the ARCs arrived a few days ago I started all over, reading an ARC.  And what I realised is . . . it’s easier.  I think because it looks like a book.  Loose pages still look like manuscript.  It’s harder to focus your mind on the fact that they’re merely unbound book pages.  Every time you read something you’d like to change you revert—you forget again.  But a book-shaped object is clearly a book, to your subconscious.  All right, to my subconscious.  In a book-shaped object I pay better attention to the ‘anymore’s.  Which ironically I’m picking more of up in the ARC than I did in the loose pages, because I’m finally reading from the right superficial non-quantum level.

SarahAllegra

It must be a pretty great feeling to see it coming together like this.

Well, see above.  The bottom line is that I’m a neurotic control freak.  But I’m a neurotic control freak who writes stories for a living.  I love what I do.  I wouldn’t want to do anything else.  And I don’t mind the hard-work aspect;  you’re lucky to have the opportunity to work hard at something you love.  And stuff happens and we’re all mortal.  What I do wish is that I could do what I do with a little less useless anguish.  Very tiring, useless anguish.  And when the fit’s over you feel like such a jerk.  In the five minutes before you plunge into the next sea of useless anguish.

They’re still tweaking the colours on the art.  The ARC covers are also printed on glossy paper and they’re thinking some kind of matte for the final jacket.  This means that the colours I’m seeing are not what they’re ultimately going to look like.  As a result there has been a fair amount of Reassure the Author going on.  The point of this story is that I wrote saying that (among other things) I didn’t think I liked the yellow of my name . . . and I was thinking, my name.  My name on a BOOK JACKET.  If you count the picture books, the number of titles out there with my name on them is getting pretty close to twenty.  And it’s still a thrill.  Every time.  My name on a book jacket.  Golly.  Wow.

And to everyone, on the forum, FB, Twitter and on email who said something like:

Okay, pre-ordered.

Instantly went to Amazon and pre-ordered!

Ditto.

Luckily, my local independent bookstore both takes pre-orders and is on speed-dial.

Tritto!?  (Me, too, anyway.)

Just pre-ordered my copy!

To the pre-order!

YAAAAAAAAAAAY all of you.  YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY.

Thank you.  The ‘earn my living’ part of writing stories is only possible because of people like you.  I may be a cow** but I’m a grateful and appreciative cow.

Katinseattle

September is FOREVER. I want it now.

I can hardly wait till September either.  Pav will be thirteen months old and BEGINNING TO SHOW SOME SENSE.  Er . . . right?

Dictionaria13

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEE

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (With all the volume and high-pitched-ness that only a teenager can pull off)

Snork.  True.  But you have to be old for genuine paint-peeling resonance.  To make the sort of noise that causes chimneys to fall over and wheels to come off cars.

Diane in MN

::sends encouraging thoughts to publisher’s minions::

Yes please.  I am not hiding under the bed.  I am not.

EMoon

Ooooooh! You get ARCs with cover art? Mine are all purple and white with Del Rey logos in little purple blocks all over them and no pictures. 

I dunno.  That actually sounds really cool and collector-y.  But when do you see the art?  Do they send you flats?  Do you have enough lead time to get really really stressed about it?  Either what it is, or what it isn’t, or what they’re going to do unless they change their minds and do something else?

Blondviolinist

::stares fixedly at calendar to make it September through sheer force of will::

Would you add something in about Pav beginning to show sense, please?  And maybe something about hellhounds eating all three meals a day every day.  Sigh.  Critters exist to keep you grounded. . . .

* * *

* In SHADOWS, it will probably be ‘anymore’.

** And the few people who are telling me they won’t read anything of mine till I write the third Damar book, or that they wish I’d go back to rewriting fairy tales because that’s what I’m good at, or that they’re holding out for PEG II . . . bite me.  I write what I can write, what I am given to write.  When the first version of PEG II crashed and burned a year and whatever ago and I couldn’t start over again immediately, SHADOWS frelling saved me.  And I like it.  I think it’s a good book.  And it was a story I wanted to write anyway, even if I hadn’t been planning on writing it just now—and even if, on paper, it’s not at all the story I thought it was going to be.  But that’s totally standard in my life as a story-teller.  The story is never what I thought it was going to be.

Not all of my books are going to appeal to all of my readers (unfortunately).  I know this.  It makes me sad, but it’s not a problem.  Being told that someone isn’t even going to give SHADOWS a chance because it’s not the third Damar novel, or the second PEGASUS novel, or a fairy tale retelling—or a sequel to SUNSHINE—well, I find that pretty problematic, not that there’s a blind bit of anything I can do about it.

Dog: FAIL

 

Some things may be looking up.  No, no, nothing about ARCs and books scheduled for publication in September*.  Both hellhounds ate lunch today for the first time in weeks.  Of course then we had an unexpected meltdown about dinner, arrrgh.  However, eating was eventually accomplished at dinner as well . . . and then they got all cranky about Pav getting bits of chicken for afters too.  Guys.  Your neurosis is showing.

But I was thinking despairingly today . . . I may not only be starting to hope strenuously that Pav doesn’t get too big to pick up**, I may spend my declining years specialising in dogs that are small enough to pick up.***  It is the simple truth that Other People’s Dogs are starting to undermine my delight in my own dogs.  Yes.  It’s that bad.

I think it was two days ago I was giving Pav a last quick sprint around the centre of town.  It was after dark and New Arcadia is not known for its heady night life.  There were only a few people on the street.  Two of them were standing talking to each other outside the Troll and Nightingale.  Between them was a lying-down dog.

I am paranoid, but like the old joke goes, even paranoids have real enemies.  This dog was just lying there but I knew I didn’t like the look of it, and I had taken note that it was not wearing a lead.  I think we’ll not worry about it, I said to Pav, and picked her up.  I then strolled out into the street, so we would be passing Ominous Dog at a little distance instead of possibly invading its private space by passing it on the, you know, public pavement.

We hadn’t even come level with it when it LEAPED to its feet and came barrelling straight at us, barking and snarling with all its hair up.  OH GREAT.  THIS IS GREAT.  I REALLY GOT UP THIS MORNING SAYING PERHAPS TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE.  I yelled, which is what I usually do in these situations, bellowing is less embarrassing than shrieking and if by any chance the human involved is going to do anything this is a SUGGESTION THAT THEY DO IT NOW.

They never do, of course.  In this case as I yelled I swung around, on the theory that fewer dogs will attack a human than will go for the hellterror in the human’s arms, and Toxic Purulence Dog swerved off at the last minute, circled around us and came up behind me again.  I don’t suppose I did feel its hot breath on the back of my neck but I felt as if I was feeling its hot breath on the back of my neck.  Not a small dog.  Just by the way.

Its human said, Awwwwwww, he just wants to say helloooooooo.

Words failed me, which is just as well.  You can neither argue nor reason with these troglodytes—and in this case I guess there is more going on than mere denial.  This guy’s getting off on his evil dog, in some weird passive-aggressive way.  Toxic Purulence Dog eventually peeled away and left us alone, and I, even more eventually, put Pav back on her own feet.†

I was out with Pav after dark again tonight†† but we were at the other end of town.  We were walking past one of the sports grounds which was all lit up because they were playing one of those men-in-shorts-kicking-balls games.  I therefore couldn’t see much into the dark beyond, but I was pretty sure I was seeing . . . an off lead dog and a human.  I picked Pav up.  As we got closer . . . IT WAS TOXIC PURULENCE DOG AGAIN.  How did we get so lucky?  And it ran straight at us††† while its human said, Awwwwww, now, Uncle Wiggly‡ . . .

It swerved off again, a little sooner this time.  Small favours.  I tracked it going down the other side of the football field and thought, we’ll just take an extra loop around the hedgerow so we don’t all arrive back at the car park at the same time.

I was nonetheless looking around like Ripley in Aliens as we got close to the car park and . . . saw a large familiar-looking dog just jumping into a car. ‡ We lingered a little longer before venturing to cross the tarmac and . . . violent, hysterical barking broke out from the car we’d seen.  I risked looking over my shoulder and . . . yup.  Toxic Purulence Dog.  Slightly muffled by being behind a closed window.

Here’s the really incredible bit.  The troglodyte lowered the window so Toxic Purulence Dog could jam its head and shoulders through the opening and scream at us.  I wondered in a cool detached way if TPD was actually going to get out and come after us again. . . .

What is the matter with people?

* * *

* SHADOWS’ official pub date is the 26th of September, if you want to draw a big red circle on your calendar.  I Remember the Good Old Days when authors got their first copies weeks before the rest of the world did.  Now it’s the other way around.  With pre-orders and things readers who are not merely enthusiastic but organised may have your book in their hot little hands weeks before your publisher’s warehouse sends it to you.

** I can’t think of Pav as ‘small’ however.  She’s just . . . low slung.  She’s so frelling solid.^  When I think of a small dog, I think of the sort of critter that you’re afraid of breaking if you pick it up wrong or hold it too tightly.  It’s not merely a question of weight:  Pekinese are solid little beggars.  Bichon Frises, in my admittedly limited experience, are not, although they may weigh half again to twice what a Peke weighs.  While I’m not going to try dribbling Pav like a basketball^^, I’m quite sure she’d bounce and come up smiling.^^^

^ Even if she’s too thin.

. . . mutters:  she is not too thin.

^^ and am only occasionally tempted . . . STOP EATING THE CARPET.  STOP EATING THE SOFA.  STOP EATING THE HELLHOUNDS’ BED.  STOP EATING YOUR LEAD.  STOP EATING MY JEANS/SHOELACES/SOCKS.  STOP EATING . . .

^^^ Love the bullie grin.  Just saying.

*** My second to last dog will be a Yorkshire terrier.  Then I’ll get one of those mobility scooter things and have an extra-large basket put on the front in which can ride a mini-bullie and a small whippet.^

^ Hazel, at nineteen pounds, all of which was leg and spine, curled up on your lap beautifully.  Pav, at twenty-seven pounds, doesn’t fit in your lap at all, partly because she’s a rectangular solid and doesn’t bend very well.

† Pav was all, Okay, that was fun and exciting!  What’s next?  I was shivering with adrenaline and had to sit down for a minute.  No, no, no, said Pav.  Sitting down is not fun and exciting.  Perhaps if I eat your shoelaces you will be aroused to take an interest.

††  I spent most of the afternoon IN THE GARDEN.  Which I will probably tell you about tomorrow.  (*&^%$£”!!!!!, etc.

††† And Pav sat up Very Straight and said, Ooooh, this is fun and exciting!  —She’s been freaked out a couple of times by big dogs rushing up to her, even big friendly dogs.  I would love to know what she’s thinking when we’re having an encounter while I’m carrying her.  As I’ve said many times, she’s very, very good about being carried, because of all that holding when she was a baby;  picking her up is, in fact, a good way of telling her to calm down;  nine times out of ten she collapses instantly.^  But what she is thinking while Armageddon is racing toward us?  ‘I’m taller than he is’?  ‘Nobody goes up against the hellgoddess and lives’?  ‘Wheeeee’?

^ The tenth time, of course, there is major blood loss, and you feel as if you’re holding onto a small exploding galaxy.

‡ Not Its Real Name

‡‡ I hope I’m imagining it that the troglodyte waved at me.

Chapter One, page one*

 

The story starts like something out of a fairy tale:  I hated my stepfather.

It’s usually stepmothers in fairy tales.  Well, equal time for stepfathers.

I almost don’t know why I hated Val so much.  He was short and hairy and didn’t know how to wear Newworld clothes and spoke with a funny accent and used a lot of really dreeping words that nobody in Newworld had used in two hundred years.  Have you ever heard anyone say “ablutions”?  I didn’t think so.  He looked like the kind of creepazoid you’d cross the street to avoid walking past too close to.  And this guy who looks like a homeless crazydumb who’s about to start shouting about the evil magician who planted electrodes in his brain stands there smiling gently at my mother . . . and she laughs and puts her arm through his because she loves him.  Uggh.

Maybe I hated him because she loved him, although I was pretty old for that kind of doolally.  I’d turned seventeen by the time they got together, and my brother, Ran (short for Randal not Randolph), who wasn’t quite thirteen yet, thought he was wonderful.  I don’t know what went wrong with me.  It was like an evil magician had put electrodes in my brain.

Margaret Alastrina (everyone calls me Maggie, but the full line-up is way more effective if you want to shout), there’s no point in telling this story if you’re not going to be honest.  Okay, okay, I do know why I couldn’t deal with Val.  It was the shadows.  But in Newworld, where we’re all about science and you stop reading fairy tales about the time you learn to read (which always seemed really unfair), being afraid of shadows was silly and pathetic.  Even if there were a lot of them and they didn’t seem to be the shadow of anything.  (And if they were, whatever it was had way too many legs.)  So I hated him for making me silly and pathetic.  That’s scientifically logical, isn’t it?

For a while Mom made a fuss about it and tried to get us—Val and me—to do things together, I guess because she couldn’t believe I wouldn’t like him if I got to know him better.  You know the kind of thing.  We did the grocery shopping—with him being as useless as it’s humanly possible to be and me having to explain everything;  why he hadn’t starved to death before he met Mom I have no idea—and when I got my learner’s permit Mom was always “Oh, take Val, I haven’t got time right now,” which was probably true but it was also Mom trying to make us friends.  (And honestly, he was a pretty good learner driver’s passenger.  He never blew about dumb stuff—and he didn’t even get upset when I put the tiniest—the tiniest—dent in Mom’s fender because there was this really unnecessary knob on the side of one of those big metal anti-cobey boxes and I couldn’t see it because the front of the car was in the way.  We got out and looked at it and I thought, My life is over, but all Val said was, “I can bend that out again.  Back into the driveway tonight so it’s on the other side and she’ll never know.”)

Mom probably couldn’t believe what had happened to her daughter.  I’d been this disgustingly sweet, cooperative kid, always worried about everyone else (this got worse after Ran was born.  I am never having kids.  Moms with new babies have no life), which is to say this dreary little dreep.  What started giving me my own personality finally was when I got old enough to volunteer at the Orchard Animal Shelter.  I was thrilled at being allowed to shovel critter crap and scrub bowls.  The self-confidence issues of a nine-year-old can be pretty weird.

I’d wanted a dog since forever, but about six months after Dad died, and Mom was still trying to be extra-nice to Ran and me, especially because she was working about twenty-six hours a day and exhausted and miserable and cranky when we saw her at all, I told her I’d found my dog.  So while she gave me the old “a dog is a big responsibility” lecture and reminded me with lots of Mom gestures and eye contact that she was working twenty-six hours a day and backup from her was a nonstarter, her heart wasn’t really in it.  I had wanted almost every dog that came into the shelter because whatever it was it was a dog, but this time it was one of those your-eyes-meet-and-you-know-you’re-made-for-each-other things.  (My friend Laura has them about every six months with a new boy.)  Clare was saving him for me while I dealt with Mom (and Ran, although Ran is fine about most things including dogs as long as they’re not his problem).  So we brought Mongo home. . . .

* * *

* Because I have a mind like a sieve that’s been left out in the rain and then caught in an avalanche, I can’t remember if I’ve given you the first few pages of SHADOWS before or not.  I know I’ve given you a couple of random snippets from inside.  But even if I have given you the first few pages previously . . . this is the last rewrite.  I’m pretty sure you haven’t seen the final version.

 

Look what arrived in the post today

Oooh. Shiny.

 

From the back:

The story starts like something out of a fairy tale:  I hated my stepfather.  It’s usually stepmothers in fairy tales.  Well, equal time for stepfathers. . . .

Maggie knows there’s something off about Val, her mom’s new husband.  It’s more than that he’s from Oldworld and doesn’t know how to wear Newworld clothes or use Newworld slang.  Why won’t he have any tech in the shed behind the house that he uses as his office?  And what are the huge, horrible, jagged, jumpy shadows that follow him around?

Newworld is all about science–you’re expected to give up fairy tales as soon as you’re old enough to read them for yourself–and magic is illegal.  Oldworld still uses magic, but in Newworld the magic-carrying gene was disabled two generations ago, back when Maggie’s great-grandmother was a notable magician.  But that was a long time ago.

Then Maggie meets Casimir, the most beautiful boy she’s ever seen.  He’s from Oldworld too–and he’s heard of Maggie’s stepfather, and has a guess about Val’s shadows.  Maggie doesn’t want to know . . . until earth-shattering events force her to depend not only on Casimir’s knowledge of magic, but on Val and his shadows.  And perhaps on her own heritage.

It’s aliiiiiiive.

 

If you zoom in on the black circle in the lower right-hand corner you will see ‘advance uncorrected galleys–not for resale’.  Pub date is September.  By which time we will have ERADICATED typos from the final page proofs, I will have stopped rending my garments and screaming about all the stuff it’s too late to change, and the art department will have finished tweaking the jacket.

Tired

 

 

I seem to be very tired.*  And I cancelled my voice lesson because I have that half-laryngitis when you croak like a frog except when your voice disappears entirely for a word or two.**  I didn’t even go ringing tonight.  I must be ill.  Well, yes.  But the main thing is that SHADOWS has taken one of those semi-predictable lurches on the conveyor-belt of the publishing process when it, I don’t know, gets caught in the gap between Conveyor Belt #1 and Conveyor Belt #2 or the Conveyor Belt Technician missed her grab or something, and suddenly THINGS ARE HAPPENING.

TELL THINGS TO STOP HAPPENING.  I AM A POOR SAD SICK WEARY THING.

Since I didn’t have a singing lesson to go to and since staying at home brooding about THINGS HAPPENING would probably only make my head explode and because a little gentle distraction is often a good way to make the brain produce useful suggestions rather than bloodshot gibberish, Wolfgang and I went off to buy compost*** and to check out the pet warehouse for a car harness for the hellterror.†  And while I was there I cruised the food since I now have a dog that eats††, although I was particularly looking at the snacky, treaty, bribey type things and . . . WTF, you dog-food industry, and you dog owners supporting the dog-food industry, WHY do so many treats have SUGAR or other sweeteners in them??  Yes.  I read labels.  I know it’s impossible to keep your kid off sweets once he/she gets old enough to hang out with his/her friends, but your DOG?  Your dog is under YOUR control.  It doesn’t have much opportunity to develop non-standard bad habits, like a sweet tooth, unless you let it.  Frelling frelling frell frell frell.  Well.  We’re still good with the plaited fish skin and the venison jerky.

DrDia

My mentor/trainer of blessed memory used to think I was a TOTAL wuss and despaired of me ever training anything because I wouldn’t tuck dried liver (or some other dog appropriate treat) into the corner of my mouth and either spit it directly at the dog or at least eliminate several seconds of reaching-into-pocket-getting-treat. An advantage of having the treats in your mouth is that the dogs will REALLY REALLY look at you since food occasionally falls from your face.

I realise this is supposed to be disgusting and several other people on the forum have responded as such but . . . this makes me laugh and laugh.  Yes, that would certainly make the hellterror look at me.†††  No, the disgustingness doesn’t bother me all that much, but the HYGIENE does.  Most dog food has FOR ANIMAL USE ONLY stamped all over it, dogs are perfectly happy eating . . . well, never mind . . . and in catering to this floor-licking species I doubt that there’s a lot of exacting enforcement of sanitation in the average dog food factory.  And you’re supposed to put this stuff in YOUR mouth?  What is stopping YOUR saliva from saying, oh, hey, LIVER, and briskly attacking it in a digestive sort of way?  —Aside from the drool factor.  Not that your hellterror is going to care in the least about being spat on, at least if it’s liver flavoured spit . . . sorry.  I can see my faithful readers deleting the blog addy in frenzied numbers . . . or frenziedly, in numbers . . . whatever.  And I’m allergic to venison, and Pav is slightly more partial to dried venison than she is to ANYTHING I allow her to find edible, which is approximately everything I don’t take away from her before she swallows it.

Speaking of treats however has anyone tried dried sweet potato?  Sounded like a great idea.  But in practise, at the point that it gets really really really gooey, it starts sticking to the roof of your hellterror’s mouth.  We had a supernaturally delightful half hour a day or two ago with her in my lap so I could claw the blasted sweet potato OFF the roof of her mouth again every thirty seconds or so.  She didn’t want to give it up, mind, and it seemed unfair to take it away from her, when she was clearly having such a good time, including all this jolly interaction with the hellgoddess.  Ew.  I think desiccated liver would be preferable.

I still haven’t found an answer to THINGS HAPPENING.  And I think I’m too tired‡ to try to figure out the car harness tonight.

* * *

* Also, never mind Margaret Thatcher.  Annette Funicello died.^

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/apr/08/annette-funicello-dies-mousketeer-ms

One of the things I find interesting is that she kept the Funicello.  Did no one ever lean on her to change it to Fulham or Fulbright?  This is the era when Margarita Carmen Cansino became Rita Hayworth and Bernard Schwartz Tony Curtis.^^

^ And you all know Roger Ebert died?  Nooooooo.  I haven’t been keeping up with this—the main thing is he’s dead, and we don’t get him back+—but hadn’t he written that long, funny, poignant, typically-Roger essay about his ‘leave of presence’ literally a day before he died?  How does that work?

+ Although this is a situation where Christianity does offer a Band-Aid.  I can think of him getting his face back and being able to talk to people again.

^^ Although Marion Morrison may have changed his for other reasons than ethnicity.

** Sometimes this is a blessing, depending on the word.

*** I have roses to plant.  Fancy.

† She only still fits in her travelling crate because she thinks she does, rather the way she still fits on my lap.  Although she’s delighted to get in the crate^ because there is (almost) always FOOOOOOOD in the back of it, but some day she’s going to stretch injudiciously and the seams are going to pop, like the Incredible Hulk emerging from Bruce Banner^^.  But a bigger crate won’t fit on the back seat next to the hellhounds, even if the three of them got on famously there is NO room even for an undersized Yorkie in the hellhound box, and I have a strange aversion to filling the ENTIRE CAR with canine containment units, since the new bigger hellterror crate would have to go in the boot.

^ Which just by the way is a total piece of crap and I will be GLAD to find a way to dispense with its services.  It’s one of these where there are pegs that fit into holes which hold the door grate in place, and there are teeny-tiny handles that you open or close so you can open or close the door.  THE FRELLING PEGS ARE TOO FRELLING SHORT SO THE DOOR IS ALWAYS FALLING OUT.  Why the hellterror has not figured this out and made my life a misery/forced me to bungie-cord the door to keep her in I have no idea, except possibly that she is fond of the crate because of fooooood thing and as long as she stays in this Place of Snacks there might be more.

^^ And speaking of things I don’t keep up with, what does happen about clothing when Banner hulks out?  Does Brucie wear spandex under everything, just in case?

†† Sigh.  Hellhound eating is a major issue—again—at present, and Pav is proving the perfect Sucker Up of Remains.  Nothing edible goes to waste with a hellterror available.

††† And the hellhounds look away.

‡ I also had a long conversation with Theodora and her daughter about the wall, and I had Pav with me, in their beautiful, tidy sitting room with the fragile objets d’art scattered around.  Since she’s much better about dangling than she is about sitting still when she has her feet on the floor, I had her tucked under an arm.  Under one arm, over my hip, and holding her rear feet with my other hand behind my back, since my coat didn’t have pockets in the right places for her to put her feet in.  She followed the conversation with great attention and courtesy—I think some of why she’s so good at dangling is she likes being taller.  At ankle level EVERYTHING IS GOING ON WAY OVER HER HEAD—but I’m not sure my right arm will recover.  I’m afraid to weigh her again, I might lose my nerve.

Wall, stalled

 

So.  We finally have some SPRING WEATHER.  You know, sunlight.  Remember SUNLIGHT [you other British* people]?  Yes.  Also, it’s warm enough to need only one woolly layer under your coat and longjohns are optional.** And my sweet pea seedlings aren’t dead yet although they’re a little paler than desirable, since I don’t get up early and it’s still too cold to put them out even after I become capable of carrying a tray of plants outdoors (probably) without dropping them.

. . . And it’s the WEEKEND.  Which most people would find a DESIRABLE TIME to have some spring weather.  But WALL MEN DO NOT WORK ON WEEKENDS.

Wall. With a hole in it. I know, in fact it’s a hole with some wall in it. But we WANT A WALL.

 

Sad forlorn deserted scaffolding. With radio. Hmm.

 

Although my greenhouse almost has a back wall again. Almost.

I cannot WAIT to have a greenhouse again.  Under my guardianship the greenhouse has always looked as if someone fought a duel to the death in it recently*** but I could find stuff.  I was out there today, trying to pot stuff on and snarling because I can’t find anything.  I’m also worrying about my robins.  Where are they nesting, this brutally cold year? †  I hope they’ve found a greenhouse that less resembles Waterloo Station at rush hour.

The crocuses have barely opened this year. They come up, look around, go, UGH, and firmly keep their mouths shut.

 

Hellebores, on the other hand, say, Oh, is it cold and overcast and horrible? Never mind. Hellebores are fabulous value in this area. I love them. And have lots. Pink, white, dark blue-purple, single, double, spotted and plain, and the wild foetidus, which is an excellent plant and I’ve never noticed it smelled bad.

 

And the faithful unassuming snowdrop. These are common garden-variety, no fancy pedigree, you slap them in and if they’re happy they spread. These started as a little clump of three.

 

Poor sad forlorn deserted cement mixer.

It’s a nice modest travelling sized cement mixer.  It reminds me of the stepping-stone moulds I bought at/for the old house, in the implementation of which a modest travelling sized cement mixer would have been a necessary adjunct.  It’s probably just as well I never tangled with a cement mixer.

 

Theodora’s view of the hole in our wall.

 

The good news is that the iris in Theodora’s savaged lily pond are still alive. The jury is still out on the water lilies themselves.

 

Wall. Hole. Sigh.

 

 

* Okay, okay.  British resident people.  Happy?

** Less optional now the sun has been down for a while.  I still have the evening double hurtle to look forward to, I’m wearing mine.

*** Everyone lost.  But the rubble remains.  Rather like having your wall fall down.

† Some little fluffy feathery thing was trying to get in through the kitchen window this morning while I was sitting close to the Aga to eat breakfast.  It kept coming back, clinging to one or another of the wooden pane frames, and staring inside.  Was it hoping its reflection was a potential romantic attachment?  Or did it just want to sit by the Aga too?

KES, 73

 

SEVENTY THREE

Cautiously, with Sid at my heels, I walked through to the front of the house and opened the door.  I went out on the porch, grabbing Sid’s collar with my other hand.  We both looked down.

A vaguely familiar-looking young man was climbing down from a large old pick-up truck.  It wasn’t as large as Merry, and it was probably twenty years younger, but it was still large and old.  Although it was recognisably a color—in this case blue—which put it one up on my vehicular doom.  He looked up at me and smiled.  “Hi,” he called.  He reached down and picked up an armful of the stuff I’d left next to the van.  I was too bemused by the entire apparition to protest.  He came up the stairs and as he got within ordinary speaking distance said, “Someone’s moving in, you don’t waste climbing stairs empty handed.  Serena said you were moving in today and guessed you could use some help.  And the garage can do without me for a few hours so I thought I’d come along.”  He was by now at the top of the stairs, and he put his free hand out.  “I’m Mike.”

I let go of Sid’s collar to take his hand.  “Mike,” I said.  “Mike?  You mean the man—er—responsible for Merry?”

“That would be me, yeah,” he said, grinning.

“That blue thing is a pale shadow of the juggernaut magnificence that is Merry,” I said.

“I know,” he said.  “But Nilesh there has several times the horsepower, and every winter as well as ploughing I spend a lot of time dragging people out of snowbanks.”

I sighed.  “I want to say ‘don’t look at me’ but you probably will be looking at me.  I hope you also run a winter taxi service for terrified urban exiles.  Of course you will still be looking at me.”

“Don’t worry.  We’ll get you fixed up with sandbags and chains ’long about October.  Merry’ll handle better in snow than any car.  If we have a late blizzard this spring I’ll make Dad give Serena time off to take you to Majormojo to stock up.”

“Late blizzard?” I said.  “It’s April.”

“Sure,” he said.  “We can have snow late as May.  It’s not real common, but it happens.  We had snow in June once when I was a kid, and we were really pissed off because school was already out.”

In the city we had two kinds of snow, mostly.  We had the kind that didn’t happen when everyone was ready for it and the kind that did happen when nobody was.  Gelasio missed a meeting with some millionaire client once because they closed the subways after one of the second kind of blizzard.  We made snow angels in Central Park instead.  I wasn’t thinking about Gelasio.

Sid had moved to sniff Mike’s trousers.  Her tail began to wag.  He bent down far enough to rub her ears in a person-familiar-with-dogs sort of way.   “That’s Carmine or Otis or Poppy or Fred.  Or Lorenzo.  Bridget told me the Phantom had adopted you.”

I noticed his word order at the same time I realised why he looked familiar.  Bridget.  Eats.  “You were sitting at the counter yesterday,” I began.

“When some strange woman with a city accent started talking to her tea cosy,” he said.  “Yeah.  That was me.”

“Which was the moment it dawned on you that here was some poor out of town yo-yo you could foist your primitive vehicle on.”  Up close he was older than I’d thought.  He might be my age.

“You could buy a car from Odin,” he said, grinning, “if you like doing a lot of walking.”

“The real estate flyer promised the underground would make it to Cold Valley by the end of the year,” I said blandly.  Sid had worked her way around our visitor and was now sniffing his other pant leg with close attention.

“That the same real estate flyer that promised all the old lake houses have buried treasure in their back yards from the Great Depression?  When all the high society ladies raced up here to bury their jewellery so it couldn’t be repossessed?”

“And didn’t dig it up again later?  Wow.  They all must have drunk too many martinis.  That cheap bathtub gin’s a killer.”

“Yeah.”  He looked up at the front door.  My front door.  I hadn’t noticed before, there was a narrow rectangle of stained glass above it.  I could see it twinkle faintly in the shadow of the porch roof but I couldn’t see if it was an illustration of anything rather than just bits of colored glass.  I hoped for roses rather than star-spawn.  “At least you got a real one,” he went on.  “They’ve insulated a few of the old summer houses for incomers who want glamor and don’t care about the fuel bills, but it’s mostly a botched job.”

“Hayley said there’s only one other year-round house left from Cold Valley’s boom years last century.”

“There are a few others,” he said.  “They’ve just never come on the real estate radar.”

Was it my inner Cthulhu viewing humanity malignly or did he look shifty as he said that?

He looked back at me and smiled.  “But this is a good house.  I’m glad someone’s finally living in it.”