M.R. Graham's Blog, page 10

Waiting for the rain – a poem

One palm

waves in the distance,

and the mockingbird above me

is silent,

waiting

for the deluge to begin.

Dark sky.

Dark earth.

And silence.

Rain is coming – a poem

Bruised sky lowering,

dips to touch the parched soil,

and with a gentle breath,

bears the scent

of damp earth.

It smells like life.

Fall back into NaNoWriMo – A Single Quick Tip

As you are probably aware, due to the sudden inundation of blog posts, tweets, and incomprehensible mumbling of assorted writer folks as they rock back and forth in a darkened corner… National Novel Writing Month is approaching.

There are tips and tricks flying left and right. What to eat, what to drink, how often to take breaks, how to cut through writer’s block, how to bribe yourself into meeting your daily word count, how to beat back the temptation to edit as you write.

FreeImages.com/fabrizio turco

But there is one bit of advice I haven’t seen mentioned yet, one I take advantage of every year. All over America, people with excessively regular internal clocks are going to roll over on the morning of November 1, glance at the clock, smile, and settle back in for an extra hour of sleep.

I, however, am going to roll over, haul myself out of bed, and use that time for writing. It only makes sense. I’d be up at that hour, anyway; it’s just that there’s a slightly smaller number attached to that hour, now. I’m not sacrificing anything, just not indulging in the same treat as everyone else. (And there’s the fact that making this a habit spares me the absolute hell of the “Spring Forward” part of Daylight Savings.)

So give it a try. Go ahead and set your clock back an hour, but shift your alarm at the same time. You’re not actually waking up any earlier than usual, after all, and that novel is calling you.

Flames of Autumn – A Poem

The flames of Autumn sear the sullen sky

with ruby, rose, carnelian, and wine–

the heady draught which slips to sparkling night,

where may the  gauds of ghosts and grims combine.  

WriMo is Coming.

[Insert Dramatic Sean Bean Here.]

I’m doing it, friends. The plan is to have two complete drafts of two different books by the end of 2015.

I am working now on something very close to me, something that has been in the works for approximately four fifths of my life, now, if not a little longer. Agonizing to write, because it must be perfect. Not just solid, not just plot-hole-free, not just well edited and well structured, but perfect. (If I vanish abruptly and am never heard from again, you may assume that it sucked me in and didn’t let go and I have been subsumed into my own fiction. Rather a romantic concept, if only I could escape the fact that, in practical terms, this would probably involve a padded cell.)

November, however, will be set aside for The Mage. We’re getting there. I’m expecting this to be the halfway point of the Liminality series. In Book One, Lenny the Medium started things in motion. In Book Two, Jadwiga the Mora returned to the world of the living. Book Three, as the title may suggest, sees Kim the Mage come into her own at long last.

But, dear reader, the Shadows are closing in.

I’m expecting to have The Mage ready in late April or early May of 2016. It may interest you to know that my working title for Book Four is The Martyr.

I believe “Bwahaha” is the appropriate phrase.

Recounting the Great British Sojourn – Day 4

What a day it was! Extraordinarily hectic, we began by walking down to Glouster Street Station to purchase Oyster cards so we could take the bus into the city with our tour director and his walking group. We went through St. James’s and then down Picadilly, where the group split up.

Mother, the Minion, and I browsed Hatchard’s, the oldest bookshop in London, then popped down to spend a solid hour in Fortnum & Mason, stockpiling tea, biscuits, and handkerchiefs. It’s a beautiful building, with not a detail overlooked. Marble, polished granite, dark wood, gleaming brass, friendly and polite attendants. It was lovely. I enjoyed it much more than I did Harrods. Harrods felt like consumerism – expensive so that its patrons could be seen spending money. Fortnum’s felt like materialism – expensive because everything they stock is made well and made to last.

We returned our purchases to the hotel via the Tube, which terrified the Mother and delighted the Minion. We survived the ordeal, though. For a system built beneath an ancient city while preserving as much of the surface as possible, it was as logical as one could hope. Memorizing all the routes would take years, but the maps made sense, and we did not board a wrong train all day. At any rate, we all felt absurdly competent when we made it back to Glouster Street in one piece.

Then back underground and to Baker Street.

There was a line for the museum – at least a hundred people. I think we waited about forty-five minutes, far, far longer than the last time I was there. They let in about twenty people at a time. It was absolutely worth it. I, amazingly, didn’t remember it anywhere near as well as I thought I did, though I suspect they have made some changes in the sixteen years since I was there last. The shop was on the ground floor, as were the staff offices, which had used to be Mrs. Hudson’s Restaurant. I was disappointed that the restaurant was not still in business but not crushed, as we had very good pub food the night previously. The first floor was the sitting room and Holmes’s bedroom, complete with Persian slipper, odoriferous experiments, “VR” in bulletpocks on the wall, violin, and correspondence affixed to the mantel by knifepoint. Some details were off – like the big, heavy calabash pipe on the table, instead of a dirty clay or battered old briar. And his catalogue seemed to be missing, although I suppose he would have taken that with him to Sussex.

The second floor ought to have been Watson’s and Mrs. Hudson’s rooms, but it has been made into exhibits – bits and bobs in glass cases with notes on how each object relates to a particular case. there was also a magnificent bronze bust of Holmes, with which, of course, I had my photograph taken.

The third floor was also  exhibits: sort of horrifying tableaux with posed mannequins reenacting scenes from the Adventures. And at the very top was a tiny little washroom and a pile of travel trunks.

We came back down, did some shopping, and made our purchases.

From the Sherlock Holmes Museum we caught the Tube to the British Museum. Unfortunately, we were under the impression that it closed a good half hour after it actually did, and so we only had an opportunity to see one  hall – African art, downstairs. We caught a couple of cases of Babylonian artifacts before the docent kicked us out. That was really a terrible disappointment. I wanted to cover at least Classical antiquities and Egypt. Next time, I suppose.

Dejected, we wandered out of the museum and in search of food, and we found a very good little Italian place only about a block away.

Another Tube ride to North Gower Street, where parts of Sherlock were filmed. The Minion straightened the ever-cockeyed doorknocker… which was awkward, as I think it is actually the door to somebody’s house. Oh, well.

And we finished the day with one last ride to Westminster, emerging directly beneath the clock tower, crossed Westminster Bridge, and boarded the Eye in time to see the sun set on London. By the time we had returned to earth, we were exhausted.

 

Recounting the Great British Sojourn – Day 3m

Day 3: Stonehenge in the morning, and an afternoon at Oxford.

This was the one I was waiting for. Up at six and dressed, breakfast at seven, on the bus by seven-thirty and on our way to Stonehenge. It wasn’t as long a drive as I had expected, really – probably a result of habitual seven-hour drives through Texas. We got there in good time and took the shuttle up to see the stones. They have moved the walk back quite a way, which, with the slight elevation of the henge, means that one can take photographs that aren’t swarming with tourists. I probably took at least fifty.

The wind was vicious, though. It didn’t take long for my ears to start hurting, and when I had photographed, to my heart’s content, we headed back down to the visitor center to see the model neolithic village. I also picked up a book of folktales and left with a prawn sandwich and a bottle of blackcurrant cider.

That’s when the day really began, for me. The afternoon was Oxford.

The coach parked by the Ashmolean, which I unfortunately did not have a chance to enter. We traveled down Cornmarket Street and down through the Covered Market, then past the Bodleian Library, past All Souls College, and into New College, walking around the quad and down the length of the chapel – dark wood and stained glass and an entire wall covered floor-to-ceiling with saints and angels in white stone. We walked through the garden, in full summer bloom and buzzing with honeybees and bumblebees. Finally, we saw the dining hall – which was a little awkward, as there were a few diners actually in it at the time.

And finally, the Bodleian itself. I was not asked to read the declaration aloud (so I muttered it to myself).

Back in London, late in the evening, the Mother and I attended Mass at Brompton Oratory, one of the most beautiful churches I have ever seen, right up beside those I saw in Italy.

Supper at the Glouster Arms, where I had my first pint of Fuller’s London Pride, which, thank God, does not actually taste like the Thames water from which it is made.

I could have stayed forever among the dreaming spires, though, surrounded by the centuries of history of intellect and passion, learning every corner and gargoyle and grotesque, every pinnacle, every tower, every stone in every wall, listening closely and learning. I could almost imagine the entire city smelled of paper and ink. I will be back.

Recounting the Great British Sojourn – Day 3

Day 3: Stonehenge in the morning, and an afternoon at Oxford.

This was the one I was waiting for. Up at six and dressed, breakfast at seven, on the bus by seven-thirty and on our way to Stonehenge. It wasn’t as long a drive as I had expected, really – probably a result of habitual seven-hour drives through Texas. We got there in good time and took the shuttle up to see the stones. They have moved the walk back quite a way, which, with the slight elevation of the henge, means that one can take photographs that aren’t swarming with tourists. I probably took at least fifty.

The wind was vicious, though. It didn’t take long for my ears to start hurting, and when I had photographed, to my heart’s content, we headed back down to the visitor center to see the model neolithic village. I also picked up a book of folktales and left with a prawn sandwich and a bottle of blackcurrant cider.

That’s when the day really began, for me. The afternoon was Oxford.

The coach parked by the Ashmolean, which I unfortunately did not have a chance to enter. We traveled down Cornmarket Street and down through the Covered Market, then past the Bodleian Library, past All Souls College, and into New College, walking around the quad and down the length of the chapel – dark wood and stained glass and an entire wall covered floor-to-ceiling with saints and angels in white stone. We walked through the garden, in full summer bloom and buzzing with honeybees and bumblebees. Finally, we saw the dining hall – which was a little awkward, as there were a few diners actually in it at the time.

And finally, the Bodleian itself. I was not asked to read the declaration aloud (so I muttered it to myself).

Back in London, late in the evening, the Mother and I attended mass at Brompton Oratory, one of the most beautiful churches I have ever seen, right up beside those I saw in Italy.

Supper at the Glouster Arms, where I had my first pint of Fuller’s London Pride, which, thank God, does not actually taste like the Thames water from which it is made.

I could have stayed forever among the dreaming spires, though, surrounded by the centuries of history of intellect and passion, learning every corner and gargoyle and grotesque, every pinnacle, every tower, every stone in every wall, listening closely and learning. I could almost imagine the entire city smelled of paper and ink. I will be back.

Recounting the Great British Sojourn – Day 2

Day 2:

Up at six and had a cup of tea in the room before going down to breakfast. (Note to self: acquire giant mechanized orange-juicer.)

This morning was the driving tour of London, with stops at St. Paul’s and Buckingham. We were just in time to catch the very tail end of the Changing of the Guard, just as they were making their way back to the barracks. The bus dropped some of the group off back at the hotel, but we opted to stay aboard and visit Windsor. There was a little pasty shop nearby, so we took out some steak and ale pasties and ate them during our short lunch break before going up and into the castle. There wasn’t time to see absolutely everything, but we did go all the way around the outside and through the State Apartments, passing through the dollhouse, first. I have to say, the tastes of royalty can skew toward the gauche. Tacky, even. Other parts were lovely, though, in dark wood and deep red, with a minimum of gilt. (Sadly, photographs were not allowed inside.)

We loitered a bit in the hotel room after Windsor, then loitered a bit in Harrod’s until we were kicked out for closing. We replaced supper with tea at their tea room, and a slice of sticky toffee cake. The tea was served, naturally, in Wedgwood, surprisingly the same design as the Mother’s tea set at home.

And then we returned to the Queen’s Gate to crash, and I have to say, I’ve seldom crashed that hard.

Recounting the Great British Sojourn – Day 1

I’m back! From where, you ask? Well, let me tell you.

A charming view from the hotel window. Kensington is lovely. Too bad I’d have to sell all my organs and sublet my soul to actually live there.

The flight into Heathrow was uneventful. The Minion, the Mother, and I landed, retrieved luggage, made it through customs, and were transported to the hotel in good time to meet our marvelous tour director. The hotel, the Queen’s Gate, is easy walking distance from the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, and the Victoria and Albert. It’s a slightly-more-strenuous walking distance from Harrods, as well. After a short nap (A Dallas-to-London flight without seats that lean back can be exhausting), we thought we’d scoot on down to the museums. There was an enormous, recursive queue at the Natural History Museum, so we continued on to the V&A. We only had a little bit of time, but we made it through the gallery of Islamic Art, then through the religious art of the Renaissance and Medieval Europe. By the time we had made it through only a few galleries, it was time to come back and change for supper.

Then jetlag attacked, and we were very ready for bed.