In the first place . . .

 

. . .  after an increasing torrent* of emails and a few tweets asking, mostly politely**, if I'm going to write a 'sequel' to PEGASUS, today I threw myself on Blogmom's mercy and she carved out time on Sunday morning to put up banners everywhere*** saying PEGASUS II COMING IN 2012!!!!!!!! 

            So, everyone got that?  I AM WORKING ON IT.  And it's not a sequel, it's the second half of the story . . . which I admit I thought was OBVIOUS and that I didn't have to make a fuss about it.  I am extremely well aware that I have made a career out of not writing sequels† but PEG II isn't a sequel, it's the rest of the story.  I am indeed inclined to be a trifle snippy that readers think that even I, old No Sequels Here, Honeybun, herself, would end as in END a story the way PEGASUS ends.  It's not an ending!  It's CLEARLY, OBVIOUSLY AND MANIFESTLY not an ending!!!!!!!††

            Got that?

            I know.  Regular blog readers are sighing heavily and muttering to themselves:  Robin, we know.  We know. †††

            And people who write me emails enquiring about sequels to PEGASUS aren't regular blog readers.

            My life is full of frustration and error.

            Take yesterday, speaking of frustration and error.‡   Yesterday was the famous Stedman Triples education day, that I'd applied for a place on the day after I had signed up a glossy new hellhound minder.  And then my glossy new hellhound minder cancelled on me, but the noble and angelic Fernanda said that she would drive over from Mauncester just to hurtle hounds, that I might be initiated into the wonders of Stedman Triples (Fernanda who can ring anything . . . although not yet on handbells).  And then I was frelling bounced from the course because they were overbooked and I'd applied late.

            Friday night I got home . . . not exactly early.  I don't do early at either end of the day/night.  And there was a message on my phone machine from the organiser of the Stedman Triples day saying that someone was ill and had cancelled at the last minute and if I would call her the minute I got this message, I could have the place.

            Call her at mmmph o'clock in the morning?  I don't think so.

            I did in fact spend a good five minutes staring out into the lightless darkness‡‡ wondering if it was worth it to get out of bed again in four hours and hurtle the hounds hard enough that if Fernanda couldn't suddenly drop everything and come to New Arcadia after all they'd probably survive . . . and decided drearily that it wasn't.  I wouldn't survive an entire six or seven hours of beating my brains out on Stedman Triples on zilch sleep—and I wouldn't have had time to cram for it first either.  And I'd've already got out of bed and hurtled before I'd dare ring the organiser the next day, er, later that same morning, and chances were that she'd already given the place to someone else.  Like, earlier on the day that was now yesterday.

            And then yesterday I felt like unholy death and green slime all day anyway‡‡‡, so I got to tell myself bracingly that it was just as well that I wasn't on the course.

            The bell gods really, really hate me.  Nobody needs to have their character adversarily strengthened to this extent. 

            This morning I limped§ to the tower feeling even less in control of my bell destiny than usual§§ thanks to the non-event of Friday practise and the rich and throbbing non-event of the Stedman day yesterday.  We began service ring with a touch of Grandsire doubles which, please the wicked, me-hating bell gods, I ought to be able to ring pretty frelling reliably on automatic pilot by now, even on Sunday mornings, but ask me that on a Sunday morning.  I seized my rope saying to myself, I can do this, I can do this. 

            And in fact I could.  The only one of us who went (briefly) wrong was Edward, which is a bit like Alfred Brendel hitting a wrong note.  It's not that it never happens, but you get to snigger when it does.  And then we rang some call changes for Cordelia, and then Niall—as he nearly always does, siiiiigh—asked if I'd call some plain bob doubles.  Plain bob doubles is the very first method you learn, okay?§§§  Even my heart-rate slows down a little on Sunday mornings when bob doubles is announced—or it did, until Niall started making me call it.  But nobody else there (except Cordelia trying to stay last on the tenor) has rung less than twice as many years as I have, right? 

            I will not embarrass anyone by identifying them here.  (Niall and Edward were sitting out:  and Cordelia is a beginner.  Beginners, even beginners who only have to stay last on the tenor can be expected to follow everyone else down in flames.)  But of the six of us, only Vicky on the treble and me trying to call the thing didn't go wrong.  It was not a beautiful listening experience.

            I need some new bell gods.              

* * *

* The book's been out LESS THAN A WEEK.  I suppose I should be pleased by the enthusiasm thus indirectly expressed.  Well, I am, but . . . 

** Although not always.  Eat hot faecal matter and die, you guys who think you own me because you plonked your credit card down on the bookshop counter^!   Or in the immortal words of Patrick Rothfuss, 'Kindly die screaming in a fire.  Your tears are delicious to me'.

^ Real or virtual 

*** Including twice on the opening page of the blog.  No, this is not a mistake.  It's also on the opening page of the web site, and you have to trip over it on your way to the send-email button.  I will continue to get queries but I hope there will be fewer of them. 

† I sometimes think that my admiration of Neil Gaiman is based less on the fact that he's a fantastic writer, which he is, than on the fact that he proves you don't have to write series.^  I've said this before, right?  Well, stand by, I'm sure I'll say it again.  But it's a little hard not to get fixated on such things when the first words out of any publishing professional's mouth when you've been so ill advised as to complain about your bank balance, are 'Write a series'.

^ Maybe you have to start by writing graphic novel series?  Then I am doomed.

†† This is probably poor old Tolkien's fault too.  When I do my little song-and-dance about PEGs I & II, I have a wearisome habit of reminding everyone of the end of THE TWO TOWERS, the second volume of LOTR:  'Frodo was alive but taken by the Enemy'.  Nobody mistook that for a really, really mean, nasty ending of the story.  Although it's also true that Tolkien had not already published a dozen novels, none of which were sequels to anything else (or what connections there were were peculiar), and he had turned in LOTR as one single monster epic novel, and his faithless publisher only agreed to publish it if he broke it up into three first.  But it's LOTR that was first called a 'trilogy' which is where the whole horrible Fantasy Trilogy thing came from . . . which I had already spent my first twenty or so years as a published writer kicking against and now it's all series.  Series!  Gah!  They aren't even stopping at three any more!^

^ PEGASUS is two books.  Okay?  Make a note.  Two.  Books.  Not three.  Not seventeen.  Two.

††† AND YOU ALSO KNOW THAT PEGASI ARE NOT FLYING HORSES, RIGHT?  Please spread the news.

‡ As the old joke goes:  Please.  Please take it far away.

‡‡ I don't remember anything about the weather Friday night.  But it was lightless darkness as far as I was concerned.

‡‡‡ I believe this is a known diagnosable symptom of ME, as listed in the Physicians' Desk Reference for several very scary drugs:  feeling like unholy death and green slime. 

§ I believe I have also failed to tell you that that magnificent concert Tuesday night also frelling crippled me.  It was, you may recall, in a pub.  I spent the evening vaguely aware that as I sat at an angle to face the tiny stage the hard, sticky-out edge of the banquette which was itself, of course, nailed flat to the wall, was digging into my back.  It dug well.  It dug very well.  It is a veritable John Henry of hard, sticky-out banquette edges.  I don't think hellhound whiplash later in the week assisted the recovery process either.

§§ Mobel on Pooka^?  Gaaaaaaah.  I've engaged my stubborn streak.  Ask me in a week.  Or better yet, a fortnight.

^ I am never sure how much regular text support and re-explanation I should supply.  Pooka, aka Apocalypse, is my iPhone.  Mobel is the method bell ringing ap for the iPhone, as discovered by Ajlr, henceforward to be known as The Evil, who thoughtfully sent me the citation.  She doesn't even have an iPhone!  She has an Android!

§§§ Before all you experts email me in outrage, yes, I know.  There are some towers that still teach Grandsire first.  Ours isn't one of them.  This whole area teaches plain bob first.