Author: Allegra

FINALLY I am starting to see themes developing in Honey on the Moon.

I will have to cut quite a bit from how it is right now – I wrote one chapter twice and will have to consolidate it unless I’m going to time shift through the whole thing so the reader doesn’t exactly know which part of the space trip George is thinking about. Unstuck from time but fixed in place.

Very much looking forward to George pranking Michel.

For John Perry Barlow. He wrote the lyrics, which are quite beautiful. Since people will ask, the song is about how the death of Neil Cassady and the birth of a girl child named Cassidy intertwine, not in real life but in the imagination.

Here are his life tips:

• Be patient. No matter what.
• Don’t badmouth: Assign responsibility, not blame.
• Say nothing of another you wouldn’t say to him.
• Never assume the motives of others are, to them, less noble than yours are to you.
• Expand your sense of the possible.
• Don’t trouble yourself with matters you truly cannot change.
• Expect no more of anyone than you can deliver yourself.
• Tolerate ambiguity.
• Laugh at yourself frequently.
• Concern yourself with what is right rather than who is right.
• Never forget that, no matter how certain, you might be wrong.
• Give up blood sports.
• Remember that your life belongs to others as well. Don’t risk it frivolously.
• Never lie to anyone for any reason. (Lies of omission are sometimes exempt.)
• Learn the needs of those around you and respect them.
• Avoid the pursuit of happiness. Seek to define your mission and pursue that.
• Reduce your use of the first personal pronoun.
• Praise at least as often as you disparage.
• Admit your errors freely and soon.
• Become less suspicious of joy.
• Understand humility.
• Remember that love forgives everything.
• Foster dignity.
• Live memorably.
• Love yourself.
• Endure.

So much for taking the day off. Since I appear to have made word count I’m going to drink coffee and go tease Jeff into watching something mindless and fun.

Spoke to Tammy yesterday. It was wonderful to hear her voice.

I have a lot of anger and tiredness in my soul about the Stanley verdict. It’s now legal to shoot indians in Canada, how very tolerant of us.

For that and other reasons, which need not all be bad, I’m taking the rest of the day off from social media. If you want me call me.

blerg.

Yes I wrote today. On my novel, writing with my big girl all cotton undergarments on.

I want to just fall back into reading really smooshy fanfic, the kind where I get little pains in my chest because the boys are being stupid and it’s ever so cute and I used to get the exact same feeling in my chest when I was reading really good nurse nellie nurdles (Harlequin romances, vintage 70’s) when I was a wee little gender warrior maiden.

To my disgust, the book I’m working on is shrinking, and SOTW is getting even bigger – at this point I need to knock some verbiage out but it just keeps getting longer and I’m a teensy bit frustrate.

SOTW is about 1/4 edited now and HOTM is just under 34K but every time I write something I take something out. It may get much, much shorter and then expand outward again.

I’VE BEEN GETTING NOTHING BUT MAJOR ARCANA FOR DAY SIGNS. THE LAST SIX DAYS the Fool, Justice, The World, Death, The Devil and the Hierophant (I never get the Hierophant). It is creeping me out.

I light a candle for all the people I know who are suffering extremes of mental health problems, specifically depression.

Lydia Netzer said ask your readers this

1. At what point did you feel like “Ah, now the story has really begun!”
2. What were the points where you found yourself skimming?
3. Which setting in the book was clearest to you as you were reading it? Which do you remember the best?
4. Which character would you most like to meet and get to know?
5. What was the most suspenseful moment in the book?
6. If you had to pick one character to get rid of, who would you axe?
7. Was there a situation in the novel that reminded you of something in your own life?
8. Where did you stop reading, the first time you cracked open the manuscript? (Can show you where your first dull part is, and help you fix your pacing.)
9. What was the last book you read, before this? And what did you think of it? (This can put their comments in context in surprising ways, when you find out what their general interests are. It might surprise you.)
10. Finish this sentence: “I kept reading because…”

Someone bought MMCo, but 10 someones bought Upsun, so me happy.

Moveable feast at ‘the last house on the right’ aka Tom and Peggy’s, in which Katie made the dinner and then brought it to Tom and Peggy’s. Paul, Kate, Keith, Alex and I were in attendance.

IT WAS ROAST BEEST AN IT WAS NOM.

It was absolutely wonderful to see everyone, and I only wish Jeff could have been there to enjoy it, but he would have been ensconced with pOp watching the Superb Owl AND YAY THE EAGLES WON seriously I was thrilled when I heard that.

#amediting Colin permitted himself the mental image of his grandmother, always a big fan of zombie movies, noisily rising from her grave at the state of her flowerbeds.

Upsun is published! If you read this blog you’re probably on the mailing list, but just in case you’re not, download it here.

Mall walk at Lougheed yesterday and then lunch at Paul’s. Katie’s been working four weeks now. Keith’s picked up some extra hours so he’s super busy too.

Life is pretty good right now. Wonder if there’s any Sweet Georgia Browns left?

Use of the word ‘darkies’ in this post is completely unacceptable, but then again so is having to report accurately on the activities of fucking racists.

Watched Our Souls at Night with Paul yesterday; it was most agreeable to see it with him as I’ve thought of him as the perfect target market for the movie since Jeff and I first viewed it. Side note. It is qwhite noticeably populated by the pale people.

Upsun manuscript is complete and will be ready for publication shortly. I get a little thrill when I see the cover. Some things get to be perfect; for everything else there’s good enough. In this case Mike’s picture is perfect, and I’m only sorry I had to put the name and title on it, kicking it down to good enough.

Shared the mOm beating down a rat tale on twitter today. It is a tale which has grown in the telling and may be significantly less accurate in its details than it could be. I encourage the parental units to consider the matter and make their changes as they will.

I posted the story after a racist said there were rats in Paris because of darkies (I compress his feces, I mean thesis, but raaaallly not by much) to which one of my fave white anti-racists on twitter said that Paris has had a well known rat problem for a fucking millennium now and flooding is the cause of the irruption, not darkies (comments passim). I have to include this explanation or the last two lines won’t make sense.

My response:

Ha ha! story time from Grandma.
. When my fOlks moved to a small town on the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia (they did not wish to live on the air force base at Greenwood) they could not understand why every single household in town had about a dozen skeevy, semi-feral cats. /2
Then came the high spring tide. The wharf rats, evicted from their normal home, went from house to house seeking shelter; each place they smelled cats, and so they kept going until they ended up at the clapboard cottage where I, a mite of six months, lay in my bassinet. /3
Picture my mother’s atavistic fury as a fully grown wharf rat approaches her young! GRABS A BROOM, WHACK WHACK WHACK WHACK until my father says, quietly, with his eyes bugging out, “You can stop. It is dead now.” The rat looked like a blood’n’fur pizza. /4
pOp shot rats *in the house* with a .22 pistol. Next day they grabbed a cat from every single house in the village.
. 1. No immigrants were harmed in the telling of this story. <—lol
. 2. The rats didn’t make it. Sorry.
.
. /FIN

Clipping along nicely, taking a little break but going right back to it. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. Was pleased to hear that my practice session on Rowena this morning was pronounced pleasant by Jeff.  I only mention it because I was thinking to myself as I got super-loud at one point that Jeff really does put up with a lot.

I did not squawk like a chicken, but I did play the “When I’m Dead” song.

Tried to drown Alex at Edmonds Rec Centre yesterday, fortunately I was not successful. I am COMPLETELY out of practice dealing with toddlers. He climbed into some water that was the right depth – and then jumped into deeper water from there; some pleasant strangers handed him back to me, and he was SMILING the little BUGGER as he sank beneath the surface.

Conflikt is over for this year. I am so glad I didn’t go. I am cocooning, and as long as I’m writing I don’t care if I’m being a lazy bum.

The ground is sodden, there’s so much rain nothing is draining. I should probably check local drains, City of Burnaby is asking residents to do that.

I can’t/don’t plot

why am I writing

I have no plot in my life

and yet it’s interesting

things happen

in and out of likelihood

but I was given a wall of words

the day I was born

and some of them are here still

although that wall now sits

at the bottom of a well

I pull and pull on that damned rope

that moves the bucket

bringing water from the well of words

each drop infused

with something odd and viral

but it tastes of home

& home is what I mean to plant

cloud seeding

everywhere

between the stars

and here

between your ears