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

I honestly didn’t believe I wrote anything yesterday but this morning’s word count makes me a liar.

Reason I adore Paul #46548

He drove all the way back from Seattle (which is where Conflikt is) to partay filkwize with me, Cindy, Tom and Peggy and DOUGLAS who wasn’t DOGLESS.

Petal is so cute with her widdy tongue hanging out of her face. Her fur is so soft I get kinda dreamy and melty when I pet her.

Oh man, that was a really really nice housefilk. I feel… cleansed. Cleansed by harmonizing Unexpected on the fly with Cindy. Happy sigh.

Anyway Paul will drive back to Seattle today and come back Monday or Tuesday.

Weather continues unbelievable rainy but the threatened 5 cm of  oobleck did not occur.

yup, goin backwards

it happens.

It is all part of the writing process.

Visualizing data sometimes takes the form of very strange fiction.

I’m re-reading the bizarre little novel I wrote (Sweetie’s House of Tentacles, a misleading title if ever there was one) when I decided to fanfic my own universe with some slash and now I’m having issues, because I am only now noticing that I very stupidly advanced the series arc therein.

Now I have to either rewrite half a dozen chapters so I can jam them in the novel I’m working on, or tapdance creatively in some other way. “Previously in the Upsun series, in a short porny novel that I’m charging thirty bucks for to prevent people from reading it because it’s essentially slash with a *ludicrous* premise,

yes, even more so than usual!

and published without the assistance of an editor — ” and then fill in the blanks.

Beta readers solicited. I’m in negotiations with someone in the Low Countries, an early fan.

Anyway, I’m re-reading plus editing, and shown below is the dialogue that cracked me up this morning. The book’s a soap opera, but really entertaining; I wrote it immediately prior to starting MMCo.

“Right,” said Marty. “How do you feel about marriage?”

“It’s a complete waste of time and a criminal enterprise with better press than the Pope,” Jesse said, promptly and cheerfully.

I’m not coming anywhere close to making wordcount, but oh well. Life continues and dribs and drabs become books.

I am feeling an Alex deficiency, but also deficiencies in other people’s company. I think if it isn’t raining too hard or too cold today (Paul and I watched wet snow fall from the relative safety of the hot tub at Edmonds pool yesterday, and yes I did swim laps, I didn’t just poach maself) I’m going to do a shop and go to the library and maybe pick up eggs and butter and almonds and hazelnuts and dried apricots for biscotti so I can take some to the housefilk which is ‘replacing’ Conflikt, since none of the Vancouver contingent are going.  Cindy’s hosting on Friday. Paul can’t come – he’s going to Seattle, grr, and the grr is ‘but we’ve been practicing, why can’t he play!!??’. But Tom and Peggy can. So, yay.

This is the second Conflikt I’ve missed since it was established. I’ll go again when 45’s out of office, or earlier if I can put down this feeling that I’ll end up in a gulag mocked by guards over my fat white neediness.