Category: Writing

500 words on Honey on the Moon yesterday – cover finished for Upsun – edits up to about 20k words on SOTW. I even managed a couple of hundred words of fanfic.

Plotting and planning continues!

which has continued wyrd. I don’t get it every November, but this is coming on very nicely, although in meatspace this is Jeff checking up to see that I haven’t left doors open and cheese on counters. In other words, perfectly normal. I am distracted with the distraction of (I can’t say what… an internal process… not a bad one) and I’m finally through the course of ulcer drugs and starting to try to digest things again.

Side note. My surface itchiness dropped to almost zero while I was on the antibiotics. Make of that what you will. It’s been heavenly. I feel like I’ve been rolled up in lotion and left at the spa. It’s been fucking awesome. I’m expecting it to all be over shortly, of course.

I had an enormous bowl of organic instant oatmeal. I have to start making my own since this stuff has too much sugar in it. Paul says he gets a special kind and steams it and says that’s Scottish style and I say it’s undercooked. We both can’t be wrong. Part of the fun of oatmeal is the goo in between and having it served as a sort of hot salty dense salad with salt water dressing seems a bit much to me… I suppose I’m out of line casting (the hook appears, thankfully

I have calls to return. I have a group lunch date on Friday next, and possibly a group lunch date Saturday next. I’ve actioned some actionable shit. There’s a load in the laundry.

THERE IS A GODFORSAKEN INCH OF FUCKING SNOW ON THE DECK.

Calice, tabernac.

Anyhoo, despite the rudeness of the awakening (jest about spat out mer tea when Er saw that E’rm telling yer) I am filled with bubbling happiness. Upsun’s in, Sweep Off is well under way and I’m going to keep churning with the edits since after six fucking months I’m finally in the mood to edit again because what I’m reading no longer seems like dreadful shit.

Read enough fanfic and you’ll DEFINITELY get yourself into the mood to edit the living shit out of everything.

Also, I’ve realized what shifts in English I’m prepared to flow with, and which I’m going to be all Prof. Fussey on and go all “I DIE ON THIS HILL, and possibly on THAT ONE OVER THERE, ok maybe I SHALL OF COURSE CAST MY LOT BEFORE GOD ON… which one of you wiseacres said I should just be calling out the GPS coordinates” on.

Fanfic is interesting that way because some of the things non-native English speakers do is cool and okay by me and other stuff — that’s really common, no matter where she learned English — makes me want to learn magic so I can raise all her ancestors from the dead and stab them to death on a laser guided unicorn horn, in front of her. Just writing out that line made me realize I need therapy but I can hear a series of catcalls from the shadows, starting with most of Paul’s male relatives, when I even put that thought out into the ether. I am a bloodthirsty critter in my fictional selves, and such a mushed-out wuss in the one true self I step around in.

ODDFudbuster But I’m a much happier critter now, possibly healthier and SNOW.

You have been reading some very strange books / you wanna go to hell, but just for one quick look / did you not realize how long you’d have to stay / and all the memories you’d have to take away

I give advice – and I don’t give orders! / You’re gonna fall / you’re gonna rise above it all

The strain that you feel not making trouble for yourself / comes out as strain, strain for someone else / you may try to bar the devil from your door, but / he got in once, and you know he wants more

I give advice – and I don’t give orders! / You’re gonna fall / you’re gonna rise above it all

 

So anyway I wrote the above noted song after we were living in Amedeo Garden Court, which would be around 1985 or so.

It was really really weird to have it come into my mind yesterday. It matches the Supernatural show. That freaked me out.

Then I remembered how many times I’ve written songs that either came true or acted as love magic. My muse is an odd and powerful critter.

 

It’s in final prep stages prior to availability for sale. I’ll be getting to Sweep Off Those Waves after I’ve had a celebratory hot chocolate and viewed the latest NCIS.

Is being through the course of antibiotics and antacids. My mouth tastes like chokingly bitter metallic assbarf almost half the day now; I spat out water at the Aerie yesterday because it tasted terrible. 

I’ve had two sips of other people’s beers in restaurants over the last couple of weeks. Mouth says yuck, which is useful, or maybe aforesaid metallic assbarf.

Tattooed Archivist on Twitter has given me my first on line review. In response to “who is underrated?” from Goodreads.

“Midnite Moving Company by Allegra Sloman
Glorious language. Sentences you’ll want to read over & over.” 

I jumped up and down like an idjit and practically screamed. Mike was amused by my gratified reaction.

She also pronounced herself in love with George’s hair, so I gave her a sneak preview that there will be a ‘coming out party’ for George’s hair.

Me, my love is saved for Michel.

For some reason this made me want to edit Hair Sinister, who knew, so I’m armpit deep in that as soon as I hit save on this

Soon I’ll be finished this goddamned HPac of antiulcer drugs. My digestion has improved, marginally, and my liver is getting better every day if the swelling and … other evidence … is anything to go by.

Working on HOTM but I can’t settle to write, I’m jumpy as hell.

neither of my children have phoned me in days so I’m pouty (I don’t call them unless it’s been weeks – at which point they sound almost guilty)

my gut is a quiescent mass of furtive anxiety

I am having trouble performing the simplest of tasks

I feel kinda messed up but there isn’t anything really wrong with me

Keith sent me a text which inadvertently reminded me of why Paul and I broke up

The weather slurps donkey balls from a lava flow.

On the plus side

brO and I have started watching Mindhunter. Oh, what am I saying, we’re two episodes from the end of S1. It is my firm intention to go back and watch the whole thing again when we’re done.

—

brO and I have viewed Their Finest. It is a spirited defence of film-making as art, a heart-wrenching confrontation of the death and geographical disorientation raining down from German bombers, a workplace dramedy, a digitus impudicus directed at the people who, for graft, glory, the ability of the state to draft you and / or sheer moronic dog-in-the-manger ill-will *fuck* with aforesaid art, and a woman-centric gem.

I’m intending to watch it again and just roll around in the performances. Bill Nighy is delicious in a fashion I could never hope to convey unless you watch the film too and help me put words to it.

—

Two of the characters for Earbuds sprang to life in my head and had a post coital convo about work, life, religion, chronic illness and poly that just made me love both of them harder… I didn’t write any of it down and Jeff is likely scowling at me

Mike’s back from whatever work travel hell hole he was most recently despatched to

I’m not really doing too bad, but my gumption machine’s broke down

So I’m on day 4 of the Helicobacter Pylori treatment pack, and my guts are making noises like ship’s rigging in a high wind. The worst of the ulcer symptoms are already gone. I still have pain and tenderness under my right ribs so my liver is obvs still unhappy with me but it’s nothing like two weeks ago when I could imagine that I was slowly dying with no difficulty.

1726: Thomas Doulton was pilloried in London ‘for endeavouring to discover the Windward Passage upon one Joseph Yates, a seafaring person.’

Sorry, stole that from the twitter account WhoresofYore this morning.

I recently fell in love with Mike Stuchbery on twitter, a simply delightful colonial boy from Australia who’s also a historian. Because he ties his history to things like facts and evidence and modern understanding of race and colonialism, the fucking nazis on the internet have gone for him hard.  His posts about history are gold – his responses to Nazis a mixture of dreamy calm and crushing wit.

Also, he keeps liking my responses to his posts.

 

when I look across the world as it is now I find

it’s no longer capitalism that draws my ire

It’s the complete and total death

of colonialism that I desire

this is a form of blues that was taken up by whites

called talking blues and as you can hear it isn’t rap

I could say that it’s a Victorian style recitative

but over a twelve bar blues bass line

who’s going to buy that crap

May I at this time point out that settlers really should not

imitate the folks who make the money

they earned the right to rap like that

and when we do it it just isn’t funny

or topical or edgy or forward facing or cool

it’s something called appropriation

holy shit that’s exactly like

what happened in the founding of our nation

(Millenium Falcon dying noise unavailable for copyright reasons)

 

without all the death of course

 

(Bass line starts up again)

 

when I look across the world as it is now I find

it’s no longer capitalism that draws my ire

It’s the complete and total death

of colonialism that I desire

 

so that long after your ancestors

stole all that land and wealth

you seize the speech of oppressed peoples

and hug it to yourself (and your coterie of cool friends)

 

Theft becomes a habit that is really hard to break

lift up, restore and sing resolve not denigrate and take

 

when I look across the world as it is now I find

it’s no longer capitalism that draws my ire

It’s the complete and total death

of colonialism that I desire

 

I’m white for what it’s worth and I’m telling you it’s our job

Our unpaid job, our emotional labour

to quit thinking the world’s a shithole

and we don’t need to take care of our neighbours

to quit spending all our social capital

on the golden fucking age of tv

to kiss farewell the tensile promise of me me me

on a geologic scale we know not many of us will likely make it through

but I hope that temporarily someone will and I’m hoping that it’s you

you the people who will seize the peace in whatever form it takes

and lead who’s left to a better world before physics hits the brakes

 

when I look across the world as it is now I find

it’s no longer capitalism that draws my ire

It’s the complete and total death

of colonialism that I desire

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My most recent novels feature poor kids born in the nineties. The f word is part of their speech and isn’t worthy of comment. The aliens don’t curse, blaspheme or use gendered slurs, a deliberate choice by one of their more charismatic leaders that the others fall in line with.

we celebrated John’s birthday (missing Keith and Jeff alas) at the Wet Spot at 6th and 6th. I had the large portion of the ribs plus yam fries and because I am a superior sort of sister brought home leftovers. Alex had demonic possession amounts of energy and his poor mama barely had the opportunity to taste her food. Le sigh.

I have to take 8 horsepills a day for the next two weeks and fuck me but they were expensive.

A Métis woman on twitter has had four white women (over the last few days at a conference), one of them a cabinet minister, tell her that her baby is cute enough to steal.

I could rant at great length about how ignorant this is. She’s had people threaten her with child removal.

Almost all FNMI (First Nations Métis Inuit) women have.

The white women who said this to her all know about the 60s scoop (20000 stolen children, .01 percent of the TOTAL CANADIAN POPULATION at the end of the 60s), and the residential schools (who stole 150000 children and killed 6000 of them, most of whom never got grave markers).

Next time you think you aren’t racist, remember that half in jest is whole in earnest.

Did not know this.  I’ve been able to confirm the existence of the group but not that they helped 300000 people make safe landfall or aliyah. That seems a little on the high side (that’s 300 people a day almost for the three years before the establishment of the state of Israel… but I will do more research and confirm numbers unless an MOT can confirm that.)

I also learned about the Nokmim who were avengers of the shoah, who hunted Nazis right into Canada after the war. They told a former camp SS officer in Winnipeg they could kill him or he could look after it himself, and apparently he hanged himself rather than be killed by Jews, although he had just been outed by the Soviets, so who really knows. (Aleksander Laak)

As upsetting as the path to get here was, my point is that the time to punch Nazis is right now. Punching them after they’ve separated their idea of subhumans out and killed them all is too late. Nazis exist in an eternal present of punchability.

Wow. Greenland Iceberg.

No writing today which is rapidly becoming yesterday.

I think I went to bed without eating supper so if there’s any pizza left I’m going to go have some.

 

Shipped off 1500 words of HotM to mOm yesterday, always a good feeling.  Know what I am working on next, a better feeling yet. I’m at the Eyrie, and it’s darkness studded with sodium vapour lights out the window.

Went to a new schnitzel place last night and they had run out of schnitzel. Mike and I laughed and laughed, and ordered something else. The beef dip was home roasted beef – his lasagne looked like like death by cheese.

Still trying to reconcile writing supergay fanfic with the notion that this culture doesn’t treat men who are civil and affectionate to each other (whether or not they are gay) with anything like respect.

and I note a Russian fan has said the following about a scene in a show

Бляяяяяять

This is pronounced Blyayayayayayatʹ and means something. Yup, if you put in in the translator on Google you get ‘shivering’. This makes total sense in context.

Out of curiosity, which seems to constitute a large portion of whatever I’m made of, I took out one of those ya’s (you can see this coming I’m sure) and it changed the meaning of the word to Shouting. So Ð‘ляяяяяять means shouting. It’s actually quite delightfully onomatopoeic.

I decided to press on through my unscheduled Russian lesson, and carefully removed another Ñ. This still means shouting, but obviously not quite as loud and angsty.  I carefully removed another Ñ.  You have to remove four Ñs before you get to the next change in meaning.

Бляяять means blaze.

Бляять means shave.

Блять means fuck.

If there’s an English word that is this magically delicious I’m all ears. AND YES I NEARLY GOT ALL THE YAYA’S OUT. (Get yer Ya-Yas out is the name of a live Stones record.)

In other news, Jeff turned on the furnace yesterday and one of my toes is gouty.