When Life Interferes

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

I decided to let you know I’m not worse. In fact, I’m markedly better. But I got up late and had a podcast interview with the Worldshapers podcast, which ran till now because I talk way too much.

I will link it here when it goes live (should be this weekend.)

Havelock cat, as usual had opinions and things he wanted to interject, as well as running back and forth across my lap for no reason anyone could figure out.

Health wise, I’d say I’m almost okay, though the way this thing keeps coming back, I make no bets.

I’m going to grab a snack and then work on Bowl of Red.

Tomorrow I have a guest post, which is a short story by Ken Lizzi, because I have amazing friends.

The other thing I should say is that I — finally — have a world bible for Witchfinder, so Witch’s Daughter and then Rogue Magic will resume episodically on Saturdays, but not this week, because I’m still trying to finish Bowl of Red. (Yes, I know. It was the stupid whateverthehell this was that interfered.)

After that it’s Deep Water (Magis) which opens with “I owed a debt to the Loch Ness Monster….” And apparently has cannibal mermaids. Eh.

Anyway, I’ll now go back to paying work, after I eat something. I just wanted you to know I’m okay.

72 thoughts on “When Life Interferes”

  1. Thanks, Sarah. I really appreciate these short notes so we know you’re well and working.

  2. cannibal mermaids?

    You mean that they eat their fellow mermaids?

    After all, cannibalism is eating others of your kind not eating beings not of you kind.

    Note, if these mermaids are eating humans (or dragons), I don’t want them to attempt to eat me but I’m not sure that “cannibal” is the correct term. [Crazy Grin]

    Seriously Sarah, I’m glad to hear that you’re OK. 😀

          1. That’s fairly consistent with a lot of Celtic and/or Norse water critters, especially since Scotland has a lot of Horrible Warnings among their stories. I mean, yes, there are good water creatures and persons, but it’s a fair guess that the kelpies and glaistigs (and so on) are going to be in favor of drowning you, enslaving you, drinking your blood, eating you, or taking your head.

            Of course, this is also true of a lot of fairy creatures that live on the land or under hills or in the sky or in a tree or wherever, so not a lot of difference in the Horrible Warnings.

                  1. Humans and Other Speaking Beings Correctly Object to be Prey of other Beings (Speaking Beings or Otherwise).

                    It is a matter of Species (and Individual) Survival.

                    Predators Beware! We Do Not Want To Be Your Prey!

      1. I sometimes wonder.

        It often appears that Dragons, Humans and other Beings Who Speak are rationalizing beings not rational beings. 😦

  3. I recall having questions about sailors overcome with lust for a creature with the genitalia of a fish.

    A modified version of cannibalism could account for that, I suppose.

    But would make it difficult to lure the sailors with the entrancing sound of their singing.

    Unless a siren song involves a lot of humming?

    (Hides from incoming carp.)

    1. Futurama’s “Deep South” Episode delves into the difficulties of ummmm how to phrase this? “consummating” a relationship with a mermaid….

      That’s definitely an issue 🙂

    2. Some tales have mermaids with a garment like a selkie’s skin, so they can take off the fish tail.

    3. Two college roommates were NROTC through the midshipman summer. One related a conversation with a sailor who was looking lustfully at a large piece of fruit. I don’t think he’d have been bothered by piscine genitalia. [eww to both scenarios…]

  4. “Cannibal” is one of those fun words with stricter and looser meanings.
    Humans who eat other humans
    Creatures (not necessarily sapient) who eat others of their own kind
    Sapients who eat other sapients (not necessarily of their own kind) – a loose meaning with sticklers objecting (“She’s not a cannibal; she’s just anthropophagous.”)

    And then there is “cannibalize” referring to the sourcing of parts to repair an inanimate object.

    1. Oooh, that’s unusually funny even for folks wanting to be twits about words– “anthropophagous” is literally man-eater. There’s nothing in it that would work to replace “cannibal,” in either the specific (Homo sapiens sapiens) or the broad (“people”) meaning of humans eating humans because it’s silent on who does the eating.

      Theologically speaking, if a creature is a moral being (roughly, sapien, a person, able to make moral choices), a Christian would have a well-founded reason to identify eating them, or them eating us, as “cannibalism.” (The City of God, Book XVI, chapter 8.)

    2. I’m surprised that the word is still allowed given it’s the Spanish version of what the indigenous Caribbean’s called themselves. I guess there’s none of them left to file a grievance.

    3. I had a discussion with my mom about this once. She said vampires are cannibals but dragons* aren’t.
      *Dragons that can shapeshift in to human form would be cannibals though.

  6. Is the Magis series the one from Deep Pink?

    They were teachings kids how to make the silly hand heart sing in the library today and I couldn’t stop being reminded of that book.

      1. OOOH something to spend my money on… can’t decide which I want first, Bowl of Red or the continuation of Deep Pink… In either case, take my money,please?

          1. Thank you . I shall wait patiently. It’s not in my nature 🙂 but I shall do it anyways…

  7. And apparently has cannibal mermaids.

    Makes perfect sense to me… then again, I’m the kind of person who had nifty fits over Frozen II’s water horse being unpleasant.

        1. The moral of the story is that you shouldn’t trust strange horses hanging around in bogs. Of course, part of that might be “You don’t know if that’s a nice horse or not, and anyway the owner will tan your hide if you try to ride his horse, and you could hang if you try to reenact a horsestealing raid.”

          But yeah, there are lots of unpleasant possibilities when the supernatural gets involved.

          1. “And it’s down to the water’s brim he’s born the rowan shield
            And the goldenrod he has cast in to see what the lake might yield
            And wet she rose from the lake, and fast and fleet went she
            One half the form of a maiden fair with a jet black mare’s body

            And loud, long and shrill he blew til his steed was by his side
            High overhead the grey hawk flew and swiftly did he ride
            Saying “Course well, my brindled hound, and fetch me the jet black mare
            Stoop and strike, my good grey hawk, and bring me the maiden fair” “

            1. Ceili’s Muse/Six Mile Bridge/Maggie Drennon (can’t remember what they were called at the time) did a great version of The Witch of the Westmerelands on a CD I have around here somewhere…

    1. Weren’t sirens originally shown with bird features?

      Persephone’s Handmaidens
      Before the Sirens became the Sirens, they were mortal girls who served the goddess Persephone. These lovely girls trailed behind Persephone when she visited her favorite meadows to pick flowers. They sang to her in sweet voices and played instruments to please her.

      When Persephone was abducted by Hades, the loyal handmaidens volunteered to help look for her. Demeter gave them golden wings, so that they could fly over the earth searching for Persephone—but the search was vain, since Persephone had been imprisoned in the underworld. Heartbroken over the loss of her daughter, Demeter lashed out against the innocent handmaidens, who had failed to bring good news back from their search. She cursed them, declaring that they would stay in their bird form until someone passed by their songs without stopping, at which point they would die. Then she banished them to an uninhabited island.

      https://mythology.net/greek/greek-creatures/siren/#:~

      1. Oooh, the Japanese version of harpies are getting kind of close to sirens, poking at it. (They are, of course, pretty girls. Not bird-centars with poop issues.)

      3. Yes. Then their feathers were plucked. From the link I included above:

        One legend says that Hera, queen of the gods, persuaded the sirens to enter a singing contest with the Muses. The Muses won the competition and then plucked out all of the sirens’ feathers and made crowns out of them. Out of their anguish from losing the competition, writes Stephanus of Byzantium, the sirens turned white and fell into the sea at Aptera (“featherless”), where they formed the islands in the bay that were called Leukai (“the white ones”, modern Souda).

        1. They also threw themselves into the sea and drowned when they didn’t kill off Odysseus– none of which makes them fish-girls.

    2. Obligatory plug here for Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire’s “Rolling in the Deep”. Good, good scientifically-dressed horror. (Alphabet people everywhere, but she’s not preachy about it.) I am never getting on a boat again…

      1. There was another series “Andrea Vernon and the…” by Alexander Kane which also raised the ‘do they eat people or mermaids’ question.

  9. BTW, good news:

    This is really not Biden’s week:

    Federal takeover of elections: DOA.
    Nuking legislative filibuster: impossible.
    Private employer vax mandate: struck down.
    Producer Price Index: surges to all-time high.
    Consumer Price Index: highest since 1982.
    Public support: craters to 33%

    — Spencer Brown (@itsSpencerBrown)

    1. Gee, where did his landslide support go to so fast? It’s like it just evaporated or something.

      2. I’m amazed that the lame stream media is reporting this stuff at all. Normally they’d be shouting “We Love Big Brandon”, “BB…BB…BB…BB” and geting rather red in the face and contorted. Somewhere someone is whispering in their ears, Is it the remains of Obumbles people (likely not most of them are running the Meat Puppet In Chief)? Sanders supporters? Hell no they couldn’t run an orgy in a free brothel. The republican Party? Uh no most days they make Sanders people look competent. That leaves Shelob Clinton sitting twitching in her web trying to find things and bring them to her. She ought to be very careful of plain old hobbits with magical swords…

  10. Glad you’re doing better (and the family is, too, I hope) and getting some work done! I really do need to expand what I’ve read of yours beyond Guardian and Uncharted but I’ve got other things to work on myself right now. Here’s hoping all projects in question go well for all of us!

        1. Well, assuming that the story of the Kilkenny Cats wasn’t an Irish Joke, there was nothing in the story that claims they ate each other.

          They just fought until nothing was left but a bit of tail. 😉

  14. The whole discussion of “Horrible Warnings” fits in with the bizarre photo I was given yesterday afternoon by Bing for my wallpaper. I showed it to my husband and his first comment was that someone needs to write a story for it.

    My first thought was that that boat must have frozen dessicated corpses on it.

  16. New contacts not working, I read that as Cannabis Mermaids….Which made little sense when someone posted about them eating each other. But, I thought, well, maybe if they were Kelpie-like (the floating seaweed type, not the horse type), and then I read it again, and realized Cannibal… The Irish version is the ceasg and the water-horse the uisage and both were definitely different from the Selkie. There is a great folk(filk?) song about the Selkies.

    Didn’t they have a TV series recently about vicious mermaids? Somewhere in Maine? Never watched it.

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