Category: Uncategorized

And not in a good way.  In case you wondered at no post yesterday, AFGM is LARGELY done, pending line by line, but yesterday I woke up feeling like recycled yuck and today is about the same.  I’ve been trying to write a post but I can’t.

It seems to be “whatever’s going around” characterized MOSTLY by overwhelming exhaustion.   So…  I’ll hopefully be back tomorrow.  Today I’m going to sleep.

I’m trying to finish up A Few Good Men and there’s no space in my head to even put up Austen fanfic.  So amuse yourselves among yourselves.  No hitting, no hair pulling, no dipping of braids in inkwells and ABSOLUTELY no glueing of ears behind back of head (You know who you are.)

Ah’ll be bach.

UPDATE:  A SLIGHTLY EDITED AND PRETTIED UP COMPILATION OF ALL CHAPTERS UP TO A WEEK OLD IS HERE

*I’m posting this novel here, free, one chapter at a time.  This is being posted as I write it, so it’s in pre-earc (for those from Baen) or in close-to (but not quite) -first draft state. Once it’s finished it will undergo editing and then it will be published in some form. I’m going to put this up with its own category so you can find it.  For those interested in throwing something in the storytellers bowl, there is a donate button on the right hand side of the site.  Anyone contributing $6 or more will get an electronic (non DRM) version of the novel upon completion.  Of course, donating is not mandatory.  I hope you enjoy the chapters.  For Director’s Commentary of sorts, look at the bottom of the chapter. *

For first chapter, look here

For seventh chapter, look here.

A Step In The Dark

Nell concentrated on the coordinates to her room and stepped through.  There was the moment of bitter cold of the betweener, the sense of winds howling around her, even though in fact wind could not exist in this dimension that was wholly devoid of air or any other element needed for life.

And then she was stepping into the familiar confines of her room, almost ontop of chalk drawings and a bowl shattered on the floor.

She surveyed the chalk drawings, with dismay, noting that the water had splattered out to mark the floor indelibly with the chalk dust. This was going to be very hard to clean, and before she was done she might very well need to scrub the entire floor and wax it, lest the landlady get upset.  Which she would.  Particularly since Nell had also broken one of the bowls.

It had taken Nell quite a while to truly believe that common belongings were considered precious, or that they were as expensive as they were.  A simple glazed bowl, a platter, anything like that would have been thrown out on Earth the minute it became cracked.  Here, even when broken, the shards would be collected in the hopes that the plate mender might fix it when next he did the rounds of the neighborhood.

She picked up the shards of the bowl carefully and stored it in the cupboard in the corner, hoping to mitigate her landlady’s annoyance by telling her she’d saved the shards to be mended.

Nell couldn’t understand it, and couldn’t work it out logically.  On Earth she’d had plenty of friends who read fantasy and it had been assumed in almost any novel that a society with magic was by necessity prosperous and clean and all the other things real, pre-industrial societies hadn’t been.

But this one wasn’t.  Though Nell wasn’t sure if it was in the past in relation to the world in which she’d grown up and which she still considered the real Earth, this Earth seemed to be stuck somewhere around the regency.  Time was hard to pin down exactly, because this England didn’t seem to have any of the same monarchs.  Or rather, it had the same monarchs up to a point, that point being around the time of Arthur, who in this world was a real documented king, with his prime minister and court magician, Merlin.  In fact, Seraphim, Duke of Darkwater, was supposed to be descended from Merlin and Morgan le Fey.

The thought had brought her right back to the subject her mind had been hoping to avoid.

Having come to it, she realized she couldn’t avoid her obligations another moment.  Taking a pocket watch from her desk, she looked at the time.  Yes.  She had to see Sydell.  For one, he would be expecting a report.  Which would mean that he would be in the park down the street, standing by the lake and scaring the mothers and nannies and the children they supervised by glaring at all of them, taking out on them the fact that Nell was now three minutes late.

Sydell counted punctuality a virtue, one of the many things upon which he and Antoine seemed to disagree violently.  Antoine had told Nell, very early in their acquaintance, that the only appointments worth keeping were those to which both heart and mind concurred and that if an assigned meeting didn’t inflame your heart with wild excitement it wasn’t worth keeping.

The appointment with Sydell, so far from inflaming her heart with wild anything, gave her a strong feeling of having been encased in ice and wishing to run away.  But if she had to hazard a guess, she would imagine that Antoine would actually wish her to keep this one.  Else…

Else, she wasn’t sure exactly what, but she was sure it wouldn’t be pleasant.  Antoine had been arrested the night they’d first set foot in Avalonis.  She’d never been told why or what he had done to deserve that fate, but she thought it was no criminal matter so much as something between Antoine and Sydell – some old vengeance or some unfinished game – because Sydell hadn’t told her that Antoine would be going to trial, or that he would have to serve some sentence for some determined set of time.  Instead, he’d told her that he, Sydell, was holding Antoine D’Argent at the pleasure of the king.  Which pretty much meant, if Nell understood properly, what used to be called in France, in her world, before the revolution, a lettre-de-cachet, that is something that said to apprehend an individual, keep him indefinitely and tell no one where he was.

At the time she hadn’t realized this, and she’d been too numb, too confused, wondering why Antoine would take them to a world where he was likely to meet with such a reception, to be able to even ask how to free him.  Fortunately Sydell had told her, unasked.  You’ll work for me, he’d said.  Three years, three days and three hours.  You are a competent witch and, as the king’s spymaster, I am always in need of one such who can nose out illegal use of magic, crimes against the innocent of unprotected worlds or other things against our law.  You serve me well and you and your paramour will be able to leave Avalonis in peace.

Am I arrested then? She had asked.

Detained, you mean?  No, you are not.  You can leave this very moment, if you wish.  But then your paramour cannot go with you.  And his freedom will be entirely dependent on my benevolence, of which I have very little towards Antoine.

Nell sighed.  Yes, Antoine would definitely want her to keep this appointment.

She picked up her cloak and wrapped herself in it.  It was, like most of her clothes, serviceable.  It had looked Romantic and interesting when she’d first arrived here and all their clothes seemed to be like something out a fairytale.  Now it was just a cloak, a little threadbare, bought second hand because Sydell’s stipend rarely extended beyond the bare necessities of food and lodging.

Clasping the cloak in front, she picked up her reticule and headed out the door, closing it carefully behind her lest the landlady discover the damage to her floor and decide to throw Nell out without ceremony.

On the way to the park she tried to set it in her mind what to say.  Normally, when Sydell had asked her to find out what someone was doing, she found things she didn’t mind telling him about.  Like that woman a few months ago who was sacrificing newborns in order to use their hearts in love potions.  Nell had felt absolutely no qualms about turning her in to Sydell’s justice even though she suspected Avallonis had horrible penalties for her kind of crime.  No.  She hoped Avallonis had horrible penalties for her kind of crime.

But then there was Seraphim.  His crime was terrible by Avallonis standards.  Because, from what she understood, Avallonis was such a strongly magical world, doing business in other worlds was strictly forbidden.  And doing business could be interpreted as merely visiting for some minutes.  But taking people or things out of those worlds – or bringing them in – definitely fell within the definition.  The penalty for that sort of infraction was death.  And the death penalty for Dukes might be beheading, supposedly a quicker and more dignified death than hanging, but someone who was beheaded was still very thoroughly dead.

Yet Nell could see, in her mind’s eye, the boy-shifter pursued by those horrible men with the magic guns, and Seraphim risking his life to save him.  Risking his life to save her.  And then Gabriel Penn…  She shook her head.  She couldn’t imagine turning either of the men in.  But then, she couldn’t imagine not turning them in.  What could she tell Sydell that would satisfy him?  If he thought she hadn’t fulfilled her part of the bargain, what would Sydell do to Antoine?  At various times, the King’s spy master had intimated that only Nell’s good behavior kept Antoine alive.

“Ah, Nell, in a brown study, I see,” Sydell said. Even before she looked up, she knew he was in one of his moods.  It was in the voice which had the biting edge of a chill wind.

Looking up only confirmed it.  Sydell was a man of maybe forty, with black hair, carefully combed back from his forehead, in the style at the moment fashionable for men.  His clothes were as exquisitely tailored as Seraphim Ainsling’s had been: tight coat of blue superfine, so carefully fitted to his powerful torso that she thought it might require a spell to get him into it, and butter yellow breeches, so tight that wearing them in public should constitute an offense against morals.  His cravat: tall and arranged in graceful folds about his neck, was a thing of beauty.

But the face of such a carefully attired gentleman was pale and at the moment peevish, his lower lip slightly advanced, his eyes darting daggers in her direction.

The park, filled with mothers and nannies and children, from those so small they were in carriages, to the ten year olds chasing each other around the lake or feeding the ducks, was a place of life and sound, but everyone seemed to avoid Sydell’s periphery.  Everyone but Nell, and she only because she couldn’t avoid it.

She bobbed a curtsey by habit and with no thought.  It was amazing how quickly such habits developed.  “I beg your pardon, Sydell,” she said.  “I got myself… accidentally enmeshed in a spell, and it took a while to extricate myself.”

He frowned at her, then his lipst curved quickly upward, not in a smile so much as in what seemed like pleasure at her having suffered a delay.  “Well,” he said.  “Well.  What workings did you get involved in?  Was it Darkwater?  What has the Duke been up to.  Tell me without delay.”

And that was Sydell all over Tell me without delay was his version of “please make a report” and delivered with even less ceremony than that would have been.  Unspoken and hanging between those words was the sense that what it all actually meant was “Tell me or else.”

But she could not tell.  She thought of the Duke on the floor, his life-force ebbing away, and of Grabiel Penn desperately pushing strength and magic into the duke with his resurection spell.  She could not let them be arrested.  Oh, they’d broken the law.  They’d assuredly broken the law.  But it was for a good cause, was it not?

She had a notion her argument was slippery, yet looking at Sydell’s pale face, his frosty glare she couldn’t imagine that he would be on the side of right in this.  Instead, she reached, desperately for the story that Penn had told the Duchess.  She’d tell the same story.  Something that juicy would be about town in no time, and the two lies, meeting somewhere in the middle would corroborate each other.  Sydell would never suspect and it would give Nell a little longer to study Darkwater and to find out whether, indeed, anything nepharious hid behind the Duke’s seeming benevolence.

She put a smile on her face and told Sydell, “Nothing of consequence.  It’s so diverting.  I don’t know what you thought Darkwater was doing, but what he is doing is what you expect of a wastrel of his kind.  You see, he left in the middle of his own engagement party to meet with a … a married woman.  And I got pulled into his transport spell, and fell atop the lady’s husband who was hiding in the bushes, and the whole thing got blown out of proportion… or perhaps into proportion.  The offended husband demanded satisfaction, and the Duke got wounded, just as you would expect, and then he transported into his room, and his valet tended to him, and I took the opportunity to return here before anyone asked my name.”

Sydell brought up the cane he’d been playing with, an elaborate affair of varnished mahogany, topped with heavy silver, in the shape of a wolf’s head.  What he said was “I see.”  But what he did was twirl the wolf’s head, as though absently.  “And what was this lady’s name?  Or her husband’s?”

Nell forced a laugh that she hoped sounded like an amused giggle, “How would I know.  You are very well aware I know nothing of the fashionable of your world.”

Suddenly Nell felt dizzy and swayed on her feet.  She blinked, and had a sense that a lot of time had passed.  The small park, with its duck pond, had gone marginally darker and colder, and there were noticeably fewer children than just a moment ago.

“My dear,” Sydell said, and the coldness in his voice belied the apparent meaning of that word.  “You should know that when you travel between worlds, there is magical residue left on your clothes.  You should also know that I am a very hard man to fool.  Next time, do not make me resort to outrageous measures to get the information you owe me.”  He got out a small pouch and handed it to her.  “Here is your stipend, Miss Felix, and do try not to give me difficulties next time.  You will continue keeping an eye on Darkwater, for now.  We need more evidence to leave the case.”

It wasn’t till Sydell walked away that Nell’s mind cleared enough for her to realize he’d put a truth spell on her and got her to tell her all.  Truth spells were much more effective than any truth serum on Earth.  They were also almost a dark art, something no honorable magician would use.  Of course, she’d long ago realized that the king’s spymaster might be an honored man, but he was probably not an honorable one.  An honorable man wouldn’t use her lover’s capivity as a lever to move her in whatever direction he wished.

Then another thought came on the heels of that.  A case against Darkwater.  That meant that they were thinking of persecuting him.  And that Nell had just handed Sydell evidence against the Duke.  She must go back to Darkwater.  She must warn those two men of what was about to befall them.

___________________________________

Director’s commentary:  There isn’t much to say about this chapter.  I know Nell’s background.  Sydell is perhaps a little creepier than I expected, but roughly what I thought he was.

From the craft point of view, in revision I’ll need to make the beginning of the chapter move considerably faster, and give more weight to the dialogue with Sydell.  Perhaps describe how people react to him as a form of foreshadowing.  Believe it or not I did some of this tonight as it was more lopsided before.  However, I’m in the very final phase of A Few Good man and wrote extremely emotional scenes tonight, so while I can apply my reason to these things and know it’s lopsided, I don’t have the necessary emotional sensitivity to fine tune it and I’m afraid I might ruin it if I tamper much further.    Trying to fine tune that kind of timing issue while exhausted and more than half absorbed in another book is akin to trying to tune a guitar while suffering from a head cold.  It will get done when the book is finished.

This is NOT Witchfinder, in case someone wonders.  That’s Friday, even if I posted on Thursday once.  (Avoiding inquiring emails, I am.)

This is something from the trunk.  One of those novels I was forced to pull the plug on.  Because of what it is, it’s not something I can finish in a month, even if it’s almost done, because a) I need to verify the research I did six years ago, because sometimes I make startling mistakes because I believed ONE book.  b)I need to research again, of course.  Enough for the time period to come naturally.

I was reminded of it because #2 son wrote a longish short story set in the period between the wars in Germany and got tons of things wrong.  Not the events, just the texture of daily life, because he apparently has managed to miss my shelves of “daily life in” or maybe just because he is a beginner writer and didn’t realize the need for more extensive research.  (To be honest, he doesn’t write like a beginner, but he’s only just started showing me the stuff.)  Anyway, I told him to set that one in the future because it just didn’t work between the wars unless he wants to ditch one of the main plot points.

Then I woke up and this was awake again…

Time’s Tomorrow

Over The Valley Of The Somme, the 21st of April, 1918.

The wind bit Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen’s exposed face, whipped his white silk scarf into a frenzy.
He didn’t notice.
Hunched forward, Manfred, the Red Baron, held the lever of his airplane in his right hand, while his left pulled the trigger, his square-tipped fingers simultaneously controlling the flight of his plane and firing both of his front-mounted machine guns in a well-practiced way at the fleeing enemy plane.
Far beneath Manfred’s plane, a persistent fog obscured the trenches and the men in them.
Manfred had done his time in the trenches and he would prefer death in the cold, clean air above the clouds to life in the damp mustiness, the sluggish boredom, of the trench.
Despite the cold and the wind that, intensified by the speed of his flight, made the red-painted plywood frame of his plane crackle and groan, Manfred felt warm.
Hot.
His heart beat fast and his pumping blood made his pale-skinned face glow.  His right hand managed the levers, his left thumb squeezed the trigger that fired both machine guns at once.
Tracer bullets flew to the right and left of the enemy plane, leaving glimmering white trails behind.
Right where Manfred wanted them.
Suddenly shots from behind Manfred startled him.  He had a tail.
No matter.  He took a deep breath.  He couldn’t turn and run.  Not now.  Not when he was so close to bringing the enemy down.
Manfred concentrated on the plane ahead, not the one behind.  He thought of what he wanted to happen.  What must happen.
The enemy pilot would land.  He would be forced to land.  And Manfred would claim the credit of having made yet another prisoner for the fatherland.
His sweaty fingers played on the controls, taking his airplane lower and lower, in pursuit of the zigzagging airplane ahead of him.
He savored the inevitable joy of his soon-to-come triumph.  It would be his eighty-first.
The fog had cleared.  Yet, if Manfred glimpsed the mud and trees beneath him — if he saw the hulls of bombed out buildings, destroyed in the years of World War I — it was as an animal sees things, without comprehension or understanding.  He certainly didn’t know where over the valley of the Somme he flew, or when he crossed the lines to the enemy side.
The focus of his icy blue eyes had narrowed to the plane he was pursuing.  Only his prey mattered.
He cared for nothing else
He lost altitude without noticing it, sinking in pursuit of the sinking enemy.  The pounding of blood in his veins, his dry mouth, the excitement before the kill, all of it kept him narrowly aware of the chase.  Only the chase.  He noticed a green hedge ahead of him and jumped it with a tug of his lever, gaining altitude for a moment.
Suddenly, bullets came at him from the front, joining the bullets of his pursuer.  Ground battery bullets.  Futilely, he thought he needed to escape.  Turn tail.  Make for home.
Too late.
He had time to think that he was over enemy lines; that he had been an idiot; that he had violated his own rules, pursuing an enemy into the mouth of danger.  He always told new men in his squadron not to fly too low; not to pursue enemy behind their lines; not to–
Bullets tore into his flesh.
Hot pain ripped his skin and muscles and nerves.  Bullets hit his legs; one shattered his knee.  The convulsion of his pain was cut short by a volley of shots drilling into the soft flesh of his stomach.
A fiery hot bullet pierced his chest.  Unbearable pain blurred his vision as his rib broke under the impact.  His heart trembled, fibrillated, as — stricken — it sought to pump blood to veins it could no longer reach.
He was dead.
He knew he was dead, and yet his head remained clear.  His lungs filled with blood and he felt as though he were being pulled under water — drowned.  His fingers, of their own accord, turned off the engine of the plane.
He didn’t want to go down in flames.  A fiery death had filled all his nightmares for months. Death, yes.  But not in flames.
His body shook uncontrollably, and the mouth he desperately opened couldn’t gather breath into his flooded lungs.
The sharp, salty taste of his own blood, mingled with the lingering sweet traces of the biscuits and marmalade he’d eaten for breakfast.
He thought of his mother and his sister Ilse.  When Germany lost the war — and Manfred had known for some time that Germany would lose — his mother and his sister would be defenseless, at the mercy of the enemy.  If only Lothar— But his younger brother could not be counted on to take responsibility for his family.  Or for himself.
Manfred had known that for some time, too.
He felt cold.  Much too cold.  His body twitched and wrenched spasmodically, in a final, senseless dance.
Why did death take so long?  He couldn’t breathe.  Why did he remain alive?
His plane spiraled towards the ground.
He pulled his goggles off, threw them from him, irrationally trying to remove the red haze that obscured his sight.
His heavy leather flight jacket, his leather coveralls, his fur flight boots, all of those were no obstacle to the cold wind that whipped around and around him as he went down, down.  Blood bubbled out of his mouth.
Lights flashed through his blurred vision and he heard odd voices speaking a language he couldn’t understand.  He caught English words amid the gibberish, “transport” and “time” and “now, now, now, now.”
Hands grabbed him and pulled him.  Celestial beings were unduly rough.  Who would have known the angels spoke English? Manfred tried to remember a prayer, but couldn’t.  And he’d never been taught to pray in English.
Light expanded around him, and yet he fell into darkness.

I’m running as fast as I can.  It might not look like it, when I spend most of my day at the keyboard, but inside I’m running.

Right now, my life has very set times and places.  This will probably change, if/when the kids leave home starting next year.  But right now I wake up at six thirty am to make sure that they get  breakfast and don’t rush out the door with no lunch.  (Look, if I’m not there to make sure, they don’t eat.)

Then I do the absolute necessary (usually catboxes!) around the house, if I’m not going Officeish (usually Wednesdays and Fridays.)  If I’m going officeish, I run up the stairs to shower and get ready, since my ride leaves by seven thirty.

In either case, I sit down by eight or so, do the blog if I haven’t done it before, then write till around three thirty, when I must start doing dual duty again, by starting dinner, doing laundry and whatever else needs it.  Yeah, the guys do stuff around the house (and other extracurricular stuff, too) but ultimately I do most of it because I’m better at it.

If I am still compus mentis, I edit in the evening, most of the time for myself, sometimes for NRP where I’m supposed to edit some of the authors (mostly my friends.)  To this I’m adding editing my own old stuff and putting it up with Goldport Press.  And I try to get to bed by eleven.

Around this fits stuff like birthdays, the occasional weekend away, and yeah, I do consider a walk in the park with my husband an amazing treat.

Now, before you tell me that I’m going to burn out, remember I’ve done this with variations (no officeish till last year, no putting stuff up, no NRP but other stuff I was doing instead) for a good six years.  I’m actually less burned out now than before, and will probably feel a whole lot better next year.

Why next year, you ask?  Because next year I’ll be largely out of contracts.  Does this mean I don’t intend to traditionally publish anymore?  No.  I’ve said before and will say it again that I’ll work for Baen while they want me to.  (I’d say till death do us part, but they’re a corporation and can’t die.  And some people have doubts about me.)  BUT I’m changing the way I’m working with them in the way I’ve wanted to for YEARS but didn’t dare: I’m writing everything on spec, sending in, and letting them decide if they want it or not then.

Until this year, this was not a feasible strategy.  Why not?  Because I have a really high sell-through rate on proposals for a working writer – I sell between fifty and seventy five percent of every proposal I write.  See where that’s not a practical way to live, if I’m only selling fifty to seventy five percent of every NOVEL I write?

But now that’s not a consideration.  If there are things they don’t want to publish, then I’ll bring them out myself.  I have yet – save for one, and that was not from Baen, and it sold to someone else – to get a rejection on any of my books that cites a flaw with the book.  Most of them say something like “we have too many of ” or cite reasons that the editor doesn’t like it that have to do with the editor not the book.  Like the famous “Your woman wasn’t assertive enough” – I’ll leave it as a class exercise to imagine how assertive my female character was, and how insane that comment is.

Add to that that I hate writing proposals and that this is incredibly stressful to me, because once the characters come alive it’s wrenching to have to let them die while I move on to something else and leave that book unfinished.  Yes, I know that’s crazy, but that’s how it feels.  Also my proposals usually fell like I’m groping around looking for a plot, which is largely true, since I don’t plot THAT way and therefore don’t know all the twists before I write the novel.

Now I don’t have to deal with that.  And I don’t intend to.  Baen will get all my DST-time books, and all my shifter books, and perhaps others I think are up their alley, depending on how many books they have in cue, and what I want to be seen when (the idea of having control over this is by the way amazing.)  I might even send some books other places, if I don’t think they’re right for Baen.

But in either case, it won’t matter.  If the traditional publishers won’t publish them, I’ll find other ways to bring them out.

Now, consider that writing a book a month is not difficult for me (and that’s taking weekends off) but that what’s been stopping me are the months of self-doubt in between, when I sit in front of the keyboard and not a word emerges.

If you subtract those months, it will look like I’m working harder.  But I’ll actually be relaxing more.

So, no matter what it looks like, over the next year I intend to keep running.  But this time, not on ice.  Or at least, I’ll get me some cleats.

Sometimes I have reading cravings.  Now, most of the time these are easy enough.

Like most of you, I go through phases.  I will read mysteries of a certain type, for instance (cozies, or historical or sometimes – not often – procedurals) for months at a time, then suddenly be unable to face the idea of reading another one.

It is well known – because I was rather shocked and blogged about it – that I spent a considerable period of the beginning of the year reading regencies.

These sort of make sense.  They’re usually diametrically opposed to whatever I’m writing at the moment, and the amount they’ll be memorable or absorbing is inversely proportional to my need for a vacation.  I.e., if I’m reading a book whose title and author will be gone ten seconds after I set the book down, you can probably bet that I’m stressed and in need of, if not actually on vacation.

During the year from heck – six books due and homeschooling the younger kid – I read mostly Disney comics.  (Stop laughing.)

All that is perfectly understandable.

But what do you call it when I start craving non fiction books of a particularly dry kind?

Well, it depends on the DRY book.  For some reason biology manuals and dinosaur books are for me, personally, the equivalent of hot chicken soup and a nice warm bath for other people.  If in addition to being extremely tired I’m also coming down with something, you’ll find me curled up in a corner reading books on the biology of some specialized marine life form, or the habits of the common ant.  Yeah, there’s a reason.  I became fascinated with that type of book at about eight, and spent many a happy childhood hour reading them.  So they’re “cozy.”

But what about a sudden interest in… oh, revolutions.  Or massacres?  They’re no one’s definition of cozy.  I also spent a whole year reading books about cults (I THINK I’m starting to get a glimmer on what that one is about.)  Months reading about the history of chocolate.  Months on the flu pandemic (back in 98, when it was hard to find stuff to read on line.  I spent hours scouring all the bookstores I could get to.)

Then there’s the truly out of nowhere wild hares.  It would make sense if you could say “oh, you stumbled on that book, liked it, and now are reading everything about that type of thing” but it’s not like that.  It’s more I wake up in the middle of the night, and like someone would say “I feel like a crab patty” I go “what I could use RIGHT NOW is a good book on the building of medieval cathedrals” or “painters in Paris in the nineteenth century” or “medieval cities.”

All I can say is that after those years or months of reading on one subject, I’ll suddenly go completely cold on it.  And then a few months or years later, an idea will come up for which that reading was essential.

Do the ideas come up because I read the books?  Or as the craving set off by the nascent idea?  Do ideas occur so deep in the subconscious that I don’t know they exist at all and they manifest themselves only as cravings?

I find that idea vaguely terrifying.  It would seem to imply a life of the mind outside the mind, as it were.  And yet it would fit the facts to an extent.  Does anyone else get these non-physical cravings?  What are your theories on the why of these?

and other imponderables…

Writing is a weird job.  Once becomes a job, that is, which for the vast majority of writers, it isn’t.

I noted early on that for most of the writers that made it big, writing was a full time job.  And it was a full time job before it justified the money they made, because they were forced to stay home for other reasons.  For me it was kind of, sort of like that.

In fact, it still IS pretty hard to say that I’m a full time writer.  I’m a full time writer as opposed to working ALSO outside the home.  I’m a full time writer insofar as it is the only one of my jobs that pays in real cash.  Is it the job that takes most of my time?  I’d say that’s evenly divided between writing and housekeeping/house management.  (Yes, I do dream one day of affording one of those.)  And I’d hate to admit to exactly how many days I only work an hour or so as a writer, and the rest of the day as a handywoman/cook/cleaner/bottle washer.  I’d hate to admit it, because several of you, at various times, have offered to come cook and clean for me, something that is PARTICULARLY disturbing when I know and you know you live across the country.  Yes, I do appreciate you love my books that much (Weirdly, mostly Kyrie and Tom) but all the same, you have to agree it sounds a little odd.  (Okay, so I’d have scrubbed floors all day for a peek at Heinlein’s first drafts.  But my dears, I’m not Heinlein.)

Anyway, the thing is, once it becomes job in the sense that you have deadlines and that at least part of your income depends on writing, you get hit between the eyes with exactly how odd it is.

You see, the thing is, at least for me so much of writing depends on the subconscious, that I can’t always say “I’m going to write this now.”  This collides HARD with my personality, which has a strong sense of doing what I’m supposed to when I’m expected to and not whining about it.

For years now, because I was working with main stream publishing, my schedule went something like this: Get an oh wow idea – say, musketeer mysteries.  Write proposal.  Send out to agent.  Depending on the agent (I had four, serially) get back suggestions or simply a “I don’t think I can sell this” which could take anywhere from a week or two to six months to get back.  Needless to say by the time it was six months, I’d be doing something else.  This was particularly vexing for historical, because the research wouldn’t ALWAYS be fresh in my mind, and I could very easilly confuse current historical period with old one.

Send revised proposal in, then wait.  Selling periods for my proposals, from moment they hit publisher desk range from twenty minutes (yes, it was Jim Baen.  Shifters.  I sent it in, email, went for a walk with my husband.  Came home in twenty minutes.  Had an offer in email.)  to eight years.  Needless to say, twenty minutes NOT a problem.  The idea was still hot in my mind.  Eight years… well.  The proposal was written in 97.  Let’s just say… I wasn’t that person anymore and be done with it, shall we?

And half the proposals just never sold.   Which is the average sell-through rate, actually.

Now, I’m not complaining.  I made a living at this for ten years, with one year off (2003.  Man was that year fun – not.)  But the thing was when the books sold, setting the delivery date was a matter or working with the publisher, and… ye can’t always get what ye want…

Which meant that I often found myself with, say, three books due a year for a particular series, while doing three other series.  2007 – which was no end of fun, too – chained six books, one after the other: shifters and musketeer mysteries and MBE.  Which meant I finished GTAC in time to start Soul of Fire, in time to do another musketeer mystery, in time…

It wasn’t the books that killed me.  It was the SILENCE in between, as I tried to “switch heads.”

Of necessity much of the writing for traditional publishing – a creature of deep scheduling – is write it when it’s up.  And to the extent I’ll still do that, I’ll still have to make my subconscious jump through hoops on demand, a process that works about half the time.

But it might be easier if in between I can write what my mind is hot on “right now.”

In fact, just knowing that I can let my subconscious write on spec and that I can always bring it out and bring it out quickly feels like a great calm descending over me.

I think it’s because it gives me a measure of control.  Could be, of course, because I’m insane.

The problem is this.  There are… twenty some novels, outlined, the first three to five chapters written (which is to say the work half done) that are stirring and wakening.

And I’m faced again with the problem I had when I started out.  How do you pace yourself when it feels like everything you do is a collaboration between you and that blind idiot you call your subconscious?  It’s not like the bum cares about deadlines or even Nanowrimo…

At the same time there is this (probably morbid) curiosity.  If I’m not fighting the lack of control, the incredible tiredness, the schedule not of my own setting (at least for most of the books) can I do a book a month?

Or do I have to do what I do on the treadmill, and set it for a pace I can keep up for the long run, instead of a burst of speed and a long rest?

I’m not really blogging today.  Not in any meaningful sense.  This blog while it appears to be a blog is really a bunch of disgruntled musings.

“Why are you not blogging today, Sarah?”  Well, because I’m laying down words very fast on my Nanowrimo novel and writing non fiction might pop me out of the mood.  Also because frankly I am still in shock from having to seriously hurt a character yesterday.  “What do you mean having to seriously hurt a character, Sarah?  Don’t you know they don’t exist?  Don’t you know that hurting them is a needed thing for the plot?”  I mean shut up, shut up, shut up.  Yeah, you’d think after almost thirty years of writing I’d treat my characters as disposable widgets that go in and do what they’re supposed to and then die or go off or something, or at least stop existing for me.  Ah!  You’d think so, but you’d be wrong.

Oh, there is a certain distance I can achieve in short stories, particularly.  I can write a story where the character really is there for the purpose of x.  But the novel characters?

Look, I’ve got no illusions about myself.  I am primarily, if not exclusively, a character writer.  The last twenty six years have been a long, slow, often hopeless struggle to learn how to plot because I realized no character exists in vacuum (well, unless it’s my short story In The Absence Of Light published by Naked Reader Press recently — coff)  For the character to show to best advantage, you need to show him/her pitting him/herself against something — usually adversity.  The exception — sorta — is my refinishing mysteries, which are truly “novels of the quotidian” with the thinnest of plots as excuse.  Weirdly, no, I don’t want to write those all the time.

So, I must write characters facing adversity.  (Note for the religious — this is how I view the problem of evil in the world.  Without it, G-d would be up a creek for a plot!)

But here’s the rub — to me, if not to the readers — the characters exist pre-plot.  And if they weren’t fascinating people and most —  though admittedly not all — of of the main characters are people I’d like to know and be friends with (though some of them I’d need to keep thorazine handy for.)  That is why they are my main characters, because I couldn’t resist playing with them and spending time with them.  Heck, look at Athos, who isn’t even MY character and whom I’ve now stolen to have my wicked way with in TWO series.  (And in Sword and Blood my way is VERY wicked indeed.)

Does it hurt when I have to hurt them?  You bet.  Do I hurt them even harder in consequence?  Oh, yeah, because I know that will make their eventual triumph tastier both for me and my readers.  Does this mean it’s easier to drag them through hell by their heels?  Oh, heck no.  Really no.

I just had to seriously hurt one of the main characters in the current book AND have the other one feel guilty for it and unable to do anything — at least unable until I run him into a corner and he snaps, when we’ll get… explosions, blood and mayhem.

I prefer the explosions part.  I feel beat and battered and need to go write them out of this fix, but I don’t want to go back there.

(Incidentally, and a subject for a post when I’m not feeling emotionally rubbed raw — part of this relationship with characters is what made writing proposals and only selling at best 75% of them so grueling.  You had to love them, bring them to life and live them.  Not good for any creator.  On the good side, I now have about 20 novels where the plotting and the first three chapters [i.e. half the work] is done and which are ready to finish and bring out.  I’m so looking forward to 2012 and the possibilities it brings.)

Now I’m going to shower, and then I’m going to spend the afternoon dragging my characters through hell (The current book section is called Come Hell.)  Not literally.  This is the Earth of Athena’s time.  But … close enough.

Pity the poor writer who must hurt her creatures…

*First chapter here  Third chapter here.   Yes, I’m lazy.  But mostly, frankly, I just woke up.  This week has not been good for sleeping, between snowstorms throwing all our schedules askew and various due dates bugging me.  So, I slept till almost noon central, almost ten my time — which doesn’t happen but once every few months.  The explanation for this, for late arrivals is that I started this story for Austen fandom years ago, but have never finished.  It’s a desecration of Pride and Prejudice.  I threw elves at it.  Literature purists, feel free to avert your eyes and cry.  If this gets enough following on this blog, I’ll finish it.  If not, I’ll let sleeping fanfic lie.  First chapter is here*

II

Through the great hall at Netherfield, Lord Darcy came striding. Though the palace at Netherfield – ancient and honored – was the seat of his friend Duke Carolus Bingley, it was now hosting the most high court of Fairyland and the Elven Realms of Avalon. As such, its great hall had been outfitted with the twin thrones of the king and queen of the elven realms in these isles, and – because the kingdom was in danger – filled with every great Lord and Lady, every prince, every duke, every mere baron that held land and magic in the kingdom.

Lord Darcy entered, without bothering to change out of his riding attire. The silver spurs on the well polished boots that encased his legs up to the knees, struck sparks from the polished marble floors. The court parted, like clouds when the sun appears. The ladies lined, on either side of the path he strode through, and knelt one after the other, as he passed, turning to him their flower-like countenances which sparkled with admiration of his fine figure, his glossy black locks and the grey eyes which shone as though bits of silver had got caught deep within.

The faces fell as they saw who followed him – the proud Carola Bingley, his fiancé, who looked at them all as though they were beneath her contempt. Lord Bingley, with his softer features and his vague smile, would have encouraged them to come forward, but Carola was jealous of her position and prerogative.

Ten steps before the throne, Prince Darcy stopped and bowed deeply but did not kneel. The grandson of the king, and his heir – who would be king whenever Oberon should go forth to the isles of the blessed – he was the highest born there, save the sovereigns.

“Speak grandson,” Oberon said, from his throne, his voice deep like thunder and rolling over the court like a wave. “What have you found? The boundaries of our land, are they secure? What signs of the rebels? Is there any magical defiling? Any show of his encroaching?”

Darcy bowed again, a contained gesture. His features froze into somber-seeming stillness, as though he had of a sudden turned to a statue. “Noble Oberon,” he said. “I would not deceive you. Though I found no explicit sign of the rebel, I could taste the flavor of his foul magic, the touch of his followers on hill and glade.” He hesitated. “The home you spoke of, fifty years ago, but three miles hence, is now inhabited by a family and not, as you had said, just a lonely old man. And that family…” He struggled for words while Oberon watched. “That family, oh noble king, has five daughters, all fair virgins of… of distinguished lineage. Far away, and in their mother’s line they are of your own blood, your majesty.”

“Five virgins,” Oberon said, frowning slightly. “Of my blood. The rebel will never resist this. He will come for them.”

“So I thought,” Darcy said. He bit the side of his lip, lost in thought. “And being that though they are mortals, they are of your blood, I think we have only two options…”

The king looked at him and then said, his voice terrible as the thunder that announces a storm. “I see only one,” he said. “We must bring them to us and find them marriages and keep them safe, deep within our palace.”

Something like pride or disdain twisted Darcy’s lips and his eyes flashed. “Bring them within? Oh, no your majesty. For though they are descended from you, many generations of mortals have poured their coarse, impure stuff into their veins. You’d not allow them to thus pollute the shades of fairyland!”

Oberon opened his lips, as though to say something, then closed them. “What do you suggest, then, grandson?”

“Two things we can do and one of them is to wrap them tight in spells so that they won’t consider the intruder or go with him, or even think of him, or of believing his foul lies.”

“And the other?” Oberon said. His lips twisted in turn. It was well known that since the Bard incident he didn’t approve of putting spells on any humans, be they ever the rudest of mechanicals. Besides, Darcy knew, every sense would revolt at the idea of spelling his descendants, no matter how remote.

“The other is that, under some disguise or contravention, dressed as mortals, behaving as they do, we meet them and warn them.”

“I like that idea better,” Oberon said. “It doesn’t do, grandson, no matter your opinions, to treat humans as though they were mere cattle. They are our cousins, in body and in magic, and deserve better treatment than the deer in the forest, whom we bespell to our traps.”

Darcy pressed his lips together but, in public, forbore to argue with his grandfather. Instead, he bowed again. “We have found, through the minds of the sleeping mortals, that an assembly is held every month, in Merryton, the nearby city. That is a … ball… A dance. Carolus Bingley and I have spoken, and we think the best thing would be for us to arrive in Merryton perhaps a day or two before and to attend this assembly under the guise of mortals. There, we’d talk to the young women – their name is Bennet – under pretext of dancing with them, but… your majesty… if words fail… then we must try spells.”

“If words fail….” the king conceded.

---

It wasn’t till later, in the receiving room of his private quarters, having changed from his riding attire into a blue velvet suit of doublet and knee breeches that sparkled like the deep summer sky strewn with distant stars, that he turned to Carolus and said, “I believe my grandfather means well, but I don’t see why we can’t just spell the mortals from a distance. To have to mingle with them will make for an unbearable evening.”

Golden haired Carolus Bingley sitting near him, laughed heartily. “It is no so bad, Darcy,” he said. “It will be great amusement. It is years since we dropped in at a mortal feast, since our king disapproves of it. I am sure there will be many pleasant people and many uncommonly pretty girls.”

Darcy smiled at his friend. Though they were very different from each other, the prince and the duke had been friends since childhood. And though he did not agree with Carolus, he couldn’t help being amused by him. “You, Carolus, are ever pleased with your company elf or mortal.”

“I just don’t see any reason,” Lord Bingley, Duke of Silver Bells, said, “For going through the world disapproving of everything and everyone.”

But Carola Bingley who sat nearby, admiring her golden beauty on a mirror, turned her passionless eyes to Darcy and said, “I will go with you, milord. I’ll make an unbearable evening perhaps not so terrible.”

Darcy’s gaze flickered onto his fiancé and he said “Yes, that will make it easier.”

“Do you really think we might have to put spells on them?” Bingley asked.

“I very much fear so,” Darcy said. “Mortals are not known for their rationality.” He turned at a sound of soft footsteps behind him. There stood, in the half-light of his sparsely but beautifully furnished domain, a young girl in a flowing green silk dress, her blond hair loosened down her back, her green eyes making her look like something untamed and quite fearful of approaching other creatures.

Prince Darcy’s features split in a wide smile, “Ah Georgiana,” he said, softly. “Come sister. Come and play for us.”

As the young girl sat before the harp, the music poured from her sweetly precise fingertips to fill the entire palace and leak out into the mortal night to enchant unwary passerbye.

---

Lydia had talked of nothing else all the way to the assembly in the carriage. “And they say there are two gentlemen, and both wearing such fine things and paying with such liberality that, perforce, they must be very wealthy. And…”

But nothing prepared Lizzy for the shock she received when, on entering the assembly, Sir William Lucas begged to make known to the Bennets “Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley.”

There they were, one dark and one blond, but both unmistakably the men she’d seen riding in outlandish costume in the moonlight just a few days before. Were they elves? Or had she dreamed all? Or were they just men of the ton in search of fresh amusement?

Through the great hall at Netherfield, Lord Darcy came striding. Though the palace at Netherfield – ancient and honored – was the seat of his friend Duke Carolus Bingley, it was now hosting the most high court of Fairyland and the Elven Realms of Avalon. As such, its great hall had been outfitted with the twin thrones of the king and queen of the elven realms in these isles, and – because the kingdom was in danger – filled with every great Lord and Lady, every prince, every duke, every mere baron that held land and magic in the kingdom.

Lord Darcy entered, without bothering to change out of his riding attire. The silver spurs on the well polished boots that encased his legs up to the knees, struck sparks from the polished marble floors. The court parted, like clouds when the sun appears. The ladies lined, on either side of the path he strode through, and knelt one after the other, as he passed, turning to him their flower-like countenances which sparkled with admiration of his fine figure, his glossy black locks and the grey eyes which shone as though bits of silver had got caught deep within.

The faces fell as they saw who followed him – the proud Carola Bingley, his fiancé, who looked at them all as though they were beneath her contempt. Lord Bingley, with his softer features and his vague smile, would have encouraged them to come forward, but Carola was jealous of her position and prerogative.

Ten steps before the throne, Prince Darcy stopped and bowed deeply but did not kneel. The grandson of the king, and his heir – who would be king whenever Oberon should go forth to the isles of the blessed – he was the highest born there, save the sovereigns.

“Speak grandson,” Oberon said, from his throne, his voice deep like thunder and rolling over the court like a wave. “What have you found? The boundaries of our land, are they secure? What signs of the rebels? Is there any magical defiling? Any show of his encroaching?”

Darcy bowed again, a contained gesture. His features froze into somber-seeming stillness, as though he had of a sudden turned to a statue. “Noble Oberon,” he said. “I would not deceive you. Though I found no explicit sign of the rebel, I could taste the flavor of his foul magic, the touch of his followers on hill and glade.” He hesitated. “The home you spoke of, fifty years ago, but three miles hence, is now inhabited by a family and not, as you had said, just a lonely old man. And that family…” He struggled for words while Oberon watched. “That family, oh noble king, has five daughters, all fair virgins of… of distinguished lineage. Far away, and in their mother’s line they are of your own blood, your majesty.”

“Five virgins,” Oberon said, frowning slightly. “Of my blood. The rebel will never resist this. He will come for them.”

“So I thought,” Darcy said. He bit the side of his lip, lost in thought. “And being that though they are mortals, they are of your blood, I think we have only two options…”

The king looked at him and then said, his voice terrible as the thunder that announces a storm. “I see only one,” he said. “We must bring them to us and find them marriages and keep them safe, deep within our palace.”

Something like pride or disdain twisted Darcy’s lips and his eyes flashed. “Bring them within? Oh, no your majesty. For though they are descended from you, many generations of mortals have poured their coarse, impure stuff into their veins. You’d not allow them to thus pollute the shades of fairyland!”

Oberon opened his lips, as though to say something, then closed them. “What do you suggest, then, grandson?”

“Two things we can do and one of them is to wrap them tight in spells so that they won’t consider the intruder or go with him, or even think of him, or of believing his foul lies.”

“And the other?” Oberon said. His lips twisted in turn. It was well known that since the Bard incident he didn’t approve of putting spells on any humans, be they ever the rudest of mechanicals. Besides, Darcy knew, every sense would revolt at the idea of spelling his descendants, no matter how remote.

“The other is that, under some disguise or contravention, dressed as mortals, behaving as they do, we meet them and warn them.”

“I like that idea better,” Oberon said. “It doesn’t do, grandson, no matter your opinions, to treat humans as though they were mere cattle. They are our cousins, in body and in magic, and deserve better treatment than the deer in the forest, whom we bespell to our traps.”

Darcy pressed his lips together but, in public, forbore to argue with his grandfather. Instead, he bowed again. “We have found, through the minds of the sleeping mortals, that an assembly is held every month, in Merryton, the nearby city. That is a … ball… A dance. Carolus Bingley and I have spoken, and we think the best thing would be for us to arrive in Merryton perhaps a day or two before and to attend this assembly under the guise of mortals. There, we’d talk to the young women – their name is Bennet – under pretext of dancing with them, but… your majesty… if words fail… then we must try spells.”

“If words fail….” the king conceded.

---

It wasn’t till later, in the receiving room of his private quarters, having changed from his riding attire into a blue velvet suit of doublet and knee breeches that sparkled like the deep summer sky strewn with distant stars, that he turned to Carolus and said, “I believe my grandfather means well, but I don’t see why we can’t just spell the mortals from a distance. To have to mingle with them will make for an unbearable evening.”

Golden haired Carolus Bingley sitting near him, laughed heartily. “It is no so bad, Darcy,” he said. “It will be great amusement. It is years since we dropped in at a mortal feast, since our king disapproves of it. I am sure there will be many pleasant people and many uncommonly pretty girls.”

Darcy smiled at his friend. Though they were very different from each other, the prince and the duke had been friends since childhood. And though he did not agree with Carolus, he couldn’t help being amused by him. “You, Carolus, are ever pleased with your company elf or mortal.”

“I just don’t see any reason,” Lord Bingley, Duke of Silver Bells, said, “For going through the world disapproving of everything and everyone.”

But Carola Bingley who sat nearby, admiring her golden beauty on a mirror, turned her passionless eyes to Darcy and said, “I will go with you, milord. I’ll make an unbearable evening perhaps not so terrible.”

Darcy’s gaze flickered onto his fiancé and he said “Yes, that will make it easier.”

“Do you really think we might have to put spells on them?” Bingley asked.

“I very much fear so,” Darcy said. “Mortals are not known for their rationality.” He turned at a sound of soft footsteps behind him. There stood, in the half-light of his sparsely but beautifully furnished domain, a young girl in a flowing green silk dress, her blond hair loosened down her back, her green eyes making her look like something untamed and quite fearful of approaching other creatures.

Prince Darcy’s features split in a wide smile, “Ah Georgiana,” he said, softly. “Come sister. Come and play for us.”

As the young girl sat before the harp, the music poured from her sweetly precise fingertips to fill the entire palace and leak out into the mortal night to enchant unwary passerbye.

---

Lydia had talked of nothing else all the way to the assembly in the carriage. “And they say there are two gentlemen, and both wearing such fine things and paying with such liberality that, perforce, they must be very wealthy. And…”

But nothing prepared Lizzy for the shock she received when, on entering the assembly, Sir William Lucas begged to make known to the Bennets “Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley.”

There they were, one dark and one blond, but both unmistakably the men she’d seen riding in outlandish costume in the moonlight just a few days before. Were they elves? Or had she dreamed all? Or were they just men of the ton in search of fresh amusement?