According To Hoyt

I am not the world’s laziest person.  I think.  It’s hard to tell.  But at any rate, I am capable of endless cat rotation; postponement of unpleasant chores; rebellion against what needs doing and general lollywagging and time wasting on a scale unseen since really lazy t-Rexes walked the Earth and lay about under fruit trees, eating the occasional apple that fell into their mouth, and eventually dying of starvation.

I’m not even the world’s laziest writer.  I know, because Dean W. Smith SAYS he is that, and I refuse to arm wrestle him for the title.  He’d win.  I’d sulk.  No one would like that.

And if you’re going “Woman, you do a daily blog, you write however many projects a year, you…

Yeah, so does Dean.  Actually he writes more, and runs businesses and … yeah.  But both of us feel lazy, because both of us know how much time we waste playing mah jong (well, that’s me.  I have no clue what he does) or obsessing about stuff that’s not related to work.

What we do accomplish is in bursts of sudden activity, usually lasting no more than a few days, sometimes a few minutes, in a sea of cat rotation.

I used to describe writing the Musketeer books (which granted, not only were under contract, but which from book three on I knew the publisher was dropping on the floor) as “First I chase myself around.  Then I make myself sit down and then I force myself to write.  This usually involves weeks of chasing, then weeks of staring at the keyboard and refusing to write, before I manage to force myself to write.”

Of course, while I was chasing myself around, I couldn’t allow myself to do anything else even remotely interesting (in this context laundry is interesting.  So is cooking) so the family started complaining about the conspicuous lack of socks and the house grew fuzz.

To an extent, it’s still the same, except no project is that bad anymore – and yes, for the ones of you who are fans – I AM looking forward to continuing the series (I should have the copyright back by March!) and I DID enjoy writing the books, but it was the equivalent of handing your baby to the sacrifice, which made it harder and harder to finish books.

However, with Noah’s boy, because I blocked on the end, and with the year before that, when I was ill so often, I’ve gone into the mode I went in normally after finishing a difficult book.  It’s called “must clean.”  In my defense, the house needs it.  I’ve been doing maintenance cleaning for months, and the name for maintenance cleaning is “things get messy slower.” For instance, I can’t find any books, and there’s bizarre stuff on my shelves.  (How bizarre?  Games the kids outgrew ten years ago.  Yes, someone was cleaning his room!)

Anyway – this long to say, I am still lazy, it’s just that people are lazy in different ways.

See, laziness was an evolutionarily favored trait for millennia.  You caught mammoth, you ate for days.  You didn’t run around killing more mammoths, because who would eat them?  And why would you want to use the energy?  And besides, if you deplete the mammoth population, you’ll have to walk miles for next mammoth.  You get the point.

For the last ten thousand years or so more industrious people have done better – some places.  My mom still talked about the people she grew up with (not a GOOD part of the country, or the region, or the town) the women made soup on Monday, it lasted the whole week.  The more industrious swept once a day.  The more cleanly ones did wash one day a week.  The rest of the time, they sat around, watching the kids and gossiping.

If you planted and reaped, as opposed to walking about picking what the land gave, you had a more continuous supply of food, which meant more kids who survived to reproduce (though perhaps not longer life for you.  That’s in dispute.)  If you left the land where you had a season off, and went to the city and got a job in a factory, you did even better (dirty and backbreaking as those jobs were by our lights, they did provide a better living than the land in the country, which is why the industrial revolution TOOK and is taking in a lot of the world, still.  Yes, I know.  The Marxists think it was the enclosures driving peasants to the city, “disposed” and ready to be exploited.  I’m not saying that didn’t happen, in some times and places, however, as we’re seeing in third world countries now, mostly the peasants drive THEMSELVES (or more likely walk) to the city and take up the better paying work, rather than starve staring at the south end of a north bound mule.)

And if you bought into social pressure about those outmoded bourgeois virtues and kept your house and children clean, you were more likely to raise them to adulthood and eventually have grandkids.

Where am I going with this?

Our state – all modern states – seem to be confused about which comes first the cart or the horse (possibly because they ARE the North Bound Mule – or its South End.)

They talk about the “causes of poverty” and the fact that poor people “collapse under a mountain of misfortune, and therefore can’t dig out.”  They THINK by subsidizing people, they’ll give them the get up and go.

This is one of those nice theories, and it applies to a lot of us, of course.  I’ve been poor.  I’ve been so broke, and so depressed that I couldn’t think of the way to dig out.  (Heck, half the time I couldn’t think of the way to dress myself or shower, or get out of bed before one pm – though post-partum depression might have been in effect there.)

What they forget is that in the long run, the people who are lazy like me – or Dean! – are still a minority.  Evolutionarily, regardless of what has happened since there have been villages, and since humans figured out how to smoke meat (you have to shred it very fine, you need special papers, and it never burns very well.  OTOH it contains no nicotine) and store grain, the majority of people are still programmed to not work unless it’s strictly needed.

Even we, driven though we might be (d*mn you, voices in head, d*mn you.  Also, mom’s training me to live in a house where you could eat off the floors.  The storage room floors, even) those of us who manage to exert some strictly not needed (for eating) activity, like learning a skilled profession or keeping a clean house, or producing stuff on contract, KNOW how much time we waste.  Hence the “I’m the laziest” competition.

Because wasting time, playing around, the dolce fa niente is humanity’s default mode.  And doing no more than we consider strictly needed was a survival mechanism for YEARS.

Right now, I’d bet 90% of the homes in America would make our ancestors weep.  And I’m not even including mine, though if my mom came to visit, I’d need six months lead time just to get it to “she won’t kill me too badly.”  Yeah, part of this is that we’re all so much more massively busy.  But another part is that no one is enforcing the cleaning standard anymore.  Cleanliness in the house is no longer a “must be” to be “respectable.”

We’ve dethroned the bourgeoisie, and its virtues with its faults.  There are no neighbors coming into our house to pry and see if we waxed the floors.  And so, we don’t wax the floors.  We don’t throw away the old mail, we don’t straighten the books – etc.  The neighbors who come in have also forgotten this, so it just doesn’t get done.

No, this is not an ode to housekeeping. Trust me, most of the time, I dust because otherwise I get ill, being allergic to dust and inclined to respiratory issues.

It is however, a way that absent pressure – in this case social pressure – humans default to not doing it.

The same goes for work-work, of course.

And this is a problem, because in the future we’re all contractors.  (Okay not all, but probably a higher number than ever before.)  This means we’ll (all of us, in general) will have to learn to work without someone cracking the whip.

Most of us know that.  Most of us in the skilled professions had to learn that – but evolutionarily speaking, the rest of the world simply doesn’t have the drive.

Then there’s minimum wage, minimum payments, indefinite welfare with no work requirements.

Are these helpful to the poor?  Well, in the – what? – seventy years since the war on poverty was started, the only victories have come from innovation in the market place, and therefore more widespread prosperity.  NOT from the welfare state and its copiously flowing teat.

Oh, yes, of course you know a success story or two.  J. K. Rowling comes to mind – though in another country – but we tell each other those stories because they ARE extraordinary.  They are also, people we’re “likely to know” – i.e. the skilled, those working in artistic professions, those who might be “the laziest x in the world” but only because they see where their drive falls short compared to what they wish to do.

It doesn’t take in account the majority of NORMAL humanity which doesn’t do more than it NEEDS to, because that would be stupid.

THOSE people, sanely, take the minimum and stay put and do the things we all do when we have time – or are playing hooky: they play games, watch TV and socialize.

So, in the end, “a hand up” turns into endless dependence and a dysfunctional way of life passed on to the kids, who in their turn simply don’t KNOW how to do more than needed.  (And before you tell me welfare is no picnic – remember we’re talking by evolutionary standards.  Life in a sleeping bag on the streets of NYC is better than what your nomadic ancestors could command with continuous industriousness.  Life in a project is better than most kings in the middle ages had.  It’s more sanitary and you have better food and clothing.   REMEMBER what part of the brain is deciding “this is enough.”  It’s NOT the part that craves a late model car or a meal in a five star restaurant.)

Which means that any “hand up” would benefit from local knowledge – i.e. people who will watch the people receiving the aid, and let these people know they are watched, so they feel social pressure to make something of themselves.

It also means that the idea of “help without judgment and without limit” might be exactly backward, and the idea that “giving enough to bring this person to middle class standards” would get the person to actually live a middle class life.

Or, of course, I could be full of it.  I’m just going on my own experience – which is all any of us can go on – of both being very poor and being very lazy.

If we’d got enough money to live on, handed to us, so we didn’t have to worry about where the next load of groceries would come from, would I have got off my expanding duff (potatoes are cheap.  Unfortunately they also expand the duff.  It expanded a lot through what could be ironically called the “lean years.”) and made the serious effort to figure out how to write a novel someone else might want to read?  Would I have made the even more considerable effort of figuring out how publishing worked, so I could get published?

Or would we still be living in Columbia, SC, in a rented house, on a budget that would break if I bought an extra paperback book?

I don’t know.  I might not be the world’s laziest writer, I might not be the world’s laziest person.  But I’m close enough.

And now excuse me – I have a floor to wax – the shade of my grandmother is frowning at me.  And after that I have some chapters of WF to write, because I have a bunch of hungry blog commenters.  Still after that I have a YA to fix/edit so I can publish it and help pay the kids’ tuition.

Would I do it, if I didn’t have any of those?  I don’t know.  But I very much doubt it.  I think I’d spend the day re-reading Heinlein and Christie and playing mah jong.

 

*I am reliably informed I miscounted chapters and this should be 76.  Sigh.  I’m taking it on faith.  And yes, I know, I’m doing it in dribs and drabs.  Yes, the end is very near, but after Noah’s Boy I find I can only do a very little a day, and the mind has fixated on — of all things — house cleaning.  So there is floor waxing, may the Lord have mercy on us all.  However, I’ll try to keep these daily as much as possible, so you don’t starve.*

*This is the Fantasy novel I’m posting here for free, one chapter every Friday.   If your conscience troubles you getting something for free, do hit the donate button on the right side.  Anyone donating more than $6 will get a non-drm electronic copy of Witchfinder in its final version, when it’s published.
There is a compilation of previous chapters here  all in one big lump, which makes it easier to read and I will compile each new chapter there, a week after I post.  When the novel is completed and about to be edited the compilation page will probably be deleted.

Oh, this is in pre-arc format, meaning you’ll find the occasional spelling mistake and sentence that makes no sense.  It’s not exactly first draft, but it’s not at the level I’d send to a publisher, yet. *

King and Kingdom

 

It was dark and dank, and smelly.  Gabriel’s first thought was that he was within a rat’s warren, or another such passage, built by creatures who, by night, live from the bounty of humanity’s building.

All Gabriel’s wishing this way didn’t work, and though he ordered with all his kingly might, he realized it would not go away.  Dark, and dank, and suffocating, the twisting paths led, by crooked paths like the random weavings of worm upon wood ever downward, ever tighter.

“I can’t wish it away” he thought, because this is the true thing.  This is what is beneath all the spun sugar, all the mechanical soldiers, all the cloying, false sweetness was just that, false.  This is what underlay fairyland, a narrow complex of tunnels getting every smaller, ever tighter, like something a creature would spin while getting away from light and from life, and perhaps from sanity.

The tunnels got progressively narrower, and their surface had a weathered look, which puzzled Gabriel, because what was there to weather them here, deep in the heart of a magical kingdom and away from everything that might touch them.  There was no rain in fairyland, no currents of deep rivers.

No, Fairlyland was all a thing of the mind.

Shortly, the tunnels got so narrow that Gabriel was walking them hunched forward, his head bent.  They smelt of rats.  It was a smell Gabriel knew well from his wretched childhood, a smell that made the hairs rise up at the back of his head, that made the bile rise up at the back of his throat.

He felt as though he were back there, in the narrow rented lodgings, lying in the dark, covered by the thin coverlet that somehow seemed to make one feel colder and to confer no comfort, waiting for the sound of feet behind the soffit, for the smell of rats, for the horrid feeling of their feet running across you.

Once, during a cold winter night, a rat had bit him on his toe, and it had taken forever to heal.

But there could be no smell of rats here, and yet when Gabriel tried to banish it, he couldn’t.  There was nothing there but the smell of rats and the narrow tunnels, and everything that was powerful in him told him these could not be altered because they were the true thing.

It took him a while – and by this time he was on hands and knees, for him to realize why this was the true thing.  The smell of rats was how his mind translated poverty.  And fairyland was poor.  Fairyland had defaulted, to Gabriel, to its ultimate existence without disguise: poor, narrow, ever tightening and ever more convoluted.  A dark place, spinning every tighter.

It came to him that when it was so tight it would barely fit him would be when he would find the present monarch.  It came to him that his teacher had been right.  Fairyland was a parasite among the worlds, floating free, and sucking life and magic out of everything it touched.

How could he want to be the monarch of such a thing?  How could anyone but a madman want to rule a parasite-land.

But no.  An instinctive recoil, a knowledge deeper than was possible to have from his lifetime, spoke to Gabriel out of the depths of racial memory.  This was what fairyland was now, yes, because it had a madman at its center, a madman who had been ruling it for centuries, and who had spun off all his own magic, so that he need now feed off other worlds and off unfortunates kidnapped for the purpose.  Like Michael had been.  Raphael’s stomach lurched at the knowledge that there had been many others, adults and children alike, who had been used for this purpose, and who had not been rescued until they were but dry husks, sucked dry of magic and life.

And at the same time the king had needed to suck dry the magic of other worlds – which was where his mad pact with Sidell came in.  If Sidell were king, he’d promised the king that he could have the choice of magic from Avalon, until there were no true magic left there.

Gabriel shook his head.  It was not supposed to be like that.  He knew, knew with his whole being.  There had been other kings and things had been different then.

When a strong king stood at the center of fairyland, he generated magic that fed the whole land and which in turn fed magic to every world that connected into it.

Gabriel, now crawling into the very narrow, very deep darkness at the heart of fairyland, thought “But that would mean you wouldn’t be you, any longer.  It would be an organic thing.  Humans call it king, but it isn’t, not really.  Generator, perhaps.  Or… or servant.”  The thought of how many years he had been a servant came and went in his mind without protest.  He hadn’t liked it, but it was far better than his years of hunger, his years of despair.

And then he thought that this would be worse.  Not servant, servant, but a service that reached into your mind, into your heart, into your very being.

He’d stood by the side of ballrooms and watched the couples, and kept an outwardly respectful appearance while keeping his own thoughts, while meditating on the shortcomings of the people around him, while finding their folly funny.

This indenture would allow no such relief.  Once he became fairyland’s … ruler for lack of a better word, he’d have to keep on with it.  Everything he did, everything he thought would reflect itself upon the land.

Any love, such as mortals knew love, that he might have, would have to restrain itself to time away from fairyland, and those would have to be very brief, very limited moments, or else, fairyland would feel his absence and reach out for someone else – for something else that would feed its magic.

Gabriel knew of a certainty, suddenly, that there had also been other dark kings before.  Here at the heart of fairyland, the instinctive knowledge of fairyland’s history was impossible to avoid.  The land knew, and knowing, communicated itself to him.  There had been other kings, worse even than this one, kings who had forced the land to reach outward and enslave humans to its will, and demand human sacrifice to feed itself.

There had also been kings who’d send their beings forth to kill and commit mayhem, to harvest life to feed fairyland.

Fortunately Gabriel had had a very moral upbringing, despite his father’s failings and his mother’s irregularities.  The thought passed through his mind, and made him smile, but it was followed by the thought there was nothing fortunate about it.  He wouldn’t be able to convince himself that it was right and just to leave fairyland to gratify his whims, or even his dreams, for long enough to cause it to go out of control.  His uncle had left fairyland in pursuit of his obsessions.  That those obsessions were judged by humans to be vile made no difference at all to what they did to the land.  Gabriel’s own dreams might be considered by some to be vile, also, but—

A thought of an almost discarded – almost but for their renewed acquaintance – youthful dream of living in Marlon’s lodgings, of growing old with him, in the quiet house filled with books, now that the ghost-lover was gone, came and went.  He thought of Marlon, at sixty, that flame-bright hair gone pale, sitting by the fire, reading, and then released the thought.

It would likely never have been like that for them, anyway.  And at any rate, Gabriel knew better.  You couldn’t just not do your duty and collect all the rewards of doing your duty.  He couldn’t simply wish that fairyland were healed and not step into the role of king.  He was the only one who could heal fairyland, and anything worth having was worth paying for.

Anything that big was worth dying for.

He was now crawling through a tunnel so narrow that he could barely breathe.  It couldn’t go on much longer.  His uncle must be somewhere ahead.  Should he go forward?  Or was he unwilling to pay the price?

Ahead, in the dark, he saw red, glowing eyes, like a trapped rats.

He thought back to an Autumn day in Darkwater, walking in the garden, and seeing the gardener pour something into a hole.  He remembered the day so clearly – it had been shortly after his father had brought him there – that he could feel the strange comfort of the woolen overcoat, the softness of the muffler around his neck, and feeling quite odd in these clean clothes, and in the half-deference the staff gave him – because everyone knew whose get he was.  Even if they were in fear of his fey nature, there was no denying with that face, he was the lord’s son, and therefore, they’d called him Master Penn and touched their hats at him.

And the gardener had done just that and said “As it is rats, master Penn, and they’ve been going all under the forcing houses, and the way to get rid of them is to stop all their entrances and exits with pitch, and to let them starve.”

He thought “I’m stopping the entrance and the exit.”  And then realized he was wrong.  Yes, this tunnel was fairyland, and his uncle’s mind was at its end, starved and stoppered.  But to starve him – to stop his exits…  It meant cutting off his food – cutting off… his access to fairyland, stopping everything he was, and everything he could be.

“Yes,” Gabriel said, and reached for the threads leading from his uncle to everything that was fairyland.

It came to him the only way to cut those threads was to attach them to himself.  To make himself the center, the spin of them.  To let them eat him alive.

“Yes,” he said, though it felt like his lips had gone ice cold with saying it.  Tears tried to spring to his eyes, but it was too late.  Everything in fairyland that needed feeding – and that was everything – attached to him: to his mind, to his body, to his essence.

He felt more than heard a scream from his uncle, the scream of a starving creature.  Gabriel had starved.  He felt a pang of pity.

But then he thought of the spun sugar, the cloying sweetness, the adults – and children – enticed, like wasps to a poisonous trap.  Not let go till they were quite dead.

And he pulled the rest of fairyland to him.

He heard a shriek as all the force went out of the old king.  If his father hadn’t, however belatedly, done his duty, Gabriel wouldn’t be alive, and wouldn’t be here.  Well, Gabriel was his father’s son and late to his duty, but he meant to do fulfill it, so that others might live.

And then fairyland exploded outward, into groves and rivers, into sacred glades and centaur meadows.

And Gabriel was in a white room, in the middle of a white palace, in a throne made of crystal, looking out over a vista of the realm that owned him.

He closed his eyes and bid farewell to his humanity.

When we moved to Colorado Springs, the greatest part of choosing our location in town was that there were three bookstores within walking distance.  Practically the only way to insure I get exercise.

Now those three bookstores are gone.  There are a lot of bars and restaurants, but well… we are mini-galting (we need a logo for this) and therefore not eating out much, and bars… If I drank as much as I do NOT at home (or friends’ homes) but pay-per-drink, I’d be even more broke than I am.

The reasons we chose to live where we live are all gone – in less than ten years.

Then there’s my household arrangements.  We have so many books that I started culling into bins for eventual garage sale, about two years ago.  But I never finished the culling, and then act-of-kids intervened, and we bought more books, which means yesterday when I went in search of a book to check on a reference, I found instead that my bookshelves have got completely scrambled.  There’s all sorts of stuff in every bookshelf, nothing is in order, and the bookshelf on the way to the attic has become a convenient place for the guys to unload and/or store stuff they don’t want in their area.  The end result is that nothing is “findable” and everything is a total mess.

Which brings me to – I started reshelving.  And realized about half the mysteries taking up space on my shelves aren’t the sort I keep.  Heck, some of them might never have been read.

You see, every month or so, I’d take a trip to the local used bookstore and get a load of mysteries, read them, put the ones I didn’t care for back in for trade, and keep the ones I was likely to read more than once.  Then, once every six months we went to the BIG mystery bookstore in Denver (first day of a weekend away) and I’d fill three, sometimes four large bags with used paperbacks, read them during that weekend and the month after, then cull.

But sometime – four? – years ago, we got me a kindle, and then the trip to the bookstore wasn’t needed, and I think I forgot to read some of the books from the last one, as well as whatever books I’d got that month.

What do I mean by all this?  I mean that technology is changing the rhythms of how we do things, in ways that aren’t even obvious until we look back.

I did not know that last time we went by the used bookstore at the beginning of a weekend in Denver that it would be the last time.  I still bought the usual books.  I just ended up reading some stuff I had on the kindle, instead.  And when the next vacation came around, I had the kindle, and buying a bunch of used books seemed stupid.  I don’t think I’ve stepped into that bookstore since.

The rhythms change.

When we moved here, I walked downtown a lot, to buy books, or – more often – to browse books.  I used to take a laptop and sit by the fireplace in my favorite bookstore and write, while people watching.

The store is gone.  Downtown’s character has changed too.  There are fewer stores people shop at, so well, during the day it’s office workers and vagrants.  In the less populated area, it’s now a little iffy, if not dangerous (yet.)

We do the things that benefit us (in my case ordering more from Amazon) and other people do the things that benefit them.  And the entire landscape changes.

I’m not arguing otherwise.  I’m convinced things like “Save the indies” for keeping bookstores alive are in the end doomed and in the short term counterproductive.  They’ll either find a value-add to give people, or they will ultimately fail.  (I’d pay for a sort of in-person book café, with knowledgeable owners who can recommend books I might like, and who have space for writers’ and readers’ groups to meet, but I don’t know how practical it is, unless in a very large city.)

I’m just saying no one can see the future, even as it’s barreling down towards us.  Which is why any centralized planning tends to fail and any push-down (as opposed to pull down at will) business model tends to fail, and the bigger and more impersonal it is, the faster it fails.  And why the government subsidizing innovation usually means subsidizing things that real life ebbs and flows around.

I read, I don’t remember where, that the reason our government (to an extent both parties) is pushing for a welfare state that controls everything is that they believe in a future where humans really have nothing to do – where robots do it all.  They all – apparently – read “With Folded Hands” and thought it was inevitable.

But even we, science fiction authors, infallible though we are (of course) get things wrong.  Heinlein never saw computers barreling down the pipe.  Well, not in the form they came.  Which means my kids get to chuckle at slide rules in spaceships.

And the thing about robots doing everything for humans, and therefore there being no work for people, and therefore the government must step in and give people a raison d’etre and, if possible thin down the population.

This would be like someone in the nineteenth century seeing our civilization and going “We must create a vast welfare state for all the scullery maids put out of work by dishwashers and all the drivers put out of work by the horseless carriages.  And that’s not talking about the people who shoe horses and the crossing sweepers.  Doom, gloom, most of humanity will be useless and only the state can save us.”

It’s a serious under-rating of humanity.  We are clever monkeys.  We’ll find new things to do when the old drudgery is lifted.

Yes, some people will end up doing nothing – but I think that has more to do with learned helplessness and does not need to be subsidized.

I’m laying you a bet that a hundred years from now there will be jobs we don’t even imagine, and they’ll be all across the IQ and aptitude spectrum.  (We don’t need drivers, or maids, but I pay money for people to haul stuff to the dump.  And we still need gardeners and sidewalk sweepers.)  I’m also betting you that the jobs will in general be less onerous/filled with drudgery and far more interesting.

Am I sure – well, no.  And I’m unlikely (though it’s not impossible) to be alive 100 years from now (unless there’s really reincarnation) to pay or collect.

But I’ve seen where we’ve come from, and I know the trend.  I know the way to bet.

I don’t think robots will stop us inventing new work to do, or new ways of making a living.

The government, on the other hand, might – by killing incentive and curiosity and draining away the capital (human and financial) that could go towards innovation.

Refuse to live with folded hands.  Trust humanity.  Embrace the future.

Note – It being Wednesday, there’s a different post by yours truly — The promised one on writing with children around — at Mad Genius Club. 

UPDATE:  Will do chapters tomorrow.  Not morning post.  Sorry.  Got sidetracked looking for a reference book, ended up reshelving most of my mystery “area” (the hallway between the kid’s room and the attic stairs.)  sorry.

*Yes, yes, I know this is just a bite, but first I had to get my file and read it and then…  And then I had headache from h*ll yesterday, so not much got done.  Being a writer of iniquity I’m betraying my promise to do a non WF post in morning and a WF in evening.  Today you’re getting WF in the morning and in the evening.  And then more tomorrow evening, after which I’ll probably be done (because really, how long can THEY drag this out?)*

*This is the Fantasy novel I’m posting here for free, one chapter every Friday.   If your conscience troubles you getting something for free, do hit the donate button on the right side.  Anyone donating more than $6 will get a non-drm electronic copy of Witchfinder in its final version, when it’s published.
There is a compilation of previous chapters here  all in one big lump, which makes it easier to read and I will compile each new chapter there, a week after I post.  When the novel is completed and about to be edited the compilation page will probably be deleted.

Oh, this is in pre-arc format, meaning you’ll find the occasional spelling mistake and sentence that makes no sense.  It’s not exactly first draft, but it’s not at the level I’d send to a publisher, yet. *

The Land’s Heart

Nell stepped forward, and the warmth enveloped her.  At first it was almost too hot and too bright, and then…

And then she stopped being separate from the light and the heat and she found herself in the spinning heart of everything: she could feel everywhere and everywhen, she was everywhere and everywhen.

In London, she was streets thronged with people, fighting odd threats.  In the countryside, she stood on frost-crackling fields, while ghost riders ran and ravaged the sleeping farms, the silent homesteads.

Fairyland had broken loose and spilled into Avalon.

The part of Nell that could still feel and think felt a clutch at her heart, a fear that Gabriel had lost his battle and that this had always been part of the plan between the traitor in Avalon and the dark ones of fairyland, that now the two would merge.

The part of Nell that now knew more, the part of Nell that was Avalon and whose mind went back through the ages, to King Arthur’s time, and before, knew this was nonsense.  Not that it had been the plan.  It might very well be the plan, but she knew better.  Fairyland and the mundane world could not merge.  They could only meet and annihilate each other.  Easy enough for the forces of fairyland to romp and storm through the lower-magical world of mortals, for a time.  But then the lack of magic in Avalon would starve them, at the same time they rampaged among the mere mortals.

And there was more.  Fairyland powered the power of every other world.  Without it, magic would leash out of all other worlds.  Its sickly state these last few years meant that it had already leaked out of the outer, most distant worlds, such as Earth.  If this went on, then it would disappear from all other worlds, and eventually life would go with it.  And if this night Fairyland spilled into Avalon and Avalon into Fairyland it would all burn itself out in a moon.

But the land had its strength.  What it lacked was a will and a mind.  And that – Nell thought – wasn’t right.  She felt the connection that should link the land to the king.  She was not – yet – the Queen of Avalon.  The land should be linked to the man she must learn to think of as her father.

Nell followed the link in her mind, and found the place where the link was cut by a dark, dank stuff like mildew which had eaten at the quick, living magic.

It was as though Nell’s heart had plummeted down around her feet.  She could not solve this, and get the King – her father, she must think of him as that – to take over the battle.  For now it was her battle and then – and then she would make sure the king received the power.  It was too early.  She did not want to wear the crown.

But all the same she must lift the sword, symbolically and in truth, the sword of power in the land.

She felt it in her hands, that legendary sword that had been Arthur’s and the first Richard’s, the sword that took form and substance now and then, but which was forever and always a sword of the spirit.

It was heavy, here at the heart of the world, and it was a symbol, more than a real weapon, Nell lifted it.

Against the growing invaders, against the dark armies, against the creatures of ill defined  magic and ill disciplined force, she lifted the sword, and with it raised the strength of the land, and she called, “Fight.”  And she screamed “Arise.”  And she commanded, “Defend.”

From every sacred grove and every cleanly hill, the power of the land, the power rose and the magic grew.  The invaders, surprised, fell back in disarray, clambered back in fear.  They wouldn’t be banished, not completely, but they would would not rampage.  They held in tight circles, defensive, embattled.  And around them the magic of the land shimmered and sparkled.

A Fighting Title

Seraphim became aware that he was being dragged over rough floor.  He tried to protest that he should be allowed to die in peace.  It seemed to him peculiar that the odd man from the dragon den should insist on dragging a dying duke along with him.

Only he wasn’t a duke anymore

And from somewhere anger came.  He’d not asked to be the duke of Darkwater.  He’d not asked to be the first born of the previous duke’s large and irregular get.  He’d not asked his father to die early and to leave Seraphim in charge of an encumbered inheritance and younger children who depended on him.

And, most of all, he’d not asked to find his father’s secret papers, not to feel obliged to rescue the unfortunates that his father could no longer help.

He had asked for none of this.

And now, now, that he must die for it, some lunatic wouldn’t let him alone.

He moaned loudly, and there was a moment of hesitation, but then the dragging resumed.

Seraphim became aware that the ground was shaking beneath him, that his arms hurt as he was being dragged, and that – and this part galled him – someone was shoving quite an unreasonable amount of magic at him, pushing and forcing it past Seraphim’s weakened defenses, forcing Seraphim’s body to heal itself.

It was an odd magic, not untrained, but strangely structured.  Instead of healing Seraphim it was forcing him to heal.

Now, there was somewhere –

Seraphim had seen that magic somewhere, felt it somewhere.  As his body started to recover, his mind pursued the mystery, and found in its unraveling enough incentive to wake up more fully.  There, there, the taste of it, the force of the magic…  He knew that type of work.

And then it hit him.  The Madhouse.  No.  Nell’s world.  Earth, they called themselves – though, of course, every unaware world called itself Earth – the world without magic.  People from it always learned magic backwards and sideways and did things by methods no sane trained magician, let alone a teacher of magic would think right.  It was as though an entire world had decided the way to build a house was to start with the roof.

And yet, the misbegotten, scrambled magic worked, after a fashion.  Not well, on Earth, but pretty well everywhere else.

He had woken now, enough to feel his whole body.  The annoyance of being dragged, the rough stone tearing at his skin, all of it combined to bring his eyes open.

He was still in the dragon cave.  Rocks were falling from a cracked ceiling.  Through the fissures, he could see glowing red lava and as if fires of hell.  He wondered if they were beneath a volcano now coming awake, and wondered how long till glowing lava dripped through and icenerated him and his—strange savior.

He looked up the length of his stretched arms, to where a man who looked, much like Gabriel, was walking backwards, while pulling on Seraphim’s hands.

“Stop,” Seraphim said.  “Stop.”

“I’m not leaving you here,” the young man said.  “Not on your life.  But I can’t do transport.  Never learned how.  So we must get out this way.  I think this hallway will—”

“Stop,” Seraphim said, and as the only way to avert this humiliation of being dragged along like a sack of rocks, said, “I’ll stand.  I’ll stand.”

His hands were let free, and he did manage to stand, unsteadily, on legs that felt as though they were made of running water and insufficient will power.

The man who looked like Gabriel stepped back, rapidly, as though even wounded Seraphim might wish to, and be able to, take a swing at him.  Seraphim focused a swimming vision on the man and said, “Thank you for healing me.  Are you from Earth?”

He got back a surprised, feral smile, a fugitive thing.  “I am from Earth, milord.  I am–  I was lured here, on my insufficiently tutored magic, and I—”  He closed his mouth on visibly unsaid thoughts, as the ceiling above gave a loud crack, and rocks fell all around.  “Milord, can you run?”

“No,” he said.  “No.”  He felt himself swaying on his feet.  “A transport spell might be easier.”

He reached for the man’s hand, because he didn’t think at this moment he could transport anything he wasn’t actually touching.  The man’s hand felt too hot and rough.  Seraphim started saying the spell, wondering if he could in fact make a transport spell.  He wished them out of this hole, out of this horrible enclosure, and into a safe place.  He didn’t much care where just now.

“Use my magic, also, milor’,” the man said, and Seraphim gratefully found it accessible, even if strange, and ignorance-twisted, and he made use of it, weaving his transport spell rapidly, turning it so that it closed finally with a resounding thud.

And then—

In a moment they were out of the cave, the heat, the threat of cave ins, and cold rushed in upon them.  They were in a vast, white clearing.  Seraphim realized, in shock, that there was snow all around, white snow, sparkling and reflective like ground glass.

In the middle of the clearing was what looked like a tomb, stone and sculpted, beside which a heavily veiled woman mourned.  Atop of the tomb, where normally a pious, joined-hands statue lay there lay a man.

“Father!” Seraphim said.

It’s not what we know that kills us… It’s the many things we think we know that just ain’t so – and which might be completely different, in fact.

Take for instance sex – yeah, this early in the day.  Let’s have a show of hands.  How many of you watched Splendor in the Grass?  How many realized it makes no sense whatsoever?

I was probably blessed in watching it now as an adult – a few years ago – and quite conscious of the insidious myths of the twentieth century, including that repressing your sexual drive will make you maaaaaaaaaaaad.  Maaaaaaaaaaad.

I’ll head things off here, and tell you right out that no, I don’t think people can be celibate life long unless they’re endowed with a special grace which is more than I – or most humans – have.  (Grace or the ability to sublimate to other things.)

Being celibate life-long might make you a little odd.  You might develop an obsession with naughty pictures, or something.  BUT mostly it will make you lonely and sad, since it’s not good for man (or woman) to be alone.  We are, by nature, designed to have a mate.

This is however not in the same realm as “you can’t repress any sexual desires at all, no matter the time, the place, your age or your circumstances and if you try to you’ll become psychotic.”

As powerful a drive as sexual desire is, it’s not magical.  Repressing it can’t make a good man into a mass murderer or a rapist.  Repressing it – temporarily, because, duh, you’re a kid and unmarried – won’t send a stable girl into the madhouse.  (If she’s the kind to go to the madhouse, then she will be in worse trouble if she DOES have sex.  I don’t think someone that mentally fragile could cope with the consequences of sex – attachment, fidelity [or lack thereof] and possible pregnancy.)

The idea that it is magical and that if repressed it will make you into a monster is the sort of cheap Freudianism that has infused society since – yep – World War One and which is at the back of much of our entertainment AND our educational policies.

In entertainment it causes people to think that stuff like Splendor on the Grass is “deep” and books with that sort of meaning are “important” (Which is why kids in YA now screw like minxes) – instead of faulty and done to death – and in education it causes people to laugh politely at the suggestion kids should be told it’s best to abstain till they’re in a stable relationship.

It’s so prevalent that the laugh is never explained.  It’s all “Oh, my dear, she believes in abstention” as though this were the ultimate stupidity.  Because everyone knows that kids can’t control their sex drive, and if they did they’d break out in pimples, or something.  Only, of course, while some kids might not be able to abstain (there’s enormous variation in human desire) most can if told it’s not going to make them go maaaaaaad.  Maaaaaad.

In the same vein, everyone knows Europe is more sophisticated than the US.  Why, my dear, their politicians routinely have mistresses.  Publically.  And no one minds.  But the rubes in the US get very upset if they find their president has a squeeze.  As if that weren’t the right of every rich and important man.

Uh…  You see, it has nothing to do with sophistication.  Unless by sophistication you mean the sort of cultural memory that goes back to Rome and knows, of course, that it is impolite to kiss your spouse in public, but quite all right to kiss your mistress.

The Europeans grant these privileges to their rich and powerful because they believe some animals are more equal than others.  They’ve been used to it. There’s feudalism in their minds.

We, on the other hand, founded on bourgeois virtues, believe that contracts are made to be kept, and if a man is married, he’s married.  He gave his word, and violating his word without remorse and semi-publically is a severe flaw in someone who’s sworn to serve the country.

Everyone also knows that all cultures are alike – except ours, which is imperialist, colonialist and bad.  This too infuses our teaching about other countries and even an entire class of politicians who think that our foreign policy should be based on self abasement and apology.

To maintain this view of the world, our schools teach what I’d call “cute brown people” anthropology.  Oh, fine, I don’t think they see it that way.  They teach the cookery of the country, and the arts and crafts, and talk about their admirable achievements (usually rather in the patronizing “and they invented a new type of clog” line.  I mean, you can’t expect little brown people to have BIG achievements, and you should praise the little ones, because wow, think about it, new type of clog.)

What they don’t teach is that every “underdog” culture was at some point dominant.  They don’t teach stuff such as that the Zulus were no more native to South Africa than the Afrikaners.  They’d immigrated across Africa in fire and blood, and got to South Africa just about when the Afrikaners did.  Assuming they’re “native” because of their skin color is the rankest racism.

What they don’t teach is that EVERY HUMAN race, culture and subtype is two things: intensely racist (in the sense of tribalist.  The humanoid band allowed us to survive.  We seek the company of those like us) and colonialist (you expand your band’s territory if you can.)

The other thing they don’t teach is that, as an extension of – and defeater – of the tribe, the nation state – EVERY NATION STATE – is out for its own interests.  Long before “capitalism” or “fight for resources” or whatever the Marxists think this is all about (and don’t get me started on THEIR illusions.  I have a book to finish) the great leaders of the French were those who were out for French interests and French domination.  (Read about Napoleon.  There were reasons he was called “the monster” – but the French STILL lionize him.)

It is what we think we know that just ain’t so – and it takes a very sophisticated society indeed to have this sort of mass illusion for so long – that is killing Western society and the US.

And it is time we woke up from the screaming nightmare we’re been in since WWI.  It’s time to realize most of these ideas are not only wrong — they are, on the face of them and stated out loud (as they never are) laugh out loud ridiculous.

Like the idea that it will do lasting psychological harm to abstain from sex while in high school.  Because… because… because… Cheese!  Also lasers!  Or the idea that people who can tan (like me) are automatically endowed with superpowers of goodness, kindness, and sinlessness.  (I prefer the open racism of Patricia Wentworth where a character is clearly a murderer because he’s part Portuguese.  At least it’s open.)   As for the idea of European sophistication, Europe is the only place where I’ve heard OPEN homophobic, racist and sexist remarks in PROFESSIONAL situations, and no one says anything.  (Of course, at least it’s out in the open.)

But out here — and in Europe, even though they’re more blunt about their own prejudices (btw, this is allowable because they “know” the US is far more racist, sexist and homophobic than they are.  It’s one of THEIR accepted lies.)  — we believe most of these things at a level so deep it filters into all our entertainment and culture, and makes itself accepted without ever being thought about.

In many ways, it’s not very different from having an alien controlling our brain – as in Heinlein’s Puppet Masters.

Go and read that book (again, if you already have).  Then take off your overcoat, kill your rider, and start learning what is real and what isn’t.

The sex-soaked, human-despising, self-destroying culture of the past century is dead and stinking.  Let’s crawl out from under the corpse of its entertainment and “news” and “scholarship” before it suffocates us.

 

But the flesh is not only weak, it is extremely odd.  I know it will surprise all my readers to find that an author as infallible as I — coughs — could mess up like this, but I went to the party with laptop and WITHOUT the latest file of Witchfinder.  It’s having been three weeks, I could not immediately recall how I’d last left our heroes (sigh) and I’d (of course) a hard time getting back into it.  But beyond that I was suffering from what I call “sliding on sheet of glass atop story” which happens when I’m still “burned” by the last story.

It’s also possible that a con last weekend and two social engagements this week have thrown this hermit-like author off her (scant as is) balance.

So, I think I’ll do normal posts in the morning and a WF post in the evening, probably the next three days, and finish it.  But it won’t happen today.

Yes, yes, I’m dethpicable — however I’m going to bed.  I’ll catch you on the morrow.

Come back this evening — and remember I am in the mountain states, so my evening is probably night for most of you.

Sorry, I’ve been catching up on “Other business stuff” ignored while NB was being finished.

But the thing is, though we attend a superbowl party every year, I’m QUITE useless at watching football.  Like most people not raised with it, it never made visual sense to me.  So, I’m taking the laptop (our poor friends are used to this) and writing when there’s no conversation going.

See you this evening.

And I’m going to try to do Witchfinder’s end ASAP.  I have everything fixed in my head, how it goes, but I still feel as if my brain is bruised (eh) so it might be tomorrow afternoon before it’s up.  I’m going to try to do it (or at least a fair chunk of it) today after I shower and do the litter boxes (which smell radioactive, if you know what I mean) today.

I’ve been trying to think why NB was so hard to finish, and why it took me so long to figure out what the ending was, and …

The thing is, as with most of my characteristics, you can’t say “she’s this.”  It’s more “She’s this but–”  Not that I’m not a very decided person, but … I tend to complicate things (possibly due to overthinking.)

For instance, you can’t really say I’m outspoken, because I spent 20 years not discussing anything that might upset anyone else.  Yes, part of this was because my job depended on people not knowing too much about my opinions, because the other side of this equation (if I can be said to be on a side) confuses politics with moral redemption and therefore views different opinions (which in the end amount to believing in a different way to make things as good as possible for most people) as evil.  It’s not a coincidence that more and more mysteries end up with “the murderer was insane” or that so many antagonists in a fantasy are possessed before they take a different road from what the character wants.

I did this, myself, in my first written novel.  Of course I was raised very left, simply by virtue of being brought up in Europe.  The pieties filter in, and you have this idea that it’s perfectly clear what’s good and what’s bad: compassion for everyone is good; cutting endless slack to those who do wrong (particularly if it’s very, very wrong in the traditional sense, like murder, theft, or child abuse, but also if it’s a sin of extreme selfishness like refusing to bathe or using up all your money on drugs) is good because, well, they’re victims of society, having tons of sex with lots of different people is good (you wouldn’t want to repress it, now, would you, besides the natural man is the noble savage and therefore good), and things like wanting to have money and material security is evil, wanting to live in a comfortable home is evil, wanting your children to behave politely in public is evil (so repressing!), being good at the sort of job where you supervise a lot of people is evil (so authoritarian!), military is evil (because if you don’t attack people, no one attacks you) and judging other people for their behavior and culture is the ULTIMATE evil.

This type of low grade “poison” seeps into your brain.  It’s all very clear cut and doesn’t account for individual variations or people.  It doesn’t account, for instance, for the person who runs a large factory doing it not because he’s in love with telling other people what to do (the ones who are are actually lousy managers) but simply managing this because his family depends on it to live.  It doesn’t account for the person who doesn’t bathe being, not a natural man, but a sadist, who likes to watch his polite circle trying to ignore his offensive odor, it doesn’t account for the fact that most of us are not victims of society but ourselves.  (Oh, all of us are influenced by society, for good an ill.  BUT in the end we’re thinking, reason-endowed beings who choose our own path.)  The Military is very needed and very praiseworthy in defense of freedom, in a world that is hostile to it.  And if we choose to murder or steal or do evil things to innocents, we are in fact doing what pleases and making OTHERS the victims.  We don’t deserve sympathy.  Victims do.

Anyway, the problem as an artist is that when you have these categories fixed in your mind, you can’t really create an approximation of life.  You hear no villain is a villain in his own mind, but having been brought up to see things in stark black and white you can’t see how anyone could disagree.  (Until you start reading history and economics, which, children, has been my downfall and brought me over to the dark side.  Living doesn’t help, either, and meeting real people not the cardboard cutouts the leftist pieties imply.)

So the only way I could think to make someone go against my enlightened ruler (brother! Don’t get me started!) was to have him go insane.

Anyway — all this digression to explain why I’m not “precisely anything” — I tend to think (or overthink) every point of every position, and sometimes I agree with the conservative or the leftist (they really aren’t liberal, sorry) sides on an overarching point, but for quite different reasons.  Not that most conservatives mind — to quote my friend Bill Reader, the other day, “I can tolerate a lot of disagreement between liberty-minded people.”  Because the point, of course, is that things can be argued out, and even tried out, and then we see which way is better.  It’s not like I (or most conservatives, and even less most libertarians) have anything invested in having anyone do things my way, my main point is that I want to be left alone to live my life according to my moral judgement.  And I don’t particularly want my friends pushed about, either.  Other than that, well — I don’t care.

So.  This brings us to how I’m neither pantser nor plotter.  (My son, neither a pantser nor a plotter be!)

I do get ideas that push, and flashes of inspiration, and “voices” starting a story in my head, but very often, I have to work everything from there on with pen and pencil, and careful plotting (And a lot of cursing.)

Even the novels that more or less dictate themselves will have transitions and rough patches I need to figure out on my own.  (The cursing happens then.  And it’s loud.)

By temperament I’m more plotter than pantser.  Look, guys, I don’t take pain killers even when I really need them — oh, after an emergency Caesarean followed by a three alarm uterine infection, say, kind of like poor Jane Seymour went.  I had all but one of the morphine pills left three years later, when we moved.  No, Dan didn’t let me sell them, and frankly I had no idea how to go about it.  Which is a pity because we were SO FAR beyond broke.  I don’t take them because I want to make sure that what’s thinking my thoughts is in fact ME and as clear-headed as I can be.

In the same way the flash from the subconscious disturbs me.  I’ve come to accept it will happen — I don’t have to like it — but I feel better if I can work out the plot along with — or preferably just ahead of — the flash.  I try to be logical and…

And with Noah’s Boy it failed me.  Part of it was that it got interrupted three times, (Then two or three in rewrite) by the perpetually breaking down body.  When it gets interrupted, I need to read back, to be reminded where I was.  And then the rational mind notices things it didn’t before, and goes and carefully alters the plot ahead.

But more important was that my carefully worked plot wasn’t “Right” and that my sluggish subconscious knew better than I did, but because I liked the character too much and didn’t want it to die, and because I don’t like being dictated to by “voices from the ID” I was blocking it so hard, it first had to get me good and tired and THEN pounce on me with a dream.

Now it’s done, and it’s off my desk, and as soon as I can I’ll do the end of Witchfinder.  And then I SHALL take a week and draw dragons and kick back.  And then I start working on Through Fire, the second of the Earth Revolution, while revising WF and Shadow Gods.

Now to shower and do the cat boxes.

Today I’m still busy finishing Noah’s Boy.  No, I didn’t run out of steam, but I had to write the big confrontation scene and I didn’t have the energy late at night.  It’s amazing how much energy it takes to type, when your character is clambering up on a roller coaster that’s on fire, while fighting the villain and trying to save the villain’s son.  It’ s like you feel every movement.  You know those experiments they did, where people lost weight while imagining doing exercise?  I think it’s something like that.

The last novel I wrote before the first that was published (it does too parse.  Go back and read the sentence again) had an extensive military campaign towards the end.  Since this was set in the bronze age, there was a lot of sword swinging and horse riding and rope climbing and…

I’d write for four hours and feel like I couldn’t even boil an egg.  I was going to eat the first thing that crossed my path.  So, while working on those sequences, we lived a block from a pizza parlor.  I don’t even like pizza, but I’d call them at noon every time and get a medium delivered and finish it in like five minutes.

Anyway, this isn’t a long scene, but I find when I’m tired or out of it, I’ll outline action rather than write it, and I didn’t want to risk that.

Also, I’m slightly worried because towards the end sequences with laugh-out-loud scenes alternate with horrific ones.  But – BAH – the editors will let me know how it plays.  So will the first readers.

Meanwhile, since my attention right now is on finishing this and finishing the typo hunt, I don’t have time to set the internets on fire.  So I thought I’d leave you guys with a few cans of gasoline and a lighter.  (According to Hoyt, the place where the internet catches fire and burns.)

So, my friend Pat Richardson found this quote:

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”

― Madeleine L’Engle

It relates wonderfully to Heinlein’s statement that he put the big ideas in his YA because teens were more likely to think about them, while the adults had already made up their mind.  I don’t remember exactly, and I don’t know what the latest in psychology is, but my Piaget said that adolescence was when you processed systems of ideas.  (Does this make philosophers cases of arrested development?)

I came at the YA Heinlein’s late, having read his adult books first, but I used the YAs to introduce ideas (and ideas of freedom) to my sons at appropriate times.

You can say Harry Potter still – to an extent – deals with big ideas.  (One of the things that amazed me is how she showed how easily a bureaucracy can be corrupted and yet still holds on to ideas of big government.  I guess a lot of artists don’t integrate what they know emotionally – the art – with what they’ve been told intellectually.  Or perhaps, being outliers, they want to be in with the in crowd.  Joss Whedon you may call your office.)  It deals with the fact that the individual can make a difference, that there can be exceptional people, and that big systems and people who are in authority can be wrong/corrupted.

Few of the other YAs floating around do.  You could say that Twilight deals with the misunderstood outsider, but truly, victimology is something that the kids get from the establishment and aplenty.

I haven’t read Hunger Games, yet, and I’m not sure I will – I hate these artificial “sacrifice” books.  I hated The Lottery.  I hate the idea these are necessitated by excess population.  In Hunger Games, you add the fact that as a mother I can’t imagine any parent letting their kids do this, unless they’re the functional equivalent of Hollywood Moms.

On the other hand, the book fascinates me because I find it odd that both the right and the left see themselves in that book.

I know the publishers perceived it left, which is part of my distaste in attempting to read it.  I don’t think they push anything they don’t perceive extreme left.  On the other hand, they’re very, very dumb, so it’s hard to tell.

However, it seems to me most YA literature deals with the body and not the mind.  Yes, adolescence is when the kids deal with big ideas.  It is also when they deal with sexual impulses for the first time.  Most YA literature – under the guise of being new and special and daring, even though this has been done since I was a teen – soaks them in hormones, sex, victimology and sex.  The victimology is, of course, how the establishment justifies the rest (We’re making them aware of the plight of transgendered, pansexual, one eyed, one legged immigrants from Panasia.)  In the pursuit of this, they often seem to write books set in the fifties or before, when this stuff actually shocked people.  (Of course most of the publishing establishment/writers were kids in the fifties.  Don’t they realize the world has changed?  Do they live in a shell?)

The interesting thing to me, is that these seem to sell worse than the Heinlein juveniles they stigmatize and “squeaky clean” and “goody two-shoes” did in their time, and also that they’re turning readers off books in droves.  Perhaps because the kids aren’t as interested in what old people think their sexual lives should be as the old people would like to think.  After all ideas are timeless, but every generation thinks they invented sex.  (For no apparent reason I’m flashing on the Real Sex programs that we sometimes caught when we weren’t too quick to turn the channel, were watching late at night and had cable – right after nine eleven we didn’t sleep much for about a year.  It seems like the people parading their sex lives in public always had white body hair.  Make of that what you will.)  Perhaps it is that these victim/sex/oppression books are all the same.  Soma doesn’t work very well when it’s always the same soma.

Can the kids be reclaimed?  Even though the schools are trying to teach them/condition them to neither think nor question?  I don’t know.  I do know that the establishment will never do it with their YA books.  (Flash Dilbert “You’ll never survive by your wits alone”.)  So, that leaves it to us to try.

Anyway.  I have a dragon and a saber tooth to deal with.  Oh yeah.  And a wooden rollercoaster.  On fire.

You guys go forth with this here gasoline can and set fire to the internets.

 

 

 

When I was very little I used to watch my mom cut clothes and lay them out and pin them.  I remember her fussing for hours with a corner of a skirt or the fit of a sleeve that simply wouldn’t “lie right.”  She would pin and unpin, and cut a little, to accommodate defects of weaving, or whatever, until the thing at last assumed the shape she wanted, or did what she wanted.  (And sometimes she was trying to get mere fabric to do rather unusual things in terms of draping and hiding or flattering a bad figure.)

It’s weird the images that stick with you, that you take with you into adulthood and your own work.  For weeks now, I’ve been pinning and unpinning the end of Noah’s Boy, because it refused to “lie flat” or in this case to crease excitingly at it tilted and sped its way towards the end.  I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what I was doing wrong.

Like mom, unpinning and creasing a corner, I thought “Maybe I need to kill a character.”  But the character it occurred to me to kill didn’t seem to do anything for the plot.  I just lighted on him because he was – and is – one of the important pillars of this novel, and because – well, you know, writers are despicable – he seems to be in a path to get everything he wants, so, you know, shock horror and only the good die young…

Only I told Dan I might have to kill Conan and he said if I did he’d divorce me…  Look, I’m no fool.  I really want the book to be the best it can be, but I like my marriage better.  And while I doubt Dan would divorce me, there would be a coldness.  And I don’t like coldness.

I tried to work around it, but I couldn’t get Tom’s decision at the end to make sense (truth be told, I couldn’t get it to make sense by killing Conan, either, it’s just that I could hide the not quite right crease under the sleeve of emotion, where no one would go looking.  But it would probably make for an inferior book, and I don’t like that.)  And anyway, it didn’t feel RIGHT.

It’s been worrying me so much that I’ve been writing and erasing the “same” ten thousand words for weeks, and my eczema is kicking up a fuss (not as bad as ALWAYS at the end of the musketeers mysteries, when I would have torn holes into the inside of my elbows.  But then, that was a matter of knowing the house was going to do something “creative” to the poor book) and I’m sleeping funny.  How funny?

Well, you know when you sleep and you know you’re really asleep, but your brain is still worrying at whatever the work of the day was and won’t let go.  And you wake up just enough to veto this idea or that?

I’ve had nights like that, my brain kicking up images and scenes I promptly wail back “but that doesn’t make any sense” to and bury.  And with the urgency of getting this to the house before they decide I’m too much trouble to work with (honestly, if it weren’t for the flu, this would have been finished months ago) it just kept getting odder and odder.

And then last night I had this image of Tom waking up to a scene of unimaginable horror involving a character I didn’t even realize was a favorite of mine, but who apparently was, because I felt the unimaginable horror and kind of scooted halfway awake and went “No.  Just no.  Calm down, Sarah, it’s not true.  You can go to sleep again.  No one is hurting THAT character.”

I turned over, and I couldn’t go to sleep.  Because by that time my rational brain was awake, and it was going “Yeah.  Yeah.  That piece” (terribly apropos, actually) “fits, and that one, and that’s how Tom figures out how to—  And besides, it sets it all up nicely for the sequels without Deus ex Machina kicking up every time.  And by the way, it forces Tom to go where you want him, in the final battle.”

All of which is well and good, except I didn’t want that character to DIE.

This weekend at the conference I heard a number of readers say that they thought writers killed characters “just to prove the book is serious” and that it annoyed them, and that they hated it when writers killed a continuing character, and besides – ARGH – how can they trust us when we’re stone-cold killers?

I don’t know about other writers.  Perhaps some writers do kill characters for the heck of it, or to prove they’re serious.  If I had to kill a character to show that it’s not all fun and skittles, it would be a peripheral one, perhaps introduced this book.  Or a fan who’d get a kick out of dying in Noah’s Boy.  (You know who you are, the people who’ve EARNED red shirting.)

But no.  None of this will work, unless I kill a character I’m very fond of, and one who is a continuing character.

One the good side, I now know how to close this book – how to make the end drape as I wish.  Which means I can finally make an end, and then typo hunt, and then send it in, before the editors send specialized revision ninjas to my house and stand behind my chair, and take my cats hostage till I deliver.  (Or before they drop me because I can’t be trusted.)

And if I have to choose between my sanity and a character’s life – wait, there’s a difference? – then (relative) sanity will win every time.  I shall kill the figment of my imagination, and live to write another day.

BUT when you’re reading Noah’s Boy, I want you to know it hurt me.  I might be a killer, but I’m not indifferent.

(And now goes off to make the death really traumatic for EVERYONE who reads this.  Eh eh eh eh eh.  Er… I mean, to write it solemnly and reverently.  Eheheheheh.)