Thanks for all the happy birthdays, everyone!

Yesterday there was dinner and bowling and gothing with the Spider Women of Reimer's Ranch, and today there was sleeping very late and cupcakes and way too many paragraph tags and not-quite-bouldering at Bull Creek. Aside from the paragraph tags and acquiring a bad case of Helpful Guy at Bull Creek, this was the awesomest birthday I've had in years and years.

Austin peeps! I'll be at Elysium tomorrow night for my birthday! Come hang out!

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And now the first line meme, since everyone else is doing it, and I am nothing if not ovine. Not that it makes any difference, since I'm in serious committed book relationships for another year.

Novels:

The Bone Palace

That summer, pestilence stalked Erisín on bronze wings. In a city named for the Saint of Death, built on the bones of its founders, no street was too rich or too humble for black-lipped Erishal when she sought new souls for her retinue. But this plague came from the south, borne in a merchant ship that slipped through a lax quarantine. Now it droned above the streets in clouds of midges, and spread below from the bites of fleas.

That afternoon, it stalked the palace.

Kingdoms of Dust

He was dreaming when they came for him.

(This is almost certainly not the real first line, but I have a scene I hope to repurpose, and it consoles me to pretend I have a start for the book)

Dreams of Shreds & Tatters

Halloween night, and parties staggered down Granville Street--clubs full of sequins and feathers, costumes and paint and masks. People dressed in shiny new skins, searching for opportunities to shed them. Groping hands and sticky candy kisses, tricks and treats in darkened corners.

Mist & Chill

The Terminal is a dive on its best day.

Even in the lands of flesh it's a dump, a ratty narrow brick and cement place with a single pool table and a cheap precarious stage in the back to hold cheap precarious bands who can't find anyplace better to play. Shitty sound system and shittier plumbing, flickering arrhythmic lights. Fliers plaster the walls, some decades out of date, bands and DJs no one's heard of fading and crumbling and drifting like dead leaves.

(totally not happy with that one)

Prayers to Broken Stone

Springtime in Paris, the cruelest month come and gone, but storms still linger. Tonight rain washes the city, speeding the Seine in its rush to the sea. In the Left Bank, it pours from the gutters and drips from curling wrought iron balconies to splash against the cobbles below. Moisture darkens white walls, new paint and plaster over centuries-old bones. Pigeons sleep beneath the eaves, fat on café crumbs, violet-grey wings folded tight against the chill. And in her apartment on the rue du Dragon, Holly sits beside an open window and watches the rain.

Pinion

Lilah runs and darkness follows.

Branches and briars tear her, rip skin and skirts, and sap clings sticky as blood in her hair. A familiar path, one she's followed unthinking day or night more times than she can count. But now fear blinds her, turns Ogilvie Park's winding trails into a too-dark nightmare maze.

Spiral

The sky hangs dark and swollen overhead, scraping its belly over the spires of Prague. Bianca pauses to wipe her boots on the mat, groceries balanced on her hip. The rain has slacked, of course, now that they've reached the apartment. Water trickles through her hair, warm by the time it drips down her neck and under her collar. She really should buy an umbrella.

The YA novel that will not be called The Night Garden

The bombs fell again that night.

Mad Max Beyond Ragnarok

The stallion came with the dawn, and the rising sun flung his shadow before him over the cracked and dusty ground.

Short Stories:

"Music From a Farther Room"

Alex found his wife waiting on the threshold, at the divide between memory and dream. He was used to finding her here, one of the many memory-ghosts to haunt these halls. But this was different. The door she stood in was one he couldn't cross.

"Bone Garden"

They found the girl unconscious on the back doorstep an hour before dawn.

Nothing unusual, someone passed out in this neighborhood, but she looked too tattered and threadbare for the usual clientele, or for the sort who might linger behind a theatre after a show. Gentian scanned the empty street behind them: shops closed, windows shuttered against the cold, frost-slick cobbles glazed with lamplight. Drunken laughter and voices carried from the next block, but the alley behind the Rhodon was silent.

"Flood"

Nan doesn't mean to fall asleep--she never does. But Evie's soft breath and the steady creak of the ceiling fan lull her, till her eyes sag and the worn paperback slides from her fingers.

"Teneral"

"Take off your mask," the arachne tells me.

"Needlepoint"

You wake crumpled on the floor, legs folded awkwardly and one arm twisted behind your back. The room is dark and still, except for the green blink of the timer behind your right eyelid.

"Red Is the Color"

I wake with the taste of storms in my mouth and screams echoing down the hall. Slow and dream-sticky, and for a second I don't know where I am, but I'm still on my feet with my gun in my hand before my eyes are all the way open.

"Serpentskirt"

All Souls Night and the gutters still brim with shed Hallows skin. Broken glass crunches under Jane's boots as she carries an amp to the van, glittering beside limp feathers and cracked sequins, tattered black and orange fliers. One hell of a party, she heard--Sixth Street is still subdued and sleepy. But even for the day after Halloween and a Monday to boot, the crowd is still better than last night's in Dallas.

"Snakebit"

The horses are restless.

The sound of snorts and hooves tangles through Lanie's nightmares, familiar dreams of fire and smoke. She wakes with a start, sweat sticky on her neck and back. Beside her, Merle stirs with a muffled curse as one of the horses whinnies.

"Waiting For the Train"

When it's raining here, you hear the trains. You can hear them other times too, with the tracks so close, but the dusty heat of summer bakes the sound out of the air, till it gets buried under cars and trucks and TVs and voices and all the other small-town noises. But when the rain comes, and the trains come, the whistles carry all over, low and mournful and rumbling in my chest.

I miss short stories...

The Bone Palace

Words today: 1348
Words total: 42,580
Darling: n/a
Tyop: n/a
Words that boggle Word: eyrie, redented, ogival

42580 / 100000 words. 43% done!

Urgh. Today was a stop-and-research-everything day. Card games, architecture, names of mountains, names of people... I've gotten them out of the carriage ride of endless cards and conversation and to Savedra's ancestral estate. Now I just need to tell them that the princess is in another castle the information they seek has already been taken by someone else, in a way that doesn't make the reader go I just read three thousand words for that?!, and then send them home so they can be attacked by assassins on the road. And I have to figure out what Isyllt and the antags are doing in the meantime. Fun!

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And now, the question meme!

Question #1: What draws you to the the darker edge of fantasy?

Hrm. An unhealthy fixation with The Lost Boys and Batman Returns in junior high, followed by seeing The Crow when I was fourteen? Oh, no, that's why I'm a goth.

Certainly being a goth has a lot to do with the aesthetic of my writing (seriously, I could not write a character who coordinates their polos with their Nikes if you paid me--it's alien and unnerving), and aesthetic and tone go hand in hand for me. And before any of those influences I adored The Tombs of Atuan, which may be the root of my love of all things ancient and nameless and sepulchral.

As far as tone or mode of whatever the word I really want is, I'm not sure how dark my fiction is. I burned out on consolatory literature in high school, and I'm certainly not a proponent of HEA and mom-and-apple-pie, but I don't like meaningless nihilism either. My universe is neither just nor unjust, but characters can usually carve out meaningful lives for themselves if they try. Some, of course, choose not to. My favorite sorts of stories have people facing the nameless and awful and numinous, but instead of going mad or dropping dead or throwing themselves out of windows, they have to pick up the pieces and keep going.

I'm not sure how much sense that makes, but there you go.

Other questions? Ask them here!

I am very behind on this week's wordcount, and now trying desperately to catwax. I apologize in advance for spamming LJ. Luckily, twitter and facebook will bear some of the burden.

I remind you that I'm taking questions in screened comments here. I'll start answering them tonight, after I have some words written. Ask me about writing, about kittens, about fishsex, about whatever.

And today's Tidbit o' Publishing Advice: When you sell a book, apparently everyone wants to interview you. I've had three sets of interview questions land in my inbox already, and two more waiting till closer to release date. I encourage everyone to be more interesting than me when this time comes.

Without pictures for the moment, because I'm not sure where my camera has scurried off to.

There is much scampering and pouncing, and biting of mom's tail. And every time I turn on the closet light, they crawl out of boxes and from behind random stuff. It's rather adorable. So far Euryale Rose is still the precocious one, though Dorothy is bigger and braver. Rose was the first to scamper, and is now the first to think that kitten chow and warm milk are awesome. Her sisters are still very skeptical of food that doesn't come from mom. Also adorable is watching her eat kitten chow very seriously, one piece at a time. I may try to tempt them with kitten chow porridge later today, but first I need to catch up on some wordcount very badly.

(At first I typed "professional cray person". I am interested in this profession.)

So we finished inventory today, and afterward went for drinks. I drank as much as...well, as a writer offered free booze, if not as much as an alcoholic writer offered free booze. And then I was just down the street from my climbing gym, even though the only part of my gear I had in the car was my harness. I went anyway.

I sent a 5.10* whilst intoxicated. And that was with the sucktastic rental shoes I was wearing.

(* Okay, it was a slab, and I think it was more like a 5.10-, but still!)

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In an attempt to get something like serious content on this journal, I shall try out the question meme. Ask me anything in comments, and I shall probably answer. Comments will be screened to protect all parties. Please also comment if you are a cray person with an informative newsletter.

Day two of store inventory. Only one more day to go. I may lose the ability to count past 25*. I have already lost the ability to write coherently or figure out what happens next in this stupid book. I managed to answer some interview questions and turn in a questionnaire for con programming, but that's all. Tomorrow I have to vote for the Hugos. Really for reals.


* We count stock in increments of 25. 25 books--scan, 25 books--scan, 25 books--scan, rinse and repeat for eight hours, until seven stores are counted. It's exactly as exciting as that sounds.

Today I went to another store for inventory. I unlocked a display case to count rare books, and what should be in it waiting for me?

A signed copy of The King in Yellow, that's what.

Maybe my tattoo didn't start to writhe and sear my flesh, and maybe I wasn't struck mad and blind by visions of the King. Maybe. But the book came home with me anyway. I may regret this when I check my bank balance tomorrow, but I don't really care.

18. Inkheart

It's so refreshing to see Paul Bettany in a movie I like. I may break down and watch The DaVinci Code just to see him as a self-flagellating evile albino, though.

19. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (vampire movie #16)

This movie is very bad. Its crimes against blue filters are vile and unforgivable. But, hey! It doesn't have Scott Speedman in it!

Inkheart gave me a brainworm, though: The Secret Garden with monsters. Plucky orphans, spooky mansions, creepy dead gardens... Add 200% more monsters (and something that passes for action) and that sounds like a winner to me.

Today's A Softer World is pure awesomesauce.

I have succumbed. I'm a twit. (I would say twat, but I have never found that word euphonious.) If anyone cares, I'm stillsostrange on Twitter.

The Bone Palace

Words today: 1178
Words total: 40,034

40k! 40k!

Tyop: n/a
Darling: The answer, as it so often was, was blood.
Mean things: ruptured eardrum, Isyllt is still concussed
Deaths: Three redshirt antags!

40034 / 100000 words. 40% done!

Not bad considering I didn't start writing till after 6, having spent all morning and afternoon figuring out a writing arrangement. (My step-spawn is here for the summer, which means I can no longer lounge on the couch all day and internet write without distraction.) This was finally solved by a trip to Office Despot, and cheap particle board furniture.

I'm not done with this scene, but all that's left now is wrap-up, trips to the hospital, and the lingering sensation that something isn't right. And then it's on to Act II. Acts II and III could stand to be a bit shorter than this, or I'll end up with a 120,000 word novel. (Which is fine as far as my contract goes, but yeesh.) Since I know I have a ton of stuff to go back and layer into the beginning, I am a bit fearful.

Spend some time boggling at and/or arguing with this: http://www.uncannyxmen.net/images/article/relationship/relationshipmapv1.htm

For example, the lack of a pink line between Cable and Deadpool annoys me greatly. That is canon, my friends. Canon.

Today at work I found an alphabet picture book called Whately's Quest. I now need a version called Whateley's Quest.

N is for the Necronomicon, in Latin and unabridged.

P is for demonic pinky-rings.

"I've absolutely no idea," said Silas, who consumed only one food, and it was not bananas.

26. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.

This book is regrettably and disappointingly anti-ghoul, but in all other regards delightful. It's so nice to be able to finish a book in one day, even if it does mean staying up way too late.

Between Ms. Rowling and Mr. Gaiman, however, I would not be averse to never seeing the root lup used in certain character names ever again. Possibly I am just old and crotchety and have no joy left in my shriveled black heart.

Never avert your eyes.

And happy Father's Day, too.

I will be celebrating the longest day with...an hour of overtime at work. How exciting.

This morning I went bouldering outside (Bull Creek Park) with the Spider Women of Reimers Ranch. This was my first ever outdoor bouldering. It was about as petrifying as I'd expected. I'm chickenshit enough about bouldering in the gym; falling off real rocks onto other real rocks increases this by an order of magnitude.

On the other hand, the rock there is gorgeous and comfy, all slab with nice pockets. I topped out twice, once on a pansy little climb that doubles as the descent (which is less pansy when you're doing it blind and backwards coming down), and once on a chimney that the booklet calls a V0-. Bollocks, I say to that pamphlet. That was definitely a V0. I like cracks and chimneys, but I did have a moment of panic at the top when I couldn't get my feet up. (It's true that footwork is important in bouldering, but there is a hell of a lot to be said for being able to meathook a rock and haul yourself over it.) I never really got over the adrenaline from that panic. I tried another lovely pockety V0, and made progress each time, but after the adrenaline spike of the chimney-stick, I was all wobbley and Elvis-legged. Next time, Pocket Walk! Next time!

And then I went into work for a couple hours OT, and now I'm finally home. We'll see if I have enough energy left to get Isyllt out of the mess I left her in last night.

I am suffering from the usual menstrual neurosis today, and it amuses me what my brain finds to latch onto when it has to be neurotic. It used to be full-on "I'm ugly and friendless and will die alone", but the farther I get from high school, the less able I am to believe that even in the throws of depression. Then in became "I suck at writing and will never finish anything" or "I have no money and am a failure as a responsible adult". Those don't stand up in face of a) having a book contract and b) having a day job. Now it seems the best the brain chemicals can manage is "I have too many books to write and not enough time and omg how will I write them all before I die?!!eleventyone!"

Poor brain. It tries so hard to be crazy, and can't quite make it.

But I'm still neurotic, and will now indulge in my favorite hobby: compulsive list-making.

( Just a list of novels, nothing to see here. )

Courtesy of darkfantasist: