Tonight I had actual instruction at the gym. This was quite beneficial. We went over general technique (my footwork didn't suck to begin with--woo!), and I top-roped on the slab wall. I climbed three slabs five or six times (total, not each). Once the sweaty-palmed dry-mouthed panic stopped, it was a lot of fun. Once I stop being a chicken-shit on the bouldering routes, things can only improve. Now I get to spend a month or so getting over the chicken-shit part, and then I get another lesson.

And now, vindaloo.

My quest continues. I was originally going to try to watch them in alphabetical order, but that led to too much suffering in a row.

#2. An American Vampire Story

This movie wasn't as bad as it could have been. I think that's all that can be said.

#3. The Satanic Rites of Dracula

I think this movie should be retitled Peter Cushing's Amazing Cheekbones, because that's what I was paying attention to 90% of the time. Good god, that man was beautiful.

I'm working on the Hammer drinking game. Based on these two, I have: Women happy after meeting Dracula--drink; Dracula carries a woman around--drink; the romance with Dracula dies (woman ends up chained in a basement, buried in a garden, tossed around, etc.)--drink; Peter Cushing slaps someone who's hysterical--drink; Dracula's ring--drink. I'm going to need more beer.

Next on the list: Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter! Stay Tuned!

Yesterday I got a membership at the good video store. After years of being stuck with Blockbuster, I was a little astounded. And they have a vampire section. Heaven! So after years of being shamefully lax, I'm getting back on the program of watching all bad vampire movies (and some good ones) ever made.

#1. Horror of Dracula

He's in ur basement, seducin ur women.

This is actually the first Hammer film I've seen. I know, I know. And while I knew the hotness that is Chris Lee, I wasn't aware of the hotness that is Chris Lee/Peter Cushing. I may, err, be in my bunk.

I also wonder how many I'll get through before I snap and have to write a vampire book of my own.

I'm returning to the first-line meme, to remind myself that I do have short stories I could be working on, even if they all hate me.

Works in various stages of progress:

Pinion

A night with no moon, and nothing exists beyond the cone of Reese's headlights. Dusty asphalt, hard red earth bleached grey by darkness, cactus and tumbleweed and worn fence posts strung with barbed wire. Occasionally the husk of a barn or derelict gas station ghosts past, breaking the flat horizon. The hum of the tires and rush of air through the windows drowns the radio, the static and intermittent bursts of Tejano or Christian that seem to be all the old Impala can pick up. The wind tastes of dust and oil and desolation and dries Reese's sweat in a grimy film on her skin.

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.

The Bone Palace

Death was no stranger within the walls of Erisín.

Dreams of Shreds and Tatters

Halloween night, and parties staggered along Granville Street--clubs full of sequins and feathers, costumes and paint. People wearing shiny new skins, hunting for opportunities to take them off. Groping hands and sticky candy kisses, tricks and treats in darkened corners.

No costumes here, in the loft over the Morgenstern Gallery, no sweat-fog and throbbing speakers. Soft music and laughter and conversation instead, the only decorations the shadows that dangled like bats from the rafters. Blake leaned back against the couch, watching the lights from the street below push the shadows back and forth and breathing in the smell of wine and wax and Alain's hair.

Mist & Chill

The Terminal is never beautiful.

Even in the lands of flesh it's just a dive, a ratty little brick and cement place with a cheap, precarious stage built in the back to hold cheap, precarious bands who can't find any place better to play. Tattered fliers plaster the walls, crumbling and drifting like autumn leaves.

On the other side it's all that and worse. Cold and stale, air tasting like the bottom of an ashtray. Daylight trickles chill and grey through grimy windows, painting everything shades of rust and bone.

The Terminal is never beautiful, but today it's an abattoir.

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.

---

"Bridle" (working title)

This isn't my scene. I like leather as much as the next girl, but watching middle-aged pony boys trussed in harnesses pulling sulkies for corseted middle-aged women is only good for a laugh. And after three hours, I'm running out of laugh.

"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.

"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 clock behind your right eyelid.

The pulpstravaganza that will not be called Diamond Dogs

The nightmares came with the fog, rolling off the harbor, creeping through the streets and seeping damp beneath doors and windowpanes. No charm or ward Jack knew would keep them out. Whiskey worked, though, some nights.

"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.

"Shoggoth With Grace Notes"

Tuesdays were music lessons.

"Snakebit"

The horses were restless.

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

"The Tenderness of Jackals"
The train chases the setting sun, but can't catch it. Not even an ICE can catch the sun, and the steel-sleek serpent slides into the Hannover Hauptbahnhof as purple dusk gives way to charcoal. In the hum and whine of its wheels, Gabriel hears the wolves.

Soon, they whisper.

"Teneral"

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

"Waiting For the Train" (needs a better title)

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.

This is my weekend to-do list, because I can't seem to remember the items on it for more than ten minutes at a time. Ignore at your leisure.

• Yardwork! (no seriously, it's scary out back)


• Return library books


• Find other library books (optional)


• Shadow Unit (or people will be cranky)


• Keep working on lousy smudgy sketch of Madeline Frost


• Write?


• First line meme, to encourage writing


• Watch other movie


• Drink coffee


• Make the boy read the first chunk of Pinion


• Make boy update the server


• Set up a page for the new SU toy


• Watch boy play GTA IV


• Buy groceries, so as not to die

I only climbed for an hour tonight, but I resent the orange route I managed last time (matociquala gets numbers, I get colors), this time with 75% less panicking and 100% less falling on my ass on the way down. I also made visible progress on another orange that I couldn't even start last week. And I finished another wee baby traverse.

Next stop, cheezburgers!

Pinion
Words today: 1170
Words total: 26,439
Reason for stopping: going to the gym as soon as the boy gets home
Sustenance: Tazo berryblossom white, my favorite tea this week
Darling: Through the lace Asha's skin is icy, but that's not the wrong thing Jodi notices--the width of her hand isn't right, the flex of metacarpals as she squeezes.
Tyop: the width of her hand isn't write
Words Word don't know: ulnar
Words I'm surprised Word do know: metacarpals
Mean things: dizziness, bewitchment, confusion, noncon kisses
Quirks: Surprise girlsmoochies! I didn't realize when I started this book that 90% of the characters were bi. It will give people something to bitch about, besides the present tense and ten million povs.

This thing has been a helpful well-behaved book all week. I don't trust this at all.

Jodi has finally met the first-tier antag, and we've revealed the Shocking Revelation that 95% of readers will have figured out three chapters ago. Now the fourth piece of my Voltron-angel has shown up, and there may be pyrotechnics.

But first I will fall off walls, and then go have a cheeseburger. Falling off walls twice a week is a good way to earn cheeseburgers.

Pinion
Words today: 1245
Words total: 25,311 (Third of a short book!)

25,311 / 75,000 (33.7%)

Reason for stopping: tired
Sustenance: green tea ice cream--it's growing on me
Darling: His leather jacket feels a lot like a hair shirt as he slips it on. (He was a Catholic boy, redeemed through angst, not through joy)
Tyop: Maddy shifts her wait
Mean things: angst, grief, yadda yadda

Are we there yet?

Pinion
Words today: 1061
Words total: 24066

24,066 / 80,000 (30.1%)

Reason for stopping: quota, and tired
Sustenance: saag paneer and a Raison D'etre
Mammalian assistance: Fafnir thinks it's dinner time for cats. He's wrong.
Exercise: see previous post
Darling: they all need context
Tyop: n/a
Quirks: When in doubt, let characters eat and talk about backstory. Interesting facts may fall out. For example: when two of my characters dislike each other unreasonably, odds are good they slept together.

Sadly, eating and backstory are over now, and it's time for more plot.

I sent my first (baby) route tonight. I then promptly panicked and fell. But I sent the fucker. The fall is nothing, but I hate the second before when I feel my fingers slip and realize I can't correct in time. The subsequent adrenaline rush made me useless for anything but the baby traverse for the rest of the night.

I've also had the revelation that I could try Craig's List for a climbing buddy. I don't care if I get an unsub, if they'll spot me competently.

Now I think I'll have a beer and try to write a little before I turn into jello.

Rosemary ciabatta, guest starring the bread robot

Ingredients:
1 cup sourdough starter
7/8 cup non-chlorinated water
1/4 cup buttermilk
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon yeast
rosemary to taste

Put everything in the robot and set it to the dough cycle.
Let the dough rise, either in the robot or some other suitable place, for 1 hour, or until it's big enough. (I used chlorinated water, which lengthens the rising time, apparently.)
Divide the dough and shape it into inch-high rectangles. Ish. Don't punch the dough down--you're trying not to release the air bubbles. (It will be a wet sticky dough.)
Sprinkle the loaves with flour (and perhaps sea salt) and let rise again for half an hour or so.
Bake 25 - 30 minutes at 425 degrees.
Nom.

The texture isn't entirely perfect. I suspect either the water, or that I let too much air out when I was shaping the loaves. But still quite tasty. Especially with olive oil and sea salt.

As soon as Pinion wasn't my official project anymore, it started putting out.

Words today: 1001
Words total: 23,005
Reason for stopping: Plot
Sustenance: Pasketti and Raison D'etre, and ciabatta in the oven. Carbstravaganza! Good thing I'm going to the gym tomorrow.
Mammalian assistance: The boy locked Siggy in the upstairs bedroom overnight, and she hasn't been happy since.
Tyop: none that I've notice yet
Darling: Headaches, hallucinations, panic attacks--she runs through her symptoms, but this isn't her specialty at all. Not a migraine. God, she prays, not a brain tumor. People don't just go crazy. There are causes. Like schizophrenia.
Mean things: See above darling.

I finished the scenes of chapter 7 that stalled me a month ago. Now it's time for chapter 8, and the big third-of-a-book explosion or reversal. I wish I knew what that was.

I woke up this morning (before noon, thank god) with Danny from Pinion talking to me. So I figured out how to say "¿Quién es esta gringa?", and then wrote 300 more words of the scene it goes in. Sadly, that was not the big scene in chapter 8 where the plot happens.

Plot continues to be highly overrated.

It's true. Iron Man is made of weaponized awesome. I'm glad my staunch disavowal of Civil War has been rewarded.

And damn, Robert Downey Jr. has gotten better with age. Humina.

---

It's also true that the Kentucky Derby is decadent and depraved, and today is filling me with an especially misanthropic rage. Grr.

The boy and I stayed up till 5:30 this morning watching Fellowship and RotK (yes, I shun Jackson's Two Towers like a shunny thing). We didn't wake up till 3:00. Oops.

Maybe I should get some pants on and try to salvage something of the day...

I never paid attention before, but in Fellowship, when the cave troll storms into Balin's tomb, he walks through the sunbeam several times. Oops.

Day four of climbing and god, I sucked like a hoover. My upper body strength vanished for parts unknown, and my footwork blew. It constantly felt like my feet were going to slip off the holds on the traverse--they never did, but I could barely find my balance, let alone a groove. The endorphins never showed up, either. Hopefully I'll ditch this suck over the weekend.

---

#5. The Confessor - Daniel Silva

Thank you, Daniel Silva, for getting the taste of that other book out of my mouth. And for writing a Vatican conspiracy book without any self-flagellating evil albinos. And for writing pretty roller-derby.

---

I appear to be swinging Readercon this year after all. Anyone have part of a room left?

---

Happy Birthday jmeadows!

Poll #1180580
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Post-apocalyptic Lovecraftian romance with a crazy gyro-captain:

Needs more:

(My car is much happier with her new struts, even if my credit card isn't.)

((God, CSI:NY is ass. ASS!))

So yesterday my car (who is brave and true but over 200k miles) began making an Ominous Noise. I spent several hours in the shop today waiting for it change from a Mysterious Ominous Noise to an Identifiable Ominous Noise (the mechanic's has wireless--I love the future). Now I'm getting my struts and wheel hubs replaced to the tune of $1500. That keening sound you hear is my credit card crying.

Possibly this would be a good time to start writing short stories for filthy cash again. Not to mention finishing all the jewelry I need to make for Wiscon. :P

Or maybe these cats should get jobs.

Thanks to aimeepayne, I have (&*^(*&*&(8ing "Don't Stop Believin'" stuck in my head. I will now listen to "Maneater" on repeat till it goes away. I'm afraid I may need bigger guns, though.