L’esprit d’escalier

I haven’t been around much, mostly because we went to Ireland at the beginning of the month, and I’m taking my sweet time getting back into the swing of things.  We took a lot of pictures, which you can see here.  I was reminded, while snapping photos, that I’d really like to take a photography course at some point.

Of course, on seeing the Long Room at Trinity College in Dublin, I also declared that I shall become a bookbinder, and spend the rest of my life restoring old books.  We took two steps inside and I stopped, gazing up and gaping, and wishing the ropes didn’t block off the books because I wanted to just plunk myself down on the floor between the shelves and breathe them in.  Of course, that’s precisely why they’re cordoned off, so that people can’t reach out and touch the books with oily fingers and do damage to them.

But oh, I could be very happy among those books.

So, other things I’ve done in the last month:

Nin got cleaned up, edited, and passed along.  It’s an exciting first step, but of course, now comes the waiting.  The person who has it has other duties, and the person she’ll show it to has other duties, both of which I understand take priority over reading the manuscript.  Doesn’t stop me from biting my nails.   So, while the method of passing it on isn’t exactly your typical querying process, the waiting part is about the same.

Still trying to settle on a project.  Grailchild makes me go argh when I open it.  Night Owls would be the less frustrating one to go with, but man, part of me says, “Dude, the market is glutted with vampires.”  Then of course my practical voice argues back that writing for “the market” is pretty ridiculous.  What’s big now might not be big in three years.  Or maybe it will still be going strong, or maybe it will have seen a lull and a resurgence.  Then there’s poor Karris, who needs some serious worldbuilding before I go back to him.  Also, “Kate.”  Also, Lil’s story.

And, even less helpful, this morning I had the idea for what I think could be a clever little story, if done right, but I’m afraid it’s gimmicky, or trite, or both.

I should probably just shut up and write it.

I’ve done some reading, though not nearly as much as I’d like to.  The pile of books is ever-growing.

I finally read The Gathering Storm, and loved it.  Sanderson’s an excellent writer.  What struck me, even in the first few pages, was this:  of course I didn’t go into it expecting Robert Jordan’s voice.  I expected Sanderson’s, and wasn’t disappointed.  What I didn’t expect was to feel like I was coming home as I read the prologue.  Sanderson has often said that he was a WoT fan from the start, so I was fairly certain he’d do a respectful job at finishing the series.  Maybe it was simply reading about places and people I’ve been wondering about in the back of my mind for so long, but I think it’s more than that.  He got it.  I’d go so far as to say he nailed it.

Obviously, since there are still two books to go, not all of the loose threads have been tied up.  The ones he did focus on, however, had me cheering.  I don’t want to get all spoilery on people, so I hope I’m not spilling too much when I write holy shit, Verin!

I’m still on my first play-through of Dragon Age: Origins, and having a blast.  There’s so very much story here, I don’t want to miss a single thread.  Which of course means I’m maybe 2/3 of the way through the game (I think? Maybe?) and I don’t want it to end.  I know I’ll play it through at least once more, as a different race and class, and probably rotate out more of the characters.  I’ve mainly kept Morrigan, Alistair and Leliana in my party, and when I put Sten and Thrall in for a little while the other day, there were suddenly even more interactions I realized I’ve been missing.  (Yes, I stop and watch the idle back and forth between my party members when we’re wandering around, even though it’s less plot-progression and more comic interactions.)

I’ll probably also pick some of the meaner answers next time through, since I’ve gone the “I want you all to think I’m awesome” route this first time.

There are RP plots afoot in WoW, which means a good chunk of writing on that front for both Threnn and Annalea.

So, pen in hand, butt in chair.  My only real goal for 2010 (aside from paying off bills and saving money) is to get something published.  Which means I need to get things submitted.  Which means I need to get them finished.

Which means I ought to close out this post.

Some photos from Sydney, Australia after yesterday’s dust storm.

I know the air pollution levels were probably high enough to kill Greg, but I can’t help but think how cool it would have been to walk around and see that first person.

Listen. I need to tell you this.

They say there’s something in the water, there in Three Lakes, sleeping beneath the surface. It’s on cheery-sloganned postcards and souvenir tee-shirts, and in the pages of chapbooks about local legends and haunted Wisconsin.

They’re wrong — not about the presence itself, but where it lives.

It’s not in the water; it’s in the woods.

We thought Marty was kidding. We thought “summoning the the Yaqi Gods of Wisdom” was just an in-joke, a family catch-phrase, a Gleason tradition he was opening up to us the way he’d opened up his family’s home.

Hell, I think Marty thought that, too.

A year ago, we downed our shots and said our prayers, and a few of us wandered out into the night to observe another Three Lakes ritual — a stroll down a dark road in the moonlight. I spent most of my time looking up. It’s not like I could see much of what was in front of me anyway. I let the guys’ voices keep me on the road while I craned my neck to see the sky. So many stars, wheeling above our heads. You never see that many back home, even on our darkest nights.

Noises filled the woods, beyond our casual chatter and cautious footsteps:  loons out over the lake, night-birds calling, something snuffling in the brush.

(“Marty, if we get eaten by bears, I’m going to be pissed.”
“We won’t. The Yaqi Gods are watching over us.”)

As we neared the place where pavement gave way to dirt path, the flash came. It destroyed my night vision and killed my view of the sky. It had to be lightning, you know? The storm had been threatening all day. Now, surely, it was here, tired of the Yaqi Gods waving it off, ready to open up the skies.

The wind picked up, shaking the branches.

Thinking about it, maybe that’s the first time I heard the voices. I thought Marty’d said something, or Greg, under his breath, too low to catch, but they were as dazed as I was, and insisted they hadn’t said a word. I didn’t bother pressing it.  The woods — close and comforting and filled with delicious mystery a moment ago — were suddenly spooky, my skin crawling with what I told myself was the simple desire to get inside before the storm broke.

When we got back, everyone wanted to know where we’d been.

I’ve lost time before because of tequila. Have I told you? The first time I ever did a shot of of the devil juice, I lost an hour. I remember bits of it — leaning against a post at a corporate function, trying not to look nearly as drunk as I felt. Telling someone to “Shoo-fly, bunny!” and learning how to get into Anne Rice’s Halloween party without an invitation, should I ever find myself in New Orleans in October. The rest of it’s a blur of Oh God I Hope I Didn’t Embarrass Myself.

So fifteen minutes? That was nothing. Marty said we’d been appreciating the woods. I backed him up. They bought it. We settled in to play a game of Zombies!!! and drink more tequila, thanking the Yaqi gods with every shot.

The rain came as we slept, and somewhere in the wee hours, the voices came with it.

No, that’s not right. They came with the wind.

Ever had this happen? You’re in a dead sleep, and someone says your name. Right in your ear, clear as anything. You know you heard it.  But then you’re awake all the way, eyes wide open in the dark, and there’s no one there. The person beside you’s out cold, and it wasn’t his voice, anyway.

Seven other people slept under that roof, and whoever was calling me, it wasn’t any of them. I lay there, listening to the rain’s patter on the pine needles outside our window, trying to get back to sleep.

The wind rose, and that’s when I started hearing the secrets. Small ones — girls giggling the names of boys they liked, someone sharing the best spot for hide ‘n’ seek  — the things you whisper in your best friend’s ear on a hot summer day.  A boy had hidden a matchbox car in the pantry, to tease one of the other kids.

The whispers went on for hours, and I lay awake, listening to the ghosts of summers past, convincing myself it was the Patrón talking.

The next morning, Shannon sent me in search of syrup while she mixed her pancake batter. Looking around the pantry, remembering that voice in the dark, I stood on my toes and slipped my hand along the topmost shelf. My fingers hit cold metal, and there it was, dusty with long years, never retrieved from its hiding place: a red matchbox car.

I put it back, terrified.

(Marty, if you or Tony or any of your cousins have been looking for it all this time, it’s all the way in the back of top right-hand shelf.)

The rest of the weekend, the air was still, thank god.

No, thank the Yaqi Gods.

We came home, and I thought, maybe, I’d left the voices back there in Wisconsin. Maybe it was just the place. Maybe I’d been dreaming drunken dreams, and remembered some story Marty had told us from when he was little.

But it was raining on the east coast, storms that had maybe followed us from Three Lakes, maybe sent by the Yaqi Gods themselves. The wind howled that first night, and I tossed and turned, burying my head under the pillow to drown out all the chattering, whispering voices. My house is pretty old, you know? Generations of secrets, all held within these walls.

They’re everywhere, now, any time the breeze blows. I can shut them out, some of them. And anyway, I can’t even understand them all — the wind travels, you know? Air currents blowing across not just towns, but oceans, carrying confidences across continents, and straight to my ears. I’ve even sussed out a few with my rusty, high-school French.

I don’t know what to do with them. I just don’t. Some of them are so old, blown around the world a hundred times over. Most of them don’t matter anymore, anyway.

You know that thing you told your best friend that time? The thing you were so certain would ruin you forever if anyone else knew? (“Oh god, I’d just die if he/she/they found out…”)  Yeah, ten other people — a hundred! a thousand! — were saying the same thing, at the same time. You’re not alone. You’re not the only one, not by a long shot. You haven’t been for centuries. Kind of comforting, isn’t it?

But some of the secrets, they’re big, and they’re now, and I wonder if the thing in the woods that night wanted me to do something about them, to bring about change, to reuinite estranged lovers or stop grand government conspiracies, to find things long lost and return them to where they belong.

I’ve done that, a few times, made it seem like a happy coincidence. Hey, look what I found when I was cleaning out that cabinet. Auntie Joan must’ve put it here for safe-keeping and forgot about it. Or Remember that guy you dated a couple years ago? I found him on facebook. You should friend him, see what he’s up to.

I’ve written a few letters, too, for the bigger ones, the ones spoken in low tones by men in boardrooms and corner offices (the air conditioning carries their secrets through the ducts and down to the street, or up to the roof where the wingbeats of pigeons stir them along and along).

Sometimes, you just need to drop the right hint in the right ear. It feels pretty good.

I mean, I don’t want to be overt about it, you know? I still think the People In Charge could come and disappear me, if I pissed off the wrong person. So I keep it quiet, don’t take credit. I use proxies and anonymizers and all that fun stuff. Hooray for the internet.

(Though, that story that broke last week? I don’t want to go into detail here, but you know the one I’m talking about. The big scandal that was all over the news? Yeah, that was me. I’m pretty damned proud of that one.)

But even as I do those things, even as I think I’m helping — in my behind-the-scences, you-can’t-see-me kind of way — I’m afraid it’s not what I’m supposed to do. What if whatever’s out there just got tired of being the Keeper of Secrets itself, and set the burden on the shoulders of whoever happened to pass it by. Maybe I’m not supposed to say a goddamned word. Maybe I’m supposed to guard the secrets, rather than expose them, hold onto them, keep them precious and safe and, well… secret.

It’s funny, almost — they gifted me with hearing secrets on the wind.

But what I’m supposed to do with them?

That’s a secret they’ve left unspoken.

(Part of the My Super First Day project.  Go see!)

Or, more accurately, gone drinking.

Off to Feathermeet for the weekend, spending time in Seattle with a group of awesome people and returning a book to its rightful owner (I hear he has one of my hair clips to offer in exchange).

Try not to blow up the internets while I’m away.

I went away for a few days.  You may or may not have missed me.

I spent a little under a week in Aruba, most of the time with a book in my hand.  It was glorious — sitting on the beach, waves crashing nearby, sun shining down, turning page after page.  Or, when I decided I’d been baking enough for the day, moving to a shadier spot, on the balcony of our room, or closer to the bar/pool area, claiming a lounge chair where the daystar’s rays couldn’t scorch me.

When packing the slew of books, I had some tough decisions to make.  See, the stack o’things to be read is ever-growing.  It’s hard to select just a few of those to come with me on a trip, since I have no idea what I’ll be in the mood for after finishing one book and getting ready to move on to another.

For example, I seem to be on a fantasy kick, but the subgenres’ll get me every time.  I’ve read a lot of … what are the kids calling it these days?  Scoundrel-lit?  Thief-lit?  Rogue-lit?  Call it what you will, I’ve found myself spending time with very many wonderful bastards these last few months — Scott Lynch’s and Joe Abercrombie’s in particular.

But I wouldn’t want to fill my carry-on with that sort of thing, only to find myself on the beach, closing the covers of one bastard novel and suddenly not ready for another just yet.  OR finding that one of the books I’d brought with me in that vein was so good that I can’t even read anything remotely like it for my next book.   That’s happened before, too.  The last book that left me stunned and stung was A Feast for Crows. I don’t think I went anywhere near fantasy for a month after that.  The one before it, I believe was The Historian. No vampire novels for a bit.  Before that, probably The Time-Traveler’s Wife — which left me so shaken and breathless that three days passed before I could seriously start another book.

Also, there needed to be a mix of how challenging the books were.  You can read all heavy novels, sure.  There are times I’ve gone long stretches doing only that, or the opposite, reading a sequence of books that didn’t require very much thought at all.  But again, why stick myself with all works of great denseness and complexity, to find myself wanting something light and no bookstores to be found?

And what about old vs. new?  While the to-be-read pile isn’t dwindling, there are always new shinies in stores omgrightnow.

So, with that in mind, I selected four books to come with, and added a fifth at the last moment.  Adding the fifth was actually a very smart move, it turned out.

The list:

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Iron Angel by Alan Campbell

The Warrior-Prophet by R. Scott Bakker

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

The first three I bought in one fell swoop the Monday before we left.  I’d wandered the sf/f shelves, scanning the authors and titles, thinking “Nope, nope, nope, dunwanna, nope…” most of the way. It was one of those trips where I knew there were books there I wanted to read, authors I’ve been meaning to try, but nothing called to me.   Seemed I was working from the end of the alphabet backwards, though, and as I was starting to despair, I hit the Cs and saw Iron Angel. I can’t explain my draw to it.  Weird thing for angels as characters, I suppose, that I’ve never been able to really trace.  I read the back; it seemed interesting.  The cover art was neat.  The first sentence passed muster.  Then there was the blurb — nice things said by Scott Lynch, of the Gentlemen Bastard series.

Thus, it seeded the pile.

I found nothing in horror, and drifted over to the YA section, to see what might be there.  Life As We Knew It had come highly recommended from coworkers and booksellers alike.  Added to the pile immediately.  Then Uglies. I’ve been hearing plenty of good things about it for a long while now.  The author was on a few panels I attended at Worldcon 2004, and I liked him.  Good, okay, three books, take me home.

At home, The Warrior-Prophet was never in question.  It’s one of those books I need long stretches to dedicate to reading it, and here were six days of long stretches.  Just as we were leaving, I feared that those four might not be enough, or that I might suddenly decide I wasn’t in the mood for one of them.  So, The Name of the Wind was rescued from the top of the pile.  I stood a long while in front of my bookshelves, trying to figure out if anything else wanted to come with, if anything demanded a reread, or if a last minute genre craving might strike.  Nothing else jumped out, though, so five it was.

For the most part, I think I made some pretty good choices.  In the order they were read, here’s what I thought:

Life As We Knew It

The premise: an asteroid knocks the moon out of its orbit, pushing it closer to the Earth.  The aftermath unfolds in the pages of a high school girl’s diary.

I was drawn in pretty quickly, since the event happens just a few days after the book opens.  There are tsunamis (the book is set in rural Pennsylvania, out of the water’s reach), volcanoes, food and gas shortages, and a very long winter.  Overall, it was a good book.  My problem with it, as a matter of fact, had nothing to do with the writing or even, really, the story.  I’d say Pfeffer pretty well captured what a sixteen-year-old would be going through when her world’s coming to an end.  I’d absolutely recommend it to someone looking for a good YA book.

So what’s my gripe?  Not enough.  Not in the sense of wanting to know more about those particular characters — the Evans’ story was very complete.  I wanted to know what was going on in the rest of the world — what other natural disasters were occuring? How were people dealing with them?  There was food and gas and electricity in some places; you know this by the end of the book.  How did they get back on their feet?  How would they be rebuilding?  There’s a companion novel, The Dead and the Gone, that might address some of this.  It’s set in New York City, so the characters might be a little more connected to worldwide events than the first book’s narrator was.

Again, this is nothing at all to do with the books and everything to do with my fascination with What Happens When the World Ends.  It’s why I love The Stand so much, why I always end up rereading it.  The brief-lived Jericho handled it well.  Battlestar Galactica. Swan Song.

Would it work in a YA novel?  Sure it would.  But it wasn’t an element that made it into this one on the scale I’d've liked.  We did get a glimpse into some of it, the frantic rush to stock up on food and supplies in the days following, the way no one around town talked about how much food/fuel/clothing they had stored, the idea of who was Family and who was Not.  It’s there, on a small scale.  It simply left me curious as to the larger.

Then came The Warrior-Prophet. I’d read the first book, The Darkness That Comes Before, a while back.  Easy enough to slip back into the world and travel with Achamian, Esmenet, Kellhus and the Holy War on the journey to Shimeh.  I won’t say too much, for fear of spoiling, but I’ll be picking up the third book soon.

After that, I didn’t so much need a break from the heavy as I wanted to give The Warrior-Prophet time to fade a bit before moving on to more sweeping fantasy.  (Though, yes, you could say the Bakker isn’t fantasy in the same subgenre as the Rothfuss or the Campbell, but I still needed something to cleanse the palate, if you will.)

So, Uglies. Setup: when you turn sixteen, you get an operation that makes you pretty.  Your face becomes symmetrical, your eyes widened, lips made full, everything that biology says makes people look at you and want to protect you, be nice to you, like you.  The main character is almost sixteen, awaiting her operation, when she meets a girl who has decided not to go through with it.

Verdict: pretty good.  I’ll most likely be picking up the sequel, Pretties. The worldbuilding’s neat, the characters believable.  My only real gripe is that, early on, the message about what we consider beautiful and why was a little heavy-handed.  But again, a good, quick read for young adults.

And then it was almost time to go home.  I was going to start in on Iron Angel, but I’d missed one important bit on the back of the book:  it’s a follow-up.  So, looks like I need to go off in search of Scar Night before I can read this one.

Which meant it was time for The Name of the Wind. I bought it after someone, somewhere, linked to one of his blog entries.  From there, I checked out the rest of the site, including an excerpt from his debut novel.  I was sold from the first few lines and picked up the book that afternoon.

Then got distracted by other things.

So, I started it while we were waiting for the ride to the airport, and after a day of flying, I’m about halfway through.  I’m reserving judgment still.  The writing is excellent; the story has me hooked.  There’s one element to the tale-telling I’m not sure how to take just yet, though, so until I’ve finished, the jury’s staying out.  But so far, very good stuff.  From what I’ve read so far, I can see why his fans would be clamoring for him to hurry up and finish the next book.

Now I’m home, out of the sun, back to responsibility in the morning and the to-be-read pile growing once more.

Help me add to it!  What’s on your to-be-read pile?

We spent this past weekend up in the North Woods of Wisconsin, at Marty’s family cottage in Three Lakes. There was drinking and boating and games and oh my god so much good food. I’m desperately waiting for Shannon’s guacamole recipe, so much so that I’m tempted to go buy some premade from Whole Foods for lunch today, though I know it just won’t be the same.

We went to the Mars Cheese Castle on the way there. I am sorry to say that it is not, in fact, a castle made of cheese, though I suppose that would get pretty stinky pretty fast. Still, there were many Good Things to Eat inside, including some kind of three-foot-long jerky sticks that made me pretty glad I wasn’t in the guys’ car.

The girls had tiaras (awww yeah) and travel games and snacks (Von won at travel bingo. I hereby claim the assist, since I managed to bury my board under stuff and just started pointing out things to mark off.) I was not on the trip to the store that yielded a bear sighting. I did, however, see a drunken chipmunk. He was quite disappointed when Marty took his booze-soaked watermelon away.

We took a walk down a country road in the dark, no flashlights, not a ton of moonlight. It was so very quiet, such a change from even our little suburb, where the sound of traffic is never really far.

Greg and Von made us a fire, and there were s’mores and geek-talk. It’s weird – I’ve, y’know, showered and washed my hair and all since coming home, but I keep thinking I’m smelling woodsmoke every now and then. It’s not a bad thing, really, sort of the last traces of an awesome weekend, making me smile while I ease back into this whole work thing.

Pictures forthcoming at some point, when I get them off of my camera and upload ‘em.

My inbox this morning was filled with 47 pieces of what I call corporate junk mail (“There’s cake in the fridge on the 17th floor!” Yeah, thanks, that’d be helpful if I were in the New York office) and 35 actual non-junk emails. Twelve of those were industry newsletters I’ve signed up for. 23 real emails, and most of those just FYI type things. Maybe seven that required any actual action on my part. Not so bad for three days off.

Anyway, yeah. Back at my desk, wishing I were still up in the woods, sipping coffee with friends and letting the day stretch out before us.

How’s everyone been?