Rabid Wolverines
IT HAS BEEN A RABID WOLVERINE OF A DAY.* I don’t want any more days like this, okay? Also I need more sleep. Obviously I was having a Precognitive Night last night about the day to come because I kept shooting awake out of lurid and complex dreams, listening for the heavy wet squishy footfalls on the stairs and the low macabre rumbling noises and the awful smell and . . .
So I’ve had three, not one, not two, but three significant publishing traumas today, for each of which people should die, but probably won’t**. I’ve had COMPUTER MEN HERE FOR ALMOST FOUR HOURS AND MY EMAIL STILL DOESN’T WORK RIGHT.*** It’s still hot, and both hellhounds and I are heatsick†, and, speaking of sick, I have a very seriously ill friend I need a day off to go visit and neither of my dog minders is answering her phone messages.
And EMoon posted this to the forum last night, in response to Blank Spots:
Oh, YES. When one of mine grinds to a halt, it’s because I got pushy and went merrily on doing what I wanted and Not Listening. That is exactly why there’s a discrepancy between (older book) and (what really happened and must happen in a book that’s forcing its way up into midbrain.) I had the right sort of idea, but the wrong time. In that case I won…nobody reading that book at the time could tell there was a problem looming…and if I hadn’t gone back to that world, they (and I) wouldn’t find out. But I have, and it’s a story that demands to be told, and therefore…
You’re scaring the bejeezus out of me here. I hadn’t planned to drop Damar like a . . . rabid wolverine, that’s just what happened, and thirty years later with Approximately Four†† Third Damar Novels waiting in the wings, I’m uneasily aware that I know things about Damar’s history that I wot not of thirty years ago and not all of them fit and maybe I could write a nice book on flower arranging or something instead.
And that’s entirely aside from the fact that PEG II is driving me one might say BARKING. Or daft as a brush. I love that phrase. Daft as a . . . BRUSH?††† Right. Okay. I am being driven daft as a barking mad brush.‡
But otherwise…when things go blank, I know to go back …feeling my way along the story-strand until I find where my bright ideas diverged from the living wood and I grafted plastic on instead.
I adore this image. Aside from the fact that it is scintillatingly accurate.
Meanwhile, both my current publisher (Penguin) and my principal previous publisher (Harpercollins) are updating their web sites to include more individual author stuff, and they want photos.‡‡ And someone, who shall remain nameless for the simple, straightforward reason that I can’t remember who it was, suggested action photos. So over the last few days we’ve bailed repeatedly on Hellgoddess and Hellhounds because Peter keeps freaking out over the camera, and the only even quarter decent one has me wearing an expression that you might expect of a woman watching her husband having a nervous breakdown with her camera in his hands, but is perhaps not quite what one wants on a publisher’s author page.
Tonight Anthea was pressed into service for bell ringing action photos, and . . . no, no, no, it’s late, I can’t face it. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. Maybe I’ll post the one of the hellhounds straining for the shrubbery‡‡‡ and me hoping that both Peter and my camera are going to get out of this one alive and . . .
* * *
* With a minor footnote concerning the ringing of Cambridge, which, bewilderingly, progresses. It’s still not good, but after a day like today I was expecting ringing rounds to be challenging. Meep.
The monthly district practice^ is near here this month, so I may overcome my natural bashfulness^^ and go along. The spotlighted method of the evening however is London, which is another frelling surprise method, like Cambridge, and I was having a moment of madness about whether I should try to learn it . . . when I can’t really ring Cambridge yet, McKinley, get a grip.^^^ On the way back from Little Warbling tonight I asked Niall what London Surprise was like. Oh, it’s all right, he said with the glamorous indifference of someone who rings pretty much anything a conductor may have a yen for. Gaah. Really more to the case is whether whoever is conducting the district practise would let me have a go.^^^^ If it’s Wild Robert . . . I’d better study London.
^ Which is pretty much what it sounds like. Once a month a tower within the given district—a different tower every month—holds what’s called district practise on their usual practise night, but it’s advertised in the district schedule, the idea being that a lot of people that aren’t their regulars turn up, and particularly that extra good ringers show up, so the locals can have a chance to ring stuff they may not be able to with the home crew. There is usually a fancy method of the evening too, announced with the rest, so you can swot up in advance if you want to have a go, and is kind of the thank-you to the good ringers for showing up.
^^ Ie my natural tendency to go to pieces among strangers.
^^^ On a bellrope, presumably.
^^^^ See: natural tendency to go to pieces among strangers.
** And which I do have enough sense not to dilate upon in a public blog, so you’ll just have to let your imaginations run riot.
*** It’s better. We think. Maybe.
† Chaos the worst, then me, then Darkness. Note that I am sparing you the grisly details.^ Peter is fine. Peter, except when he’s being carried off to hospital in the middle of the night, is always fine.
^ Although I don’t know if theirs includes bad dreams about smelly things on the stairs.
†† Depending on how you count. It might be six.
††† Ah the British. Never mind. They invented full-circle method bell ringing.
‡ Not to mention my biological confusion, since Damar doesn’t have wings and pegasi don’t bark.
‡‡ As does calico-reaction. Don’t forget calico-reaction lj, which is going to be reading SUNSHINE next month, and wants a photo to go with the essay I’m writing about How I Came to Write SUNSHINE cough cough cough cough cough. Well, I’m writing about writing and about SUNSHINE, and that’ll have to do.
‡‡‡ They frelling caught one of the local cats a few days ago. This is one of the little snags about hellhounds: they are that fast. Cats used to normal dogs think an ordinary feline sprint will get them away from any mere canine. Wrong. Hellhounds are, however, more interested in the chase than the catching, and soft mouthed, and the cat gave a wriggle—and yes, I’m extremely glad that’s all it gave—at the moment that I stopped standing there like patience on a monument and hit the brake on the damn leads—Chaos was the one with his actual mouth around the actual cat at the time—and hellhounds stopped and looked at each other and said, oh, that was interesting . . . and now come boiling out of the door at the mews hoping for more cat action every time.
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