We took the Christmas tree down today.
Hey, what do you mean? It’s only the middle of January!* This is good!
I had promised Peter I’d get the freller down today—once I pull all the ornaments off** he takes the tree to pieces and folds it up in its box.*** It was a good day to do it too because I got no sleep last night, for some reason. Lay there and had horrible semi-waking dreams where I’m fairly sure I’m dreaming but the aftertaste is still gruesome. So I thought this would also be a good day to steal—I mean appropriate—hijack—um—highlight somebody else’s words.
This in response to HERO and PEGASUS a few days ago, and specifically my closing remark: Ah well. I’m hoping that after PEG II I can settle down and be a nice author again for a while.
Alannaeowyn wrote:
A nice author? Isn’t ALBION next in line? I find it unlikely that you’ll be able to avoid more horror, then.
ALBION is next in line, so far as I know at present†, and both the evil vampire queen and what I know about the climax†† are fairly dreadful, yes. But it’s only one book. I am seriously not doing another cliffhanger. I don’t care about my readers! I hate the trailing around being miserable! You only have to read about it!
And, you know . . .I’m not having nearly as much trouble with the cliffhanger ending as I expected, because nobody is hanging off a cliff. Nobody’s in a coma*, nobody’s tied to a chair being threatened by a creep with a syringe (or a giant spider) . . . or trapped in a car headed for a cliff, or–yes–standing in front of a huge, unquestionably evil dragon. Yes, it’s a cliffhanger, yes, we’re all worried about what happens next, but–it could have been so much worse. Everyone seems to me entirely capable of dealing with the problems besetting them. It’s when they’re helpless that I’ll worry.
Well, yes. This is more or less my feeling. Which is a lot of why I’ve been rather—ahem—startled by the amount of you are a horrible person and I hate you that PEGASUS has aroused. Seriously? A little unendiness in a novel you have found involving††† and you’re having a nervous breakdown? Have you thought about getting professional help? I have mixed feelings about the frequently equally forceful declaration that PEGASUS should say somewhere that it’s unfinished—that PEG II is coming. I think my publisher and I are going to yield on this one, and some reprint or other will have a reference to PEG II at the back. But . . . no, I don’t think I owe my readers this. I’m not sure how I would have felt about it pre-internet and pre-every-author-her-web-site-not-to-mention-her-blog. What writers owe readers is the frelling gods-blasted best we can do, and I’m not sure the contract extends any farther. Yes, if we want to earn a living, we need to remember that we need a happy, book-buying audience. But . . . the internet is out there, and you don’t have to be a regular blog reader hearing me yelp about PEG II to spend two seconds clicking on the opening page of either my blog or my web site where it says, vibrantly and repeatedly, ‘PEG II COMING IN 2012’. If this makes you suspicious, it’s not at all difficult to find out that PEGASUS ends on a cliffhanger; or if you bought the book straight off the bookstore shelf and have just turned the last page. . . you can find out in those same two seconds‡ that yes, there is a PEG II. I’m not very impressed by the people who rush to beat me up because they can’t do a little research.‡‡ The information being easily available shifts some responsibility to people to look for it. No, I’ve never written a cliffhanger before. I didn’t want to write one this time, it’s what happened.
*Like Ryuuji in Tokyo Crazy Paradise…..I’m so glad I wasn’t reading that a chapter a month. Or reading Lord of the Rings as each book came out–horrible thought.
Uh-huh. Remember that I did. And all I knew when I got to the end of THE TWO TOWERS was that there was a third book.
Speaking of shaping influences. I then grew up to be an evil cow.
* * *
* I got a funny HA HA HA VERY FUNNY HA HA email from a friend today in response to mine that I had two goals for Sunday, one of which was getting the tree down. She replied with a great show of headmistressy shock, You haven’t got your tree down yet!! No. I haven’t^. Nor have I made marmalade, got all the backlist moved into Third House’s attic, learnt Una Voce Poco Fa for my interview with my new voice teacher^^, destroyed the Tea Party by my incisive logic and inexorable charisma, or taught hellhounds not to chase cats.
^ HADN’T
^^ Although I have been working on The Miller of Dee, just for laughs. Since I have the G, I might as well use it. Well, I don’t know if Beethoven wrote it that way, but that’s the way my book of Folk Songs Arranged By Famous Composers has it. And then it makes Che Faro’s mere F look safe and easy.
** This year I had a fit of cleverness and tied all the boxes up with green garden string^ so next December I don’t pick up the pile, am promptly hit in the face by six exploding rubber bands, and the contents of all the boxes fall at my feet with a sound resembling the noise of Wolfgang hitting a gate^^—the intimate, chamber ensemble version, as opposed to the full orchestral thunder.
^ I had to ask to borrow Peter’s since all of this is happening at the mews. He doesn’t have Twine in a Tin, which is what I mostly use, he has the old-fashioned hank, that looks like a skein+ of yarn, and you have to pull one end. Gently. Peter gave it to me, handed me the critical end, and said anxiously, Please don’t get . . . mad at it.
Snrrrfle. Rggmph. SNORK. No, it’s okay, I’ve been practicing with Pooka and Ruby’s earphone wires. ARRRRRRGH. Which reminds me, I’ve been meaning to ask the collective intelligence of the blog, do any of you have any experience of single earphones? I don’t dare not have one ear available for hellhounds and approaching potential hellhound nemesis, and listening on only one channel is . . . interesting not in a good way. There are single earphone thingies out there, but I don’t know anything about any of them and none of them seem to be sold by anyone I know either.
+ If I mean skein, she says, nervously, aware that she is surrounded by knitters.
^^ I tweeted about this earlier. Forcefully. Got back from hellhound hurtle to notice that the plastic cover of the parking light on the brand new wing on Wolfgang was hanging off. Snapped it back into place—it’s that kind of a cheezy thing—and drove away . . . and half a mile later there was an ominous, parts-falling-off-your-car noise . . . and yeah. It had fallen out. I picked it up before anybody ran over it—this was happening on a hairpin zigzag in Ditherington, and it did cross my mind that I would be very annoyed if I died rescuing a £4.99 piece of moulded plastic—and I will take it back to the body shop tomorrow morning. I want all my £4.99 bits of plastic to remain in their scheduled apertures at least until the guarantee runs out. The sledgehammer, Silly Putty and cheap VW knockoff cost in the high three figures, thank you very much.
*** I hadn’t meant to get controversial over the whole Christmas tree thing. I don’t like killing trees, but I eat vegetables (I eat lots of vegetables) so it’s not like this is a big philosophical issue with me. I will reiterate, however, that my own impression of the farmed real/resource gobbling fake tree debate is that I don’t believe there is a clear answer. So we can all feel superior.
† Although I am wondering if I could maybe rip off NOT THE WICKED STEPFATHER STORY or TAM LIN^ before I start it, both of which are supposed to be short. Cough cough cough cough cough etc.
^ Or both. What the hell.
†† Although I’ve been seriously wrong before. I’ve just been talking about how wrong I was about HERO.
††† Thank you!
‡ Okay, maybe a minute or two, if you have to turn your computer on. If you have an iPhone and decent wifi it’ll be about fifteen seconds.
‡‡ Nor am I very sympathetic to the people woe-is-me-ing about how desperately they want to read PEGASUS but they can’t face a cliffhanger ending. Fish or cut bait, guys. PEGASUS is out there, and it ends on a cliffhanger. Choose. If it were me, if the author was—say—Diana Wynne Jones or Peter Dickinson, I’d read it anyway, and if it killed me, it killed me, meh. Although this kind of decision is complicated in my case because I tend to be one book behind with favourite authors so I haven’t read everything yet. I’ve done a lot of rereading, slapping my hands away from The One I Haven’t Read Yet. But I’d still have the cliffhanger problem because I still wouldn’t be allowed to read the next book till the one after that was published.
There are always creative ways to torture yourself.
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