Christmas pics

Let me indulge myself in Christmas pics.

Here is our little tree.

The Resident Kid  and I go tromping into the woods to cut it down, so it tends to get smaller every year as I grow less and less enthusiastic about toting a Big Tree back to the car.
You may see various homemade decorations prominent upon it.

The big thing hanging behind it is a gilim, which is a woven tapistry rug.  This one comes from the hills up near the Caspian sea.  There are lots of funny, stiff little animals woven into it.

Continuing to indulge myself . . . (if I can't indulge myself on my own blog, where can I?)

This is the central portion of a creche that's spread out all along the mantlepiece.
Major players here. 

We got all kinds of animals in the creche, some of them oddly small or large in comparison with the others.  A bunch of these are hand-carved and painted.
The animal front and center, among all those chickens and ducks, is -- I think -- a hedgehog.

Behind the hedgehog there's a little carved dog and a pair of cats hugging each other way in back.  We got those someplace when I was a kid, but I don't remember where.  They are not terribly cat-like cats, but they're the only cats we got and I like cats, so they get to go in close.
I think the weird turquoise-coloured goose all contorted up in the back came home from China during WWII.

The guy with the basket of eggs, (what is a chicken farmer called?  A chickherd?)  and the shepherd with his five or six sheep,
(you can't see him because he's out of the picture to the left,) 
get to be closer to the manger than the Three Kings.
We're very egalitarian in our creche.

The Chinese Cover

A writer's life is not necessarily one of frantic and absorbing interest to the observer.

I mean, it can be.  I do not doubt that there are writers who finish the day's work and flip down the lid of the computer and stroll out to rassle aligators --

(Crocodiles have a narrow snout and alligators are the ones with a broad snout, in case you ever find yourself rassling one.  Alligators are considered more dangerous because of that greater crushing power of those wide jaws.  But then, writers are not wimps.)                                                                                                    These are alligators                      

or toboggan down the Matterhorn --

(Did you know it's the Matterhorn only in Germany?  If you're in Italy it's Monte Cervino.  In France it's Mont Cervin.
. . .  And folks wonder why there's so much international discord.)




This is the Matternorn, 
or whatever.

or conduct a wild passionate affair with Johnny Depp.



(You thought I'd never get to the end of that sentence, didn't you?)

But mostly writers lead, as I say, dull lives.
I know I do.

Today, however, as I was walking the dog, I met a most beautiful red fox out in the fields, who kinda curled his lip as if to say,

"You're interrupting me, you know.  Do I come into your dining room when you're hunting mice?  Do I?"
and loped off into the bushes in a snit.

The second wild bonus of the day is that I ran across the cover of the Chinese Spymaster's Lady which had not previously come my way.  In fact, I didn't know Chinese Spymaster was actually out.  It's here.

The Title, according to Babelfish, is:

Spy Sea Rival in Love

which I kinda like.

ETA:  In the comment trail, Sherry Thomas points out that this title is actually Love and Hate Among Spies 
which I also like.



If you go to the site you'll see, over on the right hand side, they've given me five little pinky thingums.
I think they may be ducks.

In any case, I am so delighted with this  beautiful cover.  I really like it. 

My Lord and Spymaster will come out in Chinese next month and then they will maybe send me a copy of each.


The fox that appears above is not the actual fox I saw.  I don't cart a camera around with me, worse luck, so I do not have a copy of the actual fox.  This is an entirely different fox, attrib galen.  It is almost as pretty as the fox I saw.

The Housing Situation

I have been pounding out the JUSTINE manuscript in a conscientious manner for the last couple o' days, which means I haven't been blogging.  I am quite utterly uninhabited except for pictures of Justine's bedroom up in the attic of the brothel and worries about what POV I should be in. This is fine for me.  Not so interesting for anyone else.

So I cannot blog, really,
the mind being dry and empty as a tin can put out for recycling by a conscientious householder.

Instead of writing something of grave import or practical use, I'm going to complain about the bird situation in my yard.

This requires an explanation.
A lengthy preamble.
A prorogation, even.

This next immediate bit is an example of why we don't do prologues.  Because they are all a form of special pleading, aren't they?

I will now insert a fold so people do not have to upload the many pictures that follow if they do not want to.

I will just warn you that there is nothing about writing below the fold.
Just philosophy and birds.

My Dog

Could anyone possibly be interested?

Me.  My dog.  My coffee.


Here we are, me and Brittany. She's a ... can I call her All American Dog? We think she's collie and husky.

But maybe it's more complex than that.
It's a wise dog that knows its own father.



I drink coffee in the morning and make up a pot of tea for the late afternoon.

When I'm working at home, Brittany is right there keeping me company while I type away.

Here, you see us having the day's first cuppa. That's Brittany just checking it out for me. Note the 'walking ware' -- those are classic cups.

Find more, much more, incredibly extended more,  here

Animals in the House

I delight in animals . . . all kinds -- from wild tigers to tame kitty cats.  The feistier they are, the better I like them.  I try to put at least one in each of my books.

SPYMASTER'S LADY introduces us to Tiny, the huge black dog that guards the house. 

Follow the rest of the blog here to Romcon

creative commons attrib bloohimwhom

More work on the galleys

This is @ Ev, Linda and Annie down in the comment trail.  I started a reply to comment and then it just growed.  So I pulled it up here to make a regular post out of it.
I get prolix. This is why I do not tweat.  Or tweet.  Or whatever.

The galleys . . . I think I am a little dyslexic or something. I have never been able to spell and if there are two periods where there should only be one, I literally do not see it.

Trying to fix the galley drives me insane.

Though sanity may be over-rated.

I sit here right now, looking at
(jo checks)
page 335 out of 392 densely-written pages. Yet another page to check line by line by line by line, (This is like getting your teeth cleaned with the little buzzy drill at the dentists ouch ouch ouch,)
all the while getting yelled at by my Internal Editor who says I could have done this or that much better.

The cat walks over the keyboard, gently shedding cat hairs, generously adding random keystrokes.

The dog -- she is my henchdog --(hench comes from OE hengest meaning horse so this is probably not a logical formation but whatthehell, Archie. Toujours gai.) sits and WATCHES me, ready to rise and accompany me on our next foray. (From ME forrai, to plunder.) Having something lie there and be intensely loyal to you is very distracting.

We will not take our usual walk. The big lumberyard where we've been going to do walks had all its building roofs cave in last week under the weight of snow. The irony of an establishment that sells pre-assembled roof trusses for a living having its own roofs fail did not escape me.

And there might be wolves, y'know, coming down from the hills. There might be wolves.


Let me tell you about the storm.

The day before the big snowstorm, in the spirit of longstanding storm-panic tradition, I decided to pick up a spare gallon of milk.

There are two grocery stores in my neck of the woods.

There is the old Food Lion where you can buy chicken necks and slim jims and collard greens and there is the big new shiny Harris Teeter where you can buy wasabi and sushi and there is a choice of four kinds of organic, free-range eggs.

(I do not buy eggs because I have an 'in' with a woman who keeps chickens. I know the name of the particular hen who lays each of the eggs. Some of the eggs are green. I find this weird.)

Anyhow. I went into Harris Teeter and the shelves were . . . eerily empty.

It was like one of those movies where the world is going to end so everybody grabs up their arsenal of automatic weapons and climbs into their RVs, (8 mpg on a highway,) loads up on Little Debbies and Ding Dongs and Classic Coke, and heads out to the wastelands where they will naturally be invisible to the technology of aliens who have just crossed interstellar space.

Nothing on the shelves. No milk, no eggs, no soft drinks, no snack chips, no cheese, no bread, no oranges, no strawberries, no blueberries, and one lone, battered and unappealing melon. No yoghurt.

The clientele is admittedly pretty Yuppie-heavy, but what kind of emergency strips out every brand of yoghurt?

Every shopping cart was in use. I went through the checkout line -- I'd picked up a loaf of raisinbread that had somehow been overlooked since I was there anyway -- and had a nice chat with the lady from the accounting department who had been pressed into service. Apparently, it had been frantic-horde-of-locusts all day.

The bottled water was all gone.

(Hello . . . People. What do you think is going to fall from the sky? Lead shot? Cornmeal?)

So I went across the street to Food Lion where they had milk and tortillas and lettuce, all of which I bought, and then I went home to hunker down, somewhat underprepared for Armegedon, but then, who among us is not?

I worked onward.  Page 120.  Page 185.  Page 236.  Every time I got so disgusted and weary I couldn't look at the galleys for one more minute I went in and made brownies or something else unhealthy. If I have to face the end of the world, I'm not going to do it on yoghurt.

You know how there are background tasks that go on when your computer is working on somethingelsealtogether? You can look at the task manager and see them in realtime, using up 5% of CPU or 8%.

That's how it is with me and the JUSTINE manuscript. All the time I'm proofing galley I'm working on JUSTINE in the background about 5%.

The good news is I changed my mind about how to handle the first lovescene in JUSTINE. I have a roughed-in a first draft of something unambitious in the way of tab A and slot B. But now I think I'm going to do something more risky. (Risky, not risqué. *g*)

If I write it to do everybody justice, I'll be working a good bit beyond my technical competence and my writerly skill and my all-round maturity and I will definitely be out of my comfort zone. I will probably flop badly. But I guess I gotta try.

So that's what I decided while I was snowed in with the galleys.

And the cat.

And the dog.

the photcredit for the supermarket is nsub1 and it's not me locally.  but that's what it all looked like.

We have snow

It is not universally popular.

No.  Not at all popular.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Have yourself a Merry Little Chrismas

another lolcat

I worked good today. I was productive and scholarly and a useful member of the writing community. I DESERVE a few minutes lolcatting.

Right.

Me ...lolcatting

Ok. Ok. I know I have better things to do.
But I can't resist lolcatting a bit.

Edited to add:  There's no picture on this post.  There used to be.  There was a day I came back and found all my pictures had disappeared.  I found most of them.  Not this.

srsly ...

Ferret Fur Flying

I was into ferrets before they were cool.
Kedger's the name of Jessamyn's ferret.


Excerpt from My Lord and Spymaster:


The Kedger's head popped up over the roof line. He poured toward her, carrying something in his mouth. She accepted a button. A little spit and a quick polish on her sleeve revealed it was brass. Amazing what Kedger came up with, even on a roof.

"You're going to make us rich if you keep this up." To please him, she dropped it in the sack. He sniffed after it a minute, then climbed up her arm to investigate her braids. Sniff . . . nibble . . . tug . . . tug.

"Anything in there I should know about?"

The Kedger responded with a comment on women who bounced ferrets around in burlap sacks.

"Sorry, mate. I'll be more careful next time."

He chirruped, still grumpy.

"Are you going to pull all my braids out, or just that one?"

He'd made his point. He took his place on her shoulder and dug his claws in, stretched up tall, and pointed his nose to the wind. South, he ordered.

Fall

Got a cord of wood delivered today. The cat comes and sits on the woodpile exactly where I want to stack logs and does her innocent blinky-eyes ... 'Moi? In your way?'

It's pitiful when you go stack firewood to duck the rewrites.

I simply cannot pin this new scene down. I'm thrashing and wuggling.
Maybe I will bring my H&H face-to-face and let them slug it out a bit.

Maybe I will put everybody on a ship and leave for China.

In other news ... I have the cover sketch for My Lord and Spymaster. Lovely work, but not just blatantly representative. Heigh-ho. Marketing remains a mystery.

Blue Bird

There was a bluebird looking in the bluebird box.

(Everybody hold your breath.)

JoB

Hail

Hail this morning.

(No, this is not a greeting to the dawn but a meteorological observation.)
It had barely started when the cat yowled at the window and came racing in.


Cat: What IS this stuff? What are you DOING to me?
Me: Sorry.
Cat: Snow was bad enough. This is just stupid. Stop it.

Cold

Cold.

Not cold for Green Bay, maybe, but frigid for a place where folks talk with So'thrn accents.

I get up every morning in the winter and make sure there's liquid water in the dog's dish outside. I keep water out there for the generality of animals, wild and tame. It's not so much for the dog; she doesn't sit outside on the porch because that would interfere with her canine goal of keeping within paws' reach of me all day long and tripping me every time I get up.

Anyhow, when it's freezing, my first act of the day is to beat the solid ice out of the dish ... whomp ... and pour in hot water from an IKEA plastic pitcher.

Did it this morning.
Steamy water.
Good

Looked out at 9 o'clock and the dish had frozen over solid. Bunch of disconsolate chickadees peering down at it.

Snow

Snow.
At last.

I don't want to hear about how the snow in your front yard is six feet deep and you've been without power since December and you are drawing lots which of the kids you're going to eat fiirst.
That's your snow.
This is my snow.

The cat has never seen snow before. She patted at it, amazed and appalled. Then tried to attack it. Then ran in circles, trying to escape it. Then she sat between the back porch flower pots, glaring at it.
Finally she came in, looking disheveled and cross.

Cat: This is your fault, isn't it?
Me: Yes.
Cat: I thought so. (stomp stomp stomp)

Post Christmas

It is entirely possible I will not cook anything till 2008.

So. Today. Cleaned out the refrigerator which was full of Thai food for some reason. Yum yum. Ate yellow curry leftovers for lunch. Gave two overlooked sushi to the cat who proved enthusiastic about the concept. Gave the last of the Ziti-and-mozzarella to the dog, equally enthused.

Refrigerator is now empty except for (1) a huge jug of cranberry juice, (2) the usual condiment suspects. (3)some lonely-looking yoghurt. The fruit-mixed-through-yoghurt group out-ate the fruit-on-the-bottom contingent, so that is what we have left, (4) a half-dozen corn muffins, and (5) a half bottle of very strange champagne from someplace like ... Oregon.

The tree has been stripped and pushed out into the cold of the back porch to await a hopeful, and probably futile, replanting. The creche has been packed away in bubble wrap and nestled into its plastic tool chest home. Christmas decorations and lights are stowed up in big plastic boxes in the attic. Ad inserted in Freecycle for some kind soul to come take away Christmas paper and etc. not worth storing till next year but too good to throw away. Air mattresses deflated and brushed relatively free of cat hair, bagged and stored in attic. Futon transformed to its couch avatar. Bedding ... truly unending amounts of sheets and comforters and duvets and towels ... washed and folded and put away ... (only one set yet to go when this load finishes.) Trash is sorted into its appropriate bin and wheeled down to the road.

Boxes and boxes have been addressed and packed into the car -- that's stuff to be mailed to folks who could not carry everything home on the airplane -- I'll do that tomorrow when the post office is open.
I also have to fast-mail a recharger that was left behind. I am inclined to UPS that one, recent experiences having given me a jaundiced view of the US Postal Service.

If I had sufficient energy left I would vacuum the carpets everywhere and sweep what wasn't vacuumed and mop everything else and wipe down all the kitchen cabinets which have become mysteriously covered with jelly fingerprints.

But I think I'm going to just collapse on the sofa.

Tomorrow ... back to work. I've become involved in the suspense plot a bit more. Looking forward to approaching it.

Cat again

I let the cat out.
"You know it's raining, don't you?" I say pleasantly.

The cat comes yowling at the window, "Let me in let me in let me in."
I let the cat in. Her fur is full of wet leaves.
This is not the smartest cat in the police lineup.

She gives me a dirty look.
"Why do you keep doing this to me," she says.

I can hardly wait till she encounters snow.

Quiet Weekend

Mailed the ms of Anneka to Superagent Saturday morning, driving all the way into town to the Main Post Office. I paid money to send it fast. No real need to do so, of course ... but I still have this residual guilt for not being quite on time getting it done.

Then I took the weekend off. No writing. I reread Windflower by the Curtises ... and what a sad day it was when they stopped writing. Scrubbed the floor. Cooked everybody decent meals. Did loads and loads of laudry. Paid bills. Caught up with some of the writing critiques I had put off. I still haven't finished two of the crits yet. Tomorrow, I hope.

I had intended to indulge myself in TV ... but the cable went out. One of those ironies, I'd call it. Comcast took over our local system and does not yet have its ducks in a row.
It would be more correct to say they don't even have their ducks in the same flock.

Anyway. No TV.

I slept late.

The dog has started scratching again. Why am I perfectly certain we have not -- with two complete courses of antibiotics -- conquered its skin problems?
Why would a dog get skin rashes? This is so peculiar.

I dreamed last night about JESSAMYN and the need to reorganize it came to me. I must be ruthless. I must throw stuff out. I must suppress whole subplots.
Attila the Hun of plotting, that's me.

I'll head out to a coffee shop tomorrow. Just have to decide which one ...