no substitute for experience

I met with a new client on Friday, a woman with professional dance experience and a bit of sewing experience, as well. She did a lot of gushing over my work, remarked on the clean finishing inside and out, and claimed that I was "professional New York costumer's level." She asked where I had studied.

"I'm self-taught," I said. She didn't believe it. She thought I'd gone to KU's textile design school. "I know people who graduated from fashion design school who can't do this," she said, and I wholeheartedly believe her. I can pick up a debut novel and tell by the first chapter if it was written by an MFA graduate.

Frankly, I find it disturbing that the first question someone would ask an artist is, "Where did you study?" And I'm not singling out my client, because her innocent inquiry didn't bother me, but I see it on DeviantArt all the time. This morning I was looking at Merimask's latest creation and it's the first question anyone asked in the comments.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking education. But I don't think it's as significant to the artist's development as people want to think it is. I have always held that creative writing classes and how-to-write books are bad for beginning writers. My Sifu likes to say that the student's skill is not necessarily a reflection of the teacher. Mikhail Baryshnikov reportedly said in an interview that his teacher was "nothing special," but what he imported to Misha was the value of hard work.

I'm inclined to think that this populist fascination with degrees and certification is the trickle-down effect of corporate culture, where Human Resources only has time to examine the quantifiable, and success is only measured by the bottom line of the current quarter. In that environment, where you went to school is more important than what you did while there.

And of course in the creative fields, that where-did-you-study question is sometimes the only tangible there is. But I think there's another reason why casual admirers would ask it, and that's envy. 

On DeviantArt, every half-decent artist is bombarded with four predictable questions, "Where'd you learn to do that?" "How long did it take you?" "What tools did you use?" "Can you tell me how to do it?"

The answer to all four is comprehensive: "Pick up a tool, any tool of your choice that's appropriate to your medium, and do it yourself, for as long as it takes, until you get it right."

But nobody wants to hear that because it bursts the bubble. Everybody knows, deep down, that to get good at something you have to work at it, a lot, for a long time. But everybody hopes, semi-consciously, that they'll stumble upon the right word or trick or secret that will make everything fall into place. That can happen, but it's usually only after putting in years and years of work. And in my own experience, even some very good teaching can take a year or more to sink in, because it takes time and context to understand, to overcome the ego, to allow the truth to compost and seep through your own worldview until it's something you can use.

Last March I read "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell, which is about intuitive decision-making. On the surface, it seems to be about trusting the gut and making a decision in the first second or two, but that's a superficial reading that completely misses the point.

Through chapter after chapter, Gladwell trots out experts: military tacticians, art critics, professional food tasters, music producers, and marriage counsellors. He dissects all of their decision-making processes, and how those processes differ from the average untrained person's. His conclusion? 

The seasoned pro's 'gut reaction' is actually the cool clear voice of mastery. 

You don't get mastery from four years of college. You might, if you're lucky enough to have good teachers and an attentive attitude, get the tools necessary to pursue mastery on your own. But asking "where did you study?" is a bit of an insult, when you think about it, because it's the artist's drive and hard work that make the education useful.

Tomorrow, I'll talk about why there's no substitute for education.

turning the screws

So I had a talk with a potential editor today. Nice chat. Professional, insightful, clinical.

And now I'm freaking out. And I'm going to be freaking out for probably the next three days, because that's how long it takes these things to burn out of my system.

Just so you know... I'm at the stage where my agent is shopping around my novel. The manuscript is at a stage that we will tongue-in-cheek refer to as "finished." There are many stages of "finished" in the life of a book.

For instance, last fall I thought it was "finished" enough to send to agents. My agent read it, liked it, and thought it needed to be more "finished" before it could be sent to editors. I agreed, and in March we arrived at a new stage of "finished" which is now being circulated through New York. Now there's an acquiring editor who likes the book, but thinks it needs to be more "finished" to make it publishable. Assuming, of course, I can make changes to her satisfaction, she will then buy the "finished" manuscript and run it though the gauntlet of editors, copyeditors, and proofreaders who will eventually produce something "finished" enough to go to press.

Actually, writing all that out calms me somewhat. So did talking to my sister, who reminded me that this is how the biz works, that any editor I go with is going to want changes and I would be expected to make them if I wanted to sell the book.

And I let me be clear, here: I don't think the editor is necessarily wrong with the changes she wanted. In fact I think there was a lot of value in what she was telling me. And I know that a certain percentage of my readers are going to feel the same way. So how do I then revise to satisfy those readers without compromising the rest of the story/characters/intent? How do I know that just because this one editor thinks something needs adjustment, there isn't another editor who will think it's fine just as it is?

This is the part I hate about being a writer. The indecision, the second-guessing myself. You know what it's like? It's like being 13 years old and agonizing over "Does he like me? Was he talking about me? What did he say? What did that mean? What should I wear? Will this get his attention? Will he want to go out with me? What will we do when we go out? How do I let him know that I like him without being too trampy/slutty/pathetic/needy?" I hated that shit when I was a teenager and I hate feeling that way now.

I hate that the story has gone out to other editors and I won't have a chance to revise it again before they see it.

I hate that the last story in the novel is the weakest of the bunch and I don't know what to do about it.

And I hate the thought of rewriting on a 'maybe' because a story is like bread dough--you work it too much and it gets flat and tough.

priorities

Over dinner my husband asks what I did during the day.

"Cleaned a bit," I say cheerfully. "Did some kung fu practice. Wrote another scene."

"So the writing's still going good, then," he says.

"Oh gawd, yes," I almost moan. "It's like all the machinery is running–running smooth–spinning–" I make hand-cranking motions on either side of my head, because ironically enough, talking about writing is for me extremely geometric and tactile, rather than verbal. "Moving right along, thank god." I can't describe how fulfilling it is. "Only problem is, I got all these sewing orders pouring in, got this one I got to finish up and mail out by the end of the week."

"And you don't even care, do you?"

"Not the least little bit. No."

cowboys and pterodactyls

Inspiration can come from the oddest places.

Last weekend was my nephew's birthday. My parents brought him a book, one of those pseudo-documentary-style books about dragons. It was actually a pretty well-done variant on the subject for young readers, touching lightly on dragon mythology from cultures all over the world, mostly pointing toward how misunderstanding of dinosaur fossils gave rise to said mythology. But there were some minor references to cryptozoology, as well, particularly a little gem about the legendary article in the Tombstone Epigraph about two cowboys who may have shot a "Thunderbird" back in 1890.

So, of course I promptly went home and did a web search for the article. Apparently it's a well-known tidbit in Fortean circles. There's a well-written, thorough, and recent exploration of the mystery over at Strangemag.com which strongly suggests the whole thing is an urban myth, and of course in the digital age it's almost impossible to suss out--at least at my level of tech-savvy--what's authentic and what's merely mirrored.

The article in the Epigraph seems to be authentic enough; the nice people of Tombstone, Arizona who have a vested interest in promoting the history of the town have digitally scanned in a century's worth of back-issue newspapers, and the article is right there in the April 26, 1890 issue, page 3. Of course, fifty years earlier a major New York newspaper was bamboozling readers for months with stories of the great civilization found on the moon, so I can't put too much stock in the veracity of the story or the cowboys who reported the hunt.

Still, it's a wonderful image--a couple of cowboys encountering a giant flying lizard. I actually have a story planned for later in the Trace saga that was needing something right along those lines, and I didn't want to go with flying vampires or giant bats.

Et voilà.

gay ken dolls in love: or, do you really need a book trailer?

It's a (blessedly) boring Sunday afternoon and I'm crawling the web reading about book trailers.

A book trailer, in case you don't know, is a bit of web video made to promote a book. Just like a movie trailer, but for... a book. Are they useful as a marketing tool? Probably not. Are they a waste of time and money? Almost certainly.... unless you just really enjoy doing this kind of thing--I have seen some very impressive amateur videos on YouTube. Will I ever make one? Probably not.

Nevertheless, some of my beta readers recently expressed excitement at the thought of such a video (they are flatteringly and unwaveringly certain that The Curse of Jacob Tracy is going to see daylight sometime... ever), and because I am a writer and endlessly narcissistic about my work, and also a little bit because it's fun and a way to feed the story-making machinery with images and moods, I have been sort of half-assed-structuring a trailer script in my head. Mostly, trying to distill the story down to two minutes, and conceive a way to tell it in a way that requires a minimum amount of money, time, and investment without looking incredibly stupid.

Which is why I greatly appreciate this video here:



Brilliant. Funny, clever, and just enough tongue-in-cheek that the crudeness of its execution adds to, rather than detracting from, its charm.

omg, I've written a gothic with a male ingenue

Bumbling around links this morning and started reading about Joanna Russ' article about Modern Gothics, which does not appear to be available on the web in its entirety, but there are enough good blog posts about it to get the general idea, particularly this one here.

I actually have a whole library of 'modern gothics' from the very era she is describing, c. 1970, written by Barbara Michaels, who actually transcended the subgenre in many ways. Michaels has a feminist streak (her other nom de plume is Elizabeth Peters and her best-known books are the Amelia Peabody mysteries). Although she wrote a few 'typical' gothics with a bewildered, helpless protagonist, more often she tweaked the formula to feature heroines who were well-rounded, proactive and capable of standing up for themselves. Sometimes they were even male.

So I'm reading along happily and come across this quote from Russ:

The Modern Gothic is episodic; the heroine does nothing except worry; any necessary detective work is done by other persons, often the Super- Male. Whenever the Heroine acts [...] she bungles things badly. There is a period of terror, repeated sinister incidents, ominous dialogue spoken by various characters, and then the sudden revelation of who's who and what's what.[...]Most striking about these novels is the combination of intrigue, crime and danger with the Heroine's complete passivity. Unconscious foci of intrigue, passion, and crime, these young women (none of whom are over thirty) wander through all sorts of threatening forces of which they are intuitively, but never intellectually, aware.

Aha! So that's what was bugging me about early versions of Curious Weather! I was writing a gothic with Trace in the ingenue's role! I kind of knew it ("intuitively," you might say), but it helps to have it defined so clearly because now I know what symptoms to watch for. The passiveness, the fascinating/threatening mentor, the undercurrent of sexuality...

There's even the trope of "Girl meets House" in Curious Weather--Trace is constantly aware of being out of his element, in a house more luxurious than he is used to, and a house that happens to be packed to the rafters full of spirits and sinister entities, at that.

Honestly, I'm a little bewildered how I internalized by all these classic gothic elements. They must be awfully deeply ingrained in the genre consciousness, because never read Rebecca, or Jane Eyre, or any of the classics. So how did I come by this cache of clichés?

Having realized the formula, however, I'm somewhat reassured by it. It gives me a framework I can understand and subvert when necessary. For one thing, in this rewrite there are two ingenues--Trace, and Miss Fairweather herself, as shown through the flashbacks of her diaries. Trace is actually more passive than Miss Fairweather, at least in the beginning, but it is a deliberate passiveness. Because he is the stronger, more patient of the two, he can afford to watch and wait.

Miss Fairweather plays the heroine in her flashbacks--although in her naiveté she sees her niece as the innocent one--and in classic gothic fashion she finds herself choosing between two attentive and attractive men. Of course, she chooses the wrong one. In the present-day storyline, Trace becomes the embodiment of her Super-Male, and she resents him for it. She has the knowledge and ambition to save herself, but not the resources.

Neither of them is the type to watch and wait forever, though. Unfortunately, when they act in this story, they *do* bungle things. Miss Fairweather does something horrible in the flashbacks, Trace makes a big mistake in the main storyline. Of course this story is the opening act of the book, so I hope they will still learn and grow by the end of the plot arc. And of course they both are working frantically to learn as much as possible and best the other; neither is blind to the dangers the other poses and they have a known, common outside enemy to rally against.

My agent told me that Gothics were coming back into vogue in publishing circles, so I hope this one will be well-placed to ride the trend. Thank you, Barbara Michaels.

three ways to improve the internet

1. Eliminate anonymity. Make people liable for what they say and do. And don't tell me it infringes on your privacy; the marketers and the government are already tracking everything you do; don't kid yourself about that.

2. Remove "Comments" sections from news articles, particularly on the so-called "respectable" sites. Letters to the editor are a time-honored tradition, but snide remarks from every Tom, Dick and Harry with a keyboard only serve to distract. Let people employ their first-amendment rights on their own forum. Employ ruthless moderation and provide trackback links to worthy dissenting viewpoints.

3. Stop reposting other people's snotty propaganda on social networking sites. It's simplistic, it's annoying, and it helps nothing. People who agree with you will just stroke your ego. People who don't, will raise your blood pressure. Any sentiment that can be expressed in a bumper-sticker is probably over-simplified anyway.

Chess Countess rocks my Queen of Spades corset

This is the divine Chess Countess in my Queen of Spades corset. I can't get over how striking and fabulous she looks. Go listen to her music, the girl's got pipes!

https://www.facebook.com/chesscountessmusic

apportments and telekinesis

He felt a shiver in the air, a tickle along the sensitive under-belly of his gift. The clock on the mantel began to chime noon, followed a beat later by the tall floor clock in the hall. Something moved in the corner of his vision, he heard a faint clank and scrape behind him, and when he turned back toward the round table, there was the silver dinner-tray, with a chill moist handprint rapidly evanescing from its lid.

He reached out quickly with his gift, but it was trickier than grabbing for an elbow and he was clumsy at it. The spirit flinched away and faded into the ether.

“Wait,” he said. “Hang on, I ain’t gonna hurt you.”

No response—but no fleeing, either. It was shy of him, but curious and eager to please. The impression he got of it was female, timid, but not the sense of chaos many lost souls had. This one had sense, and awareness.

He lifted the cover on the tray and found a nice cold-beef sandwich, coffee, creamed corn, and a rice pudding with raisins.

“I don’t suppose I could get some more of that cherry pie?” he said aloud. “That was mighty good, yesterday.”

There was a kind of shiver, and Trace heard something go chink on the table near his hand. He looked down and found a small salver, bearing a doily, a fork, and a gilt-edged china plate with a big red oozing slice of pie plunk in the middle of it. Rivulets of ice cream ran down the ruby peaks.

Apportments and telekinesis, she’d said she meant to test him on. He thought there was no harm in studying aforehand.

He broke a bit off the pie crust and popped it in his mouth. “Mmm-hmm… that sure is fine, miss. You do all this cookin yourself?”

The question seemed to amuse her. He felt a shimmer of laughter.

“No? You got help? How many servants does she have in this house?”

That subject seemed to be taboo. His skin chilled with reflected fear, and the spirit started to retreat.

“Aw, hang on there, I didn’t mean nothin by it. Wonder if you could do one last thing for me, ‘fore you go.” Trace walked to the cabinet where the cigar case lay, opened it and took one off the top. “I haven’t had one of these in months,” he explained aloud, “an’ ordinarily I wouldn’t help myself to what was layin around just because nobody was watchin.” The cigar cutter was heavy and sliced cleanly through the tapered end of the smoke. “But her worship made it clear I was to make myself at home here, and I know she didn’t stock these for her own pleasure.” Trace glanced over his shoulder, to where he sensed the spirit hovering. “Come on, honey, I bet you can light this without any trouble, can’t you?”

There was a hesitation, a drawing-together of the air. And then a shimmer, like heat-waves off the desert floor, only at eye level and directly in front of him. The shimmer tightened, brightened, and a hot blue flame, no bigger than the tip of his finger, popped into sight less than a foot in front of his nose.

It was uncanny, and Trace felt a prickle of real nervous sweat along his hairline, but he leaned forward, wrapped his lips around the cigar, and drew in a single puff of air. The cigar lit instantly, all the way around, like a magic trick. The hot smoke that filled his throat seemed to be tinged with frost needles. He pulled away from the blue flame and it vanished. He took another, longer draw, and it was all fine, rich tobacco.

Trace exhaled in satisfaction. “Good girl.”

the rooms in my head

Drew some sketches today. This is the first floor of Miss Fairweather's house and a detail of the library, since so much of the action takes place there.

The library image is rotated 90º since I tend to see it that way in my mind--in most scenes they are standing near the fireplace or the round table in the middle.

I'll probably do the second and third floors at some point, and I definitely need to do the laboratory.

pushing dirt

It's amazing how many poisonous plants are used as common suburban ornamentals. It's a good thing most suburbanites have no concept of eating out of their yards these days or they'd all be poisoned.

I've been putting off buying plants because there was so much work yet to do in the yard, but I knew the spring was getting on past the point that I needed to get my herbs in the ground, and yesterday was Mother's Day, so my spouse wanted to go fetch a houseplant for his mother anyway, so I caved in at the nursery and bought a handful of items off my "witch's garden" list.

Hence the reference to poisonous plants. Yesterday I planted wormwood and wolfsbane. No foolin'. The wormwood is politely called "Artemisia" and has pretty, soft, featherduster arms in shades of silvery-blue-green. I recognize it from when my mom used to grow it; it fills up sunny beds rather nicely. The wolfsbane, a/k/a monkshood, a/k/a Aconitum, is tall and slightly spiky with a dark green-purplish cast. It should send up some lovely flowers later this summer if I don't manage to kill it.

In all honesty, me and plants have never been a sure bet. I wouldn't say I have black thumbs, but.... I'm not the most attentive and conscientious gardener out there. I do all right with herbs, probably because they're related to cooking, which is something I can be attentive about, and I seem able to keep hostas and ferns alive, although I'm still learning how much water they need outdoors in a hot Kansas summer.

I also want to get some foxglove (digitalis) and something called black snake which comes in pretty purple shades, but that will probably wait until next year. As far as herbs go, I bought two varieties of basil, now potted and positioned on the sunny west side of the house, where there's a gap in the trees for maybe a whole five hours of sunlight. Also took a chance on cilantro again; the last attempt was a dismal failure. I think it needs more shade, but that's part of the reason I put all the herbs in pots this year--so I can better control their water, sun, and bunny access.

The rosemary and lavender I did not pot. I want them to go in the ground, in the back yard where they can go crazy (and ideally keep the bugs away), but I'm not sure they'll have enough sun near the house.

Furthermore–and this is why I'd been putting off buying plants–I'm not yet sure what shape the back yard is going to take. The Sparring Partner and I agree we'd like to get rid of as much grass as possible. In a perfect world we'd just build a massive covered deck over the whole yard, but obviously that ain't gonna happen in the foreseeable future. In the meantime I'll settle for channelling the rain runoff and keeping the mosquitoes under control.

The ground is in terrible shape back there––a layer of clay laid over by acres of oak leaves that I keep pushing around. Couple of huge oak trees dropping acorns everywhere, and redbud trees on all sides. It's a constant battle to cut down/pull out all the tiny little volunteer trees each year. Furthermore the drainage is terrible for pretty much the whole block. It's terrifically flat, except for the shallow depressions in the back third of our yard that collect rainwater and mosquitos every summer.

Finally, despite the oak trees, there's a long bare patch of yard that gets hot, direct sunlight from about 3 p.m. to about 7 p.m. The ground gets baked, the grass don't grow, it isn't the most welcoming area. It doesn't get enough sun, for long enough, to let me put in a vegetable garden. Plus, we need to keep that part open for kung fu practice. Can't swing a seven-foot staff indoors, you know.

So the long-term plan is to make more of a Zen-garden arrangement.

The SP has been collecting brick and rock for years, and the accumulation accelerated after I got there. We got a fair amount of brick from my parents' old house, and he brings home pavers from house remodels, slabs of river rock, beautiful round rocks. Plus we have a large cairn of the limestone slabs that are common to the area.

I have plans to pave most of the 10x20 foot area nearest the house, and install some of the insect-repelling plants, especially the lavender and rosemary, since they are good companion plants and I love their scents. But it's a long stop-and-go job, since I have no money and I'm making it up as I go along.

I'm looking at ways to give the yard more vertical dimension: herb spirals, tree mounds, an elevated water feature/island, etc. We have a plastic tub for a small fish-pond, and I want to partially sink it into the ground and then build up a rock wall around it. I also want to create some gravel streambeds and possibly a gravel "pond," that will actually hold and channel water when we do get rain. Gravel is cheap, but digging the paths is going to be interesting, what with all the tree roots.

I spend about six hours yesterday digging out rose of sharon, cutting back creeper vines, and moving rocks around. Boy did I sleep good last night. I still need to go out there today and put the lavender and rosemary in the ground, and probably will dig out some more roots near the house. There's a long way to go, but I like the work.

Arkham City Catwoman costume

Finally finished this baby. It was a labor of love, let me tell you. This was a custom commission for a client, and lucky for me she was plenty flexible about when she needed it done, because like all great undertakings, it always needs more time than you have allotted for it. I should have kept better track of my hours, but knowing how much time I actually spent on it would probably just make me depressed. The goggles and the hood alone took a week.

Arkham City Catwoman costume bodysuit. Heavy matte spandex and snakeskin print spandex.

Arkham City Catwoman goggles and hood.

Gloves. Duh.

Extra details.

Soon I hope to have full-length cosplay shots from the client. She's planning a group photoshoot and I am desperately eager to see this on a person.

Some FAQ of interest:
1. Yes, I can make one for you, however my supply of snakeskin fabric is limited and I may substitute something else (equally cool!) in future. Price is $700 +shipping as of May, 2012. I need at least 6 weeks work time before your event. Do not email me and ask for a "simpler" or "cheaper" version--it makes me very cranky. The seriously interested can get the details in my Etsy shop.

2. I am not selling the pieces (hood, goggles, gloves) separately at this time.

3. I do not have a pattern available at this time.

4. I cannot and will not advise you on how to make your own costume or give tips on how I did it. Because I derive my income from making costumes, it is not in my best interest to give away the ideas and techniques that took me weeks of trial and error to establish. I do occasionally create tutorials which you can find on the sidebar to the right. Thanks for understanding.

spiritual warfare

Trace spent much of the morning away from the house. It was easier to think that way, and he had a lot to ponder.

Miss Fairweather had handed over a lot of information last night, far more than she’d surrendered in the previous six months. He rather thought most of it was true, even. But with the exception of the detail about her niece, she hadn’t told him much more than he’d deduced for himself. And even if the bit about the niece was true, it didn’t account for certain other things he’d observed, like her strange bouts of illness, and her reluctance to venture out of her house. And he remembered something else from the trance—Trace had cut the line between Mereck and himself, but he had sensed a tether on Miss Fairweather, as well. Despite her protestations that she had no psychic powers, despite her verbal exclusion of herself as one of his protégés, despite the late Herr Kieler’s observation that she didn’t not bear the master’s “mark,” there was apparently something about her that Mereck deemed worth watching. There was clearly more she hadn’t yet told him. Which was typical of her.

Trace dropped in at Jameson’s and wrote a quick reply to Boz’s note—quick in the sense that it was short. He spent a good half-hour struggling with what he wanted to say and what he couldn’t. In the end he settled for the bare facts. “Back in St. Louis. Trip no trouble. Lots of book-learning ahead—likely to be quiet for a while—Trace.” Jameson, of course, was in a talkative mood and hastened to share all the latest town gossip, but Trace had lost his taste for who was working where, who was drunk, in jail, or keeping a ladybird.

He needed another source of information, he thought, listening to Jameson prattle on. Someone who knew something about Miss Fairweather’s past, or Mereck’s. He couldn’t imagine hunting down a phantom Russian, couldn’t even suppose Mereck was the man’s real name, given he seemed to spend much of his time in a travelling show. Miss Fairweather might be easier to track, but she was from England, which wasn’t exactly the next county over, and she’d already told him her nearest kin was dead. Even supposing she had any connections left, they were unlikely to know of her occultist actitivies, much less consent to discuss them with a stranger.

As for the people they had in common—Mereck’s victims—all those Trace had met were mad, dead, murderous, or some combination thereof. He remembered that dead whore down in Sikeston, poor mad Lisette, who had been much like Trace while she lived—a powerful medium, strong in her faith, and uneasy about reconciling the two. Mereck had played on her fears, set her beliefs against her desires until her mind gave way, and then abandoned her to commit the ultimate sin. Trace wondered if her entrapment in the spirit world was due to the tragic circumstances of her death, or a curious effect of her power, or a curse from God for taking her own life, or a final trap laid by Mereck—to keep her in servitude to him even after death. Her spirit had certainly been eager to whore itself to a new master; it had killed a man in an effort to show Trace what a good servant she could be.

Trace had come a long way away from his conviction that his power was a curse laid on him by God. He had stopped fearing it, for the most part; he no longer felt as if every spectral visitor was sent to torment him or tempt him into Hell. But he still shied from the idea of taking spirit familiars, especially the murdering kind.

And yet… Miss Fairweather had regular contact with the spirit world. She apparently had a house full of spirits who helped her—or helped him, at any rate. Some of them might be willing to spy for him, but he doubted the kitchen maid was privy to Miss Fairweather’s dark plans, far less a match for her sinister manservant.

He needed someone stronger. Someone… more like mad Lisette.

The thought was chilling… and intriguing. And slightly maddening, that he was thinking of enlisting the spirits of the dead in a war of espionage.

thank you mistress, may I have another?

Trying to write this morning. Very difficult finding Trace's mood/voice at the beginning of Curious Weather--one of the problems I always had with this story. He's back in Miss Fairweather's house, trying to learn from her, and of course she immediately cuts him off at the knees.

Learning is by nature a submissive process. I'm one of the worst people I know when it comes to submitting to authority and yet I yield to my Sifu every time. I'm more humble before him than anyone else in my life. And it's not because he requires it, it's because I know I won't learn if I don't.

But it feels tremendously tricky to pull off that same submissiveness of Trace before Miss Fairweather without completely emasculating him. Trace is the hero, a grown man and we've already seen him be quite the badass, so I'm worried about making him put up with this mean little woman's crap.

Further complications ensue from the point of view. Trace is by nature a watcher, a doer, and while this makes him a reliable narrator, in her presence, her personality is so dominating that his tends to get lost.

Maybe I'm overthinking it. There are plenty of fantasy stories that involve the hero learning his chops, but those are almost always a young person learning from an elder. How to keep the balance? How to let Trace assert his own power? Once I get the ghost action rolling, it should be easier, but right now I'm flailing. Ach, soggy writing muscles.

How to know when you're talking down to your readers, and what to do about it

"Don't talk down to your audience."

I've seen this advice in many, many books about writing fiction, but I haven't been able to find much about how to diagnose when you're doing it, or how to stop.

The issue came up in my writer's group. I suggested that a manuscript was "talking down" to the reader, and the rest of the room agreed, but we couldn't quite define the qualities that gave us that impression. And the writer understandably wanted to know what she was doing wrong.

There are a few reasons why a writer might unconsciously talk down to her audience:

movies of the week

You know how sometimes you know a movie is going to be bad but you have to watch it anyway just to get it out of your system? I downed three of those in the last 24 hours.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (Gary Oldman, John Hurt, Colin Firth)--Benedict Cummerbranch and Firth were the only two who didn't seem to be sleepwalking in this somnambulant spy thriller. Ultra-stylish, limping along on flashbacks, mistakes obfuscation for suspense.

Anonymous--Vanessa Redgrave and Jolie Richardson play Queen Elizabeth I as a childish, neurotic cougar. Bunch of other men conspire around her to no effect. And there's some slop about the power of words and the glory of artistic expression.

A Dangerous Method--less melodramatic than the trailer would have you believe, which is all to the good, but the restraint of the writing, acting, and directing leaves me with a tepid feeling of frustration--not exactly the afterglow you want from a movie in which at least three main characters advocate freedom of thought and sexuality as vehicles to mental health.

I feel so repressed right now I may have to flush my brain with some Michael Bay to recover balance.

goat cheese vinaigrette vegetable dip

This is a tangy, savory dip I made up. It's especially suited to raw vegetables.


1/2 brick of cream cheese,
1 small package (3 oz) goat cheese
2 Tbs mayo
juice 1/2 lemon
salt & pepper
1-2 tsps Penzey's French Vinagrette dressing mix*
extra pinch of both rosemary and thyme (optional--I like the piney flavor of the rosemary with the lemon)
dash cayenne

Allow cheeses to reach room temp. Blend together cheeses and mayo. Add salt, pepper and herbs. Add lemon juice and stir well. Keep cool.

*this vinagrette mix includes salt, pepper, sugar, rosemary, thyme, garlic, onion, scallions. Using the real thing fresh would probably be even better!

seafood congee

There's a place called Blue Koi in Kansas City, a sort of upscale pan-Asian cuisine place. A friend introduced me to it a couple of years ago and I recently persuaded my husband to go back and try it with me. Yesterday was our third visit in as many months. It's a bit pricey by Chinese-cook standards but in my opinion, the freshness and well-designed quality of the food is well worth it.

The weekend special was seafood congee with shrimp rolls on the side, and oh my, was it good. Rich, flavorful, briny, perfectly textured except a couple pieces of chewy calamari. The shrimp and lobster and scallops were all melt-in your mouth tender, and there was a generous amount of fish in the mix. The shrimp rolls––minced shrimp rolled in narrow phyllo straws and flash-fried––were dipped in a hot/sweet sauce that complemented them perfectly. I'm actually not the world's biggest shrimp lover but the spices and seasonings in Southwest Asian cuisine really bring out its best qualities.

While lunching, we overheard the owner talking to a couple of young men at the next table. One guy apparently had little experience with Asian foods, asked a lot of questions and finally settled on soup with fried tofu in it, instead of plain tofu. The owner gently explained that fried tofu was not a good idea for soup, texture-wise. The patron sort of cluelessly insisted it was ok. The owner took their order and went away. A few minutes later the waiter came back and reiterated what the owner had tried to explain: tofu soaks up liquid; fried tofu would just get soggy and turn to glue in the soup. The patron graciously gave in.

I had to respect that––the house considering the textures and end-quality of its food, the gentle insistence, not that the patron was wrong, but the education, the assertion of, "Trust us, we'll give you the best dining experience."

My husband had the roast duck with a gentle sauce and a big bowl of rice. Normally this dish is served with a sort of pickled carrot salad and roast peanuts. The Sparring Partner asked for another vegetable instead, and got pickled cucumber––chilled, thinly sliced, lighty dressed in vinegar and sugar for a tangy-sweet flavor. It was very good with the rich duck.

"The food in this place is a lot higher-level than I thought it was," my husband said.

"I agree," I said. "It's a lot higher level than you thought it was."

the epitome of Valentine's Day

This Valentine's Day is the first since 1990 or so that I did not dress in black. I hate Valentine's Day, despite being happily mated to the love of my life--I just resent manufactured holidays that encourage consumerism. This year I am working from home and no longer shop at chain stores or big box stores that will assault me with pink and red advertisements and the stink of cheap chocolate. Also, since I work from home, there's no real reason for me to get dressed at all unless I feel like it; on sewing days I wear workout clothes since I'm crawling around on the floor a lot. Today I have on stretchy jeans and a pale pink hoodie with some kind of Chinese dragon stenciled on it.

But I digress. Calendar dates mean little to me and the Sparring Partner in terms of romantic occasions; in fact the last two years we forget our own anniversary. Holidays and birthdays, if we observe them, are excuses for me to make fancy desserts.

the hardest word

Elton John said it was "Sorry," but for a editor/agent/peer the hardest word to say to a hopeful author who's waiting, bright-eyed and strung tight with anticipation, is "Boring."

I rejoined my online crit group two weeks ago, to get my head back in the critting/ storybuilding gear. After all, the best way to learn something yourself is to teach others. I've read 5-6 stories so far, written crits on two of them.

They are all painfully dull.

oatmeal peanut butter cookies

I made these by combining a few different recipes. Depending on the bake time, you can either get a chewy, peanut-butter-textured cookie, or you can overbake them and cool for a crisp granola-type cookie.

Preheat oven to 350º F.

2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 c flour
1/2 c granulated sugar
1/2 c dark brown sugar
1/4 c coconut flour (optional--adds fiber and makes a drier, crisper cookie)
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
pinch salt

1/2 c butter, melted
1 c peanut butter
2 eggs, room temp
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 bag chocolate chips

Combine dry stuff in large bowl. Melt butter, remove from heat and stir in peanut butter til semi-combined. Make a well in the dry ingredients, pour in butter & peanut butter. Add 2 eggs and vanilla. Stir by hand until well combined. Stir in chocolate chips. Mixture will be crumbly and tend to shed.

Scoop pingpong-ball sized balls of dough onto cookie sheet and flatten slightly into disks with the back of  a spoon. If you have used the coconut flour, cookies will NOT spread as they bake.

Bake 10-12 minutes for chewy cookies. Let cool on sheets 5 minutes, then cool on racks for another 10.

For crispy cookies, bake 10-12 minutes, then turn off oven, crack door open, and let the oven cool until cookies are dry and crispy.

Makes about 3 dozen thick cookies. Very filling--eat slowly!

so close, yet so far

Yesterday evening I spotted this headline on Yahoo:

Fried foods not direct cause of heart risk, new study finds.

And I'm like, HA! SUCK IT, low-fat proponents, because I've been saying that for years.

But then the article goes on to say,

"We currently recommend swapping saturated fats like butter, lard or palm oil for unsaturated fats as a way of keeping your cholesterol down and this study gives further cause to make that switch...Regardless of the cooking methods used, consuming foods with high fat content means a high calorie intake. This can lead to weight gain and obesity, which is a risk factor for heart disease."

And then I'm like, Sigh, alas alack, they still ain't getting the big picture.

In the first place I don't know of ANYBODY, aside from myself and a few other crackpots in the Primal lifestyle crowd (and I can't be sure those are real people, anyway), who cook with butter, lard, or palm oil. It's corn and soy oil 'round these parts. I was raised on Crisco, which I haven't eaten since I left my mother's kitchen, and which was giving me heartburn at age 25.

Calories do count, but much less than the soundbites would have you believe. The important thing is to make sure the calories you ingest are nutritionally dense, and helpful, rather than detrimental, to the body. Animal fats--butter, lard, tallow--are fats we evolved to eat. They're about as natural as you can get. Olive oil is natural--it's pressed out and unadulterated. Corn and soybean oil are frankenfoods. They're not good for your digestion and they're not good for your liver.

I have a great interest in the insulin theory, but it tends to be rather complex and difficult to explain to people, so I just think of it this way: if you eat calories that your body can't use, then it shuffles them aside and demands something else with some actual vitamins in it. That's why you can have a huge meal of processed foods and still feed unsatisfied.

The other problem with American fried foods is they are often breaded, and heavy batters of wheat flour are not good for you. I've used almond flour, parmesan, oat flour, gluten-free baking mix, and coconut flour for breading; they are all decent alternatives.

But sauteeing in butter or olive oil, the way they do it in France/Italy/Spain, is about as healthy as you can get, plus it tastes good. See? That's the real reason French women don't get fat.

there are days

.... When I hate the Internet and everybody on it.

moreau's daughter

“—how will you find him? Will you recognize him if you see him? The police believe the killer may be using disguises.”

“I don’t have to recognize him,” Lily said, with grim pleasure. “He’ll recognize me. ”

=======

I wrote a bit of a story over the weekend; more of a character study, really.

As alluded to previously, I wanted to transplant my assassin character into a steampunk setting and let her run free, to see how she'd talk, move, think, and operate under the constraints of Victorian society and clothing.

Also, I've always kind of wanted to write a story in which Jack the Ripper gets taken out by a vigilante chick.

It ain't great literature, but it was a fun exercise.

Read a sample here.

cosplaying a different race from your own

Here's a doozy. 

I've been researching a new character for a story. She's the offspring of Chinese prostitute and a British sailor, born in Shanghai in 1870 or so. One of the theoretical themes of said story is of ostracism and finding a place of your own.

Partly out of interest in researching the story and partly because I'm a big geek who likes to dress as my characters, I've been considering ways to make my very white-girl face look more Asian, or at least Eurasian. Looking at photos on the internet of mixed-race actresses and models demonstrates the incredibly wide variety of genetic recombinations you can get from an East-West hybrid. I'm especially interested in Maggie Q and a model/activist named Celeste Thorson, because they have longish faces and prominent jawlines, like myself.

Predictably enough, it's a big hot-point with people in the fashion and cosmetic industries, when Asian girls tape their eyelids to create folds where they weren't before, or European models tape their brows to make them look straighter or more elongated, because we're all supposed to be satisfied with what we have and not bow to the pressures of western beauty standards, or seek to satirize Eastern appearances... or whatever. Frankly I tend to think that if enough women on either side of the International Date Line are doing it, it should all balance out and everybody could quit hollerin', but I've always been crazy that way.

So what do you guys think? It's kind of trendy these days to put skinny people in fat suits to teach them sensitivity, or dress people as the opposite sex to get a different viewpoint--if you could change your features and/or skin tone *temporarily* to spend a day with the shoe on the other foot, would you? What kind of reaction do you think you'd get? 


The cosplay community I interact with is generally pretty tolerant of crossplay, e.g. dressing as the opposite sex, or re-gendering a character to suit the cosplayer's own sex, so I'd think cosplayers would be accepting of cross-ethnic-play, at least more so than the public at large.

Thoughts?

a character does not exist until you give her a name

So I spent all week jerking this rewrite out of my guts with various implements of destruction--believe me when I say, it's much easier to just write the damn thing correctly the first time, than to go back and try to take it apart and fix it later.

I actually hacked through to the end yesterday. Finished around 8:30 p.m. As I'm getting ready for bed it finally dawned on me that my face was breaking out and my gums were sore and the muscles in my neck hurt because I am COMING DOWN WITH A COLD, DUMBASS.

This morning I have a touch of headache, touch of swollen throat, touch of malaise, but I'll survive. None of that is really important, the important thing is that all the time I was writing yesterday, I had this concept chugging along in the back of my brain, a new concept, new character, new situation.

I've been thinking about my Eurasian steampunk assassin for several weeks now, and she has gradually been taking shape. Wednesday night I hounded my sifu for name options in Cantonese and he gave me one that worked. Personally, I can't work with a character until s/he has a name. I can think in general terms––what kind of character has the best personal motivation to be the right "fit" for this conflict––but I can't really find a voice until I have a name. I mentioned that to Sit t'other night and he was very pleased, for obscure Chinese reasons. "Ah, she follow Confucius," he said. (I swear I'm not making this up, so don't accuse me of perpetuating stereotypes.) "Confucius said nothing is real until you give it a name."

So on Wednesday, Lily Quinn became a real person to me. Her Chinese name is Shiao Yin, which means 'little swallow.' She needs an assassin name but we're still working on that.

And over the course of yesterday, while I was forcing myself through the wastelands of Wyoming, the story-building machinery was slowly coming to boil in the back of my brain. Character motivation A meshed with Historical Event B and layered neatly into literary reference C, thus throwing narrative Point of View D into neat focus.

There's a reason why we refer to plots as 'formulaic'. That's exactly what they are: alchemy. Cold fusion, even.

skinny models and yellow journalism

Saw this link today with the sensationalist headline: "Most runway models meet the BMI criteria for anorexia." Of course I knew it was just yellow journalism, successfully designed to drive up click-thru traffic. And of course I clicked on it.

I have several thoughts about the article, and probably none of them are going to win me any friends.

First, the article in question is in a magazine aimed at plus-size female readers, so of course they want to make their readers feel good, but they do it by denigrating the models as freakish. Tearing down anybody to make someone else feel better is not okay in my book.

Second, there's the quote, "Twenty years ago the average fashion model weighed 8% less than the average woman. Today, she weighs 23% less." That is probably true, but without knowing where they got their numbers I'm willing to bet that the difference comes less from the models getting skinnier and more from the "average woman" getting fatter. This should not be news to anybody; we all have eyes.

Third, humans––I'm going to say Americans because this is basically a first-world problem––have this constant demand for bigger better faster more––it's in our cars, our movies, our music, our social mores, and our perceptions of what is sexy. Ergo, it's inevitable that those perceptions will become more and more polarized to accommodate personal bent. So of COURSE the models are going to get skinnier, as the gulf between the haves and the have-nots widens, because the universe requires balance, and the everyday is a good deal fatter than it used to be.

We are saturated with input and numb to everything but the next shock, or the next bite of sweet/salty/sour/bitter. We are all overfed--literally--to the point of stupor. Here we sit in front of our computers sucking down Diet Coke or designer coffee, bitching about how some magazine doesn't feature women who look like me. Duh! Advertising isn't there to make you feel good about yourself! Advertising is there to make you feel wanting, so you go out and buy yet another thing to fill the hole.

Here's an idea: put down the magazine, step away from the internet, close the refrigerator. Go outside for a walk. Breathe deeply. Stop thinking about things that only serve to get people riled up. Strife is not healthy.

secrets of apple pie from scratch

This is awkward for me to admit, but my standard for good apple pie is a vague memory of the fried apple pies McDonald's had when I was a child. The ones they sell now aren't nearly the same. I'm pretty sure the old ones were fried in lard, because this was pre 1984/animal-farms-are-bad/it's-a-brave-new-world of-corn-oil days.

Anyhoo, in my mind apple pie filling should have a perfect balance of sweet/tart/spicy; it should be juicy, but not runny or gummy, and the crust should have a flaky top and a cooky-chewy underside.

Keeping in mind that pie-baking is more art than science, so your mileage may vary. 

goals for 2012

I don't do Resolutions, but last year I set myself three goals: to finish The Curse of Jacob Tracy, to find a literary agent, and to leave my day job. I'm a bit gobsmacked to realize that all three of those came to pass.

So, as prompted by my friend Mary Ann, I'm writing down my goals for 2012, to make them more concrete and keep them in focus.

1. Publish Trace and get a nice fat advance on it.
2. Finish writing the sequel to Trace, Curious Weather.
3. Start teaching kung fu.
4. Pay off the home equity line.

Bring it on, 2012!

new ebook publisher: Eggplant Literary Productions

Long-time readers will remember that waaaay back when I was still writing as if I enjoyed it, a nice lady named Raechel Henderson offered to publish End of the Line as an ebook. Despite our best intensions, that was not to be; Eggplant Literary Productions went on hiatus for a few years.

Now it's starting up again. Eggplant's startup page is here (God love Wordpress!) and their guidelines page is here. They are looking for novella-length ebooks, and short-shorts for a literary magazine. The focus for both lines is fantasy/science fiction.

I always respected Raechel's professionalism and taste as an editor. (Easy to do when somebody wants to publish your stuff, eh?) So if you got a story that's a wee bit too long for any of the other markets, and aren't up to self-publishing your e-book, pass it by Eggplant.

motley Christmas

Five years married and we just bought our first Christmas tree together. In past years I used a little miniature three-tree grove which I believe came from my parents' old business office. Last year we didn't even decorate. I think we were too tired and cranky, probably too reluctant to spend money. Somewhere along the way I'd bought some lights and plain glass ornaments that were never opened, but other than that and a half-decorated wreath, we had nothing. It's a measure of how hard and fast I fled from my old life, that I didn't even take any ornaments of my own, either from my parents' house or from my ex-husband.

We bought a Black Hills Spruce from the Optimists in the grocery store parking lot. It's been too warm this week for the trees to be properly chilled, so they're looking a bit desiccated. We borrowed a few boxes of crap from his mom's basement (she had 60-odd years' worth collected, including some scary looking string lights), put a bunch of tacky tinsel garland on the boughs, and the Sparring partner hung old satin-thread ornaments and faded wooden toys all over, while I worked on finishing the wreath. I put on gold cord and red braid, and black-gold net. Then I added a gold bow, blue oversized jingle bells, and a few miniature toy ornaments in red and white.

"That looks like Christmas exploded," the SP remarked when we were done. And it does. No Nieman-Marcus designer-themed tree for us. But then again, we aren't people who live in a decorator-showplace house, with three-color schemes and accent pillows. All our stuff is patchwork--furniture, curtains, artwork--things we've found, liked, collected. And really I suspect most people's Christmas decorations collections are the same way--things that were given to them by, or chosen for, someone they loved. The mangled pipe-cleaner ornament made by a child. The falling-apart foil angel that belonged to someone's great-grandmother.

As we were sorting through boxes of musty tissue paper and limp tinsel, we remarked on what we'd keep and what we'd return to the basement, what we'd quietly get rid of and what we might acquire in future to accent the good stuff.

It's fashionable these days to disparage Christianity. It's fashionable to talk about the pagan influences of Christmas trappings, as if those factoids are supposed to make hypocrites of those who still celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday. Since my divorce I've been conflicted about Christmas. I lost the will or the desire to worship or pursue God; I am firmly in the agnostic camp--not so much "I don't know" as "wait and see." But since I was raised by Christian parents, and schooled in a liberal arts college, and hang out with a decidedly Zen crowd, and am an Existentialist by nature, I got to a point where I couldn't hardly act or believe in anything without feeling I was reacting to something else. It's hard on a writer to feel as if every available option is a cliche.

But I think we need festivity in our lives--me, especially. Holidays--holy days--were days of worship, but in the pagan and Christian faiths (pretty much any religious group that doesn't indulge in human sacrifice, really) they were also days of rest and community.

Routine and even-keel are good things. But so are renewal and celebration. There's a difference between cliche and convention; in fiction, the conventional tropes let you know whether you're reading a romance or hard sci-fi. So you might say I've decided to embrace the formulaic this year.

where everybody knows your name

I love my writer's group.

Met with them Saturday for our monthly enclave. We critted. We chatted. We laughed. I whined. They sympathized. It's good to go hang with like-minded people, sharing an activity you all enjoy, where they listen to what you say and act like you know what you're talking about. Even if they don't agree with you. Everybody should have a place like that.

It's also very cool when they say matter-of-factly that I need to get used to editing screenplays because my book will get made into one in the not-too-distant future... and then someone else counters with, no, they'll take my book and process it into blockbuster pulp--but at least I'll get the rights check.

And then there was the part when I mentioned I had an idea for "Steampunk Quinn" and their faces all lit up and they went "ah!" That was extremely gratifying. They never were particularly fans of Quinn Taylor, in the old manuscripts, but they have more faith in me now. In some ways, I think what crippled the Quinn Taylor stories was my tendency toward Victorian restraint and archaic morality--things I no longer suffer from, so the anachronistic transfer is going to be interesting.

I took my own advice this weekend and printed out a fresh new hardcopy of Trace. Everybody took a section and skimmed as fast as they could, reading the bits where I had flagged the updated Boz sequences. The consensus was that I had done good things updating the emotional arcs. And now that I have a hard copy I'm better able to sit down and SEE the damn thing, as a whole. I just can't read on the screen the way I used to.

I have bits of Horseflesh yet to finish. I am resolved. I shall continue to work every day, away from my sewing room whenever possible, away from the house if I can manage it. I will jot down notes, outlines, and scenes longhand before I go to bed at night, so I have something to work on the next morning. I will stop second-guessing myself. I will accept that even when the words don't flow like wine, even when the muse isn't singing in my ear, what comes out on the page is generally pretty readable. I will put down words even when I don't feel like it. I will finish this thing.

custom Batwoman costume

I love this. Black and red, how can you go wrong? This is Kristin in the Batwoman costume I made for her. She was really open to using the matte black PVC, which I love.

The cape is two layers of lightweight synthetic fabric. The bodysuit is black matte stretch PVC, with red PVC accents. The gloves are matte red spandex and the accessories are sculpted leather. You can order custom items like this one through my Etsy shop.

Kristin is a repeat customer of mine. She's a careful and dedicated cosplayer, she really puts thought and time into the characters she wants to portray. She's also an artist and cartoonist. You can see her work on her DeviantArt page.

things I hate about fabric stores

1. Polyester. With the exception of some very high-tech, high-priced and fairly rare microfibers, it's nasty fabric. It's rough, slick, ravels, sticks to your skin, fights you when you try to sew it. And it occupies about 75% of the fashion fabric shelf space.

2. Polyester fleece. Occupies 75% of the floor space that could be utilized for--I don't know--real fabric? Silks, cotton twill, wool? For people who actually sew? Comes in an assortment of tacky colors and prints.

3. People who buy polyester fleece. They always buy 15 different cuts at the same time. For Christmas gifts. Disregarding the likelihood that the people who received a polyester fleece blanket LAST year have not worn it out, indeed probably have not used it, and do not need another. There is no excuse for blanketing your entire social circle with poly fleece. Pare down your Christmas list and make something meaningful for the people you actually like.

4. People who buy poly fleece who put their screaming children on the cutting counter, where the kid kicks, grabs, and drools on everything in sight, including other people's fabric. I was very mean about this when I worked at the fabric store. People were not permitted on my cutting counter.

5. People buying 15 yards of 15 different bolts of poly fleece who insist on finding something inadequate with each bolt of fleece, thereby requiring the cutting clerk to unroll the entire bolt to cut from the end without the glitter on it. (Seriously, lady? You're not going to wash the thing before you use it? Do you live in a world without germs, too?)

6. People trying to buy upholstery fabric for their interior designer/upholsterer, although they have never before bought fabric and are unprepared for questions about whether the design will be railroaded, or whether those 12 yards can be in two pieces, and hold up the line talking loudly on their cell phone for 10 minutes. THIS IS WHY YOU LET THE PROFESSIONAL DO THE BUYING. YOU ARE NOT SAVING MONEY BY DOING IT YOURSELF.

7. There is apparently only one home decorating fabric distributor left in middle America. Joann's and Hancock's have virtually the same stock these days. Competition? What competition?

8. Similarly, Joann's and Hancock's are on automatic stock reordering systems--when I was at Wal-Mart they called it "continual inventory system," which is a lie because they still took a physical inventory every year--so they only get in 3 or 4 cards of each button type at a time. So they generally only have in 1 or 2 cards of a given button type at any given time. Which means, if I need 14 buttons for a project I have to drive to at least 3 different stores, and/or wait 3 weeks until they get their stock replenished, because God forbid the store manager should be allowed to order anything for a customer who needs it.

planet comicon 2011 video!

Obviously I haven't Googled myself enough this year. I just found this two-minute video interview the nice people at Costume Hub did when they stopped by my table at Planet Comicon back in March. I remember them being there, but at the end of the weekend I never thought to look online for the video.

Check it out! I manage not to sound stupid, but I need to learn to smile more before I have to go and do book interviews!

And then there's this nice little blurb by a sexy Dr. Quinzel cosplayer I found on Tumbler:

"Awkward moment.

This is my “Holy-shit-did-Holly-Messinger-just-ask-for-my-picture” face. I was lookin’ at comics and all of a sudden I hear “DOCTOR QUINZEL!” I whip around, eager to find the beautiful soul who recognized me. (TWO Jokers passed by that day and didn’t even say ‘Hi!’ back to me… they acted like they didn’t know who I was! ..No, as in really didn’t know who I was. Hmph. Damn Dark Knight.)

All of a sudden, I see an angel in a steampunk Poison Ivy dress. HOLLY MESSINGER! AHH! I recognized her work from Elise Archer’s cosplay!

I was paralyzed ‘cause I was so starstruck and failed to strike a pose.. so sad.. haha.

My friend found this somewhere on the internet and sent it to me. Pic by Holly Messinger!"

Just for the record, I LOVE cosplays that can pass for street-clothes. It's like a secret identity of your very own. I like to go out in public in almost-costume and watch the looks on peoples' faces as they try to figure me out.

Now I'm eager for another convention. You guys are the best!

never be ashamed of your success

From the SFWA blog: Having a saleable novel doesn’t make you a sell out.

"Turn your nose up at Dan Brown all you want. Besides selling a zillion copies, the man’s storytelling was so believable, other authors wrote NON-FICTION to DISPROVE his MADE UP STORY."

I needed this right about now. 

review: the twelfth enchantment

I know it mostly seems I only review books to grouse about 'em, but this is one I really really enjoyed: The Twelfth Enchantment by David Liss. It's a seamless fusion of historical regency and gothic fantasy--I'd say Georgette Heyer and someone gothic, except I can't think of anyone appropriate in the fantasy genre of the time--Charles Dickens, maybe?

Anyway, it's about a poor relation named Lucy, who lost her father, sister and comfortable home, who now lives on the charity of her uncle who wants to marry her off as quickly as possible to the local industrialist. Pretty standard regency fodder--but then Lord Byron wanders into the picture, under the influence of a curse and mumbling mysterious messages for Lucy. While trying to lift his curse, Lucy meets a Woman of Independent Means who becomes a good friend and benefactor--and shows Lucy she has a talent for magic.

Stolen inheritances, sinister suitors, malicious faeries and Luddites all are braided together in an intriguing romp, with a dash of romance that is never cloying and a steadily-accelerating plot that comes to a satisfying conclusion. There's even a touch of women's lib, although it is never anachronistic.

I highly recommend this. It is a fine and masterful balance of plot, character, history, magic, and theme. Fans of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell will probably enjoy this, although to my mind it is far superior to that constipated opus.

review--the house of lost souls

Picked up The House of Lost Souls by F.G. Cottam at the library. It's a gothic ghost story that could, if you were ashamed to be caught reading a gothic ghost story, be loosely interpreted as a broad allegory for a man fighting his way back from suicidal depression. The ending is so lame from a fantasy/horror point of view, it tends to validate the psychological stance, but the middle parts of the book are a decent ghost story, if you don't mind the flashback-within-a-flashback narrative structure, the abrupt changes in viewpoint, the convenient insertion of epistolary clues at crucial moments, and the endless wanking over 80's London new wave/art culture. We get it, dude--you were there, you don't have to prove it to us.

The gist of it is this: in 1927, a group of Satanists including Aleister Crowley raised a demon to gain themselves fame and fortune; they imprisoned it in the manor house on a northern isle belonging to one of the members. Periodically, over the next 60-odd years, people go into the house--art students, construction workers, researchers--come out crazy, and commit suicide. Apparently the demon enjoys suicides. One guy, Paul Seaton, who is Irish, and you know he's Irish because everyone he meets makes note of the fact he's Irish*, visited the manor house in 1985, while trying to research a photographer who was a reluctant member of the coven. Paul escapes with his life but has a mental breakdown and his life and health promptly go down the crapper.

Now it's 1997 and another group of students has foolishly breached the manor's gates; one of them is dead and the rest are heavily drugged to keep them from offing themselves. The brother of one of the girls, Nick Mason, wants Paul to come and help save his sister. The two men are brought together by a mysterious benefactor who appears to be, variously, a psychiatrist, a paranormal researcher, and possibly the son and/or reincarnation of the original coven leader. All of that would be fine and intriguing except Cottam's idea of concealing clues is to cut away from a scene during important conversations, leaving blank spots in the narrative and thereby drawing attention to the question any normal person would ask. To a savvy reader, that can only mean the answer is exactly what you suppose it to be, and the characters are idiots for not noticing.

It's a complex story, as you may have noticed. To me the most enjoyable parts were the diaries of the photographer from the 1920's; the action is more succinct, the atmosphere of opulence and dread is quite effective. I suspect also that Cottam did some good research on Crowley and his cronies; the description of the banquets and parties had a ring of authenticity.

The writing in the modern scenes is much more weird to my palate; there are several odd sentence constructions that tripped me up while reading and I don't know if they are British/Irishisms, or just pretentious writing. The description in the 80's flashbacks is also heavy-handed and pretentious, in my opinion, since all the visual dissection of Paul's college chums and their local watering holes is largely irrelevant to the story and doesn't contribute much to Paul's character, either.

The action scenes are not badly handled, on the whole. The account of Paul's first visit to the demon's lair is so tense it will stand your hair on end. Unfortunately most of the climactic moments--human sacrifice, demon attacks, the death of a major character--are all handled off-stage, and so much of the air is let out. And as I mentioned, the ending is brief, pat, and completely unearned, in large part to that habit of breaking away from the scene at crucial moments. "And so Paul realized he'd had the power in him all along."

I'm really not paraphrasing, there.

Anyway. It wasn't all bad. I have the feeling the author was making deliberate choices about pacing and scene breaks, and just barely missing the mark.

*One thing that always amuses me about reading British-authored novels is how very class-conscious they still are. William Gibson comments on that quirk of British culture in his excellent novel Pattern Recognition.

big announcement

Y'know, it's weird.... I always thought when I got an agent or made some other big motion forward in selling my fiction I'd be shouting it from the rooftops.

Instead I have this niggling inclination to reticence whose source I don't understand.... perhaps a fear that by talking about the deal I will be committing a publishing faux pas, thereby causing said agent to change her mind? Or the echoes of my dad's voice, telling me I shouldn't flaunt my success? The old self-defeatist impulse that now I might actually have to work? The fear that even if I try my best it still won't be good enough (and then I'll kick myself because I know it wasn't really my best)?

Enough, already. Enough.

Last week I signed a contract for representation with Amy Boggs, the "baby agent," as she calls herself, at Donald Maass Literary Agency in New York. I spoke to her on the phone; she was warm, amiable, and very excited about Trace. She had some very helpful suggestions about how to tighten the last third of the book. She complimented my historical research. We agreed there was nothing else like it out there (at least not in the mainstream), and she said when she pitched it to her boss, his eyes lit up with interest. That's a good compliment.

So I'm doing a fairly light edit and tightening up of The Curse of Jacob Tracy, so that Amy can start shopping it around to editors. She asked a bit about my future plans for the series, so I will probably slap together an outline of what will happen in the next book. Someone will want to know about that, eventually.

I also have been cleaning up my website and blog to be more professional and more writerly-oriented. I've been out of the publishing loop for so long--I'm gathering new links, reading the blogs again. I even joined Twitter, for pete's sake, since that's where all the writer kids seem to hang out. And Amy Twitted about me already, including a link to my website, so I've noticed all this unusual traffic to my poor old boring website.

So, hey, Amy? It was great talking to you. This is gonna be awesome.

the week in brief

Friday: Taichi/kung fu performance. Your average stereotypical Chinese fire-drill. Nevertheless it went ok and we stayed to watch the Beijing Acrobats afterwards. Pretty cool. Seeing the stuff on YouTube just doesn't have the same impact as watching it live.

Saturday: Class. Exhausted. Knees hurt.

Sunday: Tuck-pointing the brick on the house, trying to prep for winter. Also, slapping down a few pages of freelance writing.

Monday (tomorrow): Finish the last Halloween costume and get it in the mail, express. Get haircut. Call the butcher so they can process our yearly hunk of cow.

Tuesday: Turn in freelance writing. Cut out & baste together nephew's Halloween costume.  Cram for Chinese class. Go to Chinese class.

Wednesday:  Slap together Silk Spectre costume for client. Wait for agent to call from New York. Obsess over changes to manuscript.

Thursday: Sister & nephew coming over for fitting/finishing costume.

Friday: Buy insulation. Winterize house.

crockpot beef ragout

Melt 1/2 stick (1/4 cup) butter in heavy skillet. (not non-stick)

Chop 1/2 of a sweet onion (or more) and saute in the butter over medium heat.

Take about 1 pound skirt steak, or other long-grained beef with minimal fat. Cube small. When onions are wilted and beginning to brown, add steak and increase heat to medium-high. Brown all over, stirring as necessary, until the liquids are gone and the sugars start to caramelize and stick.

Meanwhile, peel and chop small: 1 parsnip, 2 carrots, 2 medium red potatoes, 2 stalks celery and 1 smallish shallot. Put in slow-cooker on high heat with enough water to let vegs swim freely.

When the beef and onions are well-browned, add them to the slow cooker. Return skillet to heat and add about 1 cup water to deglaze, scraping up all the brown bits. Add to crockpot. Add about 1/2 cup red wine, or cooking sherry and a dash of balsamic vinegar.

Season with 2-3 beef bouillon cubes (take care not to make it too salty), salt and pepper (I like Lowry’s seasoned salt and seasoned pepper), 1/2 tsp rosemary, 1/2 tsp thyme, and a pinch cayenne. If you don’t use the Lowry’s, add also a dash of sugar and 1 teaspoon of paprika.

Melt the other 1/2 stick (1/4 cup) butter in the skillet and add 1/4 cup flour. Cook and stir over med-high heat until it turns a nutty brown color. Add to pot.

Leave in the slow cooker on High for about 3.5-4 hours. 

nihao!

The Sparring Partner and I are taking Mandarin Chinese language classes. We'd talked about doing it for a long time, and I had a little extra cash and a lot of spare time, so talley-ho.

It's a strange experience. Oh, the language is alien, to be sure--the whole pictograph thing has the potential for major bewilderment, and it's an evening class half-full of college-age students who are rapidly being left in the dirt by the grown-ups, who know why they're there and what it takes to teach oneself. And then of course there's the 12-year-old who's making us all look bad.

But I digress. The weird part is what's going on in my brain. I have all this language-learning architecture from my high-school French days, and it is getting dusted off and put to use. This causes a bit of confusion at times, when the pinyun looks like a word I know from French (luckily not many of them do), but on the whole I can see why people say it's easier, once you've learnt a second language, to add a third or fourth.

As far as the pictographs go, there's nothing for it but sheer repetition, baby. Flash cards and technology. Writing the characters repeatedly is best, of course--getting the motor synapses involved doubles the reinforcement. But I also bought a couple of 99¢ apps for my iPod, to learn basic drawing conventions and the radicals involved in making the characters. Those two concepts haven't been part of our lessons, yet, but I'm what's called a "deep learner"--I'm not happy memorizing things by rote, I have to know how and why they work. That's made me appear slow and stubborn in some classrooms, but on the other hand I tend to understand better once I've got it, and remember longer than my peers.

So I've learned to teach myself what I want to know. And I've already seen some similarities between the radicals and in the characters we're learning in class. It's like learning a code, which have always fascinated me (I taught myself Morse Code when I was thirteen, just for the hell of it). And God Bless Apple and the makers of apps for creating little talking programs that reinforce pronunciation. I am actually starting to understand the tonal thing, which confused me for years whenever I tried to learn kung-fu jargon from Sit.

But the best part of it all is how learning something new and challenging makes your brain feel more awake, more alert, just more smart. I always said if I had enough time and money I'd study more languages. Granted, I assumed I'd be richer when that day came, but I guess 'just enough' is the zen lesson, huh?