meanwhile, back at the ranch

[truepenny]

I should descend into the endless hell of revising The Goblin Emperor, and I may even do so this evening.

(Seriously. This book will not fix itself, especially not the big structural problems. And I know what to do; it's just the how that's beating me up.)

However, this afternoon, I have been making notes on projects that aren't ready to be written yet, because if I don't write things down, I will not remember them.

• This AU-America novel is way more ambitious than I am. Which is a problem, since I actually don't like novels with as much scope as this one is trying to claim it needs (Salem! Mormon Utah! Airships! Lansford Hastings! Circuses! Helen Keller! Frankenstein! George Armstrong Custer! Mammoth Cave! Angels! Demons! Dogs and cats! Living together! Mass hysteria!)
  
• otoh, the great thing about writing about Puritans is that you can name characters things like Dread Not Dawson; I don't know anything else about Dread Not yet, except that her older sister is named Remember, but the name is full of promise.
  
• Mélusine's equivalent of Jack the Ripper is Jean-the-Knife.
  
• Now I just have to figure out which district he preys on. (And approximately three thousand six hundred and fifty-two other things as well. I am terrified that by the time I get Yes, No, Always, Never worked out to the point that I can write it, I will have forgotten most of what I know about Mélusine.)
  

In acknowledgment and celebration of the fact that I'm working at all, here's that first line meme again.

1. The Goblin Emperor
   Maia woke with his cousin's cold fingers digging into his shoulder.
   
   
2. [untitled/short story]
   On 26 Hunger 1273 AR, I was approached by the editor of the Verstannikker Aisenning, Ny Dybarro Klin.
   
   
3. [untitled/short story: giant mutant telepathic bear]
   The wayhouse was gutted.
   
   
4. "Clouded Mary"
   Clouded Mary descended from the train one careful step at a time. She gripped her valise tightly in her kidskin fingers, mindful of the one ripped seam where her steel armature poked through.
   
   
5. The Marriage of True Minds
   Sanspiro Base is a company town all the way. Ginmet's proprietary newsfeed is all there is, unless you know how to hack the commset for Radio Free Sanspiro or W-FCK or one of the other half dozen or so pirate stations that aren't worth anybody's time to hunt down. And they get their news from Ginmet anyway, so it's only a matter of which sauce you want with today's helping of lies.
   
   
6. Cormorant Child
   With a shriek of protesting metal, the hatch opened, and Mule fell out of the palace-ship into the long grass of the Edrin Valley. He was trying to run before he made it to his feet.
   
   
7. Thirdhop Scarp
   The current owner of Thirdhop Scarp claims that the name is a contraction of "third hope," but this is etymologically dubious in the extreme; still improbable but far more likely is the local explanation: that if you fall off the escarpment, you reach the bottom in three hops.
   
   
8. "The Haunting of Peter Ludgate" (KMB)
   The terrible irony in Katharine Blood's name became apparent in her death.
   
   
9. "The Moon Key" (KMB)
   The vampire was waiting for me when I got home.
   
   
10. "All the King's Horses" (KMB)
    [no first line yet]
    [title from Peter Mulvey, "Stephen's Green": All the king's horses / That you once swore you'd seen / Are still waiting for you / Back in Stephen's Green"--it's a story about carousel horses, and right now that's all I know]
    
    
11. Yes, No, Always, Never
    Tenebry Holt aspires to be a poet.
    
    
12. Dark Sister
    Nephael cannot remember Heaven.
    
    
13. Blue Lace Agate (Ghoul Hunters)
    [first line recalled for refurbishing]
    
    
14. "The Brides of Nyarlathotep" (GH)
    The Renault case refused to break. Snapshots of the victims had gone up on the corkboard in the briefing room, one by one, and most of the agents in the Bureau of Paranormal Investigations' southeast hub could recite their names by heart: Lydia Renault, age 27; Mary Anne Sumner, age 24; Dale Kelton, age 25; Joella Barber, age 24. And they were waiting, sick and helpless, for number five.
    
    
15. "Under Babylon" (GH)
    Mick Sharpton's howl of outrage--"oh fuck no!"--was clearly audible in the junior agents' office.
    
    
16. "Hiroshima After Hours" (GH)
    [no first line yet]
    [what did WWII look like in Mick & Jamie's world?]
    
    
17. "Crossing Styx" (GH)
    "Think of it as a vacation," Jamie suggested. Mick's reply was physically impossible, but very creative.
    
    
18. "The Bone Jesus"
    [no first line yet]
    
    
19. [untitled/short story]
    "Ooh, that's a pretty one," Gretchen said, her voice a mocking buzz in DeNora's ear.
    
    
20. [untitled/short story]
    When a full-bird Colonel of the Interstellar Military Corps, Medical Division, tells you that you're a miracle, you believe her.
    
    
21. [untitled/novel: Draco and Hennessey]
    It was noon before the new wheeler said anything to me.
    
    
22. Schrödinger's Parable of the Cat
    Denise Blumenthal died on a beautiful spring morning in the polity of Greater Manhattan.
    
    
23. "Pellucid"
    The windship Pellucid heeled over, her sails filling as they caught the wind called the Mariah, one of the winds that blew so steadily across the desert that they had been mapped more than a century before: the Mariah, the Medusa, and the Mother of Angels, which had another name among windship crews.
    
    
24. [untitled/short story: archaeology and cannibalism]
    May 18, 187- / My dearest Nancy, / We have finally reached Father's new posting at Fort W---, after a gruelling five day journey from Madison.
    
    
25. "Doc Holliday Makes a Deal"
    I died on November 8, 1887. It was not a pleasant experience. Even less pleasant, however, was finding that death was not a permanent and irrevocable state of being in which a man could lie quiet and be eaten by worms as it pleased them. As it turned out, death was anything but.
    
    
26. [untitled/novel: walking back from Mordor]
    The Emperor's head hit the floor with a wet thud. The body stayed upright a moment longer, and then simply collapsed; the blood jetting out of its neck soaked Moth through before he could think to move.
    
    
27. The White Devil
    "So," said Viv. "How was MLA?"
    
    
28. "The Witch of Arvien"
    The water closed over her head for the second time.
    
    
29. The Second Son
    On the twenty-fourth of April, Medraut dreamed of Loheris again.
    
    
30. "The Skyscrapers of Bianch'Elen"
    Long ago, in a world none of them can remember, the vampires were taught to dance.
    
    
31. [untitled/short story: paranormal noir]
    The woman in my office had been dead for five days when I found her. The smell was unbearable, but the ghost was worse.
    
    
32. Black Hart Circle
    There were four in the game. Deep play, deeper than the pockets of at least two of them. Lydia Nash might be as collected as a woman choosing a new hat, but Esme Collier and Kori Fletcher were out of their depth, and Fan Carpenter didn't look any too comfortable either.
    
    
33. [untitled/novel(?): Joan of Arc]
    They'd taken the crime scene tape down from the basketball court.
    
    
34. "The Kitsune's Tragedy"
    The English milord would not last out the day.
    
    
35. "Marjorie Kelly"
    When I was thirteen years old, I murdered my best friend. Before you can understand anything else, you have to understand that.
    
    
36. The House at the End of the World
    When Sebastian Marlin became a man, there was no one to celebrate with.
    
    
37. [untitled/short story]
    The werewolf had hooked his iPod up to the stereo and put it on shuffle. He'd danced stiffly around the room to a Paul Cebar song and now stood at the window, whiskey glass forgotten in one hand, staring out across the rooftops at the sunset.
    
    
38. The Sidhetown Tigers
    Jefferson Finch was a lousy pitcher, but he was the best we had.
    
    
39. "The Queen in Winter"
    There were five queens in the creche. Beulah, Pauline, Camille, Thelma, and Katrina. Beulah was the favorite, and one night after the nurses had gone to bed, the others ganged up on her. There were only four queens after that.
    
    
40. "The Tale of Two Dead Mice"
    Once upon a time, there were two dead mice, white and small and sleek. One had eyes as green as gangrene, and the other had eyes as red as spurting arterial blood. At night--when, being dead, they did not sleep--their eyes glowed like lanterns, and if they wished to hide, they had to shut them tightly.
    
    
41. The Werewolf Laura Stiles
    Callum pushed back from his desk violently, as if physical distance could get him farther away from the collection of mistakes currently masquerading as the English 201 midterm.
    
    
42. Winter's Tale
    I woke up in a nearly empty lecture hall.
    
    
43. [untitled/short story: lions]
    "What are you doing, sister-wife?"
    
    
44. "(Un)fallen" (1)
    [no first line yet, just the ornithopter photograph]
    
    
45. "(Un)fallen" (2)
    The pain is intense, sharp, and localizes itself gradually, as Vij comes closer to consciousness, into a throbbing knot on the back of ser skull, just behind ser left ear. Se reaches to touch it, groans as that wakes a whole new set of pains through ser left shoulder and arm, and only then wonders why se is corporeal at all.
    
    
46. The Further Adventures of Teddy Truetext
    [no first line yet]
    
    
47. [untitled/novel/YA(1)]
    Diana leaned closer to the mirror.
    
    
48. [untitled/novel/YA(2)]
    Never mind what I got sent to Pridmount for.
    
    
49. [untitled/novel/YA(3)]
    After his third time in the Cage, Jude began to lose his childhood. He wasn't aware of it at first, so he never knew where it started, but one morning, he looked at the picture of his family where it stood on the tiny, wobbly table by his bed, and he couldn't remember who the other kid was.
    
    
50. [untitled/novel/YA(4)]
    Ludovic Priest was under the dashboard of a '79 Comet when Skeeter sang out, "Bully lights!"
    
    
51. The Bride of Vranar
    [no first line yet]
    
    
52. "Dragons of Earth and Sky"
    [no first line yet]
    
    
53. "The Hostage Crisis on the Derelict Mistral Freighter D35-692N-C, QUEEN OF LIVERPOOL"
    The Mistral Freighter D35-692N-C, Queen of Liverpool, had been grounded for thirty years, since the successful implementation of Chen and Tiedemann's q-curve drive had made her and all her sisters obsolete.
    
    
54. [untitled/short story: Moria-Berlin]
    [no first line yet]
    
    
55. [untitled/short story: "Cold Missouri Waters"/"Lawrence, Kansas"/wizards]
    [no first line yet]
    
    
56. [untitled/short story: homeless vampires]
    [no first line yet]
    
    
57. [untitled/novel: were-tigers]
    [no first line yet]
    
    
58. [untitled/novel: the Great Forest has reclaimed Europe and there are werewolves in it; Varya]
    [no first line yet]
    
    
59. [untitled/novel: female Dunedan; Owl]
    [no first line yet]
    

Comments

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

"Mélusine's equivalent of Jack the Ripper is Jean-the-Knife"

I want to read what this will be, please. Really soon. Pretty please? With whipped cream and a cherry on top? ;)