Technical Difficulties

1. I dreamed Monday night that I was cast as the Wicked Witch of the West in a production of Alice in Wonderland. (stillsostrange was Alice, which tells you what kind of Alice we're talking about.) I've been wondering all week, more or less idly, how to make the mashup work.

2. Dear Feckless Acupuncture Clinic: If you wish us to have a client/service provider relationship of any kind, there must be a method by which I can communicate with you. Either phone or email is fine, but ONE OF THEM HAS GOT TO GET A RESPONSE.

3. Okay, maybe it's not my magnesium/calcium/zinc supplements making me queasy. Maybe it's just me. :P

4. Amazon says there's cover art for The Tempering of Men.

5. Johnny Cash covering Sheryl Crow's "Redemption Day" has depths of awesome beyond what I would have expected. And that's saying something.

So, on the way to my dressage lesson, the radio played Foo Fighters' "Learn to Fly," and I started wondering. How many songs are there with that title (for these purposes, we also count "Learning to Fly"), and would they make a good mix CD*?

I can think of four:

1. Foo Fighters, "Learn to Fly"
2. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, "Learning to Fly"
3. Pink Floyd, "Learning to Fly"
4. Joe Rathbone, "Learning to Fly"

(If you want to expand into songs that talk about learning to fly in the lyrics, like the INXS song I quoted in the subject line, that's okay, too.)

5. INXS, "Never Tear Us Apart"

Others?

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*If I personally were to make such a mix, it would have to include my favorite song about flying, Kris Delmhorst's "Little Wings," but that's a song about what you do after you've learned to fly.

Ibex Have Evolved for Life at the Top

When we say specimen
we mean you. By you
we mean whatever
collection of night sweats
and shopping lists accumulates
in the bed by dawn. When
we say dark we mean pitch,
moonless, starless,
don't even open your eyes.
When we say he has your eyes
we mean we see nothing
of you there. If you want
someone to come for you,
you'll have to cry harder than that.
If you want to be prepared,
practice: blizzard, fire, famine.
Your shoes or your coat?
Your cat or your dog?
Sister, daughter, mother, wife?


— Lisa Olstein
from The Nation 291:20, November 15, 2010

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I got this from heresluck, who's been posting a poem on Monday for a lot of Mondays now (even if sometimes the Mondays come on Tuesday or Wednesday *g*). H.L. also observes that yesterday was the release date for Olstein's collaboration with Jeffrey Foucault, Cold Satellite, which you may now find is something you want to know about.

1. How to Put on a Sports Bra

2. Shane Macgowan and a bunch of other artists cover "I Put A Spell On You" to benefit Concern Worldwide's work in Haiti.

3. Somehow, I had missed out on Shaun the Sheep. Silent comedy is not dead!

4. It looks like Hawaii isn't going to get slammed. Hawaii Tsunami is streaming live coverage & Twitter feed. (They also have a list of the five most deadly tsunamis in history, which I found very interesting reading. I don't know why I had thought of tsunamis as a strictly modern phenomenon--the brain has weird blind spots sometimes.)

5. But Japan may get the tsunami in the face instead.

Basically, my thoughts are with everybody on the Pacific Rim--especially, of course, with those in Chile to whom the disaster has already happened, but also with those who are waiting tonight to find out how the universe's roulette wheel is going to spin.

I have made it to 100,000 words.

Also, something interesting and difficult and really quite unexpected just happened. I like this, as a writer, because it means the story is alive and kicking. It is also an incredibly mean thing to do to my protagonist, about which I should perhaps feel guilty but don't.

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My infinite loop playlist has been slowly expanding. It's now:

1. "Jesus Etc." (Norah Jones)
2. "Long Black Veil" (Roseanne Cash)
3. "Song for Sonny Liston" (Mark Knopfler)
4. "Belated Promise Ring" (Iron & Wine)
5. "Folsom Prison Blues" (Keb' Mo' -- and, OMG, the awesomeness of Keb' Mo' is beyond the ability of mere words to describe)
6. "Cold Missouri Waters" (Cry Cry Cry)
7. "Choctaw Bingo" (James McMurtry)

I still don't know what this playlist is all about (20th c./contemporary American fantasy of some sort? if I wrote by assembling soundtracks, which I never have before), but putting it on repeat for a couple hours makes my brain happy.

71,500 words. Twenty-three chapters complete, without any ?s left in them except as punctuation. WIKTORY!

Now I am going to go exercise. mirrorthaw bought me the EA Sports Active--for those who are interested, I like it much better than the Wii Fit. It's more flexible, more responsive, and it provides a much more balanced workout. Also, it does not NAG me.

Meanwhile, Pandora is providing Cab Calloway. There was Mississippi John Hurt earlier. Life is not too shabby.

I have a head cold, which I am blaming for the following weirdness.

mirrorthaw put in Peter Gabriel's greatest hits album, Hit, this evening, and as I always do when I hear it, I thought, "Man, 'Solsbury Hill' so has a story in it." But this time, the other songs ganged up and gave me one.* It's a YA sf semi-dystopian thriller/romance/bildungsroman (reluctant psychics! teenage soldiers! true love!), and my question to you is:

[Poll #1476892]

Of course, I reserve the right to ignore the poll results completely, but I'm curious.

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*For the record, the playlist is:

"Jeux sans frontiers"
"Shock the Monkey"
"More than This"
"Solsbury Hill"
"Burn You Up, Burn You Down"
"Digging in the Dirt"
"Growing Up"
"Don't Give Up"
"Sledgehammer"
"More than This" (reprise)

'80s hits reinterpreted as ragtime.

And you can segue very nicely, for anyone who hasn't seen it yet, into the Literal Video Version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart".

I woke up this morning with "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" stuck in my head. This is actually enjoyable--especially since last week, pursuant to the "Stand by Me" video (and, no, I don't remember how I got to one from the other), I'd found Pat et Stanley (Pat is the hippo). And today, poking around further on YouTube, I found The Tokens (awesome except for the bad decision on the final Alleluia Wimoweh), and that led me to the wikipedia entry on "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", which led me to FLORENCOM's YouTube channel, which starts with Solomon Linda's original 1930s "Mbube" and then just keeps going (The Soweto String Quartet totally and completely WINS THE INTERNETS. I'm just saying.)

So here. Have some music with your Q&A.

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Also, to the person who commented with a link to your review of Corambis: thank you!

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Q: How do you normally develop the plot? Do you plan them all out before you actually write it, or do you just plan the main events, and the details would come to you naturally during the actual writing?

A: Actually, I pretty much make it all up as I go along.

Q: Also, do you read the sentences aloud when you're writing to test how it would sound?

A: Not always, but yes, I frequently do.

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Q: Is the village of Mouldiwarp closer to Porpentine or Heronshaw?

A: The village of Moldwarp (please note correct spelling) is actually quite isolated, except for the Lemerii country seat, Copal Carnifex.

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Q: What are the roots (both in this world and the world of the Doctrine of Labyrinths) of the Caloxan dialect that Kay uses? I've been fascinated by your explanations for Felix and Mildmay's dialects, and look forward to hearing about his.

A: I talked about the relationship between the Caloxan dialect and early Modern English already, so the other half of the question is clearly up to bat.

Caloxan and Corambin, like Marathine, are descended from Cymellunar, which is why Felix and Mildmay can understand the Corambins and vice versa. (I actually cheated a little bit there, because I could not face dealing with the language problem again--but it turned out to be thematically and narratively necessary for Corambis to be a very self-conscious descendant of Cymellune.) The Marathine dialect has a lot of other influences that have shaped it, whereas Caloxan should be imagined as being pretty close to Cymellunar (like the isolated communities in Appalachia who speak something pretty close to Shakespeare's English). And Corambin is just that same language with more streamlining and modernization.

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Q: I love your books, and the way you write fantasy, especially the characterization, has inspired me in my own writing. I'm working on a novel now, but I have the hardest time writing action scenes. I'm more interested in the effect they have on the characters than in themselves. Do you have any advice about how to write Stuff Happening?

A: Oh dear. As I think my books demonstrate, I'm much better at internal action than external. Also, I'm bad at kinesthetics (as hanging around with a very kinesthetic writer like matociquala has shown me). So I can tell you what I've learned, on the understanding that I consider action one of my weak points.

1. Don't try to describe everything. Unless you're writing in omni, your viewpoint character won't notice everything.

2. Focus on specific physical sensations. Cannibalize any experience you've had that's relevant. Everyone probably knows the burn of exhausted muscles, for instance.

3. Draw diagrams if that helps.

4. Go ahead and make a fool of yourself. Get up and try to put yourself in the various positions you imagine your character taking.

5. If you have another person available, make them help. I find this particularly useful for anything involving hands. Because I can't visualize accurately.

6. If you have a friend (parent, sibling, child, lover, etc.) who has taken martial arts or done stage fighting or SCA tournaments or or gymnastics or dance or anything that involves learning fighting techniques and/or spatial awareness and proprioception, exploit them shamelessly. Especially, try to get a feel for what is and isn't humanly possible. (I love Dorothy Sayers, but she didn't have a clue in this regard.)

7. Um, honestly? Avoid action scenes as much as possible.

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( spoiler for Corambis )

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Q: Did you ever consider writing the series with Mildmay as the central character and Felix as the secondary one?

A: Nope. Felix came first. I didn't even meet Mildmay (metaphorically speaking) until Felix was already somewhere in Chapter 7 of Mélusine.

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[Ask your question(s) here.]

I need to brag share good news.

I got the first royalty statement for The Bone Key today. In its first year out in the big wide world, it sold out its advance approximately six times over. It is totally the Little Book That Could.

And so that this entry is not entirely me me me me me, if you have not already, I highly recommend you read Elizabeth Bear's short story, "Sonny Liston Takes the Fall."

( cut for extraneous stuff )