His Majesty’s Dragon – Naomi Novak
Fragile Things – Neil Gaiman
The Right Attitude to Rain – Alexander McCall Smith
A Cold Treachery – Charles Todd
The Mislaid Magician – Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer
Friends, Lovers, Chocolate – Alexander McCall Smith
Saint Peter’s Fair – Ellis Peters
Firestorm – Rachel Caine
Also, I finally finished Poison Study.
Is that all? It seems to me that there ought to be more books listed there.
You haven’t heard from me because I’ve been working up a storm. Things are going very well, but I’m drained; writing is work, no matter how enjoyable it is, and at the end of a day I often feel as tired as I used to feel after a day of retail. I’m still uncertain about the new things I’m adding/old things I’m changing in the-book-that-will-probably-not-be-known-as-ESTC, but second-guessing the improvements is always a given at this point in the game. And the novella is charging along. As it has evolved I’m beginning to see that it could end in two very different ways, instead of the way I had planned, and I think I will write both endings to see which works best. I expect the novella to be done by the end of the year.
Today Liam and I dropped HRH off at work and went to the bookstore to buy holiday gifts for others, and ended up walking out with gifts for ourselves instead, the gifts we went in for not being in stock. I now have the final two books in the Temeraire series, and Liam has a book on musical instruments as well as some letters for the fridge door. We also went to the toy store and bought a broom for him, because he is obsessed with using the big corn broom we use to sweep the kitchen.
We will never have to sweep again, because once I got it out of the wrapping he proceeded to enthusiastically yet carefully sweep the entire house, including under his crib. I got him a tea set too, and as soon as that was out of the package he picked up the teapot and poured me a pretend cup of tea. I was very touched.
Also, Liam has finally figured out that shoes and socks come off, and this is what he does to entertain himself in the car. He only removes the right set, for some reason.
Both upper canine teeth are out, thank goodness. Now the lower ones can quit dallying and break the surface any time, thank you.
I would like to state for the record that my new cello pickup is teh awesome. There is zero loss of sound quality between the actual string vibrating and the amp output. Zero. I didn’t think that was possible. It’s worth every single penny. (Plus I finally get to use the patch cord I bought a year and a half ago.)
Also, band practice was excellent.
Liam’s new word today: “bubble”, said while watching his bath fill. This led to the phrase “bubble bath” directly afterwards as he put two and two together. He proceeded to eat a handful of them, then generously fed me a handful too, because he is all about the sharing.
I’m wrong; there were two new words. The other was “balloon”, because one was given to him by a server at the breakfast place we went to this morning. No, three: he said “soon”, too. Yes, the new words are coming thick and fast these days.
Poor kid, his teeth are driving him round the bend.The upper left incisor is now threatening to break the gum any moment. We can’t get our fingers near the lower set without being bitten with great and frustrated force, so we have no idea how close those two are. I picked up more infant Tylenol today on the way home, for everyone’s relief.
Now I’m going to go read Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon in bed, because I have only one-third of the book left and it is good enough to be finished in a third sitting. It’s been sitting on my to-read pile since it was released, and I’m partially upset about having failed to read it before now and partially glad that I didn’t, because it’s perfect for what I want to be reading this week. (Also, as much as I adore Neil Gaiman’s writing, Fragile Things is not exactly relaxing bedtime reading because most of the stories hinge on slightly odd and/or creepy twists at the end that get odder and creepier the more you think about them.)
My plans for the evening were derailed, and I wasn’t happy about it. So I wrote instead.
Total word count, Il Maestro e le Figlie di Coro: 31,629
Total words today: 3,013
And I did another 1,193 last night after Liam went to bed, too. (There, posterity, are you satisfied?)
I’ve been messing about with creating alternate meditations and rituals for two chapters of ESTC. I’m still not wholly certain about them at the moment, but I only started them today so they need time to evolve properly. It remains to be seen if they’ll create the effect I’m still trying to capture. I moved more things around to smooth out the final chapter too, but the eighth chapter is still defying me, possibly because birth is an incredibly spiritual thing to begin with, and to capture it in words is remarkably difficult without sounding either twee or dim.
It’s good to have two so very different projects on the go at once. When I get stuck or bored with one of them, I switch to the other and still get work done. (And don’t kid yourself — this is work. It’s what I do for a living. Some stuff I am fortunate enough to sell as partials, other stuff I need to write out before I can send it out on a quest for a home.)
An Ancient Muse, the new Loreena McKennitt album, is excellent. So is Fragile Things, the latest short fiction collection from Neil Gaiman that I started reading the other day. And in fact, I’m headed for bed to read more of it before I turn out the light.
There was money in my mailbox today! Well, not actual money, but a cheque in US funds that I wasn’t expecting. I did a tech read for an excellent book in early October, and I completely forgot that the new consultant contract I’m working under pays me separately for things like that.
And you know what? Not only does this cheque completely cover what I paid for my new cello pickup, I will have extra left over. Which means I can buy both the new Loreena McKennitt album and Thomas Pynchon novel being released today without a twinge of guilt.
Hurrah!
I’m about to move the herbal and pregnancy books off the reference shelf within arm’s reach of my desk, where I keep the books I need at a moment’s notice during whatever project I’m currently writing. This is somewhat of a ritual, because it’s a sign of me finally completely releasing whatever’s been eating my brain for the past however many months.
The books that will be staying there are the ones at the far end, the ones on swans and mills and late medieval technology. And the ones I will add this afternoon are the ones on Vivaldi and music and Baroque-era life, for this new novella which is now threatening to turn into a full-length YA historical novel, one that may well have publication potential when I’m done and it’s been revised.
Once the initial furious output on this story calms down, I’m looking forward to being able to go back and forth between it and Swan Sister. And early in the new year I’d like to go back to rewriting the Pandora book, too, and finally writing the end now that I’ve figured it out.
Here’s what I read this past month:
Summer of the Danes – Ellis Peters
Hannah Waters and the Daughter of Johann Sebastian Bach – Barbara Nickel
Spellbinder – Melanie Rawn
The Limits of Enchantment– Graham Joyce
Forest Mage – Robin Hobb
Watchers of Time – Charles Todd
The Fourth Bear – Jasper Fforde
Uniform Justice – Donna Leon
Poison Study – Maria V. Snyder
Childbirth Wisdom from the World’s Oldest Societies– Judith Goldsmith
The Manner Born: Birth Rites in Cross-Cultural Perspective – ed. Lauren Dundes
Charlotte Sometimes – Penelope Farmer (reread)
Stradivarius: Five Violins, One Cello, and a Genius – Toby Faber
Mostly good. I’m still dragging on the final chapters of Poison Study, though. I just can’t settle into it. It’s interesting, just not as engaging as I was hoping it would be.