Category Archives: Books

What, the Weekend Already?

Today’s word count: 3,079
Total word count: 48,372

I’ve done about 12K this week alone on the spellcrafting book. I’m feeling much better about this. Now the second half of the manuscript feels like it’s all downhill and gathering momentum, instead of an exhausting climb against gravity.

In four-ish hours I’ll be sitting through the opening credits to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, hurrah! And tomorrow I get to go play in the store because someone is ill. Not being there on a regular basis means a shift once in a while constitutes fun, as opposed to work. Besides, I need a day off from this book.

It’s Thursday

Yesterday was an Eeyore kind of day. Nothing seemed very exciting, things were a bit gloomy, and the progress I made on the manuscript was much less than I’d hoped it to be. Part of that was my own stupidity; I opened the file with the complete text to look at something and a single chapter file as well, and forgot which one I was working on, so I ended up writing new material in both. I then took an hour comparing the two screen by screen to standardize them. I now have a twofold new strategy: (a) only open one file at a time (duh), and (b) all new typing will be done in a red font. That way new stuff shows up very clearly, no matter where it is.

Ceri started a new novel yesterday in my presence. She also brought coffee and chocolate croissants with her, which was terribly generous for someone who intended to take the new-novel-plunge. She wrote over 1300 words, which beats some of her NaNo 2003 days hands-down. (It also beat my word count yesterday, but she consoled me by pointing out that I was doing research and editing too. Editing that could have been avoided, of course, if I hadn’t lost track of where I was working. I just can’t believe my stupidity. Anywhats.)

I went out to one of the local pubs with a friend late yesterday afternoon, where we talked about religion, compared the Anglican and Catholic churches, mused about the basic beauty of the Christian faith and mourned the bureaucracy that has crushed the original teachings, and talked about the sex of God vs the gender of Christ (very, very interesting). We were marginally hit upon by the two gentlemen sitting two tables over, which made us both raise our eyebrows and smirk a bit at one another – she’s been married almost four years, I’ve been married almost five. It’s good for the ego. We had two rounds plus some nachos to nibble, and when we finally left I thought it was eight-thirty. Turns out it was nine-thirty (eep!), which meant that HRH was trying manfully to rein in his raging instinct to call out the troops to search for my broken and bleeding body in a ditch somewhere, and her husband had been waiting at his place of employment to be picked up for an hour. Oops. See, God is just so fascinating; this is what happens when I talk about religion and drink cider at the same time.

I wanted to go downtown today and wander through secondhand bookstores, but I feel so guilty about not accomplishing very much yesterday that I’m staying home.

Did I mention I’m over halfway done this book? I’m trying to be impressed, but all I can see is the half not done and due on July 1.

More Odd Ideas

What do you get when you combine the classic, almost 2,000-year-old Indian treatise on the art of love with the most up-to-date paper-engineering techniques? The Pop-Up Kama Sutra!

This lively distillation of the world’s most famous sex guide features choice excerpts from the original text, translated in 1883 by the renowned explorer Sir Richard Burton, and is illustrated with vintage color plates from India. Best of all, six incredible pop-ups present the Kama Sutra’s most interesting, instructive, and wildly acrobatic positions in three dimensions.

Believe it or not, I tripped across this while researching editions of Pliny’s Natural History. I have no idea what they have in common, or why Amazon told me that if I was interested in Pliny, I’d also be interested in this.

The reviews pan it, by the way.

Book Progress

As of this afternoon’s writing jam, the spellcrafting manuscript word count stands at 16,423. That means it’s just under one-fifth complete (or, if you’re Ceri, one over 4.871217).

The day’s total stands at 2,955 words, which is the best so far on this project. (It’s not a personal best; I hit 5K one day while working on a November novel.) I almost want to sit down and write forty-five words just so I can say I hit 3K, but I did that already to hit 2.5K, and frankly, I’m tired of thinking about spellcrafting this afternoon. I think I’ll finish the new Caroline Stevermer while waiting for HRH to get home instead.

Catechism For A Witch’s Child


When they ask to see your gods
your book of prayers
show them lines
drawn delicately with veins
on the underside of a bird’s wing
tell them you believe
in giant sycamores mottled
and stark against a winter sky
and in nights so frozen
stars crack open spilling streams
of molten ice to earth
and tell them how you drank
the holy wine of honeysuckle
on a warm spring day
and of the softness
of your mother
who never taught you
death was life’s reward
but who believed in the earth
and the sun
and a million, million light years
of being.

– J.L. Stanley

(found via Margie’s Brigid’s Hearth: Pagan Parenting page)

– Read more of J.L. Stanley’s Labyrinth Poems