Happy birthday, akirlu! Best wishes for many happy, healthy more!

I spent most of the day out of the house, because how could I not? It’s beautiful out there. As I’ve learned the hard way, I must take advantage of it while I can, because God knows it won’t last long.

During my morning circuit of the post office, the eyeglasses shop (to get mine tightened up), the drug store, and the pet store … I ran into Psynde — which was delightful, as always. We hung around and chatted for awhile, and then I came home to clean the apartment from top to bottom except for the floors — which I simply couldn’t be bothered with. Even Howard got a thorough tank cleaning to go with his spanky new plants.

Right now, the handy-dandy thermometer mounted above my desk says it’s 77 degrees. All the windows are open, and the cat is whoring herself out to a sunbeam. All things considered, life could be worse.

I’ve posted pictures after the following word count statistics. Click the jump to see Spain the Cat belly-up and toasty, and Howard the Fish checking out his new, freshly scrubbed digs.

But first, here’s today’s progress on the west coast steampunk Victoriana book with zombies, air ships, toxic gas clouds, mad scientists, dead folk heroes, secret criminal societies, and Bonus! extended deleted scenes from the Civil War:

Project: The Boneshaker
New Words: 2418 (in a very brief period of time this afternoon, so this is good)
Present Total Word Count: 129,987 words
Goal: 135,000 words by July 1st.





Observations: I know, I know. I keep saying, “Maybe it’ll be just a little bit longer than projected — and yes, I’m about to say that again. But this time, I mean it. I only have a scene and a half left to write, and I honestly think I can make it happen in less than 5000 words. I love this story so much that it almost pains me to finish composing its content. I won’t say it pains me to “finish it” because that’s not what I mean; once it’s a Draft Zero, it’s all trimming, polishing, and fine-tuning from there. It doesn’t remotely mean that anything is “finished.” But Draft Zero does mean that the story has been fully told.

Things Accomplished in Real Life: Everything you see above in the first couple of paragraphs, plus I sat down with Zeke’s parallel storyline and shuffled it into Briar’s narrative. I think I split it up/arranged it/organized it fairly well. Of course, I might re-read this bad boy from start to finish and conclude that I’m crazy.

Reason for Stopping: Husband came home from work. Reached a good stopping place. It’s Friday afternoon and dammit, I deserve a little break.

Total Fiction Words Composed in 2008: 198,553
And now, click the link for pictures of Cat and Feesh.

Cat. Cat. Cat. Fish. Fish. Cat. »

[Crossposted to/from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

Working on some thoughts, recording them. Nothing is written. (In stone.)

We have a new shop. It's on the market square in Glastonbury. I have failed to find any pics of the actual shop (and a lost cable means that you won't be getting any before next week) but here are some photos of our new view, from different angles. Don't know who took these, but in the first one you can see the A-boards for Witchcraft Ltd. The new place is next door to the white building in the second photo.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/174/415757028_0f71b56acd.jpg?v=0

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/53/151585732_52c74a8d26.jpg?v=114

We will be keeping on the Benedict St premises, but moving the bulk of operations into the new shop.

Last night I went to see "Il Trittico" by Puccini, an opera performed at La Scala Opera House in Italy and broadcast digitally to a theatre in Santa Monica. I went with some folks from my voice class, who gathered before hand for drinks and dinner at Ye Olde King's Head. It was odd to be at a table full of new friends, and realize I was the one who'd been in LA the longest, and hear all of them talk about the very things that tormented me the most at first. My advice? Learn to surf!

So after a few drinks we staggered over to the theatre (I left my opera cape at home, but tuxedo shirt, vest and black velvet blazer was formal enough, I think..) for the show. It was lovely opera, with the few singers who seemed unimpressive at first warming up to some spectacular runs. Having the slightest inkling of technique, and how hard it can be made the good view afforded by the camera very rewarding - but without losing any sound quality. It's really a fine way to see an opera, I recommend it. (Google "la scala opera" and you'll find it.)

Il Trittico is in three separate parts, Il Tabarro (the cloak), Suor Angelica (sister angelica) and Gianni Schicchi. Being a little drunk, we couldn't help but making snarky comments, and moved to an unpopulated part of the theatre so as not to annoy the grayhairs. Il Tabarro is the story of Michele, a barge-owner, and his unfaithful and younger wife. It's very dark, and ... I'm not really ruining anything by saying it ends with a death, as Michele strangles to death Luigi, the laborer that has seduced his wife.

You've all seen jazz hands, right? Well, it turns out there's an operatic anti-thesis to the jazz hands - the murder hands! Just before he strangles Luigi, Michele makes this palms-up, fingers spread gesture, about like what  you'd do if you were holding up a pair of coconuts. As soon as he did it, i said, "jazz hands, jazz hands.. murder hands!" And indeed, he then throttles Luigi, hiding him under his cloak until his wife comes a little closer to check out what he's hiding under there to surprise her. Imagine her disappointment.

So yeah. Murder hands!

David, it's a good bet that "waca" in wacahoota is a Creek borrowing from Spanish, since the native Americans didn't have cows until the Europeans brought them over. What "hoota" might be is anyone's guess. Maybe it comes from the Spanish "wacajunta," a legendary time when the cows really do come home.

Long day on the bike yesterday. Wanted to do 40 miles so I wouldn't be too unprepared for fifty on Saturday. Had to take the car in for service, so wrote from four till seven, put the bike on the back of the van and took it to the Mazda place, then pedaled away with no plan other than to pile on some miles. Carrying my manuscript and the light Air computer in case ambition struck.

Went about twelve miles, past the other side of town into Paynes Prairie, where I counted 26 alligators (two of them huge) on the way to the midpoint boardwalk. Then angled down to the other side of town to take a look at the new Super WalMart, a store so big it has its own zipcode. Depressingly huge. But I went to the sporting goods section and found a one/two-man tent that I can carry easily on the bike, for under twenty bucks.

Called Brandy from there and swung by to pick up him and Christina for a loop up the Hawthorne Trail and back into town for lunch. Gay biked in and we had a good liesurely repast at the Wine & Cheese. I just had thirty miles, though, so pedaled off. Stopped at a new Cuban place for a small espresso, and typed up the morning's writing. Then on down the Waldo Road trail, which would not quite get me forty miles. But saw I road I'd never tried, which said NO OUTLET, always a temptation for bikes. It led to a hundred-acre empty field behind the airport, used for skeet shooting. And an intriguing "ghost road," evidently a small development that went bankrupt after the roads had been put in -- almost no wear, but weeds were working their way through the asphalt. I pedaled around looking for rattlesnakes, no luck.

So I wound up doing almost 43 miles, with only one unique find: an authentic Elvis Presley Memorial Reese's Peanut Butter Cup -- _King_ Sized! With Banana Creme! I glimpsed one in Ohio a couple of months ago, and have been looking for one ever since, to show Gay, who fell in love with Elvis when she saw _Love Me Tender_ three times in a row, when she was eleven or twelve.

(I was in 8th-grade chorus when the movie came out. Our grey-haired teacher had seen the movie and said that although Elvis couldn't sing, he was actually a good actor. Of course history has borne that verdict out.)

Elvis would be 78 now, Nashville's most popular lounge lizard and its largest consumer of Viagra.

Dave, did you ever read Melville's first novel, _Typee_? Totally different from _Moby-Dick_. It was a best-seller, readable and fascinating, based on his experience of being stranded on the Marquesa Islands. Somewhat modern in its anthropological outlook, post-Rousseauvian, blaming missionary zeal for the natives' social problems.

Antony, I liked the novel _Road_, but not as science fiction. I agree with William that "when a story with SF-like content is written as "mainstream," nothing that happens outside our common contemporary experience has to ring true, because the reader can be counted on not to question it" -- which is one reason sf written by lit'ry writers often falls flat. They're also writing in ignorance of the protocols that a hard-core sf reader brings to the text. So they go slopping over into fantasy or bring in some futuristic folderol without examining how it might function in the world outside of the story. And their non-sf-reading audience just marvels at how clever they are.

(Here's something that ties the last two paragraphs together: McCarthy's favorite novel is _Moby-Dick_.)

I don't think _Road_ has a single science-fictional virtue, though I'll be on the lookout when I re-read it in a couple of months, before I teach it. It has novelistic virtues that grabbed me, though. The man's voice and his strange hypnotic relationship to the boy, the unrelenting bleakness of the landscape.

Here's a thought experiment: Give the text of _Road_ to a good science fiction writer and ask him to turn it into a science fiction novel. Could the text be constrained to answer to our genre's protocols without interfering with [what I see as] its stylistic strength? Answer coming this way in the fall.

Joe

Just found out our pal, author Louise Marley ,is on LJ as lmarley! For people looking for discussions of fiction & how to write it: she's got a lot of good stuff to say, here.

"This one" being a birthday spanking with the Sparkly Paddle of Birthday Wonderfulness.

Today's on-time paddling is for akirlu--step forward, honey, and take what's comin' to ya!

Hope your day is terrific and the coming year even more so!

And don't forget to live forever!

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/05/drunken-air-part-two.html

This is a film that Sharon Stiteler took yesterday of our bees buzzing around in my plum trees. I actually started wanting the bees because of the plums, because there were never any bees when they were in bloom...

Small collection of photos here - click the thumbnails for slightly larger photos.

More bad than good in these few gowns: whoever dressed Julianna Moore should be shot, another designer managed to make Bar Raphaeli look chunky, Natalie Portman is in a short poofy purple disaster, and I think Juliette Lewis forgot to put her dress on over her underwear.

OTOH, Cate Blanchette looks fabulous (only a month after giving birth, too - let's all hate her), Eva Longoria is wearing the bright colors that suit her, Devon Aoki looks slinky and stylish, and I really, really, really want to own Mischa Barton's gown, although perhaps with the waist nipped in just a tiny bit more. (Here's another view)

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/05/drunken-air.html

Under the plum trees, covered in blossom before they get leaves (so they look drifts of snow) the air is so thick with the scent of plum blossom that it's like walking through wine.



[Edit to add: this is what the plum tree looked like yesterday -- film courtesy of the birdchick, who was filming our bees.]

I didn’t get much fiction work done yesterday — only a few hundred words. Instead, my husband took a “working from home” day, wherein I tagged along while he ran a bunch of errands. None of it was very interesting, but it was all pleasant and different, which was helpful. Sometimes I just need to get out of the house, you know?

Today the weather is beautiful, and it’s going to continue to be beautiful for another 3 or 4 days before the sky once again descends into its perennial suck. I have all the windows open, and the front door as well (save the screen). The cat is asleep beside me, lounging on the back of the couch and catching the first sunbeam she’s seen in weeks. It’s nice. When I finish this post, I think I’m going to make myself a snack. That will be nice, too.

But anyway, here’s today’s progress on the west coast steampunk Victoriana book with zombies, air ships, toxic gas clouds, mad scientists, dead folk heroes, secret criminal societies, and Bonus! extended deleted scenes from the Civil War:

Project: The Boneshaker
New Words: 4293 (most of that today, so it’s pretty good)
Present Total Word Count: 127,560 words
Goal: 130,000 words by July 1st.





Observations: It’s going to be wicked trouble blending these two POVs, but I think it’ll be worth it. I finished Zeke’s perspective this afternoon — reaching the point at which his narrative and his mother’s narrative will reunite into one story. The end really is in sight. I just need to kill off one more guy and make an awkward getaway that may or may not be wholly successful. Then there’s just the wind-down, and the fat lady sings. Man. I can’t believe it. I love this project so much; I’m so proud of it — it’s the most ambitious thing I’ve ever tried to write, and I think it works.

Things Accomplished in Real Life: Not much, honestly. Batted some email correspondence back and forth; received, signed, and sent back a contract for my employment at the Evil Empire (as I jokingly call it). This was a good thing. There’d been some paperwork tangles, and several invoices have logjammed to the point where I’m expecting several thousand dollars spread across several invoices, sometime in the next week or two. Ah, the life of a freelancer.

Reason for Stopping: Got to a good stopping spot. Getting munchy. Want to pry myself away from Twitter and go run around outside while it’s pretty enough for me to do so.

Total Fiction Words Composed in 2008: 196,135

[Crossposted to/from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

Listen.

[Crossposted to/from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

http://www.melindasnodgrass.com/musings/2008/05/15/iron-man/

Let’s start with the obvious. I really liked this movie. It had many of the strengths of Spider Man 1 and 2, and here’s how. These were very different characters — Peter Parker and Stark — but the writers and directors were absolutely true to the personalities of these men, and didn’t try to warp them into some kind of Hollywood mode.

One thing that really worked for me was the dialogue. It didn’t consist of the quip, the one liner, the rim shot. So many action movies try to rely solely on the quip, and I hate it. (You want pain try wearing a corset.) Many of the James Bond movies were the worst offenders.

This movie also managed to surprise me (and that doesn’t happen very often). I was so very afraid that it was going to be another example of Muslim bashing, but they didn’t take that path. They rolled it back to questions about your actions having consequences, because, dude, the guy is an _arms dealer_. They also explored the plight of the faithful second in command who sees himself supplanted by the son, the young Turk, however you want to put it.

I loved the action sequences because unlike Transformers you could actually see what was happening. They also set things up in the very first moments of the film and paid them off. I can’t stress how important this is whether in film or a book. As a creator we make promises to the readers/viewers and we by god better pay them off! End of mini-rant.

Iron Man proves that a good script and a terrific actor can take an action potboiler and turn it into something more. I hope the studios are paying attention.

http://www.melindasnodgrass.com/musings/2008/05/15/rio-hondo/

I’m attending my first writers workshop, and I can say it’s _great_. Right now I’m sitting in the common room at the Snow Bear at the Taos Ski valley, watching the snow come down, and sipping a cup of coffee.

This workshop was founded and is run by the amazing Walter Jon Williams. Rio Hondo is known for the high level of critique, but also for the food. OMG, let me tell you about the food.

We arrived on Sunday afternoon, and that evening Walter treated us to an Indian feast. Chicken with almonds, lamb, saffron rice, curried watermelon (I know it sounds strange, but it was delicious) chick peas in this amazing sauce.

Since then Maureen McHugh has treated us to pork roast with roasted potatoes and carrots. (The potatoes were actually pretty good, which for me is high praise because I hate potatoes.) Catherynne Valente served shrimp pasta in a cilantro, white wine, cream sauce, and a salad that consisted only of fresh tomatoes, onions, zucchini, cilantro, and fresh pineapple. Dessert was fresh mangos sprinkled with pumpkin seeds in dolce de leche,. Wednesday night Walter made shrimp remoulade and black roue gumbo with a dessert of Bananas Foster. I’m up tonight, and I’m more worried about how my dinner will be received than I was over the critique of my story. I’m making coq au vin and a vegetable pot pie. In fact I cooked it yesterday so it would have a day to enhance the flavors.

Okay, enough about food, and back to writing. This is an amazing group of people. Many of them are folks from Critical Mass — Ian Tregillis, Daniel Abraham, Walter Jon — which helped calm my nerves. I also had a good friend, Sam Butler. The wonderful new people I’ve met are Maureen McHugh, Catherynne Valente, Kristin Livdahl, and Allen Deniro.

The level of talent and professionalism is profound, and I got great notes on my story. What was interesting was that the notes I got — add these two critically, dramatic scenes — took me back to my initial instinct. I had written those two scenes, then because I’m not great at short stories I second-quessed myself and took them out. I’m hoping I have the story on the thumb drive I brought up so I can start to work.

As I was writing the story I found myself thinking of it in terms of a thirty minute screenplay. Which meant I’d envision a scene, and decide not to include it because “I just didn’t have the budget for it.” Unfortunately, I took it too far, so now I have two scenes to add back in. Still, as a method to help me overcome my fear of this form I’m going to stick with looking at the budget.

The other thing I tried was intercutting as if I had a camera. between a story in the past and the man listening to the story in the present. That part did seem to work. (I will post this on my website under works once I have it revised because it is an Edge story about a Paladin in 300 ad.)

In addition to the food and the work, there was hiking. But more on that later.

I've been kicking around the idea of a Steampunk larp with Dirty Dave for quite a while, and got to talking about in earnest with thelastmehina last week. After mulling it over, sounding out some other nerds, and starting to work on some systems stuff - I committed to it. I registered the domain, threw up a very, very primitive informational page - and I'm going to do it. I think it captures a zeitgeist the same way that Vampire did back in its early days. Back then we got all kinds of people - goths, actors, gamers, writers... the appeal was the genre and the aesthethic, as much as the game. Time went by, and eventually it fell into something that's just for gamers.

But now steampunk is in the New York Times and the Boston Phoenix - there are bands and craftsman and costumers. It's an aesthetic that reaches outside the traditional nerd boundaries of games and fiction. The time to strike is now!

So once I set my mind to it, I can't stop thinking about it. Muddy ideas for systems stuff suddenly gelled in "aha!" moments, little bits of data presented themselves out of the mix of memory and google (those are getting more and more the same thing) and all in all, I went to sleep with my mind skittering over steampunk stuff like a gentleman chemist fiddling with glassware, and woke up with swallowtail coats and club collars on the brain.

It's like there's this whole bank of vaccuum tubes that is generally dark, but when I get fixated on something, they all light up in a symphony of activity, and I can't turn it off until I get it out of my system. It's rewarding to be inspired - but I sure wish I would be inspired about something more practical. Or at least something a little less dorky, like a book or screenplay.

Damn... check out the high Five he gives a fan before he throws the guy out at first!

I ordered the new iMac (20", 2.66 Ghz) at about 3 pm on Wednesday afternoon. At 10 am the next morning (i.e., today), Stephen called to tell me that it had been delivered! Most companies would just about have gotten around to sending an email saying that they'd received the order by then :->

The machine is very cool: huge, ultra-clear-resolution monitor, lightning fast processing, easy to set up. (I think I'm appreciating it even more after having spent two days having my VAIO hooked up to my monitor with bad resolution and hardly any screen space!) As for the extra memory issue, Crucial wouldn't ship to anywhere but my credit card address, which didn't do me any good given that it's not anywhere I'm going to be visiting on this trip. However, my brother is ordering it and sending it to my company in the Bay Area, which Stephen will be visiting on his way out of the country. A co-worker had already kindly agreed to collect packages for us.

Still unknown whether I'll be able to get anything off the Mini -- it still boots, plays the chord, and starts up, but then ends at a light-blue screen. I was all excited when I followed strangedave's advice and was able to boot it as a target drive, but now I've been told that it doesn't necessarily mean that I'll be able to get anything off it. Unfortunately, Stephen's firewire cable isn't the right one so I was unable to test it.

It only took about an hour to configure the iMac to mostly match what I had on the Mini: downloading software, getting extensions to Firefox, adding dashboard widgets, setting up Thunderbird to get my mail, and so on. I'm sure in the coming days I'll find other things but I'm almost back to business as usual. Luckily, the fact that I neglected to back up any application preferences isn't as bad as it might be because I run Firefox and Thunderbird at work. Using Fugu, I was able to easily copy the related preference files over and restore my mail filters, bookmarks, and so on. Right now, the biggest thing I'm kicking myself over is not having copied out my iTunes directory...

Thanks to everyone for their advice!

Happy Birthday, Denise!

I hope it's a wonderful day for you!