Eagles Over the Kennebec

Much like being a Liaden Scout, being a writer is 98% mucking around in the mud, and 2% excitement.

And, after a brief period of excitement, we're back to Business as Usual, which is exciting enough for those doing the work, but makes for poor telling.

SPOILERS FOR TRADER'S LEAP BELOW.  IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK AND DON'T WANT TO READ SPOILERS, STOP READING NOW.

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For instance, we are at the moment Reading.  I'm reading Trader's Leap because the book I'm lead on next has to be the follow to that story.  There's a minor problem developing because I'm more interested in the Matter of the Redlands than I am in getting Padi onto a trade ship heading into the Dust.  It's early days, and my brain is still recovering from Salvage Right, so I don't despair, merely note.

Steve is rereading all the Jethri books to date.  Again.  I think that I take from this that Trade Lanes is intended to be the wrap-up for the Jethri arc.  I could of course be wrong, or Jethri could intend otherwise.

I'm also pulling together a database of all our works, original publication and all reprints.  It's not that we haven't been keeping track of these things, but we started keeping track on cards, and just kept with it, since neither one of us is a database person, particularly, and there were Books to Write.  So, an hour or two of database work a day, to ensure that our Literary Executor will have something to work from, eventually.

In and around are the cats, of course.  Firefly is settling in nicely.  She hangs out with Sprite a lot, has a cordial relationship with Belle, and remains quite fond of Trooper.  She's also Getting the Hang of Steve and me -- no mean task.  She had early established the back of the couch as an Accepted Petting Zone, and has been expanding those territories.  She has become accustomed to me picking her up and holding her over my shoulder for a bit, or picking her up and carrying her to a chair for some chin skritches before Press of Business requires her elsewhere.  Most evenings, she joins me when I embroider -- me in the rocker, and her in the jetpac under the table next to the rocker.

So, that's the news.  Writers at work, and content to be so.

Here's a picture of Firefly and Sprite:

So, yesterday we turned SALVAGE RIGHT, the 25th novel set in the Liaden Universe®.  For those coming in late, or who are Just Wandering By "we" in the case is Sharon Lee and Steve Miller.

Since there are a lot of books, and several threads, and Someone will ask What Is This Book About, and no one is ever satisfied with "about 130,000 words," below is the authors' working synopsis:

Clan Korval has for two hundred Standards believed Jen Sin yos'Phelium dead. In Neogenesis, the delm of Korval was apprised of this error. Salvage Right is the story of what happens next.

Everybody up to speed, now?  Good.

I started working on Salvage Right (I say "I" because I am lead writer on this title; Steve is lead writer on Trade Lanes, the next title, due in September) on November 15, 2021.  My brain immediately took the idea and ran with it, and I do mean "ran."

"Big party at Tinsori Light!" was basically the theme of the next six months, when, in May, I declared tools down on a Good Enough Draft, sent the 106,000 words then more or less in place to beta readers, and took two weeks off, one of them to clean the house; the other to sit on the porch of an oceanfront apartment and stare at the waves, and the sky.

It was a much-needed break, and I came back to the manuscript with vision and energy renewed.

Which was a Good Thing.

We're going to talk a little bit about Process, now.

The last novel I was lead on was Trader's Leap, delivered in October 2019.  2020 was more-or-less taken up with breast cancer surgery, radiation and recovery.  And recovery.  Oh, and more recovery.  During which time, I repeatedly tried to write -- something.  Anything.  Only to find that I seemed to have forgotten how.

I therefore sat myself down in an effort to relearn my craft, producing as my first post-cancer It Actually Makes Sense story, "Ambient Conditions," in October 2020.  Five more short stories later, and coauthor for Fair Trade, and I felt pretty confident of my ability to take lead on another novel.

My Previous Method for writing novels was to Think Hard about the characters and what kind of trouble they were likely to get into, identify a few key scenes, and then, when I felt Ready, start writing the first scene, and proceed, in a more-or-less linear direction until "The End."

The above method has its flaws.  It is sometimes necessary for me to stop for days while planning out the next scenes/interactions chronologically.  The benefit is that, once a "good enough" draft is achieved, it really is Good Enough.

As mentioned above, Salvage Right was written in the heat of "Big party at Tinsori Light!" where the backbrain threw up this scene, that scene, this other scene, and so on.  My job was to type as fast as I could, and when the occasional breathing space arrived, to chain the scenes in an order that made sense, given What I Knew.  Problem being that I didn't know Everything.

Which meant that when I called tools down and took my two-week break, the book was Not As Finished as I believed it was, and that there was still a Large Chunk of Story still in my head that had not made it to the page.

So, long story short, I wrote +/-30,000 words in a little less than a month, rearranged the manuscript once more, and, finally, only four days late, turned it in.

Will I use the Write What You Know until you Don't Know Anything Else Method again?  Probably.  I really like the sense of movement and engagement with the characters.  I did have Moments of Panic in the last stage, but I did not have a spell of ennui such as sometimes overtakes me when I'm writing straight-through-come-hell-or-high-water.

So!  My 34th novel and I'm still learning Stuff.

I did have a blast with these characters -- as shifty a bunch as have congregated in one place in the Liaden Universe® -- and I think y'all are going to like the book.

At this point in time, recalling that These Things Can Change -- Baen plans to publish Salvage Right in Summer 2023.

My next project, after a few days of Light Duty, straightening out drawers and vacuuming and such like, is revising what I've been calling, to Steve's not-so-secret amusement, "the Hat story" (actually, "The Last Train to Clarkesville"), then start getting Duainfey and Longeye into shape for indie reissue under the proper author name.  After that?  Welp, I'm lead on the book due next June, so I guess I better start Thinking About That.

Here ends today's discourse.

So, yesterday it snowed.  I believe we got at least the five inches the weatherbeans had been predicting.  On Thursday, we had large swathes of grass showing in the back yard.  This morning, we have an even cover of white.

The other Big News yesterday, aside the snowstorm and that I won at Scrabble, is that Steve read the first 25,000 words of Salvage Right -- this being the Edition that includes all the details that were previously only in my head, and picks up some of that timekeeping I was talking about -- and pronounces it Good.

So, we continue.  My job today is to read those 25,000 words, and sketching in a blueprint to likewise expand Section Two, so that next week I can get down inside the interstitials and start hooking up the plumbing and the electricity.

For those wondering after turn-in and publication dates, we are talking with Madame, and may have a schedule to share -- soonish.

To review:  Steve is working on Trade Lanes, the sequel to May's upcoming Fair Trade.  I am working on Salvage Right, set on Tinsori Light.  A third Liaden novel, as yet untitled and only vaguely considered, will finish out the current contract, referred to in-house as The Triple Threat Contract.

Aside taking Trooper to the vet for his annual physical next Wednesday, I've got nothing on the calendar until the Cancer Center again intrudes on my life, on March 17, the two-year anniversary of my mastectomy.  I'm looking forward to getting some solid work done before then.

. . . and I think that catches us all up.

Everybody stay safe.  Tell the people you care about that you love them.

So, today was a Thinky Day.  I spent almost all of it in the Comfy Chair in my office, with notebook and pens (and the occasional coon cat) working out bits and schticks: what happens when, what absolutely must happen, what I'd like to happen (a far different thing, ref. The Wrong Lance), and who does what to whom.

I haven't written a book in exactly this way before, but they're all different, and, let's face it, given the last few years, I'm different.  If Tinsori Light: The Novel (actual title TBD) needs to be carefully worked out in modest detail via pen and paper before ever fingers hit the keyboard, that's certainly doable.  I have plenty of paper, and plenty of ink (though I'm going to have to splurge on another bottle of Dragon's Blood if this goes on, as we all hope that it will, for some time yet).

It's very pleasant sometimes to just sit and work inside your own head, shutting out the din of Oughts and Musts and Haven't You Dones from the outside world.  Sadly, I can't do it every day, but it's nice to get revisit that headspace now and then.

I hope you all have time for a bit of quiet contemplation as the year winds down.

Here's a snippet from the WIP:

"I am under the impression that the delm wishes this station to reflect Korval's on-going commitment to the realities that govern the universe that received the diaspora. Am I correct in this assumption?"

"Are you asking if I am privy to the delm's necessities?"

"An impertinence. Forgive me. Unvarnished, what I wish to know is if Korval prefers tools which are untainted by the Old Technology."

Frantic deadline writing continues, and!  We have a title for the novel, which IS a Jethri novel, and that title is!

FAIR TRADE

In the midst of All That (yes, yes, but you -- at least I -- have to give my brain something to do while the backroom is slapping together the rough of the next scene besides play endless rounds of Lumeno), the thirty-third Adventures in the Liaden Universe® chapbook, BAD ACTORS, is in process.  The Tyop Hunters are returning their results, and I'm looking at putting the chapbook up for pre-order next week, with an eye toward a July 31 release date.

BAD ACTORS collects three previously published Liaden short stories that fell through the cracks in our reprint process, due in equal parts to differing availability dates (one story had an 18-month exclusivity period, the others had a year), and the publication of the various Liaden Universe® Constellations.  All three stories feature people who might have chosen better, and all three were commissioned.  No, I don't know why three different editors wanted stories that practically begged for Protags With Questionable Morals(tm).

The stories included are!  Excerpts from Two Lives, Dark Secrets, and Revolutionists.  As it happens, two of them were principally written by Steve, one by me.  So, you can have fun trying to decide which is which.  Possibly this could be made into a drinking game.  Or, yanno, not.

Watch this space, and other spaces where Things Liaden are discussed, for news.  Be sure that when pre-orders open, we will shout it from the highest buildings available.

While you're waiting, here's another look at the cover art.

We had a small but boisterous thunderstorm on the overnight, which knocked out the power just long enough to be irritating.

Today is, indeed, Anything Can Happen Day, and all I'm saying is -- it better.  Or, wait.  Maybe I mean EVERYTHING Can Happen.  I think that's closer.

The To-Do List includes:

*Reading Trader's Leap mass market proofs (which landed yesterday; correx due end of June)
*Renewing the Hummer Bars (three Hummer Bars. I think I'd better stop, now.)
*Do the laundry
*Continue work on contracted short story, working title "Gadreel's Folly" (mid-July target date)
*Continue work on novel (due end of June)
*The mandatory walk and exercise regime

I'd briefly considered going over to Winslow and stopping at the Spiro's Gyros food truck for lunch, but that might need to wait until, oh, tomorrow, when I have to visit the vampyres, anyway.

Yesterday, was Echocardiogram and EKG Day.  Now waiting for those results.  We also stopped at the grocery store and I had a haircut in the afternoon.  That was Interesting, though possibly not for the reason you may imagine.  In the space of those three events, I moved from an environment where everyone was masked, to an environment where employees were masked, and customers who had not been vaccinated were asked to be masked (and where one maskless guy tried to pick a fight with Steve about masks, but missed), to the the place where I get my hair cut which was packed and I was the only one wearing a mask*.

It's been Wicked Hot here in Central Maine over the last few days -- I think we cracked 100F/38C on Monday; yesterday was merely 88F/31; and today the weatherbeans are calling for a balmy 85F/29C.  I, myself, am living for Friday, when the high temp is predicted to be 66F/19C.

Presently, I have two coon cat supervisors, while Steve makes do with one.

And that's how the day's getting underway, here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory.

Y'all stay safe.

Today's blog title brought to you by the Mickey Mouse Club which was on network television around 1958/1959.  Here's your link.

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*Yes, yes, I'm still wearing a mask, even though I'm vaccinated and all.  Doctor's orders are to pretend I haven't been vaccinated and the masking orders have never been dropped. This is because I'm a cancer patient (aka a person whose immune system has been purposefully repressed) and there's some concern that the vaccine is not 100%, or even, yanno, 87% effective in that population.

So, I've been working along at my Proper Business, and will in theory finish a story in first draft this weekend, which will give me room to start another story, while I'm doing my pass through the novel chunks given to me by Steve.  Turns out that I can edit/expand pieces of a novel and write one short story on the side, but not more than one short story.  A Revelation.

I've been neglecting my embroidery for a couple days, because of the tendency of the Proper Business of writers to slop over into every other part of life, but last evening, I thought I'd have a Go at designing/practicing my embroidered signature.

In all, I had three Goes.  The first two were worked in three strands of blue thread; the second in yellow thread, name in one-strand, date in two-strands.  Yes, yes, I'm telling you this for a Reason.

For my First Go, I decided to see if I was an Undiscovered Artist of Thread and could sign my name freehand.  Spoiler:  I am no sort of artist at all, a revelation that surprises no one.

For my Second Go, I used the so-called "fabric pencil" I had purchased at JoAnn's to try to sign the fabric.  This was a Disappointment for several reasons, the most important being that the pencil dragged along the cloth and barely left a guideline at all.  Still, I Made the Attempt.  The result was Somewhat better than the freehand, and I was encouraged to think that, if I used not three strands,  which is standard embroidery sewing thickness, but one, I might get a more readable result.

For my Study in Yellow, I used a fountain pen to sign the fabric, which left a good sharp line for me to follow with my thread.  I signed my name with one strand, and it was readable, but I felt, too thin.  I worked the date with two strands, and I think I have found my Grail.

All of this doodling around with thread has, I fear, Inspired me.  I wish to create a sampler of my own.  To do this, I will need to practice my letters, but that's not much of a hardship, there being tutorials on the web.  What's going to be hard is getting my design on fabric so I can stitch over it.  I see people saying that you can transfer from PDF patterns onto cloth by using a sunny window (and a fabric pencil? errr...), but that really seems like a non-starter to me for what ought to be precision work.  I used to have a lightbox (yeah, no, not an artist -- I did layout), but it's gone the way of Things Long Ago.  I suppose I could buy a kid's "toy"  lightbox; they're cheap enough and ought to do the job.  OTOH, I'm already into this hobby for thread and needles and a sewing box, and I'll really need to eventually break down and get an iron, and Where Will It End, I ask you?

So, there's That.  And now the reason I went on and on endlessly about colors and thread and the Science of my approach.

Here are the Blue Attempts:

And here is the Yellow:

And, just for fun, here's the sampler I finished the other day:

Today's blog title is brought to you by The Crystals, "Then He Kissed Me."  This is one of those songs from the 1960s that I love, and which would probably be Deeply Disturbing if I first heard it today.  Culture moves on, I guess.  Anyhow, here's your link.

So, that was 2020.

Moving on. . .

Here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory on this snowy second day of January 2021, we're settling down to work.  The cats have taken up their work stations -- Trooper in the ustabe manuscript box on my desk, Sprite in the copilot's chair next to me; Steve's back in his office, Belle on lap.

Winter has officially arrived.  We expect to see about 7 inches of (thankfully fluffy) new snow on the ground today, then more snow Monday and Tuesday.  This will catch us up to the Proper Seasonal Look -- after a modest start, the weather had turned warm, a nor'easter dropped a couple inches of rain, instead of snow, and there was grass and mud and downed sticks for as far as the eye could see.  Snow is prettier, especially if you don't have to shovel it.

In and around Everything, I lost 20 pounds last year (per doctors' orders; the theory is that less thick people have a reduced chance of cancer recurrence).  I guess I ought to lose another 10, just to show the doctors that I'm in the game, but I really don't think I want to go any lower than 160 lbs/11 stone, and maybe not that low.

As previously mentioned, I'm working on an Archers Beach story.  I hope that today will reveal if it's a novel or something shorter.  If it's a novel, I'm about to be in hot water, but -- we'll see.

I did have a Bad Moment yesterday, when I discovered that I had thrown away my maps and other notes for the first three Carousel books, in a Fit of Despond.  I do try not to throw stuff away when I'm in the grips of a Fit, but it doesn't always work.  Happily, I did NOT throw out the year 2000 edition of the Arrow Street Atlas of 133 Maine Cities and Towns, including!  Old Orchard Beach.  Also the OOB Chamber of Commerce has one of those silly little promotional maps on the web, pinpointing the location of various "attractions."  Work!  can go forward with many less FIND THIS's in the text.  Also, in Balance for the Bad Moment, an Exhilarating One, when I found via the map that the street name I had pulled out of my head (at random) -- Burdette Street -- was actually the correct street, and yes, there was a small wood at the bottom of the street, where it intersects with Foote Street.

I have not forgotten about the Authors' Spoiler Discussion of Trader's Leap.  This will not be a daily thing, but I'm shooting for once a week.  In the meantime, if you have questions, you can ask them here.

Hope every one of you is having a reasonably pleasant day.

Stay safe.

Today's blog title brought to you by John Parr, "St. Elmo's Fire."

So, there's this Thing that happens when you start to get better after having been, oh, pretty sick from the flu, say.  You start to feel better, and you say, "Hey!  I'm better!"  and then a couple weeks later, you look back at that point and say to yourself, "Oh, boy, who was I kidding?  But, hey!  I'm really better now!"  And a couple weeks further along, you look back at that point, and shake your head, because, man, you didn't know what better even was -- and so on until you stop thinking about it and eventually, you're back to 100 percent, or whatever passes for 100 percent in your country, and life goes on.

That's kind of where I am, now. I'm definitely better than I was four weeks ago, on my radiation graduation day, and really better than three weeks ago, and noticeably better than even two weeks ago, but -- still not 100 percent.  Maybe 80 percent.  Maybe not that much.

One of the most frustrating parts of this continuing journey is the hitting a Wall of exhaustion, when, just five minutes earlier, I was feeling just fine.  Really, it's like 80 to zero in two heartbeats, and suddenly I'm tearing up because I can't remember how to hard boil eggs.  Disconcerting.  My particular Wall seems to manifest in the afternoon, anywhere from ten minutes to three hours after the midday meal, so, naturally I've been trying to cram all the Stuff I feel I need to do in the hours before the midday meal. Which may or may not be exacerbating the situation, but we play with the tiles we've drawn.

In any case, I am not back to a place where I can write fiction yet (argh), but I can do other writing related things, like read page proofs, which is what I've been doing, slowly, with the proofs for the mass market edition of Accepting the Lance, which has been its own small journey into surrealism.

It's not that I don't remember the story -- not exactly that.  I do remember the -- the hanger points, which is to say, the scenes that had to be there in order for the story to continue in a forwarder direction.  What I don't remember are things like Val Con having lunch with his daughter, or the Miri's meeting with the snow removal crew, or any other of a bunch of the small scenes that give the story depth and Truth.

So, I'm about 87 pages short of a complete read of the proofs, and hope to finish them tomorrow.  Then, I'll see what other trouble I can get into -- in a good way, as the journey toward normal continues.

Everybody be safe.

So, here we are in 2020.  I've been warned not to date checks with just /20, because some Bad People could just add, oh "19" to that and steal my check.  I'm sure that's good advice, but, really I hardly write checks anymore, and when I do, I always date them fully, to wit:  "January 4, 2020," because old habits die hard, if they die at all.

In related news, many-to-all (depending on your news source) of the credit unions in Maine are off-line as the result of mysterious "connectivity problem."  This is not as much fun as it may at first seem.

We here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory are clinging to our last few precious Not-Sundays.  There's writing to do and writing being done, as well as chores, of a sort, but it's all being done in a soft bubble, almost a "deadline free zone," which we all know there's no such thing, but -- it's been pleasant to pretend for a week or two.

Deadlines and doctors appointments return Monday morning, quite early, so we'll be getting back into the Daily Push realsoonnow.

My first-in task today is to clean the so-called Boy's Bathroom, and to steam clean the kitchen floor.  After that, there's the final sweep at the WIP.  After much banging my head against various metaphorical, logical, and fictional walls, I have figured out how to straighten the last kink in the last scene.  Go me.  The entire corrected manuscript ought, I think, be on its way to Madame by the end of the week, and then?  I won't have anything to do.  [Cue laugh track]

Looking ahead, Steve and I will be attending Boskone in mid-February, and!  We will be Guests of Honor at NarniaCon, aka the Coat Check Con.  NarniaCon hosts a scavenger hunt within Boskone entire; this year's hunt will be based on the game of Clue.

. . .and that's where we stand at the moment, still inside the bubble, with the cats napping inside, and the sky grey with snow clouds, outside.

Today's blog title brought to you by one of my hometown bands, Talking Heads:  And She Was.