Category Archives: Process

Flying South

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IMG_0377Up at 4AM to take Carol to the airport for an early flight. She’s attending a workshop down in Florida, so I’m on my own—save for Da Boyz—for the next few days. On the way back I could see several large V-formations of Canada Geese heading south as well. I won’t be. The first real snow of the season is on its way tonight. I have my studded snow tires, my snow shovels, my salt. I’m as ready, I guess, as I’m going to be.

I’m still astonished at the number of crows that call the Mohawk Valley home. On the return drive I passed a flock that I swear stretched out at least half a mile. I’ve never seen so many crows in one place before in my life.

One casualty of the dead hard drive and missing backup is that the completed manuscript for Power’s Shadow is gone. Poof. Fortunately I do have the ebook edition, but this will delay the print book for quite a while. I’m behind on The Emperor in Shadow for obvious reasons, so it has to take priority for the next few months. I still hope to see a print edition of PS, but don’t ask me when because I have no earthly idea.

On the plus side, I’ve shifted enough boxes to reach the other wall of my new office, so that’s something like progress. I have plans for wall to wall bookshelves. A man can dream.

 

Questions

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Taking a break from painting, but can’t afford to be away from it for too long. One thing I’ve discovered about living in a valley in a more northerly latitude during wintertime is that daylight is a fleeting commodity. By about 3:30pm the light is pretty much gone, and when you’re painting floor and window trim especially, you kind of need it.

My office may be one of the last rooms we get sorted out. Too many others have priority. Which is fine—I have a functional workspace, so I can do what I need to do. I’ll just be doing it surrounded by boxes. Most of which I’d really like to get into. Especially my references, since The Emperor in Shadow sticks as closely to the historical timeline of actual events as I can manage. Working within a well-documented historical period is rather like writing sonnets—you are working with strictures on what you can and cannot do, and the trick is to be creative within those constraints. Indeed, I find that they work with me more than against. Sort of like, “Well, if this thing happened then, what was going on behind the scenes? What do we not know about it?”

Asking the right question at the right time is a hell of a lot better than knowing all the answers to the wrong questions. If writing doesn’t teach a person that much right off, they’re just not paying attention.

Camping With Electricity

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IMG_0402That’s the way a friend of mine described it–that in between time when you’ve arrived at your new place but the movers haven’t caught up. So we have lights and heat, thank goodness, but almost no furniture. Still living out of suitcases, eating off paper plates, and sleeping on an air mattress.

I’m typing this on a Linux laptop. It’s not my regular workstation, but the thing is, just right before the move, as in literally days before, my regular workstation decided to die, and unless I can mount a successful rescue, it took all my files with it. Backup? Of course. Problem is, I have apparently managed to lose it. I don’t know if it’s in one of the boxes on its way here or is gone forever. I do not know how I managed to do something so completely asinine as to lose a very important backup. To be fair, I actually have two, and I do know where one of them is. It’s just going to be more of a pain to restore, but it exists, so eventually everything should be back in place. My new computer is ordered and in transit. Assuming everything else arrives some time this year, maybe I can get myself back together. That would be nice, since I have a hell of a lot to do.

I hope we love it here, since I don’t plan to move ever again.

Dream Time

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Our Lady of 47 Ursae Majoris Uff, what a night. That combination of cold medicine and antihistamine sent me to a very strange place. I dreamed an entire series of stories, far future dystopian with some nasty day to day situations to get through and people barely recognizable as human, at least on an emotional level, yet recognizable enough. Not my usual thing at all. They were so vivid that at one point it was as if I was remembering that I had read them and trying to remember who the author was.

Then I realized that I had never read them before, or even heard of anything like them. So maybe I’m supposed to write them. If I can capture the tone of those dreams it’ll be worth it, yet they still have to wait their turn. After the book is done.

Reporting From Upstate

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IMG_0377Don’t you hate it when someone gives you the “I know something you don’t know. It’s really cool, but I can’t tell you.” That one? Well, this one is sort of like that one—I’ve seen the preliminary cover art (by Alegion) for The Emperor in Shadow. It’s pretty much done, but I can’t show it to you just yet, so you’ll have to take my word for it that it is indeed very cool, in my opinion the best cover on the series so far. And I’ve seen it and you can’t. Don’t you just hate that? Don’t you wish I’d just curl up and DIE? Or worse, send me to the Harmony Hut? Your call. I’ll be over here fretting about something else entirely. I got a million of ’em.

I’ve been sleeping on a thin quilted pad with a quilted quilt over me for the last two weeks as I’ve attempted to get the new house sorted before the move. I rather fancy the experience mimics that of the way the Heian (and a lot of other era) Japanese slept, with a roll up futon for a bed and their clothes or blankets as covers in however many layers the season required. It’s at once uncomfortable to someone used to a western-style bed and yet I sleep very well, to my own surprise. Almost too well, sometimes. Things to do.

A contact in Belgium has licensed non-exclusive French Language rights to translate “Cherry Blossoms on the River of Souls” into, yes, French. Looking forward to seeing it, even though I can’t read French. It’s just the idea. So far I’ve had stories translated into Russian, French, Chinese, and Japanese. Germany and the Latin and Nordic countries remain holdouts. If anyone in those countries would like to read anything of mine in their native language, bug your local publisher. They’re in charge of those things, not me.