Category Archives: Writing

Going, Going…I lied. Already Gone

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3rd Story CollectionTo the left is the cover of my third story collection, issued in 2010,  On the Banks of the River of Heaven, which is the title cut. Not only was it the third collection in ten years, but it was my first hardcover collection. As of a week or so ago, it’s out of print. If you look on Amazon it will say that it’s “Temporarily Out of Stock,” but this isn’t so. There may or may not be a few stragglers with the publisher and a few more with me, some in the used market, but basically it’s gone. We’ve talked about that whole thing where publishing short stories is like “throwing rose petals in the Grand Canyon and listening for the thud.” It was definitely true here. I can’t complain too much, as the book sold well enough to finish out its run, which is something a lot of print books never do, but in five years it never got a single Amazon review. Things like that tend to make a writer feel unwanted. Whereas on GoodReads it had sixteen ratings and a score of 4.5 out of 5.0, and anyone on GoodReads knows what a tough crowd they are. It is a good book, and I’m not going to let the fact that I wrote it stop me from saying that, but its time on the physical plane is over. It will live on, possibly forever, in ebook form.

I have to keep it short today because I’m on deadline. I’ve almost never been on deadline in my entire writing life, but there are firsts for everything. Time to get back to Yamada, and today promises to be interesting. I have the strong feeling that an Imperial Princess is just about to tear Lord Yamada a new one. Is it wrong of me to say that I think I’m going to enjoy this?

 

Almost Normal, For Outlying Values of Normal

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New Desk

New Desk

After over four months working off of a folding card table, I finally have a new desk. Carol found it online, a discontinued model for a ridiculously low price, and I only had to argue with the instructions once while I was putting it together. While it’s not my normal style–I have a style? Sort of. I lean more toward Mission and Arts & Crafts–I’m frankly not that picky when push comes to pen. Give me a good working surface with a bit of storage and I’m happy. Plus I managed almost 2000 words on my first writing session on the new equipment. I score that both a good omen and a solid win. Just don’t expect the desk to continue looking this neat. When it comes to my work space and library, I don’t do neat.

Now all I have to do is get the rest of the boxes in my new library sorted, which is going to lead to more painful decisions, but you can’t fight physics. I know the shelf space I want doesn’t fit the shelf space I have. More books will have to go into the attic. Granted, these are mostly books I want to keep even though I know I won’t be reading them again anytime soon. I just have to decide which ones those are. I’ve already had to pack up most of my brag shelf, which stroked my ego a bit because there were so many, but stung it a bit in that I just can’t keep them all out and visible. But then, I was the only one looking at them and I already knew what they looked like. Priorities.

I can see most of my floor now. Once the remaining boxes are dealt with and the guitars on their wall hangers, I can put down a rug. Nothing says “you’re home” quite like your own area rug. That pretty much declares “space of your own.” Little things, but they do matter.

As for the book, it’s coming along, and for those who care, here’s a heads-up.  Yamada Monogatari: The Emperor in Shadow, is going to be a much more political book–Heian politics, I hasten to point out–than The War God’s Son. I sort of knew that before I even started writing it, but my previous writing session rather emphasized the fact. Just saying.

History Lesson

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Library

Library

Believe it or not, that mess on the left actually represents progress. There hasn’t been a lot of that, at least in the library. I can see about a third of the bare floor now. I also know that, judging the remaining books with the remaining shelf space, the numbers just don’t work, and I can’t add more shelves…well, maybe one.

That’s for later. Part of the point of at least attempting to get organized is that I have a book to finish, a book set in a specific historical period and at a very important historical crisis point. In short, my references—and one specifically—were packed up, and I needed them. Not to get into many details, but there was a particular point in the story where Imperial and clan politics interacted in a very specific way, and in order to understand how that all fit into the narrative, I needed a specific book. That is, I thought I did. Until I was able to unpack said book.

Funny thing about that—what one person considers important, another just skims past. In other words, the book I was depending on was no help at all. I shouldn’t have been too surprised. What I was looking for was a fairly obscure series of events that happened over nine hundred years ago. Unless you happen to have a large university reference library at your disposal, you’re probably not going to find what you’re looking for. I don’t happen to have that. Nor do I have the shelf space to stock every reference I might possibly need, even if they did exist in translation, and usually the ebook edition in any language simply doesn’t exist.

What I do have is Google. I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, but online it took me maybe twenty minutes, tops, to track down what I was looking for, thanks to a Japanese site pulling from primary sources, with English translation provided. The internet does make some things more difficult with its constant distractions. But it also makes a lot of things possible. The information I needed simply wouldn’t have been available to me without it. Fortunately, I am not without it, so no problem.

Also no excuses. Funny how that works.

Whispering Pines

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WRITING 02

One thing I’m going to miss up here. Have you ever heard the expression, “Whispering Pines”? It’s a real thing. The wind makes a distinctive sound when it blows through a forest of Southern Longleaf Pines. Listen long enough and you’d swear they were talking. There are evergreens here, too. Maybe one day I’ll find a grove and try them out, but I don’t think it’s going to be the same.

Still adjusting to life in central New York. In some ways it’s a lot different. In others, not so much. For instance, “redneck” is apparently a lifestyle choice. Now, in a sense I’ve always known that. Wherever I’ve been in the country, I’ve run into them. Remember, I’m from Mississippi, where the dichotomy was much simpler—you either were, or you weren’t. And birth, education, economic level, etc. had almost nothing to do with it. Like the alleged Progressive/Conservative split, it had a lot more to do with how your brain was wired than any well-reasoned philosophical position. However, I had always thought that the particular manner in which it expressed itself in the South was, pardon the expression, our own saltire to bear. So imagine my surprise the first time I saw the Confederate Battle Flag proudly displayed on a local pickup truck.

I have to admit, my gut reaction was WTF???

I figured it must have been another transplant from my general area, shrugged, and went on my way. Then I saw it again. And again. One? Okay, sure. Two? Maybe. Three? Hmmm. I’m seeing a pattern here. Granted, there were not nearly as many around as I was used to, but it was throwing me for a loop that I saw any at all. After all, this is New York. I mean, aside from New England, could you get more Yankee? What could the Battle Flag possibly mean to the people here?

Where I come from, people have given lots of reasons for flying the flag. Other than the real one, I mean, but “Heritage” is the favorite these days. So? From that standpoint it really is my heritage. I own that. I respect the people who fought and died for a cause they believed in. The Cause itself? Not so much. Bigotry and fear convinced a bunch of poor whites to ignore their own best interests to protect the livelihood of a bunch of rich slave owners who, to be charitable, didn’t give a tinker’s damn about them. Looking at the current political situation, you start to see that not a lot has changed. So that whole “Heritage, not Racism” thing? Yeah. Gonna have to call bullshit on that.

Unless by “Heritage” you mean “Got Fooled Again.”

Time to Own It

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Snow-Jan-2014

I think I’ve known this for a long time, and I just didn’t want to admit it. After having it pointed out to me yet one more time, there’s no longer any denying it—when it comes to writing, my subconscious is a lot smarter than I am.

Not that there weren’t enough incidents before now. One example, in a story called “Four Horsemen, at Their Leisure,” (Tor.com April 2010) I was proceeding with a single notion—what happens to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse after the Apocalypse? Death, War, Famine, Pestilence…aren’t they out of a job? Just one of those odd musings that often turn into a story. Only, of course, that was just the idea, and an idea isn’t a story. What was the story? No (pardon the pun) idea. Then Death finds a living pine tree, in a place where absolutely nothing should be living. That was the story. Everything important, everything in the story that mattered, it all came from Death finding that one living thing. And I had absolutely no clue when I wrote the scene why Death should find a pine tree. There are a ton of other examples, but I won’t bore you with them. They all pretty much proceed from the same premise–The subconscious knew. I didn’t.

The incident that clarified this issue for me was something a little more recent—my hero has to travel from eastern Japan back to Heian-kyo (Kyoto) on a matter of some urgency. Only he isn’t going directly to Kyoto. First he’s going to travel a good distance out of his way further south to visit the Grand Shrine at Ise. Now, the Grand Shrine has been an extremely important spiritual site in Japan for hundreds of years before my hero’s time. It was not unusual for people then to be making pilgrimages there. Only my hero is not exactly religious, to put it mildly. He feels no compulsion to make a visit to the shrine to ask the gods’ favor for his coming trials. While he does believe in gods (he’s met a few) he’s not so sure about the idea of their favor. And yet he’s going to Ise. Why?

At the moment, I haven’t the vaguest idea, but that’s all right. To the extent that I have faith, that’s where it’s placed–I know my subconscious knows, and in due course, so will I.

And it’s gonna be good.