22 March 2003

I have "Sports and Wine" in my head. But if I put a Ben Folds album in, I'm afraid I'll brood. On the other hand, I may just brood anyway, and there are some pretty anti-broody songs on our Ben Folds albums as well as some broody ones.

But when I come upon articles like this one, it doesn't help the brooding. At all at all. Makes me want to throw stuff in the back of the car and just start driving east, because by the time we got through the Sierras, we'd know North Korea couldn't reach us with a nuke any more. I know that's melodramatic. Apocalyptic. But, well. I can't say it doesn't cross my mind.

I finished Anne Perry's The Face of a Stranger last night. Meh. The amnesia was more convenient to the author than it was difficult to the character, and I think if you're going to use amnesia, it needs to be the reverse. This is why my only story so far that features amnesia ("In the Gardens and the Graves," my Asimov Award story) has the reader knowing a good bit about the main character's past. Also the one that I'm working on slowly, "Erasing the Map," same deal. Amnesia annoys me when it's a method of creating a suspenseful (or slightly suspenseful, in this case) plot where none does/should exist. Also, pointlessly sympathetic and proto-feminist women characters vastly outnumbered any other kind. Which seems like cheating: if you're going to write in another era, you don't get to just use the mindsets of your own, and people don't get to be cool just for being chicks.

So -- not as bad as Tathea by a long shot, but I probably won't be seeking out more of Perry's novels. I started Mary Gentle's Golden Witchbreed last night. So far it reminds me a bit of the C.J. Cherryh series that starts with Foreigner, which is not a bad thing. I'm not very far into it yet. I also think that at this point, Golden Witchbreed looks like a poor title choice -- it's what kept me from reading Mary Gentle for lo these many moons, until The Architecture of Desire pulled me in. It looked like junior high fantasy to me. And so far, no. Not at all junior high, and so far SF.

I got into the whole new chapter I need to write for Dwarf's Blood Mead, sort of. I got a little bit into it. I got the transition into it written. I want Soldrun to be confused. I want the reader not to be confused. I may fail at both. But if I do, that's what first-readers are for! I'll bet I'll finish the edits within this week. Definitely within the next two weeks, unless I get deathly ill or some drastic accident occurs.

The only scene that I'm not sure I'm throwing into this kitchen sink draft but am still pondering is that with a volva, a seer woman. I'm not sure it'd further the plot (but it might, and it might further the character development...and I'm leaning towards writing it and letting the editbeings tell me to cut it out again, along with Odin). One problem is with the term volva. If I am lucky, my readers will think of it as almost a car. That's the best scenario. Otherwise they'll be anatomically educated, and one vowel won't make a lot of difference to them, and they'll giggle. Sigh. I don't know. Seer-woman sounds kind of clunky to me, and I've used skald and godi when those are the appropriate terms. What do you all think? When you were reading YAs, would this stuff have occurred to you? Would it have bothered you? (Even if "when you were reading YAs" is "yesterday." Maybe especially then.) In the meantime, onwards I scribble. I even have red ink in the Waterman. Well, sort of...it's a sort of dark red, dried-blood color, not the fresh-blood red that you usually see in red pens. And since the dwarf's blood mead is probably about that color, it seems appropriate.

Sarah suggested after my comment yesterday about turning the war on that if I was the one turning it off and on, could I please leave it off? She believed everyone would be happier that way. So I haven't turned it on this morning, but I think Mark did. But he's turned it off again. Fingers crossed.

As some of you know, I tend to do yoga with a tape. Sometimes I just do a freeform combination of whatever yoga stuff it occurs to me to do, but more often, I use the tape. That meant that yesterday I turned the TV on and got "WAR! [tape in] Namaste! [tape rewinding] WAR!" Surreal.

The people who made "Rush Hour" have made sure that I cannot get the War song ("What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!" -- that one) in my head in the voice of the original recording artist. No. Has to be Jackie Chan's voice. Great. At this point, I prefer "Sports and Wine," but I'm not sure my subconscious is going to give me a choice.

What do we make with limes? What do you make with limes? Mark brought home two freaky mutant limes from his freaky mutant workplace, and we can make Yucatan Chicken with one (although I'm not sure it calls for the whole thing), but I'm not really sure what to do with the other.

It is off to the shower with me, and then my plans involve cleaning the kitchen, working on DBM, reading Golden Witchbreed, and watching something or another -- probably the war, at least in part; possibly some "Trading Spaces" or "Children of Dune." I expect it will be a train wreck of a show. But we taped it anyway, just to see how awful it really is. Maybe more waryogawar. Maybe cooking with limes.

It actually is more exciting from in here, I assure you.