handful_ofdust

I've got so many deadlines and I'm barely working towards any of them. Instead, what I'm doing in immersing myself in research and jump-starting the novel I'm currently least prepared to write, In Red Company, which requires me to figure out as much pseudo-historical detail as I can use to make writing something set in a time-period over a thousand years ago seem, at the very least, historically...likely. We're talking Anglo-Saxon Twilight here, almost a hundred years before the Norman Invasion of Britain, in the ass-end of what will eventually become Northumbria. The good part is that I can write it a lot like Lloyd Alexander/Prydain fanfic and probably get away with it. The bad part--well, more interesting than bad--is that it's actually SO historically distant that some of the cultural touchstones I reach for most easily simply don't exist yet. The "normal" idea of a witch, for example, isn't consolidated until the Inquisition/Malleus Maleficarum era; wicce hasn't really even become a term to damn someone with (let alone burn them), simply a term for someone who can mix drugs, create poisons, has land-knowledge and possibly might still worship the old gods. The idea of ghosts isn't fully formed; they're more physical, more like draugr. So I need to write out a very specific bunch of untranslated words to use, as well as translated terminology, and I definitely need to give people actual names instead of titles like "the anchoress" or "the ex-tribal queen" or "the sexy asshole bishop."

Otherwise, it's raining all the time and everything aches. Still very amused by Gregory of Tours, who I'm rifling for a style the sexy asshole bishop's clerk might use when writing in his diary, even if said diary is mainly kept inside his own head. I'm also going back and forth through my Tumblr queue for images to use, and I've found some pretty great stuff. I need to write this fast and not worry about it being beautiful; I can make it beautiful later on. I'm entirely capable of that.

I'm at least six episodes into Clarice now, and loving it more and more, especially when it lets her go hog-wild on people, losing that tightly watchful, dignified, singular version of control she usually holds so hard to. Much like Jodie Foster, Rebecca Breeds is a tiny little woman whose physical delicacy seems to come from want and drive rather than any sort of indulgence--she's what people in Gangs-era New York would've called a "skinball," someone frozen in place due to verge-of-starvation. Her hunger for advancement, the thing He Who Will Never Be Named In This TV Show aptly fingered as the thing everything else in her life revolves around, has its roots deep in her Appalachian background...and the interesting thing they've already had Ardelia Mapp not quite comment on is how it's not only a bootstrap bullshit This Is America pose/item of faith, but it also has a lot to do with Poor White Trash resentment, which in turn has a lot to do with some gross, well-hidden belief that if she only had the money/cred she could show how ready she was born to wield the sort of societal power which "ought to" come with her lack of melanin.

Up until now, they've bonded on the shared basis of being able to study/work harder than everyone around them and ace the tests because they know nothing's ever going to be handed to them. But from Ardelia's POV, things are already being handed to Clarice, things she hasn't even asked for or wanted to ask for. She's being put in positions where she will inevitably shine, which is a form of grooming granted her because she's a tiny, ultra-upright little skinball with a hard-edged accent and piercing eyes. And she can't deny it, and they both know it, which is why Ardelia doesn't ever want to be put in the position to demand she deny it. It's fascinating to watch. PLEASE, renew this: Please, please, please.

(I also keep having dreams in which Will Graham and Clarice meet, which is never going to happen, unless they somehow cobble two expys together for the new show. That's why I usually slot in Mapp as Hannibal's potential Clarice expy, though I guess that isn't going to happen now either.)

Otherwise, the dryer is fixed, we're keeping to smaller loads done more regularly, and tomorrow I have another interview where people are actually going to want to see me as well, which is unnerving. I know I'm heavier than I was, and I wasn't exactly small last March. Ah well: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

RELEVANT QUESTIONS

Why am I cursed?
Because we all are.
None of us free from guilt,
from sin. Soaked in it, still.
Soaking.

Was it something I did?
Not directly. Blood alone
carries the stain, with none of us
exempt.
Is there something I can do?
No. Gently, no.

Accept it. Your penance is lifelong.
Your guilt will not die with you.
Those you love will carry it on,
a secret weight. Take it up
like some black stone,
palm-shaped. Made to throw.

This is the way, always,
in all ways. Our fault inborn.
These sour places, pre-salted—
a world beyond the garden.
Shed snakeskin, birth-pangs
and grief, grief, grief.
The flood, unplugged at last
leaks from my whispering skull—
runs out, runs free. Taints the sad land
with ill-wishing's echo.

This wind through the chinks, moaning.
This open gate, door-latch forever broken.
Things bend under pressure, warp,
degrade, but never break.
For we are made to bear
whatever piles upon us.

Our purpose.
A last gift He gave us, in return
for learning (all uninstructed) to prefer
to make
our own choices.

The very best kind, of course. The challenge: I knew I had to think up a monster story, one worthy of the venue, then crap it out by the middle of March...and last night, I finally figured out the back-story that had kept me from advancing any further with a piece of otherwise very nice writing. It's a bit like what happened with "The Puppet Motel," where I ended up sticking a bunch of disparate sections of notes together to embellish and (hopefully) deepen an otherwise fairly obvious tale. At any rate, not bad, yo. And on to the deadline we go.

Otherwise, my couple of prospective days of re-set became more like a whole week, over which I was able to reduce <10,000 saved emails to >3,000. It was a weirdly emotional process, not least because I ended up flushing anything to do with ChiZine Publications, Sandra Kasturi and the Bellefire Club, our monthly writer's group get-together. Which is too bad, I guess, but--I can't keep that stuff anymore. I need to move on. I am moving on.

Other stuff I did includes finally printing out a bunch of things I've needed to sign and return to various people (some for over a year, but then again, the end of 2019 and the whole of 2020 DID basically suck), as well as not only organizing my To Do List but also actually striking some stuff off of it. More to come. It's a good way to start the week, just like a good way to start the day is with Cal coming into our bedroom, muttering something about not wanting to watch his iPad in the dark anymore, and carrying off the lamp I've been using to light the inside of my desk. He saw a problem and he solved it, logically. I love that guy.

All right, back to it.

FONTANELLE

The skull at birth,
blooming together in sections
like a bone flower,
closing only slowly
and by strict degrees

A five-lidded eye, skin-wrapped
A flower, negatively petalled

Things close over, scar
but it's not forever
Trauma's a zipper, twitching
back and forth, and back, and forth
and back
and forth

One last switch of the tail
and now all the other holes
in my head come open
like eyes, those secret places
where my skull
once knit

Those soft spots
where they all come back in,
like keys to keyholes—
all the stuff
that hurts
the very most

The skull is a heart,
unbeating
When it opens itself
all kinds of things get in
It's a wound, not a gift
It bleeds forever

long after
your own capacity
to feel it.

Accidentally found out the other day that for $1.99 you can, I shit you not, get a 40-ebook bundle of Marjorie Bowen stuff. It includes Black Magic, Julia Roseingrave, So Evil My Love and four other novels I haven't read (!!!), plus three collections of her supernatural stories. The link is here: https://www.amazon.ca/MARJORIE-BOWEN-Horror-Boxed-Set-ebook/dp/B07M5M6RDX/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=marjorie+bowen&qid=1613496293&sr=8-2 SO fucking worth your time, especially if you like female horror authors who should be well-known and aren't. (I also picked up The Viper of Milan for .99, her first book, which she wrote when she was fifteen and dedicated to her mother, the person whose "bohemian lifestyle" had bankrupted her family so thoroughly that it made Marjorie becoming a published author a complete necessity. I haven't read it since I was taking a year off of university and writing a stage adaptation of Black Magic that absolutely no one ever asked for; it's sort of Cesare Borgia fanfic, and it's awesome.)

At any rate: I owe a far longer post on various stuff, including the notes I made about Clarice's pilot. But I am still working on "Yellowback," it has to be in on Friday or maybe Sunday, and Cal has two classes in a row starting at 1:00 PM. Soooooooo.

I was feeling pretty good about this week until I realized today that Cal's distance learning added to his (and my) usual extracurriculars chops my time into roughly a hundred tiny shards, and Steve's bad habit of letting me sleep in if it seems like "[I] need it" isn't helping. So we're going to have to have a talk about that, I guess. Then again, it's not just him, either; Mom insists on us joining her on her walks more often than not, which can quickly transform an hour of me playing EA for Cal during a "P.E." class I can tell he finds superbly boring into that plus another hour of me feeding him/doing chores/reminding him he has a music lesson coming up plus said music lesson plus maybe me then bullying him into his outdoor clothes plus an hour of walking/talking outside in genuinely ass hair-crisping weather. The good part is we have Friday and Monday "off," one for a P.A. Day, the other for Family Day (as opposed to every other fucking day, ha ha). The bad part is, I can't see this changing anytime soon, which means I need to take control and ram "Yellowback" through by any means necessary.

Last night, Cal and I wrote and performed a song together. It was great, but I'm not exactly sure he totally got the mechanics (pick a song you like these days, find a line or two in it that express why you like it, spin off of those lines to improvise a repeatable verse, chorus, bridge pattern). He also didn't want to play it again for his teacher Brandon, but I'm not sure if that means he doesn't like it all that much or if it just means he wanted to sing stuff from They Might Be Giants' No instead. One way or the other, I'd like to think that he enjoyed it; I did. As always, hard to tell.

Meanwhile, That Guy's second impeachment trial starts today, and the defence arguments sound insane. As Sunny Moraine noted, one appears to be "impeaching him would be a popular move, so we shouldn't." Because democracy certainly doesn't involve doing what most voters want you to do, right? Jesus fucking Christ.

Okay, back to it.

"Yellowback" is finally shaking awake, after what's become the usual almost-a-week's worth of thinking/note-taking. 419 new words yesterday, about 300 thus far today...I refuse to count the big chunk of words I simply moved from one place to another as being part of today's count, even though it'd put me a lot closer to my stated goals. Especially since I now either need to go back and trim it down or possibly break it into a couple of smaller subsidiary sections. Ah Patternism, my blessing and my curse.

Otherwise: Listening to some more Colin Stetson soundtracks, driven by sax like the breath of God. I haven't been outside in maybe five days, mostly because my Mom effed up her knee by walking on snow and also is spending a lot of this week exploring the wonderful world of periodontal and endodontal dentistry. Cal may be fighting off a cold, which I desperately hope isn't true. I spent most of last night dreaming furiously, stuff inside of stuff inside of stuff, though I do recall at one point realizing I'd surfaced far enough to actually hear/see what the podcast I'd fallen asleep listening to was saying about the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the words running overtop my dream's action like a ticker-tape. That was worth making a note about, for future reference.

Steve and I are now almost caught up with five episodes each's worth of FBI and FBI: Most Wanted, two shows I enjoy but don't bother talking about, not least because enjoying narrative content about cops/federal agents is supposedly evil these days. (I'm also still watching Law & Order: SVU, mainly because I enjoy how overtly political it's gotten ever since Mariska Hargitay became the Big Lady On Production, and I find the young bisexual Iranian cop really hot; she looks like a female Adam Driver, but prettier than that sounds.) On FBI: Most Wanted, the main character is currently having to deal with watching his daughter bond with her grandfather, ie HIS father, with whom he has a contentious lack of relationship; he wants to warn her about not getting too close to him, but doesn't want to look like a spoilsport. (Said bad Dad is played by Terry O'Quinn, btw.) FBI, meanwhile, gives me a whole bunch of other dysfunctional found workfamily types, including giant Eqyptian Muslim heartthrob Zeeko Zaki, who I would gladly pay to watch yell "Really?!?" every time a perp breaks and runs on him, before tackling the person like a long distance linebacker. I have my types, and many of them are tall.:)

All right, back to it.

Powered through the most recent story last night, finishing it up around 3:00 AM, which is when I usually go to sleep (these days). Which makes three stories finished since the beginning of 2021, each in vague increments of two weeks (one week for thinking/planning/outlining, the next week for hammering down). I'm feeling good on one level, tired as hell on another--that sort of fatigue which is half hyper-awareness, an angry excitement, with a constant Jacques Brel-esque under-beat of: "Next...!" Like: Don't stop now, Gemma. Don't fuck around. Get it done, get it done, get it done.

In this case, the VERY next thing is a King in Yellow-informed story I've been sniffing around for three years now, always set in a time of plague but now handily reframed by COVID; I had it pegged at novella-size to begin with, but I think it needs to be shorter, faster, sharper, worse. The idea of everybody having to wear masks makes a lot of sense, given that a portion of them are immune to the general pandemic but also facially deformed, easy scapegoats for post-Trumpist Know-Nothings who purport to not believe in the pandemic but blame the facially-deformed for it anyhow. Previously I had the idea of there being a serial killer who preys on the facially-deformed, but I think I'm going to go full political and make it a local cop. Because why not.

(A subplot might even address the fact that the facially-deformed no longer read as white or [otherwise], though they also all read as pariahs. One step forward and another step back, or sideways, into a whole new world of Othering. Horror!)

The last time I did anything this overt, it was "This Is Not For You," and that turned out okay. So yes, let's go for it.

The count thus far: Two stories written, two stories accepted, and now I'm banging away on the third, which (all things beings equal) might possibly end up somewhere in Nightcrawling, the way "The Mermaid of the Concrete Ocean" ended up in Caitlin R. Kiernan's The Drowning Girl. Which will make the second time I've poached on her territory, I guess, but I really do consider TDG and The Red Tree two of the best templates for a fake memoir horror novel I've ever come across, so I don't feel too bad about that. Hopefully my voice is different enough that it speaks for itself (ha ha).

Anyhow, so. It blew fierce snow pretty much all day yesterday, and the results are still around, though the sky is bright. And today I have an interview at 2:00 PM, with Neil McRobert, for the Talking Scared podcast. In That Endlessness, Our End is almost out, which means I'm accepting as much stuff as comes my way in terms of promotional opportunity--interviews, essays, interaction with reviewers, etc. Again, back to "normal." It's good and it's not. I'm always balancing it with thinking about how much time doing various stuff takes me away from Cal, or from Mom (who's got a lot of bad stuff going on with her teeth that's thankfully caused her to step back from her duties at PAL, but still can't quite disassociate herself from all the duhRAMA produced by various older actor types under her former watch). Every day it's something, and the something is almost always emotionally trying in some way, which I feel unqualified to deal with at the best of times.

I'm back in stride now. I don't want to lose it. I need to work, to write. This is all pretty self-explanatory, but I absolutely need to keep reminding myself, because it's important, the same way I need to keep reminding myself that I should do my journalling here again rather than in the journal I've been carrying around with me IRL. The same way I need to remind myself to print out all those goddamn contracts and send them to people who owe me money so I can GET said money, as opposed to just sticking word next to word next to word.

But ah, the words are so pretty, and they're finally coming again, and I feel alive. I'm glad for that.