LOVE IN DARK SETTINGS ¶ Suspenseful historical fantasy, friendship fiction, and gay fiction ¶ By Dusk Peterson

Love in Dark Settings

• Reply to comments: The Lammies again

  2009 Nov 23

  Reply to this comment by lemursexbot (i.e. my apprentice):
  
  Well, I was being facetious about accosting innocent bystanders to make them read my manuscripts. But I do plan to accost a few of the not-so-innocent bystanders - i.e., authors who have written about islanders and watermen. And yes, I'll only beg them to read the scenes set outdoors, not the bedroom indoors scenes.
  
  Reply to this comment by dharma_slut:
  
  "The thing about the 'we're endangered you aren't' argument is that queers are endangered before they ever set pen to paper."
  
  But as I recall (I'm writing this offline, so I can't doublecheck), that wasn't the argument made by the LLF. My recollection is that their argument was that GLBT writers are threatened on the literary level. Specifically, they cited the Amazon episode. As several folks have pointed out, Amazon didn't go around checking the bios of the authors of GLBT books before they removed those books from their search engine. So in that particular episode, GLBT authors were no more threatened than straight authors were.
  
  Reply to this comment by yonmei:
  
  "I think this is a much better defense of your position than your initial angry posts were: I appreciate it."
  
  Well, I appreciate your being patient while I fumbled my way to coherency. :)

• Daily life: Counting my past wordage

  2009 Nov 23

  "My biggest writing mistake is that I can't leave well enough alone. Even after the manuscript has come back from the various proof-readers I use, inevitably, the urge to pick a scab overrules all logical sensibility."
  
  --C. Anne Gardner. Because, um, yeah.
  
  For newcomers: Background to my writing entries | Background to my mentoring entries | Background to my simplicity entries | Background to my home entries.
  
  How I reply to comments at this blog.
  
  
  *** 8 November 2009. Writing: Wordage and my Internet addiction (a look at the past).
  
  While skimming through my journals for entries on "Blood Brothers," I happened across an August 1980 entry that reported I'd written approximately 162,500 words in 1979.
  
  By comparison, I wrote 193,140 words last year. These days, I'm a full-time writer with a computer. In 1979, I was a full-time student who wrote stories by hand.
  
  The 1979 word count is impressive as heck. Coincidentally, last night I began doing the tedious but rewarding task of figuring out my wordage count for the 1995-2005 period (2006 being the year when I began keeping careful records of my daily wordage). This involves going back to the original drafts of my stories, checking the word count of each dated section, and recording the results separately.
  
  Five hours of work yielded me the wordage for 1997-2000. I don't have any firm conclusions yet about whether my writing has declined in recent years, for my golden years of fiction-writing were 1995-1996 and 2002-2003. But I can see quite clearly the path of my Internet addiction, as reflected in the wordage. See for yourself; these are the number of days during which I wrote in each month.
  
  o--o--o
  
  December 1996: 12 days.
  January 1997: 17 days.
  February 1997: 14 days.
  
  ( February 1997 is when my Internet addiction began.)
  
  March 1997: 0 days.
  April 1997: 1 day.
  May 1997: 0 days.
  June 1997: 0 days.
  July 1997: 0 days.
  August 1997: 0 days.
  September 1997: 0 days.
  October 1997: 0 days.
  November 1997: 0 days.
  December 1997: 1 day.
  
  January 1998: 1 day.
  February 1998: 0 days.
  March 1998: 0 days.
  April 1998: 5 days.
  May 1998: 1 day.
  June 1998: 0 days.
  July 1998: 0 days.
  August 1998: 0 days.
  September 1998: 3 days.
  October 1998: 1 day.
  November 1998: 0 days.
  December 1998: 0 days.
  
  January 1999: 1 day.
  February 1999: 0 days.
  March 1999: 1 days.
  April 1999: 6 days.
  May 1999: 1 day.
  June 1999: 0 days.
  July 1999: 0 days.
  August 1999: 9 days.
  
  (Beginning in August 1999, I evidently made an effort to pull myself away from the Internet.)
  
  September 1999: 2 days.
  October 1999: 6 days.
  November 1999: 14 days.
  December 1999: 3 days.
  
  (In December, I let myself be persuaded to become Co-Webmaster of a flame-ridden discussion board that required 24-hour supervision. The Webmaster promptly absconded, leaving me holding the baby.</i>)
  
  January 2000: 1 day.
  February 2000: 0 days.
  March 2000: 5 days.
  
  (Notice that I keep having higher wordage counts around this time of the year. That's because I was giving up the Internet for Lent. Or trying to.)
  
  April 2000: 0 days.
  May 2000: 2 days.
  June 2000: 0 days.
  July 2000: 0 days.
  August 2000: 9 days.
  
  (In August, I quit as Co-Webmaster of the discussion board.)
  
  September 2000: Wrote 1 day.
  
  (And promptly volunteered to be a moderator.)
  
  o--o--o
  
  That's the end of my fiction-writing for 2000. In January 2001, I became partially sighted, and in January 2002 I discovered the glories of online fiction, which gave my Internet addiction a new form for a while.
  
  Overall, I wrote 185,179 words between 1997 and 2000 - in other words, I wrote about as much in four years as I had written in 1979. But you know, the reason why I mentioned my previous year's word count in my August 1980 entry was because I also recorded my word count from January to August 1980.
  
  Nine thousand words. Me slacking off is nothing new.
  
  *** 11 November 2009. Writing: My ability to write descriptions.
  
  It's becoming increasingly clear that my inability to write descriptions is due to the fact that I simply haven't paid attention to my surroundings for forty-six years. It's also becoming increasingly clear that this is clogging the arteries of my fiction-writing.
  
  The two things that have made this clear is my visit to Hoopers Island and my visit to Riversdale Mansion (the latter of which I'll write about separately, next time). In both cases I came home and wrote scenes with relative ease. I say "relative" because, even in these cases where I was carefully scrutinizing my surroundings with the aim of writing about them, I found that I couldn't remember much about my surroundings afterwards.
  
  There's a game you play as a child (or you do you have a decent education - or, in my case, a decent public library): You scrutinize a picture, memorizing everything you see in it, and then try to remember what was in the scene. It's presented as a game to children, but it's really an exercise to check children's ability to see and remember.
  
  It's a game I find I'm returning to. I've been reading picture books for the last month - simply because their large print is the only type of print I can read at this time of year without hurting my eyes - and, while a lot of the illustrations are unmemorable, there are some that I found myself scrutinizing with great care. And the longer I scrutinized them, the more that I realized how little I see of a scene on first look . . . or second . . . or third . . . or tenth . . .
  
  I think continuing to scrutinize artwork closely will help improve my powers of observation. But I need to do more exercises along those lines, because it's my inability to be able to imagine the sensory aspects of a scene that makes it so difficult for me to write down the stories in my head.
  
  *** 11 November 2009. Simplicity: And the computer file purge continues.
  
  I was down to less than a gigabyte of space on my hard drive, so tonight I did what I should have done a while back: I did a Windows search on my hard drive for all files above 10 megabyte, then started with the biggest files and purged everything that I no longer needed (or never did need) or that was a duplicate of something I had elsewhere on my hard drive.
  
  I simply skimmed the list, and am only one-fifth of the way through it, but I've already cleared out a gigabyte and a half. The big problem really is with my research material for the 1960s/retrofuture portion of Prison City. A lot of that takes the form of videos or large images. All told, I have nearly six megabytes' worth of material awaiting me. And I can't view or delete any of that before next summer.
  
  I really need extra storage space for ephemeral research material. My apprentice has his eye out for a cheap DVD writer for me, but he hasn't turned up anything yet.
  
  In the meantime, this sort of purging is a good lesson in slimming down, even if it's frustrating that the files I least want to keep usually turn out to be 15 kilobytes in size, while the ones I most want to keep are half a gigabyte.
  
  *** 11 November 2009. Writing: More schoolboy fiction.
  
  I just finished reading "Fifth Form at St. Dominic's" (1887), by Talbot Baines Reed, whose sole crime, in the eyes of literary critics, seems to be that he was popular. As Frank Eyre dryly puts it, Reed brought school fiction "to a perfection of unreality that later writers could only copy."
  
  I found the novel entertaining. Its theme wasn't deep ("Don't cheat"), but the plot was fast-paced, and the characters all had distinct personalities.
  
  I was particularly taken with Pembury, the ironic editor of the fifth-form newspaper. Here he is, taking advantage of the ignorance of a new boy.
  
  o--o--o
  
  "Here, Tony," suddenly shouted Ricketts to Pembury, who was jogging along on his crutches a little way ahead, towards the school; "do you mind showing this kid the way up? I have to go back with Wren. There's a good fellow."
  
  "Well, that's cool," replied Master Pembury; "I'm not a kid-conductor! Come on, youngster; I suppose you haven't got a name, have you?"
  
  "Yes, Stephen Greenfield."
  
  "Oh, brother of our dear friend Oliver; I hope you'll turn out a better boy than him, he's a shocking character."
  
  Stephen looked concerned. "I'm sure he doesn't mean to do what's wrong," began he, apologetically.
  
  "That's just it, my boy. If he doesn't mean to do it, why on earth does he do it? I shall be sorry if he's expelled, very sorry. But come on; don't mind if I walk too fast," added he, hobbling along by Stephen's side.
  
  Stephen did not know what to think. If Ricketts had not addressed his companion as "Tony" he would have fancied he was one of the masters, he spoke with such an air of condescension. Stephen felt very uncomfortable, too, to hear what had been told him about Oliver. If he had not been told, he could not have believed his brother was anything but perfection.
  
  "I'm lame, you see," said Pembury, presently. "You are quite sure you see? Look at my left leg."
  
  "I see," said Stephen, blushing; "I--I hope it doesn't hurt."
  
  "Only when I wash my face. But never mind that[,] Vulcan was lame too, but then he never washed. You know who Vulcan was, of course?"
  
  "No, I don't think so," faltered Stephen, beginning to feel very uneasy and ignorant.
  
  "Not know Vulcan! My eye! where have you been brought up? Then of course you don't know anything about the Tenth Fiji War? No? I thought not. Dreadful! We shall have to see what you do know. Come on."
  
  Stephen entered Saint Dominic's thoroughly crestfallen, and fully convinced he was the most ignorant boy that ever entered a public school. The crowds of boys in the playground frightened him, and even the little boys inspired him with awe. They, at any rate, had heard of Vulcan, and knew about the Tenth Fiji War!
  
  o--o--o
  
  No more is said about Pembury's disability, though he's periodically depicted as walking lamely. It's a refreshing change from the sort of disability fiction I grew up on (and which, alas, still dominates), in which a character's disability is treated as the end-all of his existence.
  
  *** 12 November 2009. Writing: The advantages of being blind, word-count-wise.
  
  I just totted up my totals for 2001's wordage. Here's the totals for the months when I couldn't see print at all and (due to accompanying pain from my untreated dry eye) was largely bedridden.
  
  February 2001: 50,700 words written (average 4225/day). Wrote 12 days.
  March 2001: 46,320 words written (average 3563/day). Wrote 13 days.
  April 2001: 65,830 words written (average 4389/day). Wrote 15 days.
  
  Oh, man. It's almost enough to make me thrust pins in my eyes, a la Oedipus. (But not quite enough.)
  
  My total for 2001 was 223,680 words written, which is more than in any other year I've recorded so far - this despite the fact that I got back Internet usage in May 2001, and my wordage practically disappeared after that. (I wrote on twenty more days last year than in 2001, but my average word count per day was lower.)
  
  I still haven't calculated my wordage for what I've always considered my peak years: 1995, 1996, 2002, and 2003. I'll be interested to see how those years compare with 2001. At any rate, 2001 gives me a new record for words per day: 10,490 on April 8. I was working on Twenty Thousand Gold Stars that day.
  
  *** 17 November 2009. Writing: Switching over to editing The Three Lands; plus, W. Somerset Maugham.
  
  My Muse is continuing to throw me a crust or two from time, but at the moment, I'm devoting my primary energy to editing the three Three Lands novels that I'll be publishing next year. "Law Links" has to be readied for its beta readers, and I need to see whether "Law of Vengeance" and "Breached Boundaries" (which have been betaed already) need further betaing. I'd like to get all this done before I go online again.
  
  Today I read some of W. Somerset Maugham's "On Human Bondage" (1915), which is supposedly a fictionalized autobiography. The schoolboy section - which was my motive for reading the novel - was so-so: stylistically polished, but otherwise no better than many other schoolboy stories I've read from authors who are considered to be lesser in quality. Perhaps the novel - which is supposed to be a classic - gets better later on; I gave up (temporarily, at least) at Chapter 41. By that point in the novel, the protagonist had cold-shouldered every boy at his school, made his adoring foster mother cry, failed to give any thanks to the headmaster who encouraged him in his studies, and abandoned a woman he'd slept with. Everywhere he goes, he's dissatisfied with the place he finds himself in; methinketh that the places he visits aren't the real problem.
  
  *** 18 November 2009. Home: Fall leaves and gardening.
  
  Doug and I had a fight stirring debate over whether the leaves on our lawn should be raked this year.
  
  Dusk's position: We should leave all the leaves where they are in hopes that they kill our wretched lawn.
  
  Doug's position: We should treat the leaves exactly the way that all suburban leaves have been treated since prehistoric times. (Well, that's what his position sounded like to me.)
  
  Our uneasy compromise - which was reached by us getting too tired to argue any more - is that only the leaves in the east side yard will be left on the ground. The grass is already dying in that part of our property, and the east side yard is hemmed in on three sides by buildings and bushes.
  
  I've pledged to go out in fifty-degree-below-zero weather to rake the leaves back into place if the wind blows them away. (I suggested mulching the leaves with a lawnmower, but Doug is of the opinion that our lawnmower is too wimpy for such a job.)
  
  The weather is actually pleasant at the moment (what my Southern apprentice would describe as "cold": about sixty degrees), so I'm spending an hour a day raking elsewhere in the yard. I could use the exercise.
  
  I'll be interested to see what happens to the east side yard over the winter. I've never actually paid attention to what forests are like after a winter with leaves on the ground. I'm assuming that the moss - which is plentiful there, hurrah - will survive, and that the mushrooms there will continue to pop their little heads up. Also, I'm hoping that the evergreen sapling will survive. But what else will grow there after a leaf-protected winter?
  
  *** 20 November 2009. Home: Switching over to writing The Eternal Dungeon; plus, The Beta Reader Problem.
  
  I finished writing the lighthouse scene in "Master and Servant 3: Unmarked." It was horribly difficult to write and will require a major revision, but at least I've got that story out of the way. So far (I still have two and a half scenes to write), "Unmarked" is 61,000 words long - almost more of a novel than a novella. I'm calculating that the novel as a whole will be about 150,000 words long. Good thing that I didn't try to squeeze four novellas into that novel.
  
  I'm setting aside "Master and Servant" for now in favor of my holiday gift fic. First, though, I'm going to take my monthly visit online. That will allow me to get started on the holiday story right after Thanksgiving.
  
  Thanksgiving was when I started writing last year's holiday story. The 17,000-word novella took me a mere three days to write. Alas, I can't hope for that type of wordage this year; my Muse is being very sluggish. So I'm going to need to work on this year's novella every single day after Thanksgiving if I'm to finish it in time.
  
  Ordinarily, I'd wait till I had all of my currently edited stories ready for the beta readers before going online. But I've reached the exalted stage where I can send out e-mail without checking incoming mail. So I'll e-mail later the stories to be betaed. I'd rather get my trip to the Web out of the way now, so that I can tend fully to my Muse between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
  
  Meanwhile, it being fashionable to complain about The Servant Problem, I'm going to whine about The Beta Reader Problem.
  
  I don't have enough beta readers to edit my Three Lands novels for this year. I may manage to scrape by in finding enough beta readers for "Master and Servant," but only by sending out a plea for help to a beta reader I haven't used for years.
  
  In other words, I'm going to have to go on another hunt for beta readers, darn it. Finding good, reliable beta readers who can do more than proofread (you know who you are, and you know that I worship at your feet) is pretty much the worst literary problem I'm facing these days.
  
  (Really, it's times like this when the M/s world looks so attractive. Just show me to the part of the M/s world where the beta reader slaves hang out.)

• Daily life: Trying to figure out ways to improve my wordage

  2009 Nov 23

  "Look, I do know this: stories matter.
  
  "Sometimes they come to me in the middle of the night, I wake up and I know there was once a person with a name, a history, a life -- and sometimes they died a hundred years ago and sometimes they haven't been born yet, but they're so real, they're right there, like I can touch them. I write them, when I can, and grieve them often, in ways I've learned to be smart enough not to talk about.
  
  "At times that bothers me, the silence I feel obligated to that comes with storytelling. It bothers me when I write, which is one manner of inhabiting a character, and it bothers me when I act, which is another. But I've learned to live with it because stories, and the people they are about, are, in the telling, more important than me.
  
  "I'm just a translator, a medium, a canvass and a liar. Their stories matter so much that in the telling of them, all I can wish is to disappear.
  
  "And I love them so much, the people I tell into being.
  
  "Which means that when it comes to the business of awards my gut says, honor them. Not me. Not writers. Characters. Stories. Honor them."
  
  --RM
  
  For newcomers: Background to my writing entries | Background to my mentoring entries | Background to my simplicity entries | Background to my home entries.
  
  How I reply to comments at this blog.
  
  
  *** 26 October 2009. Writing: Man, oh, man, I'm offline for a month, and the entire e-publishing world changes.
  
  Here's the latest news that I picked up while I was online. (Well, it'll be outdated by the time you read this, but maybe some of you haven't heard yet.)
  
  * Barnes & Noble brought out its new e-reader, the Nook. Amazon promptly dropped the price on the Kindle. Bunches of other e-readers are coming out too, causing some commentators to call 2010 the year of the e-reader. Personally, I won't be impressed till someone brings out a good, inexpensive, tablet-sized, LCD-screen e-reader that doesn't require me to coordinate downloading through proprietary software (you listening, Apple?).
  
  * Sony Reader is now selling Smashwords ePub e-books - i.e. self-published e-books. Smashwords is already making its ePub e-books available to the Stanza app for iPod. Alas, Smashwords has horrendously complicated formatting requirements for self-publishers.
  
  * Google has unveiled the plans for its long-awaited online bookstore. The evil little secret none of the commentators are talking about: This is yet another proposal to sell e-books that the customer won't actually own. But there do seem to be some positive sides to the proposal.
  
  * The Internet Archive announced that it has added the ePub format, added the DAISY format (a format used by the blind), made all its books available to the One Laptop Per Child project, and will be starting a new project, BookServer, to help people find any book ever published.
  
  * And in case you missed the news earlier, Google Books is in the process of making its public domain e-books available in the ePub format.
  
  So, exciting days for readers of e-books, but I'm still not excited as a self-publisher of e-books. Hopeful, yes, but I haven't read any news yet that makes me say, "This is how I'll be able to make money."
  
  *** 26 October 2009. Simplicity and Writing: My time online; plus, the Prison City stuff I found.
  
  Spent eight hours online today. I'm pleased. I'd been hoping that I'd be able to keep my Internet usage under ten hours a month over the winter, and that's what I did this month. I got nearly all of the tasks on my Web tasks list checked off, and I managed to spend only one day on the Web.
  
  Tomorrow I read through the stuff I downloaded, then I take a day off for simplicity re-orientation, and then I get back to work. Probably on editing, as my Muse will have wandered away in the meantime.
  
  While online, I found some nice images of locations I'm writing about, including a Flickr photo taken from atop the Calvert Cliffs. (I'm not going to ask how the photographer managed that.) I found an e-text of the tide tables for 1912, and if I failed to find the weather reports for 1912, it wasn't for want of trying. I'll have to make do with the 1910 report. I found some photos and layouts of old Calvert County houses at the Historical American Building Survey (one of the New Deal projects that's been posted at the Library of Congress site). And I found a 147-page PDF file published by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Services that maps the historical locations of oyster beds in the Chesapeake region. (Do you remember me mentioning that I love U.S. government freebies? I forgot to mention that I also love state government freebies.)
  
  *** 26 October 2009. Writing: For your amusement, the Nautical Telegraph Code.
  
  Online, I found someone's HTML edition of a 1920 book providing a nautical telegraph code. Each word of the code represents a sentence or sentences. Here are some samples from the translation of the code:
  
  o--o--o
  
  Queer! You have not had my letters. I posted to you a month ago.
  
  I did not mean what I said in my last letter.
  
  Come at once; be silent; owners need not know unless I tell them later.
  
  Experienced a terrible cyclone. Crew and ship behaved well. Am all right.
  
  Seas washed out my cabin. All clothing spoilt.
  
  Have changed doctor, who gives better hope.
  
  What shall I name baby? Please wire.
  
  Don't you think -- would be a good name?
  
  Glad beyond measure to hear the news; accept my kindest love, dearest.
  
  It is impossible to describe in a wire how I feel. Rest assured that I am thinking of you and your future happiness. Will write to you (or see you) as quickly as possible. I am very anxious.
  
  -- is engaged to --. What do you think?
  
  Will you agree to marry me upon my return?
  
  Verdict, temporary insanity.
  
  I should be glad of your assistance. I am left penniless.
  
  You must send me money to go on my holidays.
  
  I have stretched a point this time, but it will be quite useless for you to make further demands.
  
  Crew imprisoned.
  
  Do you think -- is to be trusted?
  
  Sorry to say ship caught fire last night; slight damage.
  
  Sorry to say ship caught fire last night; serious damage.
  
  Fire increasing; shall have to scuttle ship.
  
  I am detained here by authorities under protest.
  
  Please send me some underclothing.
  
  Who is going to pay for these things?
  
  Whatever the reports may be in the press do not be unduly alarmed. I am quite safe and sound. It may be some time before a letter reaches you, but there is nothing to worry about. It is quite possible an inquiry may be held here, in which case delay is unavoidable. Please do not take any notice of any alarming report you may read about in the newspaper. Will tell you all about it when I see you.
  
  Am in trouble; will you see that I am represented by your solicitor?
  
  o--o--o
  
  Why is it that my general reaction to the coded messages is to be very, very glad I wasn't travelling by water in 1920?
  
  *** 27 October 2009. Writing: The Lambda Literary Awards discussions in the blogosphere.
  
  Spent much of the day reading offline a few of the posts linked from elfwrack's awesome Lambda Literary Awards roundup. Some of the comments I read were darkly amusing. (Apparently, any of us GLBT folk who disagree with the Lamda Literary Foundation's decision are "self-hating token queers.") And there were lots of intelligent, well-worded statements being made on both sides of the debate over the change of rules for the Lambda Literary Awards. (Here is my favorite of the opposing posts, and here - except for the final sentence - is my favorite of the supporting posts. Also, here's an interesting comment by the founder of the Lammies. And here is one totally cool post about the invisibility of bisexual characters. Oh, and I loved this comment by Victor J. Banis, whom I hadn't encountered before, but who apparently is pre-Stonewall and has the scars to prove it: "I'd make a guess that 80% of the people who write to tell me how much they've enjoyed my Deadly Mysteries are women. Good on you, girls. Fetishize me all you want. I'm yours.") So I enjoyed reading a goodly number of the posts that were written from either the pro or the con perspective.
  
  Overall, though, my overwhelming reaction is one of thanks to you folks who post comments here.
  
  Thank you for being polite. Thank you for expressing your disagreements with me and with each other in a civilized manner. There aren't enough people like you in the world.
  
  *** 27 October 2009. Simplicity: Getting back on track.
  
  Okay, so maybe downloading several dozen Lammie-related posts - in addition to pages from Wired, TeleRead, and the Southern Review of Books - wasn't a great idea. It's taken me sixteen hours to finish reading everything I downloaded yesterday.
  
  Something to know for next time. But now I've finished reading all my nonfiction downloads (well, except for that lengthy Lammies thread from Dear Author), so I can devote tomorrow to simplicity-related activities. (Um, actually today. It's six a.m.) Then, on Wednesday, I can start reading the online fiction I downloaded, as well as the research material.
  
  And at the same time I really need to get more editing work done, because I'm looking at my schedule for the winter and am realizing that I have five months left in which to (1) finish, get betaed, and do the final editing of all the fiction I'm publishing next spring, (2) create any needed covers, (3) create any needed story announcements, and (4) lay out all those stories.
  
  So yes, I'd better edit now the stories that are already finished. I don't want to be doing anything in the spring other than publishing my e-book(s), beginning to post my online fiction, and taking research/leisure trips, because I want to devote the rest of my time in the spring to getting my first print novel published. If I could get two or even three paperbacks out next year, that would be fabulous.
  
  Assuming my eyes are cooperative. They were very cooperative last spring, but they vary from year to year, depending on the seasonal weather.
  
  *** 28 October 2009. Writing: Squee! My name was mentioned at Yule Treasure!
  
  Parhelion told me tonight that my name turned up at Yuletide Treasure. Yuletide Treasure, for those of you who don't know, is an annual gift exchange of fan fiction from rare fandoms (i.e. books/shows/movies that don't attract a lot of fan fiction). Apparently, somebody requested that a fanfic story be written about The Eternal Dungeon. (*Glows.*)
  
  Parhelion said that Remy's name was also mentioned, and that Manna was mentioned last year. It's an interesting indication of how original slash is developing as its own genre.
  
  [Later: Somebody sent me a list of the other m/m and gayfic writers listed at Yuletide Treasure. Man, listen to the list: Ally Blue, Ginn Hale, James Buchanan, Jordan Castillo Price, Josh Lanyon, Laura Antoniou, Patrick Califia, Sean Kennedy, and Syd McGinley.]
  
  So then I mentioned that the print publishing industry seems to be spiralling downward (it's a matter of some financial concern to me, as someone whose sole source of income is self-published writings), and Parhelion predicted that even e-published fiction writers won't be able to make more than peanuts in the future, and that authors will be hedged in contentwise by the requirements placed upon them by publishers, unless the authors became self-publishers, in which case they'd make even less money. . . . At that point, I asked Parhelion to change the subject. It was either that, or go find a gun to shoot myself with.
  
  *** 29 October 2009. Home: What happens in today's society when you aren't geek central.
  
  A telephone conversation between me and a customer service rep who is sorting out my dental health plan.
  
  Her: "So I need you to print out the application--"
  
  Me: "I don't own a printer."
  
  Her: (Silence.)
  
  Me: "I can print it out at the library."
  
  Her: "Um . . . Okay. So then I need you to fax me the application--"
  
  Me: "I don't own a fax machine."
  
  Her: (Silence.)
  
  Me: (Refuses to break silence.)
  
  Her: "What about at work?"
  
  Me: "I'm self-employed."
  
  Her: (Silence.)
  
  Me (taking pity on her and showing that I'm not so ungeeky after all): "I can scan the signed application and turn it into a PDF file that I'll e-mail you."
  
  Her: "You can . . . what? What was that you suggested again?" (Begins taking notes to update her own geekiness.)
  
  *** 31 October 2009. Reading: Recommendation of Rudyard Kipling's Stalky & Co.
  
  Rudyard Kipling: Stalky & Co. Three schoolboys wage war against their schoolmasters. ¶ Male friendship fiction, class/rank themes, historical fiction (Victorian Era), military fiction, school fiction. ¶ Fiction books and online fiction. ¶ On-screen violence. ¶ Archive of my reviews.
  
  

  [House master] Prout expounded to Beetle the enormity of money-lending, which, like everything except compulsory cricket, corrupted houses and destroyed good feeling among boys, made youth cold and calculating, and opened the door to all evil.

  
  
  To hear some literary historians talk, one would think that subversive schoolboy literature was invented in the 1910s. That was the decade when a flood of solemn treatises issued forth which "revealed" to the British public that not all good schoolboys are noble, honest, friendly to schoolmasters, enthusiastic players of school sports, and admirably qualified to become prefects.
  
  One can only conclude that these historians of school fiction have never read Rudyard Kipling's Stalky & Co. (1899).
  
  o--o--o
  
  "Well, you know, that little beast Manders minor saw Beetle and me hammerin' McTurk's trunk open in the dormitory when we took his watch last month. Of course Manders sneaked to Mason [a house master], and Mason solemnly took it up as a case of theft, to get even with us about the rats [the boys put in Mason's room]."
  
  "That just put Mason into our giddy hands," said McTurk, blandly. "We were nice to him, because he was a new master and wanted to win the confidence of the boys. 'Pity he draws inferences, though. Stalky went to his study and pretended to blub, and told Mason he'd lead a new life if Mason would let him off this time, but Mason wouldn't. 'Said it was his duty to report him to the Head."
  
  "Vindictive swine!" said Beetle. "It was all those rats! Then I blubbed, too, and Stalky confessed that he'd been a thief in regular practice for six years, ever since he came to the school; and that I'd taught him--a la Fagin. Mason turned white with joy. He thought he had us on toast."
  
  "Gorgeous! Gorgeous!" said Dick Four. "We never heard of this."
  
  "'Course not. Mason kept it jolly quiet. He wrote down all our statements on impot-paper. There wasn't anything he wouldn't believe," said Stalky.
  
  "And handed it all up to the Head [Master], with an extempore prayer. It took about forty pages," said Beetle. "I helped him a lot."
  
  "And then, you crazy idiots?" said Abanazar.
  
  "Oh, we were sent for; and Stalky asked to have the 'depositions' read out, and the Head knocked him spinning into a waste-paper basket. Then he gave us eight cuts apiece--welters--for--for--takin' unheard-of liberties with a new master. I saw his shoulders shaking when we went out. Do you know," said Beetle, pensively, "that Mason can't look at us now in second lesson without blushing? We three stare at him sometimes till he regularly trickles. He's an awfully sensitive beast."
  
  o--o--o
  
  In a book that is now on primary-school reading lists (apparently, schoolteachers aren't reading the books they recommend to their pupils), Kipling presents to the world a supremely subersive trio: Stalky, the type of self-contained boy who smiles at you as he plots your destruction. McTurk, an Irish aristocrat for whom bad aestheticism is the worst crime. And, refreshingly, Beetle, a bespectacled poet. (His glasses are mended. As Kipling puts it, from his own experience, "The life of a poet at a big school is hard.") Their deadly combination wreaks havoc on any schoolmaster unwise enough to set himself in opposition to them.
  
  o--o--o
  
  "Not the least good having a row with a master unless you can make an ass of him," said Stalky, extended at ease on the hearth-rug. ". . . Now, my dearly beloved 'earers"--Stalky curled his legs under him and addressed the company--"we've got that strong', perseverin' man King [a house master] on our hands. He went miles out of his way to provoke a conflict." (Here Stalky snapped down the black silk domino and assumed the air of a judge.) "He has oppressed Beetle, McTurk, and me, privatim et seriatim, one by one, as he could catch us. But now, he has insulted Number Five [the study group made up of the three boys] up in the music-room, and in the presence of these--these ossifers of the Ninety-third, wot look like hairdressers. Binjimin, we must make him cry 'Capivi!'"
  
  Stalky's reading did not include Browning or Ruskin.
  
  "And, besides," said McTurk, "he's a Philistine, a basket-hanger. He wears a tartan tie. Ruskin says that any man who wears a tartan tie will, without doubt, be damned everlastingly."
  
  "Bravo, McTurk," said Tertius; "I thought he was only a beast."
  
  "He's that, too, of course, but he's worse. He has a china basket with blue ribbons and a pink kitten on it, hung up in his window to grow musk in. You know when I got all that old oak carvin' out of Bideford Church, when they were restoring it (Ruskin says that any man who'll restore a church is an unmitigated sweep), and stuck it up here with glue? Well, King came in and wanted to know whether we'd done it with a fret-saw! Yah! He is the King of basket-hangers!"
  
  Down went McTurk's inky thumb over an imaginary arena full of bleeding Kings. "Placete, child of a generous race!" he cried to Beetle.
  
  "Well," began Beetle, doubtfully, "he comes from Balliol, but I'm going to give the beast a chance. . . ."
  
  The company [students who were rehearsing a pantomime with the three boys] retreated to their own neat and spacious study with expectant souls.
  
  "When Stalky blows out his nostrils like a horse," said Aladdin to the Emperor of China, "he's on the war-path. 'Wonder what King will get."
  
  "Beans," said the Emperor. "Number Five generally pays in full."
  
  "Wonder if I ought to take any notice of it officially," said Abanazar, who had just remembered he was a prefect.
  
  o--o--o
  
  There is a dark streak of righteous cruelty to the boys of Number Five that comes through most clearly in the chapter entitled (unfortunately) "The Moral Reformers." This is, after all, a Kipling novel: right is achieved through might. But a childish sweetness also underlies the boys' pranks, as can be seen in this oblique reference to public-school sexuality.
  
  o--o--o
  
  "But do you never feel that the world--the [masters'] Common-room--is too much with you sometimes?"
  
  "Not exactly--in summer, anyhow." Stalky's eye roved contentedly to the window. "Our bounds are pretty big, too, and they leave us to ourselves a good deal."
  
  "For example, here am I sitting in your study, very much in your way, eh?"
  
  "Indeed you aren't, Padre. Sit down. Don't go, sir. You know we're glad whenever you come."
  
  There was no doubting the sincerity of the voices. The Reverend John flushed a little with pleasure and refilled his briar.
  
  "And we generally know where the Common-room are," said Beetle triumphantly. "Didn't you come through our lower dormitories last night after ten, sir?"
  
  "I went to smoke a pipe with your house-master. No, I didn't give him any impressions. I took a short cut through your dormitories."
  
  "I sniffed a whiff of 'baccy, this mornin'. Yours is stronger than Mr. Prout's. I knew," said Beetle, wagging his head.
  
  "Good heavens!" said the Reverend John absently. It was some years before Beetle perceived that this was rather a tribute to innocence than observation. The long, light, blindless dormitories, devoid of inner doors, were crossed at all hours of the night by masters visiting one another; for bachelors sit up later than married folk. Beetle had never dreamed that there might be a purpose in this steady policing.
  
  o--o--o
  
  The final chapters of this comic novel take an interesting turn - just how interesting is clear from this passage, in which the school's students are deciding whether they want to join the school's newly formed cadet-corps.
  
  o--o--o
  
  "Hullo," said Ansell of Macrea's, shouldering through the mob. "What's all this about a giddy cadet-corps?" . . .
  
  "Don't know whether I've the time," said Perowne. "I've got no end of extra-tu [extra tutoring] as it is."
  
  "Well, call this extra-tu," said Ansell. "'Twon't take us long to mug up the drill."
  
  "Oh, that's right enough, but what about marchin' in public?" said Hogan, not foreseeing that three years later he should die in the Burmese sun-light outside Minhla Fort.
  
  o--o--o
  
  *** 31 October 2009. Writing: Monthly totals.
  
  I wrote 26,610 words this month, which was less than half of what I wrote at the beginning of last year's composition season. Very disappointing. And it's not as though I wasn't trying my darnedest.
  
  Looking at the hourly figures for tasks, I see that part of the problem is that I spent too little time on reading fiction and much too much time on upkeep. A lot of the upkeep was health issues; I've had two health problems and one dental insurance problem turn up in the space of just over a week. But I spent too much time on correspondence and reading downloaded articles this month.
  
  My Muse is home; I wrote for over three hours straight before breakfast yesterday, for a total of 5800 words. Alas, one of those health problems is making it nearly impossible for me to sleep. No sleep, no further wordage. I'm hoping that I can get the health problem fixed tomorrow.
  
  In light of my poor wordage this month, it looks to me as though I'm going to have to revise my schedule to allow myself to read and write more fiction in the spring and summer. Fortunately, I'd been heading in that direction already.
  
  *** 2 November 2009. Writing: My Muse moveth.
  
  My Muse has been showing signs of life recently.
  
  5770 words on October 30. Before breakfast. "Breakfast" was at six p.m., or I would have written more.
  
  5750 words yesterday. Again, before breakfast. Then another 2260 words in the evening, for a total of 8010, which ties my third-highest score for daily wordage since 2004. (I didn't keep score before then.)
  
  Mind you, all of that wordage was for the wrong story; my Muse had decided to leap ahead to the fourth volume of Prison City. "I think I should give myself a deadline for the fourth volume so that my Muse will be perverse and work on the first volume," I told my apprentice mournfully. But today I managed to corral my Muse into working on one of the missing scenes in "Master and Servant 3: Unmarked."
  
  *** 3 November 2009. Writing: My Muse really moveth; plus, Rosemary Sutcliff and P. G. Wodehouse.
  
  I've managed to do a quarter of November's wordage in the first three days of November - and this despite a doctor's appointment yesterday.
  
  Not that this streak will last forever. But I'm enjoying it while I can.
  
  I finished reading Rosemary Sutcliff's Bonnie Dundee, which revealed (among other things) that Scottish Highlanders stripped naked for battle in the seventeenth century. Jeez Louise. I'm still reading P.G. Wodehouse's Mike and Psmith (1909), which isn't as funny as Stalky & Co., but which has its moments, to wit:
  
  o--o--o
  
  Mike unlocked the door, and flung it open. Framed in the entrance was a smallish, freckled boy, wearing a pork-pie hat and carrying a bag. On his face was an expression of mingled wrath and astonishment.
  
  Psmith rose courteously from his chair, and moved forward with slow stateliness to do the honors.
  
  "What the dickens," inquired the newcomer, "are you doing here?"
  
  "We were having a little tea," said Psmith, "to restore our tissues after our journey. Come in and join us. We keep open house, we Psmiths. Let me introduce you to Comrade Jackson. A stout fellow. Homely in appearance, perhaps, but one of us. I am Psmith. Your own name will doubtless come up in the course of general chitchat over the teacups."
  
  "My name's Spiller, and this is my study."
  
  Psmith leaned against the mantelpiece, put up his eyeglass, and harangued Spiller in a philosophical vein.
  
  "Of all sad words of tongue or pen," said he, "the saddest are these: 'It might have been.' Too late! That is the bitter cry. If you had torn yourself from the bosom of the Spiller family by an earlier train, all might have been well. But no. Your father held your hand and said huskily, 'Edwin, don't leave us!' Your mother clung to you weeping, and said, 'Edwin, stay!' Your sisters--"
  
  "I want to know what--"
  
  "Your sisters froze on to your knees like little octopuses (or octopi), and screamed, 'Don't go, Edwin!' And so," said Psmith, deeply affected by his recital, "you stayed on till the later train; and, on arrival, you find strange faces in the familiar room, a people that know not Spiller." Psmith went to the table, and cheered himself with a sip of tea. Spiller's sad case had moved him greatly.
  
  The victim of Fate seemed in no way consoled. . . . "It's beastly cheek," [Spiller said]. "You can't go about the place bagging studies."
  
  "But we do," said Psmith. "In this life, Comrade Spiller, we must be prepared for every emergency. We must distinguish between the unusual and the impossible. It is unusual for people to go about the place bagging studies, so you have rashly ordered your life on the assumption that it is impossible. Error! Ah, Spiller, Spiller, let this be a lesson to you."
  
  "Look here, I tell you what it--"
  
  "I was in a car with a man once. I said to him: 'What would happen if you trod on that pedal thing instead of that other pedal thing?' He said, 'I couldn't. One's the foot brake, and the other's the accelerator.' 'But suppose you did?' I said. 'I wouldn't,' he said. 'Now we'll let her rip.' So he stamped on the accelerator. Only it turned out to be the foot brake after all, and we stopped dead, and skidded into a ditch. The advice I give to every young man starting life is: 'Never confuse the unusual and the impossible.' Take the present case. If you had only realized the possibility of somebody someday collaring your study, you might have thought out dozens of sound schemes for dealing with the matter. As it is, you are unprepared. The thing comes on you as a surprise. The cry goes round: 'Spiller has been taken unawares. He cannot cope with the situation.'"
  
  "Can't I! I'll--"
  
  "What are you going to do about it?" said Mike.
  
  "All I know is, I'm going to have it. It was Simpson's last term, and Simpson's left, and I'm next on the house list, so, of course, it's my study."
  
  "But what steps," said Psmith, "are you going to take? Spiller, the man of Logic, we know. But what of Spiller, the Man of Action? . . ."
  
  o--o--o
  
  And so on and so forth. Psmith is what makes this otherwise middling novel worth reading, so I'm glad to see that Wodehouse wrote other novels about him.
  
  *** 4 November 2009. Writing: My Muse slows down a bit; plus, turn-of-the-century romantic friendship fiction.
  
  Despite the slow-down, I finished today one of the scenes in Law Links that needed finishing. So now I only have half of a scene left in that novel. Half of a long, complicated conversation scene. No wonder my Muse is shying away from jumping over that particular hurdle.
  
  I've begun reading Horace Annesley Vachell's The Hill: A Romance of Friendship (1905), which, as its title suggests, is notorious famous for its portrayal of schoolboys' romantic friendships. So far (two chapters in) the novel has a boring plot, mediocre writing, and wonderfully detailed descriptions of the interiors of Harrow School. I feel like sending the author a thank-you note via time machine.
  
  Later:
  
  Oh, man, does turn-of-the-century school fiction have a habit of pushing my literary pleasure buttons. Here's a passage from The Hill, describing the protagonist's interactions with the Head Prefect of his House at school:
  
  "After this John showed his gratitude by painstaking attention to fagging. Lawrence became aware of faithful service: that his toast was always done to a turn, that his daily paper was warmed, as John had seen the butler at home warm the Times, that his pens were changed, his blotting-paper renewed, and so forth. In John's eyes, Lawrence occupied a position near the apex of the world's pyramid of great men."
  
  *** 5 November 2009. Writing: Triumph! The Turn-of-the-Century Toughs world is now the Mid-Atlantic.
  
  It's taken me several months, but I've finally succeeded in fully transporting the map of the Turn-of-the-Century Toughs nations onto the map of the Mid-Atlantic region. (You knew there was a reason why I was doing all those Chesapeake reseach trips, right?)
  
  It is frightening how well my Muse anticipated this day. To give just one example: I had decided last year to give Mip seven "seats" - districts that elected that republic's highest magistrates. Four of the districts would be in the "lowerlands," while three would be in the "upperlands" - that is to say, the mountains. (There were reasons having to do with an upcoming series why I wanted it that way.)
  
  Well, I decided to place Mip in a region corresponding to two regions of the State of Maryland: Western Maryland and Central Maryland (west of Baltimore, because everything east is the Chesapeake region of Maryland, which I'd already claimed for the Dozen Landsteads). Tonight, I sat down to figure out how that corresponded to the county boundaries. (In the United States, counties are subregions of states.)
  
  What I discovered was this.
  
  Central Maryland, west of Baltimore (a region of low-lying hills): four counties.
  
  Western Maryland (a region of mountains): three counties.
  
  Oh, my. Ain't that convenient?
  
  Similarly, the rest of Maryland is fortuitously designed for my purposes. That's where I'm placing the Dozen Landsteads, which, as its name suggests, is made up of a dozen landsteads.
  
  The Eastern Shore has two counties that don't touch the Chesapeake Bay, which I didn't want to happen for the purposes of my stories, so I attached them to the adjoining counties.
  
  I wanted the First Landstead to be big, and to extend up to where I live, so I attached three counties together.
  
  Altogether, that left me with . . . a dozen counties.
  
  Man, was I scorching now. Virginia became Yclau, Pennsylvania became Eastern Vovim (where Layle and Janus are from), and West Virginia became - heh, heh - Southern Vovim. New York State hosts the rest of Vovim. (I'm tempted to steal Ohio too, but that isn't part of the Mid-Atlantic, alas.) Delaware becomes Akbar (that tiny little nation mentioned in The True Master). There are more little nations up in New Jersey and New England. Presumably the rest of the continent is filled with humans too, but I don't say anything about that in the Toughs cycle.
  
  The hardest task I had was to find a location for the Sea of Mip (which Compassion Prison is next to). Remember, I'd placed Mip in a region corresponding to Central and Western Maryland. Maryland, I need hardly say, has no seas. In fact, it doesn't even have any natural freshwater lakes, darn it.
  
  I finally decided that the Sea of Mip must be the largest freshwater lake in Maryland: Deep Creek Lake, on the western end of Maryland. That lake didn't actually exist at the turn of the century, since it's the product of a twentieth-century dam. But for the purposes of my stories, it does exist. And - how convenient - if I were a Mippite picking an isolated, not-terribly-human-friendly place to build a prison, I'd place the prison right there. Did I mention that Deep Creek Lake is surrounded by swamps?
  
  It took a lot of work on my part to put this together in such a way that I didn't have to go back and revise all my previous Toughs stories, but as it is, the only story I need to revise is Hell's Messenger. The initial scene in Chapter One doesn't quite fit the real-life location I picked for it today, and the compass points in that novel may be off. But otherwise, man, you'd think that my Muse was writing for the past seven years with the Mid-Atlantic region in mind.
  
  *** 5 November 2009. Home: Reasons why I often feel I'm a conservative.
  
  An entry I wrote in 2004:
  
  o--o--o
  
  I went to the young adult section of a public library this week, searching for books on Christmas in order to idle the time while Doug pawed through music books. There I discovered five books on body art.
  
  "Oh!" I said. "Well, the young adult section has changed since I was young." And I picked up one of the books.
  
  It opened to a page describing the Prince Albert [not worksafe link].
  
  Suddenly the future flashed before my eyes:
  
  A Teen's Handbook to Watersports.
  101 Ways for Housewives to Beat Their Subs.
  The Dummy's Guide to Fireplay.
  Billy and His Daddy Go Dungeon Shopping.
  
  Don't laugh; who'd have thought back in the sixties that schoolteachers would one day be reading picture books about homosexuality to six-year-olds?
  
  o--o--o
  
  I cite this old entry because, when I last picked up a copy of Time, it had an article on ecologically friendly sex toys . . . illustrated with a picture of dungeon whips.
  
  May I go back to reading Go, Dog. Go! please? (No, it's not about puppy play.)
  
  *** 6 November 2009. Writing: Not-quite-good-enough writing.
  
  It's frustrating seeing a decent plot handled by an unskilled writer.
  
  Horace Annesley Vachell's The Hill: A Romance of Friendship has what ought to have been the ideal plot for me: It's about a schoolboy's attempts to win the friendship of a boy he admires, while fighting off a despicable rival. That's the entire plotline; it's friendship fiction at its purest.
  
  But the novel is badly handled. The villain - whom we're told over and over is subtle and refined in his methods - is made of cardboard (and I don't want to tell you how many times we're informed that his villainy arises from "low breeding" - i.e., his father was raised in the slums). The object of the protagonist's affections, whom we keep being told is admirable - and faithful! - spends the entire novel consorting with the villain and ignoring clear signs that he's hurting the feelings of the protagonist (to whom he has pledged friendship). Meanwhile, the protagonist - who is supposed to be exceptionally intelligent - does little more than twiddle his thumbs and wait for his friend to come to his senses.
  
  It's a classic case of "show" contradicting "tell."
  
  Very disappointing, especially since the novel continued to throw forth delicious passages. To wit:
  
  o--o--o
  
  The chief difficulty which besets a school friendship between two boys is that of being alone together.
  
  *
  
  This was almost the last holidays Caesar and he would spend together; and, afterwards, would this friendship, so romantic a passion with one at least of them--would it wither away, or would it endure to the end?
  
  *
  
  Warde [the house master] listened, holding John's hand, gripping it with sympathy and affection. The romance of this friendship [i.e. John's friendship with Ceasar] stirred him profoundly; the romance of the struggle for good and evil; a struggle of which the issues remained still in doubt . . .
  
  *
  
  Lovell went to the door and opened it.
  
  "Bo-o-o-o-o-o-y!"
  
  The familiar cry--that imperious call which makes an Harrovian [schoolboy] feel himself master of more or less willing slaves--echoed through the house. Immediately the night-fag came running; it was not considered healthy to keep Lovell waiting.
  
  *
  
  The privilege of fagging [i.e. fag-mastering] is not, however, unadulterated bliss. When Warde said to Caesar, "Well, Desmond, how do you like ordering about your slave?" Desmond replied, ruefully, "Well, sir, little Duff has broken my inkstand, spilt the ink on our new carpet, and let Verney's bullfinch escape. I think, on the whole, I'd as lief wait on myself."
  
  o--o--o
  
  It's worrisome to think that some readers are undoubtedly having the same reaction to my writing as I did to The Hill: "Why couldn't this interesting plot have been put in the hands of a decent writer?"
  
  *** 6 November 2009. Writing: My unfocussed Muse.
  
  My Muse - who has not the least bit of consideration for my publication schedule - continues to hare after later stories in the Prison City series. I'm letting him go whither he will; I'm just happy he's sticking round.
  
  Life was easier before I started writing for publication. The Three Lands stories were written almost entirely out of order, with me dashing from story to story. That's why, out of the dozen-plus novels in the series, I've only finished three (and one of the three is a volume that got cut in two when I decided to check the word-count at the halfway point, and discovered that I'd already written 120,000 words). Through concerted effort in corralling my Muse, I've managed to persuade him to finish a fourth volume (except for that darned half scene), while another novel in the series is close to being finished. Other than that, though, the novels are tattered bits and pieces waiting for me to cobble them together.
  
  I read with envy about those authors who can start at page one and keep writing chronologically until they reach "The End." I've sometimes done that, particularly with short stories, but writing a novel that way is next to impossible for me. Even if I draft a novel almost entirely in order, my Muse won't want to write it down in order - he'll want to write down the juiciest scenes first. More often than not, he'll get bored with my slow typing and try to lure me off to another scene when I'm halfway through the first one. I've learned to resist his lures as far as incomplete scenes are concerned (mostly), but I don't have enough control over him to keep him from writing stories in whatever order he likes. The best I can do is to beg him to let me please, please finish writing a goodly chunk in a particular series before he skips off to another series.
  
  *** 7 November 2009. Writing and Mentoring: I've decided to make my winter schedule my year-round schedule.
  
  The decision has been creeping up on me, due to a number of factors: the painfulness of being away from my fiction-writing for six months out of the year, my declining wordage (which makes it imperative that I be ready to drop everything whenever my Muse condescends to pay a call), my intense unhappiness at having to battle my Internet addiction during the spring/summer (it's been getting so that I dread the arrival of spring), and my gradual switchover to a publishing schedule that makes it easier for me to be offline most of the time.
  
  The deciding factor has been my realization, in the past month, that I can stay offline for a whole month and still get everything done that needs to be done. Except for a couple of vitally important health matters that forced me to go online in the past month at times when I hadn't scheduled myself to do so, I didn't find it any great sacrifice to take a month off from the Internet. And I don't think that things would have been any different if I'd devoted some of my online time to publishing and marketing. I might have needed to spend one more day online last month, but that's all.
  
  (I should add that this good fortune is entirely due to my apprentice. It's not that I didn't need to go online during this past month; it's that, every time I needed something done online that couldn't wait till my next scheduled Internet visit, my apprentice was there to do it for me.)
  
  Now, granted, I know that my spring/schedule is going to continue to contain elements that my fall/winter schedule doesn't. I'll be library-hopping and taking trips to museums and conventions and research sites. But I'll be spending less leisure time away from home than in the past, I hope, because, having lived in Noah's Ark for a month, I've realized that I really don't need to be importing new stuff into my life or to be dashing off to exciting places elsewhere. I have plenty to keep me occupied at home.
  
  Honestly, it's like going off to a desert island for a month and discovering that you can actually survive without 24-hour access to MTV.
  
  (*Wanders away for a bit in order to look at the pretty shells.*)
  
  The biggest difference between my winter and summer schedules will be my book publishing. There's a narrow window each year in which I can publish, because publishing requires my eyes to be in good shape. Likewise, I can't lay out paperbacks in cold weather because I need to be able to read standard-sized print when I do that. So I anticipate that my print layout/publishing and my e-book publishing will remain something that I do only in the spring and summer.
  
  My plan for my online fiction, on the other hand, is to post a story or novel installment once a month year-round. That works out to the wordage equivalent of two novels a year - roughly a quarter million words. I hope that type of schedule will be okay for you guys. :)
  
  So let's try this year-round. I'll be interested to see what effect it has on my Muse. So far (as of November 6), its effect has been 19,000 words of fiction since the beginning of the month: one-third of my monthly wordage.

• Home life: TMJ, tennis elbow, and dry eye - the unholy trio

  2009 Nov 23

  "In the midst of winter, I finally realized that deep within me there lay an invincible summer."
  
  --Albert Camus.
  
  I'm posting separately this entry some medical problems I've been having recently. (Don't worry, they aren't life-threatening, just painful and annoying.) I figure that people who are interested in reading my Daily Life entries may not want to wade through tons of medical stuff, and vice versa.
  
  For newcomers: Background to my home entries.
  
  How I reply to comments at this blog.
  
  
  *** 2 November 2009: My doctor and my wallet.
  
  This afternoon I go to the doctor's for a rather tricky exam I'm not looking forward to, since it may involve scalpels against my brain. (A cyst on the side of my head is pressing against the remainder of my head, causing me pain and nausea.) But at least it will be my usual doctor handling this; he has already successfully drained a cyst from the skin above my spine. (Cysts like me. I had another one drained a couple of years ago.)
  
  Of course this will be out-of-pocket expenses for Doug and me. I see from the news that the latest health reform act in Congress (1) requires that health insurance be made mandatory in 2013 (with big financial penalties for anyone who doesn't buy health insurance), and (2) promises that health insurance will be made affordable for low- and moderate-income families in 2019. I love the conjunction of those two statements.
  
  At any rate, 2019 is much too far down the line for Doug and me. I'm beginning to work again on the nonfiction book I'd been planning, not because I really want to be working on nonfiction during the fiction-composing time of my year, but because nonfiction may be my only hope for making serious money next year. (By "serious" money, I mean four figures.) We need enough money to pay for health insurance and to pay the annual property tax each year. Those are the only two worrisome points in our budget; otherwise, we do fine as a low-income household.
  
  (Well, except that we don't have any way to put additional money aside for our old age. But thanks to the Great Recession, we're hardly alone in that fix.)
  
  *** 2 November 2009: Well, whadya know. I have a stress-related illness.
  
  "Your cyst is an innocent bystander," my doctor has declared.
  
  Turns out that, in all likelihood, I have TMJ. ("Temporomandibular Joint Syndrome," explained my doctor. "You see why we call it TMJ.") To sum it up: My jaw joint aches. The pain is radiating out from my jaw joint, which was why I first thought that I had a toothache, and then thought that my head-cyst was at fault.
  
  But when my doctor poked me inside my mouth in the general location of my jaw joint . . . Ow. Yes, that's the spot.
  
  Ironically, my dentist had mentioned TMJ as a possibility almost the moment I walked in his door. But me being the chatterbox I am, I overrode him with a list of my supposed symptoms, which didn't fit the TMJ scenario very well, so he got distracted before I could ask him the sensible question, "What is TMJ?"
  
  The mind is a strange thing. When I thought I had a toothache, I was sure that the pain was centered on one of my teeth. When I thought I had a growing cyst, I was sure that the pain was centered on my cyst. Now that I've been diagnosed with TMJ, it's quite clear to me that the pain is centered on my left jaw joint. (In my defense, I gather that this sort of confusion is fairly common, not only among TMJ sufferers, but also among their doctors.)
  
  Fortunately for my pocketbook, the basic remedies for TMJ are all over-the-counter: pain reliever and anti-inflammation medicine (I was already taking Advil), eating soft foods (I was already doing that but am now doing more of that), no caffeine (ouch - there go the Halloween candies), proper posture awake and in bed (cue incredibly long thread at a TMJ forum about which pillows to buy), not opening the mouth wide (cue very sad thread at the TMJ forum about singers with TMJ), ice packs and moist heat (yes, both - I haven't figured out why they're both supposed to work), massage, certain types of vitamins and foods, and stress reduction methods such as meditation and exercise (oh, right - I'm already supposed to be doing that, aren't I?).
  
  Second level treatment is moderate medical intervention such as prescription pain relief and tranquilizers, biofeedback, and a mouth guard to prevent grinding of teeth . . . but I hope I won't have to reach that level. Any treatments above the moderate level are scientifically unproven, according to the National Institute of Health.
  
  According to the NIH, it's not certain whether TMJ can be caused by stress, but everyone agrees that it can be aggravated by stress, so I'm trying to be very, very relaxed now. Especially my jaw.
  
  (Oh, and someone at the TMJ forum reported that prolonged talking aggravates TMJ. Ha. I knew there was a reason I taught myself to type.)
  
  *** 3 November 2009: Pillows.
  
  Last night (as I hinted above) I perused the wonderful forums at the TMJ Association. Yes, that means I had to go online off-schedule. There wasn't any alternative; the public library didn't have enough information on TMJ.
  
  The TMJ Association had lots. It was started by some TMJ sufferers as a support group. The association expanded into education after it became clear that there was a lot of misinformation about the illness drifting around. The association's site links to the very helpful PDF document by the National Institute of Health on TMJ, which might as well be entitled Everything That You Thought You Knew About TMJ is Wrong.
  
  The association's forums were where I found the pillows thread - or rather, threads, because this seems to be a topic of great interest to TMJ folk. Frankly, this is all deja vu for me; I went through all this at the time that I first acquired severe dry eye in 2001, when my head was so sensitive to touch that I could only sleep for a couple of hours at a time before I woke from the pain. It was then that I started using a down pillow, which is nicely soft, and which you can fluff into pretty much any position you want, high or low.
  
  After I'd looked at the eighty-dollar pillows that were being recommended at Amazon for TMJ sufferers (basically, a very low headrest, accompanied by a higher neckrest), I said, "Heck, I can make the same sort of pillow just by squishing my down pillow into the right position." So I did.
  
  The object of all this was to sleep comfortably on my back, which is apparently the position recommended for TMJ folk - at least, that's what the leaflet said that my doctor gave me, and people at the TMJ forum were echoing this advice. Sleep has been a problem for me recently, because I've traditionally slept in every position: left side, right side, stomach, and back. I shift as the night goes on. But sleeping on my back all night was no worse a prospect than sleeping all night in any other position, so I decided to give it a try.
  
  It seems to be working out okay. It's not as comfortable as shifting around all night, but it hasn't caused me any sleeplessness.
  
  The next trick, of course, is to stop grinding my teeth at night, since that's a major factor in aggravating TMJ. I now understand why my jaw has been feeling relatively good during the day and then feeling worse after a night's sleep. Theoretically, I ought to be able to stop unconscious teeth-grinding, since I've controlled other things I do in my sleep, such as rolling over or dreaming. So I'm working on it. I've never actually kept track of how often I grind my teeth - till now, it's been a trivial matter in my life - but I can say that, on the nights now when I don't grind my teeth, I wake up without any significant pain in my jaw.
  
  The pain starts the moment I open my mouth to say hello to Doug or my apprentice. Darn it, and I was being semi-facetious in the last entry about talk aggravating my TMJ. I suppose this is the point in my life at which I learn to do more listening than talking.
  
  *** 3 November 2009. Tiny food.
  
  So I'm getting into the car after going grocery shopping this evening (with my left arm sore because of a tentanus shot I had yesterday), and I hit my right jaw on the car door. Then I rebound onto the car doorway, hitting the cyst on the left side of my head (remember that cyst?).
  
  "At least this takes my mind off the pain in my left jaw," I told Doug ruefully.
  
  My left jaw, which is the one that has the TMJ, is doing reasonably well. I've been nursing it carefully. I was at the grocery store because the food threads at the TMJ forum made me aware that food which doesn't require much chewing could make a big difference to my jaw. Resting my jaw and not opening it wide are two key ways for me to heal from TMJ.
  
  Also, I needed a new toothbrush. My adult-sized toothbrush has soft bristles but has been causing me to open my mouth too wide when I brush the molars. So I bought an ages-two-and-older Sponge-Bob toothbrush. I'm sure my apprentice will be delighted; Sponge-Bob is the mascot of his club.
  
  As far as food is concerned, I learned at the TMJ forum that steamed vegetables are good, since they don't require much chewing. Terrific; they're one of the staple items in my diet. I regularly eat them on whole wheat couscous, which is another plus, since couscous barely needs any chewing.
  
  I had a look at the hot cereals, since they're tiny, but decided in the end to make do with whole wheat couscous, which works as a hot cereal and has six grams of fiber in each serving.
  
  I needed a dessert item, since I can't eat cornbread-and-honey (too chewy) or jam on toast (too chewy) or chocolate (caffeine causes stress). So I bought tapioca pudding, which is fiberless fluff but tastes good. Then I mixed a dab of the pudding into couscous for a high-fiber dessert; popped into the microwave, it tastes especially good. Couscous is wonderfully adaptable.
  
  Speaking of grains, sandwiches are a problem. I've been eating sandwiches two or three times a day - I'm sort of a sandwich fanatic - but they're chewy. So I'm limiting myself to one sandwich a day, filled with cheese spread, sliced tomatoes, and steamed broccoli. (No, I didn't make up that recipe for the sake of my TMJ. It's one of my daily staples.)
  
  My other daily grain item - for the sake of my dry eye - is roasted flaxseed and a tiny bit of spaghetti sauce on whole wheat spaghetti. Spaghetti doesn't require much chewing, and lo and behold, I read somewhere that flaxseed is good for healing TMJ. I haven't found out why yet.
  
  Soups are good for non-chewing, so I bought the ingredients to make broccoli-and-green-split-pea soup. (Or rather, so that Doug could make the soup, *cough cough*.)
  
  Drinks are a real dilemma. This year, to increase my fiber intake and cut down on my simple sugars intake, I've been drinking water and eating fruit - mainly apples at the moment. But apples are on the big no-no list because of how wide one has to open one's jaw to bite into them. Sliced apples are theoretically okay, but really, I find that any fruit with edible skin is problematic, because fruit skin takes a lot of chewing. And as Doug points out, I'm just not the sort of person to patiently slice and peel apples.
  
  I had a look at the sliced and pureed fruit at the grocery store, but couldn't find anything except unsweetened apple sauce that didn't have simple sugars added. (Fruit juice is a simple sugar.) So I bought whole strawberries to blend with milk to make smoothies, and I bought tomato soup because I like drinking that, and I already have bananas, which don't even need to be pureed to be soft enough to eat. That, plus my regular orange juice, should be enough.
  
  Oh, and I took a look at the baby food aisle in case any of the pureed food there appealed to me. Man, what a racket. A dollar twenty-nine for as much food as I could eat in two gulps.
  
  Last stop, the tea aisle. People at the TMJ forum had been talking about chamomile tea helping to relax them and put them to sleep. My usual concoction - on the rare occasions that I drink herbal tea - has been a chamomile tea bag, warm skim milk, malt, and cocoa powder. (Don't screech; it's my low-fat equivalent of flavored hot chocolate.) I'm going to drop the cocoa powder from the ingredients and see whether the malt alone makes the drink flavorful enough. I just can't drink herbal tea straight; it tastes like flavored water to me. (Maybe because it is.)
  
  *** 3 November 2009: Less talking, more progress.
  
  My jaw really does feel better. I'm less numb in my left cheek, the pain is virtually gone when I'm awake, and I'm sleeping relatively well (as opposed to last weekend, when sleeping was an act of torture).
  
  This isn't to say that I'm out of the woods. A lot of my progress is being maintained by me not doing things. I'm not eating chewy or hard foods. I'm not eating on the left side of my mouth. I'm not sleeping without the aid of two Advils. I'm not sleeping anywhere except on my back. I'm not wearing my computer headphones to listen to music. I'm not brushing my teeth in my normal vigorous manner. I'm not talking very much. Obviously, I'd like to be able to resume most of my normal activities.
  
  Especially the talking. Because you know what? I mouth words when I'm writing. I'd only been vaguely aware of that before, but now I'm acutely aware of it, because it adds into my permitted talking time.
  
  Also, darn it, sleeping on my back all night exacerbates a left-elbow problem I've been having for several years now. (My left hand is the one that continually hits the Page Down button when I'm reading at the computer while eating with my right hand. I think that's what caused the problem with my elbow.) So while I've got less pain from my jaw, my elbow is feeling nasty. And my dry eyes aren't terribly happy either, because I'm not lying on my right side for most of the night, facing the humidifier.
  
  If only I could get all my body parts to agree on the best sleeping position for me. But in the meantime, I seem to be doing a good job at eliminating my teeth grinding at night, which is a normal activity I do not want to resume.
  
  *** 8 November 2009: Sleeping and posture.
  
  "You know how I arranged to get TMJ in order to take my mind off the pain from my dry eye?" I told my apprentice. "Well, now I've acquired tennis elbow in order to take my mind off the pain from my TMJ."
  
  My elbow really is the biggest problem at the moment. Despite my best efforts not to overuse it and to keep my arm posture proper, the elbow pain just isn't going away.
  
  Turns out that the standard treatment for tennis elbow (so called because it's usually acquired by people who play tennis) is the same as one of the standard treatments for TMJ: ice packs, ibuprofen for the swelling and pain, and resting the affected part.
  
  The difference is, my jaw is actually responding to the above treatment. I've reached the point where I no longer go into pain every time I brush my teeth, and the pain on the left side of my head is close to disappearing. The pain around the jaw joint is still a bit tender, enough that I'm avoiding wearing my regular headphones (the ones I use when listening to music on my computer). But it no longer hurts to wear my iPod buds.
  
  The biggest problem I'm facing with my jaw is one that I'd predicted beforehand: my dry eyes don't like me sleeping on my back. The back of my head and my shoulder area is always tender in the winter because of my dry eye; as a result, I can no longer sleep through an entire night without waking up aching. And when I ache in the night, I'm more inclined to clench my teeth. After I woke up early this morning with back pain near my shoulder area and a pain in my jaw that told clearly that I'd been clenching my teeth against the pain in my back, I gave up and tried sleeping on my right side, at least for a while. I slept fine. So now I'm going to rotate between back-sleeping and right-side-sleeping. Left-side-sleeping is out of the question while the TMJ is bothering me, and I gather (from the stern words that doctors have to say about this practice, in connection with TMJ) that my days of falling asleep on my stomach are over.
  
  My elbow, for a mercy, didn't bother me last night, though the only way I can keep it from feeling nasty at night is by dosing myself with Advil, placing my left arm on top of the down comforter, and stretching my arm out somewhat to the side.
  
  If that position sounds cold, it is. I can't cuddle up to Doug's heat, my arm (even when under a light blanket I place on it) is cold, and I've got the darned humidifier blasting cold wind at me during all this.
  
  (I've tried suggesting to Doug that we turn up the thermostat at night till I'm better. He growls about heating bills.)
  
  Meanwhile, there's a conflict between my dry eyes and my TMJ over the best position for my computer monitor. My dry eyes say that I should be looking down at the monitor. (The lower the monitor, the more eye area your eyelids cover.) My TMJ says that, for proper neck posture, I should be looking straight ahead. What they both agree upon is that I have a lousy backrest on my desk chair. But there's nothing I can do about that; it's the only desk-style chair in the house.
  
  I have decided that I need to get rid of the shelf beneath my desk in order that I can place my knees all the way under the desk, rather than be hunched forward in order to read the screen.
  
  So posture, posture, posture. That's my byword for the day.
  
  *** 9 November 2009: Desk posture.
  
  I put my computer monitor on a stand today, so that it's head-level. "That's pretty high," said Doug dubiously. It remains to be seen whether my eyes rebel. But this is at least preventing me from continuing to hunch over to view the monitor.
  
  (Also, I was able to place three pieces of pottery in the empty space under the stand: one holding my spare flash drive, one holding my eye drops, and one holding the water to wet my eyelids periodically. So now my desk is now less cluttered, and the items I need are closer to hand.)
  
  Since all of the articles about tennis elbow are right next to the articles about carpal tunnel syndrome, I've handmade a wrist rest, using a towel and a piece of thin packing foam that I've been hanging onto for a couple of decades, under the theory that the foam would come in handy one of these days. There are advantages to being a packrat.
  
  *** 15 November 2009: Now my glasses have decided to misbehave (but wow, once they behave, life'll be great).
  
  Well, after I spent Monday getting my desk and chair positioned exactly right, I sat down on Tuesday morning at my new and improved desk . . .
  
  . . . and my chair fell apart.
  
  However, the good news is that my tennis elbow has largely disappeared. The change in chair height seems to be what it was demanding; once I met its demands, it stopped holding my elbow hostage.
  
  My sleep pattern, while still far from ideal, is a little better; I've been able to stop taking Advil nightly. If I go to sleep in a relaxed state and sleep deeply, I don't wake up in (much) pain. So I'm getting as much exercise as I can, in order to fall asleep easily.
  
  It turns out that raking leaves is compatible with plotting stories in my head.
  
  The bad news concerns my new eyeglasses. I'd ordered a pair, then discovered, when they arrived, that they were for long-distance viewing only. Nobody had told me (including my ophthamologist, now my ex-ophthamologist, for that and many other reasons) that I'd been issued with a prescription that required me, for the first time in my life, to wear progressive glasses or trifocals. So I didn't ask for progressive glasses or trifocals at the optical department, and what arrived were glasses that only allowed me to see long-distance.
  
  So I ordered progressive glasses - rather dubiously, because I'd read horror stories on the Web about what progressives were like. But the alternative was trifocals, and they didn't sound as though they'd be much better. I also discussed with the optical department clerk the possibility of getting glasses just for computer use.
  
  The progressives arrived, and my goodness - you mean there's a world beyond arm's length?
  
  I have to go backwards in time to explain. In 2001, as most of you know, I became partially sighted. In the space of a week, I lost my ability to read print; then my distance vision became affected. I remember waking up one morning in early 2001 and discovering that the distance vision in my left eye was beginning to disappear. Panicking, I called up my opthamologist (yes, the same one).
  
  He said calmly, "Oh, that's to be expected."
  
  So I hung up and waited for the rest of my distance vision to disappear. Within a week, it was gone.
  
  Because of that stupid remark, "Oh, that's to be expected," it never occurred to me that I could correct the problem by getting a new prescription of glasses. I thought that my distance vision - and, as it eventually turned out, much of my intermediate vision - was simply gone, in an uncorrectable manner, and that I'd have to stumble through a blurry world for the rest of my life. After all, that was the verdict on my dry eye - that it was incurable.
  
  For the past eight years, I've been unable to see people clearly at the front of a conference room, see dinner companions clearly at the other end of the table, or read street signs. These have been minor irritants compared to my problems with obtaining e-texts; I haven't given the matter much thought except when having to trot halfway down a city block in order to stand under a street sign, so that I can read it.
  
  Around 2004, it occurred to me that I should probably order new glasses, for the same reason I did in the old days - because my eyesight slowly declines each year. But because of my lack of health insurance, I didn't get around to obtaining new glasses till this year. So what a shock it was to put on my new glasses and find all of my vision restored.
  
  Darlings, I can now stand at one end of the Mall in Washington, D.C., and see the Capitol at the other end of the Mall. In clear detail.
  
  This doesn't mean that my partial sightedness has disappeared, because that's affected by a different factor than my glasses - it's affected by the level of humidity in the air. To put it simply, my eyes don't have enough innate moisture in them to function properly under normal humidity conditions. They're only truly functional when the humidity is 80% or higher (which, thankfully, is often the humidity level in the D.C. area in the summertime). This means that, while technically I can see the Capitol from a mile away, trying to look at the Capitol from that distance during the late winter would give me a giant headache, because my eyes would have to strain themselves to function properly. Similarly, it doesn't matter how clearly I can see a printed book in the winter; my eyes rebel against having to read print at that time of year, because they don't have sufficient moisture. (There's a similar condition whereby someone with 20/20 vision can be so badly affected by light that they're effectively 100% blind, because they can't open their eyes without undergoing immediate pain.)
  
  So I'm still partially sighted, but I'm hoping that finally getting an up-to-date glasses prescription will ease the strain on my eyes that's been caused by my trying to view objects that my current glasses couldn't focus on properly.
  
  Alas, I think that the progressive glasses I was given have misaligned lenses, because I had double vision and problems with blurring all through Friday, when I tested the glasses out. I did a home test to check whether the lenses were misaligned, and that test's verdict was, "Yes."
  
  So it's back to the optical department for a third time (and I haven't even dealt yet with getting the computer glasses). My schedule for tomorrow looks like this:
  
  --Call customer service rep for my dental plan.
  --Call the optical department.
  --Call the medical test folk.
  --Call my dentist.
  --Call the local health clinic.
  
  This is not the sort of schedule that someone with a phone phobia wants to have. And I think it's disgusting that I'm acquiring new medical problems at the rate of roughly once a week. It's beginning to appear that 2009 is going to be my Year of Ill Health.
  
  (At least I don't have the swine flu. Yet.)
  
  *** 15 November 2009: Yet another bodily complaint.
  
  My right heel has decided that it doesn't like me lying on my back all through the night. In revenge, it is waking me up in pain each morning.
  
  Only my right heel. My left heel is fine with the arrangements.
  
  I want a new body, please. You can send it to my via UPS.

• Writing life: A celebration of thirty years of The Three Lands

  2009 Nov 23

  I pressed my Muse hard and persuaded him to finish writing Law Links (The Three Lands) today, November 8. I began writing that novel fourteen years ago, almost to the day: November 15, 1995.
  
  By coincidence, this year happens to be the thirtieth anniversary of the original draft of the first Three Lands story I wrote, Blood Vow. In honor of that, I thought I'd show three versions each of two scenes from the novel, so that you can see how my writing has ceased being absolutely dreadful progressed.
  
  
  o--o--o
  
  DRAFT ONE: The Chara
  
  [The beginning of my fantasy short story "Blood Brothers," written in 1979. Don't let your eye skip too quickly over the last sentence in the first paragraph. The part in the curly brackets was my later interpolation, when I evidently decided that the sentence begged for an explanation.]
  
  Chara's first name is hereditary. Not Anthony, his second name, but Chara, meaning "Emperor." I often wonder who will carry on the empire when he is gone, for he is several years older than I, and {like many military men} shows little interest in women.
  
  It was barely a year after he had freed me. I had been his slave for ten years, since fourteen, when I was taken prisoner by the old Chara's guards. Chara hadn't freed me before, possibly afraid I would return to Creita, my homeland, but affection for me won over, and by this time, I loved him so much that I decided to stay rather than to return home.
  
  I came upon him one morning with a map spread out in front of him. Marked in blue were the provinces of the Empire: Ramjan, Pleiant, Thuul, and Tlak, the last with the Empire's capital, Emor, marked in red. The provinces the Empire had only partially conquered were marked in green: Loongai and Creita. In yellow were the nearby provinces that had only been invaded once or twice; they extended off the map. Chara had none of his father's strange goals of capturing the entire world; he knew, as the scientists had proven, that the world had no end.
  
  He looked up as I entered. "Greetings, Andrew. How old are you?"
  
  I was used to Chara's unusual questions; it's true that he's a genius, and as a genius, he has a different level of thought. "Twenty-four, m'lord."
  
  "That means you've lived in Emor for ten years."
  
  "Yes, m'lord." I wondered what he was getting at. Not the years of my servitude - Chara shies away from the subject.
  
  "How would you like a vacation, Andrew?"
  
  "M'lord?"
  
  Chara beckoned me out of the doorway. "Come sit by me."
  
  I walked over and drew a chair up to the table, staring at the map. I had seen maps before, of course - there is a mosaic map of Emor across the entire Great Hall floor - but they are a continual fascination to me; Creitians have no such things.
  
  "Where's your home, Andrew?" Chara asked.
  
  "If you mean where I was born, it's here, Kikou." I pointed to a small town on the map. "But Creitians are migratory people; they rarely stay longer than one year in a place - certainly not long enough to call any one place 'home.'"
  
  "'They'?"
  
  "I'm an Emorian now, Chara."
  
  Chara leaned back. "Oh, then you wouldn't be interested in what I was going to say."
  
  "What were you going to say?"
  
  Chara continued as if he hadn't heard me. "Emorians are a lazy lot: they never stir out of their own city, and certainly never go to unconquered provinces - especially not such a beastly place as Creita."
  
  "Are you going to Creita, m'lord?"
  
  "What does it matter to an an Emorian?"
  
  "Typical Emorian humor," I said dryly. Chara grinned lazily . . .
  
  o--o--o
  
  DRAFT TWO: The Chara
  
  [The same scene re-written one year later.]
  
  My master was at a black marble table, studying several maps. (Maps, after nine years, were still a novelty to me. I spent much of my time in the Grand Courtroom, where a mosaic of the Emorian Empire constituted the floor.) His hair, eyes, and skin, like that of any [member of] his family, were light, but black lines scarred his face: dark rivers of responsibility gained at an early age - he was barely seven years older than I. He pushed his hair back in that controlled, decisive gesture that governed all his movements, then, sensing somebody, looked up.
  
  "Good morning, Chara," I said.
  
  He smiled as he relaxed from his diplomatic posture. "Good morning, Andrew. Ah, you have the map. You hid it well."
  
  "So I surmised from the state of your room," I said, coming forward and handing him the paper. "You should have woken me."
  
  He looked down rapidly at the maps before saying, "You seemed to be having a bad night. I thought it better to let you sleep."
  
  There is only one thing I ever dream about - my childhood in Creita - and that's the one thing Chara never wants to discuss. I said, "Dreams this morning too; perhaps you should have woken me. What is this map, anyway?"
  
  Chara thrust forward another map. "Take a look at this. This is our occupation of Creita ten years ago."
  
  I glanced at the map for three seconds before pushing it back to Chara. "Well?" he said.
  
  "Getting rid of all the red might produce a more conservative answer of your occupation," I said.
  
  He laughed, sitting back in his chair. "Forever a Creitian nationalist." He glanced at my face, and added, "Sorry. Draw up a chair."
  
  "I'm Emorian."
  
  "I know. It was a stupid joke. Sit down, for Delmm's sake." He got up and pushed a bench toward me.
  
  I dragged it over to the table and sat across from the Chara. "And the new map?"
  
  o--o--o
  
  PUBLISHED VERSION: The Chara
  
  [The final version of that scene, age 45.]
  
  The Chara was standing a few spear-lengths from me, looking out one of the southern windows. He was dressed formally with his silver tunic and his Sword of Vengeance; his cloak was tossed onto a chair nearby. He was only twenty-six, but his face had the look of an older man: severe responsibility had gouged deep rivers of age into his skin. As the door closed behind me, the Chara turned his head and said, "I was just wishing that I could wander over the black border mountains right now. It seems a shame to stay inside on a warm day like this." I made no reply, and he added, "I see that you brought the map. I couldn't remember this morning where I had put it."
  
  "So I surmised from the state of your sitting chamber, Chara," I said, coming forward and placing the map in his hand. "You ought to have woken me."
  
  He turned and put the scroll down on the table nearby, which was already cluttered with a dozen maps. Without looking up, he said, "I thought that you might need the extra rest."
  
  There was a pause as he unrolled the map and began examining it. I said, "I did not mean to disturb you, Chara. Perhaps I ought to sleep in other quarters."
  
  "Don't be foolish." He leaned over, traced a line on the map with his finger, then sighed and allowed the map to roll up once more as his gaze drifted back to the view at the window.
  
  I followed his gaze toward the tiny slice of scenery. I could see a portion of the capital city surrounding the palace, a sliver of the river-threaded fields beyond, and a patch of Emorian sky – which, for a change, was blue and cloudless. Towering above them all were the black border mountains that separate Emor and Koretia.
  
  The Chara said, "I seem not to be able to keep my mind off the mountains. Perhaps I have acquired some of your Koretian blood."
  
  I said rigidly, "Chara, I am Emorian."
  
  A smile crept onto his face then, erasing the lines of worry and making him appear even younger than he was. "That fact," he said, "had not escaped my notice. I was joking. Now stop being so stiff and formal and come sit with me."
  
  He waved his hand toward two chairs sitting under a small patch of sunlight falling through one of the northern windows. I felt the seldom-used muscles of my mouth turn up, and I bowed in obedience, before seating myself where he had indicated.
  
  o--o--o
  
  DRAFT ONE: Lord Carle
  
  [The first appearance of Lord Carle, in a passing reference, as part of a flashback. This is from the age-16 draft.]
  
  "You're from Creita? What part?"
  
  Longing to kill him, yet not daring to move for fear of his guard's sword, I made no reply.
  
  The Chara smiled. "Never mind. We'll get to know each other soon enough. Can I at least know your name, so I won't have to call you 'boy'?"
  
  "Andrew," I replied shortly.
  
  "Come here, Andrew."
  
  I stepped forward obediently. Suddenly he frowned and said sharply, "Turn around."
  
  I did so, puzzled. Thus far I had been allowed to wear my own clothes, so my back and the newly formed stripes on it were bared to him.
  
  "All right, turn back," he said quietly. Then: "When did that happen?"
  
  I made no reply. The guard offered, "This morning, m'lord."
  
  "How?"
  
  "The boy--"
  
  "No, I want to hear his version."
  
  Stumblingly, I explained, "I forgot to lower my eyes when Lord Charles passed."
  
  The Chara didn't even look to his guard for confirmation. He said to me, "Go over to that room over there, and tell them I sent you. They'll have medicine to put on your back."
  
  As I left, I heard him saying to the guard, "Go to Lord Charles. Tell him he's to come here immediately. . . ."
  
  DRAFT TWO: Lord Carle
  
  [The second appearance of Lord Carle. This is from the age-17 draft.]
  
  As I pulled the curtain back, I heard a cry - almost a scream - and looked down the hall to my left.
  
  It was Lord Charles, breaking in a new slave. The young girl he was breaking in must have been new, for Charles' slaves know he delights in screams. As I turned, he looked up, and a look of animosity flew across his face before he regained his composure and asked curtly, "Where's your master?"
  
  His tone was as courteous as a muskrat's, but I said, my face as expressionless as the first day I met him, "In the Study, I should imagine."
  
  "You imagine? Why aren't you with him?"
  
  The blood in my head was pounding so hard I barely heard my own answer. "I'm not his slave - as you know."
  
  Charles blinked, then gave a subtle smile. I realized it was the second time that week I'd lost my temper - and that had never happened since I had come to Emor, not even with Charles. I turned away abruptly, to a satisfied mutter by Charles . . .
  
  o--o--o
  
  PUBLISHED VERSION: Lord Carle
  
  [The final version of that scene, age 45.]
  
  The girl's cry was so piercing that, without thinking, I pushed my way through the door. The door opened only to a passageway that led to further rooms, so I did not expect to see anyone. But I found myself facing Lord Carle, who was in the midst of disciplining his Koretian slave-girl.
  
  The girl had fallen to her knees weeping. I could see the red mark on her cheek where Lord Carle had hit her. He was bent over her as I entered, and as he looked at me, I saw a fire spark in his eyes.
  
  He barely managed to contain the fire in his voice. "What do you want?" he asked abruptly.
  
  Having no good reason to be in his quarters, I said, "I apologize for disturbing you, Lord Carle. I was searching for the Chara; I thought he might be with you."
  
  He stiffened up and assessed me for a moment, leaving the girl sobbing at his feet. Finally he said, "You ought to know where your master is. Why are you absent from him?"
  
  Something about the crouching girl, whose presence the council lord was ignoring, caused me to say coolly, "Because, Lord Carle, I am not the Chara's servant and so am not required to know his every movement."
  
  Lord Carle stepped forward. As he did so, the girl stopped crying and began looking between her master and myself, as though she expected to witness a duel. Lord Carle stopped a few feet from me. Keeping his eyes fixed on mine, he said with malevolent softness, "If you are a loyal Emorian, Andrew, then you are his servant, as I am his servant and all Emorians are. If you do not believe this, then disobey the Chara's commands again and see what follows."
  
  I made no reply, and found a moment later that my gaze had drifted away from Lord Carle's eyes. He turned away then, as though in disgust that he had wasted such a deep dagger-thrust on so unworthy an opponent. I took the opportunity to slip back to the corridor.
  
  I stood there for a moment with my eyelids closed and my head tilted back, as though I had just emerged from red-hot fire. Then I walked the remaining distance to the Map Room.
  
  o--o--o
  
  JOURNAL ENTRIES ABOUT "BLOOD VOW," 1979-1995, with major spoilers.
  
  27 April 1979 (Friday)
  
  I haven't the slightest idea of where I'm going with the Chara story (except for a little undercover work for John), but I like the main characters, so I'm slogging it out.
  
  13 June 1979 (Wednesday)
  
  I hate it when I'm in a writing mood, and there's nothing to write. I'd like to restart "Chara" or "Sword," but I can't seem to get past where I am.
  
  10 July 1979 (Tuesday)
  
  I finally got "Chara" rolling Thursday, and got seventeen pages written before I got stuck at the climax: I couldn't figure how to get my characters out of their mess. Death lies in the last scene, and there are a couple violent episodes earlier on. My failure to finish "Chara" so depressed me that I immediately set out to find another fantasy project to work on.
  
  26 May 1980 (Monday)
  
  Another weekend wasted. Couldn't get anywhere with "BB," and got practically none of my homework done (everything in my locker came home). With "BB," the problem is simply that I don't feel like writing - haven't since "Wizard [of the Sun]," with the exception of "Ad Infinitum."
  
  6 August 1995 (Sunday)
  
  Last night, tired of spending my insomnia-ridden nights contemplating the same old dark fantasies [a reference to some daydreams with highly unethical plotlines that were drifting through my mind at that time], I reread some of my old stories. Previous to my junior year of high school, all of my stories are dreadful. However, I did write one story during my sophomore year, "Blood Brothers," which I think has possibilities. The main character, Andrew, is a native of Croetia (can't imagine where I came up with that name [2009 note: I guess Croatia must have been in the news in 1979]), a country under the control of the empire Emoria. Like all Croetians, he has a great hatred for Emorians. (I don't know what got me into writing about empires and oppressed nations--was I reading Mary Renault at the time? [2009 note: No, I first encountered Renault's novels in college.] Then one day Andrew is made a slave and taken to Emor, where he eventually becomes friend to the emperor himself, the Chara, and begins to consider himself an Emorian. The plotline of the story is that the Chara decides to take Andrew with him to Croetia, where the Chara is hoping to strengthen his empire's hold, and Andrew stumbles across his old blood brother and finds his loyalties in conflict.
  
  The story is only nine thousand words long, and the rest of the plot is dreadful--the only good part was the beginning, which I rewrote at age eighteen--but I think it's an interesting premise. Perhaps I will work on it after I finish "Wizard of the Sun" [another 1979 story, which I began rewriting in July 1995].
  
  After is the key word--I had told myself before that I mustn't reread my old stories till I was finished with "Wizard," lest I be distracted by another story, and this indeed has happened. It would be too easy to go through my life thinking up story after story, but never getting any of them completely down onto paper. I mustn't do that; surely I have learned a little self-discipline during the past few years. As for "Wizard," my initial inspiration has drained away, but I continue to plug away at it each day. I need to train myself to harness that ninety-nine percent perspiration if I'm ever to become, if not a genius, then at least a published novelist.
  
  9 August 1995 (Wednesday)-10 August 1995 (Thursday)
  
  Sunday evening, in a desperate attempt to chase away the dark fantasies which had been obsessing me every night for days, I tried writing the first couple of chapters of "Blood Brothers"--only to find that story turning pretty dark itself. It was as though my fantasies, after being kept effectively under lock and key for five years, were now determined to conquer new territory.
  
  18 August 1995 (Friday)
  
  Despite my best efforts to stave it off, ["Blood Brothers"] took over my life last week. I am now up to 40,000 words and the book is still half-written, so this is definitely an adult novel. I was frustrated at not knowing from the start what the full theme of the book was--it is very difficult to write a book when you don't know what every image and phrase needs to relate to--but I knew that it would kill the story dead if I tried to artificially create a theme, so I ended up writing the last three chapters first, and thus discovered that the story wasn't simply about loyalties to brothers and to lands and figuring out what to do when these come in conflict, but rather about an overarching loyalty above all these loyalties--in other words I brought in Religion. (Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later.)
  
  15 October 1995 (Sunday)
  
  Just wrote the final words to what has turned into a four-volume series called Chronicle of the Three Lands. Not, of course, that that means I'm actually finished with any of the books. Blood Brothers is three-quarters done, Touch Fire is just started, Law of Vengeance is three-quarters done, and Breached Boundaries is one-fifth of the way through. At this rate, I can't hope to finish the series by the end of the year, though, if I get my wits together, I can finish off Blood Brothers.
  
  I'm pleased with the final paragraphs--it's great when the Muse just hands me a whole passage, lock and barrel. Would that I could write the whole series in that manner.

• Reply to comments: The Lambda Literary Awards threads

  2009 Oct 27

  Exciting discussions! I'm happy to see that you guys have been busy in my absence.
  
  Reply to this comment by yonmei:
  
  "You want to identify yourself as '50% gay and 50% heterosexual' rather than bisexual - and therefore include yourself out of the category LGBT writer because you identify yourself as too heterosexual to fit inside it?"
  
  Is that a hypothetical example, or did you think that was what I meant? I'm an LGBT writer by virtue of the BT part of the equation. "Bisexual" and "heterosexual" are overlapping categories, not mutually exclusive ones, just as "bisexual" and "gay/lesbian" are overlapping categories.
  
  "Secondly: once a writer - or any public figure - is dead, however they chose to identify themselves in their lifetime, we their readership have a perfect right to discuss their sexual orientation / gender identity in terms that make sense to us."
  
  We're straying from the topic, I think (though the topic you mention is an interesting one, and I'll be glad to discuss it if you want). My point is this: I was concerned when you seemed to be adopting the attitude that writers of LGBT literature must be assumed LGBT until proven heterosexual. That seems to me to strain credulity, given that we have tons of evidence in the current day that many very straight writers enjoy writing about LGBT characters.
  
  If you want to label those past authors as "unproven either way," I'll readily agree with you. I think that, in most cases, it's difficult to ascertain the sexualities of people in the past. But that doesn't detract from the argument I was making, which was that the Lambda Literary Foundation, by refusing to give awards to anyone but out of the closet LGBT writers, was exiling most of the past classic writers of LGBT literature - and, quite likely, many of the future classic writers of LGBT literature. (Leaving aside straight authors of LGBT literature, there are still a heck of a lot of closeted LGBT writers.) So I really don't see much value in the Lambda Literary Awards as future indicators of excellence in LGBT literature.
  
  "I get the impression from this discussion that you admire neither their courage nor their writing, but prefer to promote heterosexual writers."
  
  I've promoted LGBT writers extensively, both as an editor and as a Webmaster. I've also written editorials that take a hard-hitting stance against prejudice against gay writers. In this particular thread, I didn't feel any need to defend the courage of LGBT writers because that hadn't been called into question by the Lambda Literary Foundation. The courage of straight writers of LGBT literature had been called into question, so that's what I wrote about.
  
  "Why claim him as heterosexual if you're ignorant of his life and don't know?"
  
  But I never said that I was ignorant of his life. I've read his memoir, I've read his fiction, and I've read biographical writings on him. That was why I was puzzled that you were calling his announcement he was heterosexual into question.
  
  The only publicly known homosexual relationship by Alec Waugh occurred when he was a teenager at an English public school (where same-sex romances have been a rite of passage for many students who have gone on to live thoroughly heterosexual lives). He died in 1981, well after gay liberation made it easier to come out of the closet. Since that time, all those literary historians who are eagerly turning up evidence of his brother's gay relationships have failed to turn up any evidence of Alec Waugh having been gay. From what I can tell, he only wrote one barely-gay novel, about his experiences in public school. I say "barely-gay" because, in an era when it was considered quite legitimate to write at length about male romantic friendships, Waugh showed little interest in the subject of male/male love. If one compares Waugh's novel to E. F. Benson's David Blaize, which was published in the previous year, or Ernest Raymond's Anglo-Catholic novel Tell England, which was published five years later, the contrast is quite striking; male/male romantic love is central in the latter two novels in a way that it isn't in Waugh's novel. The literary evidence is that Waugh's homosexual relationship was a minor episode in his life that he probably would never have written about if he hadn't been thrown out of school because of it. (Which just goes to show that kicking a student out of school for homosexual activity is a really, really bad PR move.)
  
  All of this suggests to me that, if Waugh was still stating near the end of his life that he was heterosexual, he probably was. There's no absolute certainty in any aspect of literary history, of course, but I think the odds are in favor of heterosexuality in this case.
  
  It seems to me that, when someone states what their own sexuality is, the onus is on the person who is contradicting their statement to put forward proof. That's why I asked you to do so. So I turn your own question back at you: Why are you so upset at me accepting Alec Waugh's publicly stated self-identification of his sexuality when, by your own admission, you aren't familiar with his writings?
  
  "That [the fact that Rosemary Sutcliff didn't say much about Alcibiades's gay life in her novel about him] if anything seems like evidence on the other side."
  
  Well, it might have been if she hadn't included a gay subplot in that novel. :) If she was a closeted bisexual trying to stay strictly in the literary closet, she didn't do a very good job of it.
  
  In any case, we're in agreement about the heterosexual evidence of her memoir.
  
  "I'll e-mail your apprentice when the long story's done."
  
  Yay! Because I gobbled up the other installments when I got offline and am now sitting at the edge of my seat, waiting for the denouement. (I assume it's a denouement?)
  
  Reply to these comments by mightymaeave, dharma_slut, and Rose Red:
  
  I haven't read yet the article that dharma_slut recommended, so the best comment I can offer on this interesting thread is that it's exceedingly difficult to place a solid line between minority and majority. Both mightymaeve and I have made the same point: How does one classify people who are partly in the minority and partly in the majority? For that matter, how does one classify people who have erotic fantasies that don't fit what is considered acceptable for their particular sexuality? There's a lot of discussion in the slash community as to whether being a slasher makes one, by definition, queer (as opposed to GLBT). I'd hate to apply that label to all slashers, because some slashers are the equivalent of those heterosexual guys who jerk off to lesbian porn and then go engage in homophobia. There is homophobia in the m/m writing community, alas. But I've also heard about a lot of cases where writing slash forced so-called straight authors to give greater consideration to the complexities of their own orientations and gender identities. (I'm one of those authors: entering the slash community helped to force me to come to terms with my gender identity.) Even if a heterosexual writer of m/m is simply the literary equivalent of a fag hag - someone who centers much of their life on people who are of a different orientation - they're treading ground that is often considered taboo for their orientation.
  
  People who think it's always easy to write GLBT literature if one is straight . . . Well, I suspect that they just haven't talked to enough straight writers of GLBT literature about their experiences. And that's exactly the same mistake that most people who are prejudiced against GLBT folk make: they don't take the trouble to ask other people about their experiences before drawing broad conclusions about those other people's experiences.
  
  Now, about Uncle Tom's Cabin. That would be the right analogy for straight writings on GLBT experiences in some cases. But I think that, in other cases, the right analogy would be a memoir by a 1960s civil rights activist who happened to be white. That activist might well have undergone brutal violence alongside the black civil rights activists. So if he chooses to write a tale about the black civil rights movement, he's in a very different position from Harriet Beecher Stowe, who never worked alongside the slaves she wrote about. His background won't be exactly the same as the blacks' - he won't have grown up in a society that condemned him for his skin color - but his experiences will have overlapped enough with the blacks in a particular sphere (civil rights activism) that he can tell an important part of their mutual story - and perhaps even provide a helpful glimpse of their story.
  
  Another analogy - forgive the egotism here - is Twenty Thousand Gold Stars. I'm not a BL; I can't write from their perspectives. But I dwelt in their online communities for four years, so I can legitimately write from the perspective of a member of those communities. Likewise, someone who has lived amongst gays and listened to their stories and witnessed their experiences can tell readers what it's like to live in a gay ghetto as written from the perspective of someone who isn't gay himself. And that's no small gift. Much of the great literature of the world - including 99% of journalism and historical fiction - has been written from the perspective of sympathetic outsiders.
  
  And honest to goodness, sometimes it's impossible to tell the difference between literature by minorities and literature about minorities by non-minorities, even when the non-minorities only have book-knowledge of the minorities they're writing about. Time and again, I've been defeated in trying to guess the gender and orientation of writers of m/m literature. Good m/m writers cover their tracks. :)
  
  If we can't tell, by reading it, whether a gay novel is written by a gay author, what exactly is the point in giving an award to that novel only if the author says, "I'm gay"?
  
  If one's purpose is simply to honor out-of-the-closet GLBT writers, then for heaven's sake, give out awards to the writers themselves. I would be delighted if the LLF started a set of awards honoring writers who have shown particular literary courage. But I think that is quite a different thing from requiring to know an author's orientation before judging whether their book is worthy of an award. I believe that good books stand on their own, without reference to the author's biography.
  
  Reply to this comment by maevele:
  
  "nobody is forbidding anyone from writing whatever the fuck they want, they just want the awards to be for queer identified people."
  
  First of all, I'd appreciate it if you would go back and read (or re-read, as the case may be) "The Susan Rules" in the profile for his journal, particularly the last sentence in Rule 3. Once we know each other well, I can tell in what spirit your profanity is intended; but if you don't post here regularly, it's best for you to err on the side of netiquette.
  
  Secondly, the awards, until now, have been for the best GLBT literature. Period. Straight authors have been honored by the Lambda Literary Awards in the past. So it's a bit disingenuous to say that the Lamda Literary Foundation folks "just want the awards to be" for out-of-the-closet GLBT writers. This is a massive change in the foundation's stated mission; they're excluding many of the best works of GLBT literature from an awards ceremony that is supposed to honor excellence in GLBT literature.
  
  It would be nice to think that the LLF's decision will have no impact on the ability of straight writers of GLBT literature to write. But the fact is that a goodly number of publishing companies pay attention to awards when deciding which books to publish. If a certain book isn't eligible for a very prominent award in a publishing field, then that book is less likely to get published. And if a professional writer can't get a certain genre published (e.g. GLBT literature), they're unlikely to write in that genre. So I do believe that this decision by the LLF will have a negative effect on the ability of straight writers to produce GLBT literature.
  
  I don't believe that the GLBT literary community's best interests are served by the LLF taking an action that is likely to discourage the writing of GLBT literature by straight authors. And I believe that a reason put forward by the LLF for this change - that GLBT writers face danger, and that, by implication, straight writers of GLBT literature don't - is horrendously wrong. Some straight writers of GLBT literature have undergone job loss and loss of friends and family as a result of their decision to write about gays and lesbians. I wouldn't be at all surprised (based on my own experience of being a reporter on sexualities other than my own) if some straight writers of GLBT literature have had their lives threatened. So I think that the "we're endangered, you aren't" argument has no legitimacy.

• Daily life: Moving from research to writing

  2009 Oct 26

  "The trouble is. . . that too many historical writers have been more in love with history than with writing. They are so fascinated by their discoveries (how well I know the danger!) that they are tempted to put them all in. So, as their knowledge increases, the story gets bogged down in detail. They describe and explain where they should be content to indicate. There is a good deal to be said for writing historical fiction in the depths of the Indian jungle. . . . But the more courageous way is to face your reference-books squarely across the table, and convinced yourself that you, not they, are going to write the story."
  
  --Geoffrey Trease: Tales Out of School.
  
  For newcomers: Background to my writing entries | Background to my mentoring entries | Background to my simplicity entries | Background to my home entries.
  
  How I reply to comments at this blog.
  
  
  *** 14 October 2009. Home and Writing: Wellness clinic; plus, steaming ahead with Prison City.
  
  "I went to a wellness clinic today," I told my friend Katharine when she visited yesterday.
  
  "Oh? How was it?"
  
  "I keeled over."
  
  Me and my stupid body. The first time this sort of thing happened was in high school biology class. We were supposed to prick our fingers and use the blood to test our blood types. I'd just pricked my finger and was staring in fascination at the blood. Oh, how interesting, I thought.
  
  *Clunk.*
  
  I honestly thought my body had outgrown its tendency to faint at the sight of needles, or I'd have asked Doug to accompany me when I had my flu shot. As it is, I made a bit of a spectacle. I wasn't terribly panicky, because I'd gone through all this before, but of course the nurses who gave the flu shots didn't know that I wasn't having a severe reaction to the shot.
  
  Fortunately, I didn't pass out entirely, and equally fortunately, within sixty seconds, one of the nurses had thought to ask me the right question: "Has this happened to you before?" They were both very nice about me ending up flat on the floor next to their table, even though they had to fend off questions from concerned bystanders.
  
  Between that and Katharine's visit, I didn't get any writing done yesterday, though I spent the evening giving the Hoopers Island chapter a thorough edit. Today, my Muse delivered to me, not the requested shantyboat scene, but the steamer scene. Good enough, especially since my eyes have been cranky over the change to cool weather.
  
  Doug's gone off to visit his family for a few days. I suppose that means I should try to do a bit of housework while he's gone.
  
  *** 16 October 2009. Writing: Slow progress with Prison City.
  
  I haven't been reading enough fiction recently, so my Muse has slowed to a crawl. I managed to squeeze out from him two thousand words today, mainly of exposition, which I can do in my sleep. But if I'm to get any more, I need to crank up the fiction reading.
  
  Thanks to the weather - it's been in the forties - I've reached the point in the year when I get a headache after reading standard-sized print for only a couple of minutes. My eyes may revive somewhat next week, when the weather is due to warm to the fifties, but in any case I'm trying to finish up the last of the research that requires me to read handwritten notes.
  
  I also need to do some research online - my list of planned Web tasks has been lengthening - but no sooner than the end of this month, I've promised myself. Exactly when I go online will depend on my Muse; having some knowledge of his cycle, I'm guessing that he's going to get very excited toward the end of the month. No way will I break into that excitement in order to go online. But once that peak is well over, I'll visit the Internet.
  
  I finished rereading Randall S. Peffer's Watermen, and got into one of those "What on earth can I read after that?" moods. (Not to mention one of my "When am I ever going to be able to speak to a waterman?" moods, but there's no cure for that. There just ain't no waterman hang-outs in D.C.) So now I'm reading William W. Warner's Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay, which I only skimmed for the oyster bits before. I prefer Mr. Peffer's book, which has more of the human drama, but Beautiful Swimmers won a Pulitzer prize, so it's likely to be worth a careful reading.
  
  *** 17 October 2009. Writing: Inspiration and perspiration, or How I write stories.
  
  I'm concerned by the fact that my composing season began three weeks ago, yet I've only written 12,000 words so far. Last year, I wrote 31,000 words during the first three weeks of my composing season.
  
  Well, all I can do is keep reading fiction as much as possible, exercise as much as possible, and stay offline and away from other distractions. The rest is up to my Muse.
  
  "I know writers who write only when inspiration comes. How would Isaac Stern play if he played the violin only when he felt like it? He would be lousy." --Madeleine L'Engle.
  
  I wish I had one of those writing skills that could just churn out the wordage, regardless as to whether my Muse was around. I can certainly nudge my Muse by sitting down and forcing myself to write when I don't feel like it. But when I say that I'm "waiting for my Muse," what I actually mean is that I'm awaiting for the ability to translate the stories that are in my mind into scenes on paper. Inspiration I don't lack, ever. I have two zillion stories in my mind, queueing up to be written down. What I lack is description. All that the stories consist of, in my mind, is dialogue and vague images. For the rest - for the concrete descriptions of scenery and activity that are necessary for prose fiction - I need to ingest large amounts of other people's fiction and hope that their descriptive abilities rub off on my Muse.
  
  If my Muse hasn't reached the point of being able to do description, then I can write down the stories, but the results are poor. To give you some idea of what my stories are like without those descriptive passages, here's a raw scene from "Rebirth 2: Love and Betrayal" (with major spoilers for "Rebirth 1"). This is what my scenes look like when I draft them in my head.
  
  o--o--o
  
  (Scene: Layle and Elsdon in the High Seeker's cell.)
  
  Elsdon: "He was a sadist. That's the only word I can use describe him."
  
  Layle: "Do you use the word 'sadist' in its restricted sense?"
  
  Elsdon: "You mean, do I think my father derived sexual pleasure from beating me? I couldn't say. I suppose it wouldn't surprise me if he had. He was that sort of man - cruel beyond words, and always convincing himself that his cruelty was a form of love."
  
  Layle: "If your father had found someone with whom he could direct his violent impulses in a manner that brought happiness to the other person, would that have made a difference to you?"
  
  Elsdon: "Do you mean, would I think more kindly toward him if he'd only beaten masochists? No, to tell the truth, I'd have despised him more if he'd corrupted anyone into enjoying his sickening pleasure."
  
  (There is a knock at the door.)
  
  Layle: "Excuse me."
  
  o--o--o
  
  Obviously I should have been a playwright. If you compare that inner draft with the final version of the scene, you'll see the parts I had to sweat to achieve. In particular, I created a whole sipping-from-the-cup section at the typing-up stage, in order to add action to the scene (and also to permit a little darkly humorous foreshadowing of the revelation about Layle's nature). In the original draft, Elsdon and Layle simply talked about Elsdon's father until they were interrupted by a knock at the door. I couldn't even have told you whether they were sitting or standing. I certainly couldn't have told you what their surroundings looked like.
  
  The only way I was able to eke out those descriptive passages was by immersing myself in the fiction of authors who actually know how to write description, till I reached the point where my Muse would write in that manner.
  
  So my equivalent of the writer's usual exercise in self-discipline ("Just get it down on paper") is to read, read, read other people's fiction. While that might sound easy, I've reached the stage in life where reading fiction is harder for me than reading nonfiction. So that's where the self-discipline comes in.
  
  Later:
  
  While we're on the subject of how I create, I happened across one of my old scene outlines tonight. I'd used it as a bookmark, which shows how ephemeral my outlines are.
  
  This is the outline for a scene in the third volume of The Eternal Dungeon. No need for spoiler notices here; as you can see, the outline is comprehensible only to me.
  
  o--o--o
  
  Bad week
  Became torturer for fun
  Lying thru truth
  Diviner tale
  L: T has honesty & some loyalty
  T: Loyalty!
  L: Right to search T
  T: Get nothing but the truth from me
  L: You've lied
  Punishment
  
  o--o--o
  
  My story outlines are just as bad. This is a bit of an outline of an upcoming Three Lands novel; again, I have no fears of spoilering anyone here.
  
  o--o--o
  
  Talk with the Lieutenant on patrol
  The Lieutenant arriving at the Commander's hut
  The Lieutenant arriving back at tent
  Talk with Captain about the Lieutenant
  Imminent attack
  Visit to the Blue Tent
  Sleep
  Talk with Captain
  Offering the cup
  Talk with Captain
  
  o--o--o
  
  I pity anyone who tries to reconstruct my unfinished stories from my outlines.
  
  I don't write down outlines for every story, much less every scene. I only scribble down outlines when the plotline/dialogue has become so complex that I can no longer keep track in my head of what goes where. Or if I'm not sure whether any needed scenes are missing (since I usually plot scenes out of order). Or if I want to give myself encouragement by ticking off each scene as I write it.
  
  One story that I didn't write down an outline for is Twenty Thousand Gold Stars. The reason that novel has no written outline is that I wrote the novel three months after I became partially sighted. At the time, I couldn't read anything, no matter how large the print. I didn't yet have text-to-speech software, nor did I yet know braille. So I typed up the novel with the computer screen off, keeping track of every blinkin' part of that novel in my head. Every scene, every piece of dialogue. There was no way to do rewrites either; if I thought of a better way in which to write a sentence, I had to type up the better version in a separate revisions file and pray that I would someday be able make revisions to the original file.
  
  At the time - April 2001 - the ophthamologists weren't offering any promises that I would ever get my reading eyesight back, and I hadn't yet learned about the various forms of accessible technology that would allow me to make revisions. So writing "Twenty Thousand Gold Stars" - and Mystery, which I wrote in the previous month - was an act of faith.
  
  "Twenty Thousand Gold Stars" had the best first draft I ever wrote. The knowledge that, at best, I might only get one chance to rewrite the novel made me pick each and every word with care. When it came time to rewrite the novel, I barely had to make any changes. (Well, except for correcting my many spelling errors. I'm not that great a typist.)
  
  I wish I could return to that purity of writing - that ability to pour my heart into every single sentence, making it as perfect as I possibly can.
  
  *** 19 October 2009. Reading: Recommendation of Evangeline Walton's The Cross and the Sword.
  
  Evangeline Walton: The Cross and the Sword. In the eleventh century, a Viking warrior is caught in a bloody struggle between Norsemen and Englishmen over the fate of England. ¶ Heterosexual fiction, male friendship fiction, class/rank themes, family relationship themes, historical fiction (Middle Ages), love stories, military fiction, prisoner fiction, race/ethnicity themes, spirituality themes. ¶ Fiction books. ¶ References to topics of sexuality. On-screen violence. ¶ Archive of my reviews.
  
  1956 was a good year for the Vikings. While Mary Renault dazzled the literary world with her first novel about Ancient Greece, other historical novelists turned their attention to Norsemen: Rosemary Sutcliff with The Shield Ring, Henry Treece with Viking's Dawn, and Evangeline Walton with The Cross and the Sword (published in Britain as Son of Darkness).
  
  Walton's lyrical Mabinogian Tetralogy has been much praised, so it's a wonder to me that her 1956 historical novel has received so little attention. The reason for this, I fear, is that medieval fantasy is a favorite genre among today's readers, while the readership for medieval historical fiction has largely fallen by the wayside. The Cross and the Sword deserves more readers than it has received.
  
  It is the tale of a boy turned warrior, outcast from his Viking family because his foreign-captive mother was considered a beguiling witch. His exile takes him overseas, where he finds himself caught between two cultures: the heathen Norsemen who plunder England out of greed, and the Christian English who maim and torture in the name of their God. Nowhere, it seems, is goodness to be found; yet Sweyn longs for something he believes cannot exist.
  
  

  Past noon it must have been when, sometimes staggering, sometimes crawling on hands and knees, I came to a meadow where horses grazed. Wolf-like I crouched under a bush, a stone in my hand, until I had a chance to come up behind the horse-herder. I killed him then, strong as trapped rats are strong. I laughed when his blood and brains spattered the stones and me. Good it was to get my hands upon an Englishman; I told myself that he would be the first of many.

  
  
  

  So it goes. Many wrongs the English had to avenge upon us; lifetimes of murders and rapes, of burnings and robberies. Not human did we Sea-Folk seem to them. I doubt if any man ever kills another who seems to him human like himself. Even to the robber, the man he slays may seem a menacing wolf, self-defense a threat. . . . So we keep the wheel turning wrong for wrong, and then fresh wrong to avenge that wrong.

  
  
  *** 22 October 2009. Writing: Status report on how my stories are going.
  
  Because I had to leave the house to deal with health matters, I missed prime writing time this morning. (I produced five thousand words yesterday.) But it was a nice day to be outside - in the mid-seventies - and I got a lot done during my tasks run. I visited the dentist (it's either a cracked crown or gum disease; we're going to assume for now that it's gum disease), and I re-ordered my glasses (the prescription got screwed up the last time because nobody at my opthamologist told me that it was a prescription for progressives, which I'd never worn before).
  
  Meanwhile, here's how my stories stand at the moment. The "done" figure includes scenes written before this season. (In the case of "Law Links," we're talking about a novel I started writing fourteen years ago.)
  
  o--o--o
  
  Master and Servant 1 (Prison City): 13 scenes done, 9 to go.
  
  Master and Servant 3 (Prison City): 14-1/2 scenes done, 2-1/2 scenes to go.
  
  Law Links (The Three Lands): The novel's all finished except for two half-scenes.
  
  o--o--o
  
  I haven't worked on anything else yet. I'm particularly concerned about finishing The Unanswered Question (The Eternal Dungeon), since I want to post that as my holiday gift fic. But "Master and Servant" and "Law Links" are higher priority, since they're due to be published next spring. I need to leave extra time for beta reading, so I'm rushing to get as much written as I can before the end of the year.
  
  If I only get "Master and Servant" and "Law Links" done, plus edit the novels and short fiction that are awaiting editing, I'll have enough material to go forward with publication next year. "Master and Servant" is going to end up very long; it's already 100,000 words (including "Master and Servant 2: The True Master," which is online now). The three Three Lands novels I'll be publishing will add up to about 430,000 words. The short fiction I've tentatively scheduled (from both the Main Bookshelf and the High Bookshelf) add up to 70,000. So we're talking about a total of 600,000+. I'll be offering, in one fell swoop, more than six novels' worth of wordage.
  
  But I'm not only concerned about giving my readers their money's worth; I'm also concerned about getting series finished. Ideally, I'd like to get a novel or two finished in either the Eternal Dungeon series or the Life Prison series. In both those series, I have half-finished novels awaiting my attention. Even if I couldn't get those novels betaed in time for spring 2010 publication, at least I'd have a head start on the 2011 publishing season.
  
  Everything depends on my Muse, who hasn't shown himself to be very cooperative so far. But he hasn't reached his peak point in his cycle yet; once he does, he may begin rolling out the wordage.
  
  (Doug has been grilling me on why my Muse is male rather than female. I told him, "My Muse is a daimon.")
  
  In other news, I had to go online for a half hour yesterday in order to deal with a dental insurance matter . . . but I was well-behaved and didn't download e-mail, because I knew that I wouldn't be able to resist reading the e-mail right away. As a result, I managed to wrest two thousand words out of my Muse that evening. My Muse is good about rewarding virtue.
  
  *** 23 October 2009. Writing: My Muse continues to stutter out scenes.
  
  Two scenes left to go in "Master and Servant 3: Unmarked." They're both complex scenes, but it would be nice to get them done by the end of the month, so that I could have a sense of accomplishment (to make up for the fact that my Muse has only delivered one-third of my monthly quota so far this month).
  
  I'm pleased with how "Unmarked" has turned out, neat and orderly. I wasn't sure whether it would; it was one of those stories that I wrote with the scenes out of order, which always raises the risk of chaos. Let's hope that "Master and Servant 1: The Abolitionist" ends up as tidy.
  
  *** 25 October 2009. Simplicity: Gearing up to go online.
  
  Sheesh, I'm beginning to figure out how I've managed to spend so much time away from fiction writing during the past twelve years. Since my Muse seems to be stuck again, and since I have a horrendous number of research tasks building up on my Web tasks list, I downloaded my e-mail yesterday in preparation to going on the Web. Two hundred e-mails, but most of them were spam. There were only two e-mails and three blog threads that I spent any large amount of time replying to.
  
  Took me twelve hours to prepare the replies. I just have no self-control where writing e-mail and posts is concerned. I write and rewrite and rewrite, till I've spent more time on a single post than I would on a short story.
  
  The only positive news is that, this time through, I managed to make the final draft of one of my post comments shorter than the original draft. That sort of restraint requires tremendous self-discipline from me.
  
  I'm wincing at the length of my current Web tasks list: 100 items. And that's not counting the research items in my Prison City notes file. Plus, some of the items are wonderfully open-ended tasks, such as "Search for 1910s first aid books at Google Books and the Internet Archive."
  
  However, unlike my late-September Web tasks list, there's no immediate deadline for the items on this list. (Well, except to see whether there's a free version available of a medical test I need to take.) So I can concentrate my attention on journal updates and Prison City research, and let any other lengthy tasks slide over to my next trip onto the Web.
  
  Because you know what? I'd really rather be spending time with my Muse than checking the current status of the tags at my blogs.

• Daily life: Chesapeake watermen research

  2009 Oct 26

  "When I was writing Trumpets in the West in the middle of India, with scarcely any reference-books, I discovered just in time that the stage-coaches in 1686 carried no outside passengers. It meant rewriting a complete chapter. Probably no child would ever have noticed the mistake, and perhaps no History teacher would have minded. . . . Similarly a whole chapter of Thunder of Valmy had to be rewritten when I discovered by chance that a certain morning at Versailles in May, 1789, had been grey and drizzly, not sunny as I had first pictured it. What does it matter, a pedantic detail like that? Just as much, or as little, as the workmanship which old-time sculptors and carvers put into figures so far from the ground that no human eye would ever appreciate it."
  
  --Geoffrey Trease: Tales Out of School.
  
  For newcomers: Background to my writing entries | Background to my mentoring entries | Background to my simplicity entries | Background to my home entries.
  
  How I reply to comments at this blog.
  
  
  *** 26 September 2009. Mentoring: An exchange between my apprentice and me.
  
  "I'll be visiting a friend around noon tomorrow, so I won't be very available, Sir."
  
  "Very available?"
  
  "Well, I'm always available to you, Sir. I'm just not always very available."
  
  *** 28 September 2009. Writing: #1 reason to love the U.S. government (Prison City research).
  
  #1 reason to love the U.S. government: free government documents on the Web.
  
  As you may recall, I had the notion of placing my protagonist's estate next to the coast of Calvert Cliffs State Park, but I wasn't able to figure out whether this was a plausible location, because I wasn't sure whether the depth of water next to the beach was suitable for a wharf or pier.
  
  Well, my dears, here is what I was able to find online over the weekend:
  
  A nautical chart showing the depth of water along the park's coast, prepared by the federal government's Office of Coast Survey.
  
  A nautical chart by the same government body, showing the depth of water along the park's coast in 1908.
  
  The 1908 chart also shows:
  
  * The location of the oyster bars (i.e. where oystermen would be sailing).
  
  * The location and length of piers.
  
  * The names of towns.
  
  * The location of rivers and marshland.
  
  * The location of roads (paved and unpaved).
  
  * The location of houses.
  
  What I already had (but needed to examine more closely) was the U.S. Geological Survey's map of the area in 1904, showing:
  
  * The names of towns.
  
  * The location of rivers and marshland.
  
  * The location of roads (paved and unpaved).
  
  * The location of houses.
  
  * The topography.
  
  Taken together, these two maps are like a gift from the gods. They tell me that a house existed right about where I was planning to place my protagonist's estate, close to what is now the park beach. The two maps differ slightly on where the house was located, which gives me wiggle room to place the house where I want, but they both show that a road led up to the house.
  
  (Understand, I could have placed an imaginary house there regardless, but the actual existence of a house there tells me that the terrain was suitable for such a house location. That's what I was trying to determine.)
  
  Oh, and all that information I mentioned above? I also have it for Hoopers Island. I now know exactly where on the island my imaginary boarding school is located (next to the appropriately named Richland Cove, on a peninsula of land that has virtually disappeared, so I needn't feel guilty about not having visited it), I know exactly where my second protagonist would encounter marshland during his walk across the upper island (more or less where I encountered it, as it turns out), I know where the roads through the upper island were located in 1910 (almost exactly where they are today), I know the location in 1910 of the nearby Back Creek (whose exact boundaries have shifted slightly over the years), and I know where some of the watermen are going to engage in a firefight with rival watermen (in the part of Hoopers Island called Gunners, of course).
  
  As icing on the cake, I found online various maps by the Maryland Geological Survey, showing shoreline changes in Maryland between 1848 and now. This will help me to correlate modern maps of Dorchester County and Calvert County with turn-of-the-century maps. One of those maps reveals, by the way, that the cove next to Calvert Cliffs State Park didn't exist in 1848 - it's a product of shoreline erosion since that time. No wonder the cove has no name. However, judging from the turn-of-the-century maps, the cove did exist by the 1910s.
  
  I also downloaded from Google Books a copy of the 1916 edition of the United States Coast Pilot - published by the U.S. Department of Commerce - which includes deliciously detailed passages like this:
  
  "Tar Bay is a shallow bay between Barren Island and the northern end of Hooper Island. A very narrow, crooked channel leads from Chesapeake Bay across Tar Bay northward of Barren Island, and through Fishing Creek into the northern end of Honga River. It has a depth of about 4 feet, is marked by two lights and by bush stakes, and is considerably used by small local craft, but local knowledge is necessary to follow it. The lights form a range for the approach, and in entering the first is left to starboard and the second to port. Fishing Creek [the creek between Hoopers Island and the mainland] is crossed by a drawbridge."
  
  Getting back to the plausibility of anchorage in the unnamed cove next to Calvert Cliffs State Park: the answer is "just barely." Bugeyes and skipjacks - the Chesapeake-style boats that I'm planning to have in that part of the story - are shallow-draft boats (i.e. they don't go far down into the water), so I think I can get away with having them anchor there, especially since the water next to Hoopers Island - where I know that boats anchored in the 1910s - seems comparable. (I say "seems" because the Office of Coast Survey didn't provide exact figures on its 1910 map, darn them.) And there existed piers further up the coast in Calvert County, as well as a fishing station at Flag Ponds, on the coastline just north of Calvert Cliffs State Park (not to mention a nice long oyster bar in between). Just to be safe, I'll give the Calvert Cliffs cove a pier.
  
  "I want the U.S. government to spend all my tax money on projects like this," I told my apprentice after I'd downloaded all this. I mean, really, this wealth of free information at government Websites is public service at its best.
  
  *** 28 September 2009. Writing: #1 sign that it's time to stop gathering research material.
  
  The revised version of my historical note for Master and Servant is 2600 words long.
  
  *** 28 September 2009. Writing: Starting into my writing season.
  
  I do not, alas, have the ability to turn my Muse instantly on and off, so I'm spending this week easing into my writing season: I'm reading the online fiction and e-books I've accumulated for the last couple of months, I'm sorting my computer files, I'm de-cluttering my study, and I'm catching up on phone calls to friends and family and on correspondence I can't put off till next year.
  
  Vital correspondence and Daily Life entries left aside, I'm doing my best to avoid reading nonfiction. Sooner or later, my Muse will notice that I'm reading only fiction and then, beaming, he'll pay me a visit.
  
  And not a moment too soon, as far as I'm concerned. I've missed him.
  
  Meanwhile, my penchant for downloading has reached the point of no return: I now have 1% space left on my hard drive. So I'm trying to figure out easy ways to purge files.
  
  *** 29 September 2009. Simplicity: Purging my hard drive.
  
  As of the beginning of this evening, I had 1.7 GB free on my 56 GB hard drive. I needed 8 GB free, just to be able to defragment the drive.
  
  I managed to get 1 GB free by going through my "To Read" folder and getting rid of files I obviously don't need. Then I scrutinized my Videos folder and concluded that I could get rid of another 8 GB by moving my full-length movies over to my laptop.
  
  The question is where I'll find room on my laptop; I only have 4 GB free there.
  
  Darn it, I need a way to save files onto DVDs.
  
  *** 30 September 2009. Writing: Slugging away at the Prison City lighthouse research.
  
  Spent today undertaking the dull but necessary work of skimming the period nonfiction works on lighthouses that I downloaded last week. I only have three e-texts left; then I can start on the period novels about lighthouses.
  
  The most interesting publication I read was a 1908-9 magazine called "The Master, Mate, and Pilot," which was filled (among other things) with items like this:
  
  "Popular novels and magazines are said to be the favorite reading of light-house keepers. Naturally these worthy men would go in for light literature. (Gaze steadily at this paragraph for twenty-three seconds and a joke will appear.)"
  
  'Tis nice to see that bad jokes are a perennial favorite.
  
  There's still no sign of my Muse, but I'm not impatient. I have a friend coming to see me on Tuesday, and the Sunday after that I'm scheduled to go to Dorchester County with Spiralred; I'd hate either event to occur when my Muse was champing at the bit.
  
  *** 2 October 2009. Writing: The play Fishing Gone (Prison City Research).
  
  Doug and I went to see a play about Chesapeake watermen at the Smithsonian last night, "Fishing Gone." The most interesting aspect of it was the actress, a native Baltimorean who now lives on Tangier Island (a Chesapeake island in Virginia) and who played herself. The play was framed around her giving us, the audience, a tour of the island. "The boat back to the mainland leaves at 4:00, not 4:01," she said sternly.
  
  The playwright, Roger Vaugn, has good maritime writing credits, but I blinked when I got to the part in the play where a character was saying (unless I misheard him, always a possibility) that skipjacks were brought to the Chesapeake by New England fishermen and were the first boats that were powerful enough to dredge with. (Skipjacks were actually invented about eighty years after New England fishermen invaded the Chesapeake, they weren't the first dredge boats, and they were smaller than the first dredge boats.)
  
  The other aspect of the play that bothered me was that there were a fair number of "dumb yokel" jokes in it - jokes that played upon the idea of the Tangier watermen not knowing as much as the audience did. In fact, the plotline revolved around better educated characters lecturing one of the watermen until he sees the light. Even a line about the tourists and watermen learning from each other couldn't disguise the fact that, in the play, the watermen were the ones who did all the learning.
  
  "So basically what you're saying is that the play was a wash," my apprentice concluded after I'd given my report. He summed it up nicely.
  
  *** 3 October 2009. Writing: Rugby, watermen's dialect, and steamboats (Prison City research).
  
  I spent today trying futilely to find the videos I downloaded several months ago, showing rugby mauls. (You gotta love a sport where one of the official moves is called a maul.) I think I accidentally deleted the videos, darn it. But I went through the rest of my material on rugby history and did a corresponding brush-up on the football scene in Master and Servant.
  
  Yesterday - despite my earlier conviction that I was done with library research for this year - I accompanied Doug to the Hyattsville Library and did another run on its Maryland Room (which, I may not have mentioned, is a reference room, so I can't borrow the books there). My eyes really weren't up for lengthy reading - and anyway, the library closed ninety minutes after we got there - but I wanted to skim Varley Lang's Follow the Water (1961), which was written by a teacher-turned-waterman. It turned out to provide evidence that, fifty years ago, watermen's dialect was essentially the same as it is today. Since Varley Lang became a waterman in the fifties, when watermen were still alive who had been following the water back in the 1910s, this is pretty clear evidence that the dialect hasn't changed much over a century's time. Larry Chowning, who fictionalizes interview material from watermen who lived back in the 1910s, implicitly offers the same evidence. This is good, because I can't find any turn-of-the-century books that quote watermen. In fact, as far as I can tell, Follow the Water was the first book specifically about watermen. (A factoid: Mr. Lang was a consultant for Katharine Paterson's Newbery-award-winning children's novel from 1980, Jacob Have I Loved, which is set on an imaginary island in the Chesapeake Bay.)
  
  By "watermen's dialect," I'm referring simply to the traditional Chesapeake dialect. I'm sure that it varies from place to place, but its general features seem to be the same, no matter which location I look at - for example, a relative lack of complex sentence structures, and a tendency to drop the pronoun or article at the beginning of the sentence.
  
  Oh, and a tendency for men to call other men "honey." I'm rather taken with that.
  
  I also glanced through David Holly's Tidewater by Steamboat and some other books on steamboat history. I'd been having the worst problems finding information on steamboat history online, but Mr. Holly's book provided me with just what I needed: a layout of a steamboat's decks. That, and his description of what sounds could be heard on a steamboat, are enough to let me write that steamboat scene.
  
  Because I was reading under a deadline, I kept sending Doug off to make photocopies for me. He finally joked, "Do I get credit in your book?"
  
  "You're already in the acknowledgments," I assured him.
  
  *** 4 October 2009. Writing: Playing around with EPUB e-books.
  
  EPUB, as you may recall, is an open-source format for e-books; its creators want it to be the MP3 of the e-book world. Well, they seem to be succeeding. Everyone is jumping on the EPUB bandwagon these days: iPod (via Stanza), Barnes & Noble's e-book reader, Sony Reader, and Google Books. Only Amazon is left out in the cold. (Ha. That's what happens to businesses that try to conquer the world with a proprietary e-book format.)
  
  So I experimented around, and I determined that I can use Calibre to convert a bunch of HTML and jpg files into a single EPUB book. Neat. This means that, next year, I can release all of my fiction works in a package edition, in two formats: EPUB and zipped HTML.
  
  I have to say that, the more I look at EPUB, the more I like it. It has nearly all the advantages of HTML, combined with the advantage of built-in packaging of several files. Depending on the e-reader, you can also take advantage of features like a contents sidebar and bookmarks.
  
  The reason I didn't initially like EPUB was because some publishers are using it to try to replicate the look of printed books. That just won't work. EPUB is basically a variation on HTML; if you try to do stuff like justify the text and include paragraph indents, the results are just as bad as if you tried to do that to an HTML document. (I don't want to tell you what a quarter-inch paragraph indent looks like when the reader is viewing an EPUB e-book in 28-point type, as I do. Just double-space between the paragraphs, please.) Treated as it is meant to be - an electronic document - EPUB is a perfectly nice format.
  
  Because of EPUB's newfound popularity, I might eventually be able to find place to sell EPUB e-books besides Lulu.com. And I sure hope that Google Books's decision to provide EPUB downloads for some of its public domain books means that it will eventually support the EPUB format in its Publishing Partners program.
  
  By the way, after looking at what files make up EPUB, I became curious, because the contents of an EPUB file (.opf and .xml) look awfully like the contents of a DAISY file (.opf, .xml, .ncx, and .smil) - DAISY being the text/audio e-book format used for the blind. So I checked, and sure enough: the DAISY Consortium is in charge of standards for the EPUB format. I'm not sure about all the implications for this, but I'm betting that it at least means that the DAISY Consortium is making sure that EPUB remains accessible to the blind.
  
  *** 5 October 2009. Writing: Preparing my domain for next year; plus, novel-reading related to Prison City.
  
  Since my Muse is still on vacation, I spent three hours today (so far) on Website layout. I think my new publishing plans - getting all of my fiction ready for publication/posting before the publishing season begins - is a good one, because it lets me do all the needed Website layout at once (other than minor tweaks when I put promised fiction online). There's a lot of layout to do; those three hours were spent on Darkling Plain alone . . . and I haven't even made the changes yet to reflect next year's publications in that series.
  
  Doing Web layout is like eating candy to me, so I haven't felt any urges to go online. In fact, the idea of going on several times a week (as I did last winter) is beginning to seem . . . well, weird.
  
  Meanwhile, I continue to read fiction in the hopes that my Muse will get the idea. Right now, I'm reading Katharine Paterson's Jacob Have I Loved, which I suspect I wouldn't have liked if I'd tried to read it as a kid (it was published when I was junior in high school), because it's heavy on exposition, and so far (five chapters in) not much has happened plotwise. But as someone who has just spent a whole summer on Chesapeake research, I'm impressed with how well Ms. Paterson mastered her subject matter; through her novel, I can really feel what it's like to live on a bay island.
  
  Darn it, this is demoralizing; I'm not that good an author.
  
  [Later: Finished reading the novel. Oh, man. I was in tears by the end.]
  
  I must go; Doug just came in and said, "I tried. I really tried."
  
  I waited patiently for him to finish.
  
  "I tried not to make the eggplant lasagna as decadent as last time. . . ."
  
  I'm off to eat decadent lasagna.
  
  *** 5 October 2009. Writing: Speaking of demoralizing . . .
  
  A very-not-worksafe passage from Poisontaster's A Kept Boy, with names changed in order to prevent spoilers.
  
  o--o--o
  
  "Can you come while being fucked?"
  
  The effort to string together that many words is monumental . . . but worth it for the way the deeply-furrowed, blown-pupil look on Brian's face transforms into breathtaking head-thrown, sealed-lid, open-mouthed blissfulness, transcending the heated pearl-stripe of come and clench of Brian's body around him.
  
  In you. I'm in you, Hank thinks, driving hard. Inside you. Always inside you.
  
  The orgasm, when it comes, is like sliding on ice off a cliff's edge; an almost peaceful equilibrium point of utter, perfect stillness followed by the drowning, crashing crush, consciousness compacted into the liquid spill of his body into Brian's.
  
  Mundane humanity returns too much later, Hank's back twinging as he goes from locked-rigid to noodle-limp, exhaustion licking him with black, greedy tongues.
  
  o--o--o
  
  Now, this is why I rarely write graphic sex scenes. I can't write sex that well. (*Goes offstage to whimper quietly.*)
  
  *** 6 October 2009. Writing: 1910s watermen's dialect (Prison City research).
  
  Still no sign of my Muse. I'm feeding him Marion Zimmer Bradley, whom I haven't read since the 1990s. She makes for good light reading.
  
  Doug wanted to do something special today, so we went to the library. (I love a man who considers going to the library to be a special outing.) My eyes are in that early-fall transitional period when I can't read standard-sized print for long, but I can read it for a short time, so I browsed through Hyattsville's Maryland Room.
  
  I stumbled across a treasure, one I'd ignored before because of its silly title: They Live by the Wind: The Lore and Romance of the Last Sailing Workboats: The Garand Banks Schooners, the Square-Rigged Training Ships, the Chesapeake Oysterboats, the Fishing Sloops of the Bahamas. Since the author, Wendell P. Bradley, died before finishing his manuscript, I'm going to guess that his publisher was responsible for that monstrosity of a title.
  
  At any rate, beyond the awful title was pay dirt. The Chesapeake section of the book was written between 1953 and 1966. The author, who lived on Tilghman Island, describes life there. The centerpiece of his account is a passage recreating a day he spent sailing with "the oldest active captain on the Bay," who captained "the last gaff topsail sloop on the Bay." Captain Will Jones was eighty-four years old at the time and had followed the water since he was eighteen.
  
  Bradley's experiences cover the same time period as Varley Lang's in Follow the Water (1961), and the book also overlaps in content with Randall S. Peffer's Watermen (1979). All three authors give essentially the same impression of Tilghman Island watermen, which - as a history writer and journalist - delights me. I love the evidence of multiple witnesses.
  
  I am happy to report that the dialect of "the oldest active captain on the Bay" turns out to be essentially the same as today's Eastern Shore dialect. Mind you, he could have changed his manner of speech to fit with the times, or his speech could have been misreported, but I've now got three authors - Bradley, Lang, and Larry S. Chowning - who have all recounted watermen who were alive in the 1910s as using the same dialect in later years as is in use today. (Possibly four. I wasn't paying attention to ages when I read Mr. Peffer's Watermen.) It would be nice to turn up a 1910s document that actually quotes Eastern Shore dialect, but that would take me far too much digging to unearth.
  
  Besides, I want my Muse to show up and make use of all this research, darn it.
  
  *** 7 October 2009. Simplicity: Freeing up space on my computer.
  
  As you may recall, I recently ran out of room on my 56-gigabyte desktop computer; I was down to less than a gigabyte of space. I need to free up at least nine gigabytes, so that I can defragment my disk.
  
  After sorting a lot of unsorted computer files into their proper folders, I've managed to identify the sources of my space problem.
  
  The problem doesn't lie with the files in my To Read folder (though that folder sure needs some weeding). Nor does it lie, surprisingly enough, with images. (I tend to collect public domain artwork a lot, for the sake of my booktrailers.)
  
  The problem lies with videos, music, and PDF files from Google Books and the Internet Archive.
  
  I can resolve the last problem easily enough: many of those e-texts can be replaced with EPUB or plain-text files from Google Books and the Internet Archive (or simply ditched altogether). The videos are a bigger problem. A heck of a lot of those videos are for research for my Prison City and Triad series; I can't discard them till I've finished my research for those series, which will likely be years from now. Nor can I afford to buy an external CD or DVD drive.
  
  So I'm just going to have to systematically go through my hard drive to get rid of files I'm no longer using. I've already freed up nearly two gigabytes that way. So I've only got six gigabytes to go.
  
  *** 9 October 2009. Simplicity: Freeing up space on my computer, Part 2.
  
  I woke up this morning with the sharp realization: I don't need more storage space. I need fewer electronic belongings.
  
  Mind you, I'd still love to have external storage space for my movies; a single movie takes up a third of a gigabtye on my hard drive. But for the rest of my files, the problem isn't that they're too big; the problem is that I have too many of them.
  
  So my lack of external storage space is a blessing; it forces me to decide what I really need.
  
  *** 9 October 2009. Writing: Turning over the slate.
  
  I've been in a mild depression since my writing season began, nearly two weeks ago; my Muse has been nowhere in sight, and I haven't been terribly interested in the activities I've been doing in the meantime. (Also, I've been dealing with medical bureaucracy, which is enough to drive me to comfort activities.)
  
  In past years, I would have resolved my depression by going online. One hour online is like a hit of cocaine to me. This year, I told myself firmly that I just needed to keep reading fiction, and sooner or later my Muse would turn up.
  
  He's here.
  
  "Seventeen hundred words!" I chirped at my apprentice this evening.
  
  "I thought you were going down for a nap," he replied, confused.
  
  "I did! I woke up again!" Then, as he remained silent, I felt compelled to explain, "Seventeen hundred words only took me an hour. I know that seventeen hundred words would be a twenty-four-hour marathon for you."
  
  "Seventeen hundred words?" said my apprentice, incredulous. (He's quite capable of writing at a rate of one sentence per hour.)
  
  Actually, I'll know I'm back in full form when I begin producing 3000 words a day, that being my average last winter. Right now, I'm still groping my way back to a decent style, but switching from reading Marion Zimmer Bradley to reading Evangeline Walton should help. (I'm about to reread her Viking novel, The Cross and the Sword.)
  
  At any rate, my depression is gone. Did I mention that I only feel really alive when I'm writing stories?
  
  By the way, "turning over the slate" is a reference to the double-sided slate that hangs from a nail on my study door. On one side, the slate is blank. On the other side is written the words, "Muse in. Do not disturb." I turn the slate over when I'm entering into a writing session, so that Doug will know not to interrupt me.
  
  However, I can't turn my slate over entirely yet. I've received word from Spiralred that our trip to Dorchester County will take place as planned this Sunday. Plus, I have a few of those yucky health matters to get done. But at least I won't have to do all that in the midst of gloom.
  
  *** 12 October 2009. Writing: My Muse moveth.
  
  A day in Dorchester (which I'll write about in a separate entry) seems to have woken up my Muse: I wrote five thousand words today, despite the fact that I'm having to go to bed early in order to attend a wellness clinic tomorrow morning.
  
  This is my total wordage for the 2008-9 seasons:
  
  o--o--o
  
  Summer total: 29,935.
  
  Winter total: 178,100. Winter total average: 29,683/month, 3,124/day of the days on which I wrote. Wrote 57 days, an average of 9.5 days per month.
  
  Total for 2008-9: 208,035 (139% of 150,000; 58% of 360,000).
  
  o--o--o
  
  My goal for 2008-9 was 150,000 words: thirty thousand words a month for the five months of my composing season. (Because of my mother's death, I was delayed a month in starting my composing season last year.) I more than exceeded that goal.
  
  This year my goal is sixty thousand words a month for six months, for a total of 360,000 words. Since I don't plan to spend 72 days online this winter (that's the awful total for my online time last winter; note that it exceeds the number of days I spent writing), I'm hopeful that a goal of two thousand words a day will be achievable, since I average three thousand words a day on the days when I write; if I write on two-thirds of the days this winter, I'll achieve my goal. As an extra cushion, my summer total for this year was 16,660 words, so I've already completed 5% of this year's goal.
  
  Setting aside the math and getting back to content: I've finished the Hoopers Island watermen chapter, though it's going to have to be heavily rewritten. Just in time; the Hoopers Island books I borrowed are due next week. Tomorrow I've got the wellness clinic and the delayed visit from my local friend. Then I'll get to work on the shantyboat chapter. The Calvert County watermen chapters are going to be the hardest to write, because I have much less information to work with. Though I do still hope that I can persuade Doug to revisit the Calvert Cliffs State Park next March.
  
  Meanwhile, I'm immersing myself in watermen's dialect by rereading Randall S. Peffer's Watermen, which is well worth revisiting.

• Writing life: Prison City research trip to Dorchester County

  2009 Oct 26

  An update for those of you who don't read my regular Daily Life entries: I've settled that the Calvert Cliffs cove near Cove Point in Calvert County is a suitable home for my protagonist. I've written the Hoopers Island watermen chapter. I've rewritten the Solomons Island chapter. I still have to write the lighthouse chapter and the Calvert Cliffs chapters.
  
  But meanwhile (or rather, before I wrote the Hoopers Island chapter), I went off to Dorchester County again, this time with spiralred.
  
  CHESAPEAKE MARSHLANDS NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE COMPLEX (at Bishops Head Point)
  
  "We came, we saw, we got muddy!" I announced to Doug at the end of the day, showing off to him my new, two-toned sneakers (previously my extra pair of white sneakers), which were now half covered in dried marshland mud.
  
  I was very pleased. I'd been mourning the fact that I couldn't afford black sneakers this year. Now I have grey-and-white sneakers.
  
  Spiralred and I started the day by discussed important topics as we crossed the Bay Bridge. ("Do you Twitter?") Then, once we'd reached Dorchester County, we stopped at the visitor center at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, because Spiralred remembered visiting an educational center south of Blackwater on previous trips. Turned out Chesapeake Marshlands National Wildlife Refuge Complex is way south of Blackwater, at the tip of the peninsula of Dorchester County that lies east of Hoopers Island, over the Honga River (just north of Hooper Strait on the map).
  
  We stopped for lunch at Maple Dam Road, the road that cuts through Blackwater. There's a bridge halfway down the refuge that goes over Blackwater River, and just after the bridge is a parking lot. We sat on the grass next to the parking lot, right next to a couple of little buildings that we hoped did not house dangerous chemicals.
  
  It was just Spiralred, me, and a few butterflies. It was too late in the year for most of the summer animals, too early in the year for the migrating ducks and geese. (The author of Prison City made careful note of that.) We ate Spiralred's idea of picnic food: pasta salad, gourmet pizza, and the sweetest grapes on the face of this planet. Then we headed toward Bishops Head Point.
  
  Spiralred put me in charge of the map. Despite that, we got there.
  
  Or rather, we got to the head of a one-lane path leading into the refuge. "Would you like to walk from here?" asked Spiralred. That was exactly what I wanted to do, but we were delayed momentarily by a local woman who drove into the parking lot and suggested that we move our car to the edge of the lot because "there are going to be a lot of cars here soon."
  
  We glanced at the building we'd chosen to park next to on Sunday, October 11. A church.
  
  In the refuge, it was me, Spiralred, some birds of prey, a few crabs, and butterflies. Lots of butterflies, competing for just a few flowers. Our hike turned out to be one and a half miles to reach the end of the peninsula; the weather was excellent, about seventy degrees with a light breeze and clear skies. At Bishops Head Point itself, there was an excellent view of Lower Hoopers Island, four miles over the water. Then we headed back. Spiralred showed me how to eat blackneedle rush, and we discussed important topics. ("What is that place the characters end up in at the end of Winnie-the-Pooh?")
  
  We returned the church parking lot, which was now overflowing with vehicles. Thanks to the nice local, Spiralred's car was easily extracted.
  
  HOOPERS ISLAND
  
  Spiralred didn't have any other plans for the day, so I bullied persuaded her into visiting Hoopers Island, which she'd never been to. We stopped first at the store at the top of the upper island, to use the restroom. While there, I got up the courage to ask the store clerk - whom I'd now met three times - whether there was a path to Richland Point.
  
  Richland Point is the place at the southwest end of the middle island where I'm planning to place my imaginary boarding school. Richland Point scarcely exists now, thanks to shore erosion, but in the 1910s it was a proper peninsula. It was marked on a 1908 U.S. government map as uninhabited marshland. I had no idea what it was today, but I wanted to find out.
  
  Trouble is, Hoopers Island Road ends before Richland Point. Was there a path down to Richland? I put the question to the store clerk.
  
  The clerk turned out not to live on Hoopers Island. She referred me over to a local man, wearing a baseball cap and down-home clothes, who was standing in line. He, hearing what she said, came over to me.
  
  If I'd had my wits about me, I'd have introduced myself and explained about my interest in the island. I rarely have my wits about me when talking to strangers. I blurted out my question.
  
  He, understandably startled at my abruptness, paused before saying, "Nope. There's just the canal."
  
  "The canal?" I said, hoping he'd explain.
  
  He nodded.
  
  "So there isn't any path to Richland Point?" I pressed.
  
  "Nope," he replied firmly.
  
  That seemed to be the end of the conversation. It reminded me of the conversation that was said to have taken place after President Calvin Coolidge - from taciturn New England - was asked whether a sermon he'd attended was good.
  
  "Yes."
  
  "What was it about?"
  
  "Sin."
  
  "What did the minister say?"
  
  "He was against it."
  
  Out in the car, I told Spiralred, "It doesn't sound as though there's any way to get to Richland Point, but I'd still like to drive down as far as we can get. . . . How brave are you?"
  
  She is fearless, as I had already determined, so she was game to driving along that thin little causeway from the upper island to the middle island. You know the one: it's about the width of a toothpick, the road has no shoulders, on one side is the Honga River, and on the other side is the Chesapeake Bay.
  
  Actually, when we got there, I felt as though I'd played up the dangers too much; it wasn't that bad a drive. Thing is, though, the last time I'd been there, with Doug, it had been a dark, wet, windy day. The causeway looks considerably different when the barely-visible road is slick, waves are splashing up toward the road, and the wind is threatening to push your car into the Bay.
  
  We reached the end of Hoopers Island Road. It just ends, with only a left turn onto a private road. And just before it ends - lo and behold - there's a gravel path going south.
  
  I now wasn't sure what had been going on in that conversation with the local. Did I misunderstand him? Did he misunderstand me? Did he dislike the idea of strangers tramping their blithe way over his island? Or was he just worried that the dumb tourists would end up getting sucked into marshland mud?
  
  With a map firmly clutched in my hand, we started forward. There was just me, Spiralred, and the butterflies. ("You're going to have to put butterflies in your novel," Spiralred said. I told her, "I was just plotting that scene in my head.)
  
  And mosquitoes. They'd been absent all day, but suddenly they appeared, with all the fanatic energy of suicide bombers. I put on my sweater (I'd forgotten my long-sleeved shirt in the car). The mosquitoes simply moved their target range to my neck.
  
  We reached a muddy path leading southwest. The gravel path veered southeast. I doublechecked the map; Richland Point was indeed southwest. Somewhat dubiously, we started down the path.
  
  That's the point at which I go mud on my shoes. So did Spiralred. The "path" was simply flattened marsh grass where some vehicle had driven. Underneath the grass was marsh mud. The mud was making sucking sounds on our shoes. I began to think that the local had been right about those dumb tourists.
  
  "It's awfully muddy here," noted the fearless Spiralred, which allowed me (the quivering coward) to propose that we head back to the dullness of the gravel path.
  
  The gravel path turned out to be more interesting than we'd expected. The thin marshland plant here - darned if I know what the name was for it - grew above our heads. Every now and then we'd hear rustling in the marsh, but trying to see through the plant was like trying to see through a jungle. It felt like we were walking between two living walls.
  
  We reached the end of the path. We reached the pond.
  
  It was a relatively small pond, but it was filled with ducks - mallards, Spiralred declared, with her better eyesight. They were all quacking energetically. Next to the pond was an enormous spread of bare earth. What was it? The beginnings of an industrial project? We walked across it, looking for any sign that the path continued on the other side. Then I noticed that there were plants sticking out of the earth.
  
  "I'll bet this is the pond bottom," I said. "I'll bet that the water spreads this far sometimes."
  
  Spiralred and I immediately began worrying that we were crushing hibernating pond animals. We practically tiptoed our way back.
  
  We headed back up to the upper island, while I tried to determine how far we'd walked. (I still won't know till I check a satellite map.) As we drove northward, I looked to the northwest, and I'll swear that, over the Bay, I could see Cove Point.
  
  We stopped at Old Salty's Restaurant - the motorbikers who had been parked out front before were gone - and we had supper while discussing important topics ("I can't imagine what will happen next in Life Prison") and yet more important topics ("Have you seen Rocky Horror?").
  
  Old Salty's crab cakes, I can testify, are as good off-season as they are in season. The bread pudding is to die for.
  
  Thanks to Spiralred and her willingness to tramp through uncharted marshland, this trip gave me the material I needed to write the Hoopers Island watermen chapter - not to mention a new scene featuring a marshland pond - though I'm still struggling with nature terminology. I'd really like to get someone from Hoopers Island to look over the manuscript - though how the heck I'd find that someone, I don't know. Maybe I can stand in the island store again, holding my manuscript and looking like a pathetic tourist till someone takes pity on me.

• I'll be offline (more or less) till April

  2009 Sep 27

  I'm entering into my usual fall/winter hermitage in order to write write write fiction. (Wish me luck. Last year's hermitage wasn't much of a hermitage.) With luck, I'll come online about once a month - or less - to pick up e-mail, do needed research, and post Daily Life and Progress Report entries. If you need to get ahold of me over the fall and winter about a time-sensitive matter, please CC your e-mail to my personal assistant (i.e. my apprentice).
  
  Also, if my Muse is cooperative (*pauses to glare at exceedingly uncooperative Muse, who smiles cheerfully back*), I'll be coming online some time in late December to post my holiday gift fic. I can't say at this point which December holiday I'll be posting it on. Hey, I need to leave an element of surprise in the gift-giving.
  
  Finally, a round-up of "thank yous" and "you're welcomes" for the recent posts from MightyMaeve, Lizardlez, and Thetammyjo; a big thank you to Rose Red for continuing the book-buying struggle; and a "sorry" to Yonmei for breaking off in the middle of our discussion - but keep posting, please!
  
  That goes for the rest of you too. Post any replies to my old posts that you want, and I'll get back to you in one of my "reply to comments" round-ups.