Kathryn-Kat-Allen

As Above, So Below

2009-11-07T00:57:56Z

In spoiler free comment -- Supernatural continues to be clever rather than pretentious :) (also a show that can be watched repeatedly and actually get better for the depth of focus... one in the eye for patronising gits who think TV should be getting away with being less satisfying than the proverbial Chinese take-away).

...

And as a thought for the day -- "The universe is full of elegant and satisfying answers, but their truth and relevance to the individual is in proportion to ones relationship with the question."

(aka in reductio ad absurdum -- 'Ask a silly question...')

After The Fire

2009-11-01T08:21:26Z

Then you have the answers. Which, as it happens, turned out to be mostly 'no'. But I'm enjoying my enjoying my usual leaf-smoke-scented post-ritual buzz, mellowed into contentment. Sacrifice is what it is, and I've learned from it (and the lesson is not -- oops, sorry I asked).

Plus, there was magic in the day, and it looks like the remaking went well.

And I'm not about to spit on my luck.

[btw people, if you decide to take a leak the other side of a gate from where there's candle and flame flickering and someone talking softly in otherwise pitch darkness* on Halloween night... Well, just consider that it might be a good idea not to.]

* and yes I totally forgot about the automatic light sensor but it didn't fire up once.

Do You Remember?

2009-10-31T21:43:23Z

I've been getting a little worried about Caspar, the cat who lives next door whose at least partially blind in one eye (and whose people claimed that he always had the bad eye when we casually mentioned it -- as if we wouldn't have noticed that he was a perfectly normal kitten). Anyhow, I'm pretty sure they're leaving him outside a deal more than a one-eyed cat should be (given he's small, loses most fights with other cats, and we're as urban as you can get with lots of parked cars and speeding motorists using the back and front road as rat runs) and his repeated requests to be let in have a lot more effect on me than his people.

Which was how I happened to be talkin with him this morning about disturbing the wren I'd been watching(because he was birding from the top of our fence -- his black and white patches blend extremely well into the half black daubed paintwork and exposed weathered wood of the backside of the neighbour's fence). And that was when somewhere between eight and a dozen long-tailed tits flew in. (No we really are absolutely in the town, almost as town centre as you can get, and they shouldn't be flying anywhere near, but... and yanno halloween) They're just beautiful in flight, even though they always seem to be yelling at each other, chirruping high and very loudly, tails tucked then spread. And I had to wave them on because they were coming in to land almost within paw-reach of a very very interested Caspar who was suddenly not at all worried about my intentions (which were 'you - your side of the fence, please'). They chirruped annoyance and moved on, and I was nearly back indoors when I realised they'd done a wide circuit and come back -- resulting in me pointing at the cat, while telling a long-tail sat about four feet from me in the hazel (and I think two friends in the jasmine 'don't you see? it's a bloody cat?'. After which Caspar was entirely insulted and wobbled along the couple of yard of fence onto his balcony, and started calling his people again (still to no effect)

But oh, with the autumn sunshine, and the chill, and the black and white and powder-puff pink and the apple and jasmine... It was beautiful.

And if you don't know the other story... some many years ago I was walking Isa and there was a godawful row of chirruping... and I saw a ring of blue and long-tailed tits one the ground, a bunch more yelling encouragement from the trees, and in the centre two little hawks engaged in combat. So I went across, and the ring flew up but the two fighters didn't. And I picked them up, one in each hand, still locked together, and gave them a brief lecture the main point of which was 'I could have been a cat -- that'd have sorted both of you' while I untangled their claws from each other, and checked for damage done. Then I opened my hands and felt them roll over and kick off into the air. It was... magic.

(And deus ex machina)

On The Premises

2009-10-14T01:21:57Z

And my short story "The Hard Place" (originally - Between a Rock and a Hard Place) took 3rd prize in this quarter's (or maybe that's third's?) On The Premises short story competition.

I'm quite chuffed. (And also rather lucky that the premise entirely fitted an existing story that happened to not be out at another market in time for me to enter it)

[You know, I like when other people enjoy my stories -- but I also rather like when their appreciation involves money.]

That's All That Matters Now, No Matter What.

2009-10-12T03:28:13Z

I was never a Boyzone fan -- but it was Stephen Gately's voice caught my attention (and handed me over to Ronan Keating) so that I listened to this song.

There's music that soundtracks your life -- that knocks you off your high horse or picks you up and dusts you down, that makes you cry or starts the mend on a broken heart, that encourages you to say hello or helps you say goodbye. (It can be poetry to music or a few lines of doggerel sung from the heart -- what matters is whether it speaks to you, whether you invest it with meaning)

I've not learnt a lot of lyrics by heart since I was a teenager (prior to that I used to absorb sponge-like) -- but this song I can happily sing to myself. And when I do, it's his voice I'm singing along with.

Without Stephen Gately, I might never have listened -- there are a lot of songs written that I've never heard and likely will never hear, even though they play in the background while I'm in HMV or embellish the soundtrack to a favourite tv show -- and my life would be just a little different (or maybe a lot different) if I hadn't heard this one.

I'm not a grief-stricken fan. There are quite a lot of people in the world whose lives mean more to me. But when I heard he was dead I remembered him for this song. For making it stick in my head. For the little bit of my world that he influenced.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQyRJy-EV6c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tmbu7T2Xso

Thank you, Stephen.

Well There's Nice

2009-10-02T18:24:09Z

In other news, I'm a top ten finalist at 'On the Premises' and I got passed up to ~~General O'Neill at Stargate Command~~ John O'Neill at Black Gate.

But This Summer Isn't Over Yet

2009-09-28T19:05:48Z

Anyhow, this morning started way too early because my brother'd rung the hospital at 8 am and they couldn't tell us when our clinic appointment was today -- there wasn't any record of one. So, his duty done, resident brother went back to bed and left me to seek out intelligent life. After several phone calls to various places it was confirmed that the appointment hadn't been made last Friday and one was duly made for 2.10 pm

... the flashback to which is that my mother has been having some digestive problems for a long while. From about March this year I was busy trying to get her to see the doctor (because she was getting tired very easily, nausea, breathing trouble etc etc) and to actually engage with the idea of pursuing treatment. This pretty much meant spending a lot of the time being yelled at for 'nagging'.

And, as usual, the doctor started out with guff about her getting older blah yaddah blah -- and then six or seven weeks ago they got the blood test back indicating severe anaemia. And suddenly there were iron tablets and more tests to be done (and we're all not thinking cancer really hard). Last Sunday she was admitted to hospital for a colonoscopy. It should have been an overnight stay, two nights at most, but in the end she was only discharged on Friday -- after a couple of tries at the colonoscopy (which were both somewhat confounded by intestinal twistiness and narrowing), a gastroscopy, and two CT scans which all ended up being inconclusive.

There is evidence of diverticulitis (which the GP should probably have considered some time ago before it got to this stage), but there's also a possible tumour -- a lump -- and that might well be cancerous.

From Friday it's been fairly certain there was an operation coming up... today's meeting with the surgeon cut the time before then from two weeks to next Tuesday (if she passes her pre-op medical). There are some less than pleasant things that could go wrong -- including that as she's 84 years old she has a 2-5 per cent chance of serious complications (including death on the table or post-op organ faliure).

But, there really isn't a lot of choice but the op -- because while diverticulitis can be treated with antibiotics and diet etc, the narrowing is considered severe... and if it isn't only diverticulitis but bowel cancer...

Anyhow, there's a lot of things she wants done before she goes into hospital. Then I'll be back to trying to visit every day and keep her in biscuits and underwear etc And somewhere between a week and three weeks after that there'll be the stresses of having her home but keeping her from... let's just say that whatever I've been doing while she's away won't have been done right.

Mostly, today's appointment was confirming what we already knew but -- because my mother has a wonderful way of going off-topic in the face of doctor's telling her things she doesn't want to hear -- he'd wanted her relatives in to be certain she had actually listened and understood. (Today she was moving on to how Lionheart -- Richard the -- is not a King she's fond of... the surgeon's name being Leinhardt but pronnounced Lionheart* by everyone, to the point where you're not sure if saying Leinhardt wouldn't be a terrible faux pas. Oh, and he tried starting off by getting her to tell him what she understood the situation to be, but she entirely dodged that and instead asked him if he thought she *hadn't* understood...)

...

I didn't want to broadcast this stuff before there was anything known or happening -- I guess now it's happening even if I'm not entirely sure what's happening. I may, or may not be around as much. I may, or may not be particularly clueful or thoughtful when I am.

* I also got to answer the phone to Inspector Will Scarlet the other day...

Seih Ou Tei, Seih Ou Tei, Sei Ettain

2009-09-28T00:15:19Z

I would much appreciate it if anyone who feels I owe them would let me know -- IM, email, or a comment here as suits you. And if anyone is aware of someone who considers themselves to hold a marker from me, please pass on this request.

Thank you.

ICONS!

2009-09-26T01:47:49Z

There is a bunch of news I should probably be talking about but don't want to... along with some writing comments that would be fun... but a good meme is more fun!

From stillnotbored

Comment to this entry saying 'ICONS!' and I will pick 6 of your icons. Make an entry in your own journal and talk about the icons I picked.

These are the icons stillnotbored picked for me to talk about.

1. flowerclimbershadow - the original picture is one of resident brother's photos that I played with in photoshop. I tweaked it a little and added the little person trying to make it all the way up into the petals (in case you were wondering). Probably the easiest explanation for what the image means to me is that I mostly used it for entries or comments about my writing or personal journey where I'm not talking about craft epiphanies or material gains but the quixotic nature of both. In the grand scheme of the universe climbing flowers isn't important -- only if you're climbing the flower it really must be.

2. white-deer - one of the earliest scenes from The Middlemost Child gave me the white-deer. I used a lot of fairy-tale and folklore in that book, including pantomimes and pub signs. White deer, and specifically white harts, turn up a whole lot round here in Yorkshire... and as it's one of the royal beasts, connected with the Otherworld, and with transgressing a moral code -- well, that the High King has the white deer as his heraldic beast, and that Artemis turns her parents into white deer to hide them from the Witch Queen, is not random. While writing Middlemost I tended to use the icon when I was secretly really pleased with myself for being clever about getting refs and symbols into the book for my own pleasure.

3. dagger-rose - this is another Middlemost icon. The dagger-rose is how the Nameless Enchantress takes possession of the powers of her nieces, great nieces, multiple-times great nieces. This and the white-deer eventually got mixed into the Middlemost-clipshow animation but at first, as I posted quite a lot about Middlemost, I liked having several pictures to use, and this one I did use a little for when I was writing Artemis.

[I think I probably need to clean out my icons a bit and make some new ones. Some time when I have easy access to photoshop and the net on the same computer.]

4. meme1 - this started in chat. matociquala had one with the text but a plain background and we were sharing it around for reasons of memage -- but I complicated the background on mine. As with many icons I've always used it with the degree of double meaning -- it works well for comments about slapfights as well as being a craft truism, and I've used it in various places where I was being just a little bad :)

5. fingerbobs go bad - this picture turned up in chat for some reason, and the minute I saw it I made a joke that no one else got about the Fingerbobs* ... No one got it, of course, because the Fingerbobs were a children's puppet show of my childhood (of the Bagpuss and Woodentops kind).

http://www.childofthe1980s.com/2009/05/20/fingerbobs-fingermouse/

I could still sing the theme song after at least thirty years without seeing an episode :) The icon has ended up being used a lot for when I'm either making joking comments no one is likely to get or otherwise being just a little bit...evil. It's kind of like the Stay-Puffed Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters... a fond childhood memory foolishly turned to the destroyer of worlds :D

*well it does look like a cross between a forties movie's threatening shadow & a fingerbob!

6. innocent blood-grace - one of my two Innocent Blood icons. Shakespeare has an alarming tendency to squeeze into books, and I always knew this quote was going to be a chapter heading at the end of Innocent. (I'm actually on this chapter at the moment). I don't know anymore if we'll learn that the midwife killed when the bargain was made -- Loveday Nance -- was a fan of the Bard but it's otherwise a terribly good fit for the story in ways you'll discover when you read :) Of course I haven't posted enough lately to really need two icons, but I tended to use this one when I could do with a bit of saving grace -- the other when I could see light at the end of the tunnel (possibly in the form of an express train)

[And I *really* need to clean out and update the icons I don't use so much...]

And If You Thought That Last Post Sounded Weak

2009-09-02T02:56:22Z

Apart from trying to survive the summer...

A couple of weeks ago -- with me having pushed and persuaded and been yelled at for some months -- the GP discovered my mother was anaemic... Not a little bit anaemic but OMG take these tablets invasive testing begin anaemic.

She is in the middle of tests for various cancers.

Which we do not think she has, but...

As she says, she keeps telling them that she's been ill like this since February (and gradually worsening before) but the GP insists it must have been sudden onset and therefore cancer. Of course, if it isn't cancer we'll be back in the territory of puzzled that doctors never seem to get out of...

As I say, I've been having to push on getting her to act on this. She has in return been screaming and yelling and crying at me (which, yes, is worse that the rest) and being less than pleasant to live with.

And the tests are scary and that makes everything worse.

Which is just another taster of what LIFE means to me at the moment. Also why it'd be pointless my going to see the doctor about the sleeping problems... I can hardly deny I'm a bit stressed lately.

So why blog this when I've not talked about it and don't particularly want to talk about it? Or about any of the rest?

The other day I heard another version of the 'Kat doesn't try' crap.

And I am just fucking sick of being told I don't try hard enough. That I should do more.

That bullshit was started by someone who did not have my best interests at heart and for their own reasons. And yes, for some other people it's a comfort...

Fuck you.

I do not have a lot of zen right now. Yeah, that's weak of me.

(Try something on and I will very likely go for your throat. Really, this would not be a good time for dominance games)

Sorry.

I've generally found that the nice people in the world grew up not that nice where niceness wasn't considered as a virtue.

...

2009-09-02T01:04:13Z

My mental gears are grinding really small to absolutely no purpose right now.

I heard from the Ombudsman (well the ombudsman's underling).

For the first page and a half of a two page letter he outlines the case, more or less dismisses the excuse Lloyd's gave for not refunding my money... and then introduces a whole new reason why Lloyd's is NOT liable.

The contract between buyer-credit card company-supplier doesn't exist here because the ombudsman has determined that making payment to the supplier is NOT entering into a contract with the supplier. Therefore the credit card company is not liable for the contract with the supplier being broken as there was no contract.

...

Lloyd's didn't claim this. At no point did either Consumer Direct or the Ombudsman's office mention it as a problem. For ten flipping months I have been advised repeatedly by government agencies to pursue a claim against the credit card company NOT the supplier.

There is serious irony here in that both Lloyd's and the Ombudsman were entirely happy with my being allowed to handle the phone calls/paperwork on behalf of my brother...

Anyhow, just so any Brits reading know... this get out clause for the credit card company applies ANY TIME one person makes arrangements or handles queries about a purchase for which another person pays. Which actually means, since I live in a three adult household, that most of the purchases we make have not had the oft advertised security of credit cards over cash payments. Every household item -- because my Mother is the homeowner of record -- every telephone and gas bill, every maintainance job, the bloody council tax... And yes, if I arranged a holiday and Resident Brother paid for it... not covered.

(And in case you're wondering, Resident Brother was there for every single meeting with TPS Ltd and there is no evidence available to the ombudsman to identify who was going to be the eventual 'owner' of the computer)

So, after ten months I'm back to exactly the place I was right after TPS Ltd refused the refund. Just older, tireder, and not sure how much longer I can 'borrow' the hated laptop for.

At least I did manage to phone up* and discover that I have seven working days to appeal the decision (though he couldn't think of any reason I would have to want to appeal -- which kind of makes me want to find one).

That's right... it took three months to get to the head of the queue and another to review the case... but I have seven days to get an appeal in to their office (not seven days to send it, seven days within which it must reach their desk)

...

And so I called Consumer Direct -- who were very cheery, assurred me that I had rights, and referred my case to Trading Standards, who will ring back to advise me on how I can pursue those rights (which I suspect means telling me to go to the small claims court because like many other rights on paper they don't stand up well in the face of people who don't give a fig about being fair and respecting them)

I've spent most of the day feeling very tired with the odd spurt of indignation -- so much of the last ten months has been about trying not to think about this stuff, and not to fret about the £534 I'm probably not going to get back, that I slip into a thought-place where I'm honestly wondering what I hope to gain from fighting, because whatever happens I'll still be back at square one having to buy a computer, and I have to remind myself that it would be nice to have the money to buy the computer (without having to go without buying other stuff like new shoes and paying my share of the council tax) and that Technology Products Solution Ltd RIPPED ME OFF.

...

People call me a pessimist when I don't assume that things will turn out right even if all the right is on ones side... I suspect a lot of people get to go through their lives without running into LIFE.

*oddly enough he recognised the case from just my name... which made me wonder how much work they actually do round there.

I Hear The Voices When I'm Dreaming...

2009-08-28T05:55:21Z

So today's an anniversary of sorts -- I did the formal nine weeks from now, but today's where I remember knowing I would have to do something, and that it didn't matter if I'd been acting under a misapprehension, or whether or not said misapprehension was deliberately created -- obligations happen and need to be acknowledged.

Three years.

The weeks and months flew by really worryingly, but it feels like forever and a day.

...

Unlike four seasons of Supernatural... which took no time at all :D

The answers to the apparantly most important questions for fans are --

Both, but as that'd likely weird Dean out... Dean.

I am really really enjoying the demon/angels plot.

And my reaction to Wincest is pretty much the same as Dean's* with added 'and this would not have to end really really badly in what rose-tint drenched universe of my-little-pony horror?'

Also I entirely don't mind that they use, and thus repopularise, a bunch of folklore things that I like using in stories... because they don't waste them**.

*"Come on, that's just sick..."

** And I've never been about to claim I invented things that are only stuff people have forgotten anyhow...

Carry On My Wayward Son

2009-08-23T04:49:40Z

I knew 'Supernatural' was a good friend by the end of series one -- but I knew I was in loff when Dean realised he had to let Sam shoot the werewolf.

(And hey, a series that tortures protags the way I like to *and* brings them back from the dead TO DO IT OVER AGAIN! -- maybe I'm not the only weirdo who likes that kind of thing :D )

No Names, No Pack Drill.

2009-08-21T02:40:52Z

Me: so, you're supposed to keep me distracted from all the boring and nasty...
Subconscious: I did! Am! What about Ivory and that whole fantasy world?
Me: that was last week.
Subconscious: ...
Me: o.o
Subconscious: just remember you asked for it...

Do not grump at your subconscious it can only end in tears -- or a story idea that involves (probably) inimical time-travelling alien invaders, a raid on a factory modifying stolen children, secret agents, more secret agents, amnesia, automatic writing, notMPD, PTSD, Koi carp, rice paper, practically mundane SF sensibilities (hah like I would!) an alternate reality Northern America (maybe), a supersekrit base, the Changed, a North North American agent, a rogue Ego, a Hand, an untested Subconscious... and Hickory Dickory Dock (tick tock, tick tock, tick...)

[it'd actually kind of like to be a graphc novel series... or three season arcs of a TV show... but since my subconscious appears to have hijacked this from whoever should be writing it so as to fill my current entertainment needs I am calling it a book idea -- okay a trilogy maybe]

I'd thank god that Tick Tock is massively overused as a title, only that leaves me in worse titling places. (And no one has names... apparantly I am having an existential crisis about naming characters - I may even get around to blogging about it)

[in recent TV watching news... Supernatural is fun, and yay Lafayette rediscovering a bit of agency (okay I have been saying 'regrowing a pair' :P )]

Grant Grant Grant!

2009-08-11T06:37:11Z

The good news keeps rolling in :)

Today's was that stillnotbored won the Columbus Literary Award for fiction with pages from her current novel in progress -- 'Delia's Shadow'.

This too, is not actually any kind of surprising...

Victory to the stubborn, the story, and the skillz! (Go genre hack!)

Hugo Hugo Hugo!

2009-08-10T01:58:00Z

Okay, I have the patience of a gnat for Hugo twittering -- and yes, I also thought it would be yesterday so I started off impatient :D

But the results were not as evil as could have been...

Of course no one would have put money against Ted Chiang winning.

Or Elizabeth Bear.

But it's still worth a rousing yay! that she did.

(sadly Charlie did not win :( )

(And Dr Who *didn't* win! I was so pleased. Yes, it is bad to cheer for someone to lose... and yes I did get to be bad)

Yay the winners... commiserations to the losers (well some of them) and now I can stop thinking about the Hugos till some night next year.

Huh?

2009-08-06T11:55:41Z

So here I am failing to sleep*, again.

Mostly because of the phone call from the Ombudsman. Rush of adrenaline and a serious WTF. Because it's some weeks since I was sent a letter saying I'd been assigned a case officer and this guy tells me he's just now been assigned and starts off saying 'I haven't had time to look at the file, but it looks like Lloyd's are still considering their reply...'... At which point I tell him that they have already said they think I should accept the remedial work, then taken another nine weeks to say I can complain if I like, and that the last communication was to tell me that since I'd been mean enough to complain to the Ombudsman they weren't speaking to me anymore... He reconsiders and tells me that he'll send off a letter to me tonight with his name and contact details and any progress he's made by then... He sounded a lot more interested in reducing his workload by making cases go away, even temporarily, than championing consumer rights.

*edit for spineless whining that I get bloody annoyed at as soon as it's typed*

Yeah, not great healthwise, and still not good at patience or cheerfullness in the face of adversity...

...

But I just noticed that a letter I got from the US has dragonfly stamps on it.

You would not believe how many times dragonflies are turning up in my life at the moment. Dragonflies are pretty much the symbol of Innocent (it's a dragonfly larvae on one of the Innocent user pictures) and the last week or so they're appearing everywhere. I'm not sure if it's meant to be encouragement (or taunting) but the 'you notice them more because you're noticing them' explanation for this kind of thing probably doesn't work here -- since dragonflies would have been just as meaningful any time during the past three years, and I tend to like the dragonfly as a motif anyway so the increase in incidences of me noticing it are liable to indicate an increase in occurance rather than in significance...

Of course it's probably just the boring duty-first universe letting me know it wants Innocent finished before I run off to play with the wonderful amazing OMG that's just so much fun new idea for a series (an okay-this-is-kind-of-popularist set of shinies idea to boot) that's been providing hours of quiet distraction the past few days. (I so could talk about it for hours but I've had a timely reminder that writerfolk out there will steal original ideas and this book is making me so incredibly happy by being very old things made new... people who've read my stuff probably know it tends to chuck a bunch of shiny ideas together and/or see old things from my personal and very skewed world view, so if I say that what's downloading in my head is shinier and newer and makes me laugh out loud... yeah, this is the same but different. Someone steals this and I won't just grumble quietly)

And yes, one of those 'why I write explanations' that's true but that I don't talk about much is that there's nothing like having a whole new fantasy to distract from what ails you.

I could dream about winning the lottery and then hiring a lawyer and siccing him on TPS and Lloyd's but that lasts a moment. It's way more fun to be arguing over whether the secondary character who has been making you laugh since he got in your head gets to be in a wheelchair or not (see I think he figures the wheelchair will protect him from me... foolish boy)

Distraction is good...

So, with the other stuff pushed out of central processing into memory, it feels like it might be time to go fail at sleeping some more.

* It was looking promising and I need some better quality sleep, the napping is keeping me going but it doesn't catch me up.

Torchwood

2009-07-11T08:19:11Z

I don't know where to start because of course you don't expect a Torchwood story to make sense or have the remotest grip on logic or reason or SCIENCE even... (but honestly, killing a few mice in a sealed bell jar has not ever meant being able to exterminate all the mice in a house, let alone all the mice in the world... really)

So apparantly the mission for this five-parter was to MAKE US HATE JACK HARKNESS!

I mean, back in 1965 he agrees to shepherd 12 cute little orphans to their doom for the very good reason that he won't be risking his life doing that. Umm wait, so we're totally sure the aliens aren't going to accidentally take everyone in range? But besides alien trust issues... he agrees to do it because he can't be killed. Nice guy, I suspect I'd have said 'stuff it, you want to deliver 12 cute little orphans to aliens you take them yourself, because if this is worth the lives of 12 cute little orphans then prove it's about the greater good by taking the risk yourself'... He just does the deal and tells the cute orphans to 'walk into the light'. And forgets all about it for 44 years.

In 2009 he briefly struts his moral high-ground of 'an injury to one is an injury to all' and for a couple of minutes you feel he may have learnt something, but within hours he first agrees that 10% of the children of the world is a good deal (after 'just say no' doesn't work) and then, when inspired to do something a bit more positive than saying 'no', sacrifices his own grandson for the greater good. (And this is done as if there was a ticking bomb with seconds to go, although there's precious little sign that the children of the world are all gathered up ready, indeed we're told that the UK has only grabbed 80%... and instead of going and rounding up a couple more school's worth they send soldiers into people's homes to snatch individual kids... oh yup that's going to work with the sekrit plan to pretend the aliens tricked us...) (no just don't even try to work out why anyone is doing any of this... everyone is stupidly selfishly other-sacrificing, and the army will grab kids from their screaming mothers arms because otherwise their kids will be taken... Oh, wait, if they don't grab the screaming kids who would there be to grab their -- the soldier's -- screaming kids? Really, soldiers are not that stupid, including that their kids are just as or more likely to be going to failing schools and so being gathered up anyway... no wait THE GREATER GOOD (aka EVIL demands this))

But wait... while the aliens have got by for more than forty years on just 11 children (one escaped) they are DRUG ADDICTS. If they kill the entire human race, or even a decent proportion of said human race, how is that going to get them more chemicals that make them feel good? (And of course the druggie aliens are disgusting vomit spewing aliens with violent tempers... DRUGS - JUST SAY NO) No, don't ask yourself why the human race doesn't immediately offer to farm kids for the chemicals while working on how to synthesise more (cloned tissue implants perhaps) -- because clearly while the aliens can transport themselves in pillars of fire they can't synthesise whatever they've found in prepubescent children that gives them a buzz. (And so have to wear the child as a hood ornament... and does that mean there are only 11 aliens with plug-in kids? How do they know they can peddle hundreds of thousands more?) This could be a really massive market opportunity for the human race... really, addicts are not generally the top of the drug trade food chain. The British government could have stepped in to become drug lords!

Anyhow, instead Jack sacrifices his grandson... because one child for millions is a good swap. Thank God he suddenly had a daughter and grandchild (Oh and of course just flung that information at Ianto when it'd most hurt) andthat he didn't actually believe that injury to one crap... not when it comes down to killing AN UGLY DRUGGIE ALIEN!

And sorry but the initial plan was to walk into the sekrit government building, and tell the aliens 'No' in a loud firm voice? (and crumble the minute they kill your boyfriend) Because that makes total and perfect sense. Really, best plan of all... it works with stroppy foreigners after all, raise your voice commandingly and announce that you'll fight them! Best. Plan. Ever. And then fire your guns at the bullet proof glass and entirely forget that you've seen that there's an airlock round the side... Plan falls apart and people in Thames House die horribly in screaming panic (except for the guy who gets in a hazmat suit... and demonstrates that the virus is kind of easily contained)

Next comes the BSG style laying out of bodies/bodybags -- though who they got to go into the building to clear out corpses which might still be infectious... and if they're not still infectious then the alien's germ warfare agent will fail, because when people die within minutes of becoming infected and there's no post-mortem contagion then you haven't got a viable weapon of mass destruction. However that's logic and logic has no place in Torchwood.

Ianto's dead, so there's clearly no point Jack doing anything more -- fifty people were killed and that makes fighting the aliens on the beaches a worse plan than giving up 10% of the world's children. Cue depressed Jack.

And yes, Ianto dies... Ianto comes out and declares himself gay for Jack Harkness to his sister, and then dies. The hero's gay lover dies, and fairly pointlesly... no brave guns blazing death but a 'gosh, went to deliver the threat to the aliens who previously threatened germ warfare without taking so much as a gas mask' death.

(You know, all this continued as if other countries would just line up their kids like sheep, even though they hadn't even the minimal information the Brits did. Or that those other countries had any means of rounding up kids to send them off. Or that we wouldn't all end up in one massive row about which kids were more expendable -- hey the Chinese only have one each but there are multiple countries teeming with street kids. But the UK is going to keep everyone in the country knowing they're big lying liars??? What happened to the internet? Satellite TV. Telephones.)

Then big bad civil servant (who being one of the grey invisible people wouldn't have made much of a 'demonstration of loss' to the public but is supposed to obey orders to sacrifice his children when he knows the Cabinet have exempted their kids) is threatened with his girls knowing he's not a nice person before they get on the bus to be alien plug-ins. He being, we are assured, a good man, he goes home and kills his daughters and their mother. No 'let's have a go at running away' first... He shoots the kids (apparantly civil servants are allowed to sign out pistols for this purpose... my tax money at work) and he shoots his wife... who isn't under any kind of threat of death. And I felt slightly sick because I'm under the impression that I'm supposed to think of this honour killing as A GOOD THING. (It did not involve him having a heart to heart with his wife -- the sequence of events shows him arriving home, getting out the gun, hiding it from his family, and then shooting all three -- because he's a gooood man and doesn't want them to suffer knowing that he isn't) WTF??? I guess the goings on in Hitler's bunker did demonstrate the Nazi love of children/family.

But Jack's daughter (Alice) persuades the evil bitch who had him entombed in concrete that the Government isn't the State -- which she's sworn to protect -- and to go get Jack. Big mistake. Jack gets a spring back in his step and twiddles some knobs he didn't consider twiddling before and rush. hurry. clock is ticking. he needs a kid to be the transmitter for the signal (which I suspect blew up the alien's drug plug-in since though there was much red blood something also transported away... so I'm a bit at a loss as to how this helps with the viral doom thing). Anyhow, all the kids scream -- this is like the Gentleman episode of Buffy! -- alien explodes (all the kids in the world/UK have to scream to get one alien in London?) -- and grandson gets fried (possibly they could have made the signal a bit more directed at the one alien plug-in kid and not needed quite that much power?). End of threat. o.o

Jack is sad. Jack's daughter is sad. Everyone immediately realises that the threat is over and stops gathering up kids and beating up their parents. Joy. Happiness. Government looks embarassedly around for a scapegoat.

(So do I... and I choose THE WRITER)

Thankfully the American Ranger General had taken charge of getting the British kids together, so we can blame the Americans... (which is becoming quite popular in UK series only RTD treads the fine line between actual blame and 'no it was the Brits!' that should keep both sides of the Atlantic happy) but no, wait, civil service bitch -- who obeyed all the orders about killing people and rounding up kids -- got unhappy about her boss being forced to top himself and has recorded the PM deciding to use that excuse, and so power is passed into the hands of NaziBitchOne -- the woman who proposed that a lottery was a bad idea when they could use this emergency to get rid of the failing schools and their pupils... must be the education secretary, I guess. Really, I think I'd rather have the lying bastard who didn't think up that gem of social engineering in power still. (And boys and girls, funny that they didn't mention offering the kids who're in care or on the at-risk register... that'd give you a hundred thousand right off, then those in young offenders institutions and on asbos, you could get the police to round them up far more easily than knocking on doors looking for kids kept home from school. You'd also have made the alien's internet-style argument -- that we let a child die every four seconds so handing them over to aliens would be fine -- because you'd have been highighting that the majority of people do think that there are a bunch of kids who're substandard and are happy to have them treated as expendable. But then Gwen couldn't have made a really poor effort at saving Ianto's nephew and niece.)

Six months on, Jack runs away to space. We're not actually told about any other fallout from the whole affair... The world goes back to chewing the cud.

There was clearly meant to be a message, what actually came across was... that we pretend to like children but actually can't stand the little buggers. Social engineering is BAD. School league tables are a plot! Population control is EVIL, as is anything done for the greater good (so definitely no walking the kids to school so as to reduce your carbon footprint). Drugs make you EVIL (and unpretty). Oh, and being gay = dying young of a disease (and finding out your lover has been keeping a whole sekrit family sekrit from you so you also die a little bit unhappy with the gay choice). And a man should know when the best thing he can do for family happiness is murder his wife and kids (which as it happens didn't save them from anything except knowing daddy's job was a lot more ethically challenging than he'd ever told them). And The Doctor (or possibly that's God) doesn't always come and save the human race because humans are stupid and cruel to each other so he ignores them. And being pregnant makes you stupid... no, wait, Gwen's always been stupid. No, being Welsh makes you stupid, which is why a Welsh policeman takes off his stab jacket and forsakes his asp to attack the nasty soldiers (although since he hasn't been given any orders about them grabbing children off the streets he's merely keeping the peace by stopping them). Also Welsh men are all unemployed layabouts, thus while they'd put their kids into the care of Ianto's sister, so their wives could go to work, they were all hanging round the estate avaiable for an impromptu riot. And...

And as NaziBitchOne said... an injury to one is not an injury to all. Proof positive being that Steven dies and only two people are seriously injured by it (everyone else is made happier).

So many lessons.

The major one being that Russell can't write... and should Cpt Jack ever transport his face of Bo back onto my TV screen I really have to not watch, even if he's on BBC1.

Ooo More Toothfulness

2009-07-09T23:28:23Z

Today was not a good day for dental work... I bled a lot. I bled for both fillings and that partly necessitated a change in the materials used for the hole under the crown that turned out to be deeper than expected. But then I may not have to worry about it not being the prettiest filling in the world because my dentist wasn't sure it would settle down and so might well need a more major intervention and root-filling. I am under orders to give it a little time to calm down and if it doesn't or 'kicks off' I am to come straight in (this delivered in the 'no I really really mean first signs of trouble' tone of voice). For a tooth that wasn't giving me any serious trouble before it's been a growly throbby beast since*. But, possibly, calming down a bit.

*it's the real bit of tooth that's unhappy, and that feels weird... it's like I can feel the crown as being something jammed over it, like a sore foot stuffed in a shoe.

Oh and BTW tonight's Torchwood episode... WTF? It looks like they decided to make the shift to BBC1 demonstrate everything non-SF watchers think SF does wrong AND do the very bad thing. Which is kind of bizarre because BBC1 and ITV1 had both seemingly moved on from always doing the very bad thing.

Full Of Grace

2009-07-08T08:40:14Z

You know, I can't recall now if I ever really believed Innocent would be an easy book to write -- I know I wanted something with a straight-forward top-story (in the vague hope that I could sell it for the top-story while sneaking in everything else under cover of the romance) but since even the romance is a bit challenging I'm not sure how many minutes I could have convinced myself it would be quick and easy mind-candy.

Next book will be the easy one.

I'm still trying to keep Innocent's top-story simple, though. Which makes it kind of hard to write. The latest hard bit being a conversation* on omniscience, prayer, and free will between the hero and... well... the hero.

When people talk about books being clair or noir, or consolatory versus whatever, or comedy versus tragedy (Shakespearean definition of)... I have to admit that most of mine aren't. Some days I kind of wish I could see the world that way, but as I don't... the stories I write aren't. I don't do happy chair-dancing world-saving and I don't do over-angsty everyone dies. (Or happy chair-dancing everyone dies and over-angsty world-saving, for that matter) I'm half-glass girl. (In EO the nice guys destroy each other/themselves, in Middlemost the wrong choices end up saving the world and I just flat out say that 'happy' and 'ending' are value judgements, and in Innocent... )

Innocent is the story of the end of a story, the POV characters being surrounded by backstory that's shaped their lives and which they're trapped into. It's a boy meets girl and saves her from the dragon story where the boy saves the girl, and the girl saves the boy, and then the guy who started the big story saves them and... maybe... himself. Because the top-story hero and heroine can't save themselves... not that they don't try, but there's more to it than killing the monster. It's complicated.

So yesterday I stumbled over a song the not-hero (Edwin Samael) claimed like a pin claiming a magnet -- Sarah McLachlan's Full of Grace -- which I then found on Youtube and am playing obsessively (as you do). That's how I discovered an earlier version of the song -- Fall From Grace -- which Samael also grabbed, as more perfectly describing his past/present (and no, I really don't plan to write a book about his past, what's in Innocent is probably most of what readers will get, although I know a more, with more depth, than I'll be able to fit in -- the prequel to Innocent is the book informally known as Mud, which features a different one of the not-minor characters during WW1, whereas Samael's story is back in the 1780s)

Fall From Grace.

The winter here's cold and bitter, it's chilled us to the bone,
I haven't seen the sun for weeks, too long too far from home,
I feel just like I'm sinking and I claw for solid ground,
I'm pulled down by the undertow,
I never thought I could feel so low,
But oh darkness, I feel like letting go.
But all of the strength, all of the courage couldn't lift me from this place.
I know I can love you much better than this.
I fall from grace.
Fall from grace.

It's better this way, I said, haven't seen this place before,
Where everything we say and do, hurts us all the more,
It's just that we've stayed too long in the same old sickly skin,
Pulled down by the undertow,
I never thought I can feel so low,
And, oh darkness, I feel like letting go.
But all of the strength, all of the courage couldn't lift me from this place,
Together we crumble and stumble and fall...
Fall from grace. Fall.

I know I can love you much better than this,
So it's better this way...

The later version is

Full Of Grace.

The winter here's cold and bitter, it's chilled us to the bone,
I haven't seen the sun for weeks, too long too far from home,
I feel just like I'm sinking and I claw for solid ground,
I'm pulled down by the undertow,
I never thought I could feel so low,
Oh darkness, I feel like letting go.
If all of the strength, and all of the courage, come and lift me from this place.
I know I can love you much better than this.
Full of grace. Full of grace, my love.

It's better this way, I said, haven't seen this place before,
Where everything we say and do, hurts us all the more,
It's just that we stay too long in the same old sickly skin,
Pulled down by the undertow,
I never thought I could feel so low,
And, oh darkness, I feel like letting go.
If all of the strength, and all of the courage, come and lift me from this place,
I know I can love you much better than this.
Full of grace.

I know I can love you much better than this.
It's better this way...

And yes, the top-story is a romance... and Samael is where he is because he fell in love.

And, I do find there being two versions of the song curious. Fateful even. I don't usually find a whole lot of music to make up specific playlists, and Innocent has been particularly unmusical (it likes 'When Water Comes to Life' as well, but shares that a bit more with Mud and Ashes... the way Ashes shares 'On the Other Side').

And after I'd played it a couple of times, Jacob started singing with Fall From Grace and hoping I'll find a way to help him get just a little closer to version two -- there's even less of him in the book than Samael, and most of that is bad. (The rest of his story... wouldn't fit.) But I think I can give him a chance.

::grins::

Anyhow, right after I knew how Jacob's story ends, and that I've ended up feeling sorry for him, I understood how Innocent fits with Mud and Ashes. It's always been a bit of a puzzle to me how I ended up with a WW1 prequel -- well I know the mechanics but... -- and a WW2 sequel, to a book about a peaceful village. Now I have a feel for the connection, from one little bit of conversation between the two heroes and some sympathy for the devil... Innocent is the small scale example for the big-picture in Ashes... and if I want to write that story, and ever write Ashes, I'm going to have to try and sympathise with the bad guys in there as well.

I learnt a lot about this book and its kin in the past twenty-four hours.

Doesn't make it any easier to write, though :D

*where conversation is a couple of exchanges** before we get to the 'this is my plan/your plan can't work' bit

** including another reference to rabbits... I swear I didn't know I was writing a Watership Down homage (until, yesterday, I was reminded of Bigwig and the shining wire and am now describing Innocent as The Wicker Man meets Brigadoon meets Watership Down) :D

Friends Don't Let Friends...

2009-06-29T02:13:11Z

Okay, so not doing too well the last couple or more days, and clearly my brain was seeking distraction because after watching a chat conversation about crossover Secret Garden ideas (okay wild punning) in which there was mention (by clarentine) of The Secret Garden of NIMH --

I went to bed, I slept, I dreamt, and I woke up with a book idea that insists it wants to be called 'Ruritania' and is the story of a revolutionary plot master-minded by intelligent bunnies (who don't trust the intelligent rats), a dog (who needs to floss more), and a girl (who's been exiled to her family's country estate while they decide what to do with her).

This is, being mine*, a world of witch burnings, pogroms, repression, and a very polite society where magic has been used to boost technological development (so a rabbit gets to explain one of the five principles of force with a train metaphor!).

And it's notsteampunk!

My subconsious... I show it you.

stillnotbored says it needs vampires. (Which is not entirely impossible... not impossible at all :D ) Friends don't let friends plot bunny books and leave out Bunnicula!

[Yes, I am actually serious about this being a book. No, it won't be funny. No, I don't need another book idea, but they do make excellent distractions when distractions are required.]

*And you can also tell it's one of mine because it's about the nature of humanity and of reality. Plus a couple of spare conversations about ethics thrown in to keep it cheerful.

I'm Not Going To Spend My Life Being A Colour - (What About Us?)

2009-06-27T04:44:41Z

If I hear one more person imply, or just say out loud as on Newsnight Review, that Michael Jackson should have died in the 80's -- died before he became problematic, while he was easier to idolise, before the stories about his whackiness drifted from silliness to smoking gun...

Well actually my answer was to watch Black or White -- a video that wouldn't have existed -- and smile and chairdance.

Then I watched Earth Song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqeADZgjtpY and cried.

I'm not going to try and wade through the silly stories and the slanders and the sad truths to judge a troubled man whose work touched millions. But I am damn certain that his death should not be a relief and a chance to package him a little more tidily.

Shouldn't be... but the world chewed on him a long time -- it devoured his childhood and when he grew up it dined on his reputation with equal pleasure -- now I guess it'll gnaw his bones a while.

The Michael Jackson story says a lot more about us than it ever could about him.

So I wish you peace, Cousin. Go from here as you will (but perhaps, just for fun, in black velvet, with sheathed claws and a defiant roar). Fare you well.

And thank you. I didn't know you at all, but these songs and others knew me better.

Even my darkness.

"I used to dream,
I used to glance beyond the stars,
now I don't know where we are,
although I know we've drifted far"

Not Loitering Anymore

2009-06-16T04:07:02Z

I'm happy to announce that Scott Andrews of the muchly pretty "Beneath Ceaseless Skies" has said nice things about my Old West fantasy 'Pale' and bought it.

::grins:: Can't tell you how pleased I am that it found a good home.

[And stories like 'Pale' should be out there working, not loitering on hard drives :) ]

When Falling Isn't Moving

2009-06-15T03:31:39Z

The backstory exposition:

Last year, before the computer mess started, I'd been working on a short story called Crimson -- Arthurian romance with serial killer. And got the idea that it might be fun to write the same story in two different voices -- Crimson being in Victorian archaic, and Red more rawly modern (And yes, the titles are from 'I see it crimson, I see it red'). But pretty quickly I found the language in Crimson allowed me too much distance -- and while that might make it more saleable (Dexter-itious) it's also not something I want to write, or turn this idea into. If I can get to grips with it (and honestly even distancing I was uncomfortable so I may not) it'll have to be less mannered and so there won't be enough room for Red to be unmannered in.

But having decided that, I still wanted to use the other title. (Or possibly I just really want to try selling first rights on the same story twice :D )

A couple of days ago I realised that there was a pretty obvious way -- tell the same events from a different POV. And, since there is an obvious other POV, that rocked.

But if I was going to give the two boys stories, it seemed really unfair not to give the girl her own -- she has, potentially, a unique perspective -- and so now Crimson and Red are joined by Swansdown.

And that's where I laugh at how my brain works, because in my books (at least the ones where the point is not entirely a romantic relationship) I have a fondness for tripods -- three POVs to tell a story. (I also tend to find myself with two male POVs and one female). Wait on then, with three POVs, and those likely a bit long in the shorts (Pale was 5600 words and very much less story), surely this is really a book rather than a crazed experiment in short fiction (where the experiment is *not* seeing what kind of trouble a girl can get into by trying to sell first rights to the same story three times although that would be crazed enough).

Obviously the sane thing to do would be to turn this into a three POV book.

Except, of course, that as a book it wouldn't work at all.

There are bits of writing advice we take for granted when we're learning... when people talk about how a sentence/paragraph/scene/chapter should do at least two/three things, the list from which those two/three things are picked usually includes 'move the story forward', it's the obvious one, the one you don't have to think about -- and the most important. And it's as true of POVs...

A long while ago I critted a chapter on the OWW where the writer took one POV through a series of events (as I recall it was the lead up to someone falling off a dragon) and then there was a scene break and another POV character related their view of and reactions to exactly the same events, (and the next chapter picked up from that point and then all four POVs gave their versions of the next chunk of events) Despite that the different POV characters did have very different 'takes' on the scene, by the time you've read two eyewitness accounts of an incident the third has trouble being interesting even if that's the one where you're discovering it wasn't an accident. I have a vague recollection that not even pride in my work could get me through the fourth version.

Crimson, Red, and Swansdown will all relate the same events, but to work each POV has to rerelate in new and astounding detail a pretty large slice of the events the other POVs have already covered -- also in detail -- and yes those versions are very different but they're still working with the same underlying architecture of actions. If I intercut those POVs you'd keep finding yourself rereading the same events, and however brilliantly I write the different interpretations, or skew the character filters, the reader knows what happens in this bit already -- the story will have stopped moving forwards.

Like the dragon rider in freefall stops falling.

A difference in perception is not enough to keep a story moving. Even major revelations in the later repeats are unlikely to, and may have a reduced impact because they're buried in a repeated scene.

But wait, you say, there are books and TV shows and movies that do this and they work!

(Although right now I can only think of the various detective dramas where similar eyewitness accounts of events are told in flashback -- oh, and the ITV drama 'Mobile' which pretty much illustrates that if you're going to tell a story from several different POVs it's probably best to give each one a seperate episode -- and even then it didn't rock my world because the first episode used up most of the drama and the second exposed most of the twistiness, leaving the third with a less entertaining, unconvincing, and heavily expository trudge to the denouement)

And jolly good luck to those who attempt it!

Thankfully Crimson, Red, and Swansdown aren't going to be quite as impossible as they won't tell the same events in quite the same order. Structure is our friend :)

Crimson has a 'now' frame round a set of backstory narrations. Red will tell the story from start to finish. And I think that Swansdown will start and end earlier -- for obvious reasons -- and I may just be insane enough to use a past frame with prophetic flash-forwards.

Because I can.

::giggles::

And We All Have A Choice

2009-05-18T19:00:55Z

I feel entirely crappy today - surviving two bouts of flu has mucked my system about and now I am having weird generaised discomforts shading into serious discomforts...

But without that I suspect I would still be uncomfortable about any group called 'fuck you'. My presumption is that either whoever set this up is trolling for personal amusement B'tard style, or else this is one of those subtle first steps where condoning an antisocial act for the greater good leads gradually to being required to take part in antisocial acts and then to an escalation in the kind of acts performed.

Let's put it this way -- no, thank you.

I'll say it now, because I can and because there are way too many people living and dead who end up doing things they would have sworn they were way too upright and saintly to do. And whining about having no choice afterwards.

I'm not a saint.

Fuck you is not a sentiment I choose to support.

Edit: And no, I'm not going to shut up and go along... That's exactly how the conditioning works -- social pressure to keep people saying yes until they're so deep in that they no longer even consider saying no.