scribbling damselfly @ LJ

Yesterday involving some good news,¹ last night required celebrating. Which is how I ended up at one of my favourite locals, a grungy pub with a grandiose name in direct contrast with the ubiquitous portraits of Arab sheiks and its decidedly less than grandiose couches and crazy wallpaper and praying mantis mural.

So, naturally, because I was with speculative fiction writers, and we like to discuss the important issues, the topic of zombies came up. LOTS.

And who cares whether it's already a meme², it is now.

The question is this: Zombie Apocalypse. You choose: Location. Weapon. Soundtrack.

Karen gobsmacked me with the promptness of her answer (clearly, she's considered this issue in some detail before now) and I very nearly pulled my normal stunt when put on the spot, which is to blush, and stammer, while my brain does a flawless impression of a sponge. Luckily, alcohol, while it does kill brain cells, seems to concentrate on killing the shy ones first, so I managed to sidestep my normal reaction and, even better, summon up an actual answer. Which I shall share with you all, because it amused me, although I do reserve the right to change my answer repeatedly and at any point.³

In short:

• Location: South Yarra
• Weapon: A machete or two
• Soundtrack: Mad World (the Gary Jules cover)

Location is easy: I'm always at work, so it's got to be South Yarra. I'm picturing one of those trendy chic upmarket roof gardens or courtyards, full of ambience and dripping with money I don't own and can't seem to find, and full of people who (if they weren't zombies, obviously) look glam and fab and corporate. Because this is up to me, however, I will look better in my knee-high boots than they ever did even when they were actually alive and not covered in blood, gore, and the brain tissue of their (and probably my) work colleagues.

Zombies, zombies, squished and jostling every inch of this placid courtyard. I'll be on that little balcony off to the right, leaping into their squirming, reaching mass. In slow-motion. Naturally.

The weapon I gave less thought to, admittedly. I'm not entirely sure where I'm going to get usable blades, because at work we don't even have knives sharp enough to cut cake. But I just feel that long blades are going to look awesome with my wardrobe, which, as I might have mentioned, is going to be corporate and hawt. And not a little bit schoolgirl anime, because obviously I'm vicariously reliving my adolescence in this scenario.⁴

I will probably have my hair back, for practicality's sake. And I will be wearing knee-high boots, not knee-high socks. And, um, I'm not actually a brunette. (Oh, and also? Those three in the background look far too surly. They're probably already zombie-food by this point.)

And as for the soundtrack, well, there's not much to say on this one other than: HECK YEAH I'M GOING EMO ON THE SCORE. This is South Yarra, with corporate zombies, and I'm going down in slow-motion glory. I can think of no better soundtrack to underscore this poignant moment.

1. In my case, it was dayjob related, so I won't bore you with too many details, but suffice to say the past 2 and a half months has been an examination period, wherein every single report I wrote had to be handed in to be scrutinised by no less than 3 people. Who each gave me a mark. And then all those marks added up. And in order to pass the exam, I had to score a minimum of 95% — which, yes, is INSANE, and possibly is reason aplenty for explaining my strange and frazzled state of late… The good news being that I passed, I passed, frabjous day take that, voice in my head that taunted me with thoughts of inadequacy! [↩]
2. Seriously, if it's not already a meme, I'd be surprised — but I'm too lazy to google because I've been awake since 5:30am for no reason whatsoever except my circadian rhythms apparently possessing some kind of ninja-competency doctorate in cruelty. DAMN YOU, BIORHYTHMS. DAMN YOU. [↩]
3. It's a zombie apocalypse! I can't be tied down! I need to be free! And organised! And have backup plans! [↩]
4. I am including this picture because it ticks the corporate, hawt, and schoolgirl boxes — but mostly because this picture did actually come up when I searched for zombie apocalypse corporate wear. I do not really see why, but I heartily approve. [↩]

Right this very second, I'm supposed to be writing.

And my body is doing its damnedest to convince me we're not capable of sitting still¹ or (horror of all horrors) dragging words out of the murky recesses of my consciousness and slapping them down in some laughable approximation of narrative order. My eyes are sagging in their sockets, my shoulders are starting to climb up around my ears, and my legs keep attempting mutiny by standing. Get up, my mind is whispering. Give it up. Do something easy. Like watching TV. Or reading — there's that juicy book you're in the middle of, just waiting for you. Or what about scrubbing the bathtub? ANYTHING BUT THIS.

All because I'm not quite sure what happens next in this short story, and apparently DECIDING is too much to ask.

Honestly, some days I think if you just accomplish staying in the chair, you've won an epic battle.²

1. at the desk — apparently lying still on the couch or the bed, reading, we're definitely capable of [↩]
2. Although words and/or plot wouldn't go astray right now. Any second now. Whenever you're ready, words, plot. No, really, take your time. [↩]

During the recent edits on Shadow Bound, I tripped over my outdated grammatical education. Namely: did you all know that the plural of roof is ROOFS?

(North Americans please to be looking away, since you have always known this, because for you this has always been true, and thus my perplexity may in turn perplex you.)

Okay, back to those of us who were taught that the plural is rooves, such as (apparently) Kiwis or Australian children pre-1980's,¹ I have one thing to say about this new development: DO NOT WANT.

Australians pluralise elf and hoof to elves and hooves respectively — why have we decided to make roof an exception to this rule? WHY? It's not as if English needs yet another rule that only applies sporadically, is it?²

Sigh. Too bad I wasn't consulted in the vote.

1. for the record, my grammatical education was decidedly NOT pre-1980's. Which means one of two things: I owe the majority of my grammatical er, excellence, to my mother, or I went to a school that was a little slow on the uptake. [↩]
2. No, I have nothing of actual merit to say on this issue. What did you expect? I'm a writer. I'm allowed to posture dramatically over grammar, aren't I? [↩]

My circadian rhythms responded to Tuesday's punishment by waking me up at 5:29 both yesterday and this morning. Oh, circadian rhythms, this means war, and you're going down. (At least no one has greeted me this morning at work with a horrified expression and the diffident, "Are you OK? Do you need to go home?" which I normally earn after a day or so of interrupted sleep patterns.)

Today I am going to do something I don't often do: link to a review.¹ Mainly because that bit down the bottom, all in capitals, is the entire content of the email Karen sent me directly on finishing the book and, well, it's my favourite summary of Shadow Queen ever. And now you can all enjoy it too

Speaking of Karen, she also has smart things to say about the author's position in the whitewashing fracas, as does Justine.

And Caitlin Kittredge has smart things to say about the "write every day" mantra, and how that works for her. And how you can make it work for you.

1. That was it. Quick, wasn't it? Didja catch it? [↩]

Today being a public holiday in Australia, I had exactly one thing planned: to sleep in.

You can imagine, then, that waking up at 6:22 did not thrill me, and waking up again at 7:18 after a valiant attempt to ignore my first foray into consciousness for the day wasn't any better.¹

So I did the only thing I could possibly do, under the circumstances. I decided to punish myself. Once and for all, I would teach myself that on mornings when a sleep-in is planned, then by gosh and by golly, sleeping in will be had. Or, at the very least, a thorough lying in.

Which is why I got up, had a shower (because, you know, sleeping in can be done while clean and fresh — particularly if you're going to be awake for it), made sure the blinds were most firmly shut, and climbed back into bed with a very dim bedside lamp² and a book and stayed there for five hours.

I considered, after all that strenuous reading, forcing myself to take a nap for good measure, and I'm not entirely ruling out the possibility for this afternoon's list of activities, but for now at least I am confident that I have got the message across. I am judging this based on the fact that I feel all sort of glorious and drowsy and … oh, yes, that's the word. Relaxed.

1. Normally I can manage better than this at sleeping in, but my uterus was suffering today, and apparently it didn't want to go through it alone. Bloody needy bit of plumbing is all I can say. [↩]
2. If you're trying to punish a body for unearthly and illegal attempts at wakefulness, dim lighting is imperative [↩]

So, it's probably a touch mean of me to tease you all with a wordle of Shadow Bound, since it won't be published and available to read until much closer to the middle of the year.

But I'm going to do precisely that.

Gee, can you guess which two characters get mentioned an awful lot?

So I told myself, when I finished the edits, I would not write a word, not a single word, before Saturday. Five days off. Obligatory and compulsory and well-deserved.

But you know what my brain is? Contrary. Because I barely made it through two days before this girl spoke up inside my head with the first line of a novel. Yeah, I'll just tack that idea on to the list of the umpteen novels already waiting in line to be written, shall I?¹

So instead I give you people a video I was sent today which made me laugh.

1. Through a monumental effort of will, I have not actually started writing this new novel — because the faerie novel needs finishing first, and because I really do need a bit of a break this week. Conscious but very little more and all that. [↩]

Today I bring you: a title!

Book 2 of The Binding — which I have previously been referring to by such monikers as Book 2, Pledged, the rest of Matilde's story, and "that effing car-crash of a narrative" (you know, when I'm feeling particularly affectionate) — shall henceforth be known as Shadow Bound.

I'm very happy with it, and not only because pretty much every title I could think of with Queen in it started to sound dreadfully, er, steamy. So going with Shadow for the linking element? Good thing. (Titles. They're hard.)

In other news, today, in stopping to let me board, the tram stopped directly under the insulated point, and couldn't start again. The driver tried all sorts of strange and mystical things like peering at the roof, adjusting the side-view mirrors, sitting down so heavily in his seat that he rocked the tram (not enough), and even jumping in his cabin to rock the tram (not enough). After all his efforts failed … we had to get out and push. PUSHING TRAMS. I have never heard of such shenanigans.

Makes for a good story, though, there is that.

Lookit!

Just as I was saying that I was coming to the end of the deadline crunch, and thinking about how glorious it would be to read new stuff, I caught up with a friend for dinner the other night and she leant me:

BOOKS! (All my friends are enablers of the worst best kind.)

It is all part of her ploy to bring me to the YA scene, because I happened to express my love for the voice in YA books — if you're looking for whippy narrative tone, with sarcasm and cleverness and sly internal observation all wrapped around blunt honesty, YA is where it's at — and now she has given me homework. The best kind of homework ever.

Naturally, I started reading them on the tram on the way home. There was, after all, a solitary tram ride to be endured, and, well. It goes without saying, doesn't it? This was not the wisest weakness I've ever indulged, because at that point I had STILL not finished the edits¹ — but tonight, not half an hour ago,² that last is no longer true. Edits are done, the corrected manuscript has been mailed to my editor and agent and is therefore officially off my desk, and I am free to enjoy my all-new all-YA reading feast guilt-free.

1. which, between time constraints and wacky hijinks involving the Accept All Changes button while miles from the latest backed up copy, were, yeah, dragging on a bit… [↩]
2. I have spent the intervening half-hour looking for icons of Mr Earbrass, or images that could be made into icons of Mr Earbrass, but to no avail, alas alack [↩]

My Goodreads page shows me as being in the middle of a modest slew of books, which is not untrue: they're all books I've started and not yet finished.¹ But whenever my workload gets intense, I have this habit of returning to familiar ground, reading-wise.

So lately I've been re-reading, and my books of choice for this Christmas are Jane Austen's — Pride & Prejudice and Persuasion to be precise. I never can tell which of the two I like best, and whenever I read one I inevitably read the other within a month.

This time, I'm going to follow that up with a little Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, which was one of my Christmas presents, just as soon as I finish the edits. Which may be too much Austen and Austen-imitation even for my taste, but what the hell. I'm up for it!

1. I never used to read multiple books at any given time. But things change. [↩]

Ugh.

For the past … week? has it only been a week? … I've been pulling in 15-16 hour days, between the dayjob and the edits, and the few hours left over afterwards are for scarfing down some trans-fats and/or melted cheese, commuting, and nowhere near enough sleep. I tell you, I am not built for this sort of routine.

My favourite manuscript pages in this whole process were the act breaks. Do you know what they are? FREEBIE PAGES. (I'm gonna write manuscripts with fifty-gazllion acts in future, just so I can have lots of lovely, do-nothing-to-me freebie pages.)

Luckily, as of today I've all but finished the edits on Pledged. The first pass to take care of the line-edit stuff is done, the tags I stuck throughout the manuscript to mark bigger fixes have all been taken care of, the edit letter with its structural problems has been ticked off. I even made a little "It followed me home! Can I keep it?" note in the margin over that made-up word Now the only thing left to do is a final sweep for repetition.¹ Which is none too soon, really, because the pressure's on at the dayjob and I could really do with a just a smidge more sleep. Like, you know, a decade or so.

One thing I did manage to do in the past few weeks was go to the movies, wherein I was treated to a trailer for Clash Of The Titans. The tagline of which, in a stroke of utter lunacy, is: TITANS WILL CLASH.

To which I say: tagline writers, you have just committed a tautological crime against humanity. STOP THAT.

1. I tell you, if one of my characters looks, glances, gazes, stares, glares, or fixes their eyes on something ever again, it'll be too damn soon. [↩]

Not dead.

Editing.

Send alcohol. Or cabana boys. Or a TARDIS — time. I need more of it, STAT!

Well! Christmas — and 2009 — is officially over and done with. I won't say I've emerged entirely unscathed, but I and my family appear to have the correct number of functioning limbs and vital organs apiece, and my incipient lunacy has progressed slower than anticipated.

I'm counting it as a win.

Mostly, in between brief bouts with my family and decidedly less brief bouts of flying,¹ I spent my Christmas editing. (Oh yeah, I know how to party. Just ask me.) Sometimes, my family helped with the editing. Like the one time I really wanted someone to say that blood did not taste all that metallic, and not one of them would. After that, since they took such glee in ganging up on me, I asked them "Well, what tastes like iron, that isn't blood, and isn't iron?"

Their suggestions included blood sausage, cranberries, and Deep Heat. None of which, you know, make for great similes.

I've made a first pass through every page of the manuscript, so all the little fixes should be taken care of and only the fiddly larger fixes remain. Oh joy. My all-time favourite blooper in the manuscript was when the character Xaver suddenly and inexplicably, for one line only, became Xander. WTF? My all-time favourite editor's note in the margin of the manuscript was this one:

a nice word – but not a real one??

Obviously my editor is a woman after my mother's heart, who is convinced I am engaged in a single-handed attempt to pervert English by (gasp) making up new words.

And now, after all the editing I've done this weekend, I think it's time for pizza. Or oblivion. I can't decide.

1. Three out of five of my flights were heinously delayed, courtesy of Brisbane Airport — even when I was nowhere near the place! Damn flow-on effects and low-budget airlines not having any spare planes, anyway. [↩]

First, the administrivia: I have been a most efficient and dedicated authorly creature and mailed out the giveaway books. They went out in the afternoon post of Monday 21 December (my time). So, winners, eyes on your mail boxes, and please to be ooh'ing and aah'ing over the pretty when it arrives, 'kay? 'kay.

I would like to say that my Christmas has been quiet and contemplative, but as I steal a moment to write this I quite literally cannot hear anything over the bawling and hollering of the two year old and three year old. They're not a patch on the twenty-four year old cousin egging them on, however. I can say my Christmas has been raucously festive, at least

It's also involved edits. Lots of. I'm now about halfway through the first pass of edits on Pledged Book 2, whatever it ends up being called. But as I go through, I stick a post-it note against any fix that requires too much thinking or might result in a ripple of changes back and/or forward through the novel. So the pages I've 'done' usually end up with a minimum 3 post-it notes apiece, and need to be gone back to. They're starting to look like much harder work than the pages I haven't touched yet. Oy vey.

Somewhere along the line I realised I've started talking to the edits. Well, actually, that usually happens from the get-go — but I seem to have progressed to talking aloud to the edits. Can't remember at what point I started talking aloud to the edits of Shadow Queen, so hard to say whether my insanity is progressing faster or not. Probably faster. Accelerated by the Christmas lights, no doubt.

I had more to say, but the squalling has reached epic proportions and if I don't at least make an effort to intervene, I might end up caught in the crossfire. See you all in the new year!

The giveaway is ended, and Goodreads has sent me an email telling me the names of the lucky people who'll be welcoming a stray book onto their shelves:

• Cristina Hernandez,
• Melanie Honeycombe,
• Jess Diec, and
• Donna Pullen

Congratulations!

Goodreads have sent me your postal addresses, so I'll have the books in the mail as soon as I can.

Tomorrow marks the start of potentially intermittent internet connectivity,¹, but I'm sure you'll all be far too busy with your own Christmas shenanigans to miss me too much. Hope you all have a great holiday!

1. Actually, given my home internet connection went AWOL sometime on Friday, technically said period has already started [↩]

Heads up, Newcastle:

When: Wednesday 30 December 2009 @ 11:00am
Where: Borders @ Westfield Kotara, Newcastle

So, if you want your books devalued scribbled upon, and you can't make the signing on the 22nd, now you have a second chance to stop by and entertain me

I'm a little broken-brained today, on account of an extracurricular stint at the dayjob,¹ and I still have edits and a few more edits to do, so by way of content I offer you Jennifer Crusie — Ten Tips for Writers.

This is some sterling publishing-related wisdom. My favourite is point 5 and/or 6: measure your worth as a writer on your work, not on your ability to publish, or your sales. Because writers are in control of the quality of their work. But the ability to publish, or sales once published, is not, in this crazy-subjective and unpredictable industry, directly correlatable to said quality.

And don't miss the comments, while you're over there.

1. on a Sunday! I am SUCH a good child, aren't I? [↩]

So you know what I did, carrying that decidedly not-large-by-fantasy-novel-standards manuscript home on Monday?

Yup: I wrenched my back, bad enough to spend the next day rather sparky and blurry-eyed courtesy of nurofen. Writing! It's DANGEROUS, people.

Thanks to christmas shenanigans courtesy of the dayjob, I haven't managed to spend as much time as I'd like on the edits this week.¹ But I did have to laugh at one comment in the edit letter proper.

Those of you who remember the edits of Shadow Queen will remember that the manuscript I handed in had 10(ish) chapters, and the final published book had over 30 — because with every pass my editor kept patiently requesting "Shorter chapters, please. No, shorter still!"

Well, it appears I learned my lesson rather too well, because the edit letter for Pledged has a note that some of the chapters shouldn't be chapters at all and should be run on to the end of the previous chapter. And in looking through I discovered the manuscript I handed in had over 50 chapters.

Yeah. I run to extremes.

The only other "fun" facts to come out of the edits so far is that my characters are apparently (just a touch) too fond of glancing, looking, gazing, and even occasionally various rarer permutations thereof. Apparently my characters were engaged in some kind of staring competition while I was off busily trying to concoct a plot. Damn them, anyway.

1. Said shenanigans have left me with some intriguing text messages in my phone. Such as the following: The only reason I have not declared outright vendetta is that this chewie is surprisingly good. You're lucky. This time. [↩]

I've just come from catching up with my A&U editor, who said so many lovely things about my writing that my ego is currently too large to fit inside my rather humble apartment and is consequently perched on the rooftop throwing stones at passersby and singing bawdy songs at the top of its metaphorical lungs. Everybody should have the chance to work with such lovely people is all I can say.

Of course, I'm sure I'll be gnashing my teeth over all the squiggly, niggly, consequence-altering changes I'll need to wrangle into submission by the end of the edits. Not to mention all the stupid little writerly habits that plague me. Exhibit A:

first page of the manuscript and already a reminder to avoid repetition of words - oops!

I have been so astoundingly successful in not thinking about Pledged that I have genuinely forgotten everything and anything that happens in the manuscript,¹ and thus I managed to inspire no small suspicion in my editor that I was simply pretending to be Deborah Kalin and had the real author locked up in a basement somewhere. Er, oops. Still, can't accuse me of not doing my best to come at these edits "fresh"!

One thing I was sorta refusing to think about was how the ending of Pledged would be received. Because I love the ending, love it in a hill-I'll-die-on kind of way, and I so wanted my editor to love it as much as I did, and what if she didn't…?

But look!²

BOOYAH

1. Truefax. Just this Saturday gone Tessa eyeballed me in alarm and filled me in on the ending I'd apparently written. I plead, er, distraction. Or something. [↩]
2. And no, blood is not the last word of the book. No spoilers here. Tess, I hope you're proud of the restraint I just showed. [↩]