Echoes in a Hollow Space

In 1901, two English ladies—Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain—experienced a timeslip while visiting Versailles, going back for an interlude to the time of Marie Antoinette. They detailed this story in a book called An Adventure. You can read about it here: xenophon.org.uk/adventure.html

If you click on the link, then click on "The Music of An Adventure" you can hear a transcription one of the ladies, Ms. Jourdain, a talented musician, made of a strain of music she heard while "there." Not surprisingly, they received much ridicule from the male establishment of the time, but they clung to their accounts for the rest of their lives. There are inconsistencies in their stories, but other things they reported would have taken a great deal of research on their part to get right. So the account remains controversial even today.

Still, it's a cranking great yarn. And I say, all cranking great yarns should be true, even if they aren't.
*

The Getty Fire was still quite a ways from me but it got perilously close to the LA Basin. The LA Basin isn't more important than the other areas that have burned but it's densely packed. If the fires get into the Basin I don't know how they'll stop them. It's something to worry about every time fire gets close to the really crowded areas. Fire departments are stretched so thin right now. They heroically got on top of the Getty fire this time, but we’re still burning, homes are still being lost.

California is a trend leader in many ways. But I would rather not be on the front lines of the devastation caused by global warming. Californians are sharing that with our brethren in hurricane, tornado, and typhoon country. But make no mistake: global warming is coming for us all.
*

I changed my alarm sound from the annoying ding ding ding ding ding ding a-ding to the sound of a hooting owl echoing in a forest. It's eerie and wondrous when it drops into the silence of my room.
*

Someone was talking about animism the other day and it made me think of Ayahuasca, the visionary drug processed by the Quechua people of the Amazon. It's an arduous process to bring forth the drug, involving many steps, and not at all intuitive. When a Westerner asked the shaman how his people learned to process it he said, "The spirit of the plant told us."
*

Trust the road
no matter where it
takes you, how many
forks and crossroads.
Wherever it leads,
in any direction,
is the path you must follow.
*

Looks like the giant Tick fire was started by a guy who was living in junkyard like conditions and decided to cook his lunch outside on the barbecue. In Santana wind conditions. Florida had nothing to do with it.
*

I finished the old compilation novel (Beneath a Hollow Moon) and put it in a trunk where it will get moldy or will come back out again and I can make it new. I've started another novel, one I'd written a couple of chapters on a long time ago. In fact, chapter one was the last Editor's Choice I received from the Online Writing Workshop for SFF (OWW) before I left it. Carmina. It's been doing a siren call to me for the last couple of months, and so far the writing's been going well. Except for those two previously written chapters it's completely new writing and that feels really good. Also, a completely different universe from the previous novel, and that also feels good. And the best part? I know the end but have no idea how I’ll get there! I'm stumbling around, but I feel like I've finally come home again.

I'll forever be grateful for the things I learned from OWW, the community I was a part of, and the encouragement I received there. Invaluable.
*

It’s a process of letting go:
of youth,
resentments,
of those we love,
of seasons of
grief and joy.
Let them go, let them fly.
Let them find new homes,
or sink away into the earth,
away from my fading heart,
my lightening soul.
Away, now!
*

Chapter one of my alternative—very alternative—pirate story, The Heart of the Western Tide, has been posted to the Online Writing Workshop.

It's a very strange little story, with a stranger voice, and I'm not sure if it's a novella or a novel at this point. But it was enormous fun to write what I've written so far.

I have yet to figure out if the amount of fun I have writing something is in inverse ratio to the quality of the project, but I'm sure some critters will let me know...

I've posted chapter one of Venus In Transit to the OWW. I think it's encouraging that I actually got excited when I reread this chapter. Taking a vacation from this novel is the best thing I could have done. It's given me a lovely fresh perspective.

And thanks, Kevin. :-)

Here's your chance to experience it first hand, free of charge—with the potential of winning a free membership and free stuff. The powers that be and the generous Joshua Palmatier are sponsoring a critique contest. The rules and prize lists are posted below:


Commendable Crit Contest:

1. Eligibility: To enter the contest, the entrant must join the
Science Fiction and Fantasy Online Writing Workshop for the FREE
trial month sometime during the month of February OR they can already
be a member of the workshop. There is no obligation to remain part
of the workshop after the free trial month for those that join for
the purposes of entering the contest. Details about the workshop can
be found at the workshop's homepage at sff.onlinewritingwo rkshop.com.

( The rest of the rules. )

But I'm not Bitter! (Much.)

I finished up chapter 21 and started polishing chapter 19 to post to the OWW. That will be the last chapter I put up on the workshop. I wanted to leave those who've been critting, and those who have been following but unable to crit, with some sense of closure, if not the end of the story. Nineteen culminates one part of the story that at least some people have been wanting for awhile now.

So now I just have to push on through to the end.

92,500 / 100,000 (92.5%)

This 100k number is pretty much a fiction. Ain't no way I'll wrap this up in 8k, but I am closing in on the ending, and I want to see how far over 100k I go.

92,500 / 120,000 (77.1%)

120k is looking pretty reasonable. There just aren't that many tangents left to get lost in. ;-) Miracles may happen and I may even bring it in under that, and certainly when I do the rewrites there will be enough to cut, I think, to bring it back to 100k. But I'm thinking this first draft will probably go at least this long. We shall see.

Blargh! I've spent the day revising, although I tried really hard to work around the problem I'd created for myself in Charged with Folly. The first part of chapter 8 went really well, but I got stuck because of some characters I failed to introduce earlier in the story. So I went back and wrote them in: four in all.

OWW readers: If you want to catch up on the new material in chapter 5, I've updated the post and bracketed the new material (in 3 places) with [NEW] and [END NEW]. There's also a link posted in the author's notes which takes you to some new material for chapter 3 which introduces a fourth new character. They don't materially change chapter 5--just made it an even longer travelogue--but all of these folks will be coming into play later on, in one way or another.

Blarghity blargh! First drafts are so much fun.

Other than revising, I've been working around the house the last two days. I've finally gotten my energy back and I thought I should accomplish something before going back to work on Tuesday. ::sigh::

Man oh man, it's been the busy at work, but I did manage to finish up that pesky chapter five and post it to the workshop. I'm less than blissed about it, but at least I'm not as unhappy as I was a couple of weeks back. It didn't want to get written in a nice, neat sequential way. It wanted to jump all over the place, throws lots of interesting ideas at the walls—ooh pretty colors!—and see which ones stuck. It's chock full of stuff, although I did manage to cut some of it and smooth some of it, but . . . meh. It's kind of ugly.

First draft, Pam.

Oh, right.

On to chapter six. If I can just figure out what happens next.


Random quote of the day:

"Sometimes we measure the quality of life's passage by just how much of an assortment of mindless pastimes we develop to entertain ourselves through it."

—Peter David, The Woad to Wuin

Thanks for the mercy clicks, OWWers. Now my chapter doesn't look so naked when I sign in. And I was just begging for clicks at this point, not prodding people to do crits. The lack of hits had me worried. :-)

(Of course, if you want to do crits, that's swell, too.)


Random quote of the day:

"No truth can make another truth untrue. All knowledge is part of the whole knowledge. A true line, a true color. Once you have seen the larger pattern, you cannot go back to seeing the part as the whole."

—Ursula K. Le Guin, Four Ways to Forgiveness

My friend is kind of in a holding pattern at the moment. The doctors are trying an aggressive healing regime to try to avoid surgery. He'll be in the hospital at least a week with that, then comes the big decision. If he hasn't improved enough, he'll have to go through major surgery. The prognosis is fairly good--he's been healthy as a horse until this latest crisis--but it's still major surgery and it's still worrying.

So all we can do is wait and hope the healing works. And send good thoughts and prayers his way. I'm trying not to have faith in my fear.

He's like a brother to me. Back in our bohemian days he, his wife, and I all shared a place on Venice Beach. There are no two people on this planet I'm closer to, with the exception of my mother. It's frustrating not being able to do something. But sometimes all you can do is wait.


Random quote of the day:

"Fear is faith that it won't work out."

—Sister Mary Tricky


On a far less important note, Charged with Folly has gotten a pretty decent reception on the OWW. I guess I'm on the right track there. I'm quite pleased.

I love writing novels. I always know where I am when I'm immersed in a big project, even if I don't know where the story is going. It's one of those perverse inconsistencies which are my specialty.