The Sixth Station

I always want to preface this sort of entry with the hashtag #firstworldproblems, because really? I'm a spoiled brat. My life is not a horrible miserable thing. I should not be an unhappy as I am. But...I am unhappy, and I don't know what to do about it. One way I am apparently dealing with this is by not drinking, which is likely only because I'm not by nature a drinker. Really, though, my brain is screaming this at me, more loudly with every passing second:

I just...yeah. I had an email on my last break at work today that said I hadn't got into Clarion West for this year, and while I had no real faith at all in the idea that I ever would, I just...I don't know. Hope is a cruel thing. I just...need purpose. Because I've had no purpose in my life for a very long time. I mean, I wanted to finish high school. Then I wanted to graduate university. Then I wanted to finish my pre-reg. Then I wanted to go to the UK. But in the end I pretty much arrived in Sheffield and fell to pieces because I realised that I had nothing more to do. I've been drifting around in a daze ever since. And I moved to Sheffield in 2006. I've done things since then, obviously, like travel and move around and whatnot, but...there's been no reason behind it. My driving force these days is pure miserable confusion. I keep looking for a reason I'm here and I never find it. My most defining memory of last year, for instance, is walking around the British Museum in a miserable daze on a Friday night until it closed, and when it did I sat on the steps out the front and cried because I had no idea where to go or what to do with myself. Or my life.

I'm still sitting on those steps, and I'm still crying. Months later, and I still have no idea what to do. The Clarion West thing is just a symptom of a much larger problem. I probably worded this much better in my personal blog, actually. So I'll just go plagarise myself for a moment:

"I had the news around four-thirty today that I definitely didn't get into Clarion, and really...it wasn't a surprise so I can't claim anything on that, but it's more another kick in the guts that I just don't know how to take. My issue, you see, is that I have no purpose in my life. Whatsoever. I occasionally talk myself into believing that I could do something writing-wise, but the truth likely is that while I can write somewhat better than the average, it's not good enough to be worth more than precisely jack shit. This doesn't have to be as depressing as it sounds, actually. But to me it does tend to turn out that way, because without writing, I...am worth precisely jack shit. I will never marry, I will never have children, I will never make any difference with my day job, and I provide very little in terms of basic human comfort to anyone I know. If I were to vanish tomorrow, I would have done absolutely nothing of note with thirty years of living. And that's what makes me want to disappear. Because honestly...why bother?"

Like I said, I'm just...not in a good headspace. And I haven't been in a long long time. Sometimes I can get around this by writing, because writing generally makes me happier. But these days...it's just a reminder of that immortal Simpsons line: "Well, kids, you tried your hardest -- and you failed miserably. The lesson is: NEVER TRY." That's where I am right now. And it's not a good thing, because I can't just stop writing. I'm wired to write, whether or not I'm any good at it (and most signs point to the fact that I'm not). So it feels self-destructive, in a way, to continue doing something that makes me feel this way. But without it...I really am nothing.

So, yeah. Dear brain: I suppose that's the end of that chapter. We really need to break up and never talk to each other ever again.

Dragging Heels

I hate this kind of evening, really -- I've spent the whole day wanting to come home and write, but now that I'm here I just haven't got the energy to do anything useful at all. And I'm giving myself a headache trying to force it. Gah.

I think I'm just feeling guilty because I told myself a month ago that by the end of March I'd have Greywater in a fit state for submission to agents, but I've fallen into one of my Old Bad Habits and haven't really been writing at all the way I've supposed to have been. It's an ego thing, to some degree; I have very little self-esteem and the thought of being rejected is still really hard for me. It doesn't help that I talked myself into applying to Clarion West just before the deadline and that inevitable rejection is going to send me spiralling into a complete pit of despair, so. I don't know.

I suppose the good news is that my experiments with Twitter Fic were somewhat successful; I managed to get myself second place in the vote with my Cthulhu-esque tale of love and sushi, which I suppose means I have yet another thing to thank Lovecraft for. We're batting three for three here, in terms of things that win competitions for me or actually get published. God, that man is probably sitting down there in hell just warming a pitchfork up for me.

In other news, thanks to my little glee-fest over the movie Thor and the fact I mainlined The Almighty Johnsons this weekend, I'm having Lots of Feels about epic Norse poetry. As in, I may have to start reading it. This can't be a good thing. I did, however, acquire a book of Maori myths from the library yesterday, mostly because I commissioned a picture of Pania, Erik, and Rowan weeks back and it's just coming through, and...now I want to write a ridiculous spin-off wherein the token Maori flatmate, the half-selkie and the not-actually-a-witch adopt a taniwha and THEY FIGHT CRIME. My subconscious is bleeding, I tell you.

Obviously, I'm going insane. I hope everyone else is doing better than me...I kind of feel like I should be doing something about that. But really, my brain's in two minds about that.

Pieces In A Parlour Game

At some stage today I really going to have to get out of bed and get dressed. If only because my mother sent me a quilt the other day, and after two successful days of teaching the cat she's not allowed to sleep on it, she's now sleeping on it. Curled up like a snail. Why must cats fight so many of their battles with the power of CUTE? It's not FAIR.

But I seem unable to do anything of note, really. Although due to a sudden desire to actually watch Thor properly, I am now utterly in love with Loki Laufeyson and have recently also been reminded of how much I love trollin!Tony Stark. Because he be trollin'. Always with the trollin'. ...dammit. I'm not actually in any fit state to be forcing myself to write, but I adore smartasses, and Tony and Loki definitely qualify as smartasses. And after seeing the trailer for The Avengers I want to see this movie just to revel in the smartassery of their inevitable ham-to-ham combat.

But yeah. The little black dog of depression is doggedly dragging along at my heels, and making it very hard to write anything, which is a bit of a bugger because I'm in such a bleak place mentally that some fantastical escapism is really what I need right now. I just can't summon the energy to work the spells for myself, as it were. I did, however, notice that the voting for the Twitter-style love fic competition is up at last.

SpecFicNZ February Twitter Love Contest: the entries are there, and one of them is mine. If you have the time -- and they ARE only 140 characters long at most -- go have a read, and a vote. It's an interesting little concept, and I did enjoy seeing what others came up with too.

In the meantime, I suppose it's back to trying to work out how to get out of this bed. And no more quilty for kitty, dammit.

Brevity Is The Soul Of Discretion

I really haven't made any effort thus far to make any goals for this year, writing-wise, which really says a lot for the fact I am absolutely useless at that sort of thing. I've lost all self-confidence for starters, but I just need to...work through it, I suppose. To that end I sucked it up and entered the Twitter-length fiction contest I mentioned the other day, against my own better judgement. Ha. I also had an interesting little experiment, because an email had come through from the kindly folk who run NaNoWriMo about Pitchpalooza.

In essence, this is just about pitching your NaNoWriMo novel to these people and hopefully winning a prize. The trick is that you have to do it in two hundred words. As you've heard from me already, brevity is not my forte. At all. So I took one look at the email, laughed, and said YEAH RIGHT.

Half an hour later I was furiously editing an attempt at a query letter for Greywater I had been working on in December or something. I'd given up at around three hundred and fifty words. So, I got to distilling, and I found...it's such an interesting exercise, and I really ought to try doing it for a lot of other things I've written. I love to write, obviously, but I'm freeform and highly indulgent. I don't really edit very well. But the Twitter fic and this two hundred word pitch taught me to be more selective about my words, cutting away the chaff and going for the evocative rather than the merely elaborate. It also gave me hope, that I'll be able to edit this first draft of Greywater down from 167k to at least 150k, if not lower. Because that is my goal, this year. Getting that to a submissible state and then submitting the hell out of it.

For posterity, here is the synopsis. In the meantime, I am tired from a long walk and I need some sleep. As usual. I'll probably just go back to talking to Arjit about his obsession with wielding the sword of a pacifist in a war said pacifist never wanted. Or so we were led to believe. Hmm.

When Major Otho Calenta, on leave from active service, is summoned to the prison-city of Aran Nomese to convince a reclusive inmate to lead her once-lauded army into battle, he doesn’t know how he’s expected to achieve his goal. Not only is a she a centuries-old water elemental sorcerously imprisoned by the earth-god of his country, he knows already the bitter taste of crusades long since lost.

Raised from childhood to believe his duty is to take up his sword and protect the innocent, upon arrival at the broken-down palace of Greywater Otho feels obligated to attempt his mission. But between the peculiar machinations of the lupine Attorney-General of Lonan and his own troubled conscience, he sees little reason to incite a pacifist creature to murder. His reticence only grows when a prickly friendship mixes curiosity and craving between them.

Greywater is a novel set in a fantastical world where love and lust shadow a tale of loss and longing, where a soldier and a creature of ice and water meet on an unequal field to engage in the oldest battle: the one where you must learn to save yourself before you even dream of trying to save anyone else.

Inspiration Stations

Due to a combination of factors, I haven't been writing since I came back to New Zealand. Mostly it's that I am just so disorganised; living real life again is far too complicated for a person with a brain as small as mine. So, I've been stuck on trying to get myself sorted for both work and Christmas, leaving very little time for writing. But I want to write, so...

The other day I got a couple of my more recent commissions printed properly, and then I stuck a few up on my wall with some of the older ones to remind me of what I am up to. It's still missing a few of my favourites, but my own printer is out of ink and I pulled the plug on my credit card for the others...but I've been paid since, so I will have to do some more at some point. But yes, having pictures up on my wall is a major inspiration to me, along with the extensive playlists I make for different novels. I can write without these things, sure, but I much prefer to have them. They remind me of what I need to do. Besides, there's nothing quite as terrifying as Viola Morgan staring at you from behind your computer with her baleful button eyes.

...terrifying woman. Damn her. At least she doesn't have a scalpel, though one must note she is dangerously close to a canopic jar. It's currently filled with earbuds, but things always can and do change. But yeah, I am trying to work out what I should be working on in the run up to Christmas. A friend wants to start reading Greywater so I probably ought to proofread/sense check chapters as I pass them along, but I should actively write something too. Kaverlen Falls is calling, but I've had a couple of very curious revelations regarding several characters and their fates, and some scenes from the end of the unnamed third book are very strong in my mind. So I probably ought to write those down, so at least they exist. I can alter them to suit whatever the story ends up being later, of course.

I'm just not sure about anything, I suppose. I find it very easy to get discouraged and just throw my hands in the air and shriek STOP WRITING YOU CAN'T WRITE JUST STOP IT. But I can't. Like I said, I just keep realising things about characters, and it feels like failure if I don't give them this chance to live. But then I wonder what sort of chance it is, if I can't write anything worth reading. So...yeah. It's very much SSDD around here right now.

So, with that said, I'm going to go and try to write something without thinking about it. Because when I think about it I end up in floods of tears wondering why I am even alive. Yeah, it's that time of month all right. My issue, mind you, is that it's always my time of the month these days. Gaaaaaaah. At least I have a felt plushie. That wants to kill me. Oh, dear...

"And good evening, Colin."

I haven't managed to do much of note the last week or so. I arrived back from Australia and between trying to get over jetlag, catching up with some fellow local writers, and going back to work a day and a half after getting back into the country...I'm exhausted. Not to mention I've got the most ridiculously fruit-stuffed Christmas cake in the oven this afternoon. I've never made a fruit cake before. I don't even like fruit cake. But as I'm well-known as the sort of madwoman who'll bake anything on a dare (yes, Oreo-stuffed chocolate chip cookies, I'm looking at you) my mother told me to make one for her. So...we'll see how that turns out. Although with that said it's not like I have to eat it.

Otherwise, I spent Saturday most emphatically not writing, which was at least partially because I took a break from Dany and Tyrion and my other favourites to read the book that arrived in Saturday's post. The Scottish Prisoner. I've been dying for this book for months, and...finally. I did learn a lesson about checking release dates, mind you; I knew the UK date was later than the US one (or at least I thought it was) and when in Australia I ordered it from Amazon.com. And when I was at Whitcoulls last week hunting out A Storm of Swords for a laugh I checked the new release section and almost had an apopolexy when I saw that The Scottish Prisoner was there. Cheers, New Zealand. You suck, New Zealand. God, I love you, New Zealand.

Now, I'm a bit of a rabid Lord John Grey fangirl so of course instinct demanded I buy it, but my bank account is unhappy with me after so many weeks of not working, so I actually kept my cool and didn't buy another copy when I knew I had one coming in the post. I also got the next A Song of Ice and Fire to distract myself with anyway, but you know. [slaps hand] I'm a bad fangirl. (Actually, I still haven't read Lord John and the Plague of Zombies yet either, so I am a doubly bad fangirl.) But to make up for it I'm going to have a ramble here now anyway. I hesitate to call it a "review" because it's not like I have a clue what I'm talking about at the best of times, but I want to have a little SQUEE HANDFLAIL WHEEEEEEEE moment, so here we are. It's going to be filled with SPOILERS, so ye have been warned.

Like I said above, I've been waiting for this book for ages. Mostly it's because I love Lord John like the foaming-at-the-mouth idiot woman that I am, but it's also because it promised to give some real insight into John and Jamie's "friendship." Said friendship was utterly in tatters after Brotherhood of the Blade, and although we know from Voyager and beyond that the two of them managed to come to an understanding before John married Isobel, it was obviously not something that could be overcome with mere words. It needed action -- acta non verba, if I may be pretentious enough to pretend I know anything about Latin, ha ha ha (tip o' the hat to Herself there for teaching me the Latin in the first place) -- and fortunately for us, we got an entire book of action. In words. Oh god the irony, it burns. And you know I fucking love it.

I have to say first off that I have a copy of iTunes that is possessed by some sort of music demon. Or possibly a leprechaun. I already knew from having read various generous extracts that Jamie and John would be taking a trip to Ireland, and the moment I opened the book to the first page iTunes -- which was on random -- promptly brought up The Rocky Road To Dublin. Cue hysteria on my part. Incidentally I apologise for the leading photograph of this entry; that's not Ireland, it's the Highlands of Scotland. I've never been to Ireland myself; partly it's because I am a moron, but I also have this funny little thing about Ireland. By descent I'm English and Scottish -- although a Scotsman once told me I was Danish -- but my father has a family tree on his mother's side going back to the sixteenth century that he once told me proved we were Irish. I read it, then flipped out and emailed him back wailing DAAAAAAAAAAD WE MOVED TO ULSTER FROM ENGLAND and...yeah. I'm neither a Paddy nor a Mick, I'm a bloody Pom. Oops. (Although my great-grandmother was actually Scottish; apparently my English grandmother was terrified of her. Er.) So, yes, going to Ireland in books is about as far as I get right now. (And in my head, every Irishman sounds like Dara and Ed. Ha.)

So, to get back to the book. Overall I enjoyed it -- it's not my favourite of the supplementary material, I don't think, but Brotherhood is somehow hard to top for me. (And not just because through said book Lord John saved my life in Mexico. Long story.) But there is definitely a lot to recommend it. My only complaint is that I felt it could be longer, which is hilarious in hindsight because I've felt a few of the Lord John books have been a bit overlong in the tail. It wasn't even so much the story that I felt could be longer, I think I just wanted more detail. It's the richness of Gabaldon's writing that I always keep coming back for, and I didn't get as much of that here as I usually do -- though I might change my mind on a reread, because I was chewing through this thing like the word-glutton I am. I know I took my time over various extracts when they came to light and got far more satisfaction that way, so you know. Take that one with a grain of salt.

The characters, again, are what stood out for me. Naturally I adore Lord John, and even though I am not actually a huge fan of Jamie's, I do like his narrative voice. And yes, you heard that right; I am a full-blooded presumably straight female who wouldn't jump Jamie Fraser's bones at first opportunity. I'm not sure why that is; I find him to be a fascinating character, but he doesn't appeal to me the way I know he does to most other readers. I suspect it's just because my tastes are odd, but there you go. I do, however, love his narrative voice; Voyager is one of my favourite books in the series because we get to hear from Jamie. And considering the way this book deals with Jamie and John's friendship, I thought it was a very good idea for Gabaldon to have it told from both viewpoints rather than just John's. There's a running theme through the book about the two of them meeting as equals, and by sharing the narraitve rather than it being strictly from John's only really gave that a strong resonance. I enjoyed that. It also gave plenty of opportunity for warm fuzzies between Willie and Jamie, which considering the state of their relationship by the end of An Echo In The Bone...ooh, yeah, fluff is handy right now.

So, John and Jamie. Brilliant. But their supporting cast is wonderful -- Tom Byrd, I just want to squishle. And it says something for Diana's writing -- and perhaps my own gross stupidity -- that I fully thought Tom was going to die in Ireland. (I say "gross stupidity" because I've already read an extract of Plague of Zombies that says Tom is alive, and I know that happens after Prisoner.) I was very, very sad. And then very, very happy. I also have a thing for John's brother Hal, who is a stubborn son of bitch with an honourable streak a mile long; Jamie makes a comment towards the end of the book that he envies the brothers their company, and I can see why. Hal and Johnny are just...Hal and Johnny. As someone with two brothers and one sister, I can safely say that there is nothing in this world quite like a sibling who has your back. And though Jamie still has Jenny, it's...different. I love my brothers, but my sister is the one who knows me best. I imagine it to be much the same with men and their brothers and sisters.

Hal's wife, Minnie, is also a revelation in this book -- although I was fond of Minnie anyway. Harry Quarry is a force unto himself -- a very poetic force, albeit one best suited to the saucier imprints of Mills and Boon -- and I had a little snicker when John Hunter turned up again. Oh, that man is a prick and a half; when I was in London earlier this year I went to the Royal College of Surgeons and saw his collection. Tsk, tsk. I've seen "interesting" anatomical collections before, being that I spent so much time wandering in and out of the Lindo-Ferguson Building at Otago, but even I was taken aback by what the man had. (I was particularly revolted by the half-child's head, which says a lot as my previous "worst ever" was the conjoined twins who did not look to me like they'd died at birth; they seemed far too old in my admittedly limited experience.) But it was a nice touch to bring him back for the concluding duel of the story.

As to the story itself...it was actually a good deal easier to follow than some of John's other stories. That may be just because I'm an idiot, but there you go. It flowed like a river, picking up pace and flotsam along the way, and then hit a dam before spilling over into a very nice conclusion. I did have one complaint, but the more I consider it...well. A month or so back I made a smart-ass remark on the compuserve forum that my wilful brain has a happy-ever-after scenario that involves John running away to Germany to live with Stephan von Namtzen where they can raise sausages ever after. Said sausages referring to dackels (dachshunds), naturally, but only on the surface of the matter. Ha ha ha. I have a particular fondness for dachshunds, you see; ever since I was eleven or twelve I've been of a mind to acquire one and name it Colin. Which is entirely the fault of Prince George. ...ironically enough set in the same time period as this novel. Ha. So you can imagine I was overjoyed when Stephan reappeared.

Weirdly enough, I wasn't a hundred percent satisfied with it, but it may be because I am, in the words of Jamie Fraser, something of a "wee pervert" myself. I wasn't quite satisfied with the change in Stephan and John's relationship, and at first I thought I was just being a jerk because of a lack of detail. (I've been rereading the other stories in Red Velvet and Absinthe the last few days, you see; explicitness is the name of the game there!) I then realised that for all John was clearly over Percy, I was not getting the same sense of intimacy between John and Stephan that we were treated to with Percy and John in Brotherhood. And I don't mean in the sense of sex -- the emotional intimacy wasn't the same. And for a bit I couldn't decide if it was because John was pulling back, or if it said something else. From the lovely scene in Brotherhood it's very clear that John and Stephan are emotionally close, and the end of the book sorted it for me. Stephan sent John a dackel, and invited him hunting. And I grinned. Not just because I mentally named the poor creature "Colin," but also because I realised what it was. I love Stephan, and I love him with John, but they strike me as friends more than anything else now. And not in a bad way. Much as I wanted them to be something more, I think they are best as friends. Not that I'd object to being proved wrong, but it's all good. They're friends, but not exactly confidants in the way John was with Percy, or even with Jamie.

The relationship between Jamie and John was particularly lovely to watch develop anew. I was particularly struck by the ending, where Jamie, John and Willie are watching the horses and John opens with the Torremolinos Gambit. It was a wonderful callback to the first time their friendship went balls-to-the-wall in Voyager, and it also put John, Jamie and William together. I've always been fascinated by that triad, particularly as it is one of the things that I believe ties John and Claire together much much later. While John is no-one's "woman," neither is Claire -- they're both partners to Jamie in terms of his two children, and this lovely little scene almost has them as a peculiar little family. Yet they're all unaware of it, which gives it a nice echo we'll see later. I love that sort of thing; I think that's what makes both reading writing prequels and supplementary material so much fun.

Of course, I have the brain of an idiot and I was watching The Venture Bros. earlier yesterday, and for some reason as Jamie and John began to work together I started mentally picturing them as Brock Samson and Rusty Venture. Which is perhaps a bit of a disservice to John, because he's nothing like Rusty. It was just the juxtaposition of the huge guy ostensibly working for the much smaller man and yet the two of them having a laugh together as the relationship's more equal than that...although yes, I do have days when I mentally picture Jamie as a red-headed Brock. ...nice ass, Samson. But that's the heart of it; I absolutely adored how John and Jamie went from John's hilarious "I wouldn't piss on him were he burning in the fires of hell" comment to playing chess again by the end of it. And it was believeable. Though we already knew it was a given, they had to work for it. And they did. That's what I liked so much about this story; as I said above they came together as equals, and that was what allowed them to work through their issues with one another and part as something very much like friends. For being the one to set that up and make it possible, I wish Hal would take me on the hearth rug. Ha.

The particular stand-out moments to me were Jamie rescuing John from the castle, which was a lovely bit of irony considering there was some vague talk of Jack Randall through the whole thing. I've always wondered how much John knew, you see; I couldn't imagine Jamie ever telling him, but John does know something happened in Jamie's past and I can't help but wonder if he'll ever put it together. After all, John's not stupid -- and I liked how he came to realise why Jamie stayed at Helwater. I actually thought it was a bit cruel of Jamie to lead John to think it was for Betty, because while I harbour no belief that Jamie would ever want John the way John wants Jamie, I thought lying about something of that nature was a bit unfair. But John was a lot more magnanimous than I was, and it was a nice way to lead him to realise that Willie was Jamie's son. I also liked how Isobel, Jamie and John became connected through Wilberforce, as it says a lot to me about how John came to wed Isobel and why Jamie was a bit apprehensive about it considering the circumstances. Also, Lord Dunsany arranging for John to become Willie's guardian even before John weds Isobel was nicely done. These people are connected, in so many ways. One of my favourite Stephen King novels, Bag of Bones, talks about how the TR-90 (a "town" of a sort) is filled with people connected by "underground cables" you can't see but you feel, and that's what I got here. Heartstrings, strung out between them all. And even though you already know these people will be connected to one another long into the future, you can see why even now. I read the first book as Cross-Stitch rather than the US title of Outlander, and though I like the latter better for the series as a whole it feels like a callback to the former title to me. It's a tapestry, and the threads move in and out of the weaves of the others. I love that. That's why I read these books.

There are a lot of other things I could say, but my brain is dying this afternoon. And like I said, I need to reread the book anyway. But there's just...a richness to the story that I enjoyed. I must unashamedly admit that John is my favourite character, but I think it was because John finally got to do something with Jamie that was meaningful. Because they were equals. I liked John from the moment I first started reading from his POV in Voyager (I don't recall thinking much of him in Dragonfly In Amber), and I can assure you that I remember very well reading that book in Christchurch. I all but shrieked at him when he made his Torremolinos gambit after the chess game and reached out for Jamie. I knew it was not the time. It put them on an unequal footing that went beyond the standard governer/prisoner thing, and although we knew they worked through it we never knew how. And to finally see it, all these years later...I feel quite privileged, somehow. It's such a vital and strong part of John's character, this constant love for Jamie, and seeing how the two of them can deal with it to the point that they can be friends...

The duel struck me deeply. I loved how it was told through Jamie's eyes but with John's words in his mind; they were principle and second, and almost in a way they were one body in that moment. Considering they can never be one in the way John might wish -- and my heart broke for him when he heard Jamie calling for Claire and ached to be someone who could give him solace -- this did my poor bruised heart right in. There's a lot of things in this book, in terms of the different relationships between people and the reasons for it -- love, honour, duty, filial association, that sort of thing. John gets brotherhood from Hal and a more physical kind of love from Stephan, but from Jamie...it's an understanding. It's not romantic, but it's not platonic either. It's something else entirely. It acts, actually, as a very strong reasoning behind the oddity of John and Claire's consummated marriage, but that's entirely another discussion.

But yes, this is all getting very disjointed. I just loved the little details of this book, too; John's repeated motif of the master couplet said so much for the theme of equality, and I also had a good little snigger at the poem Jamie was reading early on about the woman scorned. I tended to read it as his quiet unease about John; as far back as my reading of Voyager I could see Jamie held a concern about John's intentions towards him for a long long time. And I mean that in the sense Jamie didn't realise for quite a while the nature of John's honour. Fair enough, considering his experience at the hand of Jack Randall; it was no wonder Jamie would believe John's fake impossible "love" (you can't hear my sarcasm in the written word, believe you me) could turn just as easily to resentment and hate. Which is why I loved how Jamie refused to let Quinn kill John. And I also understood the last bit with the names. I loved how John suddenly got annoyed and demanded that Jamie stop calling him "my lord." And the fact that Jamie wanted to but knew it was better not to...it was lovely and sad and made me think of their meeting all those years later in Jamaica. That was where the equality truly began. But it was there earlier, just...it was never quite the time.

So, I am looking forward to In My Own Heart's Blood in a couple of years. I love Jamie and John, and I love them together. Even though my slash fangirl self will always wish John could have what he wanted, I do love them as friends. It's such a rich and fascinating relationship, one once again in tatters, and seeing how it was between them the last time they patched it up...it gives me hope for this time. It also makes me slightly philosophical; much as I wanted Stephan and John together, I think they're better as friends. It's the same with John and Jamie. They have their own paths, but they're just...there are heartstrings, as I said. They stretch out between us and all the people that we love. And I particularly like how a Scot and a Pom had to go to Paddy-Land to become friends. Something about that just amuses me deeply.

In other news, I should probably go and do something like writing myself. I have LOTS OF FEELINGS about writing, mostly something between despair and hope, but that's for another day. In the meantime...just write. As they say.

"I think it's going to be a very Merry Christmas!"

I can't remember if I first ran across it in-novel via one of his many author-avatar characters or if it was in On Writing, but at some point in my reading life Stephen King described "The Zone" and I totally clicked onto this concept. I'm a haphazard writer by nature, but also a very prolific one. My "official" NaNo total came to around 155k, but that doesn't account for the two 3k stories, the 7k other not-finished short story, the 3k not-finished short story, another 3k of assorted dribbles that haven't got official story status yet, and the monster 30k "short" story I wrote over the last three days in between writing all this other stuff.

Er.

I haven't done all that much today, to be honest, it being the first of December. But I have to go back to New Zealand on Sunday and I have a list of stories I want to finish before I do. One of them is done. I'm going to make myself a shopping list just to make a point to myself, actually.

What I Must Become - creepy short story about horrible creepy things.
No Good Deed - projected 10k worth of angst and sweetcakes.
Expressions of Etiquette - entirely screwed up short story about coming "home" for the holidays.
The Blacksmith's Daughter - unnecessarily horrific story about smallfolk and the whims of the gods.
Dream About Flying - bizarre misaimed Aesop about jerkass genies and falling in love with someone you shouldn't have fallen in love with.

They're all in...varying states. The first is finished and stands at just over 6k. The second has about 7.5k to its name and I figure I could finish it tonight. The third is complicated as I haven't written much of it -- maybe 800 words -- and I need to have it finished by next Friday. The fourth is all plotted out at just under 3k and just needs to be filled in; I should finish it tonight over the second, actually, because it needs to be less than 6k anyway and I need to do something with it before the 15th. The last is...maybe 2.5k written and is for a friend for Christmas and therefore can wait until everything else is done, so...maybe if I can get Daughter finished tonight and Deed mostly done, I can spend tomorrow finishing Deed and then working on Expressions. And then I won't feel like a failure for maybe two minutes.

I'm having an odd time of it, you see. I was told yesterday via email that I didn't make the cut of the master's programme, so I'm at a loose end as to what to do next year. There are benefits, of course; I can now go to Thailand/Cambodia/Vietnam for my birthday in February without crippling worry about funding a move to Wellington, and without the university schedule holding me to the country I can go meet up with friends in Seattle for a weekend in August and then pop over for SARAP! in Edmonton with friends met in Turkey. I just...I'd wanted this programme, you see, to help me learn something about my writing and also make contacts. I guess I just need to spend January editing and querying Greywater and hope something comes of it. I just...don't really know.

But I have been reminded that I love writing. Whenever I get rejected I tend to think "FINE I SUCK I'LL JUST QUIT." But I know that I won't. Because I can't. The infamous 30k in three days thing is proof of that. It just...poured out of my heart and through my fingertips and onto the computer screen and it made me laugh and cry and laugh some more and I just...I don't know. Maybe my writing will never mean anything to anyone but me. Maybe I'm just stuck in the Zone all on my own.

But I'm going home in the weekend and I know the DVD pictured above will be waiting, as I tossed it back from London before I left the UK. It's my Christmas movie. And it's December now. Time for joy, they say...and that was one reason why I wrote that 30k story. It's...kind of a Christmas present, though I'm not sure I'll have the nerve to send it to the person it was written for. But I probably will. Christmas is an awkward time in my family; there are terrible memories for us associated with the season, but then there are so many brilliant ones too. And that was what the 30k was about. The beginning after the end.

And I already knew that carpets can fly, anyway.

If I Could Turn Back Time

The first time I walked into the Raphael room at the Victoria and Albert Museum in Kensington, I just about had a fit because it was huge, empty, and beautiful. I have a thing for grand stately rooms, particularly when I feel like I have it to myself (you may note in entry before this one, there is a picture of the larger temple at Abu Simbel with no people in front of it; I took that, and my good god it was amazing to be able to do so). The next time I saw the Raphael room I figured it wouldn't get any better than the first hit, so to speak. HOW WRONG I WAS. They'd installed what you see above: a giant couch. That's not even the half of it. You could walk into this room, kick off your shoes, and loll around in the presence of masterpieces.

There's a reason why I'm babbling on about this, believe it or not, but I'll get to it in a minute. The entry is really supposed to point out that I've "finished" NaNo, or at least I've achieved some of what I set out to do. I have first drafts of Hibernaculum and Greywater finished, I have a random beautiful and terrifying scene between Ryenn and Arosek written, I have a roughly 7k short story about SPARKLY EVIL BLOOD FAE, and as of today I have 50k on the manuscript of Kaverlen Falls, which I just started last week. I'm hoping to finish a draft of the 6k short story The Blacksmith's Daughter tomorrow, and...the official wordcount so far is 154,256.

I'm still having something of a crisis. I just don't know if I'm a good writer. It's a mental thing, as in I'm a complete mentalist, but now that I have spent almost six weeks in Australia writing my heart, eyes, and wrists out, I'm terrified there's nothing to show for it. Which is blatant lies judging by the prodigious output I've managed, but then I tend to bury my head in my hands and wail BUT IT'S ALL CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP an awful lot. [rolls eyes] I don't know.

Speaking of crap, my mother forced me to go see the latest Twilight movie with her the other day; I already felt ill before we got there, and the patented SPINNY CAMERA ANGLES OF DOOM meant halfway through the damn thing I had to dig into my purse and find two paracetamol and five mg of prochlorperazine. And I still felt so ill I had to keep my eyes closed for ten minutes. I didn't even eat my popcorn, and I have an eating disorder. (Maybe I should just spend my life locked in a room with Stephanie Meyer. I can almost guarantee I'd never want to eat again if all I had for stimulation was her books and those damn movies.) At one stage in the movie I even facepalmed. I literally facepalmed. Here, have a visual aid:

And I don't even like Star Trek, either. (DENNY CRANE!) I don't even remember what it was that made me do it. There were a lot of things that upset me about that movie. Principally, though, I was deeply disturbed by the power balance in Bella and Edward's relationship. I could only stomach it by entertaining the private theory that Bella is in fact an anguisette (thank you for the sanity switch, Jacqueline Carey). Because otherwise I'd just have to go with my initial gut feeling, which was that Bella is a good and dutiful housewife-to-be who marries at eighteen, justifies her husband's violence against her with "he can't help himself" and "it's proof of how much he loves me" and when her unborn baby threatens the mental health of her friends and family and also her own life, she justifies allowing herself to die by the thought her worth as a wife is only to act as a human incubator.

Also, there was a huge-ass fight between vampires and werewolves and NO BLOOD WAS SHED WHATSOEVER. I miss Alucard. I miss him a lot. ...I guess I just like my abominations Eldritch, not Edward.

The thing is, though, that I really ought to be careful what I complain about. I readily admit I can't and won't ever understand Twilight. But I will open myself to mockery by admitting the other day I noticed a movie about to play on FoxTel and promptly recorded it. And later watched it while kicking my feet in glee. I know most people pan the damn thing, but in my opinion it's so bad it's hilarious. ...sorry. ^_~

But I think I'm in a melancholy mood anyway because I finally finished reading the full text of the old story I had been writing all those years ago with an older friend, and...while I was wincing at the writing at the beginning, by the end I was utterly absorbed in the world we had created and the story we were weaving to the point I couldn't work out who wrote what. It's also been so long since I paid any lasting attention to the characters or the story that I'd forgotten so much of what we had written and what we had planned, and now that I am at the end of it...the sense of loss is immense. Not just for the story itself, but for the friendship that created it. I ache to read more of it, as much as I ache to write to my old friend and see where life has taken her now.

I thought of the V&A above for several reasons. I mean, museums are places of memory. You walk in the door and you are taken back to places that existed long ago -- so long ago, in some cases, that we can't even be quite sure they did exist. We can guess, but we're never going to know what those lives were like. There's a terrible sadness, in that. And I get a similar sadness from unfinished stories, especially one like this. So much potential, just rotting away on my harddrive. It feels like a betrayal, that even I forgot them. Part of me just wants to turn around and write to my old friend and beg her to tell me that she didn't forget, because if we both did...it seems so unfair.

But then, I also thought of the V&A because of that giant couch. It's not the first whimsical thing I've found in a London museum; I was most enchanted by the Super Fun Happy Slide! installation I discovered one dreary December at the Tate Modern, but then you expect that kind of malarkey at the Tate Modern. Not so at Victoria's digs. I love that museum for many reasons, and I walk in there feeling like it's one of the great and airy palaces of my imagination, stately and elegant and real. And then...I find a giant couch in my favourite room.

The emperor of the story I forgot, he came to his royal title at the age of eighteen after having been raised a commoner. It was always a running joke in the writing process that Dion would one day do something daft like fill the Emperor's Bathchambers with rainbow bubbles and a thousand rubber duckies, or that he'd draw a hopscotch grid on the approach to the Shining Throne and refuse to hold court unless all assembled gave him a round. He's the kind of person who'd insist on beanbags for state assemblies. TAnd this room, in this beautiful and elegant museum...had a giant couch specifically designed for lolling. Dion would have loved this room.

I wish I hadn't forgotten. In some ways, though, I almost wish I hadn't remembered.

Under the Sea

I have once again reached the most terrifying part of a novel -- the slippery slide to the finish. Except I'm like one of those chickenshit little kids who sit at the top of the highest slide wailing that they're too scared to let go and just slide. So, even though I began yesterday by sketching out the entirety of the first of the Scary Slide Chapters, I ended up going for a drive into Perth. There was some logic there; my mother needed a ride to the airport. Having gone all that distance, my father and I ended up going to the Aquarium of Western Australia, hence the rather trippy photograph above.

It was an interested experience, being that the main reason I wanted to go is because I have been writing three novels involving the machinations of four gods, each having most sway over one cardinal element. The West is Water, and he has been haunting me a lot recently. It's partially because he is the most human of the four, and by consequence the least human. He's a very curious wee creature, my Inamoran. As I walked around the aquarium I felt him with me. He's barely my height -- about five foot four -- and light of foot, and has this lovely lilting light little voice. ...ha ha, that makes me sound insane. I swear I'm not. I've had an overactive imagination since I was very small, and my greatest regret is that I am paradoxically too logical to have ever had a proper imaginary friend even when so very tiny, because I knew it was impossible. Hence my love for reading and writing fantastical stories, I suppose.

But I walked these waters, the places that he loves, and I took some photographs. I decided to share a few of them, just because it might aid me in getting back to the Slippery Slide of Doom. I'm a lousy photographer at the best of times, and my camera can't cope with lowlight conditions very well, so I apologise for the quality. But still. It's the song of the sea.

So, I need to go for a walk into town to visit a bank machine, as I am going horse-riding tomorrow afternoon. So much for the writing? Ha. My excuse is that I haven't really got a lot of opportunity to do it at home, and I need to go down to Margaret River anyway. I rode both a camel and a donkey in Egypt last month, and as a consequence ended up wanting to ride a horse. I can claim it as research, anyway; in the older stories the characters ride horses. Mostly. Ha. I also need to do a tiny bit of shopping and work out what I am making for dinner, how domestic of me. But I might read a chapter or two of the book I acquired yesterday, the second part of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. It's only taken ten years and one Singapore Airlines flight from Heathrow to Changi for me to finally get around to doing it. But really, my thoughts on that series so far is an entirely different entry.

In the meantime, there have been various soundtracks to my writing as of late, but I feel the urge to share this Jean-Patrick Capdevielle piece. He is the composer who first brought us Emma Shapplin, whose voice I have loved since 1999. This video is a song from his pseduo-opera Atylantos, and considering the fate of Inamoran...well. Atlantis has fascinated me since I was very small. When I was twelve or thirteen I created my own Atlantis, which eventually morphed into the enclave of the Ossu'heim, Inamoran's sole remaining children imprisoned between worlds and oceans by the curse of another god. Stories within stories. But I adore this song, even ten years after I first heard it.

Funnily enough, it's not my favourite -- that would be Bellezza Divina. But it's so much story in so little space and is absolutely beautiful.

Speaking of beautiful things, in case you wonder what my little imaginary friend who accompanied me to the aquarium looks like, I have had a commission of him done by the wonderfully talented Calicot over at DA.

He is on the right; the woman on the left is she who will be Chaesha, goddess of East and Air. They're actually both in their proper human forms in this picture. Which reminds me, last night after getting back from Perth I watched television (which I never do) and then I did write for a bit. But I started writing a short story about Janerin's human wife, Janerin being the god of North and Earth. Now that's procrastination, folks. I'll write, but not what I am supposed to!

...we're all doomed.

Magic Doors

Self-confidence doesn't come easily to me. I could list a lot of reasons as to why I suspect that might be, but it's not actually going to help me understand it in the slightest. It's only relevant to this post in that I am consistently amazed at how much I am enjoying working on The Juniper Bones. I mean, I don't want to imply that I generally don't like writing -- obviously I would hardly be doing it if I hated it -- but because I often end up in despair over what I am writing, it's a little bit strange when I find myself actually saying to myself as I write: hey, this is actually pretty damn good!

It's probably something to do with the change of scenery. The Juniper Bones, unlike the other two novels I've been fiddling with, is set directly in our world in fairly recent times. It makes it slightly easier to deal with in some respects (I don't have to make stuff up) and harder in others (I'm not allowed to make stuff up). But that's not it entirely. It's written in the present tense. I don't habitually write in the present tense, you see; for a very long time I had the garden variety knee-jerk reaction I was taught to have to the present tense, which appears to be NO IT'S BAD DON'T DO IT. But in 2000, when I first started at university, I bought a book my first night there from K-Mart. It was a random selection. I can't even remember now what it was called; I do still own it, but it's stashed in the barn somewhere and has been since I moved to Sheffield in 2006. I'll find it eventually. But it was written in the present tense and I loved the immediacy of it. It was also a very well-written story.

Still, it didn't really grab me as something I ought to be doing. That didn't happen until 2002, when I read a Smallville fanfic also written in the present tense that to this day still blows my socks off whenever I chose to reread it. And I do reread it a couple of times a year. It's highly atmospheric and by turns wry, silly, sorrowful, passionate and very, very funny, and I am still very charmed by it. But the way the author wrote these words struck a deep chord with me, and I chose to write what exists of People In Looking-Glass Houses because the ironic style was well-suited to the nature of the story. I've never finished a draft of that damn novel, but when I first started working with Eliot in a short story named Stockholm Syndrome in 2005, I decided to go with the present tense for him too. It's been stuck to him with crazy-glue ever since.

It can take me a while to get back into writing that way, I must admit. And by "a while" I mean "about two seconds." There's something very natural to Eliot's ironies, to me, and I suppose that's why I like reading back his stories more than most of my work. I still can't decide whether or not this means that it is actually good, or if I've just repeatedly flicked a switch in my own head.

But I am hopeful of actually finishing this draft. I wasn't at first, partially because I was so sure I would RAGEQUIT before I finished Hibernaculum anyway, but The Juniper Bones has a particularly messy denouement I still don't entirely understand. (And considering the copious amounts of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey...stuff, I possibly never will.) Yet...I so badly want to tell this story, because I am so in love with the characters right now. And not just Morgan and Eliot, my so-called Usual Suspects. I'm still surprised by something I discovered during NaNo last year, which is Erik's increased role in the story. He was supposed to be a shadow-character for Tess, someone for her to interact with if I needed someone to fill that role. Instead he quietly stepped forward and filled that role for Eliot, even though that was what Pania was for. It's changed the tone of a lot of things, and that...well. I suppose this is why I write, and why I read. It's for the surprise. It's for the joy of picking up a book or sitting in front of a keyboard and opening a magic door with no real idea what lies beyond it, or where that door is going to take you. When I clicked absently on the link to that Smallville fic in 2002 I had no idea that it would still be influencing my writing in 2011. And yet here we are.

Long live the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey magic doors, I say.

Grief

When I was in Aswan recently, I ended up being stalked through a souk by a little Egyptian man who was determined to sell me a statue of Anubis. Granted, it was my own fault; I had gone for a walk further up the market with two of my tourmates, and while they were haggling over canopic jars the other merchant asked me what I wanted. As my bag was already overfull (and the recently-acquired belly dance costume was not helping; after a year of lessons you'd have thought I'd remember how heavy those things are), I wasn't much interested. He tried to sell me the usual cheerful touristy traps. "You like Isis? Nefertiti? Tutankhamun?" I kind of blinked at him and said "I LIKE ANUBIS." The expression on his face was really quite priceless. However, these people in the souks remember you, and on both subsequent visits I made to the souk before we went upriver, this man found me and tried to sell me Anubis.

In the end I came home with a tiny faux-obsidian canopic jar with Anubis on the lid. I believe it's for the stomach? I'd have to look it up, as I've forgotten a lot of the things my Egypt-mad childhood self learned back in the day. Unfortunately I haven't a picture of it; I sent it back to New Zealand from London and I'm in Australia right this minute. It's a pity, and he's rather cute. For a god of death. (You could say the same for Sobek, the crocodile-headed god; now I can't remember what he is god of, but we went to a temple (I think in Kom Ombo) where he and Horus were all over the walls, and he was bad-ass. Oh, yes.) But I was thinking of my wee friend Anubis both last night and today, and it was because I've been dealing with grief.

Now, I was saying yesterday I was going to write a short story about evil fae before I went on with my third novel completion project, but I opened the last part of TJB -- the file is rather poetically entitled the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew.doc -- just to see what awaited me and wouldn't you know it, I got to writing. I did it completely against the way I was supposed to, as well; with these fights for the finish I'm supposed to go to the very beginning and work my way through from there so I catch all the fragments and start to catch continuity errors. Which tend to be rife, considering I generally write out of order. However...

There's a scene about two thirds of the way through the third part of TJB that involves grief. I came to the internet when I was sixteen, in the late nineties, and I was an unashamed fanfic fangirl. And emo. Which means that basically, emo death!fic was my bread and butter for rather a long time (and I believe the fact that I kind of stumbled into my first publishing credit in an anthology of erotica was not accidental, thanks to reading far too much PWP in those same days). With that said, I got out of the habit of killing people left right and centre while claiming dramatic license a while back. Which isn't to say I won't kill characters, but my stories are no longer complete massacres for the sake of trying to be a tearjerker.

Last night while I was flicking through the .doc I found that this scene in TJB was only fragmentary. For some reason, I wanted to finish it. Oddly, Eliot is in varying states of grief all the way through TJB, but this was the first time I had ever seen him really let it go. And it hurt. There is always something of me in every character that I write, but rarely is any character so close to me in personality they could be called a Mary-Sue. It's more that they take some aspect of myself, amplify it so I empathise with them, and then they go off and become their own person until I start screaming at them to behave. Which they never do. Eliot...is not like me in a lot of ways. He's a smart-ass, sure, but says what he thinks and he is rarely backs away from a confrontation. Honestly, he's more likely to run head-on into them. But this is largely because Eliot has a death-wish. Eliot wants to be dead. When I created Eliot I was deeply depressed, and before he found himself in a full-fledged novel he was just a collection of short stories I wrote to work through that depression without directly harming myself. But for all that, Eliot rarely displayed actual grief. And I think that is something I share with him. I am often depressed. But my grief is my own.

Giving that grief voice through Eliot was an odd experience. I'm still trying to understand it. I've since had to move on to some other scenes, but I am proud of what came out of it. I just...I rather wish I had my canopic jar here now. I want to turn it over in my hands, rubbing my thumb across the maw and ears of the jackal, remembering the scent and darkness of the night I bought him in Aswan near the ancient whispering currents of the Nile. Death is natural, for us. For Eliot, it is anything but. Yet grief is all the weapon we have against it. I suppose in the end we must all learn to wield it in our own way.

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

(Ash Wednesday)
T.S. Eliot

"Tell me we both matter, don't we?"

I've been quite lax with this journal the last few weeks, partially because my brain's all over the show whenever it comes to doing much between feeding my face, going for long walks around Koombana Bay, reading trashy novels or writing my own. I think it's because I did feel guilty about not being about to keep up with Rule of Three, especially as I had an email today that made me all excited about it again. Oh, well, I should go and catch up on some stories and get involved in voting with those that were shortlisted. I also think the avoidance is helped by the fact that this journal is tired to a gmail account I don't use for anything else but this sort of malarkey, but while I was in the UK my smartphone picked up on the account and was always chirping to tell me when I had new comments. Usually I wouldn't notice until I came specifically to check, and since I've been in Australia I've been off the 3G network I was on and I haven't been often by, so...yes. Head in the sand, that's me. I'm rather good at it, too.

Still, I've been writing. It's almost NaNoWriMo time again, too -- and I am taking part, although I'm not doing it properly. I want to finish the first drafts of at least Greywater and Hibernaculum, and if things are going really well I might just have to give The Juniper Bones an all-mighty kick to go with it. I've been working on Greywater since Monday night or so, and currently it's slightly less than 140k and I just got to the end of chapter sixteen. Which isn't to say it's 140k to 16; there's probably fifty or sixty pages of text beyond what I've been writing up to, simply because I habitually write out of sequence. But when I get into this kind of mood I go right back to the beginning and write chronologically so that I can pull the threads into a proper weave. This was particularly important with this novel, as the first chapter existed while the next two didn't, and I really needed a better sense of the beginning to make the middle come together. And it is coming together, often in ways I didn't quite imagine. The characters are very alive to me right now, which I suppose can only be for the best. They're off doing things and behaving in ways I didn't expect -- I'm looking at you, Leylea and Sabin, and you know it -- and I can't complain because it just makes me feel as if the story is about real people...because real people often do things we don't expect, even when we later realise their behaviour is perfectly in line with their personality.

Still, Deniz left a comment on my last entry asking for snips, and as I am still quite pleased with this little (little?!) story, I thought I'd share some of what I've been up to. These two characters aren't a large part of Greywater -- in fact only Nan makes an appearance in that novel -- but they're a part of the larger story and they're becoming dearer to my heart by the day. Even though Nan told me the other day she wants guinea pigs because her parents farm them and then she climbed in a box with the First Lord Consul and the Ice Maiden of Aran Nomese and started a sing-along to the tune of I'm On A Boat. But I have to love her. Even if she seems to be turning into a female Bret McKenzie more and more with every passing day...

So, we have two little bits here -- the very beginning of the story, which doesn't actually have a proper title. I refer to it as Keep Calm (And Carry On) while the file is tea,dammit.docx, but it probably doesn't matter. I think the UK put tea on my brain and it's just not going away.

*****
 

It was silly, she thought sourly, that they would think a mere cup of tea would settle anyone after what had happened, least of all a Mydaraën. Not that she’d been shy about pointing that out – yet her suggestion of a rousing band and enough alcohol to sink seven ships had been summarily shot down and she had been installed in the little bedchamber far from the rest of the delegation.

With a pot of tea.

She did wonder if Alara would have been more amenable to her suggestions – for all Alara Feronza would generally appear to be the least amenable of the priggish lot of them, Nan knew that the woman would at least pretend to listen to her. But then she recalled how she had last seen her – covered in blood, her face that same perfect porcelain mask even as she meticulously cleansed her sword of all gore – and shuddered. She did not know the true Alara. She was beginning to doubt that even Alara herself knew.

*****

The next part comes much further in the story; though the story is from Nan's POV, it's really Alara's tale -- but it's about them both, because this is where knight and magian, forced to close proximity by the one they refer to as the grey wolf of Kerdenet, begin to realise they're quite comfortable where they are.

*****

“He told you that?” She cursed, loud and long, in the harsh-vowelled dialect of the far north-east. Only when she realised Alara had no idea of the exact meaning of what she said did she finally spit out: “Son of a whoremaster! Tell me his name, Al. I mean it. I’ll kill him myself.”

As you killed those men for me. Those words hung unspoken between them. But Alara simply shook her head, though Nan knew now she could not be as unmoved by her passion as she appeared to be. “Not now, Nan. Or at least, not yet. But yes, he came to me that night, said I could do the right thing and tell Rolande about us. My husband-to-be might then have been kind enough to simply break the contract and leave the dowry with my father. It would be harder, the Red Dog said, if I left it until the inevitable discovery in the bridal chamber.”

“I hope you told him where to shove it.”

“I punched him in the face, actually.”

“You…Alara.” Nan had no idea whether to laugh or cry. She settled on something between both. “Oh, gods, Al.”

Both of Alara’s hands wrapped around her now and she actually smiled, though it was tainted with sadness. “He told everyone it had been an accident. But several people knew he’d been speaking with me, and most people were aware that I was my twin’s equal in all ways. In the end I suppose I played into his hands, for if it had gone the way he wanted, Rolande could have pointed towards it as evidence of our previous association.”

“I still want to kill the bastard,” she seethed, linking her fingers tightly through the other woman’s. Her head still ached, but it seemed more important than maintaining the wards. “Tell me his name, honestly, I’ll tear him a new arsehole tomorrow. And again the next day, too.”

“Let me finish the story, Nan, please,” Alara chided, but though her smile had long gone Nan could hear faint amusement that faded only as she went on. “So, Rolande and I were married the next day with all the pomp and circumstance required.”

Nan’s eyes dropped downwards. She’d always noticed that Alara still wore her wedding rings. She’d never really looked at them, but Alara allowed her to turn the leftmost hand over, let her raise it to the light. The ruby in the ring closest to her heart was deep and bloody, the birthstone of her husband. The one on the outside held an amethyst in a delicate leaf setting. That was Alara’s own birthstone, deep violet with rainbows of every colour concealed within.

“That night, he came to me in the bridal chamber.” As she sighed Nan lowered her hand, pressed it close between the palms of both of her own. “He was very gentle. But I laid there like a rock, unmoving, and afterwards he said to me: was it so very bad, then?” She bowed her head. “And I cried.”

The admission, so utterly at odds with everything Nan had been taught of this peculiar woman, hung on the air like a condemned criminal kicking the gallows air. When she spoke again, Nan found her own voice strange, higher-pitched than normal. “He’d been with a woman before?” She swallowed hard, half-choked on her own fear. “Did he…know?”

“He knew. He never went into details – he was too much a gentleman to be as crass as all that. But he’d known women in his travels, and could be sure I was no virgin. But he also knew that my lack of response came not from a longing for a man I would no longer know, but from a fear that he would know me again.”

*****

Now, I probably ought to go back to working on Greywater, as tomorrow I should properly get out of the house and go for a drive to Margaret River or somthing. Even though I'm here to write, I suppose I need a proper break sometime...?