Weeding bermuda grass. Remembering, as I always do when I weed bermuda grass, that desert plants are really only a step or so away from the plants in Bones of Faerie.

The stalks' long leaves rustled as he went by. In the distance, corn ears moaned as townsfolk pulled them free. The corn had grown well this year, and the squash and beans, too. They'd all fought our harvesting, and we had the bruises to show for it, but come winter we would eat well.

Yeah. The only real difference being that bermuda grass doesn't make good eating. (For humans anyway. I'm told horses like it just fine. :-))

A couple times we've even found bermuda grass growing in the guest bedroom. That stuff really could take down cities, given half a chance.

Weed some bermuda grass, brush up against a few jumping cholla, and you really could believe that plants have designs on taking over the world.

And yet, in a way that's hard to explain, all of that is tied up in why I love living here.

I wonder if, in some small way, Liza might one day start to feel that way about her world, too, even as she chides herself for being foolish for doing so.

Book 4:

Agamemnon: "Menalaus, my brother, the Trojans have killed you! The Trojans will pay!"
Menalaus: "Chill, it's not a mortal wound. Seriously."
Agamemnon: "The Trojans will still pay!"

The truce falls apart. Men die. We begin to wonder why Agamemnon, whose wife the Trojans did not abduct, seems so much more bent on killing them all (all! all!) than Menalaus, whose wife the Trojans did abduct.

Speaking of Menalaus' ex, no sign of Paris this book. Once can only assume he's still rolling around with Helen.

But never mind that. The thing that's genuinely wonderful is the use of language and metaphor, which very much comes through in this translation, and which makes those battle scenes more compelling than they ought to be.

Screams of men and cries of triumph breaking in one breath,
fighters killing, fighters killed, and the ground streamed blood.
Wildly as two winter torrents raging down the mountains,
swirling into a valley, hurl their great waters together,
flash floods from the wellsprings plunging down in a forge
and miles away in the hills a shepherd hear's the thunder--
so from the grinding armies broke the cries and crash of war.

There's another extended passage, in this book or maybe the next, that compared the churn and dust of the battle to the threshing of grain.

And there are shorter evocative passages. Including, as men die, the repeated phrase, "the dark came swirling down across his eyes." (shivers)

As lnhammer says, the things Homer does well, he does very well indeed.

There is a white chocolate cake in the pastry case next to me.

There is a manuscript in front of me that I'm editing for a particular style issue.

If I get through 25 pages, I get to order the cake.

Dear Protagonist Who It's Hard to Believe Once Didn't Want to Do Anything At All,

So first I send you off to summer camp, then I send you off to college, and now it seems you've found paying work and are ready to head out into the world. Wow. Time flies. One day you're a half-written incoherent rough draft, the next you're almost fully revised.

Only--maybe you have a little time left to hang out together before you move away? We can go shopping, get you some good work clothes, look at your prose and logic one more time. It'll be fun.

Yes, I know you're impatient to set out on your own, but can't you just humor your creator one more time? After all, we've been through a lot together.

Affectionately,

Me

P.S. Of course, it's not like we won't see each other again. After all, you'll be home for copyediting page proofs the holidays, right?

Because otherwise, surely I wouldn't have missed the fact that I won an ARC of Fire in Kidliterate's giveaway. Yay! I've only been lusting after this book now, for ... well, at least since penmage read it, which I think was around the same time I read Graceling, which must put it at months and months and months.

And if you aren't already reading kidliterate's most excellent reviews, why aren't you? We can't all use revisions as an excuse, now, can we? :-)

Thanks for all your summer reading recs. I've been having fun adding them!

Round two revisions on Thief Eyes arrived Monday, so my brain is likely to be offline (or rather, hyperfocused on that one thing) for the duration. Mostly small stuff--a couple remaining semi-overarching issues, plus some good thoughts on prose style that I hope to give some time.

I love revision, even when it does eat my brain.

A note I found from round one: Last book, the overused word was "silver." This book, it's "crazy." Have informed editor that next book, it will be "rutabaga." :-)

Followup from this post -- an eclectic mix of summer reading recs from lj-ers--if anyone else has anything to add, let me know!

( A summer reading list )

And Iris came on Helen in her rooms ...
weaving a growing web, a dark red folding robe,
working into the weft the bloody struggles
stallion-breaking Trojans and Argives armed in bronze
had suffered all for her at the god of battle's hands.

Book 3 being the book in which we meet Helen, who I found I disliked less than I remembered--but I think my memories may all actually come from The Odyssey. It turns out the troops aren't the only ones tired of this war--Helen, as far as I can tell, wants it over too--longs to go back home to her first husband and her other family and friends, and is none too pleased with Paris these days.

( She has some reason for this )

Book 2, summarized:

Agamemnon: "Hey, anyone wanna ditch this war and go home?"
Men: "Heck yeah!"
(men bolt for ships)
Agamemnon: "Just testing kidding!"
Storyteller: "Ummm, yeah. Anyway, how 'bout I just give you a long long list of glorious war commanders and we try to pretend this never happened? Okay? Muses, help me out here?"

Though, for all the lists of names are kinda dull, the descriptions of the lands they come from are rather evocative. "Messe, crowded haunt of the wild doves." "Enipse whipped by the sudden winds." And of course, "Orchomenos rife with sheep." :-)

One guy in the list showed up with only three ships. He's dismissed by the storyteller as a "lightweight." I want to know more about him.

One thing that especially caught my attention: Zeus sends Agamemnon a false prophetic dream. All my myth-reading has taught me that one ignores any dreams at one's peril. But we're in a different sort of world here, one where dreams need to be evaluated and where maybe blindly trusting them isn't the tried and true way after all. Huh. (Nestor even says, essentially, "If this dream came from anyone but Agamemnon, I'd assume it was a fake ...")

One more thing: reading this in high school, I was too busy being bemused that there was both a "lesser" and a "greater" Ajax to notice that little Ajax is actually kind of hot:

Little Ajax--a far cry from the size of Telamonian Ajax--
a smaller man but trim in his skintight linen corslet,
he outthrew all Hellenes, all Achaeans with his spear.

In summary: He may be small, but he sure is good with that spear. (cough, cough)

As I was working on the author's note today, my brain leapt to:

"If you want to learn more about Hallgerd, Gunnar, Thorgerd, Svan, Hrut, and Hoskuld, take a voyage down to your public library. It's all in books!"

I'm behind on most things (see revisions, brain-eating), so am late in mentioning that I'll be at Westercon tomorrow night through the weekend. Looking forward to it--if you're there, say hello!

Here's where I'll be specifically:

Thursday, 7-8 p.m., Xavier room
Children's Classics ... Today
Janni Lee Simner, James Owen, Michelle Welch, Aprilynne Pike

Friday, 10-12, 1:30-3:30
YA Workshop
(Advance registration required--afternoon critiquing now closed)

Saturday, noon-1 p.m., Xavier room
How to Write to Young Adults and Kids
Janni Lee Simner, Michael D’Ambrosio, Chris Paige, Aprilynne Pike

Saturday, 1:30-2 p.m.
Reading from Bones of Faerie
Boardroom

Saturday, 2-3 p.m.
Autographing (or even just chatting)
Dealer's Room

So I went with the Iliad after all, because sometimes seeing one's reactions to poll results makes one realize what one wanted to do after all. In the Fagles translation, which is quite readable and lovely--much more so than the translation I read in high school, I'm pretty sure.

( Book 1 impressions )

Ninja replacement score thus far: 2. Chryseis and Briseis, of course.

Also: Since the odds of finding strong women in this story are looking kinda low, the saga reader in me is now holding out hope for witty decapitations instead. :-)

So I've put my fencing lessons on hold, in an attempt to let whatever's been going on with my achilles tendon heal for real, and am biking and taking yoga classes instead. (My heels seem to especially like yoga.) Though it's hard to know if I would have switched gears eventually anyway--I'm something of a serial hobbyist, and two years seems about a typical hobby span for me, with a few exceptions. (Writing, which became not-a-hobby. Scouting, which also isn't exactly a hobby, and which I spent 8 years at and may yet go back to one day.)

Anyway, every new-thing-to-learn I've taken on has taught me something slightly different about life and learning processes and, of course, writing. What I've gotten from yoga, both now and when I've done it in the past, is this:

It's not about anyone else. It's about you, and where you're at, and about pushing the edge of the where-you're-at.

Yoga is very explicitly not a competitive activity. In some ways it's the exact opposite of fencing that way. In yoga, for any given pose, you'll probably find there's a point to which you can push the pose. And there's a temptation, for me at least, to look around the room, see how everyone else is doing with the pose. This is something I do my best to resist, though.

Because it's not about anyone else, as any instructor I've ever taken a class with has said, one way or another. It's about seeing where you are, being good with (and non-judgmental about) that, and then seeing whether maybe, from that place, you might want to push yourself a little farther. Or not--there are days that aren't pushing sort of days, too, where just doing what you're doing is enough.

Anyway, I think I'm happiest as a writer when I remember this, too: that it's not about what anyone else's craft or career. It's about my words, and where they're at now, and where I want to take them from there.

First round editorial revisions out the door for Thief Eyes. Don't know why, but the revision process always eats my brain, making me useless for much else, even though I enjoy revision quite a bit. Revision is how I write, pretty much, even before anyone else sees what I've written.

Come to think of it, there actually is a duck in this story. But it doesn't have a speaking part. Or any part at all, really, save to serve as scenery. :-)

Poll #1422054
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What should I reread next?

ETA: It's a little embarrassing to spell a book I like enough to be considering rereading--and have sitting right beside me--wrong. But assume I meant Iliad, not Illiad, above! (Thanks, jennifer_js.)

In which lnhammer writes me Smokey Bear/Binchou-tan crossover fic. Because forestry icons need to stick together, right?

(This is, of course, the same lnhammer who sends me random pythagorean triples; and who, when asked if he would wear a warm winter cap on a Tucson summer day--all so that I could block out the logistics of kissing boys in hats for a story--was willing to do so. If this isn't true love, true love has a few things to learn ...)

Dear Character Who Gets Minimal Screen Time But Is Nonetheless Pretty Important,

Every read through some part of me hopes things will be different this time. You'd think I'd know better by now, wouldn't you?

Still, if you want to reconsider any of your choices, now's your last chance.

Wistfully,

Me

P.S. No, I suppose I wouldn't offer at this late date unless I knew you weren't likely to listen. Still and all ...

Via theloa, Bones of Faerie was discussed as part of a post-apocalyptic radio show she co-produced for Rás 1 (Iceland's National Public Radio). (In Icelandic, of course!) The Bones-related bits are toward the end--it was especially fun to hear the opening I know so well in English read in Íslenska. :-)

... kmessner posts an excellent defense of summer reading freedom--and summers without required reading lists.

People have rights as readers. Think about it. You're probably looking forward to some summer reading yourself, right? I'll bet you have some titles in mind, and I'll bet that some books will pop up over the next few months, too -- books that your friends recommend or books you read about online. But wait.... On June 24th, someone gives you a list. "This is what you'll be reading this summer," they say. "Okay?" No. Not okay. Not even if it's a list of, say, twenty titles and I get to pick any five I want. Twenty titles? Out of all the books in the world? I get to choose from these twenty? Really?

I also love the way kmessner did come up with a list of (non-required) reading recommendations for her students--she asked each of her students to recommend "One Book to Read This Summer," and then compiled a list of their recommendations. As it's officially summer now (hah, say those of us in places where school's been out for a month!), it occurred to me that we could play, too. So: - Recommend one book for folks to read this summer - It can be any kind of book--any genre, for any age, entirely text-based or graphic novel--just something that you think would make for good summer reading, for whatever reason - In a few days, maybe a week or so (depending when I get my revisions done!), I'll post the compiled list of everyone's suggestions here!

Bones of Faerie is now available from my local public library. This makes me happy. :-) (Does anyone else go to visit their own books on the library shelves?)

cynleitichsmith is giving away copies of Bones of Faerie, Secret of the Three Treasures, and Gothic! all together. (Secret and my story in Gothic! are signed; Bones has a signed bookplate.) Deadline for the drawing is June 30.

Interview with Emmyreader at Don't Lose My Place.

Julie McGuire at the Internet Review of Books quotes me in her article on summer reading, Keep it Chill! Keep 'Em Reading.

Reviews at Torque Control, anywherebeyond's Making Stuff Up For A Living, Homewood Teens Know Books, This Purple Crayon.

And especially, why openings are hard:

You need to begin with two things at once--a sense of life as usual, and a sense of the change that's about to let the story in. You need to do both these things relatively quickly, in some cases even almost simultaneously.

This in spite of the fact that these two things are at direct odds with one another, and cannot exist at the same time or in the same place.