Love in Dark Settings

"There is usually no precise equivalent of [Ancient Greek's] 3rd person imperative in English. Euclid often uses it in expressions which are translated by 'let there be' or 'let it have been drawn'. In the Septuagint translation of the Bible, God uses the 3rd person imperative in the first five and one-half days' work: genêthêtô phôs, Let there be light or Be there light. Perhaps an English example of the 3rd person imperative can be found in the stage direction Enter the King.

"What the commands of mathematicians, God, and playwrights have in common seems to be this, that the mere act of speaking suffices to bring about the truth of what is being said."

--Alfred R. Mollin and Robert B. Williamson: An Introduction to Ancient Greek.

Topics in this post: making booktrailer videos, fan mail, making cover art, early childhood reading, editing fantasy, reading science fiction, researching historical fantasy, prison tourism, prison history, memories of watching Doctor Who in the 1970s, editing and laying out leather fiction, wordage.

*** 7 April 2008

My post-Internet mania took an odd turn tonight, and I ended up scripting my booktrailer for "Triad" (in the Life Prison series). My Muse seems to be more eager to work with booktrailers than with my stories; I've barely started researching that novel.

I received two letters tonight that cheered me. One was from a reader saying, "Yes, yes, yes!" to my proposal of posting plain-text versions of my fiction on my updates list. The other was from a reader who (*cue for everyone to coo here*) named her cats after the two main characters in The Eternal Dungeon.

*** 8 April 2008

It's taking me just as long to make the corrections after listening to Blood Vow for proofing purposes as it does to actually listen to the file. That means I still have twenty hours of proofreading left. And since I don't do more than a couple of hours of editing each day . . . It look as though this project may slide over into May. It depends on how long the layout takes me. Certainly the cover art and the final production of the booktrailers are tasks that I can do on the same days that I'm proofing. I've already done the needed domain layout. So - cross my fingers - I might still get the book out by the end of the month.

*** 9 April 2008

I worked today on the cover for "Blood Vow." InDesign being its usual cooperative self, it kept double-boldfacing the title and author name, but I finally figured out a way round this.

Viewed at thumbnail size, the cover turned out to have poorer contrast than I would have liked, because the artist placed a dark-skinned man in a black-and-dark-green tunic against a dark red roof. One can only assume that the artist didn't anticipate the era of thumbnails. :) So I had to go back and change the image's contrast, which had the unfortunate side effect of making the dark-skinned man look lighter-skinned. Darn it. However, he's still clearly darker-skinned than the other man in the image, which is what matters most.

I showed the results to Doug. He asked, "Why is that man so much shorter than the other man?"

Blast. So I produced yet another version which made clear that the light-skinned man was seated. Of course, this meant zooming out, which made the faces smaller. I couldn't decide which version I preferred; I ended up deciding to show both versions to some of my readers and ask which they preferred.

I also got a little more work done on the proofing of "Blood Vow." I'm a quarter of the way through the proofing, which is comforting but odd, given that I'm four chapters through a twenty-three-chapter book. I must have shortened the length of my chapters as I went on.

*** 10 April 2005

I wrote in my Life of Simplicity entries yesterday, "[My Muse] has a tendency to appear at the most awkward moments, when I'm not ready for him."

He arrived overnight, and I'm not ready for him. Darn it. I've started reading Parhelion's fiction again, hoping that will help.

Later:

Sixteen hundred words. My Muse is in a more forgiving mood than usual.

*** 11 April 2008

I had lunch with my mother, who showed me my baby book. (Are baby books still made? They're books where parents record important events in their babies' lives.)

When I was one year old, my mother recorded about me: "Loves books and spends hours 'reading.'"

Within a few months, one of my favorite phrases was, "Read book, Mommy."

Most interesting to me was a list I made in elementary school of books I had either read or wanted to read. (Had read, most likely. The third book on the list I still own, while I own another book in the same series as the first book.)

Here's the list:

A Spy in Williamsburg.

A Slave's Tale.

Alvin Fernald, Foreign Trader. (A children's thriller about a boy being pursued by gun-toting criminals.)

Captured by Them.

My, my, what a revealing set of titles.

The list isn't a revelation to me, though, because I have clear memories of scouring my school libraries and public library - and even the Library of Congress, which my father started taking me to when I was ten - for books on espionage, imprisonment, and slavery. I also remember that, at age nine, I read over and over this passage in Peter Pan. If you've read the novel, you may recall that the passage occurs when Peter sacrifices an opportunity to escape from drowning, in order to save someone else.

o--o--o

The rock was very small now; soon it would be submerged. Pale rays of light tiptoed across the waters; and by and by there was to be heard a sound at once the most musical and the most melancholy in the world: the mermaids calling to the moon.

Peter was not quite like other boys; but he was afraid at last. A tremor ran through him, like a shudder passing over the sea; but on the sea one shudder follows another till there are hundreds of them, and Peter felt just the one. Next moment he was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, "To die will be an awfully big adventure."

o--o--o

I was a devoted fan of darkfic from my earliest years. I spent my preschool years playing out tales of imprisonment and slavery with my friends. I must have had a bloodthirsty set of friends - unless, perhaps, I corrupted them all. But I suspect that most small children are bloodthirsty in their dramatic/literary tastes, or else they wouldn't be enjoying "Hansel and Gretel" and "Red Riding Hood." I tend to think that the forms my childhood darkfic reading took - and, I trust, the forms my adult darkfic writing take - were and are more healthy than the average American's obsession with movies like Terminator.

Later:

The nearly-three-hour lunch screwed up my schedule for today, alas, but I did get a chance to go through the latest beta report for Noble. That novel is ready for proofreading. Alas, I'm still stuck on the fourth chapter of proofing "Blood Vow."

I also got a thousand words written in "On Guard" (The Eternal Dungeon) before lunch with Mother, I nearly completed the latest domain layouts, and last night I finished the booktrailer for "Triad." Nice to know that I'm ahead of schedule in something.

*** 13 April 2008

Amidst another icky descent into the Web, I did uncover the factoid I needed (the proper pronunciation of a name, which plays a pivotal role in one of the stories) to let me continue with the publication of Leather, Licking, and Lawnmowers. Hurrah! Because all that I need to do there is give it a final proofing by eye - not ear, eye - and I'll be ready to do layout.

I can work on both "Licking" and "Blood Vow," at once, of course, and will, but there's no question that "Licking" will be ready in e-book format before "Blood Vow" is. Of course, that means redoing my domain layout yet again. :) But it will only mean a minor change, and I'll certainly have "Blood Vow" ready for publication next month.

Another nice happening while I was on the Internet: Sylvia Engdahl, whose Stewards of the Flame I'd ordered in print, sent out an e-mail to her readers, announcing that the novel was now available in e-book format . . . and offering to give the e-book free to those who had bought the print book. I promptly sent her an e-mail, and she just as promptly sent me the e-book, accompanied by a chatty note expressing the hope that the e-book looked all right and expressing concern that my receipt for her print edition showed that I wouldn't get the book till July. I was able to reassure her that this was simply due to me being super-cheap and opting for free, one-package shipping at Amazon; the second book in the bundle, Naomi Novik's next novel, isn't due out till July. Since I can't read print books directly till summertime anyway, I didn't consider this a great sacrifice when I placed my order in February . . . but now, thanks to Ms. Engdahl's generosity, I'll be able to read the e-book edition before then. (Don't ask me what her new novel is about. I don't know yet. With authors I adore, I don't read any more of the book blurb than is necessary to tell me whether the book is in a genre I read.)

This isn't the first time I've encountered her kindness. In college, I wrote her one of the first fan mails I'd ever written in my life, about her science fiction trilogy that has since been published as a single volume, Children of the Star . . . except that I didn't know it was a trilogy, having only encountered the first two books at the library when I was a young teen. In her reply, she not only alerted me to the existence of the third book but also talked about the publishing trials of being an author of young adult novels (which was what she was exclusively writing in those days), information that was invaluable to me as a young writer.

Every now and then, I encounter one of those "What books had a formative effect on you as a writer?" questions. Sylvia Engdahl's novels were amongst the books that shaped me. Leaving aside the fact that she's a darkfic writer, I think that her protagonists helped to shape mine because they were so often alienated from the societies around them - not intentionally, but as a result of personality and of necessary sacrifice. At the time I first read the first two books in Children of the Star, at age fourteen, I was only two years past having been in a school for the emotionally disturbed, and I still regarded myself as a societal outsider. (I've never entirely given up that label.) The protagonists in my stories were often outsiders struggling to find a way to turn their outsider status into something positive. That is why, I think, Children of the Star had such a powerful emotional impact on me when I encountered it.

Well, that plus the imprisonment scenes. :)

*** 14 April 2008

I'm up to Chapter 6 in Stewards of the Flame. I'd forgotten that Sylvia Engdahl's characters tend to be rather wordy and didactic. It doesn't bother me much, though, because the plot is classic Engdahl: a protagonist who finds himself taken into custody for no good reason; a society that uses the tools of oppression while insisting that it's all for the people's good; a sympathetic subversive; a maybe-good-guy-maybe-bad-guy who's making mysterious decisions. And overlying it all, a biting critique of the health care system. "I never before asked myself why white coats on the assailants should change anyone's perception of what's otherwise classed as rape," says one of the characters.

Later:

I've decided that a biting critique of the health care system is not the proper choice in reading matter on a day when one's mother undergoes major surgery.

However, she made it through okay, thank goodness. It took forever for the doctor to call with the news, so Doug sent me to the library to photocopy our tax forms, and I stayed there to keep my mind off my worries. I found a book there, Phyllis G. Tortora and Keith Eubank's Survey of Historic Costume: A History of Western Dress, which finally made clear to me the difference between the fashions of the 1890s and the fashions of the first decade of the twentieth century.

I also went through some local travel guidebooks, put together a long list of interesting places to go to, and concluded that I'd rather stay at home. Seriously. There just aren't many places and events that can compete with a really good writing session.

One possible exception is the Eastern State Penitentiary. The prison, which is now a museum, is kind enough to offer a virtual reality tour online, but I'd still like to make it up there to take a live tour. The prison is only a day-trip from where I live, and it was one of the most influential American prisons of the nineteenth century.

I'm still upset that I lost the opportunity to visit, not one, but two historical prisons in Provence - including, for heaven's sakes, the prison at the Ile Sainte-Marguerite, where I could have seen the cell of the Man in the Iron Mask. But I did at least get to see the Conciergerie in Paris, which has a cell that has been reconstructed to look like it would have done when the prison was active.

Some people go bar-hopping. I used to go church-hopping, visiting every historical church that I happened to pass. Doug still remembers our memorable trip to Boston, when I took us round to just about every achitecturally outstanding church in the city - and Boston has a lot of those. At one point, in order to get in, we had to call upon the assistance of a priest whose lovely church was way out in the suburbs, so I'm sure he didn't get many tourists come knocking at the door of his parish house. He was pleased as punch. He not only let us into his church but gave us the full tour, proudly describing each and every feature.

These days, I'd like to go prison-hopping. There must be more prison museums within driving distance than the Eastern State Penitentiary. It's just a matter of figuring out where they are.

*** 15 April 2008

I've started to read The Oxford History of the Prison, which is written by a variety of contributors. The chapter on ancient and medieval prisons (by Edward M. Peters) is rather dry, but includes this tantalizing passage:

"The limitless powers of the male heads of Roman households included the right to maintain a domestic prison cell to discipline members of the household. This cell, the ergastulum, could be a work cell for recalcitrant or rebellious slaves or a place of confinement at the pleasure of the father for any family member for any infraction of household discipline."

Heavens. That certainly makes pale by comparison the punishment of standing in a corner.

And then there's this tidbit:

"The Benedictine Rule does not mention a term for prison, but an earlier canon law source, a letter of Pope Siricms (384-98) to Himerius, bishop of Tarragona, stated that delinquent monks and nuns should be separated from their fellows and confined in an ergastulum, a disciplinary cell within the monastery in which forced labor took place, thus moving the old Roman punitive domestic work cell for slaves and household dependents into the institutional setting of the monastery."

Even more amazing:

"The systematization of canon law tended to homogenize Latin monasteries, and by the late twelfth century each monastery was expected to contain a prison of one sort or another. . . . [Tales of these prisons form] a distinctive monastic contribution to the history of prisons: the first instances of confinement for specific periods and occasionally for life for the purpose of moral correction."

According to Dr. Peters, there was no attempt in the West to use imprisonment as a form of moral correction until the Christian Church - with its emphasis on penitence and reformation - came along.

On the other hand, "Boniface VIII [in 1298] is the first sovereign authority in the Western tradition to determine that imprisonment as punishment was a legitimate instrument of a universal legal system." The Romans had sometimes used imprisonment as punishment, but later Roman law forbade the use of imprisonment for anything except confinement.

Also, Dr. Peters says that the Roman imperial court invented the idea of the inquisition. He adds, "The authority of [Christian] ecclesiastical courts, including inquisitorial courts, over monks, secular clergy, and laypeople was not substantially challenged in most of Europe until the various Reformations of the sixteenth century and the movements for the secularization of ecclesiastical property and the elimination of clerical privilege in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As part of the associated polemic, a largely mythical image of the ominous and terrible 'Inquisition' was used effectively against any manifestation of clerical authority over lay-people."

Later:

I watched the "School Reunion" episode of Doctor Who - the first time I've watched the show since . . . well, since the first season of the Seventh Doctor, and those of who know your Doctors will know how long ago that was. But Sarah Jane was my favorite assistant - the first one I ever saw, because they were playing her episodes when I first saw Doctor Who while living in England in 1977 (long before the show reached the U.S.).

She still does a good job screaming at monsters. :) And in certain ways the episode was classic Doctor Who: silly villains, sillier monsters, lots of humor, and poignant moments where the Doctor angsts over some personal trouble. The scriptwriter did a good job of tying in the angst subplot with the monster plot.

There were some differences, though. My father used to say that what is striking about British television is that there are so few acting jobs in Britain that world-class actors end up appearing in really cheesy television shows. This was certainly the case with Doctor Who. It was merely light entertainment, and it had the most godawful sets in the world - and in the midst of it all, some Shakespearian actor with multiple awards to his name would be rolling off, with a serious expression, lines like: "You will join with us in the end, Doctor, and our mastery of the universe will be complete!" (Cue melodramatic music.) I mean, really. One almost felt that the actors should have received danger money for appearing on Doctor Who . . . except that I'm sure most of them loved it. It was light entertainment of the best sort.

Well, the bad lines haven't changed at all, but the sets are considerably better than they were in 1970s and 1980s. I suppose that, if I were watching television regularly, the production might look cheesy to me compared to the production of the show's competitors, but Doctor Who no longer feels to me like an amateur production. It feels as though somebody is actually spending money on the show.

(I should add, though, that I was wowed by the sound effects back then. Unless I'm mistaken, they were produced by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which also produced the terrific sound effects for The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. )

The other thing that has changed is that, back in 1977, Doctor Who was still aimed primarily at children. I don't remember there ever being so much as a whisper of romantic interest between the Doctor and his female assistants . . . much less his male assistants. (Of course, I was fourteen then. Maybe I just missed the hints.)

K-9 hasn't changed at all. The good things in life never do.

*** 20 April 2008

I started on the basic layout of Leather, Licking, and Lawnmowers; tomorrow I'll do the final proofreading by eye. Layout is much, much easier than it was when I published Bard of Pain, thanks to my compiling a stylesheet. To give you some sense of what laying out an e-book is like for me, this is the section of the stylesheet for the WordPerfect layout, from which all of the other layouts are derived.

* * *

Add front matter and back matter.

Place empty line before page breaks.

Place two empty lines after page breaks.

Place two empty lines between chapters and with other indications of mid-page breaks.

Indicate scene breaks in this manner: o--o--o

Italicize author's name.

Italicize part titles.

Boldface title and chapter titles.

Letterspace title and chapter titles 120%.

Turn on Format > Keep text together > Widow/Orphan.

On first page: Page Number Position - None.

At the beginning of the text (either the first part title or first chapter): Page Number Position - Center.

Add en dashes and em dashes (including en dashes for number sequences).

Add single curly quotes (use Find command) and double curly quotes (Edit > Repeat Next Action + Alt-F10 > smartquotes.wcm).

Correct double curly quotes after em dashes.

Do final proofreading by eye.

Page size: 6 x 9.

Margins: .5 inches.

Tab set: .688 inches.

Font: Constantia.

Double-check that the file is okay.

* * *

Then I put together the seven editions. :) But it's just a matter now of following my previous instructions. Last fall, when I had to figure out what to do step by step, layout was a nightmare. I'm in that nightmare stage now with working out the template for my paperback layout.

*** 21 April 2008

I seem to be having some weird form of editor's block; I can't get myself through the proofing of Leather, Licking, and Lawnmowers. I'm trying to coax myself out of this state by editing "On Guard" (in the Eternal Dungeon series), which needs to be edited anyway.

Overall, I didn't get much done today, other than overcoming my severe phone phobia to call a couple of friends. That's been on my list of things to do for several months now. They seemed happy to hear from me, so I'm glad I called.

*** 25 April 2008

Since I don't generally create outlines, coming close to the end of a story sometimes catches me by surprise, if I'm writing the scenes out of order. I just listed the remaining scenes in "On Guard," and was surprised to discover that I only have five scenes left to write. This novel will be short rather than overly long, as I'd feared it would be.

But that means I have to do the research on steam engines that I've putting off for three years, darn it. I hate, hate, hate doing research on machinery; I always feel out of my depth. But hey, three years' delay means that there are probably videos of working steam engines at YouTube now - my reward for dilly-dallying.

My Muse has been around for the last few days, so I've been paying court to him, but now it's time to get back to doing the final proofreading of "Leather, Licking, and Lawnmowers."

I started reading The Merchant of Venice. Is it a sign of my taste for low culture that I felt relieved to get back to reading Ursula K. Le Guin's The Farthest Shore?

One thing I did notice: Reading The Merchant of Venice required close concentration from me - if I skipped a word or two, I lost the meaning of the sentence - and afterwards I found that I was concentrating more closely on The Farthest Shore. Perhaps I should be reading a bit of historical literature every day? For a while now, I've been wanting to read my copy of Two Early Tudor Lives, which contains George Cavendish's The Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey (c. 1558) and William Roper's The Life of Sir Thomas More (c. 1553), both of which look as though they're filled with interesting period details.

*** 26 April 2008

Internet roundup:

For those of you following the situation concerning Amazon and POD printing, Marion Gropen has provided a summary for self-publishers: The Amazon POD Ultimatum: What Does It Mean to You?. And Ron Pramschufer and H. L. Nigro chime in with their thoughts.

Something I scribbled down a while back, addressed to god knows who:

If you have Firefox, which search engines do you have in your search engine list?

Mine:

Google.
Amazon.
Wikipedia.
Project Gutenberg.
Internet Archive Texts.
Google Books.
Scribd.
YouTube.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
Creative Commons.

And something I scribbled down a long time ago:

A Writing Meme

Courtesy of Storm Grant. I usually avoid memes, but this one sounds sensible.

1. Your genre(s)?

(Deep breath.) Mix and match the following, because I'm a cross-genre writer: fantasy, historical fantasy, contemporary fiction, science fiction, suspense (in the loosest sense), spy fiction, hurt/comfort, angstfic, darkfic, slavefic, prisonfic, servantfic, mentorfic, lord/liegemanfic, DS fiction, leather fiction, friendship fiction, heterosexual love stories, original slash, gay fiction, gay erotic love stories, and gay erotica. Oh, and military fiction, if I ever finish writing "Triad" in the Life Prison series.

In nonfiction, I've written professionally on intellectual, cultural, and social history (leather history counts as "social," right?), community news, interfaith news, news on sexual ethics, and heck, if you count my Web directories and school papers, I've written on just about every subject under the sun. You had no idea, did you, that my junior-year thesis was on mathematics? Or that I once wrote a children's book on New Deal city planning? Or that I researched a biography of William Morris, the Victorian writer/artist/printer? Or that my first published magazine articles were on astronomy and religious architecture? (Not both at once, though I'm capable of mixing the two.) Or that I spent several years researching a book on the history of the harmony of the spheres? (I still have an unfinished historical fantasy novel that draws on that research.)

2. How many books have you completed?

Oh, god.

(Long pause to count.)

Ten novels and nine novellas. It feels like more than that, because most of the novels were originally released as series of novellas and novelettes. I'm not going to count the stand-alone novelettes and short stories.

3. How many books are you working on now?

(Laughs hysterically.)

Several dozen? I'm not going to count.

Okay, how many I'm working on at this very moment: three.

4. Are you a linear or chunk writer?

I was very much a chunk writer till I got corrupted into being an online writer. Now I tend to be linear for the sake of my poor beta readers, who suffer enough from me as it is without receiving scenes out of order.

5. The POV you're most partial to?

Between 1995 and 2002, I wrote fiction almost exclusively in first person. Then, overnight, I switched to third person. Go figure. I still find first person a lot easier, but most of my recent works have been in third person.

6. The theme that keeps cropping up in your books?

Inner struggles with an evil side, followed (usually) by redemption.

7. How many days a week do you write?

How many days a week am I supposed to write? Seven days. I'm lucky if I write on half of those.

8. What time of day do you get your best writing done?

Between midnight and dawn. I'm a night owl.

9. Who are your inspirations?

Oh, lord. When I tried to list them all, the list ended up looking something like this: Susan Cooper, Alistair MacLean, Robert A. Heinlein, Sylvia Engdahl, Rosemary Sutcliff, Dorothy L. Sayers . . . The list went on forever. And that was without listing authors who haven't influenced me (as far as I know), but whose writings I adore, such as Parhelion and Manna.

So let me just offer a short list: the authors who either inspired me to write in a particular genre or whose plots and characters so much rooted themselves in my subconscious that my stories might as well have been subtitled "Variations on a Theme by . . ."

For fantasy and historical fantasy, it's Mary Renault (especially The Last of the Wine and The Persian Boy), Patricia A. McKillip (the Riddle-Master trilogy), Guy Gavriel Kay (his novels introduced me to the concept of historical fantasy), and Mary Stewart (the first two books of the Merlin trilogy). These happen to be my four favorite writers, no surprise. Also, Ursula K. Le Guin (Earthsea). For leather fiction, my original inspiration was John Preston (I Once Had a Master). For gay fantasy, the stories by those lovely slavefic writers in the Phantom Menace fandom were the ones that got me burning to write down the stories that had been in my head for years. That's why most of my stories in my first year of Internet writing were slavefic.

I have no idea who to blame for my prisonfic. I seem to have been born with those stories in my head.

10. Who are your favorite authors to read?

If you read this journal long enough, you'll find out.

*** 29 April 2008

Me on the phone with my apprentice, responding to his remark that imprisonment for reformation is no good if society refuses to accept the reformation of the prisoner after his release: "Yes, that's the second half of the story. The first half is the reformation of the prisoner, and the second half is whether he's accepted-- Oh, my goodness. You've just given me a plot bunny."

My apprentice, laughing: "I didn't know that was a fluffy little bunny."

"Don't you recognize what a bunny is for me? Pain! Angst!"

My apprentice, still laughing: "I guess I don't recognize your bunnies till they bare their little fangs and attach themselves."

*** 30 April 2008

Well, my work hours for this month aren't much different from that of March, but the number of words per day that I produced was down from 2600 to 1600, so I ended up writing ten thousand words less. Rats. Hopefully, the progress I'm making in staying off the Internet will help me next month.

*** 1 May 2008

My father, who is a literary historian, tells me that he's working on a new biography of an English literary figure. He added, "It's remarkable how much the act of research has changed in the past few years. I calculate that I can do fully three-quarters of my research for this book on the Web."

Since my father is the sort who pours scorn on students who depend on the Web instead of going to the library, that's saying something. He made special mention of Google Books, and I replied that, a few years ago, I would never have considered moving to any place where I didn't have access to a university library, whereas today I would be quite willing to do that, since Google Books and the Internet Archive and Gutenberg Project and the many smaller archives of primary sources supply nearly all of my needs.

That I chose to write about the Victorian and Edwardian periods is no coincidence. Although I might some day edge up to writing about World War One, I wouldn't go any later than that - not till the U.S. public domain advances higher than 1924. As it is, the majority of primary sources I seek from the 1880 to 1920 period are available on the Web.

Unlike my father, I don't have to worry much about secondary sources. Every now and then, I'll say "Darn it" when I discover that a memoir I'd like to read is copyrighted and therefore not posted on the Web. But I can only think of a handful of copyrighted books that I'd really, really like to read and that I'll have to go to libraries to consult: three 1930s books that discuss homosexuality in prison (Louis Berg's Revelations of a Prison Doctor, Joseph F. Fishman's Sex in Prison, and Samuel Kahn's Mentality and Homosexuality), plus Jailhouse Journalism, a recent history of prison newspapers. The latter topic is impossible for me to research from primary sources since, as far as I can tell, no early prison newspapers have been posted on the Web or published in print. If there are any handy archives in D.C. that have turn-of-the-century prison newspapers lying around them, I've no idea where they are.

I'll have to go to the Library of Congress for the sex books (how wonderfully libertine that pronouncement sounds), but the University of Maryland has a copy of Jailhouse Journalism. I'm a bit worried about the LC visit, because my father tells me that the Library of Congress's inability to keep track of its own books has reached scandalous proportions; he reports that nearly half the books he orders there the LC can't find for him.

Getting back to the topic of my own research: Access to additional background sources would be nice. There's a whole host of books that have out in recent years with enticing titles: Affectionate Men: A Photographic
History of a Century of Male Couples
(1850's to 1950's), Dear Friends:
American Photographs of Men
Together, 1840-1918, Male-Male Intimacy in Early America, Queer Cowboys and Other Erotic Male Friendships in Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century, Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957, Sodom on the Thames: Sex, Love, and Scandal in Wilde Times. No doubt there are many other books on friendship history or gay history out there; I haven't been actively searching for them. There was a time when I read every single classical gay history book that I could get my hands on, and when I could tell friends at the drop of a hat what the latest theories were on the translations of arsenokoites and
malakos (two New Testament terms that may refer to homosexuality; those came in handy when I was writing this story). However, I'm no longer that assiduous.

*** 3 May 2008

My "extremely demented" apprentice (his words) sent me the following:

Q: Why did Elsdon dress up in drag?
A: He wanted to show Layle a new rack.

*** 6 May 2008

Well, I compiled - below - my activities since my last entry, and some things are glaringly obvious: Too much time spent reading nonfiction. Too much time spent at the library. Not enough time spent reading fiction. Not enough time spent writing fiction.

My usual warm-weather pattern, in other words. Well, at least I've made progress in staying off the Internet. But I really need to buckle down and do a lot of fiction-reading in the coming month, in ordr to prod my Muse. (Not to mention finish publishing Lawnmowers.)

Oh, one more thing I spent too much time doing during the past month: Writing blog entries. :/

ACTIVITIES SINCE MY LAST WRITING LIFE ENTRY

Fiction written and edited:
--"On Guard" (The Eternal Dungeon).
--"Emergency Call" (Leather in Lawnville).
--"Triad" (Life Prison).

Fiction edited:
--"Blood Vow" (The Three Lands).
--"Noble" (Princeling).
--"Forge" (The Eternal Dungeon).
--"Hell's Messenger" (Life Prison).
--"Compassion's Keeper" (Life Prison).
--"First Lesson" (Loren's Lashes).
--"Empty Dagger Hand" (The Three Lands).
--"Leather, Licking, and Lawnmowers" (Leather in Lawnville).
--"Cold Stars" (fan fiction).

Fiction laid out:
--Bookshare.org edition of "Bard of Pain" (The Three Lands).
--"Leather, Licking, and Lawnmowers" (Leather in Lawnville).

Nonfiction written and sent out to be betaed:
--"Unconventional Service."

Trailer created:
--"Triad" (Life Prison).

Cover art created:
--"Blood Vow" (The Three Lands).

Fiction read:
--Mary Stewart: "The Hollow Hills" (by text-to-speech).
--Parhelion: Assorted Nero Wolfe fan fiction.
--Sylvia Engdahl: "Stewards of the Flame."
--Mary Jane Auch: "Ashes of Roses."
--Marguerite Henry: "Sea Star: Orphan of the Chincoteague."
--William Shakespeare: "The Merchant of Venice."
--Ursula K. Le Guin: "The Farthest Shore."
--Ursula K. Le Guin: "The Other Wind."
--Ursula K. Le Guin: "Tehanu."
--Dan Sakers (editor): "Gaylaxicon 2006 Sampler."
--Patricia A. McKillip: "Ombria in Shadow" (in braille).
--Isaac Asimov: "Foundation."
--Diana Gabaldon: "Lord John and the Blade of the Brotherhood."

Research reading (Victorian and Edwardian history):
--Phyllis G. Tortora and Keith Eubank:
"Survey of Historic Costume: A History
of Western Dress."
--John Seymour: "The Forgotten Arts & Crafts."
--Norval Morris and David J. Rothman (editors): "The Oxford History of the Prison."
--Steven Gdula: "The Warmest Room in the House: How the Kitchen Became the Heart of the Twentieth-Century American Home."
--Christopher Evans, "A Visit to a State Prison," Eurasia.
--Donald Lowrie: "My Life in Prison" (1912).

Research reading (authorship):
--Ron Benrey: "Writing Christian Fiction."
--Isaac Asimov: "It's Been a Good Life."

Research reading (simplicity):
--See the bottom of the May 2008 Life of Simplicity entry.

Leisure reading (nonfiction):
--Stephanie Coontz: "Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage."
--James Sutton and Alan Bartram: "An Atlas of Typeforms."
--David Rush: "They Too are Quakers: A Survey of 199 Nontheist Friends."
--John A. Buehrens and Forrest Church: "A Chosen Faith: An Introduction to Unitarian Universalism."

Leisure reading (children's nonfiction):
--Patsi B. Trollinger (with illustrations by Jerome Lagarrigue): "Perfect Timing: How Isaac Murphy Became One of the World's Greatest Jockeys."
--Ellie Crowe (with illustrations by Richard Waldrep): "Surfer of the Century: The Life of Duke Kahanamoku."
--Anastasia Suen (with illustrations by Paul Carrick): "Wired."
--Nancy I. Sanders (with illustrations by E. B. Lewis): "D is for Drinking Gourd: An African American Alphabet."
--Becky Hall: "Morris and Buddy: The Story of the First Seeing Eye Dog."

Leisure reading (picture books - fiction):
--Ludwig Bemelman: "Madeleine."

Shows watched:
--"Doctor Who: School Reunion."

Places visited:
--The hospitals where my mother stayed.
--Washington National Cathedral.
--National Building Museum.
--Martin Luther King Memorial Library (D.C. public library).
--St. Paul's Episcopal Church, K Street, Washington, D.C.