Love in Dark Settings

"Look, I do know this: stories matter.

"Sometimes they come to me in the middle of the night, I wake up and I know there was once a person with a name, a history, a life -- and sometimes they died a hundred years ago and sometimes they haven't been born yet, but they're so real, they're right there, like I can touch them. I write them, when I can, and grieve them often, in ways I've learned to be smart enough not to talk about.

"At times that bothers me, the silence I feel obligated to that comes with storytelling. It bothers me when I write, which is one manner of inhabiting a character, and it bothers me when I act, which is another. But I've learned to live with it because stories, and the people they are about, are, in the telling, more important than me.

"I'm just a translator, a medium, a canvass and a liar. Their stories matter so much that in the telling of them, all I can wish is to disappear.

"And I love them so much, the people I tell into being.

"Which means that when it comes to the business of awards my gut says, honor them. Not me. Not writers. Characters. Stories. Honor them."

--RM

For newcomers: Background to my writing entries | Background to my mentoring entries | Background to my simplicity entries | Background to my home entries.

How I reply to comments at this blog.


*** 26 October 2009. Writing: Man, oh, man, I'm offline for a month, and the entire e-publishing world changes.

Here's the latest news that I picked up while I was online. (Well, it'll be outdated by the time you read this, but maybe some of you haven't heard yet.)

* Barnes & Noble brought out its new e-reader, the Nook. Amazon promptly dropped the price on the Kindle. Bunches of other e-readers are coming out too, causing some commentators to call 2010 the year of the e-reader. Personally, I won't be impressed till someone brings out a good, inexpensive, tablet-sized, LCD-screen e-reader that doesn't require me to coordinate downloading through proprietary software (you listening, Apple?).

* Sony Reader is now selling Smashwords ePub e-books - i.e. self-published e-books. Smashwords is already making its ePub e-books available to the Stanza app for iPod. Alas, Smashwords has horrendously complicated formatting requirements for self-publishers.

* Google has unveiled the plans for its long-awaited online bookstore. The evil little secret none of the commentators are talking about: This is yet another proposal to sell e-books that the customer won't actually own. But there do seem to be some positive sides to the proposal.

* The Internet Archive announced that it has added the ePub format, added the DAISY format (a format used by the blind), made all its books available to the One Laptop Per Child project, and will be starting a new project, BookServer, to help people find any book ever published.

* And in case you missed the news earlier, Google Books is in the process of making its public domain e-books available in the ePub format.

So, exciting days for readers of e-books, but I'm still not excited as a self-publisher of e-books. Hopeful, yes, but I haven't read any news yet that makes me say, "This is how I'll be able to make money."

*** 26 October 2009. Simplicity and Writing: My time online; plus, the Prison City stuff I found.

Spent eight hours online today. I'm pleased. I'd been hoping that I'd be able to keep my Internet usage under ten hours a month over the winter, and that's what I did this month. I got nearly all of the tasks on my Web tasks list checked off, and I managed to spend only one day on the Web.

Tomorrow I read through the stuff I downloaded, then I take a day off for simplicity re-orientation, and then I get back to work. Probably on editing, as my Muse will have wandered away in the meantime.

While online, I found some nice images of locations I'm writing about, including a Flickr photo taken from atop the Calvert Cliffs. (I'm not going to ask how the photographer managed that.) I found an e-text of the tide tables for 1912, and if I failed to find the weather reports for 1912, it wasn't for want of trying. I'll have to make do with the 1910 report. I found some photos and layouts of old Calvert County houses at the Historical American Building Survey (one of the New Deal projects that's been posted at the Library of Congress site). And I found a 147-page PDF file published by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Services that maps the historical locations of oyster beds in the Chesapeake region. (Do you remember me mentioning that I love U.S. government freebies? I forgot to mention that I also love state government freebies.)

*** 26 October 2009. Writing: For your amusement, the Nautical Telegraph Code.

Online, I found someone's HTML edition of a 1920 book providing a nautical telegraph code. Each word of the code represents a sentence or sentences. Here are some samples from the translation of the code:

o--o--o

Queer! You have not had my letters. I posted to you a month ago.

I did not mean what I said in my last letter.

Come at once; be silent; owners need not know unless I tell them later.

Experienced a terrible cyclone. Crew and ship behaved well. Am all right.

Seas washed out my cabin. All clothing spoilt.

Have changed doctor, who gives better hope.

What shall I name baby? Please wire.

Don't you think -- would be a good name?

Glad beyond measure to hear the news; accept my kindest love, dearest.

It is impossible to describe in a wire how I feel. Rest assured that I am thinking of you and your future happiness. Will write to you (or see you) as quickly as possible. I am very anxious.

-- is engaged to --. What do you think?

Will you agree to marry me upon my return?

Verdict, temporary insanity.

I should be glad of your assistance. I am left penniless.

You must send me money to go on my holidays.

I have stretched a point this time, but it will be quite useless for you to make further demands.

Crew imprisoned.

Do you think -- is to be trusted?

Sorry to say ship caught fire last night; slight damage.

Sorry to say ship caught fire last night; serious damage.

Fire increasing; shall have to scuttle ship.

I am detained here by authorities under protest.

Please send me some underclothing.

Who is going to pay for these things?

Whatever the reports may be in the press do not be unduly alarmed. I am quite safe and sound. It may be some time before a letter reaches you, but there is nothing to worry about. It is quite possible an inquiry may be held here, in which case delay is unavoidable. Please do not take any notice of any alarming report you may read about in the newspaper. Will tell you all about it when I see you.

Am in trouble; will you see that I am represented by your solicitor?

o--o--o

Why is it that my general reaction to the coded messages is to be very, very glad I wasn't travelling by water in 1920?

*** 27 October 2009. Writing: The Lambda Literary Awards discussions in the blogosphere.

Spent much of the day reading offline a few of the posts linked from elfwrack's awesome Lambda Literary Awards roundup. Some of the comments I read were darkly amusing. (Apparently, any of us GLBT folk who disagree with the Lamda Literary Foundation's decision are "self-hating token queers.") And there were lots of intelligent, well-worded statements being made on both sides of the debate over the change of rules for the Lambda Literary Awards. (Here is my favorite of the opposing posts, and here - except for the final sentence - is my favorite of the supporting posts. Also, here's an interesting comment by the founder of the Lammies. And here is one totally cool post about the invisibility of bisexual characters. Oh, and I loved this comment by Victor J. Banis, whom I hadn't encountered before, but who apparently is pre-Stonewall and has the scars to prove it: "I'd make a guess that 80% of the people who write to tell me how much they've enjoyed my Deadly Mysteries are women. Good on you, girls. Fetishize me all you want. I'm yours.") So I enjoyed reading a goodly number of the posts that were written from either the pro or the con perspective.

Overall, though, my overwhelming reaction is one of thanks to you folks who post comments here.

Thank you for being polite. Thank you for expressing your disagreements with me and with each other in a civilized manner. There aren't enough people like you in the world.

*** 27 October 2009. Simplicity: Getting back on track.

Okay, so maybe downloading several dozen Lammie-related posts - in addition to pages from Wired, TeleRead, and the Southern Review of Books - wasn't a great idea. It's taken me sixteen hours to finish reading everything I downloaded yesterday.

Something to know for next time. But now I've finished reading all my nonfiction downloads (well, except for that lengthy Lammies thread from Dear Author), so I can devote tomorrow to simplicity-related activities. (Um, actually today. It's six a.m.) Then, on Wednesday, I can start reading the online fiction I downloaded, as well as the research material.

And at the same time I really need to get more editing work done, because I'm looking at my schedule for the winter and am realizing that I have five months left in which to (1) finish, get betaed, and do the final editing of all the fiction I'm publishing next spring, (2) create any needed covers, (3) create any needed story announcements, and (4) lay out all those stories.

So yes, I'd better edit now the stories that are already finished. I don't want to be doing anything in the spring other than publishing my e-book(s), beginning to post my online fiction, and taking research/leisure trips, because I want to devote the rest of my time in the spring to getting my first print novel published. If I could get two or even three paperbacks out next year, that would be fabulous.

Assuming my eyes are cooperative. They were very cooperative last spring, but they vary from year to year, depending on the seasonal weather.

*** 28 October 2009. Writing: Squee! My name was mentioned at Yule Treasure!

Parhelion told me tonight that my name turned up at Yuletide Treasure. Yuletide Treasure, for those of you who don't know, is an annual gift exchange of fan fiction from rare fandoms (i.e. books/shows/movies that don't attract a lot of fan fiction). Apparently, somebody requested that a fanfic story be written about The Eternal Dungeon. (*Glows.*)

Parhelion said that Remy's name was also mentioned, and that Manna was mentioned last year. It's an interesting indication of how original slash is developing as its own genre.

[Later: Somebody sent me a list of the other m/m and gayfic writers listed at Yuletide Treasure. Man, listen to the list: Ally Blue, Ginn Hale, James Buchanan, Jordan Castillo Price, Josh Lanyon, Laura Antoniou, Patrick Califia, Sean Kennedy, and Syd McGinley.]

So then I mentioned that the print publishing industry seems to be spiralling downward (it's a matter of some financial concern to me, as someone whose sole source of income is self-published writings), and Parhelion predicted that even e-published fiction writers won't be able to make more than peanuts in the future, and that authors will be hedged in contentwise by the requirements placed upon them by publishers, unless the authors became self-publishers, in which case they'd make even less money. . . . At that point, I asked Parhelion to change the subject. It was either that, or go find a gun to shoot myself with.

*** 29 October 2009. Home: What happens in today's society when you aren't geek central.

A telephone conversation between me and a customer service rep who is sorting out my dental health plan.

Her: "So I need you to print out the application--"

Me: "I don't own a printer."

Her: (Silence.)

Me: "I can print it out at the library."

Her: "Um . . . Okay. So then I need you to fax me the application--"

Me: "I don't own a fax machine."

Her: (Silence.)

Me: (Refuses to break silence.)

Her: "What about at work?"

Me: "I'm self-employed."

Her: (Silence.)

Me (taking pity on her and showing that I'm not so ungeeky after all): "I can scan the signed application and turn it into a PDF file that I'll e-mail you."

Her: "You can . . . what? What was that you suggested again?" (Begins taking notes to update her own geekiness.)

*** 31 October 2009. Reading: Recommendation of Rudyard Kipling's Stalky & Co.

Rudyard Kipling: Stalky & Co. Three schoolboys wage war against their schoolmasters. ¶ Male friendship fiction, class/rank themes, historical fiction (Victorian Era), military fiction, school fiction. ¶ Fiction books and online fiction. ¶ On-screen violence. ¶ Archive of my reviews.

[House master] Prout expounded to Beetle the enormity of money-lending, which, like everything except compulsory cricket, corrupted houses and destroyed good feeling among boys, made youth cold and calculating, and opened the door to all evil.

To hear some literary historians talk, one would think that subversive schoolboy literature was invented in the 1910s. That was the decade when a flood of solemn treatises issued forth which "revealed" to the British public that not all good schoolboys are noble, honest, friendly to schoolmasters, enthusiastic players of school sports, and admirably qualified to become prefects.

One can only conclude that these historians of school fiction have never read Rudyard Kipling's Stalky & Co. (1899).

o--o--o

"Well, you know, that little beast Manders minor saw Beetle and me hammerin' McTurk's trunk open in the dormitory when we took his watch last month. Of course Manders sneaked to Mason [a house master], and Mason solemnly took it up as a case of theft, to get even with us about the rats [the boys put in Mason's room]."

"That just put Mason into our giddy hands," said McTurk, blandly. "We were nice to him, because he was a new master and wanted to win the confidence of the boys. 'Pity he draws inferences, though. Stalky went to his study and pretended to blub, and told Mason he'd lead a new life if Mason would let him off this time, but Mason wouldn't. 'Said it was his duty to report him to the Head."

"Vindictive swine!" said Beetle. "It was all those rats! Then I blubbed, too, and Stalky confessed that he'd been a thief in regular practice for six years, ever since he came to the school; and that I'd taught him--a la Fagin. Mason turned white with joy. He thought he had us on toast."

"Gorgeous! Gorgeous!" said Dick Four. "We never heard of this."

"'Course not. Mason kept it jolly quiet. He wrote down all our statements on impot-paper. There wasn't anything he wouldn't believe," said Stalky.

"And handed it all up to the Head [Master], with an extempore prayer. It took about forty pages," said Beetle. "I helped him a lot."

"And then, you crazy idiots?" said Abanazar.

"Oh, we were sent for; and Stalky asked to have the 'depositions' read out, and the Head knocked him spinning into a waste-paper basket. Then he gave us eight cuts apiece--welters--for--for--takin' unheard-of liberties with a new master. I saw his shoulders shaking when we went out. Do you know," said Beetle, pensively, "that Mason can't look at us now in second lesson without blushing? We three stare at him sometimes till he regularly trickles. He's an awfully sensitive beast."

o--o--o

In a book that is now on primary-school reading lists (apparently, schoolteachers aren't reading the books they recommend to their pupils), Kipling presents to the world a supremely subersive trio: Stalky, the type of self-contained boy who smiles at you as he plots your destruction. McTurk, an Irish aristocrat for whom bad aestheticism is the worst crime. And, refreshingly, Beetle, a bespectacled poet. (His glasses are mended. As Kipling puts it, from his own experience, "The life of a poet at a big school is hard.") Their deadly combination wreaks havoc on any schoolmaster unwise enough to set himself in opposition to them.

o--o--o

"Not the least good having a row with a master unless you can make an ass of him," said Stalky, extended at ease on the hearth-rug. ". . . Now, my dearly beloved 'earers"--Stalky curled his legs under him and addressed the company--"we've got that strong', perseverin' man King [a house master] on our hands. He went miles out of his way to provoke a conflict." (Here Stalky snapped down the black silk domino and assumed the air of a judge.) "He has oppressed Beetle, McTurk, and me, privatim et seriatim, one by one, as he could catch us. But now, he has insulted Number Five [the study group made up of the three boys] up in the music-room, and in the presence of these--these ossifers of the Ninety-third, wot look like hairdressers. Binjimin, we must make him cry 'Capivi!'"

Stalky's reading did not include Browning or Ruskin.

"And, besides," said McTurk, "he's a Philistine, a basket-hanger. He wears a tartan tie. Ruskin says that any man who wears a tartan tie will, without doubt, be damned everlastingly."

"Bravo, McTurk," said Tertius; "I thought he was only a beast."

"He's that, too, of course, but he's worse. He has a china basket with blue ribbons and a pink kitten on it, hung up in his window to grow musk in. You know when I got all that old oak carvin' out of Bideford Church, when they were restoring it (Ruskin says that any man who'll restore a church is an unmitigated sweep), and stuck it up here with glue? Well, King came in and wanted to know whether we'd done it with a fret-saw! Yah! He is the King of basket-hangers!"

Down went McTurk's inky thumb over an imaginary arena full of bleeding Kings. "Placete, child of a generous race!" he cried to Beetle.

"Well," began Beetle, doubtfully, "he comes from Balliol, but I'm going to give the beast a chance. . . ."

The company [students who were rehearsing a pantomime with the three boys] retreated to their own neat and spacious study with expectant souls.

"When Stalky blows out his nostrils like a horse," said Aladdin to the Emperor of China, "he's on the war-path. 'Wonder what King will get."

"Beans," said the Emperor. "Number Five generally pays in full."

"Wonder if I ought to take any notice of it officially," said Abanazar, who had just remembered he was a prefect.

o--o--o

There is a dark streak of righteous cruelty to the boys of Number Five that comes through most clearly in the chapter entitled (unfortunately) "The Moral Reformers." This is, after all, a Kipling novel: right is achieved through might. But a childish sweetness also underlies the boys' pranks, as can be seen in this oblique reference to public-school sexuality.

o--o--o

"But do you never feel that the world--the [masters'] Common-room--is too much with you sometimes?"

"Not exactly--in summer, anyhow." Stalky's eye roved contentedly to the window. "Our bounds are pretty big, too, and they leave us to ourselves a good deal."

"For example, here am I sitting in your study, very much in your way, eh?"

"Indeed you aren't, Padre. Sit down. Don't go, sir. You know we're glad whenever you come."

There was no doubting the sincerity of the voices. The Reverend John flushed a little with pleasure and refilled his briar.

"And we generally know where the Common-room are," said Beetle triumphantly. "Didn't you come through our lower dormitories last night after ten, sir?"

"I went to smoke a pipe with your house-master. No, I didn't give him any impressions. I took a short cut through your dormitories."

"I sniffed a whiff of 'baccy, this mornin'. Yours is stronger than Mr. Prout's. I knew," said Beetle, wagging his head.

"Good heavens!" said the Reverend John absently. It was some years before Beetle perceived that this was rather a tribute to innocence than observation. The long, light, blindless dormitories, devoid of inner doors, were crossed at all hours of the night by masters visiting one another; for bachelors sit up later than married folk. Beetle had never dreamed that there might be a purpose in this steady policing.

o--o--o

The final chapters of this comic novel take an interesting turn - just how interesting is clear from this passage, in which the school's students are deciding whether they want to join the school's newly formed cadet-corps.

o--o--o

"Hullo," said Ansell of Macrea's, shouldering through the mob. "What's all this about a giddy cadet-corps?" . . .

"Don't know whether I've the time," said Perowne. "I've got no end of extra-tu [extra tutoring] as it is."

"Well, call this extra-tu," said Ansell. "'Twon't take us long to mug up the drill."

"Oh, that's right enough, but what about marchin' in public?" said Hogan, not foreseeing that three years later he should die in the Burmese sun-light outside Minhla Fort.

o--o--o

*** 31 October 2009. Writing: Monthly totals.

I wrote 26,610 words this month, which was less than half of what I wrote at the beginning of last year's composition season. Very disappointing. And it's not as though I wasn't trying my darnedest.

Looking at the hourly figures for tasks, I see that part of the problem is that I spent too little time on reading fiction and much too much time on upkeep. A lot of the upkeep was health issues; I've had two health problems and one dental insurance problem turn up in the space of just over a week. But I spent too much time on correspondence and reading downloaded articles this month.

My Muse is home; I wrote for over three hours straight before breakfast yesterday, for a total of 5800 words. Alas, one of those health problems is making it nearly impossible for me to sleep. No sleep, no further wordage. I'm hoping that I can get the health problem fixed tomorrow.

In light of my poor wordage this month, it looks to me as though I'm going to have to revise my schedule to allow myself to read and write more fiction in the spring and summer. Fortunately, I'd been heading in that direction already.

*** 2 November 2009. Writing: My Muse moveth.

My Muse has been showing signs of life recently.

5770 words on October 30. Before breakfast. "Breakfast" was at six p.m., or I would have written more.

5750 words yesterday. Again, before breakfast. Then another 2260 words in the evening, for a total of 8010, which ties my third-highest score for daily wordage since 2004. (I didn't keep score before then.)

Mind you, all of that wordage was for the wrong story; my Muse had decided to leap ahead to the fourth volume of Prison City. "I think I should give myself a deadline for the fourth volume so that my Muse will be perverse and work on the first volume," I told my apprentice mournfully. But today I managed to corral my Muse into working on one of the missing scenes in "Master and Servant 3: Unmarked."

*** 3 November 2009. Writing: My Muse really moveth; plus, Rosemary Sutcliff and P. G. Wodehouse.

I've managed to do a quarter of November's wordage in the first three days of November - and this despite a doctor's appointment yesterday.

Not that this streak will last forever. But I'm enjoying it while I can.

I finished reading Rosemary Sutcliff's Bonnie Dundee, which revealed (among other things) that Scottish Highlanders stripped naked for battle in the seventeenth century. Jeez Louise. I'm still reading P.G. Wodehouse's Mike and Psmith (1909), which isn't as funny as Stalky & Co., but which has its moments, to wit:

o--o--o

Mike unlocked the door, and flung it open. Framed in the entrance was a smallish, freckled boy, wearing a pork-pie hat and carrying a bag. On his face was an expression of mingled wrath and astonishment.

Psmith rose courteously from his chair, and moved forward with slow stateliness to do the honors.

"What the dickens," inquired the newcomer, "are you doing here?"

"We were having a little tea," said Psmith, "to restore our tissues after our journey. Come in and join us. We keep open house, we Psmiths. Let me introduce you to Comrade Jackson. A stout fellow. Homely in appearance, perhaps, but one of us. I am Psmith. Your own name will doubtless come up in the course of general chitchat over the teacups."

"My name's Spiller, and this is my study."

Psmith leaned against the mantelpiece, put up his eyeglass, and harangued Spiller in a philosophical vein.

"Of all sad words of tongue or pen," said he, "the saddest are these: 'It might have been.' Too late! That is the bitter cry. If you had torn yourself from the bosom of the Spiller family by an earlier train, all might have been well. But no. Your father held your hand and said huskily, 'Edwin, don't leave us!' Your mother clung to you weeping, and said, 'Edwin, stay!' Your sisters--"

"I want to know what--"

"Your sisters froze on to your knees like little octopuses (or octopi), and screamed, 'Don't go, Edwin!' And so," said Psmith, deeply affected by his recital, "you stayed on till the later train; and, on arrival, you find strange faces in the familiar room, a people that know not Spiller." Psmith went to the table, and cheered himself with a sip of tea. Spiller's sad case had moved him greatly.

The victim of Fate seemed in no way consoled. . . . "It's beastly cheek," [Spiller said]. "You can't go about the place bagging studies."

"But we do," said Psmith. "In this life, Comrade Spiller, we must be prepared for every emergency. We must distinguish between the unusual and the impossible. It is unusual for people to go about the place bagging studies, so you have rashly ordered your life on the assumption that it is impossible. Error! Ah, Spiller, Spiller, let this be a lesson to you."

"Look here, I tell you what it--"

"I was in a car with a man once. I said to him: 'What would happen if you trod on that pedal thing instead of that other pedal thing?' He said, 'I couldn't. One's the foot brake, and the other's the accelerator.' 'But suppose you did?' I said. 'I wouldn't,' he said. 'Now we'll let her rip.' So he stamped on the accelerator. Only it turned out to be the foot brake after all, and we stopped dead, and skidded into a ditch. The advice I give to every young man starting life is: 'Never confuse the unusual and the impossible.' Take the present case. If you had only realized the possibility of somebody someday collaring your study, you might have thought out dozens of sound schemes for dealing with the matter. As it is, you are unprepared. The thing comes on you as a surprise. The cry goes round: 'Spiller has been taken unawares. He cannot cope with the situation.'"

"Can't I! I'll--"

"What are you going to do about it?" said Mike.

"All I know is, I'm going to have it. It was Simpson's last term, and Simpson's left, and I'm next on the house list, so, of course, it's my study."

"But what steps," said Psmith, "are you going to take? Spiller, the man of Logic, we know. But what of Spiller, the Man of Action? . . ."

o--o--o

And so on and so forth. Psmith is what makes this otherwise middling novel worth reading, so I'm glad to see that Wodehouse wrote other novels about him.

*** 4 November 2009. Writing: My Muse slows down a bit; plus, turn-of-the-century romantic friendship fiction.

Despite the slow-down, I finished today one of the scenes in Law Links that needed finishing. So now I only have half of a scene left in that novel. Half of a long, complicated conversation scene. No wonder my Muse is shying away from jumping over that particular hurdle.

I've begun reading Horace Annesley Vachell's The Hill: A Romance of Friendship (1905), which, as its title suggests, is notorious famous for its portrayal of schoolboys' romantic friendships. So far (two chapters in) the novel has a boring plot, mediocre writing, and wonderfully detailed descriptions of the interiors of Harrow School. I feel like sending the author a thank-you note via time machine.

Later:

Oh, man, does turn-of-the-century school fiction have a habit of pushing my literary pleasure buttons. Here's a passage from The Hill, describing the protagonist's interactions with the Head Prefect of his House at school:

"After this John showed his gratitude by painstaking attention to fagging. Lawrence became aware of faithful service: that his toast was always done to a turn, that his daily paper was warmed, as John had seen the butler at home warm the Times, that his pens were changed, his blotting-paper renewed, and so forth. In John's eyes, Lawrence occupied a position near the apex of the world's pyramid of great men."

*** 5 November 2009. Writing: Triumph! The Turn-of-the-Century Toughs world is now the Mid-Atlantic.

It's taken me several months, but I've finally succeeded in fully transporting the map of the Turn-of-the-Century Toughs nations onto the map of the Mid-Atlantic region. (You knew there was a reason why I was doing all those Chesapeake reseach trips, right?)

It is frightening how well my Muse anticipated this day. To give just one example: I had decided last year to give Mip seven "seats" - districts that elected that republic's highest magistrates. Four of the districts would be in the "lowerlands," while three would be in the "upperlands" - that is to say, the mountains. (There were reasons having to do with an upcoming series why I wanted it that way.)

Well, I decided to place Mip in a region corresponding to two regions of the State of Maryland: Western Maryland and Central Maryland (west of Baltimore, because everything east is the Chesapeake region of Maryland, which I'd already claimed for the Dozen Landsteads). Tonight, I sat down to figure out how that corresponded to the county boundaries. (In the United States, counties are subregions of states.)

What I discovered was this.

Central Maryland, west of Baltimore (a region of low-lying hills): four counties.

Western Maryland (a region of mountains): three counties.

Oh, my. Ain't that convenient?

Similarly, the rest of Maryland is fortuitously designed for my purposes. That's where I'm placing the Dozen Landsteads, which, as its name suggests, is made up of a dozen landsteads.

The Eastern Shore has two counties that don't touch the Chesapeake Bay, which I didn't want to happen for the purposes of my stories, so I attached them to the adjoining counties.

I wanted the First Landstead to be big, and to extend up to where I live, so I attached three counties together.

Altogether, that left me with . . . a dozen counties.

Man, was I scorching now. Virginia became Yclau, Pennsylvania became Eastern Vovim (where Layle and Janus are from), and West Virginia became - heh, heh - Southern Vovim. New York State hosts the rest of Vovim. (I'm tempted to steal Ohio too, but that isn't part of the Mid-Atlantic, alas.) Delaware becomes Akbar (that tiny little nation mentioned in The True Master). There are more little nations up in New Jersey and New England. Presumably the rest of the continent is filled with humans too, but I don't say anything about that in the Toughs cycle.

The hardest task I had was to find a location for the Sea of Mip (which Compassion Prison is next to). Remember, I'd placed Mip in a region corresponding to Central and Western Maryland. Maryland, I need hardly say, has no seas. In fact, it doesn't even have any natural freshwater lakes, darn it.

I finally decided that the Sea of Mip must be the largest freshwater lake in Maryland: Deep Creek Lake, on the western end of Maryland. That lake didn't actually exist at the turn of the century, since it's the product of a twentieth-century dam. But for the purposes of my stories, it does exist. And - how convenient - if I were a Mippite picking an isolated, not-terribly-human-friendly place to build a prison, I'd place the prison right there. Did I mention that Deep Creek Lake is surrounded by swamps?

It took a lot of work on my part to put this together in such a way that I didn't have to go back and revise all my previous Toughs stories, but as it is, the only story I need to revise is Hell's Messenger. The initial scene in Chapter One doesn't quite fit the real-life location I picked for it today, and the compass points in that novel may be off. But otherwise, man, you'd think that my Muse was writing for the past seven years with the Mid-Atlantic region in mind.

*** 5 November 2009. Home: Reasons why I often feel I'm a conservative.

An entry I wrote in 2004:

o--o--o

I went to the young adult section of a public library this week, searching for books on Christmas in order to idle the time while Doug pawed through music books. There I discovered five books on body art.

"Oh!" I said. "Well, the young adult section has changed since I was young." And I picked up one of the books.

It opened to a page describing the Prince Albert [not worksafe link].

Suddenly the future flashed before my eyes:

A Teen's Handbook to Watersports.
101 Ways for Housewives to Beat Their Subs.
The Dummy's Guide to Fireplay.
Billy and His Daddy Go Dungeon Shopping.

Don't laugh; who'd have thought back in the sixties that schoolteachers would one day be reading picture books about homosexuality to six-year-olds?

o--o--o

I cite this old entry because, when I last picked up a copy of Time, it had an article on ecologically friendly sex toys . . . illustrated with a picture of dungeon whips.

May I go back to reading Go, Dog. Go! please? (No, it's not about puppy play.)

*** 6 November 2009. Writing: Not-quite-good-enough writing.

It's frustrating seeing a decent plot handled by an unskilled writer.

Horace Annesley Vachell's The Hill: A Romance of Friendship has what ought to have been the ideal plot for me: It's about a schoolboy's attempts to win the friendship of a boy he admires, while fighting off a despicable rival. That's the entire plotline; it's friendship fiction at its purest.

But the novel is badly handled. The villain - whom we're told over and over is subtle and refined in his methods - is made of cardboard (and I don't want to tell you how many times we're informed that his villainy arises from "low breeding" - i.e., his father was raised in the slums). The object of the protagonist's affections, whom we keep being told is admirable - and faithful! - spends the entire novel consorting with the villain and ignoring clear signs that he's hurting the feelings of the protagonist (to whom he has pledged friendship). Meanwhile, the protagonist - who is supposed to be exceptionally intelligent - does little more than twiddle his thumbs and wait for his friend to come to his senses.

It's a classic case of "show" contradicting "tell."

Very disappointing, especially since the novel continued to throw forth delicious passages. To wit:

o--o--o

The chief difficulty which besets a school friendship between two boys is that of being alone together.

*

This was almost the last holidays Caesar and he would spend together; and, afterwards, would this friendship, so romantic a passion with one at least of them--would it wither away, or would it endure to the end?

*

Warde [the house master] listened, holding John's hand, gripping it with sympathy and affection. The romance of this friendship [i.e. John's friendship with Ceasar] stirred him profoundly; the romance of the struggle for good and evil; a struggle of which the issues remained still in doubt . . .

*

Lovell went to the door and opened it.

"Bo-o-o-o-o-o-y!"

The familiar cry--that imperious call which makes an Harrovian [schoolboy] feel himself master of more or less willing slaves--echoed through the house. Immediately the night-fag came running; it was not considered healthy to keep Lovell waiting.

*

The privilege of fagging [i.e. fag-mastering] is not, however, unadulterated bliss. When Warde said to Caesar, "Well, Desmond, how do you like ordering about your slave?" Desmond replied, ruefully, "Well, sir, little Duff has broken my inkstand, spilt the ink on our new carpet, and let Verney's bullfinch escape. I think, on the whole, I'd as lief wait on myself."

o--o--o

It's worrisome to think that some readers are undoubtedly having the same reaction to my writing as I did to The Hill: "Why couldn't this interesting plot have been put in the hands of a decent writer?"

*** 6 November 2009. Writing: My unfocussed Muse.

My Muse - who has not the least bit of consideration for my publication schedule - continues to hare after later stories in the Prison City series. I'm letting him go whither he will; I'm just happy he's sticking round.

Life was easier before I started writing for publication. The Three Lands stories were written almost entirely out of order, with me dashing from story to story. That's why, out of the dozen-plus novels in the series, I've only finished three (and one of the three is a volume that got cut in two when I decided to check the word-count at the halfway point, and discovered that I'd already written 120,000 words). Through concerted effort in corralling my Muse, I've managed to persuade him to finish a fourth volume (except for that darned half scene), while another novel in the series is close to being finished. Other than that, though, the novels are tattered bits and pieces waiting for me to cobble them together.

I read with envy about those authors who can start at page one and keep writing chronologically until they reach "The End." I've sometimes done that, particularly with short stories, but writing a novel that way is next to impossible for me. Even if I draft a novel almost entirely in order, my Muse won't want to write it down in order - he'll want to write down the juiciest scenes first. More often than not, he'll get bored with my slow typing and try to lure me off to another scene when I'm halfway through the first one. I've learned to resist his lures as far as incomplete scenes are concerned (mostly), but I don't have enough control over him to keep him from writing stories in whatever order he likes. The best I can do is to beg him to let me please, please finish writing a goodly chunk in a particular series before he skips off to another series.

*** 7 November 2009. Writing and Mentoring: I've decided to make my winter schedule my year-round schedule.

The decision has been creeping up on me, due to a number of factors: the painfulness of being away from my fiction-writing for six months out of the year, my declining wordage (which makes it imperative that I be ready to drop everything whenever my Muse condescends to pay a call), my intense unhappiness at having to battle my Internet addiction during the spring/summer (it's been getting so that I dread the arrival of spring), and my gradual switchover to a publishing schedule that makes it easier for me to be offline most of the time.

The deciding factor has been my realization, in the past month, that I can stay offline for a whole month and still get everything done that needs to be done. Except for a couple of vitally important health matters that forced me to go online in the past month at times when I hadn't scheduled myself to do so, I didn't find it any great sacrifice to take a month off from the Internet. And I don't think that things would have been any different if I'd devoted some of my online time to publishing and marketing. I might have needed to spend one more day online last month, but that's all.

(I should add that this good fortune is entirely due to my apprentice. It's not that I didn't need to go online during this past month; it's that, every time I needed something done online that couldn't wait till my next scheduled Internet visit, my apprentice was there to do it for me.)

Now, granted, I know that my spring/schedule is going to continue to contain elements that my fall/winter schedule doesn't. I'll be library-hopping and taking trips to museums and conventions and research sites. But I'll be spending less leisure time away from home than in the past, I hope, because, having lived in Noah's Ark for a month, I've realized that I really don't need to be importing new stuff into my life or to be dashing off to exciting places elsewhere. I have plenty to keep me occupied at home.

Honestly, it's like going off to a desert island for a month and discovering that you can actually survive without 24-hour access to MTV.

(*Wanders away for a bit in order to look at the pretty shells.*)

The biggest difference between my winter and summer schedules will be my book publishing. There's a narrow window each year in which I can publish, because publishing requires my eyes to be in good shape. Likewise, I can't lay out paperbacks in cold weather because I need to be able to read standard-sized print when I do that. So I anticipate that my print layout/publishing and my e-book publishing will remain something that I do only in the spring and summer.

My plan for my online fiction, on the other hand, is to post a story or novel installment once a month year-round. That works out to the wordage equivalent of two novels a year - roughly a quarter million words. I hope that type of schedule will be okay for you guys. :)

So let's try this year-round. I'll be interested to see what effect it has on my Muse. So far (as of November 6), its effect has been 19,000 words of fiction since the beginning of the month: one-third of my monthly wordage.