A couple of recent conversations (including a letter conversation with mrissa about history and social customs)plus some interesting links made me think about exploring the connection between history and fiction beginning with time.

Tags: behavior, bvc, history, time

A long walk down Somerset lanes and then on the almost deserted beach at Brean Down. Huge trees thrown up onto the beach by the sea - shows how powerful the recent storms have been. T found an old iron ship's nail. Stopped for a swift half at the Burtle and overheard the following immortal exchange:

Man 1: She's moving, but she says that when she goes, she'll empty the septic tank.

Man 2: So - she's taking all her shit with her, then?

A big thank you to everyone who has already signed up! Any subscribers should have had the novel (The Moon in Daylight) in both Word and PDF, so please let me know if you haven't received it.

The first three stories will be with you by the end of the month - probably by the end of this week, in fact, a little earlier than planned. I've enjoyed revisiting Winterstrike, and have nearly finished the first new Singapore 3 story, which features Sergeant Ma. You get to meet Ma's family, as well.

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I will also be floating a new series of stories for the next year. I'm reducing the cost of this a little, with a further reduction for regular subscribers.

WINTERSTRIKE: there will be four short stories set in the world of Banner of Souls and Winterstrike, so if you’re after some far future Martian tales, this is the sub for you!

WORLDSOUL: again, 4 short stories, each set in the different quarters of Worldsoul – north, south, east and west, featuring some of the characters from the new novel.

CHEN: With the series eventually coming to a conclusion, although not an end, with Morningstar, which is now due out next year, this is an opportunity for me to explore the back stories of some of the other characters in the series, although Chen and Zhu Irzh (with added badger) will be appearing in them. At the moment, this will mean: Sergeant Ma, Exorcist Lao, No Ro Shi the ultra-Communist demon hunter, and Chen’s commanding officer.

The first set of these will be with you in June 2012.

Customised stories under the Story Garden imprint are also still available.

NEW NOVEL: THE MOON IN DAYLIGHT

And I have…a new novel!

“Outside the lighted windows of the church, London roared by. It was dusk now, ancient stone soaking up the November cold and breathing damp into the echoing air. The man stood, having long since tuned out the traffic, murmuring under his breath:
"...At this time that is not a time, in this place that is not a place, on this day that is not a day..."
He did not speak in English, but in old Welsh, the sibilance whispering through the vaults. Movement caught the corner of his eye, but he ignored it. He stared straight ahead, to the red candle. In the pool of its own light, it looked like a column of meat: the white wick a sliver of fiery bone.
Outside, London hammered on. Nothing to do with him, this modern twenty-first century world, and yet he had a place in it. Not as his own self, for most of the world had long since ceased to pay attention to his kind, long since ceased to believe. The real world, some called it. But that, he thought, was on the verge of changing.
After all, real is what you make it, if you are a god.”


The Moon in Daylight is a full-length contemporary urban fantasy novel which has never been published in either short story form or novel format – it’s a new world for me. Set in London and North Wales, this is the start of the adventures of Siriol Jones – professional herbalist, Druid and magician – and her mysterious friend the Hermit. In this novel, Siri and the Hermit go in search of Siri’s addict sister, Non, and find more than they bargained for in a trip to the Celtic otherworld. It’s got magic, some very dodgy goddesses, London folklore, the club-going lord of midsummer and ancient boar spirits, and what I hope is a reasonably accurate depiction of the actual British pagan scene.

In tone, it’s closer to the Chen novels than my SF, and it is hopefully a light read!

The Moon in Daylight is available in Word and PDF format, and I can send this to you immediately.

Short Stories

Worldsoul stories x 4£16.00 GBP Winterstrike stories x 4£16.00 GBP Chen stories x 4£16.00 GBP The Moon in Daylight£10.00 GBP All of it!£50.00 GBP All of it for regular subscribers£45.00 GBP

This week seems to have brought wildlife out all over the place - goldfinches, herons, cuckoos and Canada geese out on the bird reserve. Both geese and swans are followed by skeins of toddling fluffy babies. Here in the orchard we have a tree full of owls: I haven't seen them but I can hear them. During the heavy rain last week, we met several displaced water rats and there was a big hare in the stubble of the corn field a couple of days ago.

At present, someone has put 3 ponies in our back field: they were initially offhand and then realised that we came bearing carrots, at which point they have become very very friendly. They have a spindly foal, with a ridiculous (but natural) New Romantic pompom hairdo.

Just as well that there is so much wildlife as Henry continues his decimation of the local animal population, bringing back voles, shrews, birds and rats on a daily basis. We now have a working camera again, so there should be some cat pics soon.

Otherwise, it has been a busy week - we went up to Bristol for the Leonardo Da Vinci drawings exhibition on Monday (including a beautiful sketch of oak leaves) and spent an hour or so in Bristol museum. Staff changes currently mean that we get two days off, which is good for the mental health. Yesterday, we hosted a steampunk handfasting in the orchard - the sight of 70 Victorian engineers and their wives among the apple blossom is one that I shall treasure for some time to come.

I won the Nebula! Wow. Very tired now.

(Wow. That was unexpected.)

Congratulations on your Nebula win, Jo!

*dances the happy happy dance, throwing sparkles around, and waving at papersky*

Tags: other people's art

So if you decide to use large tomatoes instead of ramekins or dinner rolls as implements for holding raw eggs to bake them in a moderate oven, it'll work just fine, but the acidity of the tomato will interact with the egg and increase the needed baking time to about 40, 45 minutes for a moderately firm yolk. I salted the inside of the tomato lightly and lined it heavily with basil before cracking the egg into it, and then I stuck a thin slice of baguette over top and put a little cheese on that. I'll use more specifically chosen bread (likely Swedish rye) and cheese next time, but I didn't want to go to the store for this experiment, so I used the bit ends of what we had, and it turned out fine once we figured out about the acidity. Pretty tasty, worth remembering.

And now you know, and knowing is, if not half the battle, at least some appreciable fraction.

The book I'm reading right now seems to think that the rest is breeding the right horses, but since it's regarding 1812, I'm not sure it's universally applicable.

Tags: dad said to learn something, household minutiae, so juicy sweeeeet

The song of the wood thrush: it’s entrancing, enchanting--and nourishing? Consider the case of Brian Blessing, the new music teacher at Powell Middle School. Maybe being a music teacher had something to do with it, or maybe not. Maybe it would have worked out the same for you or me, if we’d been in Brian’s position (God willing, we’ll never be in Brian’s position).

And that position was, bundled into Allan Wilson’s car, with one of Allan’s brothers on either side of him, headed for the spur of track that serves the sawmill. There Allan intended to make Brian understand, in a visceral way, that it was a bad idea for Brian to flirt with, let alone go out to dinner with, Allan’s ex-wife Marnie, who taught seventh grade in the classroom next to the music room.

Just when it was seeming that assault and battery might progress to homicide, a police car turned onto the sawmill access road, spooking the Wilson brothers, who shoved Brian into a decrepit shed beside the tracks and took off.

Back in town, no one knew what had happened to the music teacher, and as for Brian himself, even when he managed to find his way back to consciousness, he couldn’t muster the strength to lift himself up, and his broken jaw and cracked ribs precluded the sort of loud hollering that might possibly have caught someone’s attention, if they had happened to be walking along the spur line behind the sawmill.

So Brian lay in that shed all night, and all the next day, and the following night, and the day after that. No food, no water. Several times a day the shed shook as railroad cars loaded with lumber rolled from the spur line to the main tracks. The rest of the time, Brian could hear the sounds of the sawmill’s operations--and birdsong. From before the sun rose, cardinals and song sparrows, catbirds and starlings, robins and orioles. And the wood thrush. Adrift in a sea of pain, Brian clutched at the wood thrush’s song. It soothed his wounds and thirst like springwater; it filled him and satisfied him like bread.

Finally, five days after the Wilsons had grabbed him, Brian was discovered, a delirious wreck, so the medics first assumed, when Brian tried to tell them how he had subsisted on thrushsong, and yet at the hospital the doctors confirmed that he was not dehydrated. His blood sugar levels were normal, and there were no ketones present. Very strange, everyone agreed.

Brian was never quite the same after that, and I’m not talking about the limp. I’m talking about his diet. He’d always bring a sandwich to school for lunch, often something from Subway. But during the green months, from May to September, if you caught him at home in the early morning or around suppertime, you’d see him sitting outside, facing the trees, an empty plate balanced on his knees and an empty mug in his hand, listening to the wood thrush.


photo by Lloyd Spitalnik

Tags: birds, birdsong, case studies, stories, wood thrush, writing

People in need--unfortunately, those seem to be on the increase. green_knight wants work, as she's getting freelance biz off the ground. Here's the post. I personally recommend her translation skills from English into German. She also scanned three of my novels and converted them to text files for me to work with.

Tags: links, signal boost

I bicycled from home to Bryant-Lake Bowl this morning, taking the Midtown Greenway. Greenway = AWESOME. Half an hour to Uptown through wildflowers, gardens, between old restored warehouse and manufacturing buildings, birds singing, kids playing soccer at Kix Field, and no automobile traffic. My legs were a mite wobbly when I got back, and I was sweaty as a sweaty thing, but I was also full of exercise and self-determination endorphins.

And what I went to Bryant-Lake Bowl for was the monthly Fiber Brunch, which I've been meaning to get to for, well, months. Doreen runs a terrific get-together. And we had extra big fun, because the cast of the Princess Bride Drinking Game show asked if they could use the theater stage to rehearse. Of course we warned them that we could all recite entire scenes, but would try to contain ourselves. They were terrific, and lots of fun to knit to. ("Inconceivable! *drink!*)

Now I'm having a beer. Because that's what you do after a bike ride.

Tags: biking knitting exercise outdoors fun
Current Mood: content