la_marquise

Laundry done: tick.
Bathroom cleaned: tick.
Groceries bought: tick.
Rewrites continued: tick.
Cats fed and fussed and let in and out: tick.
Marquis re-acquired: not yet. He's due to arrive around midnight. He'll be exhausted. :-(

I'm off to eat and watch the beginning of the new series of The Killing.

Skirt of the day: grey with black hem.

I am delighted to be able to announce that The Grass King's Concubine is officially sold to DAW and should be out in 2012/3. It's a two-book deal, for both Grass King and its sequel. Remember my elevator pitch? 'Orpheus and Eurydice and the French Revolution, with extra ferret women.' Grass King is the underworld. Book two -- no title as yet -- will be the Revolution. I don't know if the ferret women will play a big role in the second book yet, but the Cadre -- the immortal warriors -- definitely will.

A day early, but definitely a very very fine present.

Skirt of the day: blue flouncey.

So I've red-penned the first fifteen chapters of Grass King. I think it'll do. I hope so. I think I like it.
The first 50 pages in ms (single spaced) include an earth tremor, a magical bargain, a riot, a zonbie, and a dust-storm. Is that exciting enough, do you think?

Very ded now.

Skirt of the day: long blue cotton.

It was an interesting weekend, this one. I'd hoped to go to Portland, but money did not permit. So instead the marquis and I went to Strawberry Fair here in Cambridge, and drank beer and looked at interesting things, and I came home with three new skirts. Two of them are blue... Then we watched Doctor Who and went flop and played with the cats.
Sunday there was a vague plan to write and clean and go to the pictures. I was just starting on the cleaning when the phone rang. It was Caro winolj: she and various others were out on a 20 mile bike ride, and laosin had had an accident. Could I come and pick her up, please? Of course, says I, and set out into Darkest Cambridgeshire.
There are a lot of long narrow dyke-edged roads. It took me half an hour, which was poor. But I got there to find poor K sitting on the verge in pain, with Caro and groliffe and anef looking after her. We put her bike into the back of the car and I drove her first back to her house to pick up a warm top and her bag, and then to A & E.
She's re-broken the collarbone she broke in another bicycle accident about 15 years ago. After she'd been x-rayed and seen the doctor and given an appointment for the fracture clinic, I brought her back here and we fed her white wine and Indian food. She tells me she's very sore today, but she's coping. Cambridge people might want to drop in or ring, though.

Today, I went to the gym (huzzah!), then revised three more chapters of Grass King. I'm now very close to the end -- the aim is to get it done by the end of Wednesday, then print it off, reread, do pagination and so forth, and get it off to Nice Editor before we set off for Stockholm and the Eurocon on the 16th June.

Skirt of the day: black pinstripe wrap.

Laundry done. Gym gone to and new (very hard) programme completed with only one minor tweak. Various things posted. Various emails sent. Mooncat brushed. New scene for rewritten Grass King written.
Cats telling me they need feeding....

Collapses in heap.
Skirt of the day: denim

Another two chapters worked through, though I'm now on the brink of the nexgt chunk that will need major rewriting. It'll be fun when I get there...

I don't usually do the darlings, but this pleased me: "The man spoke and his words filled the room of the rice throne, wove about pillars, sank into tiles, slid fingers of doubt under the robes of the courtiers, ruffled veils, blew out through the window lattices."
That's Marcellan, Whose Fault It Is (sort of). He's 'quisitive.

Skirt of the day: new blue tiered cotton.

How, she asked parenthetically to writing, is it that I manage both to overwrite and to underwrite at the same time?
Frinstance: "Here, in their private place, he walked unveiled and unarmed, long plait swinging loose down his back, clad in light green tunic and trousers. Only the twisting line of braid at collar and cuffs marked his status. Corn ears and rice fronds, for bannerman. And, bordering them, the pale blue coil that marked air. Cadre, leader of two thousand, intimate of the Grass King, domained in air." Which is all very fancy, but makes no sense unless you know what I mean by banners and cadre and domainings. Which I haven't explained at this point. Bah, she muttered. Humbug, even. (That's Sujhien, btw, Mr Air-Powers-and-Angry.)

Skirt of the day: jeans, I was lazy this morning.

2034 words. This blasted book is getting longer. It's already long enough. Sigh.

"People jostled at her from every side, workmen in leather aprons, women with baskets, filthy, ragged urchins. A reek of sour milk and rotting vegetation hung over everything. Aude choked behind her veil and put her head down, hurrying as best she could."

Skirt of the day: rust cotton. (Old and worn, sadly. But not, for once, blue.)

Right, time to feed cats and think about ironing.

1353 words today, which isn't bad.

"A wide room stretched out below them, lit by tall dirty windows in the side walls. Row upon row of dark iron machines marched down its length, each festooned with tight lines of thread. Women in greyish aprons leant over them, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, hair tucked up under rough caps and headscarves. Shuttles ploughed back and forth, foot pedals thumped and racketed on the hard earth floor. Children scuttled here and there, diving under looms to retrieve clumps of broken thread and floss. The air was thick with fragments of fibre."

A riot is threatening, and Jehan has a chance to be a hero. (Yes, this is still the same book.)

Skirt of the day: jeans.

Rewrites still progressing, with reasonable fluency. I'm toying with cutting a minor character entirely, as they are a hangover from a much earlier version of the plot and actually add nothing. Aude is learning to be proper, and isn't appreciative: "Aude doubted that. Her new maid continued to pull her hair and lace her garments too tight, and never, ever smiled, not even when the most fashionable modiste in all the city came to measure Aude for her new wardrobe. There was a dancing master, too, and a lady of uncertain age and origin who gave instruction in the holding of fans and the placing of flowers."

While Sophy (the car) is at the car spa, I am back on my bicycle. There are not words for how much I dislike cycling. It really doesn't go well with skirts (or my winter coat). It really doesn't go well with the sort of stuff I carry about, either (there is no sensible way to transport boxes of index cards by bike, let me tell you). I know there are specialist garments and carriers. They aren't for me: I don't have that kind of life and I don't really want it. Walking, I love, but for longer distances it can be very time consuming. So today I cycled, and froze (because the coat is too long). A little known fact outside this city is the existence of the Cambridge Headwind. Whichever direction you are going here, you will be cycling into the wind, and the longer the road the more true this will be. Today I battled it both up and down Coldhams Lane, tomorrow I will dare Mill Road. Meanwhile the builders are back (finally, hurray) and the garden is somehow even muddier (as, therefore, are the cats' paws).

It is, I suspect, never wise to post about politics in other countries, but regarding the events in Arizona, I do have to ask: is there such a crime as hate speech, or behaviour liable to incite violence in the US? Because some of the rhetoric that is out there from the right wing would be actionable here, I think.
And secondly, another of my very dim questions. I note that when other people insert links into their ljs, they can do it not just as a website address but as a sentence which overlies the latter. How, please?

Skirt of the day: blue wedgewood over red crinkle.