International PIxel-Stained Technopeasant Day

A free story for you! A little outdated now that vampires have gone sparkly and cuddly, but hey, free!

Bride of the Vampire

by

B. Gordon

Of course the wedding was at night. The Gothic granite of St. Andrew's, tinted Halloween-orange by the sodium streetlights, made a perfect backdrop. Joe centred its square tower in the viewfinder, then tilted down past the glowing rose window to the blocked intersection. A gaggle of black-draped teenagers held pairs of red and white roses and pointedly ignored everyone, even the street-theatre group parading giant puppets of skeletons and politicians.
He panned along the sidewalk, where vendors stood guard over displays of t-shirts: Bite Me; I never drink...wine; Vamps Suck! and occult jewelry. "Moonstones, the mystic jewel with the power of the full moon! Real silver, for protection!"
A phalanx of pastel-suited protesters lined the sidewalk of the Baptist church across the street, clutching signs, ready to wave them when the cameras or the couple appeared. Distracted by the arrival of the Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgendered protesters, they hadn't spotted Joe. The two groups traded uneasy glances.
Middle-aged women were scattered in knots among the crowd. Some held banners: Best Wishes Nikolai and Julie from Anne Rice Fan Club; LKH Fans Nikolai. A few dragged cringing husbands, but most looked set for a girls' night out, dissecting the bridal gown and self-written vows over drinks and desserts.
The motorcycle cops leaning against their propped bikes looked uneasy. Nerves or embarrassment? Other media were out in force; Joe and Anna would have to fight through the scrum to get near the happy couple when they showed up.
He shouldered the camcorder and looked down at Anna Chan. "Who do you want to hit first?"

#

Questions from the studio audience.
Kimmie Franton, 37: Julie, I just love paranormal romances. Is your fiance as hot a lover as those vampires?
Laughter. Julie blushes and glances at Nikolai. He smiles, revealing long white canines, and pats her hand.
Julie: Well, we're not married yet, and Nikolai is kind of old-fashioned, so I can't really answer. But he's really romantic. He fills the house with roses and candles, and makes me feel like I'm the centre of his universe. So I guess I'd say yes, and even more.
Albert Whitaker, 48: Has he bitten you yet?
Julie: That's, um, kind of personal.
Whitaker: When he bites you, it's not just you and him. You're sharing blood with everyone he's bitten in his career. Have you considered the health issues--
Nikolai: If I may answer for my beloved. There are so many misconceptions about the Undead lifestyle, tragic misunderstandings which have led to my people's persecution for generations. The sharing of blood, for instance....

#

As Joe approached, the protesters shuffled into formation and raised their signs. Anna glanced up to check that the Record light was off, then muttered, "Undead stay Unwed? And I thought Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve was a lame slogan."
Joe grinned and pointed at a sign in the back. Adam and Eve not Dracula and Eve.
"Lamer," Anna said. "Why not something straightforward like Fangs off our wimmenfolk, Bloodsuckers?"
"Leviticus 17:12? Is that the bit about not eating blood?" People who expected Joe to know the Bible by chapter and verse made him want a good stiff drink.
"Probably. Looks like he painted out 20:13, men lying with men. Think they've given up protesting gays or will he repaint it every time?"

#

Taped interview on Sunnyside.
Rick Klofski: Nikolai, after your marriage to Julie, you'll have Honorary Living status. What do you say to those who suggest that's the motive for your marriage, taking a shortcut through the bureaucracy of the Re-naturalisation process?
Nikolai: What those narrow-minded bigots forget, Mr. Klofski, is that many Undead simply pass as Living. But when I met and loved my dearest Julie, she inspired me to openness, to her and to the world. If that exposes me to slander, even to personal danger...such is Life.
Rick Klofski: Gay activists charge the Undead with riding the coattails of their same-sex marriage fight. Can you comment?
Nikokai: It is a pity that we who strive for the right to exist and love openly should fight amongst ourselves.

#

The young women with roses did their best not to look at the camera, but Joe caught the sidelong glances and just-too-loud chatter. They'd act blase about being interviewed, but afterwards most would ask quietly when the segment would be aired.
"If I can find a vamp who'll bring me over," said a plump girl with black-outlined eyes. "I mean, why not? Now it's legal to be Undead, who wouldn't want to live forever?"
"Really," said another, tossing her matte-black hair. "What's so great about going out in the daytime anyways?"
"No way I'd marry one, though. Not if they're all like Nikolai. That centre of the universe masterful thing? So last-millenium."
A girl with bird-bones twisted into her thin braids stared at Anna. "I'd do it. But only if marrying a vamp made me legally dead instead of him legally alive. That would piss off my mom so bad. Hey, aren't you Anna Chan? Your undercover Bad Jobs articles rocked."

#

Questions from the studio audience.
Lee-Anne Tremblay, 26: Julie, would you ever consider becoming a vampire yourself?
Julie: Oh no. I know people worry about me losing my soul, but really, Nikolai loves the life in me, he says I bring sunlight to him for the first time in centuries. I'd hate for him to lose that.
Marilla Houston, 52: What about children? Can you have children?
Julie: Um, no, I don't think we can. But lots of couples can't have children, and there's so many babies in the world who need good homes...we might adopt.
Nikolai: If my darling wants to adopt children, I will fight that battle as I fought for marriage rights. But we have not even had our honeymoon! Let us think only of each other, for a little while.

#

The black stretch limo growled up to the roped-off sidewalk. Tinted windows must be a selling point for the Undead, Joe thought, and checked his sightlines. To get a better angle on the vampire and his bride he'd have to trample bystanders. Anna would do it in a heartbeat, but Joe was squeamish and camcorders were expensive.
The crowd hushed. Joe's neck prickled. The buildings facing St. Andrew's had been searched, but a high-powered rifle reached a long way, and the night air was dead still. There had been threats.
"Solid line of cops in front of the fundies," Anna whispered.
Nikolai stepped onto the red carpet. A sigh billowed out around the street as humanity's night terrors were embodied in one tall, impeccably dressed man. His shoulder-length hair swung over his bone-white face as he bent to help Julie out of the limo.
Virgin sacrifice, thought Joe. The girl looked so young, so alive, ripe as a peach and asking to be bitten into, to be devoured--He didn't know whether he wanted to protect her or devour her himself. Okay, straighten out. The craziness is getting to you.
Nikolai's hired security filed around the couple in a wall of dark-suited muscle.

#

Questions phoned in from listeners.
Devon Harman, 18, from Abbotsford: How many humans have you killed in your life?
Nikolai: Young man, you have been reading trashy horror, the sort I hope will soon be prosecuted as hate literature. The blood sustains us, true, but it must be given willingly....

#

"There," Anna said. "The blond guy, brown jacket, thirties. Following the Laurell K. Hamilton Fans."
Joe swung the camcorder and found the LKH Fans Nikolai banner. The guy blended in pretty well. It took Joe a minute to see he wasn't attached to any of the women. Something about his body language. Other men glanced at their wives or girlfriends, stuck close for fear of being swept away in a sea of estrogen. This guy watched everyone around him, not any one woman. He moved with the crowd, but his shoulders were tight and his head cocked alertly.
"How long till the cops spot him?" Joe kept the guy in the viewfinder. If he filmed the takedown, that would be something. Maybe not enough for Anna.
"Come on, Joe. This way, and keep the camera on him." Anna elbowed through the crowd at an angle, aiming for the spot where their target would intersect the police cordon.
The blond reached under his light jacket as two cops spotted him through the barrier. Anna closed the gap and leapt. Her smooth dark hair lifted and fell like a hawk's wings. Her arms wrapped around him, tangling his hands in the unzipped jacket. He fell hard, Anna on top. Glass shattered under him and he screamed.
"Silver nitrate in lightbulbs, I bet," said a teen in a Hellsing t-shirt. "That's what they used in Portland." His girlfriend nodded and took a picture with her cell.

#

Special evening filming of Winnie!
Winnie: Nikolai, is it true that vampires live forever?
Nikolai: My dear Miss O'Fray, how long is 'forever'? We are long-lived, yes. I myself am two centuries old, but only when I found Julie, my lady of light, did I understand how lonely those centuries had been.
Winnie: I hate to bring up sad thoughts on a happy occasion, but Julie is human--right, honey?--and she's going to age. What will that mean for your marriage?
Nikolai: Beautiful as my love is in her body, her soul is yet more beautiful. I will never tire of her mind and soul.

#

The St. John's Ambulance attendant was cleaning Anna's skinned knees when Nikolai and his security came in. The vampire bowed. "I am told, Miss Chan, that it was you who saved my darling and myself from a fanatic. I am greatly in your debt."
Anna squinted up, and her card appeared in her hand like magic. "I'll take an exclusive interview the night after you get back from the honeymoon, and call it even."
He laughed, flashing white teeth. "A true newswoman's instincts. Consider it a promise." He turned at a flurry behind him. "Cara mia, stay where it is safe."
"Oh Nikolai, I had to thank her. She saved you!" Julie pushed her way between the suits, her Belgian-lace veil lopsided and her antique-cream train dirty from the pavement. "Ms. Chan, you were wonderful. So brave! Thank you so much!" She bent over Anna, hugging her enthusiastically.
Joe got it all on tape. He had instincts too.

#

"He was right there." Joe said, as St. John's packed up. "Where were your trademark penetrating questions and put-'em-on-the-spot attitude? Was the old Dracula charm working on you?"
Anna shook her head. "Wait for the exclusive, when I can corner him. I know his type. Shitloads of charm and a controlling bastard. Like my husband."
"I didn't know you were married."
"I'm not." She paused, and Joe decided to drop it. "She's what, twenty-two, twenty-three?"
"Twenty-three." It had been in the press release.
"Still a kid. She'll grow and change, he won't."
"Why not?"
"He's dead, Joe."
"Well, it's over now. The circus has left town, and you're a hero. Buy you a drink?" He put out his hand and pulled Anna to her feet.
She looked down at her bandaged legs and sighed. "Sure. Hah, you think that was a circus? Wait for the first vamp divorce."

END

The origin of vampires

As requested!

First, background on magic, in my system. Every living human being has magic in them, just by being alive. Some have much magic, increased by study and practice or by being in proximity to magic (think of it as second-hand smoke), some have only a little.
Back in the mists of time (Bronze Age?) magicians developed a way to join their powers and channel them towards some great task they couldn't accomplish singly. The joining was accomplished by a blood-sharing ceremony and had a tendency to kill or drive insane one of the participants--the weak link in the chain, it was assumed.
The magicians came up with what seemed like a good idea. They would include in the joining someone (a slave or prisoner) who was dying, in hopes that the magic would be directed to that 'weak link' and spare the magicians.
Sometimes it worked as expected. Sometimes it charged the dying person with enough magic that he didn't quite die. Instead he became a sort of zombie, a mindless slave blood-bound to the magicians, and could be maintained semi-alive by small feedings of blood, the same way animal familiars were bound to a magician. And who doesn't want a mindless slave, particularly one who could be used as a sort of magical storage-jar? While it might be filled with magic, it couldn't direct or control that magic, because of not being properly alive.
But if the zombie-slave was overfed, or re-used too many times in the joining ceremony without being burnt out by it, it might become sentient. If the magician who was feeding it died or lost control of it, it might become autonomous. And would still need blood to maintain itself, but would have to go out and get that blood. Thus, vampires.
It's the magic in the blood that maintains them--although they can't control magic, they are magical creatures, and have some powers (glamoury, strength, etc.) that are associated with magic. If one takes a magician's blood to the death, it is charged with enough magic to create another vampire, blood-bound to it.  (There is not a strict one-to-one exchange, by the way). For this reason, second or third generation vampires are forbidden to take magician's blood, lest they become powerful and autonomous. Or, if they take magician's blood in small quantities, they might be blood-bound to the magician instead of to the vampire master who made them.

Somewhere between the Bronze Age and the Early Modern / Late Medieval period, there was enough disruption of the magical tradition that this (fairly closely guarded) knowledge was lost to the magicians. The oldest vampires knew it, but guarded it even more closely.

Now I believe I'll go to bed, so I can be up early and work on the Dread Synopsis.

Onion sauce! Onion sauce!

Writery stuff:
I've been wandering about dazedly the last few days, feeling rather like Mole in the opening of Wind in the Willows, squinting in the spring daylight after a winter underground. I came very near shouting 'Onion sauce! Onion sauce!' at the campus rabbits on Friday.
Because! Willow Knot, revised up to 120k from its hacked-down 105k, has gone off to my agent in both electronic and paper forms. This makes me feel much more like An Agented Author, because I've filled in my side of the agreement, for the first go-round anyways. I fully expect to have more to hack out and fill in and smooth over.
This weekend, though--Happy Thanksgiving!--I'll be reading other people's published books, baking an apple pie for the boy, and maybe watching dvds. And updating my blog. I've already slept in to 8 am, like a slothful sloth (except not upside down).

You may recall that I figured to have the revision done and dusted by the 14th. Well yeah. There was what one might call the Fortunate Fall of my desktop computer having kicked over in mid-August, leaving me with no large screen monitor. I love my eee (on which I am writing now) but its screen can be covered by one hand. And I seriously needed a big screen to read over the revision for flow. Half a page at a time was not enough.
Paul gave me his old Mac laptop, which has a screen at least as big as my dead desktop's. And he loaded it with the free trial of Scrivener, which he and Mark have been pimping to me for a while. So I shoved WK into Scrivener, a fairly easy task since I'd broken it into scenes and given the scenes descriptive titles already, and took a good hard look at the story flow.
That was when I fell in love.

Yes, I love Scrivener madly. I would bake it cookies and run hot baths for it, and haunt used bookshops looking for missing volumes in its uniform editions of Mark Twain. Like that.
And Scrivener revealed to me that I could knock one more winter off the forest section. And it showed me that the palace section desperately needed a 12th Night masque with a dancing bear.* It let me look at two scenes at once so I could meld them into one scene without losing the important bits. It let me look at a floorplan of the palace while I walked characters through. And it compiled the whole shebang together in order at the end.
Okay, there were some Adventures in Formatting for me then, because Open Office decided to indent all first lines, most of which were already indented (because I do that), and the font changed in one chapter for no apparent reason, and so on. But most of that was my not realising just how much Scrivener does, plus the usual sort of wackiness found in moving files through different systems and different word processing programs.
So I've bunged Cost of Silver into Scrivener, and I'm going to muddle about with the status and label settings now that I have an idea how they work. And yes, I've registered Scrivener, I did that about 20 days into the free trial.
Note: I am not a convert to Mac. But I'm willing to use one for the sake of Scrivener.

The Outside World well sort of:
Had a fine time at V-Con last weekend. I was invited to be on a panel(!) by the kind offices of Susan Walsh. The topic was Vampires We Have Known and Loved, with Tanya Huff, Rhea Rose, etc. Tanya was lovely and gracious, answered a number of questions about the tv series and about sequels to her past series, and did her best not to dominate the panel despite the audience attention. Two of the panelists were on because they'd just contributed to a vamp anthology calle Evolve, and another was a voice actor who'd done a vampirish villain or two. And me.
So I took the folklore tack and commented on how the vamp concept has changed over the years, a little bit on the challenge of portraying vampires in a historical setting (Stuart England) where there was no concept of blood-drinking walking undead (oh look, I'm plugging the book I haven't finished yet!). I did plug Paul Barber's indispensable Vampires, Burial and Death, and read a few paragraphs from Varney the Vampire, or, The Feast of Blood!
Several people took down both titles, as well they should.

VCon's art show was terrific this year, far better than the show at Worldcon. It was disappointing how few bids there were. So I bought art.
I bought a Melissa Duncan print (okay technically I have this on credit, but she knows where I live). Terri, you should check out this lady's art! (I thought I'd seen a more extensive website of her work, but can't find it now)
And two small pieces by Valeria de Rege, lovely quirky little paintings on wood blocks, some with text taken from sf novels.
I restricted myself to only one of Danielle Stephens's brilliant little papercraft shadowboxes. She does not have a website, so I'll have to take a photo and post it to show you what they're like.
Pauline Walsh doesn't have a website either, so I'll have to do the same to show you the charming little femo Hermit Thing that I got.

The VCon hotel (Marriott Pinnacle) had a whole set of Stupid Policies that made it a questionable choice for a con. Food had to be consumed in the room where it was purchased (so the Dealers Room theoretically had no food for those manning tables). No costumes in the lobby, the pool, or the (overpriced) restaurant--'costume' being undefined. No weapons, again undefined, anywhere. No groups of four or more people in the lobby--think about that one.
The staff I dealt with were all pleasant and professional, but they were stuck with enforcing nebulous and discriminatory policies. The elevators from one public level to another stopped running at midnight, forcing one lady (filksinger?) with mobility problems to use the shiny slippery stairs. Another woman, who had changed out of her costume into street clothes, was asked to leave the restaurant because she didn't match the (unposted?) dress code, although her companion was diabetic and needed to eat. They walked to a McDonalds.
Like most high-end hotels, they overcharged for internet, $16 day and I'm not sure they had wireless. The bottle of water in the room cost $4.50. No fridge, only a cooler with a broken door.
Beds were comfy though, and it was possible to turn the a/c and heat off and not be woken in the night by roaring.
Actually it was just as well that we couldn't get internet at the hotel. It meant I finished revisions, instead of browsing the web.
What else? I did a couple of shifts on the SF-Canada table, and hand-sold at least one more copy of Eileen Kernaghan's The Snow Queen, which is a terrific treatment of the fairy tale. And bought a couple more books for myself.

*I did go and check whether the perceived need for dancing bears was one of the varieties of insanity known to affect authors. Fortunately it isn't.

But I gave away no prized possessions

Unless blank notebooks count?
I flew to San Francisco for Potlatch, and this being the 3d I've attended, perhaps I've become a regular? Unless the Bay Area fandom that runs it is so longstanding and tight-woven that it's like the Maritimes and if you weren't born there you'll always 'come from away'. Not that I felt at all excluded, with all my VP mates: Evan, Dru, Elise and Lucy. Plus meeting up with Eva who was in the writing workshop last year and getting to compare notes (and meet her little girl) on what we'd been doing in the meantime.
This year I achieved balance--yes! Attended two panels (Books of Honour discussion and a panel on multi-pov as the new century's favoured style), visited with friends, and did the writing workshop. I even managed to sell something while table-sitting for Elise.
We missed Bart, though. Everyone missed Bart.


Workshop: an explosion of attendees this year. Last year, o faithful reader, you may recall that two sessions were required, with Suzy Charnas and Mary Rosenblum brought in to handle the overflow (which included me, and it was a great session). This year there were five (5) sessions, with one instructor each, running at the same time (Saturday lunch). A logistical challenge, especially since Vylar was both overseeing the arrangements and in one of the sessions. But all went well, with only the most minor of glitches.
I got to meet the instructor, Debbie Notkin, the evening before, because I was hanging about wondering if I could be useful for something. And she said she was drawn into my story in the first 2 minutes, and that I am a writer. (internal shouts of Yes! Yes!) But I thought, oh, it might be that 'local dexterity' thing, because as you know, Bob, I had concerns about the structure--it's an unlicked cub of a story. But she thought not, that it required tweaking more than gutting and restuffing.
The three stories (the other sessions had 4 students, ours had 3) were quite different, though all had first-person narration, and two didn't name the narrator. One was probably classifiable as horror; it had no supernatural element, and might well be salable as litfic. I wondered if it had been workshopped before, as it was polished and tight, with only some minor punctuation errors. Wait, I wrote a blurb: "In the 1960s South, three outcast boys unearth a human skeleton, and their imaginings about its past lead them to courage and destruction." I was pleased with myself in the discussion for coming up with a possible way to show the boys' friendship and foreshadow the ending at once, but honestly, the story was pretty much ready to go.
The second: "Members of an experimental utopian community leave their offshore platform for a supply run to the mainland, and return to a brewing storm and a group fracturing under stresses internal and external." This one had structural issues: most of it taking place as flashback and direct explanation to the reader, during the supply run. I found it a frustrating story to critique, because I kept focussing on plausibility problems which could probably have been cleaned up easily, or handwaved past if the pace were faster. There were several Big Ideas, and at times it felt more like essay than narrative, or at least a story that should have been much longer. Probably most of the discussion time went to this story, but it was an interesting discussion, particularly around which elements best served the story, and which might be ditched or downplayed without losing the theme.
Mine went first, because getting it over is good. One of the critiquers wanted more to be explained, which I found myself resisting--not the material culture bit, which for once I had left mostly sketched in and was willing to expand--but the backstory and the motivations of the gods (This space intentionally left blank). To me, much of the point of the story is that we don't know the motives of the gods and have to struggle along with guesses and do our best, with the contrast for the characters of having been 'favoured of the gods' once but no longer. Since the characters are disused heroes, and what (I think) the story is about is 'what do you do when your story is over', I didn't want to be too specific about what they'd done down in the world, only to have echoes of myths to suggest what sort of heroes they'd been.
Which is a dangerous path, as I learned with "Foretold". Hint at gods or heroes, and everyone's looking to figure out who's really Zeus, or Thor, or Arthur. Nobody did that this time, so I may have got the vagueness right for that aspect. So I have to think about how specific I need to be for the plot to make some sort of sense, without turning it into a rebus.
A useful takeaway: putting the story theme into words, somewhere in the story. Usually I have no idea what the theme is, but this time I do, so in revision I need to sneak it in.


Socialising: Evan put up Dru and me in his cool apartment, multilevel with a bay window and view over the gardens. Lots of space but not boxlike, the space broken up into comfortable bits, and bookcases strategically placed. Creambuns and strawberries for breakfast, late night talks about books and writing and slushpiles and agents and reading.
Elise's table was a magnet, as usual. I think each of us VPers was there for some part of the con. She had some helpful thoughts about my plot-bunny, and shared a little bit about her elves in the old West novel, reawakening my lust for her to finish it so I could read it, sigh.
Lucy table-sat and caught up with friends. I hung out with her in the con-suite for a while, and we all went out for dinner, failing at the Fish Market because of massive (and untrue) wait times, then successfully at Bombay Garden. Indian buffet with tv screens showing Bollywood videos. I'm not that experienced with Indian food, but it was delicious and I wish I'd had room for more. I will note that I'd far rather watch dance spectaculars with my dinner than sports broadcasts. Also that you should hire Lucy to petsit your cats.

And yes, I'm going to get a membership for World Fantasy this year in San Jose, so I can visit with people again. Even though I am teh suck at networking. I had cards with me, and only gave out one. I didn't even think of giving one to Jed Hartman when he (browsing Elise's table) saw my nametag and asked if I'd submitted to Strange Horizons. I didn't say 'why yes, and you have one of my stories right now', no, I said, 'yes, a few times' and did not offer him my card. Agh. I am so Canadian.

Books: why, yes, I bought books. Fortunately I'd brought notebooks for Elise, so the weight/space requirement on return wasn't hugely different. Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton, spiffy Tor trade paperback because I'd somehow missed it on the first go-round; Howard Who? by Howard Waldrop (Small Beer); Stagestruck Vampires by Suzy McKee Charnas (Tachyon), Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder because both Evan and Dru recommended it; two Dave Langfords, The Leaky Establishment and The Sex Column. And a few others.
I read Vampires on the way back, and loved "Beauty and the Opera, or, The Phantom Beast". That one's going to stay with me for a while. Mark snaffled the Langfords so I have to wait on them.

Just before Potlatch, I had the treat of a visit from Betty (whom I always think of as Serena, which comes from friendships that begin in pseudonymous societies) for a few days. I had Monday and Tuesday off, so we talked writing, walked out to the shops, and slept in. I got to read more of her long-running LOTR fanfic, which I think has a fair claim by now to being an original story, and was introduced to Crossing Jordan via a fic she's writing as a gift.
Serena handles sex scenes so well, using them to show how the characters are changing while managing both hotness and humour. Given that I tend towards asterisks or some version of 'then they had sex', I should put more study into how she does it.
Also she made a delicious vegetable dish with peanut sauce for dinner.

The month got off to a good start.

big gnashy teeth

Evidently I wasn't getting enough sleep last week, or was confused by the construction (neverending construction) at UVic which moved the entrance of the library over to what was once solid glass walls. At any rate, I forgot to lock my bike helmet up with my bike (my extremely cool matte-black bike) and left it hanging on the handlebar instead.
No, it was not stolen. It was ...(Lovecraftian ellipsis)... devoured!

You must understand, o Best Beloved, that the university, like the general hospital, is beset and beleaguered by rabbits. Spotty rabbits, white rabbits, black rabbits, lops and so on. Everything but native rabbits. This is because Bleddy Irresponsible Pet Owners who probably got Cute Bunnies for Easter, let their rabbits loose at the hospital, then at the university, when they got tired of taking care of them. And they bred, like, like, okay, you know what I mean.
It's the Victoria equivalent of alligators in the sewers.
The hospital has a more difficult time with the infestation. Bunnies get into the furnace rooms and leave little bunny pellets everywhere, they undermine foundations, and so on. The administration tried to bring in a sharpshooter to reduce the numbers, but there was a huge outcry, and volunteers rounded up hundreds of rabbits so that the people who had pleaded for the bunny-lives could adopt the cute little critters and save them from a dreadful fate.
You can guess, yes? About a dozen were actually adopted. There's a great difference between getting all sentimental about the fluffy bunnies and actually being willing to do something oneself.
A later attempt to bring in a falconer was also shouted down, even though it was the natural process and all that. It seems to me that even Disney nature films let the predator do the job once in a while.

So there are many cute bunnies on campus. And students feed them, but perhaps not enough. I returned to my bike in the dusk, to find my helmet some distance from the bicycle, with its foam pads torn from the velcro and scattered all about. Deep fang-marks were torn into the styrofoam, as of flocks of miniature vampires. I imagined them squabbling over it like seagulls, one snatching it from another, a little soccer play, the victor carrying it off (or climbing into it, which might have been easier), the others grouping and plotting their next foray.
It's Watership Down out there.

dragon ate the moon, I fell asleep

Last night I was up watching the lunar eclipse, at least the partial-to-full part. It stayed full so long that I went and lay down again, figuring to get up for the full-to-partial part. I woke up about 6 am, so I'll have to settle for whatever pics are up online.
Today I am not at my best.
What I noticed was that the more the moon was covered, the more visible the covered part became, till at last, rather than being a black slice, it was a round coal glowing under grey ash. The sky was clear and a great many constellations were visible. It surprised me how much light was coming from the sky even when the moon was quite hidden. Before the eclipse began, the moonlight laid sharp dark shadows across the back lawn, the sort of light that makes people say they could read by it. Once the eclipse was complete, there was still enough light from the sky that I could have walked about, but I wouldn't have trusted my depth perception, and I would have relied on knowing the place well.
Priscilla was confused greatly by my getting up and walking up and down stairs in the night. She charged up and down after me, and rushed outside when I opened the back door. When I sat on the bench outside, she followed more sedately and sat on the grass, near the place she sits in the daytime. Power of habit, I suppose, as I doubt there was any sun-warming left by then.

Has anyone ever come up with an explanation for vampires being able to tolerate moonlight but not sunlight? Given that moonlight is reflected sunlight? Varney the Vampire and Count Ruthven were rescusitated by the full light of the moon. But then I think they (and Dracula?) walked about in the daylight as well. I should see if I can find out when the Killer Sun was added to the mythos.
My astrologer-vampire ruminates about why silver should be harmful to vampires when moonlight is beneficial, given that silver is the metal of the moon. He doesn't come up with an answer.
And what do werewolves do when the full moon is eclipsed? Turn into hairless wolves?

Good news on the arthritis. I went to my second rheumatologist appointment, and it seems I'm having no ill effects from the meds thus far, and I can try dropping the Naproxen to one tablet a day instead of two--my choice as to which one to drop. The hydroxychloroquin stays as before, being the one I can expect to be on for good and all, barring serious side-effects.
I asked about prescription renewal, and my own doctor can do that, which will simplify things. I've entered yet another realm where everyone already present knows stuff that I don't, and they don't know what they need to tell me because none of it's new to them anymore.
I had a few minutes to look about the Arthritis Centre this time. The chairs in the waiting room are designed to allow people to hoist themselves in and out, and have accessories that can be attached to support the arms and so on. A rather queasy mix of relief and guilt that I didn't need those so far, and had biked to the centre on my cool black bike.

The 3-Day Novel contest is coming up, and this time I will be home for it, so my word count should be higher. I don't have an outline, only an assortment of images and motifs that will (I hope) come together into something resembling a storyline.
Yesterday I biked downtown to pick up more ginger teamix and snacky food to carry me through the weekend. On Friday I'll probably get a veggie plate and some other finger-food. Plus the plums are coming ripe. If I need a break I'll prep a few trays of plums for the dehydrator.
Once again, the challenge is to keep typing, to not stop to revise and tweak, to not dither about wordchoice, just to get it down. My feeling is that this will be a collage-y type of story, with different voices, so I should be able to jump around in time, get the beginning and ending down, then fill in the middle. Maybe I'll write a bunch of scene ideas on index cards and pull one out when I get stuck.
No all-nighters, though. I will eat and I will sleep. And I will try not to fuss about whether this story is as good as last year's. It's about the experience, not the judges.
Mark will be at September Crown. So he gets to go to the meetings instead of sending me. Mwa-haha.

standing in a draft

It all depends how one defines 'complete'. The ever-expanding first draft of The Willow Knot is 91k. The last quarter has many notes-to-self about bits to expand or insert. The story is all there, yes. The narrative isn't, necessarily.
My first drafts of short stories or of chapters (to be posted on workshops, for instance) are fairly clean. I usually tweak and polish while re-reading, so my standard for first draft may be more tight-arse than some. Notes to self have usually been replaced by the relevant text before anyone sees them. This leaving it as is and going off for a month(ish) to research and work on other things isn't what I'm used to. I'll have to see how it works.
Rather presumptuous to talk about 'what I'm used to', when I've completed, oh, one co-written novel thus far. Siege of the Revenants was composed mostly on email, writing and emailing back and forth to each other for about a year, writing scenes as the fancy took us, leaping about in space and time. Then fitting the jigsaw together and noting the missing scenes (sky, sky, sky, reflection of sky, grass, sky). I did the note-taking, but M-- did the first collation and first full draft, so it's doubtful whether I have completed a first draft previously.
Revisions, heck yeah. I like revisions. It's the instinct to tidy rather than clean.

Conventional wisdom is that the second draft is the first draft trimmed by 10%. I know for certain sure this will not be the case. I'll be able to trim, yes, but I'll be adding at least another 5k, and it wouldn't surprise me if the second draft verged on 100k. Unfortunately, there isn't the 10k of angst and explanation that I cut out of Siege, so the third draft reduction is going to take out meat as well as fat. Bones have their own beauty, scraped clean.
My study's ornament, thou shell of death.
Once the bright face of my betrothed lady,
When life and beauty naturally fill'd out
These ragged imperfections
Okay, so Tourneur didn't agree.

In the meantime, I've gotten back to "Climbing Boys", and after that, I hope, to "Elementary Magic" (which needs a new title). I'm reading the Secret Memoirs of Princess Lamballe, and Bohemia in the eighteenth century, by Robert Kerner, by way of research. Both of them have odd prose styles, demanding to be read out loud, which I would, if I weren't slowly recovering from a sore throat.
I've got some lovely books on palace architecture, which I'm not letting myself look at until I've finished "Climbing Boys".

It's very odd to plop into the window seat in the morning and open the short stories folder instead of the novels folder. I've been set on the one storyline since October (with a break for writing "Chimps on a Blimp") and I'm a creature of habit.
Priscilla doesn't mind. She nags me to get into the window seat and make her a lap, so she can wedge herself against the laptop and turn into a purring shedding muff. This the cat that wouldn't go near a lap when she first arrived. But perhaps since I pull a duvet over my legs, she can pretend she's not really on my lap?

Submissions and rejections: Bunged "Spellcheck" off to On Spec, which has to maintain a percentage of Canadian content (yay for restrictive culture laws!) to keep its grant. In a spirit of what the heck, entered Fold in the Glimmer Train Fiction Open, which accepts entries up to 20k wordage. I'll have to check if "Bride" is anywhere presently, because I don't think I've hit Realms of Fantasy with it yet. "Foretold" has come home to me, unwanted by Fantasy Magazine, and I may try it at Weird Tales (received a recent issue of WT from Ferret, so I have an idea what they print).

Just finished reading: You Don't Have to Be Evil to Work Here, But It Helps, by Tom Holt. This is a follow-on from The Portable Door, but could probably be read on its own. Hapless Brit becomes involved with magic, gods, random heroes and bureaucracy, finds frustration, danger and love. I really should post a couple of the contract provisions for selling your soul to the Devil, which are all too plausible. It's a book that requires being read out loud to whoever else is around--not least because they'll be wanting to know what you're giggling at.
All Together Dead, by Charlaine Harris. Both the friend who lent this to me and another friend who was present said that this instalment was disappointing. I'm undecided.
Bad aspects - perhaps I should have expected it from the title, but there are definitely too many characters. Some show up just for the sake of showing up, as if it were a reunion episode on tv. I agree that Harris should bounce her 'continuity girl' rather than mentioning her in the acknowledgements. The first chapters are full of characters introduced with tags and explanations, and several of them don't do anything to justify the introduction. Yes, it can be difficult to enter an established series and not know who everyone is, but there's always the option of providing an annotated character list before the story starts. (I love Bubba as much as the next reader, and it's nice to know that he made it through the New Orleans flood, but he Doesn't Appear In This Story, so don't waste space on him!)
Good aspects - my friends said that nothing happens or changes, and the changes in Sookie's relationships aren't fully established or explored; the focus is more on the big picture of vampiric politics and human retaliation. In that big picture, there are some serious changes, and I'm curious how the vampire hierarchy will shake out in the next book.

ghostly online presence

This morning I registered my domain name. I feel a bit queasy and what-have-I-done? about it. I'll have time to adjust, because Mark is off to Kalamazoo (and Tyler too, whoops, wrong rhyme) and I decided to go with Islandnet through him. Nothing can be done until he returns, by which time my stomach should have settled.
Islandnet's $10 Cdn a month, but they're local and easy to get hold of. Which reminds me that I need to start collecting receipts and things so that I can figure out what to do about my taxes next year. Argh. I've seen what Mark goes through doing the small business taxes thing for Gaukler Medieval Wares, and now I'm venturing into the self-employed course?
He keeps saying "You're allowed two work-related conferences a year!" in a cheerful voice. I hope that means he'll keep on doing my taxes.
I suppose designing a website could be fun, in between the screaming in frustration and banging my head parts. Should I have lots of blinking lights and contrasting backgrounds? Maybe some Flash animations to liven things up?
Let's see. Things a website should have: index, bibliography, news, excerpts, bio?

Writing: Finally, into the last quarter of Willow Knot. 83k - did I once say blithely that I was allowing myself 80k so I'd have 5k slop allowance? Ha. I'll be lucky to get out of first draft under 90k. On the good side, much of the last quarter is already written, including the ending. And I'm starting to see my way through the court/intrigue part, and understand what happened there.
I know who the bear is now, and an acute reader should pick it up pretty quickly as well.
Began the conversation that should lead to Alard proposing to Myl (Mylla now) but they've veered off into talking about the divine right of kings (not in those words). That's all right, since it works towards Myl's purpose at court and the dream-vision.
I'm feeling a little more confident about them falling in love in a meeting-of-minds Heyerish way, which is my ideal. Not that I can write as well as Georgette Heyer, but at least if I aim high I fail higher than if I aim low.
I've also realised that neither of them will be in love when they marry, and that Myl's going to enter it in quite a cold-blooded way, hoping to get security and free Tyl from enchantment. With luck the reader will be fond enough of her by then to forgive this unromantic attitude.
I will--I will finish the draft this month. I swear. Witness this.

The first 3 chapters of Cost of Silver (pt. 1 The Astrologer's Death) went up on my LJ. *flinches at admission of having a Livejournal account*. Ferret caught me up on a major historical glitch, which I am humbly grateful for her doing. She also pointed me towards a way around it. Words are insufficient to thank her. Bookherder (another Furtive Scribbler) demanded the next chapter, even if I've run out of festival names (octave, quinzaine - then what? I dunno) so I'll probably do it, because cliffhangers are cheating.
Re-reading the first chapters pleased me--I've gotten past the 'this is all dreadful' stage and reached the 'this isn't bad, did I write it?' stage. If I picked it up in a shop I'd read further.
Soon I'll be able to get back to Astrologer, while letting Willow Knot sit before revision. One of my OWW critique semi-circle was asking about it, too.
Maybe get the Boxer Rebellion magic story and the poltergeist chimney-sweeps story done as well?

Glimmer Train rejected "Foretold", no surprise, and "Bride" didn't win for short fiction, again no surprise. Tesseracts rejected "Spellcheck" which will leave me wondering if I should have sent "Bride" instead--my two stories with Canadian settings.
"Spellcheck" is off to SH, "Foretold" to Fantasy, and "Bride" to Clarkesworld because it has a sexy vampire and I only need 4 more rejections to meet my 2007 goal.