it's a rosebud in june

It's June, and that means ... it's time for flower pictures!
Here's one of the first blooms on the garage-whelming alba, just opening from fist to spread palm. I'll put up a more recent pic soonish, showing it spotted all over with white. The arched trellis we shoved in between the two bushes is completely hidden now.
The cold damp spring that we've had means not all the roses are going to bloom, but the Dortmund and the albas are showing off, and the Blanche Double that I planted last year has taken full advantage of its nice sunny location and bloomed like heck.

After three months or so of trying to dedicate every weekend to wordcount, and ending up burning myself out after a few hours and going online to look at lolcats or whatever, I decided to accept that Cost of Silver was going to take longer than I hoped, and let myself do other things on weekends.
Last weekend I drove the Malahat twice, once to visit my brother and his family, and once to visit my friend Anna.
The weekend before, Mark and I took the ferry to Vancouver and visited Chris and Shannon (which would be, for those who haven't made notes, our son and his girlfriend).
This weekend a much shorter drive into Saanich to the farmers' markets, with a last visit to Babe's Honey Farm for its last sale. Very sad about this. Babe's was founded in 1945, and went strong until Babe died a few years back. Then it was bought up, and kept going, but the accountant(?) stole about a million dollars, so now it's going under for good, and I don't know what's happening to the bees and so on. Hang on, I'll find some news stories for more accurate information.

While I was at my brother's, I dug up a row of the raspberry plants he's giving away (to replace with blueberries, a decision my husband strongly approves) and got to see his pictures of their bees swarming in the summer. Pretty amazing - a cloud of bees leaving the hive, settling on a tree branch nearby, then Pete and Laura cutting the branch off, and shaking the bees into a cardboard box, then tipping them back into the hive, where they settled again happily.
Sometimes I wonder about setting up a hive in our yard. We've had bees crawling in and out of the front porch roof, last year, and this year into the roof by the back door. I see them bumbling about the sweet rocket and the comfrey in the back yard. But I'm not sure how much attention they need, and I'm worried about pests and disease.
My plum tree, which I've mentioned before, is suffering from caterpillars (I hate caterpillars. Lots. I don't care how fluffy they are, they're evil.) and from what I fear is bacterial canker. I've been up on the stepladder trying to reach the diseased branches and cut them off, which is breaking my heart because some have plums on them. Last year the plum harvest tanked, after a few bounty summers, so every plum lost hurts. Worse, there's only a poor chance that this pruning will save the tree.

In cheerier news, I scored a free rocking chair from UsedVictoria, and passed my 20 yr old jade plant on to someone who'd just lost her 30 yr old jade plant, so that karma should be nicely balanced. I have now a rocking chair on the front porch, and have sat and read there on a few mornings already, and in the back yard I have my hanging chair, ditto. The hanging chair is becoming a lovely Secret Hiding Place as the sweet rocket grows up around it and the grape vines begin to spread over the posts.
This pic was taken at dusk, because I liked the effect, so you will just have to imagine it in full daylight.

Cost of Silver is nudging 130k at present, and I'm not at all sure I'll be able to wrap it up under 150k. I've had some plotty stuff that made me happy, so I'll post about that next time, maybe.

Photo credits this time are mine. The previous cat pic was by Mark Shier, and I should go back and add that info.

Asafia's bargain

There's a discussion over on the Clarion Foundation blog about teasers, which in this case means choosing excerpts for brief readings.
The following may be too long, but I think it stands reasonably well on its own. I may be too close to the story to judge.
A scene added in the last revisions of The Willow Knot to flesh out the Wicked Aunt:

Asafia stepped into the marshwater, and black mud rose about her bare feet, dabbled at the hem of her white shift. The fat moon bleached hair and skin to like pallor with her linen. In her arms she bore bundled cloth.

"I have woven," she said to the darkness. "I have woven strong within and without, for the love I bear you and for the gifts you give."

"Weaver woman," said the darkness. "What do you bring me?"

Asafia shook her burden out, in meshes that caught moonlight with shadow. "A net to snare birds. To snare frogs. And those who pass between shapes shall not pass through this."

The darkness reached out with hawk's talons to hook the net, with stumpy fingers to worry at the knots, with a blunt muzzle to snuffle at the cords. "The strands sting. What virtue have they?"

"Strands of courtesan's hair for the snare of lust, plied with threads of shrouds for the grave that none escape. Washed in the tears of an infant, the monthly blood of a virgin, and the spittle of a crone."

Could she have learned the craft of House Sallew, those knots that sealed the king's secrets, how much more power would her net have? But that was an old grievance, and Asafia put her niece's sullen obstinacy out of her thoughts. This prince of the marshes was cunning, and she must not be careless.

Its tongue rolled out, touched the net and shrank back snail-like. "What ask you for this?"

"A flask of nix-water." She added, "And safe departure from your lands."

The muzzle flattened to a child's pouting mouth, sharp teeth showing as the upper lip drew back. "The night'll come that you forget, and I'll have your blood and bones."

"Then who should make you a net to snare the silver birds?" Asafia threaded scorn into her voice. "You'd sooner have one dish than a hundred meals?"

It squatted at her feet, shapeless as a trick of weary eyes. "Such a dainty dish that one would be, white as swan's flesh." A stinking sigh fluttered her damp skirts. "Well then, clap hands on a bargain." It held out fingers like rotted twigs, and Asafia took them in her clean hand, felt them yield in her grip like a cluster of frog's eggs. It giggled. "Be one with me, you'll need no nix-water to change your shape."

Asafia said, "To be consumed comes to all mortal flesh without your aid. Give me my flask."

bike to work week

So I have been biking to work. So far (cross fingers, knock on wood) the weather has cooperated by not actually raining, and not being too hot for comfortable bicycling.

Registrations have opened up for the 3-Day Novel Contest, so I will be getting mine in. I wish I had any sort of idea for this year, whether plotline, conceit, opening scene or character. The last few mornings I haven't even been able to remember my dreams.

The weekend before last I cut about 4 inches off my hair, by the expedient of braiding it tight to the end, and cutting across the braid. Now my brushed-out hair is only to my waist, and braided hangs to the middle of my back. It is even across the bottom, which it has never been, creating the illusion that my hair is unexpectedly thicker.
I find myself fiddling with the tail of it, and having odd tactile memories of my mother's hair. She had the most gorgeous thick auburn hair, shoulder-length and wavy. The very tail-end of my hair verges on her colour, but mostly mine is duller and browner.
My mother was the last person to cut my hair, in September of 1974, shortly before she died. I wondered if I would have a massive spasm of regret after hacking off the bottom part, but so far I haven't.

In other news, I still haven't finished The Cost of Silver. It is the book that never ends.

no cat here

Because she is expertly camouflaged.

And now I must go offline and write 500 words of fenland riots before I can go to bed. But in good news, Oliver Cromwell has made a personal appearance and a brief speech, at a time and place where there is some documentary evidence he actually was, though I had to make up the speech and am now guilt-wracked in case I got his style wrong.

photo credit: Mark Shier

still here

The twenty-fourth of May
Is the Queen's birthday.
If you don't give us a holiday
We'll all run away.

As you may have noticed, the world didn't end, and the Rapture didn't occur this weekend. Which I'm quite pleased about, as here in Canada we have a long weekend, and I'd hate for it to be interrupted by the Tribulations. (The caterpillars are a problem, but not--thankfully--a plague).

It may be that prophecies are in the air, but I was moved to rant over on Evil Editor when the umpty-umpteenth query involving a prophecy and a chosen one who was the only one who could deliver the land from the evil. The chosen one, by the way, was an adolescent girl.
Which is not to assume that the book (or any of the other books fitting those criteria) is necessarily a bad book. Just a book with a plot that made me bang my head on the nearest available flat surface.

In the invaluable Tough Guide to Fantasyland by the wonderful and much-missed Diana Wynne Jones, the entry on Prophecy begins :

is used by the Management to make sure that no Tourist is unduly surprised by events, and by GODDESSES AND GODS to make sure that people do as the deity wants. All Prophecies come true. This is a Rule.

Less succinctly, if you are a writer (the Management), you include a prophecy in your book (the Tour) so that your reader (the Tourist) will know ahead of time how the story will end.
You include a prophecy so that your characters (the Tour Companions) will have no freedom of choice and thus no character development, because no matter what they do, how they squirm, they will fulfill that prophecy line by line, no skipping ahead.
Why would anyone do that?

It can't be just lazy plotting (though that's probably a factor), because usually the reluctant heroes are coerced into action not only by the Prophecy but by some personal incentives as well (known in movie trailers as This time it's personal) such as loved ones being taken prisoner or killed, whole villages being slaughtered, the world is going to end and that means him and his little dog too, .... So if your plot is already poking your character with pointy sticks in the direction you want, what's the prophecy for?
I suppose there's some fun in reading on to find out what twisty language and hidden meanings the prophecy will turn out to be using, but that's kind of a thin, distant pleasure, isn't it? Like doing a really old crossword puzzle.

Where does this expectation of prophecy come from? Tolkien didn't make a big deal of prophecies in Lord of the Rings, as best I recall. There was the business of the sword that is broken, but that was more of a sad song than a directive. David Eddings used a prophecy extensively, but in a rather more unusual way, by making the prophecy a character of sorts.
Maybe if I had read lots of Big Fat Fantasy aka Extruded Fantasy Product I'd have a better idea of the origins and requirements of prophecy in fantasy. Maybe I'd even see the point of it.
But the next time I see a query that uses the word 'prophecy', I'd be thrilled beyond words if it turned out that the prophecy was false or mistaken, or referred to something else entirely. Or was a trap set up by the Evil Overlord.
Or, heck, was just misinterpreted several times, so that everyone thought it had already been fulfilled. How many different historic events have Nostradamus's prophecies been refitted to?
After all, if Mr. Camping can get his doomsday prophecy wrong, why should Seers, Dreams, Runes and Omens always get it right?

writerly fussing

Thing I learned recently.
Battles are like forests, in the struggle to establish and describe the same bloody things all the time (trees and explosions) without either continually repeating oneself or, alternatively, looking as if one has shaken the thesaurus out over the scenery.
The historical Battle of Newburn was fought and lost between dawn and afternoon. It took me three bloody days to finish writing one character's experiences in it. Gaaah. Anyway, done! Then the retreat after it, which dropped said character into a nest of Northumbrian witches, to improve his education. (Wherein the writer is beset by doubts that this expansion is unbalancing the novel...)

I swear, action scenes are the hardest for me, like wading through molasses. Dialogue? Dead easy. Description, I'm not crazy about, but it can be knocked off in under three sentences usually. Openings of stories, no big deal. Action? A constant struggle.

In other news, I've hit the stage in this work where I become convinced that I've lost the voice, and that everything I'm adding is written in an utterly flat and modern style that will jar the hypothetical reader entirely out of the story.
Fortunately, because I know I'll think this (it happens with every 3-day novel), I can pretty much disregard my misgivings and struggle on.

In still other news, my left shoulder decided to act up for a couple of days, twinging and whingeing in just the same way it did before I was diagnosed with arthritis. So I gave in and took a couple of Naproxen, the NSAIDs my doctor told me to stop taking, and hey, they worked.
The flare-up may have been because I'd been taking the lower dose of methotrexate for some months (8 pills instead of 10 on Happy Methotrexate Day). Hopefully it doesn't mean I need to change or adjust the meds, because I've been pretty happy with the lack of side-effects so far.

You receive this post because it has been so long since I posted, and now you see that it is because I have nothing to offer but angst.

Right. Back to the saltmines.

Skychair west

is up! So it must be spring in Victoria. The rocket is sprouting, the fruit trees are flowering, and it only rains a couple of times each day.
Below is our bluebell woods in miniature.

The downside is that chilly weather has meant we are only now seeing the bees bumbling about, and the wind and rain have stripped the plum blossoms, so pollination may not have happened.
And the caterpillars are back. I've clipped three nests off the Spartan tree, and have been up on a ladder searching the plum tree for the little buggers. I have come to understand why 'caterpillar' was an insult in Shakespeare's time--they chew the blossoms off their stems and leave them hanging, and they take leaves down to the base so the twig dies, and they're nearly invisible until the damage is done and sometimes after.

Well. Anyways.
Beans and peas planted in front and back gardens. Strings holding back the raspberries.
We have rhubarb. So far I'm keeping it in check with a bowlful in the morning, but since I hacked off 4 crowns and replanted them around the yard, next year may be overabundant. Note to self: look for rhubarb recipes.

And I am about to stuff William Lilly, Astrologer, into The Cost of Silver. I may not be able to get Nicholas Culpeper in (what a stand-up guy he was!) without bending space and time, but I'll give it a try. Then I just need to make sure I haven't sprained continuity beyond mending.