"With the Uncanny one has reached the fringes of the Numinous."

                  —  C. S. Lewis

More and more I appreciate Tolkien and all those writers who inspired him

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

'I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.' — W B Yeats

The Silver Apples of the Moon by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh

Not a canary in a cage.

‘I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.’

— Mary Oliver

The King of Owls by Louise Erdrich

They say I am excitable! How could

I not scream? The Swiss monk’s tonsure

spun till it blurred yet his eyes were still.

I snapped my gaiter, hard, to stuff back

my mirth. Lords, he then began to speak.

Indus catarum, he said, presenting the game of cards

in which the state of the world is excellent described

and figured. He decked his mouth

as they do, a solemn stitch, and left cards

in my hands. I cast them down.

What need have I for amusement?

My brain’s a park. Yet your company

plucked them from the ground and began to play.

Lords, I wither. The monk spoke right,

the mealy wretch. The sorry patterns show

the deceiving constructions of your minds.

I have made the Deuce of Ravens my sword

falling through your pillows and rising,

the wing blades still running

with the jugular blood. Your bodies lurch

through the steps of an unpleasant dance.

No lutes play. I have silenced the lutes!

I keep watch in the clipped, convulsed garden.

I must have silence, to hear the messenger’s footfall

in my brain. For I am the King of Owls.

Where I float no shadow falls.

I have hungers, such terrible hungers, you cannot know.

Lords, I sharpen my talons on your bones.

Detail from Simone Martini's Annunciation with St. Margaret and St. Ansanus

Detail from Simone Martini's Annunciation with St. Margaret and St. Ansanus

—

"He shall be called the son of the Great God, and by his name shall he be hailed as the Son of God, and they shall call him Son of the Most High."

— Dead Sea scrolls manuscript Q4Q246

Translated from the Aramaic. It has been suggested that Luke's version was taken from this Qumran text. The Feast of the Annunciation is in March, but I find myself looking at images in December as Christmas approaches. The center of 3 panels painted, the saints being positioned on outside panels. This painting was worked on in 1333, a beautiful example of Christian art done in the early medieval period. The angel Gabriel announcing to Mary that she was to be the mother of the Son of the Most High. Simone Martini did this work, I believe for the Pope in Avignon, and it was later moved a few times. It's one of my favorites of the full Annunciation works from that period. My focus in study has always been Greco-Roman to the death of Joan of Arc, because this was when the world made a big change that is still in action today.

Life is precious

'There is a space between the setting of the sun and the fall of night that we all long for, twilight, dusk, that singular moment of ambiguity and mystery. We don't know what color it might be, what time of the day it really is, and we cannot call it night yet— all this, only for a moment and then it is gone.'

Twilight by Ed Org.

Kindness is needed now.

In a world where you can apparently be anything now, be kind to all.

Sad, but true.

Never think you've seen the last of anything.

— Eudora Welty

"He is my household's guardian soul; He judges, he presides, inspires All matters in his royal realm; Might he be fairy? or a god?" — Charles Baudelaire, The Cat

Les Fleurs du Mal

 

It's done for this month. I might work on another 3 days before I stop for Thanksgiving Holidays. And then get back to work on the Monday after. I am going to be cooking and doing some shopping this week, visiting the boys some. The Nano stat chart kept saying I would finish today and they were right. The chapters are pretty consistent in page numbers, which most of the time took two days of work to do. Sometimes 3. I just kept focusing on the chapter each time and never thought beyond that. One chapter at a time. 

Unfortunately, laughing, NANO does not a book MAKE. It is far from finished. But it really helped me catch up after losing October to no more than a single chapter. That hurt. I am not a 50,000 word a month writer normally. Those writers are Nora Roberts and Stephen King, who do their 10 pages a day, for so many days a month without fail. I could name about 15 other NYT writers who do that and at least 20 other writers who come close, who often make other lists. Some people do approach writing just like a 9-5 job. Most working writers are always writing though, you can count on that. They write daily. They don't wait for inspiration or to feel good, etc. In other words, when they get going in the morning or night, they sit down and write and write for hours and hours at a time. That's why NANO is good. Habit. One word at a time. One page at a time. Habit. Creating a habit. Committing to work. 

My son has a running coach. He wanted to run a marathon, which is 26.2 miles. He had to work years for that. He spent a few of those years with a running coach. They still run together. It might surprise people that I spent money in 2021 with a therapist in order to reclaim a creative process that I once possessed and lost. Because any creative process takes a kind of belligerent commitment. I relearned that commitment is inspiration. It's not about time, but about the art, the creative act. Committing to the act of creating your art, whatever that may be. Because this is how I make meaning. This is how I am fulfilled emotionally as a person. And yes, sometimes it is a struggle. While NANO is a more visible goal that you are sort of sharing with countless other writers, it's just November, 30 days. And then it's over and writers have to keep working. 

I have always felt that art, which is my writing, unlike many other jobs and chores that take up part of our lives, is different, it requires nearly all of me to make it happen. NANO teaches you that. To do your work, some other things will be sacrificed. I already know TV, Movies, things like that are what I once sacrificed the most and now I know it's social media, too. Because I am going to read, and talk to my children, and take care of my house. I am going to exercise and garden in the spring and summer. But leisure time is small and precious. NANO teaches you HOW to choose, too. 

I often think of NANO as an exaggerated state of creating where IF you really want to finish your art and have a life of art aka writing, you can figure out in NANO what you can do and not do, not only in writing but in life as a writer. That's the kind of tool NANO can be. Most people laugh at NANO. A lot do. I used to. I never could finish a NANO. I never even kept the drafts in the few NANOs I did long ago. Garbage. But then last year I understood what NANO could really do, that it was an opportunity for some writers. 

I always like what John Irving said about writing: Half my life is an act of revision. NANO teaches you that, too.

NaNoWriMo Update and some rambling thoughts.

I always knew that if I ever wrote stories, they would be fairy tale stories and purely fantastical fiction or really Romances. The Goblin Market and the Pre-Raphaelites, Coleridge, Victorian novels and yes, Victorian fantasy influenced me. A. S. Byatt's fairy tales and novels. Angela Carter's fairy tales, especially The Erl-King. Even Gothics would play a part. The Bronte family, who really wrote brutal novels about love, almost horror, certainly fairy tale-ish. I remember China Mieville talking about Jane Eyre and how brutal a novel it was. Jane was practically starving her entire life and few people had been kind to her. She ended up marrying a brutish, spoiled man who had committed all sorts of offenses and their love could only completed after he was fully punished. Blind, the first wife dead. And then there was Heathcliff and the two Catherines, and all those other unpleasant or awkward offspring. Dickens was full of murder and brutal people. Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White haunted me in more ways than I can write here. Hawthorne, Melville, Hardy. What can I say. All these stories have, though not officially fairy tales, "fairy tale things," really. It would always be fairy tales for me. It would be about people, love, superstitions, maybe magic, and death. It would be about the weight of history. Because I understood the importance of geography and history. Ordinary girls would have to wage wars against extraordinary things to survive. And because I was southern, family would always play a part. Rambling thoughts this morning. I am almost finished with Nano. I have almost written 50,000 words in November. Good words. I never write really bad first drafts. I don't like them. I never use them. But this book is far from over. And of course, revisions will be done. I had to ask myself why now and not before? It was pretty easy to answer. This is very hard work and I just could never commit to this kind of life while my parents and Johnny were alive. They took up too much of my emotional capital. It's just that simple. And it's not even deeply psychological or frustrating, because I chose them over writing all the time. Writing a novel is a selfish act, it's not democratic, and sometimes it's not even sane. People who write for money do it better. I know this personally. Writing for a living makes sense. A job. I just pretended I was writing for money again, and I had a deadline and it was a job. And I will continue to do this job until the day I can no longer do it. Smiling.

My NANO word count today is 46,311 words at present. Because I am working and it will change.

Alice in Wonderland

 

There is no doubt from simply viewing this image that it was created in the 1960s. Everything about it screams counterculture. Jansson, regardless of this image, was an incredible talent, but this Alice is not a favorite. I collect Alice everything.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll 

illustrated by Tove Jansson, 1966

Why I am Silent Most of the Time.

It's time to consider most data, journalism, magazines, and politics to be exploitive. EVERYTHING that works to exploit for money or power, etc. rather than solve challenges and problems, rather than open discussions without shouting messages and preaching, for the common good of all people, is not productive, no matter which side of an issue it takes. We have come to a crisis point in history and social exchange where even good people are exploiting any issue, trivial or serious, as an expression of their momentary feelings or power plays in order to diminish one side or another, one view or another, and it's all an exercise of polarization. Fragmentation. Demoralizing and impotent. Because true change is problem solving and you can see it. It's not theory. While theory was once valid, it is now a serious handicap in polarization and diminishing "the other." Mistakes are always made in history, people. Mistakes are made now. Our brains are story telling processors, they are not always logical. Most days I cannot discern the lines between those seeking justice and those seeking revenge. Righteousness and sanctimonious posts, essays, and literature fill our lives in every single arena. We know a fascist when we see it. That's an easy one, because a fascist is working against democracy and often expresses his/her way as the only way. But everything else is kind of nuanced. When your way is the only way, pause.

I don't do culture wars or identity struggles anymore. This is probably the one and only time I will ever mention any of this. My timelines and blog, outside this one post, is free of any exploitation and sanctimonious messages. I am not silent in life just because I am silent here. I am committed to change and problem solving, but I do it in my community where it really happens in people's lives, through charities and hard work. I posted this because I have seen data used in magazines I once respected as exploitation. I have read interesting nonfiction full of the same, and I can hardly pick up a novel now that is not preaching at me. Book bans have come to mean more in the news than the fact that third graders are failing all across the country. They can't read well. They comprehend less. Discussions of mass killings catch the headlines when every single city is full of people facing death by gun violence from people in their own neighborhoods. We are a people living in fear and off fear. Gloom and Doom. Well, despite all this messiness, there is a whole lot of good in the world, a lot of beauty, and a reason to hope.

I don't live in the past, though I know it has a weight on me, that's evolution and geography, and yes, history. But I also don't live under the weight of futures that do not exist, and may never exist. I don't live in despair, and neither did my parents who existed during the Great Depression and World War II, who had none of the privileges I do. I don't barter in misery or seek validation here. It's entertainment and where I do find information or check out friends. I am an ordinary person, really, flawed, yes, a list of life's mistakes a mile long. I don't have a perfect life or a perfect face. I'm kind of plain and chose never to dye my hair. I am odd, too. Too blunt. Catholic in my thinking though I am highly flexible. I do value logic and a sense of humor. I value mercy and forgiveness as much as I value truth. Knowledge and data is not wisdom. Facts can be manipulated. Culture and trends pass. Morality even changes. And I am finished preaching.

Books I have Reread at least 5 times in the last 7 years. Amazing

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

Persuasion by Jane Austen.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Our Mutural Friend by Charles Dickens

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

The Quick by Lauren Owen,

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Rook by Sharon Cameron

Great Expectation by Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier

Moby Dick by Melville

Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Short Stories by Faulkner

Short Stories by Hemingway

Possession by A. S. Byatt

Book 1 and 2 Paradys by Tanith Lee.

City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer.

Wonder Tales Book by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Thorn Jack series by Katherine Harbour

Winter Rose by Patricia McKillip

Swordpoint by Ellen Kushner

and anything by romance writers Loretta Chase, Lisa Kleypas, and Laura Kinsale.

Happy Birthday Colin Lyric.

 Colin at the Memphis Zoo.

dave mikey nance reading nick land's critique of the left and mark fish ...

Creating means making mistakes.

 

Creating is messy. You should see my writing desk on a regular working day. Messy. Messy. Messy. On Friday afternoons, I stop and clean it up. All my little messes. To makes messes in the creative process is to make mistakes. To be wrong. To fail. I have been making mistakes in art and writing my entire life. Some of those mistakes are in print. Laughing. As I got older and more experienced, I began to think of creating anything as "big mistake-making adventures" which will involve a lot of destruction along the way. That's why rewriting and starting over and just working regularly are so important. You are going to write so many words that you will never use or paint or draw so many things you just don't like. Some creative acts are even traumatizing. Laughing. When I was young, I used to sort of deny my mistakes or try to rationalize them or work to cover them up. Now I just relish them. Fear of making mistakes, of being wrong, of failing, IS ABSOLUTELY the "creative mind killer." My best advice is not to ignore mistakes, defend them, fear them, or leave them uncorrected in infinity. Make them. Learn from them. Use them. But creating means making mistakes.

Nano Stats: 10,923 words

NaNoWriMo 2023 begins today.

You write. That’s the hard bit that nobody sees. You write on the good days and you write on the lousy days. Like a shark, you have to keep moving forward or you die. Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

— Neil Gaiman on writing

Goodbye October, you shall not be missed.

 

(I love this story. It's one of AC's most overlooked masterpieces.)

The King of Owls

 

art: La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Marc Fishman

For I am the King of Owls.

Where I float no shadow falls.

I have hungers, such terrible hungers, you cannot know.

Lords, I sharpen my talons on your bones.

— Louise Edrich

Gavriel's Promise

“I promise I will repay you.”

“Oh yeah?” she asked, looking at him, with his bare feet and plain, dark clothes. “With what?”

The smile stayed on his lips. “Jewels, lies, slips of paper, dried flowers, memories of things long past, useless quotations, idle hands, beads, buttons, and mischief.”

        ― Holly Black

      The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

An observation.

My mother had headaches a lot when my sister and I were growing up. Serious headaches, headaches of all kinds. Migraines. Sinus headaches, weather headaches. Headaches that took her to the hospital, BC powders, pain pills, even injections at the hospital. One day, several years ago now, my sister asked me, "Do you ever have a headache?" Laughing. I mean we are both older women. My reply was "I guess so." But she and I never say we do. We never complain of a headache out loud on any ordinary day. Perhaps this is due to our mother, our incredible mother. Because her headaches were really her war on the world, her coping, and her daughters will never say they have a headache. We don't. And I made this observation today because there is a woman in my feed who complains of a sinus headache almost every other day, and I thought why? Why is it so important to post on social media that you have a headache unless you are suffering from a serious illness, like a brain tumor or something equally important and even then, why do people share these things? Really. Why? I rarely share those things. It's like dissecting your daily life to nothing more than forensic details.

Details are not all that interesting (yes, I love dry details when reading or studying history) unless they mean something to your overall narrative.

The woman who constantly complains of sinus headaches in my feed on Facebook has them for obvious reasons. Her lifestyle, for example, the little things she does each day. I've noted that. Of course, these so-called sinus and pressure headaches, these mini migraines are not too bad, or she would alter her lifestyle. Well, one would assume that as an rational outcome.

Next book, create a character like this.

The Goblin Market cover by Housman

 

“Lie close,” Laura said,

Pricking up her golden head:

“We must not look at goblin men,

We must not buy their fruits:

Who knows upon what soil they fed

Their hungry thirsty roots?”

                — from The Goblin Market

                     Christina Rossetti

Next to Lestat, my favorite vampire is Gavriel from The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

She took a deep breath, "Last chance. Are you in need of rescuing?" His expression turned very strange, almost as if she'd struck him, "Yes, " he said finally.

           Tana, from The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

            Holly Black

The Erl-King

“He knows which of the frilled, blotched, rotted fungi are fit to eat; he understands their eldritch ways, how they spring up overnight in lightless places and thrive on dead things.” —Angela Carter, “The Erl-King”

Beautiful Arthur Rackham painting

 

From English Fairy Tales. 

🎨  Arthur Rackham

The language of the neurotic in distress

2 3 5 7 

11 13 17 19

23 29

31 37 

41 43 47 

53 59 

61 67

71 73 79 

83 89 

97

Bliss and Dance

“Against the blue day, her image lit upon his eye, as splendidly colorful as the butterflies. It pleased Nardi to think of her in this way - her energy as swift as sailing as the swallowtails', and erratic and hypnotic as the flit-and-flutter of skippers. She was both as ordinary as orange tips and as exotically impossible as the monarchs that made their way here every year across the Atlantic. This was her spirit, a thousand butterflies of every category and variety, crossbred into one magnificent specimen. Lepidoptera Hannaeus.”

                                    ― Judy Cuevas, Bliss

(Bliss and Dance, two beautiful classic Historical Romance novels written by Judy Cuevas aka Judith Ivory. These are part of my classic romance collection. Books I read over and over and have kept for many years. And not they are not for sale. Smiling)

Julius Von Klever "Forest King"

 

Julius Von Klever "Forest King"

Sometimes, it's not what is on the page concerning the character you are writing, but what is in the writer's head. A history.

Life.

“We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.” ― Louise Gluck

Widowhood

Arthur Boyd Houghton, "Widowhood," for Jean Ingelow's "Poems" 1867.

Today is my mother's birthday. October, 13th and a Friday, too. If she were alive, she would be very old, 104 years. That's too old, perhaps. I don't know. We all want to live forever, don't we?

I've been writing very hard on the WIP, The Ambitious Fairy Project, since July 1st, and I don't mean a crappy first draft. I don't write in drafts. I revise, rework, re-plot, rewrite, write new, etc. etc. etc. as I go, inching along toward the new while always looking at the old. I read it aloud a lot from the beginning and so forth. This is the  way I work and I am way over 250 pages at this point. Much more to go. I plot so I know the big stuff, even though surprising little stuff might pop up. That's the beauty of writing, all of this. But I have also been plagued this year by one illness or event after another. October has been cruel and I've made some mistakes, being highly reactive to that cruelty, too. This is part of being a widow, always doubting decisions that are not familiar from previous experience. I always had help before with my loving and trusted companion, my husband. Almost seven years gone now and goodness, I have made some disasters for myself, live and learn. I have also made some very good decisions. I suppose life is like that. But this year, wow, what a year of illness. One thing after another. I've worked on with the book, but the garden suffered. My confidence suffered.  My mental state, too. I have to get up every day, like it's a new world and talk myself into living the best life offered. That's how I roll right now. That's what I do. Talk myself into faith.

Living alone is hard. Choosing to live alone is even harder. There is a difference, because it's what you sacrifice that sometimes haunts you, that laughs at your efforts.

Being a widow sucks.

But I am determined to survive and live the best life possible.

Today I thought a lot about love. How much I loved and how I was loved and what a beautiful thing that is.

I thought about my personality some, that "just being" has always been one of my gifts, that the things I enjoy in life are so simple and easy to find. I know that I was privileged to have had a good relationship with Johnny and that I will always miss him.

I also miss my mother, that incredible force of Nature. Oh, she was. An original. Mother died right at 90 years of age, so she has been gone 14 years now. My father 16, my husband nearly 7. These are numbers I can hardly believe. And I have been alone without them in that singular and special way I remember...

There is an aloneness that I possessed even as a small child. That aloneness is different from being lonely. One can be lonely in a house filled with loved ones. No, I was alone as in separate. These three people could occasionally reach across that aloneness and touch me. I loved them deeply. Only my three sons and Haylee, Jamie, my grandchildren, my siblings touch me now. Perhaps a few friends. But not the way my parents or Johnny did. Not the way Johnny did.

Being a widow sucks.

I know much of this present sentiment is the result of illness and perhaps some depression that goes along with certain struggles. I know these feelings will change. They will pass.

It all passes. Places, People, Purpose.

But my loves are inspiration to me. Those living and those dead. 

Then why do I feel crushed.

CRUSHED.

(Feeling better today)

My motto until I die 2023.

"I believe that we, that this planet, hasn't seen its Golden Age. Everybody says its finished ... art's finished, rock and roll is dead, God is dead. Fuck that! This is my chance in the world. I didn't live back there in Mesopotamia, I wasn't there in the Garden of Eden, I wasn't there with Emperor Han, I'm right here right now and I want now to be the Golden Age ...if only each generation would realise that the time for greatness is right now when they're alive ... the time to flower is now.”

— Patti Smith

Blue (3)

 

The Angel of Power

 by Annael (Anelia) Pavlova

Blue (2)

 

The Lady in Blue

By Chris Polasko

Blue (1)

 

Blue (1)

The Night Fairy by Angela Barrett

The Innocents (1961) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers

My favorite ghost story. The Innocents. Based on the short story by Henry James and adapted by Truman Capote. There is so much I could say about this film, but won't right now due to time. I will come back to it later in the year. I want to post it here, now,  because I watch it every October as part of my 31 Days of Halloween. Not a year goes by that I don't look at it and wonder why modern directors cannot make films such as this. I love film. This is psychological for one, with subtext. Hollywood does not know how to do that well right now. They are trapped by the predicament of technology. How ironic.

 

"...I walked into the bird-haunted solitude of the Erl-King, who keeps his feathered things in little cages he has woven out of osier twigs and there they sit and sing for him." 

                               — The Erl-King,  Angela Carter. 

                                🎨 Igor Karash

Happy Birthday William Faulkner

 

I wish I was at home, still in the kitchen with my family around me and my hand full of Old Maid cards.

William Faulkner

(Happy Birthday, Bill.)

Anne Rice talks about writing on Facebook

I've been looking at all my Anne Rice books, thinking of my reading of her over the years, I remember vividly some of my thoughts when reading one of her books for the first time, thoughts which made my own journals or that I wrote as marginalia in the book. Rice was a consummate researcher and reader by personality and in this video she talks about that. Research was a part of her life. Reading was her life. Like myself, she read far more nonfiction than fiction. She said that she liked detail, those dry details that many people read over or soon forget. 'Those are the things I love.' In this video she talked a bit about Michael Curry whom she loved as much as she loved her character Lestat. 'Micheal Curry is equally important to me. She answers questions about her process while talking about writing. Writers face "constant battles" when creating. I sometimes believe it is absolutely neurotic to be sitting alone in a room, spending hours talking to imaginary people. But some of us are dreamers like this. She talks about those horrible moments of trying to shut off our minds after hours of creating, something I often experience.' I laughed and smiled when listening to her talk, because she was so "NOLA" Irish Catholic that it's funny at times and I so loved that because I also grew up in that kind of atmosphere in the South. Anne Rice was an incredible human being, a wonderful writer, a loving wife and mother, and was lucky in both her experience and career. Like all human beings she faced pain and suffering. Jack and I were talking about her and her dreams/goals and how she never really got her books to TV the way she wanted because she simply ran out of time. I don't watch the current series. I followed her carefully over the years and I knew what she wanted. 'I hope fans of the TV shows will buy her books and read her stories so they can see these characters as she envisioned them.' One of the most wonderful things about this particular video for me personally (as a writer) was Anne saying she does not work in drafts. I loved discovering that because I have felt so alone in the world of publishing at times. I do not write in drafts at all. I don't even understand that process. I don't really share my work or ideas, I keep them close to me. I don't need beta readers, and have never used a beta reader in my entire writing experience. I sometimes think I will, but never do. Usually other writers I know will see my work when I am done. Laughing. One "definitive" piece of advice Anne gives is about trusting your own emotional instincts, right or wrong. She did lament killing off Armand, and later brought him back to life. And I was surprised to find out how much editorial advice she took from Vicky when I knew how much freedom Anne had when working. But of course, Vicky and her had one of the longest editor/writer relationships in the history of publishing. I often wish I had been in the room when Vicky read Interview with a Vampire for the first time. In those years, Knopf was a literary, upmarket publisher (still is) and we all know Victoria Wilson knew she had never seen a book like Interview with a Vampire come across her desk. OMFG. Even now as I write this I am laughing, because my own experience in publishing gives me a true understanding of that moment. Vampires. Vampires at Knopf in the 1980s and not by some dead 19th century writer. Pardon me while I lie back in my chair and laugh while marveling at the thought of it. Of course, vampires were popular in genre fiction, but this was not genre fiction. Well, as they say, the rest is history. Yes, I have some friends who would never ever admit they had read an Anne Rice novel. A couple times, I gave them as Christmas presents to professors at college. They are full of philosophical thoughts and the cosmos is a metaphor for life. I miss Anne Rice. Her complexity. Her contradictions. Her love of beauty and understanding people who lived in the past. She got history better than most. Really. She had struggles. She was very nuanced in her thinking and often changed her mind, back and forth. That's a rare thing in the world right now. Too rare and a loss. I wanted to write this post because at some point I might not have time myself. We are all running out of time.

On Arthur Rackham

Haunted Wood, 1913, Arthur Rackham

"He became, in my eyes, a wizard who with one touch of his magic wand would people my imagination with elves, gnomes and leprechauns. He would make me gaze fixedly at a majestic tree with massive trunk, and tell me about the little men who blew their horns in elfland. He would say that under the roots of that tree, the little men had their dinner and churned the butter they extracted from its sap. He would also make me see queer animals and birds in the branches of the tree, and a magic door beneath its trunk..."

              — Walter Starkie's memoirs of his famous uncle

Rufus Wainwright - Sonnet 29 - Shakespeare

This is all I have to say today.

A Cassandra that nobody quotes or talks about now.

🎨 Leonard Baskin

The bee is domesticated but not tamed.

     — William Longgood

The Origin of Love (feat. KJ Apa, Lili Reinhart, Camila Mendes & Cole Sp...

I am reading The Symposium by Plato and I found this song which is version of Aristophanes's speech. Everything cost. Love is a wound. The search eternal.

Meet Me in the Woods - Lord Huron - Lyrics

This song is a new addition to my writing playlist. I don't choose songs because they are my favorites or what I normally like to listen to, but because the songs match the both the tone and meaning of a scene or multiple scenes happening in the book. I have written the ending of the book. This song is one of the last four songs on the writing playlist that support the ending of story and its tone and meaning. I really like Lord Huron, too, not just this particular song. It's been a great discovery. Taking a week off now to clean my house and rest. Before I tackle the middle of the book which is a mess.

The Fall of Rome by R.A. Lafferty

"Sometime in this period Alaric did penance for forty days in reparation for his murderous raids in Greece. He was subject to remorse, for which reason he cannot be ranked among the great military leaders of the world. And in this period also, the Goths became un-Gothed to a great extent. They caught the Greek fever and discovered sudden new talents in themselves. They borrowed stringed instruments from the Greeks--they had had only horns and bull-roarers before--and went music crazy. It has been mentioned that rhyme in verse and son appeared at the turn of that century for the first time ever in the world. Nobody knew where it came from, but all the peoples took it up at the same time. The Goths made ballads in rhyme, in their own language and in Low Latin; and these became almost the signature of that rural Goth springtime in Epirus that lasted four years.

When the impulse seized the Goths next, after martial interludes of more than five hundred years, they would be the troubadours of Languedoc in South France."

— The Fall of Rome by R.A. Lafferty

(How I love this book. Oh, what fun....)

(If only I could buy it. But no. Borrow.)

Working this morning.

 

When writing a book, one has to be many things besides just the creative writer. Creating is one aspect of writing a novel. At some point, one has to become a stern reader, an experienced editor, a capable book doctor, meaning rewrites if necessary. One has to be able to look at the work and know what its weaknesses are and if the book can sustain those weaknesses or not. For example The Night Circus, it's exquisite at many points, but it does have a weakness, drama and plot, especially toward the ending. However, that was a weakness the book in totality could carry, and the reader does not care. Atmosphere held it up, it's own enchantment. But certain readers do feel that weight, the ambiguity, especially when concerning Celia and Marco. How working writers learn how to examine this is: They simply take the magic away from The Night Circus and then look at it without the exquisite language and atmosphere. This is what editors do. This is what book doctors learn. This is what very stern readers can see. This is one of my favorite books and I can see this with no judgment as a beloved reader. But as a writer, I have to know it. I have to know it, because I love this book intensely and I admire the atmosphere, and I want to learn those skills, but I also want a plot. Can a book like this hold both? Is it necessary? If one chooses plot and drama, does one forfeit atmosphere? Hmm. Questions for this morning.

My favorite female writers who are influencers.

I was just thinking, after Angela Carter, Russian writer, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, has had the most influence on me. These two women. There are others. Isak Dinesen, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Mary Gaitskill, and of course, Shirley Jackson and A.S. Byatt.

Musing on Angela Carter this Saturday morning....

My sister and friends are always sending me Angela Carter articles and essays to hang on my wall. Perhaps this is because I do connect with Carter in many ways. For one, she was never likely to toe the party line or simply resign herself to the current political. She liked complicated. She was interested in contradictions. Questions were necessary. Agendas were small. Carter could never have been an academic in the traditional sense. Publish or perish, searching for new directions all the time, a head rolling with purposes and theories, riding the waves of trends. She saw right through those constructs and gimmicks. She was formidable. I admire all these aspects of her personality and basically over the years, turned similar.

            Jane, Notes. August 5, 2023