Happy birthday to coffee_and_ink

[pameladean]

Below the cut-tag are a couple of paragraphs of the short story I'm writing for sdn. Of course anybody may look at them who is interested, and indeed I hope suddenly that they may please my wonderful editor while she's waiting for me to finish the hell up, but I am posting them for coffee_and_ink's birthday specially. I don't think that they are spoilerish, but if you are very rigid about the matter, you might.



So Dri, whose childhood ambition had been to own and pull a footcab, catching nefarious villains in the process, came to work for the Red Temple. In the event she did not ask about reading the archives. Mundri, the chief librarian of this branch of the Red Temple's documents, was almost as forbidding as Dri's not-hated, non-arguing aunt. Mundri did not brook much argument either. When Dri pointed out that one's spiritual advisors told one to argue, Mundri said dryly that Dri could argue with the priests all she liked, but she was not to argue in the library.

Dri liked her priest, a young placid woman called Atliae. Atli argued with her, but Atli also let her talk. At home, unless one happened to be bleeding heavily or running a fever, it was more or less impossible to speak more than a sentence without having it discussed in detail. Their mother had had to be very firm repeatedly before the bleeding and the fevers were let off the general requirement of discussion. Dri enjoyed home quite a lot, but talking about herself in paragraphs was enchanting, like eating as many cinnamon cakes as you wanted and neither being scolded nor ending up with a stomach-ache.


Pamela

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Most tempting!

[pameladean]

I've been a bit slow to catch on to the function of LJ as a means of shoring up one's failing confidence, and I hope I shan't overuse it, but thank you very much.

P.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

*g*

Looking forward to those progress reports, because those, in turn, mean anticipation of good reading.

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

I love the reference to cinnamon!

[pameladean]

I have spent a large portion of the writing of this story making myself very hungry indeed.

P.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Your writing is musical.

I love this.

[pameladean]

Thank you, Jackie.

P.

[qe2.livejournal.com]

Oh. Oh oh oh.

Is this set in Liavek?

[pameladean]

Indeed it is.

P.

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

So Liavek lives. I was thinking about you folks earlier this evening, when, standing in the line for the registers at the Borders in Westwood, I saw a book by Bill Shetterly that someone had misplaced on the counter.

By the way, the science fiction/fantasy section had two of your books, but none of Kara's. I happened to look for anything by John DeChancie (with whom I had dinner last night), so I looked for other people I knew under "D."

[pameladean]

"Wow," I thought, reading the above, "this person must go WAY back if zie calls Will Shetterly 'Bill.'" So I looked at your LJ. Hi there.

My books just got reissued, whereas Kara's are probably in a kind of limbo at this point, so it's not too surprising. Say hello to John, if he is actually around rather than having breezed through a convention or something.

P.

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

I remember Ursula Le Guin reading a portion of a short story on NPR's "Weekend Edition" and then calmly saying that the book had been refused by a few publishers. Talk about cruel! I wonder if it was part of the reason why someone eventually did publish Searoad.

So, teasing us with a few paragraphs today?

[pameladean]

Well, I hope not. This is an outtake from the rejected Liavek novel, and I hope that it will be pleasing as a short story, when finished, to the editor who invited me to write her something.

P.

[sdn.livejournal.com]

see below.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I want to read this!

[sdn.livejournal.com]

::grinning broadly::

keep on going. this is great.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Oooooh. This is absolutely charming and tantalizing.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Oh, this year I got some of the best presents *ever*. Thank you!

[pameladean]

My pleasure, and very glad to hear it.

P.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

How lovely. *hug* thank you for letting us see it.

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

AOL.

[pameladean]

Thank the birthday person.

Well, all right, you can thank me too. I could have put it behind a filter.

You're welcome. I am more than recompensed for the very minor trouble.

P.

[diony.livejournal.com]

This is a very nice thing to find on a gray Monday morning -- except now I want more!

[homemakerj.livejournal.com]

There's something very special about you and your writing.

[lcohen]

delicious in so many ways! thank you for sharing it with all of us!