Creeping Along

[pameladean]

Spring is doing that, sneaking up very slowly. Temperatures edging, not leaping, into the fifties; buds getting stealthily larger; snow shrinking away from the sidewalks and sinking into the soggy, leaf-laden ground. I have heard the chickadees "Phoebe" each to each, and actually, I think they'll sing to me, too. The robins have added their melodious evening whistle to the annoyed squawking they were practicing earlier. Woodpeckers are trying out single, slightly petulant notes, and running up and down tree trunks. The tulips that were coming up before the snow are still coming up, a sixteenth of an inch a day, just in case.

The book is creeping along, a steady but very definitely tortoise-like pace. I don't know that I will ever get back to my usual daily wordcount, a fairly modest two thousand words or so. I'm not perfectly sure that I wish to; that way may lie RSI, which so far I have managed to avoid. Maybe you have to run faster to get its attention.

Tam Lin will be reissued later this year, in its lovely new cover. In the intervals of staring at my novel, I've been wrestling with the necessity of writing a little inside-back-cover essay about The Dubious Hills, which will be reissued next year. Writing that book in the first place was quite bad enough. I had to do those essays for the Secret Country books too, and I'm not very happy with the results, but at least I had a greater distance from those books.

I'm bouncing off my mental walls because Eric is coming to visit during his spring break. It hasn't been so very long since we saw one another, but it's been more than long enough. We will be going to see "Princess Ida" and Hamlet, and otherwise either hibernating or trying to sneak up on the springtime.

I have just read Diane Duane's Wizards at War andTo See the Queen, evilly pretending that they are research. In some sense, really, they are. I enjoyed them as I always enjoy Duane; if I have quibbles, they will surface on the rereading. I also acquired and read L. M. Montgomery's Pat of Silver Bush andMistress Pat, so that I could have some kind of Montgomery fix without wearing out The Blue Castle and the Emily books. As with Duane, I find Montgomery compulsively readable even when, as I do about a hundred times more often with Montgomery, I have a violent disgreement with some principle inherent to the structure of their work.

I have to go glare at my chapter again now. Take care, you guys. It's a dangerous time of the year.

P.

Comments

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

She's got a new Wizard book out?! Coolness! I was looking for her stuff (and tried to stear my oldest nephew towards Duane's books.)

[pameladean]

Yes, and it's a nice fat one, too.

P.

[oneminutemonkey.livejournal.com]

I am so happy that they'll be reissuing Tam Lin. It is, hands-down, one of my two favorite books ever, along with War For The Oaks. It's one of those very few books where I can pick it up at anytime, open it to any page, and read happily for a while, losing myself in the poetic prose and beautiful ebb and flow of the words. To me, it exemplifies everything that's right and possible about urban fantasy or magic realism. Blackstock is the college I've always wished I could have gone to; Janet and Christina and Molly and Rob and Robin and Thomas are the people I've always wanted to know. And everytime I read this book, I wish I could put words together like that, despite knowing damn well I have my own style.

I've gone through a number of copies of this book in the past 15 or so years, however long it's been since I first ran across it, and I expect I'll add at least one more copy to my collection later this year.

I'm not normally so sentimental about a book, but Tam Lin's always struck a chord with me. :>

[pameladean]

And people ask me what good my education was.

Thank you.

P.

[msss.livejournal.com]

I thought it was only me! But yeah, War for the Oaks and Tam Lin are the two that I've hunted and hunted across the Internet and second hand book stores. And now I think I'll order a new copy to lend out, because the Fairytale series one is a bit fragile and the cover far too pretty to be ruined...

[gwyneira.livejournal.com]

I'm very glad Tam Lin is being reissued. Partly because that's just generally good news, and partly because now I can recommend it to people without the "it's out of print, and sorry, you can't borrow my precious hardcover copy" proviso, which always makes me feel very miserly.

Wow, I haven't seen a production of "Princess Ida" in years. Our local G&S society is excellent, but for financial reasons, they lean a little more heavily than I'd like on "Mikado", "Pirates", and "Pinafore", to the detriment of the lesser-performed operettas.

[pameladean]

Yes, now you can lend them a new paperback. Well, soon, anyway.

I've never seen "Princess Ida" at all. The Gilbert and Sullivan Very Light Opera Company does the famous operettas more often than the obscure ones, but the obscure ones do get done.

P.

[aynatonal.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad to hear about the Tam Lin re-issue. Over the years, I've read my copy right out of its cover!

[pameladean]

I have to say, no matter how many times I hear that, it cheers me right up every time.

P.

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

Is The Blue Castle the one with the protagonist with the disagreeable family who's told she has a year to live and casts them all to the winds in search of happiness?

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is.

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

O happiness. I've been idly wanting to reread it but couldn't remember the title!

Thank you!

[pameladean]

It was reissued comparatively recently, with a cover to match the Anne and Emily books, which is a bit odd, really.

I find it hilarious and moving every time.

P.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Oh, good! I've been wanting to give _Tam Lin_ to my mother-in-law, also named Janet, also a grad student about the same time as your Janet. :) But the only used book-shop copy I've found is at least as well-read as my first copy, so I'd love to give her a new one instead.

[pameladean]

I'm always happy to contribute to family harmony. 8-)

It's a very handsome edition, I think.

P.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Tam Lin will be reissued later this year, in its lovely new cover

HOORAY!

[pameladean]

I just took Eric on a TAM LIN tour of Carleton. I was quite embarrassed at how I kept forgetting things. I may have to read the new edition myself.

P.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Aww, a virtual or in-person "Tam Lin tour" of Carleton sounds lovely.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I think I already said yay about the Tam Lin, I know I did to Sharyn, along with suggested cover-designs. Later this year is good, it will solve many Christmas present problems.

The Pat books have always struck me as deeply peculiar. I mean there's a girl who's in love with a house. In fantasy, I wouldn't bat an eyelid, but this is supposed to be early C.20 Canada. And is the end really the only thing Montgomery can imagine to end the relationship? Has she no concept of polyamory even such that one could love both a human being and a house? I mean she must have, because Anne loves avenues and ponds and Diana Barry as well as Gilbert, so she must have been doing it on purpose to see where it went, do you think?

[pameladean]

It is deeply peculiar. I thought until the end that she didn't just love the house, she loved the house and land, like loving a dryad who had to stay with one tree, and the problem was that loving anybody else would mean that she had to leave her first love; one of those perplexing insoluble dilemmas that you get even in polyamory.

After the end, I just don't know. I think your observation about fantasy is astute, though. There's an odd fantastical streak in a lot of Montgomery that she just doesn't seem to know what to do with. It has to be subsumed in rebuked imagination, a lot of the time, or explained by poetic imagination (Walter Blythe being really prophetic, and Paul Irving not), but it always seems to want to come out more.

P.

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

I forgot to mention yesterday, but I saw a cardinal --actually heard him first. Then I ran up to him yelling, "Why'd you guys pick Ratzenberger to be Pope??"

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

Hee.

[pameladean]

A flock of nice red finches would have done a far better job, I believe.

P.

[queenbookwench.livejournal.com]

So excited for the Tam Lin reissue! I love it myself, and I have a good friend who became an English major basically because she wanted to be Janet Carter. :)

[pameladean]

I hope she wasn't sorry!

P.

[gwynraven.livejournal.com]

Nope, I never was :) Although I did have to get over the fact that *no one* is Janet Carter *g*

[lcohen]

yay for progress on book! yay for _tam lin_ reissue! yay!!!! for eric visit and "princess ida" although now i have an earworm.

am filled with sadness that i will not see you at wiscon. i won't be at minicon, either and it's been two years and, well, *pout*. i just have to let you know when i go up there but i am bad about that.

[pameladean]

I know, and we are stuck right in the middle of a conversation.

I knew you'd be here last summer, but I just didn't make it to the party I knew you'd come for. Hot weather makes me turn into a pudding. So we are both equally bad.

P.