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

[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...