He's not normal. I swear he's not.

...Or maybe I'm wrong, maybe all cats harbour a secret yearning for baked goods. The girls were fond of toast. Preferably buttered, and extra-preferably spread with Gentleman's Relish, but the dry bready crunchiness would always do on its own.

Barry, it transpires, hath a passion for croissants. His antennae are sensitive enough to detect the buttery flaky goodness through three layers of packaging, and his wrinkly-wet-walnut brain is smart enough not to be defeated by the zips on my bag. Which is why he had First Breakfast sometime in the night, and I was half a croissant short this morning.

(PS - yes, he still got Second Breakfast, undiminished. One does not diminish Barry's breakfast. He would sulk, for values of sulking that - well, you wouldn't want to go there.)

(no subject)

This is actually a sidebar to that 'How (not) to Write a Novel' meme that we've been playing with, because it was only as I finished off my entry that I realised I'd said nothing about research. I suppose I was focused on the writing process, and I do still think that writing and researching are entirely separate proceedings: input and output, if you like.

Besides, I hate research, always have. A friend once described this attitude as: "Oh, Chaz hates research. He does like finding things out, mind," which I think is entirely fair and true. And reasonable. I dislike the formal mindset of researching, that sense of being on a mission, to seek out what facts will enhance a novel; it runs totally counter to my whole sense of what a novel is, which is really not enhanceable by facts.

However, serendipity is a fabulous thing. You take what comes to you, accept it with gratitude and use it with glee. Or I do. Like this:

When I was a younger man, and writing crime thrillers, I did no active research at all. I knew the world I was writing about fairly well, so I just wrote the books as I wanted them to be, and then had various specialist friends - doctors, lawyers, social workers, criminals - read them for glaring errors, and then I'd rewrite as little as I had to. Storytelling values are not courtroom values; it's about credibility, not accuracy.

But. I was on a panel at a con, and we were talking about research, and I was occupying my usual place as heretic, and the subject of petrol-bombs came up, because two of us had recently been writing about them. Nick Royle had done the thing properly, gone to the fire brigade, persuaded them of his bona fides and discussed the common street recipe (which is a little more complicated than petrol-in-a-bottle). I had gone for a walk, and bumped into this lad I knew because he'd burgled my flat a few times. So we sat on a wall for a chat, and we'd recently had riots in the area, and of course he'd been involved, so he told me all about it. Including how to make petrol-bombs. So Nick and I both ended up with the same information, only by different avenues of access; and I'd just reached that point in my I-don't-do-research spiel when he said "But Chaz, that is research," which of course it is. Only it's serendipitous research, unsought-out. I'd have got by without it, but you use whatever comes.

Then I started writing fantasy, and was appalled by how much research it needs. I used to think this was ironic ("there I was writing real-world books, with no research at all; now here I am writing made-up worlds, and I have to research it all so carefully..."). Again it's a panel pleasantry, but my favourite exemplar goes like this: if I'm writing a contemporary crime story and my character has to move from Newcastle to Carlisle, I know how to do that. By car, by train, by bus: I know how far it is, how long it takes, everything I need. The first of my Outremer books has a girl being carried by eight strong men in a litter across a semi-desert landscape. How far can eight strong men carry one teenage girl in a litter in one day? In the heat? And if she picks up a hitch-hiker, toss a second girl into the litter, how far then? (I have a book that talks a lot about mediaeval travel, but sadly says nothing on this topic. Happily, these days we have the internet, and re-enactors; there are people out there who are bizarrely eager to find these things out on my behalf...)

So I am conscious, indeed self-conscious these days, of the need to research; and happily most of it is reading books, and I enjoy that anyway. But serendipity is still my favourite. Mild spoilers ahead, but I came across the story of President Mitterand's last meal (here's a brief account, tho' I had a better) and was fascinated by it; then I was at a crime-writers' conference attending a lecture on poisons, and the lovely specialist who was talking to us told a tale of four Italians who went hunting songbirds, and cooked their kill and ate it, and so died, because the birds had been feasting on hemlock which does them no harm but is still lethal to us even post-digestion and post-roasting; and the timing was immaculate, so I took a contemporary French president's gourmandising and some contemporary Italians' exotic deaths and joined them together and gave them to an imaginary Ottoman. And as above: I'd have got by without it, but you use whatever comes. And Lord, but that was a good one...

While I'm waiting...

Hee. I am the world's most oppressively punctual person, especially when I'm waiting to be picked up; ready early, already pacing and scowling and glancing at watches ten minutes before my lift is due.

By contrast, none of my friends is punctual. At all. If the phone rings ten minutes before my lift is due, I don't even need to answer it; I just know, they're running late, they'll be an extra half-hour or whatever. It's astonishing that I have any friends left at all. By rights, they should all have disowned me by now, on account of the black looks and the snarking and the silent longsuffering and the occasional holding forth on discourtesy, etc.

However, here's an unexpected bonus: while I'm waiting, I don't actually have to pace and scowl. I can turn my computer back on again and play on LJ.

As it happens, I'm waiting for LJers: shewhomust and durham_rambler and I are heading north, via samarcand's new house, to a wee fishing village on the Northumberland coast, where we shall celebrate the wedding of m'friend'n'colleague Val McDermid and m'new publisher Kelly Smith. This for values of "wedding" that obviously include love'n'affection and so forth, plus complete religious & conservative disapprobation, hurrah! So we're going to party & dance & stay over in a pub. It'll be good. Eventually.

[Note to self: do not snark. These people read this journal.]