Boyz' noyz

These cats do just love making noises. Causing noises, rather, external to themselves. Before I threw out the old chest of drawers, Baz used to sit on top of that and reach a long paw down to rattle a drawer-handle, over and over. Now, deprived of that pleasure, he has found a loose floorboard on the upper landing that makes a resounding sound under pressure. So he jumps onto it from the window-sill. Over and over.

Meanwhile, any moment now, I am going to walk all through the upper storey of this house to the bathroom and bodily remove Mac from the toilet cistern, where he is just standing and rocking the porcelain lid back and forth, because that also makes a most irritating cat-satisfying sound...

Liveblogging the fatal ramble

It hardly counts as a deathmarch, if you can do it in a day. This, then, is the fatal ramble towards finishment and delivery of HIDDEN CITIES. I started this day with fifty pages left to revise...

Ten pages down, forty to go.
Deadline: six-thirty tonight (I have a dinner date at seven).
Pints of coffee consumed: one
Nutriments: one apple, one Christmas orange*
Next anticipated nutriment: chocolate!
Distractions: a few chapters of The Count of Monte Cristo. Nothing more. The internets are empty.
Feline assistants: none. It's warmer downstairs. My lap is empty.
Darling-so-far: Not the boat, it was the sea that mocked; and all mockery is a lie.

*a phrase I owe to mizkit, and which encompasses all tangerines, satsumae, etc etc, and which I use in this instance because I cannot remember which kind of variety of small easy-peeled orange it actually was.

Liveblogging the fatal ramble - 2

Nineteen pages down. Thirty-one to go.

Deadline: still six-thirty. It's looking easy.
Pints of coffee consumed: one two
Nutriments: one apple, one Christmas orange, one white chocolate snowman, one crystalised plum in chocolate
Next anticipated nutriment: soup!
Distractions: a few chapters of The Count of Monte Cristo. Still nothing more. Internets still empty.
Feline assistants: still none. Still warmer downstairs. Traitorous little fuzzbutts.
Darling-so-far: He swayed like weed in the turning tide, and felt the water drag his dreams away.

Liveblogging the fatal ramble - 3

Thirty pages down. Twenty to go.

Deadline: still six-thirty. *is overconfident*
Pints of coffee consumed: still two
Nutriments: one apple, one Christmas orange, one white chocolate snowman, one crystalised plum in chocolate, one bowl of curried carrot-and-celeriac soup with bacon croutons and one slice of granary toast with grilled goat's cheese.
Next anticipated nutriment: hmm - more soup, perhaps? That was nice...
Distractions: a few chapters of The Count of Monte Cristo. Bored of emptiness of internets: no longer looking.
Anticipated distraction: wintry Olympics! I may be some time... (Please not to ask me why I want to watch healthy young people in skintight clothing tangling their limbs as they slide around on cold stuff. *is mystery to self*)
Feline assistants: Mac cleaned the soup-bowl. Barry cleaned the toast-plate.
Weather: snow!
Darling-so-far: There was violence everywhere, in that machine and all these machinations, in chains and hammer-blows and heat, in the tiger and its woman and every man here: violence contained, potent, ready. Even the temple idols were a trap.

Liveblogging the fatal ramble - endpost

Fifty pages down, none to go.

Deadline: n/a. I just have to send it now. I'd rather not; I'd rather have another pass. It's not the book I wanted it to be. They never are. For now, I think, this'll do.
Pints of coffee consumed: still two
Tea: Jasmine Monkey King
Nutriments: one apple, one Christmas orange, one white chocolate snowman, one crystalised plum in chocolate, one bowl of curried carrot-and-celeriac soup with bacon croutons and a slice of granary toast with grilled goat's cheese, one chocolate biscuit.
Next anticipated nutriment: ah, always that quandary. This is my time for drinking, but ought I to drink, before a dinner date? I suppose I could have another cup of tea. But I shall have just delivered a novel, ended a contract... I deserve a drink.
Distractions: n/a - nothing left to be distracted from, until I sort out what I do next.
Feline assistants: useless unnecessary creatures, imbisible cats.
Darling of the day:
( spoiler for Jade Man's Skin )

Aaand...

It's gone. It is in my editor's hands, or at least her inbox.

What shall I ever do now with my days?

Well, let's see. I need to:

Revise the proposal for GETTING CARTER, or at least cut it, because it is Too Slow for America.

First line: Actually, Carter isn't a house at all. It's a historical document, a chessboard, a state of mind.

Revise "I Shaved Half-Emperor Cyrrhenius" for the TWF anniversary antho.

First line: Hands? These hands are the steadiest in the demi-monde.

Revise Sekrit Projekt, on which I have been far too dilatory.

First line: (sekrit, obviously)

Finish "Skander", the first of the Alexandria stories; I've been writing it for years now, way too long.

First line(s): Skander: city of exiles, assassins, plotters and panders and whores. City of poets, of lovers, of embassies, liars of every hue.

City of corruption, too effete even to revel in its shame. Its public face is its arse, thrust out at the world in a weary self-exposure.

Skander sits on every man’s horizon, my own not otherwise.

Write the proposal for GINGERSMITH et seq.

Aaand something else, I'm sure. Probably some things else.

Oh, and get my head around a lot of curious technical stuff before I go to California. Next week.

Eek.