This is how it works

[desperance]

I've been in Derby, with Gail-Nina Anderson and Sean O'Brien, for a Phantoms event (again a sell-out - book now for Newcastle this Xmas!). Yesterday afternoon, Gail and I went to the city art gallery (one of the things I love to do with Gail - she's an art historian by training, and you get acuity, knowledge and anecdotes all in one; she opens paintings up for me, as no one else ever has). In the Joseph Wright room, there's a painting of a wise man holding forth over an orrery, and there in front of the painting is either the selfsame orrery or (rather more likely, I fancy) an accurate replica thereof.

I have, of course, always wanted an orrery. We pressed the button and watched it work, and tried to list the major moons of Jupiter, and like that.

This morning, having breakfasted and having time to kill before the train, I went for a walk, and on the way:

I thought "Damn, I need to write a new ghost story for Phantoms this Christmas"

and then I thought "Hey, I could write one with an orrery in it!"

and then I thought "It could be called 'The House of Mechanical Pain'"

and then I thought "and it would be about clockwork, teeth & gears, inevitability"

and then I thought "and I could structure it like an orrery, separate sections for all the planets and their moons"

and then I thought "that might be overcomplicated for a short story that I have to read aloud"

and then I thought "it would work very well as the structure for a novella, though"

and then I thought "and it would be about a family reunion, and it could be called "An Orrery of Treasons", and it would be about many separate betrayals, each character passing on the baton of betrayal to the next"

and then I thought "is all fiction about betrayal? Love and death are the great themes of literature, but it could be that they are all expressed through betrayal, one way or another"

and then I sat on the train and made lists in my head, and I have not yet found the novel that refutes me.