Beginnings
Aug. 3rd, 2012 04:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceSo I wrote all these books, long since vanished: and one by one, I am hopeful that they will all reappear. Two, as we know, have been reissued under the Book View Cafe imprint (and if you were hoping to take advantage of our Dog Days of Summer sale, hold your horses: there's been a technical glitch, and the coupon codes aren't working at the moment).
Now I want to add another. Heroic archaeological work by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler back in England, scraping data off half a dozen dodgy floppies, has secured an e-text of Dispossession, the third of my urban fantasies from the mid-nineties. Once I've cleaned it up and checked it over, we'll buckle down to all the formatting and so forth. And try to think about a cover, yay. Why do e-books need covers, again? *is baffled*
In the meantime, just as a teaser, for those of you who haven't read the book in other form: this is how it opens. I still like this.
PHILOXENIA
Everyone does this once, at least, or should do:
where you wake up in the wrong bed with the wrong body nestled close, unfamiliar smells on the sheets and in their hair and a beat of blank in your memory before their name comes to mind, a touch of strange where you touch them because their touch is so different to what your skin is used to, what your bones expect. You listen to their breathing as they sleep, and even that's out of kilter with rhythms long established in your head; and you're so, so glad they're still sleeping, because you realise suddenly that you have no idea what colour their open eyes will be, or how your face will look reflected in them.
They say we fall in love to reinforce our own self-image; perhaps we sleep around to do the opposite, to remind ourselves that others see us differently, or can do. That we all have other faces, the possibility of alternate lives.
Whatever, it's a thing that happens, we're not a naturally monogamous species; and once, yes, once is terrific. Once in a while is okay, though you don't want to make a habit of it. But every day, every day I wake up with a stranger.
I'm getting to know her well.
Now I want to add another. Heroic archaeological work by
durham_rambler back in England, scraping data off half a dozen dodgy floppies, has secured an e-text of Dispossession, the third of my urban fantasies from the mid-nineties. Once I've cleaned it up and checked it over, we'll buckle down to all the formatting and so forth. And try to think about a cover, yay. Why do e-books need covers, again? *is baffled*In the meantime, just as a teaser, for those of you who haven't read the book in other form: this is how it opens. I still like this.
PHILOXENIA
Everyone does this once, at least, or should do:
where you wake up in the wrong bed with the wrong body nestled close, unfamiliar smells on the sheets and in their hair and a beat of blank in your memory before their name comes to mind, a touch of strange where you touch them because their touch is so different to what your skin is used to, what your bones expect. You listen to their breathing as they sleep, and even that's out of kilter with rhythms long established in your head; and you're so, so glad they're still sleeping, because you realise suddenly that you have no idea what colour their open eyes will be, or how your face will look reflected in them.
They say we fall in love to reinforce our own self-image; perhaps we sleep around to do the opposite, to remind ourselves that others see us differently, or can do. That we all have other faces, the possibility of alternate lives.
Whatever, it's a thing that happens, we're not a naturally monogamous species; and once, yes, once is terrific. Once in a while is okay, though you don't want to make a habit of it. But every day, every day I wake up with a stranger.
I'm getting to know her well.