Goat Notes

The Princess out of Time: 480 words.  Theological discovery of the day - my Saturnists find the idea of 'eternity' somewhere between silly and blasphemous.  Their conceptualization of Faerie is... interesting: not necessarily especially insightful as a whole, but it's certainly got some illuminating new angles, and some interesting new candidates for the category.

Fairies best not irritated at your daughter's naming feast, Lesson One: Atropos.

Only for 85 words this morning, but after weeks of "I got nothing!", that feels like a bigger deal than it sounds.

Been quietish as well as story-dry lately - partly through a sort of bloggetty exhaustion, partly due to RL stuff of the mostly-good kind. I may mention some of this biz at a later stage: can't just yet.

But I can hear the Muses singing...

Lob Lazy at the House of Silence: 480 words, writing the ritualistic fairy-tale linkage between eucatastrophe and dénouement while it's hot. Or, in this case, while pleasantly crisp and chill.

This has been giving me some interesting insights, not only into the Kateverse's alt-Scandinavian cultures, but into the things they know that maybe I don't. This linkage stuff, for instance, strikes a seam in their folklore that... well. There are Deep Mysteries in this world that Katy Elflocks knows about, and the gods and the Elvish Court and suchlike; but here's plain proof that at least one other mortal once learned them too. Likely in more detail than Katy, who has other cares and interests she considers much more wholesome.

I wonder now who this world's Woden-figure really was. If he wasn't exactly Mercury after all, but knew something of the god's ways... and didn't mind screwing around with some heavy necromantic crap... Oho!  He could be my ultimate source, and plenty more.   I wonder whether I'll ever get to develop any of that. Not in anything I'm writing at present, either way.

And here, as a special bonus because it is gibbering away in my head, is a little riddle-chant those healthy hearty Nordic nannies like to teach their children.

There is probably a reason that all the Nordic-descended cultures seem to have drifted towards bland mainstream neo-Olympianism.

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 910 words.  Mostly Okay Genius makes his move.  My heroes aren't the only people who can play "Let's You and Him Fight!" without saying a word or copping the blame.  Also, he is better at it than they are.

The World on Maltby Edge, I now discover, is sung to a traditional tune called Riding over Alland.  Which figures.  The highly-coloured imagery seems to be inspired by it, too.  Words of that version keep intruding on my day, but I am resisting them, because I am quite earwormed enough already without encouraging it any further, and also because I suspect the totality of those lyrics would be of small interest to anybody but some future Northdales equivalent of Cecil Sharp.

I know that Riding over Alland is itself only a slight modification of some real and stirring tune in this world - I'm a non-musician and couldn't possibly compose anything half that good offhand on my morning commute, or most likely ever - but however irritatingly familiar it is, I can't quite put my finger on where I've nicked it from.

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 360 words, of comradeship and Bonecold Refugee.

The Wave That Broke on the Ingerfell: A complete 2,400 word Kateverse short story!  An earthy folk-tale from Cauldale of how Kit Fox tried to scam a penny bag of nails from somebody, and everything got completely out of hand.  Chicken Little meets Rudyard Kipling for a story which reflects nothing that ever happened or nearly happened in the 'historical' Kateverse at all, except that Kit Fox happened to it.

I didn't foresee the actual climax of the story until just before I wrote it.  This was just pure fun in motion, all the way through.

Very little redrafting needed.  This I can handily do in time for International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, to which The Wave That Broke on the Ingerfell is now scheduled as my contribution.  I wondered what I was going to be able to whip up for that!

A happy New Year to one and all!

I have not been awful active in a literary way over the holiday. 2,650 words of Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland, all of them from a long Council of Infodump very little of which will survive the redraft. But the developments it sparked have changed both my present chapter and the whole dynamic of the Rising beyond all expectation. Again, I am cast upon strange tides, and many-braided Allwater has taken me to some places I never imagined I'd see.

Two new visions which may bear future fruit, and which have at least helped keep me out of mischief. One was a reverie into which I fell upon the Holyhead train, in which I learned that one Man's Eru is another Orc's Azathoth - and that one side's desperate doomed stand against overwhelming horror and power can look remarkable similar on the other side of the lines. But not necessarily in the same genre. I like Doc Wolfram and Splicewire and the Lady of the Last Ditch almost as much as I would hate to live in their world, and it is just conceivable that I've met a dark fantasy notion with enough heart that I might be able to yarn about it. Certainly I haven't stopped having new flashes about that setting yet.

...And one that came to me in a dream, of a hunt on St Lucy's Eve, where I involved myself in a thousand-year adventure with St Lucy herself, and the Titaness Luna, and a charming and witty Iranian emigrée named Soraya, to wrest the light of the world from the heartless legalist glare of Delian Apollyon.  The end of this dream is not yet, so I shall say no more.  But if there is really a sensible answer to its central problem, I should give a great deal to be able to tell of that, too.

Ars longa, vita brevis, as always.

Meanwhile, here is a merry year's-getting toast from me and all the Katherines; and here are certain New Year's resolutions, looking to a day when they have gone to their long slushpile. 

Wassail, dear friends and good neighbours!  Drink hale! 

[Glug]