As I get older, the 4th of July comes closer and closer to being my favorite holiday (still edged out by Halloween for obvious reasons). It’s not that I’m a big flag waver or anything; I just like it because on Independence Day it’s actually cool to be a history nerd. People want to talk about it, to badmouth it or praise it or whatever. I like the company.

Plus, we do it while blowing things up. (Haha, read Aaron Polson’s three line flash piece “The Bet” to celebrate.) It’s the American Way.

Since I don’t like to drink and blog, this will be my happy Independence Day post. Have a good one! Here’s a little illustration of my idea of patriotism, the bad-ass mug I bought at the National Archives this week:

What? It’s Thomas Jefferson– that makes it patriotic, dammit.

And for those of you who think American History can’t be entertaining, I give you this, one of my favorite scenes from HBO’s amazing John Adams series. The drafting of the Declaration, with Adams and Franklin laying into Jefferson the Cranky (oh so hypocritical…) Emo Author:

So many awesome things in that scene. I don’t even know where to begin. This is why I feel the need to inject speculative fiction into history all the damn time.

To draw this nearer to the subject of this blog, then, allow me to say that David McCullough is the man. You can always celebrate the 4th by reading 1776 or John Adams! All the cool kids are doing it.

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Now playing: Suede - The Wild Ones
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Hey y’all, happy Canada Day. Hope my friends in the Great Frozen North (okay, so it’s not that frozen, and certainly not right now, but it makes it sound even more bad-ass to say that) are enjoying family, fun, and possibly an awesome backyard cookout. Word up.

I think we’re spending today at the National Archives in DC to visit the Declaration of Independence and all that goodness. I know it’s a few days early, but I don’t plan to be anywhere near Washington for the 4th. No, I’ll be in my parents’ back yard with my mother’s excessively large collection of siblings (and hopefully a fair amount of my cousins as a result), drinking beer and feasting on veggie burgers– or maybe the kick-ass portobello sandwiches Dad makes for me. But this is me, being patriotic.

In the mean time it’s Wednesday!

Progress on my WIP The Resurrectionists, a f@$ed up zombie love story from 1820s Philadelphia, stands about here:

11221 / 80000 words. 14% done!

Tommy and Becca go for a walk, and someone’s in trouble.

“Do you forgive me, Becca? Really?”

She drew a deep breath, trying to clear her head of him. “What do you want me to say? That you were right?”

“I want you to say, ‘Yes, Tommy. I forgive you for being a shocking libertine–no, I love you the more for it, and trust that when we’re married you’ll be the ideal husband and refrain from giving me and our brood of devastatingly beautiful and intelligent children the pox’.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“What a perfect ass you are.”

Ah, young love. I know, I know, where’s the reanimation? The graverobbing? Oh it’ll come, but this is always the sort of thing that happens first for me. Strange little character and relationship moments. Can’t help it.

It should’ve been more this week since I actually wrote a lot, but I spent the last two days this week making maps and writing up information (did a word count just now– 8k of it. Holy hell, worldbuilding is a sickness) about countries that don’t exist for a project I will write… some day.

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Now playing: Flogging Molly - Selfish Man
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I’ve mentioned many times that I keep a personal writing journal– it’s at InsaneJournal, which is like LiveJournal but with less rules and crappy ads. The “tags” feature as it works with LJ type platforms is freaking brilliant for a crazy anal retentive writer type. Any entry I make about a given book, draft, chapter, character, plot, list, agent, writer, whatever, all I do is click the tag and they all come up in a neat little row. All my pretty lists, perfectly organized. It’s quite beautiful. Almost moves me to tears.

Well, no, but it’s beautiful anyhow, dammit.

Anyhow, I have one post for each of my projects that’s sort of a go-to post, with links to the pertinent information in other posts, should the tag system not suffice. (Sometimes it doesn’t. Worldbuilding is a motherf@$ker, let’s face it.) I also have one that’s a list of ideas that I’m sure I’ll want to use some day, but at the moment have no idea how or why. I keep the thing diligently updated, striking out ones I’ve used, adding new ones at the bottom, etc. Occasionally I’ll see a prompt elsewhere, an anthology that I think looks really cool, a call for submissions with some direction or another, and go to my List of Ideas Post and see if anything starts throwing sparks off it.

It happened the other day when I saw the link for the Library of Horror Tales from the Cauldron link. I went to the Idea Post and found one based on an article I read in Smithsonian a few months back that referenced a particularly hilarious, incredibly Victorian reaction to a male peacock’s feathers– this man said it made him ill to see them, because it meant the man was parading for the woman, and she picked the prettiest one.

How vulgar. Female sexuality is a myth!

And so I wrote this story called The Peacock and the Raven about (not Victorian, but proto-Victorian, anyhow!) witches last week, the one I mentioned… and realized it wasn’t horror at all, and was no good for the anthology.

Not that I’m complaining– I actually think I can make something of the story eventually, and more importantly it was way fun to write. But isn’t that always the freaking way this goes? I mean, I knew how it would end, but I was totally wrong about the character reaction and… a lot of things. Do you all have more control over where these things take you?

If so, do you give lessons?

No. I guess I’ll have to content my control freak urges with endless listmaking and cross-referencing with hyperlinks, won’t I? Ah well, I tried!

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Now playing: The Small Faces - Come On Children
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Go ahead, finish that rhyme. You know you want to.

“Sometimes you can learn more about a person by what they don’t tell you. Sometimes you can learn a lot from the things they just make up. If you are tagged with this Meme, lie to me. Then tag 7 other folks (one for each deadly sin) and hope they can lie.”

So Cate Gardner tagged me for this one, and here I am! Welcome to my Emporium of Lies. Shouldn’t be too hard, since it’s what I want to do for a living, right?

Pride: What is your biggest contribution to the world?
Bought Paganini’s soul in exchange for awesome virtuoso capabilities. I’m that good. Here, let him entertain you while you read the rest of this:

Tell me the world does not owe me a serious debt of gratitude.

Envy: What do your coworkers wish they had which is yours?
Paganini’s soul. (The master wants him, but he can’t have him.)

Gluttony: What did you eat last night?
Half a cow. Including the heart.

Lust: What really lights your fire?
Those PETA ads. Yeah wow, naked proselytizing celebrities that make me look like a douche. I love it!

Anger: What is the last thing that really pissed you off?
The ending of A Tale of Two Cities when I re-read it recently. What a load of crap. I nearly tore the whole living room up, I was so very, very angry. F@$k you, Sidney Carton!

Greed: Name something you keep from others.
My stunning comedic brilliance. Soak it up, because I’ll have to lock it away after this. Don’t be jealous.

Sloth: What’s the laziest thing you’ve ever done?
In grad school I bought a Mt. Dew I.V. so I could play EverQuest for days at a stretch without ever leaving my desk.

And there we have it! Hmm, actually, I’m kind of surprised I never thought of that last one. That was a serious addiction. Aww, now I miss playing MMOs!

I think it’s safe to say I’m tagging the people who read this who haven’t been tagged already. It’s done the rounds!
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Now playing: Franz Liszt - Grandes Études de Paganini, No. 141: III. la Campanella
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Well it’s WIP Wednesday. What is this, you ask?

I have no idea, but the fabulous Catherine J. Gardner made it look like fun. Or, at least motivation. From what I understand, the idea is to hold yourself accountable to your blog for how much progress you’ve made on your current WIP(s) each week on the titular day. I already sort of do this at my little writing journal I keep, but since I hope this summer will be extremely lax in terms of what I get written (in other words, said writing journal will be littered with side projects and short fiction), it might not be a bad idea to keep track of it here. The whole group writing thing was fun in November, after all!

And so I say that progress on my WIP The Resurrectionists, a f@$ed up  zombie love story (er, what other kind could there be?) from 1820s Philadelphia, stands about here:

4995 / 80000 words. 6% done!

Good god, how pathetic.

Weird things with this one:

1. Not writing it in order. Haven’t done that with anything in over a year, and finding it lovely.
2. I have lots more of it scripted, but that can’t count. Finished scenes only!
3. In the process of trying to construct this one, I’ve so far done a related novella and short story. These total over 27k that probably should’ve been in this book. See, no discipline.

I’m on vacation.

And now, a piece of one of the three scenes I have written. Oh, the joy. Two dudes and two prostitutes walk into a room…

Once they were safely bestowed out of sight of their female companions, Tommy let him go, leaned forward, and began undoing Paul’s neckcloth industriously. “Sweet heart, listen to me. She’s not sure you want her, and so she’s waiting for a sign. Kiss her, and she’ll do the rest. She’s worried she’ll lose her money, and it’s too late to find another customer-”

By this time his nimble fingers had made short work of the damned cravat. When he yanked it out and dropped it to the floor, Paul finally acquired the presence of mind to swat him away. “I say, Tommy, I don’t think I can-”

Tom swatted back and set his fingers to work on Paul’s waistcoat.

Paul felt very much like a little boy being undressed by his mother for a Sunday bath. He swatted half-heartedly once more, but knew it would be useless.

I’ve no idea why I felt compelled to use that bit, except that it pretty much says everything about these two idiots. But there it is.

Join us! Come on, it’ll be fun.

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Now playing: Franz Liszt - Reminiscences de “Don Juan” (after Mozart)
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