Till the fearless come and the act is done

In spite of dying of allergies, I managed to fix the flashback thing today. It is, alas, one big gobstopper of a magically-induced flashback. Ah well. As long as it gets the job done. Now I just have to fix the remaining prologue scene and do any additional clean-up and clarification. For a deadline that's just under three weeks away, that's not too bad.

My author photos are apparently cursed. My would-be photographer was sick this weekend and is now injured. I may end up using some self-taken myspace pics, at this rate. :P

I will now return to my previously-scheduled dying of allergies. The sinus pain just moved into my cheekbones.

Bookkeeping, sex and power edition

Totally vague and rambly, because I'm too lazy to cut-tag spoilers. :P

6. The Last Hot Time - John M. Ford

The bullet in the lower thorax was deep. He undid the woman's belt, started to unfasten the fly buttons, then just got the shears and cut his way in. It wasn't anything like undressing her. Meat forgave everything.

I am so in love with that last line. I want to steal it and use it everywhere.

This is a beautiful book, in a quiet understated way. It's especially impressive that I tore through it so fast, given that the main trope--Young Man Coming Into His Own--generally does very little for me. And Doc himself, while an absolute sweety, is a little too frictionless and, well, Scandasotan, for me to sink my teeth into. I appreciate the grace with which the emotional remove is done, but it still keeps me at arm's reach. The writing is so gorgeous, though, and the whole cast of characters so lovely, that I still barreled through the book.

The sex that worked so well for cristalia did nothing for me, though. I mean, I understand the weight of emotion behind Doc's dilemma, and it is real and valid, but it just didn't engage me. Maybe it's my age and sexism showing, but mostly I just kept going Yeah, well, and...? I suspect I would have been much more sympathetic to the dom-dilemma if it hadn't been a man having it, sadly.

7. The Queen's Bastard - C. E. Murphy

Another lovely book, and not particularly quiet or understated. And another book concerned with sex and power, though in this case it's tied up with gender and, to a lesser extent, class in a not-very-faux-Elizabethan Europe. I was much more engaged with this, and with Belinda's Coming Into Her Own, or as much of it as we get in this book. And indeed, Belinda has her very own dom-dilemma, and I'm much more sympathetic to it. Even when she did nasty and unforgivable things I was still rooting for her, because she was so very beautifully cold and competent. Cold and competent (at least in fiction) is hot. Any less cold and she couldn't have done her job, and I can't stand insufficiently sociopathic spies and assassins. :P

(I am fully aware that the things that turn me on in fiction wouldn't always translate well to real life affection--except for competence, of course. You can never have too much competence.)

The climax, however, seemed to come the hell out of left field, like a logging truck with faulty brakes. I may need to reread the preceding bits to make sure I didn't somehow skip a scene. Since we're given glimpses of other character's povs throughout the book, I found the big surprise to be insufficiently in-clued, which in turn felt like cheating. This may have been a failure of close reading on my part, though.

For want of a fishsex (Sinus pressure leads to spam)

In addition to the pain in my cheekbones and my growing desire to take up home-trepanation, Miss Asenath Waite is also wandering around in the back of my head making over-protrubant big eyes at me. This would be all fine and dandy, but she can hardly seduce me away from my deadlines if she doesn't bring a plot with her.

A feminist rebuttal of "The Thing on the Doorstep" is one of the stories I reeeeeally really want to write before I die. Even more so than "Waves Like White Elephants" and "The King in Yellow Wallpaper". And the Tombs of Atuan/Dragonsinger fanfic.

What Asenath really wants is a fishsex story, maybe even with a blind cave mermaid, but the trouble with this is writing a story around it that makes sense to anyone who hasn't read TTotD. Of course, I could say screw that and write it anyway, and hope a nice Lovecraft anthology comes around. :P

What I really really really want is for the plot to Undertow Fathom Salvage Fishsexstravaganza, since Miss Waite would be perfectly at home there. All my stray fishwaifs could frolic and gambol and save the world from/deliver the world to Cthulhu. If they only had a plot.

Maybe if I had a title, plot would follow. I need to find more snappy one-word ocean titles, before matociquala and cmpriest and jmeadows use them all.