Kitten update

Without pictures for the moment, because I'm not sure where my camera has scurried off to.

There is much scampering and pouncing, and biting of mom's tail. And every time I turn on the closet light, they crawl out of boxes and from behind random stuff. It's rather adorable. So far Euryale Rose is still the precocious one, though Dorothy is bigger and braver. Rose was the first to scamper, and is now the first to think that kitten chow and warm milk are awesome. Her sisters are still very skeptical of food that doesn't come from mom. Also adorable is watching her eat kitten chow very seriously, one piece at a time. I may try to tempt them with kitten chow porridge later today, but first I need to catch up on some wordcount very badly.

Spicy spam kabobs

I am very behind on this week's wordcount, and now trying desperately to catwax. I apologize in advance for spamming LJ. Luckily, twitter and facebook will bear some of the burden.

I remind you that I'm taking questions in screened comments here. I'll start answering them tonight, after I have some words written. Ask me about writing, about kittens, about fishsex, about whatever.

And today's Tidbit o' Publishing Advice: When you sell a book, apparently everyone wants to interview you. I've had three sets of interview questions land in my inbox already, and two more waiting till closer to release date. I encourage everyone to be more interesting than me when this time comes.

One more night spent on your mirror

The Bone Palace

Words today: 1348
Words total: 42,580
Darling: n/a
Tyop: n/a
Words that boggle Word: eyrie, redented, ogival

42580 / 100000 words. 43% done!

Urgh. Today was a stop-and-research-everything day. Card games, architecture, names of mountains, names of people... I've gotten them out of the carriage ride of endless cards and conversation and to Savedra's ancestral estate. Now I just need to tell them that the princess is in another castle the information they seek has already been taken by someone else, in a way that doesn't make the reader go I just read three thousand words for that?!, and then send them home so they can be attacked by assassins on the road. And I have to figure out what Isyllt and the antags are doing in the meantime. Fun!

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And now, the question meme!

Question #1: What draws you to the the darker edge of fantasy?

Hrm. An unhealthy fixation with The Lost Boys and Batman Returns in junior high, followed by seeing The Crow when I was fourteen? Oh, no, that's why I'm a goth.

Certainly being a goth has a lot to do with the aesthetic of my writing (seriously, I could not write a character who coordinates their polos with their Nikes if you paid me--it's alien and unnerving), and aesthetic and tone go hand in hand for me. And before any of those influences I adored The Tombs of Atuan, which may be the root of my love of all things ancient and nameless and sepulchral.

As far as tone or mode of whatever the word I really want is, I'm not sure how dark my fiction is. I burned out on consolatory literature in high school, and I'm certainly not a proponent of HEA and mom-and-apple-pie, but I don't like meaningless nihilism either. My universe is neither just nor unjust, but characters can usually carve out meaningful lives for themselves if they try. Some, of course, choose not to. My favorite sorts of stories have people facing the nameless and awful and numinous, but instead of going mad or dropping dead or throwing themselves out of windows, they have to pick up the pieces and keep going.

I'm not sure how much sense that makes, but there you go.

Other questions? Ask them here!