But meanwhile, here is a photo from this very evening, featuring both wee Claire and yours truly (also a brief appearance made by our bookshelves):

( and then we danced around )

And a bonus! Here is Beth and Claire, from a couple of days ago, folding laundry together:

( you'll notice that someone is doing a fine job of sitting up )

Dear Beth,

Happy birthday! You are now, once again, older than me. Claire might find that confusing, so I suggest you don't mention it to her until she starts comprehending numbers a bit better.

Can I tell you how incredibly excited I am to live my life with you? We're mothers! We have a baby! That's amazing. And tonight, she sees fire for the first time! You call it candles, but I call it the Promethean leap. Because that is slightly more awesome than saying future pyromaniac. Though not by much.

And your presents! Let me tell you, your presents are fantastic. I know you don't believe me, and you won't until you actually see them, but they are legendary.

But really: I love you. You're amazing. I love watching you with our baby, and I love saying goodnight to you, and I love waking up with you, and I love talking and laughing and singing and signing with you. I love you, and everything that makes you you.

All my love,
-Cass

Happy birthday, editrx!

...said David Tennant.

Not surprisingly, the baby continues to smile. Also, she is considerably more stylish than either of her mothers.

( Incidentally, one of these pictures has tissue paper in the background. Guess who liked to try and eat it. )

Or: My library books have just come in.

I love requesting books. They appear, magically! Everything I want, ready for me to pick up! (This is slightly untrue. There are two books on Anne Lister, Regency lesbian superfox extraordinaire, that I happen to know the Metrowest library possesses, and they won't let me have them.)

I am now staring at my lovely collection of texts, completely bedazzled and uncertain which to pick up first. Help me, flist!

1. Naomi Novik, Victory of Eagles
2. Mary Jo Putney, River of Fire
3. Mary Jo Putney, Silk and Secrets
4. Pam Rosenthal, Almost a Gentleman
5. Laura Kinsale, The Dream Hunter
6. Laura Kinsale, My Sweet Folly
7. Elizabeth Vaughan, Warsworn
8. Elizabeth Vaughan, Warlord
9. Carol Berg, Flesh and Spirit
10. Carol Berg, Breath and Bone

And then there is David Kahn's The Codebreakers, which is my beloved nonfiction anecdotal history of cryptology, and is also active proof that I am only willing to go so far when it comes to writing a really historically inaccurate romance novel.

(Writing this reminds me that I haven't been keeping up with my list of read books; I feel a bit bad about that, since they're great fun to write and are helpful to have around. Perhaps I will start again with this list.)

Many Happy Returns, Skyfyre and Lifewater!!

I cannot believe I knew you both when you were...okay, I was going to say "this high" but "this high" is just about level with the top of my own head...how about "13 years old"? Is that better? Does it make me sound less silly? Yes? Okay.

I can't believe I knew you both when you were only 13! You've both grown up so much.

I feel so lucky to have married into such fantastic siblings.

Happy Birthday guys!

-Beth

Many happy birthdays to skyfyre and lifewater! You are filled with squids and joy!

I have, in my possession, a small envelope containing the payoff for our car loan (saved honestly, if you're wondering how we came to have such a random sum in cash). It is to be deposited tomorrow.

How odd.

Beth has foolishly agreed to let me write one historically inaccurate romance novel. Hurray! Now I need to think of a pen name. (This is very, very important.) I've always thought "Julia Doyle" would make a good Regency romance name, but it might be a bit too plain. Survey says?

Of course, this also means I need to go back through my files and find that knife-fighting X-Files AU I wrote when I was seventeen, and see if it's worth my time. (Answer: OBVIOUSLY.) While I was busily crowing over "Miss Wood's unfashionable red hair" and other such gems, I also looked at my current plate of projects to see what I have going on. The list has become... large.

The Historically Inaccurate Romance Novel
Also known as the X-Files AU, also known as The Lady Brave, also known by it's working (horrific) title My Love, Take Me Now.

( Betrayal! (Did I write this when I was seventeen? Yes. Yes I did.) )

The Stupid Vampire Novel
My actual current project -- the sequel to Salt and Silver -- which octette is very patiently waiting for. One of the working titles was The Feast of Blood, because I am easily amused; the current one is The Doors of New York, because I am also terribly unimaginative.

( Soul-gazing! (Oh, is this a portion of rough draft that octette hasn't seen yet? Yes. Yes it is.) )

The Disability Novel
This is one that I can't futz around with -- it started originally as a story called The Ash and Oak Man, about a world in which superstitions now work. The main character was pulled through an ash tree and was cured of a coma (or something similar) before the story starts. He now has a strange affinity for superstition-magic. As of the current draft, as cool as his abilities are, it's actually massively disabling. And now, he fights crime! It's very exciting in my head.

( College! (Or rather, a set of class rules that has, so far, made it through every iteration of this idea.) )

The Serious Regency Romance Novel
This may also be just a straight-up historical novel. There's a love story, and it's the main thrust of the story, but considering the curtain!fic nature of it, I think it could be sold as mainstream. Anyway. Bah. Unfortunately, while I do know I've written a prologue for this, I seem to be unable to find it (augh, my nightmare). There's at least part of it handwritten somewhere -- it's a rather further-out project than everything else, so I have time to fret and research and tear through all my notebooks trying to find a measly three pages AUGH.


And finally:

The Austen Slash Novel
No, for real, this one's supposed to be serious lit. I can't screw around with the history on this one, so it's very back-burner, and compared to my other book ideas, it's a new kid on the street (it's only a couple of years old!). It has to sit around for a lot longer before I can even think of writing an opening (that will then be rewritten, discarded, dredged back up, rewritten again, and then discarded again, ad nauseum, until Claire can take up the mantle and write the damn thing for me instead). That being said, what I have plotwise is essentially: Mary Bennett. Anne de Bourgh. Those crazy kids. The end.


(True story: Once when I was but a wee sprat, I spoke unto pnh and said that I was mortally afraid I would only ever come up with one idea for a story ever.)

ETA: Oh, hell, I forgot the space opera one. Sorry, a4yroldfaerie.

ETA ETA: Dammit, and the "Christ as Tamburlaine" story that requires a pile of research and, uh, possibly a very fake identity.

And we have photographic proof.

( Lo. )

There's no theme, here -- it's just stuff I'm liking right now.

( though if you want it to have a theme, go for it )

1. On the 27th, instead of enjoying my last few days of maternity leave, I'll be have an MRI and an EEG to find out if there's something going on in my head that causes my migraines (my doctor doesn't like that I get tics with them, and the neurologist that he sent me to doesn't like that I get full-on dreamscape hallucinations with them. Huh).

2. I have a short story with exactly one paragraph that refuses to gel correctly.

3. Neither I, nor anyone else, possess the Star Trek reboot on DVD.

4. Which comes first: my milk drying up, or the publication of a new book? Don't know. Don't know which answer I'd want, either.

5. The terrible historical romance I just finished reading was really, really terrible. And yet, Beth won't let me write terrible historical romances, even though they clearly get published! It is free money, Beth! And "history" is such a wishy-washy term anyway -- I am totally sure that no one notices the utter wrongness of a character wearing a bustle and a hoop skirt at the same time.

6. Also, if I don't have to worry about research or reasonable plotting or emotional honesty, I bet I could churn out something in no time flat.

7. Like, what if I pulled out that romance novel I started when I was seventeen? The one that started as an X-Files AU? There is codebreaking in it! And knife fighting! And French spies! It is AWESOME. Just give me, I don't know, a week, and I can clearly produce something someone will buy, Hatchette Book Group USA.



8. I seem to have killed Beth's soul.

I have a writing icon -- it's the one labeled, unimaginatively, "writing". This is my secret writing icon (except the part where I've just said so).

It's a flickr photo I found because octette wondered aloud if there was a loa riding her. I said there was; I included the link. I saved the file, too, but I didn't save the photographer's name (if you find it, tell me). In any case -- eventually, I made it into an icon.

It serves a lot of purposes. Sometimes I use it when I'm commenting to octette. Mostly it's just fun. But in my head, at the moment, it's all about writing. Forget that it's a chihuahua (but you probably can't, now that I've said it). The shadows, the eyes. Maybe it's my loa, right now. The rider, the weight on the shoulder that leans forward and breathes against the neck.

That sort of breath can get very... persistent. Irritating. Maddening. Especially if it doesn't resolve into some sort of ecstasy.




Essentially: I am terribly, terribly annoyed.

I've been trying to update more often for a while now -- as it turns out, it's much easier if I'm at home all day (and when I have odd sleeping patterns).

--

Appearances for today have been cancelled, since wee baby had a rather good showing yesterday that ended with a slight over-stimulated meltdown yesterday evening -- she is now refusing to leave her trailer until someone gets her agent on the phone, dammit.

--

So at College of My Heart (and, I assume, other schools as well), there's this phenomenon wherein the anxious student (i.e., all of us) will procrastinate and avoid one class's work... by doing the work for another class. So even though the student is doing the right thing and working her tail off, she still feels guilty for skiving off.

Turns out, this feeling does not disappear after college. Which I sort of knew, thanks to the day job, but I'm being reminded of it right now because I am researching/plotting the sequel to Salt and Silver... while at the same time reading some Val McDermid books to study the style for a project of my own. They're both good uses of my time, but every time I get sucked into the McDermid, I feel hideously guilty. Hurray for anxiety.

(The McDermid is extremely appealing, but the sequel work is actually more pervasive. This includes drawing little diagrams in my notebook, reading a biography of Mary, Queen of Scots, looking up mythological mermaid variants from notes I'd taken several months ago, and actually writing. The mermaid thing might be a dead-end, but it's a start.)

--

Today's oddity: I looked in the mirror today and realized that, huh, I can sometimes be considered reasonably attractive. This is... extremely surprising to me. I was expecting a lot of things from and following pregnancy, but finding myself pretty wasn't really one of them.

For those in the area, Beth and I -- and wee baby -- will be crashing the Readercon lobby/hallways on Saturday, starting around lunchtime (when we will abscond with Claire's aunt and uncles) and then for some portion of the afternoon. Further appearances will depend upon the baby's feelings on the matter, and whether anyone bribes us to show up at a different time.

This morning it struck me how hilarious Claire can be while I'm changing her. She does this thing where her eyes are wide open and she's looking at me with full focus, stretched out, a pacifier in her mouth... and her hands splayed over her cheeks, just pressing against them as if she's saying "Faaaaaaace. MY FAAAAAAAAACE."

So I'm busy composing a grand labor entry -- but it's not done, and anyway, I want to post music. Therefore! There shall be music.

There are some songs I know I'm going to use as brain-food for storytelling. I know I'm often putting more in them than there sometimes is -- it's all about how they hit me, I suppose. Here follows five songs that either have or will directly affect something I'm writing.

( sometimes, the last thing you want comes in first )

Happy birthday, octette -- you are the best friend and coauthor ever. Also, you are awesome. AWESOME. ♥♥♥

Since Claire's birth, we haven't had a single sunny day. Not. A. One.

Either this means that she presages the coming of the apocalypse, or she herself will become a dark lord of some kind.

Or we have somehow moved to Forks, Washington, and must be careful that she doesn't meet with any tall, pale, oddly obsessive boys out for her blood love.


In other news, ( have a picture. )

polonius, with his excellent Cass macro.