Very occasionally I look through my folders on the computer and open old files to try and find out what they are. I was doing that this morning and came across a file called “Explorer5.doc” which I could not remember at all. Now I’m kicking myself. I have this lovely opening, and no idea what this story was supposed to be about. I strongly suspect it’s another elves in space one, but that’s all I remember. Who Neil and Chris are, I have no idea.
“Explorer five, recalling you to base. Come on in Neil, your time is up.”
Neil leaned forward, tracking the blip of darkness that tumbled slowly across the hopper’s viewscreen, gloved hands flexing on the controls of the collecting arm. “Give me a moment, control. I promised Jeannie a rock.”
Carbon-dioxide hissed from the little craft’s jets as he gentled her into the path of the pebble, reaching out for it with robotic fingers. Saturn’s sandy curve swung into view, filling the cockpit with pale gold light.
His earpiece crackled, Lieutenant Tanner’s voice tinny and breathless with annoyance. “Pick one out of the hopper. I repeat, come in now. You’re too close to the rings, Neil, don’t piss about.”
As he sank down into the ring plane, chasing the dark meteorite as it fell into Saturn’s grasp, the sun slid out from beneath his feet, and light beat upwards through the spinning tumble of ice. He gasped in a breath of recycled air, smelling sweat and awe.
The rings stretched before him like the surface of an alien sea, light lancing through the interstices between boulders, shimmering through the boulders themselves, their hearts alight as they tossed in their strange tides. Caught up in the wonder, he laughed out loud, cutting over Tanner’s “I’m going to make sure you never fly again…” with “No, listen Chris, you should see it. I’m above the Keeler gap. The spiral density waves are like something out of a Celtic manuscript. Illumination, literally! Plaited ice and those trefoils you get like… like the legs on the Isle of Man flag. All done in golden light. It’s fantastic!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Chris’s metallic voice squawked, unimpressed. “That’s the propeller moonlets. You’re running out of air, and my patience.”
“I’m just chasing this one dark pebble – something that isn’t going to melt on her, Chris. I’ve been away three years, I’ve got to take something back!”
“You’re not a tourist, Neil you… what the…!”
What happened next? I don’t know. Anyone want to finish it? I don’t think I ever will.
I really don’t think exercise is good for me. Practiced as usual on Friday night, then on Saturday Andrew and I danced out from 11.30 to 4.30 at the Mill Road Winter Fair
There were three morris sides there: Coton Morris Men (experts in the least stealthy of martial arts), Cambridge Morris Men and the Ely and Littleport Riot. (The Gog Magog Molly dancers were also there, but except for the last half hour they were dancing at different places from us.) So it meant that we would do a dance, then we’d get a break while Coton and then Cambridge danced before we did another one.
So it really didn’t seem all that strenuous while I was doing it, and I really enjoyed myself. When I wasn’t dancing, I was able to play the bodhran for the other dancers, which was just as much fun. It was a fantastic day. Lots of the shops were giving away free hot drinks and snacks, and we could hear a brilliant samba band in the distance. Unfortunately we didn’t have an opportunity to really look at anything because we were dancing all day, except for a break for a quick pub lunch.
As we walked back to the car, I was congratulating myself on the fact that my level of fitness had increased noticeably. I can now do three dances in succession, whereas when I started I had trouble finishing one. And I could go home from four hours of dancing feeling scarcely tired at all.
By the time I got home I had collapsed. My shoulder felt raw and damaged, I could barely straighten up or walk or keep my eyes open. And I spent most of today flat on my back with a migraine. I’m becoming quite used to the fact that the day after a dance-out I spend half the day in bed with a migraine, but I didn’t think exercise was supposed to do that to you. If the pundits can be believed, exercise is supposed to make you feel better. So why does it make me feel as if I’ve been run over by a truck?
The law would impose a sentence of life imprisonment on anyone who “penetrates the anus or mouth of another person of the same sex with his penis or any other sexual contraption.” The same penalty would apply if he or she even “touches another person with the intention of committing the act of homosexuality.”
The law requires a three-year prison sentence for anyone who is aware of evidence of homosexuality and fails to report it to the police within 24 hours. It allows for the prosecution of Ugandans who engage in homosexual acts in foreign countries. And it imposes a prison sentence of up to seven years for anyone who defends the rights of gays and lesbians.
These clauses have “a powerful Orwellian flavour” and reflect a “twisted world of sexual paranoia,” Mr. Lewis said in his speech to the Commonwealth People’s Forum, a civil-society group. “Can you imagine a father or a mother turning in a son or daughter? Can you imagine a teacher ratting on a student? But that’s exactly what this law requires. I’ve truly never seen its like before.”
I’m reading “Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition” by B.R Burg today, which is unfortunately not as interesting as it sounds, largely because the author goes in for paragraph long sentences and academic-speak. If only more scholars were as easy and clear to read as N.A.M Rogers!
If I’m reading him right he intends to show that the Pirates of the Caribbean formed something of an OKHomo society, particularly as they reflected a lack of condemnation of sodomy in society as a whole in the 17th Century. I’m somewhat unconvinced that laissez faire toleration is quite the same as lack of condemnation, particularly when people are still getting pilloried for sodomy, but I’m interested to see what he has to say next.
What did strike me though, was this quote from W.H Auden:
In times of war, even the crudest kind of positive affection between persons seems extraordinarily beautiful, a noble symbol of the peace and forgiveness of which the whole world stands so desperately in need.
It seemed to me that that was what “kiss me, Hardy” was all about. Battle is raging all around, men are screaming in the bowels of the ship and the great guns are pounding, and a dying man wants to know that he isn’t going to go without the benediction of some kind of human affection. You have to worry about the filthy minds of the Victorians who thought such an almost sacred gesture needed censoring.
I just got an unexpected email from Gerry Burnie, whose novel “Two Irish Lads” I can thoroughly recommend as a lovely, gentle historical m/m set in the early days of Canada. He’d just read False Colors and liked it so much he reviewed it on his site
“It is a superb piece of writing, a credible and exciting story, uncompromisingly authentic in time, and highly recommended.”
Elisa Rolle’s Rainbow Awards Cover Art contest is on its penultimate lap, and there are only twenty covers left to vote for. Of those twenty, False Colors is one and Frost Fair is another. I’m torn between hoping for False Colors to get through, because it’s my book, or hoping for Frost Fair to get through because the cover art is by me.
I can’t quite bring myself to ask for votes on either of them, but if anyone fancied going and voting for their favourite cover out of the selection on offer, the link is here
I can’t wait to find out what the first post is on the SiN advent calendar so many brilliant authors of m/m historical romance have contributed to it. I reckon that if I comment every day I stand a good chance of winning something 🙂
In other news, this frozen shoulder is really starting to bother me now. I’m always shattered because I’m not sleeping properly – it wakes me up every time I shift position. It hurts all the time, and it is starting to interfere with my driving and my dancing. I’m doing the exercises, which do help, and taking the painkillers, which also help, but the painkillers are giving me inflamed gums and making me pile on weight and the whole thing is beginning to grind me down.
Another day with no writing. However, I did read “The Complete Dr. Fell Volume 1: Lost” which I really thoroughly enjoyed. Beautifully written, beautifully observed and it made me well up with tears at various places. Definitely going to buy Volume 2 today.
So it hasn’t all been bad, especially when I’ve just had a new review for the new edition of Captain’s Surrender from Katie Mack at All About Romance reviews
Soon it will be the first of December, and the Speak Its Name review site is filling the whole month with an Advent Calendar of blogging:
“The Blog is Two Years Old and to celebrate–and to thank all you lovely readers for your loyalty–we have, for your delectation, lined up a fabulous feast of amazing authors – one each day from 1st to 24th December – who will be blogging about a subject of their choosing, and a present will given out each day.
Come back every day and click on the appropriate door to open the post, but don’t try and cheat! We’ll know if you do!!”
I haven’t managed to write a word since last Thursday, and this is starting to get ridiculous. On the other hand, I’m pleased to say that Away with the Faeries is definitely alive. I can feel it brewing. It keeps suggesting things for me to research – the Hindu equivalent of elves, for example. If I let it, I think it wants to become more epic than I had been thinking. Is Ben a reincarnation of someone very important, or would that be just pandering to the ‘chosen one’ idea that I generally don’t like? Is George – who was always meant to be the dead lover whose existence was a plot device – actually alive and being held prisoner by the elf-Queen? When Chris was shot down by that UFO and spent a month in hospital with amnesia, was he actually shot down in 1945 and returned in 1995, unchanged? What exactly is the situation between the English elves and the Indian Gandharvas? Are they such as to allow Ben to be important as a playing piece in negotiations between them, without actually being particularly ‘chosen?’
And does this mean I’m going to have research the legends of the Gandharvas *and* the culture of England in 1945, and then to re-think and re-plot the whole thing with extra backstory? I think I am. But the upside of the whole thing is that I think – if I do – the end result could be a lot more interesting. I’m actually starting to feel excited about the book, instead of hoping I can get it over with quickly so I can move on to something more ambitious. That was a silly plan anyway. Why not just make this book more ambitious and do something more complicated now?
As if to make up for the news about the frozen shoulder, I have something to squee about this week. I’ve just signed a contract with Samhain to publish Shining in the Sun!
(Not the real cover, just my usual temporary mockup 🙂 )
Blurb
Handsome and wealthy Alec Goodchilde has everything a man could want in life except the freedom to be himself. Once a year, he motors down to an exclusive yacht club on the Cornish coast and allows himself to take the summer off from a life he thinks of as a trap.
Once a year, poverty stricken surfer Darren Stokes allows himself to take the summer off from his life of grinding overwork and appalling relatives, financing his holiday by picking up the first rich man to show an interest.
When Alec’s car breaks down, leaving him stranded on the beach where Darren is surfing, he is transfixed by the thought that Darren is the summer made flesh. Freedom, wrapped up in one lithe package, dripping wet from the sea.
But Alec is so deeply in the closet that he hasn’t even admitted to himself that he’s gay. And Darren is recovering from last year’s disastrous fling with a rich guy who turned out to be more than he could handle. He’s sworn to himself never to get in that position again.
A rich boy/poor boy holiday romance set in the beautiful sea-side county of Cornwall in the UK.
Squee! I’m really excited by this because it’s a m/m contemporary and a complete change of subject matter from everything I’ve had published before. I was worried no-one would want it because it was such a left turn from my usual stuff, so it’s fantastic to have it accepted 🙂 My editor, Anne Scott, got back to me within a day of submitting it, and is already talking about a publication date some time in June 2010. She is so efficient as well as being really thorough and brilliant to work with, and her enthusiasm makes me squee.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to this, whether by telling me that Tony’s name made you think the character was lower class, or that the original title, Boys of Summer, made you think of baseball. And special thanks to all my amazing beta readers, without whom this would still have been a bit of a shambling wreck. You rock! *Hugs* 😀
The Boat of Small Mysteries - A cozy mystery aboard a narrowboat, in which a murder and a disappearance keep our aroace detective from fully relaxing into the idyll of country life.
