Ambrose & Elsewhere

I walked over to the grocery store tonight through a pleasant dusting of new snow. On my way back I was crossing through a parking lot when I realized the random scrapings of fresh-fallen snow under my feet weren’t random at all: I was walking through a word about twenty feet long, inscribed into the snowy surface of the lot. As a philologist I was instantly captivated, of course, and as a fantasy reader (and writer) I was reminded of some electrifying scenes from The Silver Chair (my favorite of the Narnia books, and I hope they never make a movie of it).

So I had to stop and read the word, but (since I was standing in the middle of it) I had to take it in installments. The first part of the word was AS and when I turned around to look, the second part seemed to be HOF.

“AS-HOF,” I muttered. A temple of one of the Aesir. Someone had written an Old Norse word in giant snow letters and I had just happened to walk through it. How cool was that?

Unfortunately, on second glance, it turned out that there was a second S after AS and what I had thought was F was really LE. I reread the word and was no longer pleased to be standing in the middle of it.

For years I was sure I couldn’t write flashfic. In fact, if a story clocks in at less than 5000 words I usually feel it might be too short. But recently something snapped and I’ve not only been writing flashfic but selling it. Today my first effort along these lines, “The Gordian Stone”, went live at Every Day Fiction. (Morlock is a major character in it, but given the POV of the story I decided not to use his name.)

I’ve never published in a ‘zine that had an online comments section, and I think it’s an interesting and potentially useful innovation. Potentially dangerous, too, if a surly author starts quarrelling with readers there. But interactivity is something online publications can give readers (and writers) in a way that print publications can’t, so this seems like a good way to work the medium in a way that the medium works.

EDF dropped me a line yesterday to say that they’re taking another flashfic of mine, “Brother Solson and Sister Luna.” This is a landmark for me, as it’s the first story I’ve sold that is in no way shape or form a Morlock story. (I’m not planning to abandon the Crooked Man, but it would be nice to feel I have more than one string to my authorial bow.)

Because they had words like ἀιγίλιψ “destitute even of goats.” (I just ran across this word in Homer.) What makes it even better somehow is that it rhymes with “chicken-lips.”

My favorite Greek verb is also somewhat zoological: βοόω “to change into a cow” (an obviously useful expression).

I make one tiny little joke about preventable death, and then I nearly experience one…

I was cycling in to my first class this morning when I was nearly run down by a young motorist who was wisely watching for other cars on the street as she made a turn into traffic–and unwisely not watching for anything else. She did eventually stop. I’m not sure whether it was my polite manly screams or the crunch of my bike’s rear wheel under her car that led her to realize this wasn’t a routine turn. (I hope it wasn’t a routine turn for her.)

She was most apologetic, and I was undamaged and even the bike escaped relatively unharmed. The rear wheel is now bent like a banana but the rest of it seems to be in good shape.

And, as it happens, I have another ruined bike I can cannibalize for a rear wheel. I was biking around campus during winter break when the pedal-shaft of my bike actually snapped. My explanation for this is that my powerful, classically trained thighs exert a force that mere carbon steel cannot be expected to withstand. My son’s rather skeptical reply was that “there must have been some corrosion” (which is, unfortunately, supported by an examination of the broken shaft).

So I plan to use the rear wheel from Bike A to repair Bike B and get back on the road fairly soon.

Maybe this isn’t such a great idea, though. Powerful cosmic forces seem to be aligning against my biking on or near the campus. But as long as the weather isn’t among them, I guess I’ll keep giving it a shot.

The US now leads the industrialized world in deaths preventable by health care.

(Seen at Paul Krugman’s NYT blog.)

A lateish Merry Christmas (or Newtonmass, or Tuesday, or whatever you prefer) to you and yours.

St. Lucy’s Day doesn’t coincide with the solstice anymore. But this is the poem I’m always thinking about at this time of year.

‘Tis the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s,
Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
The Sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
The world’s whole sap is sunk;
The general balm th’ hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed’s-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interred; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their Epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring;
For I am every dead thing,
In whom love wrought new Alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness;
He ruined me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death–things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that’s good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;
I, by Love’s limbecke, am the grave
Of all, that’s nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drowned the whole world, us two; oft did we grow,
To be two Chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death–which word wrongs her–
Of the first nothing the Elixir grown;
Were I a man, that I were one
I needs must know; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means; yea plants, Yea stones detest,
And love; All, all some properties invest.
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.

But I am None; nor will my Sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser Sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all,
Since she enjoys her long night’s festival.
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her Vigil, and her Eve, since this
Both the year’s and the day’s deep midnight is.

Here’s a nifty post on slushpile clichés by ann_leckie (seen via buymeaclue). And Mithraists should not miss her post with the origami tauroctony.

Actually the barrels are full of water. But one of them serves as a candle-stand, so…

My story “The Red Worm’s Way”–one of my personal favorites, as it shows Morlock at his surliest and drunkest–has been sold to Flashing Swords. Again. FS first bought the story when Howard A. “Indiana” Jones was the editor. When HAJ left for greener fields and blacker gates, the new editor, for reasons best known to himself, dumped my story with some others in an unedited e-book which was available briefly before the publishing company folded. When Flashing Swords came back to life, the editors set about resuscitating the anthology, adding some new stories and authors. It should appear next year as Return of the Sword. Judging from the honor roll of authors, not to mention the cover art, it looks like a venture I’ll be proud to be a part of. (Actually, I already am.)

And John O’Neill at Black Gate has bought the latest Morlock story, a lighthearted piece titled “Destroyer.” It has dragons, and a horde or so of the buglike Khroi, gigantic carnivorous spiderfolk, teenagers, a werewolf, prophecies of doom, an Orestes complex, magic, murders, and fun for the whole family, at least the ones who survive. My guiding principle on this one was “Enough! or Too much!”, I guess. “More jokes and less dismemberment” might be a good recipe for the next one–but I’m not too far into it yet, so don’t hold me to that.