A passing thought

Hitting 'send' on the email that gives the accountant my books for the tax year feels just as momentous as hitting 'send' on the email that gives my publisher a new book.

 It probably wouldn't feel like such a big deal if I kept my books up to date throughout the year and kept all of my expense documentation in one place, but I don't seem to have the personality that's capable of doing it - though I did resolve at the beginning of the year to not loose my receipts and seem to have more or less managed to do so for once. It would also probably be easier if I started compiling them earlier in the year, rather than thinking I'll get it done in the lazy days of summer that never seem to come.

Maybe when I'm finally finished with school and only have one job I'll finally get on top of it.

The Kitschies

Cuddly tentacles were given out on Monday night, in the downstairs of a pub in London. Like the downstairs of a lot of pubs, this one had a pretty low ceiling, which I only noticed when the actual prize-giving began and nearly all the men who took the microphone had to crouch to avoid braining themselves. My memory of the evening is fuzzy - much like the tentacles - probably because I was preoccupied by the fact that MARGARET ATWOOD WAS THERE and MARGARET ATWOOD WAS WEARING A TENTACLE MONSTER.

Photo borrowed from the kitschie's blog with hopes they won't mind. 

Dave kept trying to make me go and say hello to her - it was a small enough event that that wouldn't have been totally weird - and I kept threatening to deck him if he didn't stop, because I'm of the theory that one should never meet one's heroes unless expressly sought out by them, because there lies the path to madness and restraining orders. I was amused to find out that her agent, who was also there and wearing tentacles, was the agent that made my MA year cry in despair many moons ago. Small world, ain't it?

Only tangentially related: I keep hearing that writers never really get famous because people can't pick them out on the street, and I wonder if it's a symptom of my work, of being connected to UEA, or of having an obsessive personality that I do recognise a lot of the well-respected writers on sight, even ones who I don't personally read and have never actually met. I guess it makes it a little less weird that the ones who I recognise immediately, from the back, and across a crowded room (Ali Smith, Helen Dunmore, Kate Mosse... ok, Margaret Atwood) are all people I've met in person. 

All of the books (and video games) on the shortlists sound amazing. Like most book events, the room was decorated with copies from the shortlist, and I managed to make off with a few, but all of them are going onto my to-read list. And books that more closely fit the criteria of progressive and speculative are going onto my to-write list. 

There must have been something either in the air or the water. About halfway through the evening Dave pulled on my sleeve and said, "Golden Ratio." Then, on the eight-minute tube ride to Liverpool Street Station we worked up the outline of an entire speculative novel from that one concept, wrote it down, and moved on to an epic fantasy blending sci-fi and dragons before having to get off. And now it looks like both of us wish we could temporarily abandon responsibility to go write, which is pretty normal for me but less so for Dave. So if I happen to vanish in the near future, it might have something to do with spirals. 

Notes

On the absolute last day in 2015 before I completely gave up and surrendered to Christmas, family, and what is starting to look like a chronic respiratory infection, I toddled into London to see Jason. It was one of the more entertaining trips: the man seated next to me on the Tube was reading appallingly unedited erotica in eighteen-point font on the largest tablet known to humanity (the word 'panties' was used without a touch of irony, and the wrong 'their' and 'to' was used repeatedly.  (I read far too fast for my own good.)) and I got to the Random House office just in time to get a good seat in the lobby to watch as a pair of uniformed Metropolitan Police wandered in and asked to speak to the person who had phoned about receiving a bomb threat (Said threat came in the form of a letter, because publishing is apparently nothing if not completely civil at even the worst of times.).

The next draft of the nameless novel is due at the end of January, and rather than go back and forth by phone and email and muddle through tracked changes and misinterpret written instruction and get everything confused, someone (it may have been me, I don't remember) decided that the best way to get to understandable, executable editorial notes was for me to sit down with Jason and talk through everything that either of us thought might need addressing. This was much more enjoyable than one might expect, since there are several things about the current draft that I'm not crazy about and wanted to figure out just how much bending someone else thought they might be able to take, as well as several parts that are not as bad as I thought.

And now that it's the first day of 2016 on which I can reasonably expect to get work done it's time to take the pages of notes I wrote during that meeting out and see what can be done with the book. Which, despite our having talked about it as much as anyone can a work in progress without completely killing it, still doesn't seem to have a final title. The two at the top of the list at the moment are In Passing and The Lauras, but I'm expecting to hear from Jason at any minute that he's changed his mind. Not only is it difficult to talk about a book with no title, but the cover artist can't get started with her design until the name of the thing is nailed down, so it would be nice to have the name pinned firmly down. Given the fact the publication date is less than nine months away, I'm starting to wonder if it's possible for a book to go forth into the world nameless and come to anything but misfortune.

Recovering

If ever I fake my own death it will probably be an accident, considering that this summer a few people, Lucy included, were temporarily under the impression that I'd shuffled off the mortal coil. Though I have been tempted to fake my own kidnapping once or twice before, for the sake of getting a little work done.

July was spent, as mentioned before, trying to polish off a still nameless novel, which has since been passed on to Lucy and even now is lurking in at least one reading pile that I can think of - which is probably why I've suddenly gotten so much better at keeping my phone charged and in my pocket. The day after it was handed off I dragged the Englishman to meet my grandfather, which hasn't happened before because said grandfather doesn't fly and I don't Florida, which is where he happens to have wedged himself in. It also happens that he's a retired NASA physicist, so I spent the week playing with ion mass spectrometers and scribbling down the stories he told while the two of them talked philosophy. Then we hauled butt to the Shore, with a detour along the way to fetch my little sister from summer camp, because the Englishman has never seen the Shore and I miss it.

The day after I made it back to my usual timezone, I packed up and went to Edinburgh. Which was unexpectedly lovely, given the amount of carping I've heard from people about Scotland. Besides dragging myself up Calton Hill and being treated to the unexpected sight of a dozen well-muscled men wearing nothing but kilts, I also dragged myself up Arthur's Seat, and saw the absolute worst stand-up comedy that has ever been performed anywhere by anyone. The Book Festival sticks its authors in an actual yurt when they're not in use, and since Jura was a sponsor there was a full bottle of whisky out to be poured from at will every evening I was there. The actual event in which I participated was the most enjoyable I've ever done; the chair was lovely, the audience was lovely, Michael Russell was lovely, I didn't misspell anyone's name when I signed their book, and I didn't do anything that I need to be ashamed of. Though I did manage to trigger an audience gasp of horror: the chair asked who we'd have for a fantasy dinner party; I asked if it was a party to have a nice chat or for the sole purpose of putting strychnine in the soup, because I'd been waiting for the day to poison Phillip Pullman since I read The Amber Spyglass as a child.

And almost immediately following my return from Edinburgh came the holiday weekend and the Reading Festival, where I saw bands playing live that I can't name because it'll just sound like bragging.

Even making allowances for my fuzzy math skills, I think I've had five actual working days in the month of August.

So now it's back to work. I'm hoping that, any day now, my head will break water. Though it's more likely that Henry will find out how little I've gotten done. Or rather, how much more there still is to do. I should be hauling carcass back to Norwich for the last year of the degree in a few weeks, and usually my work life takes over once I'm back. The room we began turning into an office at the beginning of the summer will be getting a floor tomorrow, so of course I'll be going back the moment that it's actually finished and useable. I have a half-hope still that having a designated room of my own, instead of working off the dining room table and being moved around constantly, will mean that I'll get more work done while I'm down in Reading, because it feels like I simply don't work enough while I'm here. Of course, the converse is equally likely to be true: I do far too much work while I'm in Norwich and if I keep up that pace something will spontaneously combust.

Heaven alone knows what will happen once I graduate and home and work find themselves merging.