Back on schedule

By Holly Lisle

Today I caught up with my deadline, and am no longer behind schedule. I’m not back yet — the deadline is still tight and I’m having a bit of a time with exhaustion. But I thought I’d pass on that bit of good news, anyway.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


Weblog on hiatus

By Holly Lisle

I’m going to be offline for a while. I’ll resume here as soon as I can.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


Back, with words

By Holly Lisle

Day before yesterday, I got 2303 new words. Yesterday, 1073. In that same two-day period, I had most of my free time taken up by dealing with author’s rights problems with an article of mine. Of that, I can finally say that it was resolved to my satisfaction, as of this morning, and the less said, the better.

Today, I’m starting in with the place where I left off yesterday with Baanraak, who is on Kerras, the first of the dead upworlds, discovering traces of Lauren’s handiwork there. I’ll do another thousand or so words on that scene, then move on to Pete helping Molly and Lauren face up to the fact that they’re going to have to bring the Sentinels into their private project. Today, at least, I get to focus exclusively on my writing.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


Forty-two

By Holly Lisle

I measure the passage of time now in terms of hard-to-get fruit and vegetables — black cherries and avocados, peaches, good Midwestern corn on the cob, apples with local names and real bite, blackberries and nectarines and beefsteak tomatoes, morel mushrooms. I miss the drifting of snow, the budding out of trees, the apple blossoms scattered, first trilliums, first lilacs, digging in the garden, the smell and feel of good earth as it softens, first swimming expeditions, walking ankle-deep in creek water with the forest cathedral-green arched over my head. I miss the first blush of autumn on the hardwoods, the maroons and rubies and sunflower yellows of Ohio woodlands in full autumn, and the friendly, chilly-but-rarely-nasty North Carolina winters.

But time does pass. I missed peach season this year — I don’t know how or why, but it left a hole in my time. I am determined to get good corn and eat it — steamed and lightly salted, and maybe with a decadent bit of butter — before that too slips by me.

I am forty-two, and I can’t figure out how that happened. Fifteen seemed like it would — should — last forever, riding my bicycle with no hands for miles and strolling through farmers’ fields and climbing up and down Ohio hills. Twenty-four seemed like it would last forever, chasing two toddlers and working as a nurse and wondering if I could finish that first book. Thirty-one — that went in a flash, with a second book written, a first book sold. And thirty-two — that was just a blink. Leaving nursing, becoming a full-time writer on a the frailest of hopes — a three-book deal and my own certainty that I could make it.

Forty-two. Optimistically, I could look at this as a halfway mark, or less. Realistically, I probably passed the middle of my life a while ago and failed to acknowledge the moment. I think odd thoughts now; I look at the little knick-knacks that decorate my desk and realize that they are far more permanent than I am. That copies of the first paperback novel of mine in print will still exist when I don’t. I thumb my stack of Simaks and Sturgeons and think long thoughts.

We are transient creatures, no matter how permanent we seem to ourselves at any moment. Lost in moments of deep focus, time stops for us — time does not exist when I write. But that only means it picks up its pace when I step away from the story. The kids have grown so fast — one is an adult now, and that thought still stuns me. The people in my life have changed, so many lost, so many gone away. I wonder if I will have my hills and seasons and garden again someday.

And the stories. How will I write them all, and who will read them? And is there anything else I haven’t done with my life that is still waiting? What clues have I missed? What have I left undone?

The twenties were all about confidence and chasing forward, and my thirties were all about getting things done. So far, the forties seem to be about this damnable itch at the back of my mind that somewhere, somehow, I have left the iron on and I need to figure out where I left it, so I can turn it off.

If I could get them, I would take a million more black cherry seasons. I do not think I would ever tire of the passage of days, the movement of seasons, the change of light in the hills, the comforting sound of rain on a roof, rain streaking down a window. I do not think I will ever be ready not to be here. But I am forty-two. And maybe that changes, too.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


Snippet of Gods Old and Dark, and stuff

By Holly Lisle

Sick yesterday, ALL day, culminating in a barf-fest at about ten p.m. that left my face covered with little broken blood vessels (called petechiae if you’re into medical terminology, which I’m not anymore, but some things are tough to forget.) Sick today too, but not that sick, thankfully. Nonetheless, while I let myself sleep in until seven, I still got up and did nearly two thousand words on the novel.

I wrote a Baanraak scene today, and I had fun with this, so I thought I’d post a snippet. I’ll give the following set-up: Baanraak is in human form and on Earth at the moment, trying not to draw attention to himself following a disturbing incident with Molly a few days back. For those who haven’t read the first book, Memory of Fire or the teasers for the upcoming The Wreck of Heaven, Baanraak is one of the rr0n, an evil creature from far up Earth’s worldchain whose natural form is what gave rise on Earth to legends of dragons. Beyond that, this segment should stand pretty well on its own.


Hendricks, Tucker County, West Virginia

Baanraak looked north at the tiny town and inhaled, long and deep. The magic was nearby — live magic, downworld magic shifted upworld, the source of the Night Watch’s discomfort and his amusement. But its source still lay southward, just a bit farther. He was close to locating the first and smallest of Lauren’s siphons, but already he could tell it wasn’t as small as he’d hoped. It was pumping out a lot of magic. More than he would have expected.

Molly’s sister had done something strong here, something scary. He’d thought two people taking on the whole of the Night Watch had been ludicrous — but Molly was a terrifying creature, and would be even more awe-inspiring when she came into her full power. She wasn’t even close yet. And the sister came from that same stock — ferocious and strong and passionate. He could feel the passion in the magic that surrounded him. He inhaled the magic, dragging it in deep, and he could taste the sister, and the taste he got shook him to his core. He tasted love, and it was love that moved even him, love so fierce and certain that it could change a world, or a worldchain. It was changing things.

Love was the spell she had cast, Baanraak realized. Love born of loss, and hope, and fear, and determination to survive. Love of life itself, love of the world and the creatures that lived on it and in it. Love of blue skies and thunderheads and the sweet smell of rain on the grass; love of bright lights and city streets and the people that walked through every day oblivious to the wonder of their own existence — and love of those who knew, and who cherished every breath.

The magic urged him to hang on, to keep fighting for good, to live with everything in him, to share love through action. To protect, to preserve, to defend.

He was a dead thing animated, a creature without love or passion or compassion … or hope … and the power of this plea shook him, and ripped into him with invisible talons, and dragged him weeping to his knees.

It was not the human form he had taken that was doing this. Flesh he could cast aside or remake at will — his flesh was under his control. It could not be his soul that this plea — this command — reached, for he had no soul. Millennia dead, he had been for millennia free of the pain of grief and tears. This was betrayal by silver yet again — betrayal of the Baanraak he had known for all of his existence by the Baanraak that had hidden within him, waiting for something to bring him forth.

Sobbing, Baanraak pulled himself to his feet. He shuddered, and blocked the magic away from himself as best he could, but it had wormed its way inside him and had filled empty places with itself. Nature, which abhorred a vacuum, had never found the vacuum within him. But a few careless moments in the presence of one human’s magic had done something that a millennia with Nature could not.

He only wished he could tell what that something was.

He turned his back on the little town of Hendricks and walked south on WV 72, walking on the berm, watching out for cars. There were a few, but not many. He was heading into the heart of the magic.

He would not taste it again, he promised himself. He did not dare. But this would be, he thought, his best hope of a good hiding place. Everyone knew live magic could not feed the dark gods — that they stayed close to sources of death and destruction. So this would be the last place anyone would look for him.

He needed time to think. To re-figure. His encounter with Molly, which had ended with him dead — but not destroyed — had shaken him badly. He didn’t know how she’d beaten him. He’d had her. But then she’d done something and he’d found himself in the forest, some little time later, rebuilt of humus and moss and rock, sun and water, and with some of his resurrection rings missing. The main one, the traitorous one that carried the silver channel in its vile heart, still animated him. But of the others he had found no sign. They were lesser rings, made only in supplement to his main one, or stolen from enemies he’d admired — and he’d added them to his wearable trove of immortality simply as a form of backup. He would not be lost without them, but he did not like the fact that he had lost them. And he did not like the fact that he did not know what had become of them.

He walked for a mile, and then another, and the off to his right he saw a trail sign. He turned onto it, feeling the magic becoming stronger with every step.

Here, the magic had had plenty of time to start soaking into the ground, the trees, and the water. Before long, uncanny things would start happening in the wilderness near Hendricks. Hikers on the Otter Creek trail would have some fairy sightings, though they probably would not reports them — people had gotten wary of reporting things like fairies. But before long they would be all over the area. Fairies were like mosquitoes that way; give them running water, appropriate terrain, and live magic, and not even DDT would get rid of them.

He glance up at the canopy of green over his head — summer leaves on their last legs before autumn came. It was a beautiful place. And it felt alive now. Any world’s natives were by nature almost blind to their own world’s magic, but the stuff Molly’s sister had brought in here had an unmistakable flavor. People would notice, even if they didn’t know what they were noticing. This area would get a reputation with the New Agers, and even though the area had bears along with its deer and its pheasants and its pretty rhododendrons, they’d start coming in search of the magic. And here they would actually find it.

Hikers walking along this path would be imbued with that same ferocious love, and they would become — heroic. Self-sacrificing. Men and women who had never before thought of anyone but themselves would start taking chances to protect others. This was going to be a dangerous stretch of woods for the unwary — it was going to change people’s lives.

The surviving flora and fauna of Earth’s magical ecology would find their way here, too. Baanraak wondered how many of the wee folk had managed to hang on this long on this planet with things so bad. The pookas, the black dogs, the werewolves and whisperers — in spite of all their strength, they were delicate creatures. When the magic started going, most of them had died off. If any survived, this place would be a little bit of heaven to them — if they could just get here. And their being here would add to the magic, make the place stronger.

Eventually, the trees would wake up, he thought, and start guarding the place themselves. Wouldn’t the tree-huggers be surprised when the trees hugged back. And wouldn’t let good. These were all second-growth trees — they’d never known rich magic and wouldn’t know how to handle themselves. They’d be wild or stupid unless someone trained them. Still, that would be a long time from now.

And then, hiking deeper into the forest, Baanraak caught one of the trees watching him. His skin twitched and inwardly he swore. There was already an old god here, then, using this magic, accelerating the area’s recovery. In no other way could the trees have woken up so fast. And these were canny — they had given no sign to him of what they were as he’d walked forward. So they had been trained already. If he had not been thinking about trees, he would not have noticed them watching him. If he had not stopped and stared when he caught the tree watching, he would have been fine, perhaps. But now his cover was blown. He would have to leave — trees were not taken in by form. They could see him for what he really was, and they would tell the old god. Killing the old god wouldn’t help his situation, either. He wanted to keep a low profile, not draw attention to his presence. If Molly and her sister had enlisted old gods in the effort to restore this world, they would be watching out for each other. If the trees had been quick about it — and he could hear their leaves rustling and their branches rattling even as he stood there — the odds were that the old gods, and perhaps even Molly, already knew he was here.

And the only thing he wanted — the only thing — was to stay out of sight for a while in a place where no one would think to look for him.

He turned and started out of the forest, back toward Hendricks. He could rent a room there, find a mirror, make a gate. Go someplace else. He’d thought Molly would not look for him on Earth, but now he needed someplace even more unlikely than Earth.

He was careful not to think until he was well clear of the forest, well free from the watching trees. He was careful not to think until he’d found a public restroom with a big mirror at a gas station. He would have to make himself smaller to fit through it. He had to have a place to go.

And he thought of Kerras, upworld, dead and dark and burned and frozen. He could hide there while he thought. While he reassessed and planned and figured. He’d make a bubble for himself, a bit of air, a bit of warmth. He’d be fine. And no one would look for him on Kerras — the gods both old and dark had abandoned that world.

And that’s it. As always, this is un-spell-checked, un-edited first draft, so it’ll be prone to major typing and spelling errors. Fresh fruit, complete with the occasional worm.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


Dying slowly, dying fast

By Holly Lisle

Got 2154 words, and the scene between Molly and Seolar turned out as well as I’d hoped (at least, it feels that way right now, before I’ve reread it.) They look at who and what she is, and what this means to the two of them. It turned out to be pretty heartbreaking for me while I was writing it. I hope that comes across to the reader when it’s in the book.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


24 (the TV show)

By Holly Lisle

Yesterday I took a day off. My older son and I sat on the couch and watched episodes of 24 from the DVD set he got from his grandparents. I’m enthralled. It isn’t television — the creators and actors have managed — by devoting twenty-four hours (minus ad breaks) to a single day of story — to give the series the depth that television lacks. They also apparently had a good budget, because the production quality is superb. Acting is also excellent — all of the major cast so far has been brilliant. Some of the extras have been laughably bad, to the degree that Stephen King was bad in the television version of The Stand, and I find myself wondering who they’re related to, or what strings they pulled to get parts. Nevertheless, extras don’t last long in this series. If you hate them, they’ll get shot soon.

Although my son assures me that many of the storylines get painfully contrived at around episode 3:00 pm and don’t pull themselves together for a while, they aren’t contrived yet, and, eight hours into the thing, all I can say is, if you haven’t seen this yet, you should. It’s amazing.

And with that note, I’ll get to back to work on Gods Old and Dark, where today Molly and Seolar deal with Molly’s peculiar curse, and their future.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


Pages, pages

By Holly Lisle

Wrote a quiet, reflective, relationship-y chapter in Gods Old and Dark, as Pete tries to work out things with Lauren, and tries to understand the obstacles between the two of them by talking with June-Bug. I figured after a battle between the keth, Loki, and Thor, and all the Sentinels, a quiet chapter might be a nice break.

Got 2066 words today, first time I’ve broken the 2000 barrier in quite some time. I have high hopes for tomorrow. I’ll be writing a scene with Molly post-Baanraak, and her encounter with Seolar, who has faced more death than he can take. Lots of angst. Should be fun.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


Writing

By Holly Lisle

1500-plus words yesterday, 1500-plus today. It’s like writing in the middle of a hurricane, or sitting in Dorothy’s house in the center of the tornado, putting down words. Nothing else is stable, there is no solid ground, there are no guarantees. But I have the words, and I’m hanging on to them, and trying to build my bridge to safety with them. The story … it’s coming along. I can’t tell you right now if it’s good or if it’s awful, but it’s moving forward. Not as fast as I’d like, but as fast as I can manage.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


Looking up a little

By Holly Lisle

My brother-in-law got to go home from the hospital late yesterday. We still don’t know a lot, but I’m glad he’s back home.

For the first time in a while, I’m actually able to write, and I’m getting pages done. I’m very relieved.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved