I’ve finished work on Rydding Village book 4, Weaving and Wyverns. I’m just waiting on a cover, which is supposed to come in the next few days.
Now I’m going to get to do what I’ve been saying I want to do for years: take October off. I won’t be entirely off, but I won’t be doing work that chains me to my desk at my favorite time of year. I’m not going to be writing a first draft, editing, or proofreading. I’ll mostly be doing some planning, plotting, and brainstorming for future projects. I also have some business and promotional work I need to do and some projects I want to get started in that area. But the working time will be flexible. I’m allowing myself to take time off. If it’s a lovely day and I want to go for a hike, I will. If it’s a cool, rainy day, I’ll spend the day baking and curled up on the sofa with a book. There are a couple of day trips I want to take. There’s an old logging train in West Virginia that now does excursions into the mountains, and I want to do that. I also want to visit Monticello. On weekends, there are so many festivals around the area to visit.
I guess I need to work on the house, as well. I need to organize the basement, and now that things aren’t growing so furiously, I might be able to catch up on getting rid of weeds in my yard. I’d like to unearth the fire pit so I can have a real bonfire night or two. Right now, it’s full of weeds.
But this weekend will mostly be for rest. This morning I had a meeting in a nearby town and did some shopping while I was there. I may hit the community garden market later in the afternoon and try to time it to coincide with the steam train that will be coming by. Saturday is supposed to be cool and rainy, and I’m going to spend a very lazy day with tea and books.
Earlier this week, it was Hobbit Day, the anniversary of the original publication of The Hobbit. I decided to celebrate by watching the 1977 animated TV movie version. For one thing, it’s about the only incarnation of the story you can get through in under an hour and a half, but for another, it was in some ways my introduction to that universe and even to fantasy fiction.
I was in elementary school then, and my teacher would read a chapter from a book to us every day after recess, I guess as a way of settling us all down. As the airing of the TV movie approached, she read The Hobbit. I recall there were some other linked lessons that tied it into the curriculum, but I don’t remember details about them. I did as I always did when she read us a book and got impatient with the chapter-a-day pace, checked the book out of the library, and read it much faster so that I was done well before the class was. When the TV movie came on, I told my parents that it was homework, so I had to watch it.
The edition my teacher read looked like this, so when I saw a coaster of it, I had to get it.
I didn’t remember much about the movie itself, not even whether I liked it or how I thought it compared to the book. I was in the midst of Star Wars mania at the time, so I don’t think it registered too much. It was a brief diversion from all things Star Wars, and I wasn’t interested if there weren’t spaceships and laser swords. I was too young for The Lord of the Rings at that time, so I’m not sure where else I could have gone with it if I had really gotten into The Hobbit and wanted more like it. I guess I could have found the Narnia books sooner (I had read The Horse and His Boy during my horse phase, but I read it more as a talking horse book than as a fantasy novel and didn’t know it was part of a series). I was reading the Oz books around this time. I don’t think I’d yet figured out the concept of genre. I just read the books I liked that were about things I was interested in at that time. I hadn’t realized that there were categories of books that similar books fit into.
It was a couple of years later before I got into the Narnia books and from there spotted The Fellowship of the Ring in the library and remembered that this was a follow-up to that book I read before the TV movie came on. Then I went into a big fantasy phase that I’ve never quite come out of.
It was interesting to revisit the animated movie after all this time, after having seen the bloated epic saga of the live-action version and having read and re-read the books. In a lot of respects, the animated version is more faithful to the book than the live-action version was. It doesn’t contain a lot of made-up stuff that isn’t in the book. It does skip some things, but I think it’s proof that they could have done a faithful adaptation in around two hours. I think Tolkien would have approved of all the insertions of folk-style songs into the soundtrack, though he might have been baffled by the disco synth sounds that often came up in the score, especially for action scenes.
If you’ve got kids you want to introduce to that universe, this would be a good option. They skim over any serious violence, like zooming out and showing dots on a map as a way of depicting the battle, and it’s very much done as though aimed at kids, focusing on the stuff kids would find interesting. It’s also a fun watch for adults who want to reset their brains after the live-action attempt at this story. Their Smaug and Gollum are a bit of a letdown compared to the live-action versions. They have a very different take on the wood elves and the dwarfs than we get in live action (no hot young dwarfs). On the other hand, their trolls look a lot more like the traditional Scandinavian depictions, and I like their take on the goblins. It is very, very 70s, so depending on your age it may be a blast from the past or so retro that it’s a bit campy.
This week, I’ve been working on the “make the words pretty” pass of Weaving and Wyverns, book 4 of the Tales of Rydding Village series. That’s when I read the book out loud, performing it as though I’m recording an audio book. It’s a great way to catch awkward phrasings and to make sure I’m really seeing what’s on the page, as opposed to what’s in my head. My audiobook narrators have said my books are easy for them to read, and it’s probably because I do it this way.
This is when I tend to find a lot of “why did I do that?” moments, where something doesn’t make sense to me and I don’t remember why I wrote it that way. If I have to read it several times to figure out what I meant, readers don’t stand a chance, so that means rewriting.
This is a pretty draining process because I’m not used to talking this much. I could barely sing during choir practice last night. My voice was pretty much shot. I’m taking breaks between chapters and drinking a lot of water, and I’m trying not to talk when I’m not reading the book.
I have one more pass, when I read the formatted book out loud to myself. That may happen next week, or I may hold it for the following week to give myself a bit of a break. And then the book will be ready to go.
After that, the rest of the year I’m planning to focus on thinking and preparation, getting some new promotional things going, and also giving myself some time off to enjoy the autumn. I scheduled in a week of vacation, but I may not take a whole week off. I may do it in smaller chunks. If it’s a really nice day, I may head to the Blue Ridge Parkway and do some hiking or visit an apple orchard. If it’s a cool, rainy day, I may spend the day baking, drinking tea, and reading. Otherwise, I’ve got an old book I wrote but never revised that I may take a crack at, and I want to do some planning/plotting for future books so I can dive right in next year. I’m going to try to schedule my days so I fit in fun around the writing, either getting the work done in the morning and playing or working in the yard in the afternoon or going exploring during the day and spending some time working in the evening.
But first, I have to get this book done and out into the world.
I had a bit of a getaway last weekend, as my church and choir had a retreat up in the mountains. I made a day of the trip up there and stopped at the Virginia Museum of the Civil War, which is at the New Market battlefield. The museum is a bit weird. It’s run by the Virginia Military Institute, as VMI cadets played a role in the battle and a number died there, and it’s all very Lost Cause, with the focus on glory and valor, etc., and no mention of what they were actually fighting about. There was a film that showed what led up to the battle, the battle itself, and the aftermath, and the one section that acknowledged slavery was a thing seemed to have been edited. In the part showing how the people nearby were preparing for the battle that was going to take place around them, it showed the locals hiding valuables and taking shelter in basements, but then it showed an enslaved woman seeing the Union soldiers approaching, smiling and running, then it showed a really racist cartoon of a man reading the Emancipation Proclamation and a picture of Abraham Lincoln, but with no narration saying anything about these things (the rest of the film had narration explaining everything).
They preserved the farm where the battle took place, and I walked around the farm buildings and house, which were interesting in their own right. The battlefield was just a field, though it did give some sense of the scale. There was a walking trail going around all the key points in the battle, but it was pretty hot so I went back inside to look at the museum. Inside the museum, the exhibits mentioning anything to do with slavery or Black people were “under construction” with the explanatory plaques or photos missing (and those were the only ones that were being reworked, so it felt pretty deliberate). I left the museum angry and didn’t want to show up feeling that way at the retreat, so I stopped at a local potato chip factory I remembered being nearby. I missed getting to see the chips being made because they’d already stopped for the day, but they loaded me up with samples of all their flavors to try. I ended up buying some of the seasonal flavor they were only selling at the factory and a couple of other bags to bring to the retreat (and then there were so many snacks I never got them out, so now I have the Strategic Potato Chip Reserve).
The fact that they used gun barrels to make the Virginia “Love” sign should have been a clue about what I’d find inside the museum.
As for the retreat, it was held in a place that used to be a Victorian spa resort. The main building was an old hotel that looked like something out of Somewhere in Time. My room was in another old hotel that was built in 1855. When I was out on the balconies with the rocking chairs and Adirondack chairs, I felt like I should be wearing a white dress and carrying a parasol. Inside was rather more spartan, since it is a religious retreat center. I spent most of the weekend doing choir rehearsals, but I did get to hike up the mountain (it’s the Appalachians, so it was just walking up a trail, not actual mountain climbing), and I got a short hike in the woods. We had campfires both nights. One night, the kids got really excited about toasting marshmallows and making s’mores, so the adults had s’mores chefs serving us. There were huge meals in the dining hall and I met a lot of interesting people, as well as getting to know the people I already knew better.
The building in front was where my room was, and I got to spend a little time sitting on one of those balconies with a book.
I took the back roads home, so I got to do some fun mountain driving and saw some spectacular scenery, though there were some nervous moments because the road wasn’t labeled and I thought I’d made a wrong turn, and I was in an area with no cell signal, so my map barely worked (fortunately, I’d brought up the map while I had access to wifi in the main building, so I did have a map. I just didn’t have directions). I knew from my car’s compass that I was heading in the right direction, and I made it to the road I knew. When I got home and checked the map, I found that I’d been on the road I wanted to be on. The fall colors are starting to come out, so it looked like fall even though it was warm in the afternoons.
Mountains! The view was worth the climb.
I shouldn’t have been too tired, since I went to bed at my usual time, but I was exhausted when I got home. I imagine it’s introvert drain. I’ve been very antisocial this whole week, which is helping.
I’m currently editing the fourth Rydding Village book, the pass when I read it out loud and make sure the words work. But when this book is done, I’ll be spending October doing a lot more driving around and looking at scenery.
It’s already starting to feel like fall. The first hints of gold are showing in the trees, and when there’s a gust of wind, leaves fall. It’s been pretty chilly overnight, so it’s still cold in the mornings, gets warm in the afternoon, then it’s cool again as soon as the sun sets. I started regularly wearing my lightweight hoodie in August. This was one of the main reasons I moved away from Texas. I wanted more fall. In Texas, it’s warm through October, then sort of starts looking and feeling like fall around Thanksgiving, aside from spurts of cool weather that last a day or two. Here, we had “Texas October” in August, and fall-like weather will last through Thanksgiving.
But we’re about to get another warmish spell, close to Texas October, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s hitting the weekend we’re having a church and choir retreat up in the mountains. There’s an Episcopalian retreat center that apparently started as a camp-type place, but then it ended up incorporating what was once a Victorian spa resort, the place people went from Washington, D.C., to “take the waters” and get away from the heat and humidity on the coast during the summer. Now the old Victorian hotels are part of this retreat center. It may be a bit warm for hiking, but it’ll be nice for sitting around a bonfire at night.
Since I finished this round of revisions on Rydding Village book 4, I’m making a day of the trip up there. Along the way I’m planning to visit the New Market battlefield and the Civil War museum there. I just watched the Ken Burns Civil War series from PBS, so now I’m trying to get around to some of the related sites in this area. The house three doors down was used as a military hospital during the war (the person who lives there now says there are blood stains still in the wood floors), and I can see a cemetery with a war section from my front windows, so since I’m surrounded by this history I figure I need to learn more. That was never an era in history I was that interested in.
There’s also a regionally famous potato chip factory near the museum, where you can watch them making the chips, get samples, and buy some, so I may do that while I’m nearby.
Then we’ll see if my voice has recovered enough to do three days of choir rehearsals. We won’t be rehearsing the whole time. There will be other activities and a lot of free time. I’m bringing books to read and some notebooks to write in, since there’s no Internet. It’ll be a good time for an online detox. Then I’ll be ready for a round of edits.
Way back when I first started working on the book that became Enchanted, Inc., I did a kind of “retreat” on Labor Day weekend to prepare for writing it, which included watching romantic comedies so I could capture that tone while adding magic to it. That started a tradition I’ve called Chick Lit and Chick Flick weekend. I didn’t read chick lit for Labor Day weekend this year, but I did make a point of watching a romantic comedy. I thought about watching something new, but since rom-coms, especially new ones, can be so hit or miss, I went with a fairly obscure favorite, a British rom-com called The Very Thought of You (though it was originally released under a different title).
It’s hard to describe this movie in a way that shows what makes it fun without giving away the twists, but then the twists are hardly surprising, given that it is a romantic comedy and it’s fairly obvious which couple will get together.
The gist of it is that an American woman gets fed up with her life and decides to leave it all behind. She buys a ticket for the first flight she can afford, which turns out to be London. Then she meets a guy at the airport, and that sets off a chain reaction of events. We see things mostly from the guy’s perspective as he meets her, makes some grand gestures to be close to her, then loses her, and then he tells his two best friends about her. Next we see one of the friends run into her, realize it’s the woman his friend told him about, and he then flirts with her and loses her. And then we find out what was really going on around all this to explain the other events.
It’s not really a Rashomon thing where the story changes depending on who’s telling it. It’s more that the camera sticks with the guys, so we only see what they see and know what they know at the time, and so we get different information depending on which guy the camera’s with.
Joseph Fiennes is our romantic leading man, and this movie seems to have been made just before Shakespeare in Love. It’s interesting to consider how his career might have gone if this had been what established him instead, but I get the feeling he wouldn’t have stuck with romcoms even if he hadn’t become better known for costume dramas since his choices have been rather eclectic. He does make a great romantic leading man because he says a lot with his eyes. The movie also includes Tom Hollander and Rufus Sewell. Our leading lady is Monica Potter, who had a brief run at being the next big romcom heroine around the turn of the century.
I enjoy this one because mixing up the structure makes the standard girl-meets-boy fresher, and then there’s the underlying internal conflict with the guy having to choose between loyalty to his friends and love and then consider whether his friends really are his friends, so there’s some emotional depth to it. It’s laugh-out-loud funny in a couple of places, I actually want the main couple to get together, and we get some lovely London scenery.
I don’t think this one is currently streaming anywhere. I bought the DVD after seeing it on cable (or possibly a local station) one Saturday or Sunday afternoon years ago. I don’t know what kind of release it got in the US, given that it came out during a time when I was seeing a lot of movies and paying attention to what was coming out but I’d never heard of it. If you do find it, it’s good for the classic romcom feelings but with a few twists, as well as getting to watch some actors who went on to be much bigger stars at early points in their careers. There’s even an extra you barely spot who’s gone on to become much better known.
Last night was my first choir rehearsal in about four years. I’ve been singing in “summer choir,” where you just show up on Sunday morning and learn a simple piece, but this was the start of “real” choir, with rehearsals and with everyone there. This choir sings for the Episcopal church services, but it also functions as a kind of community chorale, with several concerts of big classical pieces every year, so there are people who come to rehearsals and who sing in the concerts who don’t sing for church services. There are several who go to other churches. The cantor of the town’s synagogue sings with this choir.
One thing that’s really different for me is that they need me to sing alto, since they’re top-heavy with sopranos. I think half the alto section is made up of sopranos. I have a good low register, so I can do it, but it’s definitely a mental shift that I’ll have to get used to. I’m not sure I’d want to sing soprano in this choir, anyway, because they do a lot of Anglican church music that’s written for boy sopranos, and that’s not the kind of soprano voice I have. What little voice training I’ve had has been with opera singers, and that’s a different technique. I’d be blasting them out with a strong vibrato instead of having that pure, sweet sound. In the alto section, I can be rich and lush, though I’ve warned them that I’ve mostly sung jazz in my lower register, so I get pretty torchy. When I sing low, I sound like I should be wearing a slinky dress and leaning against a piano. My low voice has been called “sexy” by people I’ve been in choirs with before.
I had a huge “it’s a small world” moment at the rehearsal when I learned that the woman sitting next to me went to the high school I would have gone to if we’d stayed in that place after I finished eighth grade, went to the same university I went to, and then worked for a while in the part of Texas where I went to high school and where my parents live, so she even knew that small town. This town seems to be full of former Texans. I guess we’re reversing the flow from when Stephen F. Austin came from Virginia (not too far from here) to Texas with a group of settlers. Now they’re all coming back.
I put new batteries in my electronic keyboard so I can do some practicing and get the alto part in my head. Next weekend is a church retreat that includes a choir rehearsal, so I’ll be doing some serious singing (in between hiking jaunts, since we’re going to a retreat center in the mountains). I’m not sure my voice is up for that much, since I’ve barely used it in a long time. I’ll have to do some exercises every day this week to see if I can build up to it.
The last book I read hit so many of my buttons that it might as well have been written just for me, with a favorite trope executed in just the way I like. I checked it out of the library, but I bought the e-book before I was even done reading it so I could have a copy to keep. I suspect this will become a comfort read, something to turn to when I need to feel good.
The book is Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis. A man wakes in what’s clearly a dark wizard’s workroom in the aftermath of a spell gone wrong, with no memory of who he is, how he got there, or what happened. At first, he’s afraid of what the dark wizard will do to him, but then he comes to realize that he’s the dark wizard. The more he learns, the more disturbed he is by the kind of person he apparently is. He’s got a princess in his dungeon, his staff is terrified of him, and he’s part of some ritual being planned by another dark wizard. He’s not sure how he’s going to get out of it without his memories, but he also isn’t sure he even wants to be himself anymore, and he can’t rely on what he thinks he knows because nothing is as it seems.
I’m a total sucker for the plot trope I call “who would you be if you didn’t know who you were?” It’s a subset of the amnesia plot. The standard amnesia plot usually focuses on the character trying to find out who they are, but in this one the character learns fairly quickly who they are, and they don’t want to be that person. Minus the memories and baggage, they try to make a fresh start, but they still have to deal with the consequences of past actions that they don’t remember. That’s exactly what this story is about, with the character horrified of who he apparently used to be, trying to set things right, but still having to deal with the fallout from what he’s done. It reminds me a lot of the Moist von Lipwig books in the Discworld series, with a reforming rogue who’s developed a conscience.
There’s also an element of found family here, as he bonds with the castle’s staff, who are oddly loyal, considering how he seems to have treated them in the past, and then there are the villagers, who seem proud of their local dark wizard, even though he must have menaced them. Dealing with the other dark wizards requires putting together a wacky coalition of people he hurt in the past, and all the while he’s trying to figure out what kind of man he really is and what kind of man he wants to be.
The book is funny at times, but also gets serious and emotional. I ended up loving all the characters, and the ending was so satisfying. This seems to be a standalone novel (her next one is entirely unrelated), but it looks like there’s room to follow some of the characters as they have further adventures. They just wouldn’t be adventures related to this core conflict, so maybe it’s best to leave them alone to go on with their lives. I do want to know what happens to them, though.
I think my readers would enjoy this story because it’s fairly humorous fantasy with fun characters you enjoy spending time with. I guess you could even say there’s an adorkable wizard.
