my heart is a glorious machine;

I've just been out on the lawn, basking in the sun like some sort of cat or reptile or what have you; I have never been so ravenous for sunlight. My skin grows impatient when the sun ducks behind a cloud for a few moments. (I am wearing this, which is very apt for daydreaming in the sun on a day full of breezes, not to mention listening to acres of New Weird America and freak folk. Speaking of which, Daddy got me Steeleye Span for my birthday, "for old times' sake". ♥) Lying in the sun gets the brain to wandering over all sorts of odd paths, and I have just realised several things about my poor messy Evangeline story, which I shall set down because a) for some reason some of you lot seem to miss hearing about it, and b) someone might even have an idea which I will gladly take for a test run.

Let me see -- when I was discussing the story with Kyra last month, she helped me to realise that the library is protected -- I've been running with the vampires-can't-cross-threshold-unless-invited myth and working out how the magics would work mechanically, so to speak, and you can't make them, they have to be -- a psychic barrier of lived-inness protects a house from undead intruders; a house that's just been moved into would be less protected, the older a house is the more difficult it is for vampires to get in, temporary lodgings might be susceptible; it is entirely possible that vampires could get into Mr Caruthers' rooms without much trouble as he is hardly ever there and has no attachment to the place, nor has he really lived there. Anyway, the library is loved and lived-in by so many people -- especially Evangeline and Mr Caruthers -- that it does have that threshold protection, but it becomes significantly weaker when Mr Caruthers is absent. I'm not quite certain why he is so strongly tied to the building; perhaps it has something to do with the reservoir-of-magic/ley lines/something important that is built into/under/around/something the library, and probably Mr Caruthers having mucked about with unpleasant and too-powerful magics in his youth. Because the library is so tied to Mr Caruthers, at this point Evangeline's strong attachment to it does not affect the barrier much. He goes off on some Mysterious Plot-Important Errand at the beginning of the story, vampires break in, plot happens, people die, yay.

And then! While lying in the sun I realised that the vampires were looking for Evangeline when they broke into the library: and they got Lottie instead, because of some sort of misinformation, I don't know. I don't want to make this obvious on the outset, either. (They may have been interested in Mr Caruthers as well, I don't know, but understood they couldn't breach the library if he was there -- and Evangeline has something that they Need.) I think what they want Evy for is her story-sensing -- there's some kind of unrest, quite possibly related to the slow-building unrest which will only need the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in less than two years to ignite the tinder for war, which may or may not involve governments trying to figure out how they can use vampires for things. (Rubbish, this is getting too complicated! I want a smaller story! Stoppit!) I am beginning to think that there is no useful future-seeing amongst the vampires because their unlife puts them out of time in a way -- so while some of them may get glimpses of the future it's not necessarily distinguishable from past or present or hallucination and is usually very random and unlikely to be at all connected to anything that the vampire could find useful -- since they absorb memories from the people they drink, they may be getting a glimpse of one of those lives, or perhaps the future of someone known by those people, and memories may tangle together as there is so much mixed blood. (There's a running idea of memory existing in the blood, and I must commend cherise for setting me on that path. ♥) Anyway, Evy has the ability to see storylines, or something like that, and the vampires either want to turn her or consume her with the idea that by one of them drawing all of her blood into themselves they will acquire her ability. I don't know, this is the first stage of that idea.

But then Mr Caruthers is also very very important and in some way key, and I'm beginning to understand that part of the end everything is leading to is the vampires wanting him or Mr Caruthers offering himself up as a tithe for some ritual/ceremony/use of magics -- a la Tam Lin. It is entirely possible that he would offer himself up out of sheer guilt -- he has this dangerous more-than-a-residue of the black magics that he toyed with irresponsibly as a youth and they could very well explode and do terrible things and he can't really control it, but willingly sacrficing himself in a situation in which a great explosion of magic would actually be a solution, well... And self-sacrifice would also cleanse the magics of their destructiveness. However, I have no plans nor desire to kill him, so that end will have to be worked through somehow.

There's also something about the trees of London coming to the aid of the city, in a way -- shadowempress suggested something having to with the essence of London that led to this idea. That fits with my idea that trees, as representations of life, are why stakes of wood can kill vampires, though I'd like a better understanding of why certain plants ward better than others (holly, for example, and, hey, garlic?). if wood is dangerous, imagine how well the trees could overcome the vampires. That's the germ of the germ of an idea, though.

Oh dear. 

You guys, I have been reading frenetically over the last several weeks. It is delicious, although occasionally disconcerting -- there were a couple of days when I was so locked into a pair of books that I could not drag myself away from them, and so did hardly anything but read. The catalyst, I think, is suddenly (and at last) having so many new books to read. Library trips have mostly been bringing back old favourites of late, or books I've read once or twice in the years since we've moved here, and the book-lover's soul does get a little lonely after a long time of this. But now I've a job in a bookstore, and I can borrow whatever I please! It is delicious. Also I have been buying far more books than usual. Eep. (But my bookshelf needs Eva Ibbotson on it! And Un Lun Dun! And...) Not only because of work, but because of serendipitous recent happenings that seem to be shoving books into my lap. There was the unintended trip to Rosie's Book Shoppe, the only used bookstore in town, during which I found Those Who Hunt the Night, one of the few vampire novels I have read and loved, and discovered that it has a sequel! which was also on the shelf! and together they were only five dollars. La la la... And then Ollie's, after getting my photo ID, and its stacks of discounted books, half of which are silly Christian-fiction nonsense (nearly every book I've ever read that dealt with Christianity in a meaningful way has never seen the light of a Christian bookstore), but I found and bought three wonderful books, though I've read them all before and haven't needed to re-read them yet.

My manager finds my frantic reading habits amusing, I think; he still seems surprised when I come back with my loans a few days after checking them out, and swap them for new ones. Of course I've been roaring through my loans especially quickly the last month, because I finally started reading Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series, and when I get on a series, I really get on it. And I was actually surprised at how much I've been loving this one. The characters are fantastic and I adore them all, and while Mr Butcher's prose isn't always the most well-crafted, it fits Harry Dresden's voice in a way a more talented wordsmith might not be able to match. And the ideas and imagination and the plots are wonderful, which makes up for mechanical shortfalls. Have I mentioned that I LOVE EVERYONE IN IT? LIKE CRAZY? And aslksdghg, the Carpenters are pretty much my favourite people EVER. And THOMAS. And Murphy, and HARRY HIMSELF who is so adorable and ridiculous and has the worst life ever. (If you are named Harry and a wizard, your life will be awful. Trufax. Also if you are a private investigator specialising in supernatural shenanigans, and you wear a leather duster, your life will be awful and your love-life will be complicated beyond belief. Here an imaginary Ender Wiggin interjects, "Wait until you wipe out an entire race." And my Ten action figure scowls at him and says darkly, "Wait until you destroy YOUR OWN PLANET and EVERY OTHER MEMBER OF YOUR SPECIES WITH I IT." And then he sits back on the windowsill and looks smug, as though he's pleased about winning this argument, until it dawns on him, and he goes to emo on the candelabra, while miniature Martha facepalms from the lamp.) 

And I just finished the last book this afternoon and feel kind of adrift. There are more coming out, but they're not out yet, and I miss everyone already! 

The other books that I found particularly difficult to come out of were, as previously mentioned, Those Who Hunt the Night and then its sequel, by Barbara Hambly: Those Who Hunt the Night is a vampire novel set in England, circa 1907, and the protagonist, James Asher, is a philologist and folklore expert and professor who also used to be a spy (and he has a motorbike), and his philological observations of vampires make my linguophile self twirl in sheer delight, because that is exactly how I would react. I love the book because it's excellently written, and a compelling story -- someone is murdering vampires, why?, and Asher is pretty much blackmailed (via threats to his wife, Lydia, who is also one of the best characters in the novel) into investigating by vampire Don Simon Ysidro -- and it also examines the nature of vampires and vampirism. Hambly's vampires are neither demonised nor apologised for, which gives both the characters and the reader a lot to think about. They're both sympathetic and not sympathetic at all at the same time -- and fascinating.

The sequel is Traveling With the Dead, in which Hambly nearly but not quite steals my idea (except it was really Kyra's, I think), about vampires and foreign governments and the years leading to the Great War. While the first book is mostly James', the second primarily belongs to Lydia (though it centres on James and what he is doing, the journey is Lydia's), and we discover that she is even more made of awesome than previously suspected. I love that she's a strong, opinionated woman, a female doctor and theoretical scientist in an era in which this was rare and controversial, but she's allowed to love pretty clothes, and be vain about her spectacles, which she will not wear if anyone is likely to see her. And she's brave and funny and clever and I love her a lot. I think I love the second book even more than the first, because it takes everything we learnt the first time and deepens it, examines it, develops it a little further.

I must warn you, however, that if you pick these books up, especially at a used bookstore, do not be deterred by the horrible pulpy covers and the deeply misleading sensationalistic back-cover blurbs. (Huh. For some reason the blurb for Traveling With the Dead makes a big deal about James going on the Orient Express, which, sure, he did, for a tiny part of a chapter, and that was in flashback, and the Orient-Express-ness was not even remotely important or much emphasised. Also it makes Ysidro out to be the villain of the piece, which... he really, really isn't.) 
Today it was so warm that I spent half the day outside -- I spread a quilt on the lawn and made a picnic of my lunch (roast chicken), and stayed for several hours more finishing Small Favor, the last Dresden Files book, and sometimes just lying on my back or on my stomach, marvelling in how the sunlight and warmth felt almost tangible. Later, I went to the playground with Mum and the siblings, and pushed Leandra on the swings and tried to spin on the merry-go-round with Heidi, which didn't work out so well. Mostly I read Neil Gaiman short stories and watched people in between. And I am revelling in dresses! Oh summer dresses, I missed you most of all! 

In the evening, I shut myself in the book closet with an old candle and an old mix I made for Kyra last year, and wrote poetry and made hand-shadows against the weird flickering light.

I've just got back from the library, and it is the first time in months that I have walked, not run, there and back, braced and bundled against fierce cold. Yes: we're having a warm spot! I am giddy with it! I have worn skirts two days in the row, almost the first skirts I've worn in two months! My dresses have been hanging forlornly in the closet feeling lonely and abandoned, and I find that months of trousers leave me feeling not entirely like myself (and the combined efforts of work and winter have forced upon me a self not only perpetually trouser-clad, but in flat shoes).

The air doesn't quite smell like spring -- it's mostly only the warm-ness of it, and the smell of mud, because spring has a sharp green growing-things edge to it, and of course it is February, a dead month if there ever was one. But the scent is heady enough that I was taking great hungry gulps of it, walking through mud and slush to the library in my favourite high-heeled boots. If only it would last!

Today is a nice respite, or I hope it is, because lately I have been a mess, in every way I don't like, and I am tired of being kept up late with existensial angst, and brooding over failures both real and imagined, and having to bully myself out of bed in the morning, and all sorts of other things which do not belong in this entry.

Hmm. Have just woken up from mostly intentional short nap after forgetting to post this. Interesting experience: listening to NPR while drifting in and out of wakefulness. This is not really a new experience, because for the last year and a half I have been switching on the radio on waking in the morning, whether or not I am actually awake. However, this morning waking and dreaming understandings created a strange, fey conconction of story. A man was being interviewed -- was he actually Asian, or was that my dream? No, I think he was, though his voice wasn't, and his name wasn't; I'm fairly certain the anecdote about his great-great grandfather (or close to) choosing an English name upon reaching America was real. Beyond that, I don't know which of the things I remember actually has any counterpart in reality: he lived in a strange house-restaurant on the shore of a beach, there was something about not wanting anyone to recognise anything as coming from the Old Country (Japan? was this the 1940s?), and having to leave one's home very quickly, with a minute's warning in which to gather your things, which seemed to be more of a bizarre custom than anything else. There was some odd imagery of the house-restaurant on the beach, curiously open -- doors, windows, outlay -- full of shells and odd things, standing there abandoned on the shore. Eventually I swam upwards out of the sleep-waves, and whoever-was-the-interviewer was telling everyone that they had just interviewed Someone Or Other, novelist. How very curious.

Sigh. I planned to clean the bedroom and sleep today (and possibly hang out / play music with Jonathan), but Jim, my manager, called this morning to ask if I could come in. Which is a good, really, because this is the second time now that someone hasn't been able to make their shift and they called me to fill in, and since I have done it both times, it means a) a larger paycheck next month, and b) that I am showing how much I actually want the job. But still -- I don't actually remember very much about today, especially near the end of my shift; I was starting to feel wobbly and odd. (Ergo I wrote it into my NaNo. Heh. You know, my NaNo begins in early November -- quite by accident, really! -- and is currently near Christmastime. When I started it was raining all the time, so that's reflected, and now it has been snowing nearly every day, so there is a great deal about snow and ice and being very cold now. There's not a lot of write-what-you-know available in this novel, but I sure do cram in what I can!) 

This is what going mad feels like: when you actually start arguing with the Edward Cullen poster that won't stop staring at you. I actually can't remember what I told him, even, because the argument was soon banished by the horrifying revelation that FYE sells lunchboxes with Edward Cullen's face on them. I looked like an emoticon, I was so weirded out. LUNCHBOXES. The food would all get his venom poisoning their system VAMPIRE FRUIT AGAIN OMG. Also it would be neatly organised and, like, colour-coded and stuff. (I then proceeded to, um. Well. I wrote, like, a page and a half of crazy, crazy Growing Up Cullen rambling when I should have been NaNoing. ...I'll post it later.)

At least I am caught up -- at last, now that the very last week is upon us -- and so do not have to wrench at least two thousand words out of myself every day. Also, the fact that this story is barely even begun is sort of terrifying. I will have to make some sort of goal for me to write by when November is finished -- just now I can't even think that far ahead, in terms of writing, or my brains will explode messily out of my eye sockets -- because, hey. I have over a hundred novel-sized pages written in a month. The last time I wrote this much of one story, especially in order? I think I may have been twelve?

But I have all of these other projects that I want to work on next month -- I can think of four short stories, offhand (three are fanfiction), that have been sitting around ninety-percent finished for months, and as I type, others are springing into my head and waving their hands about desperate for attention, poor things. Also I had a Very Splendid Idea for a short story that I want terribly to have a go at...

I sang a lot at work today, because I was trying not to fall asleep at my station, and because I had no customers, and hey, if I can't read or listen to music or write, why not sing? It occasionally even lures customers. Only I realised that every single song I was singing was -- kind of macabre? "The Prickly Bush", "The House Carpenter", "What Does the Deep Sea Say?" (okay, not macabre, but tragic), "Henry Lee" -- well, there was "Saucy Sailor", and that's all catchy and whatnot and only has jilting in, not any death. I tried to sing "Tam-Lin" but I haven't memorised all of the words yet, for some reason. (FOR SHAME.) (Hey, what, Led Zeppelin did a cover of "The Prickly Bush"? Crazy. I...kind of want every version ever recorded of this song, though, for sentimental reasons: Steeleye Span, especially this song and "All Around My Hat", are the soundtrack for my early childhood. I -- was not a very usual child. This is my parents' fault really.) It amuses me that most of the songs that I know all of the words to are traditional folk songs. I mean, look, they were made to be sung! The melodies just beckon to you, all right? (Anyway, for the record, I can sing most of "My Body Is A Cage", and, um -- some traditional American spirituals. *facepalm*) 

Today at the dinner table I got to expound upon reasons it is rarely good to marry a vampire. I...don't even know, guys. Speaking of which, you have no idea how much I need this t-shirt. We belong together! (Although the gun-with-silver-bullets irks me. THOSE DO NOT WORK ON VAMPIRES. Silver is alchemically connected to the moon, which is why it works on werewolves. Vampires have absolutely nothing to do with the lunar cycle. There is no good reason for silver bullets to harm them. I do, however, believe that vampires are harmed by cold iron.) 

...And before dinner I completed the final stage of my hair-dyeing, and about half my hair is a sort of blood-red now. It looks very striking, and is also quite cheering. There will be pictures when the remainder of the dye comes off my face.