my heart is a glorious machine;

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.

Oh, life.

Eventually I will make a Thanksgiving Post, because Thanksgiving is a very important holiday to me -- which is a very silly thing to say, really, because every holiday is deeply significant to me in one way or another, with exceptions for things like Flag Day and Columbus Day (o hai, European Xenophobic Oppressors Day! and I'm not even into political correctness). Thanksgiving is one of those lovely warm intimate quiet holidays: it hasn't got the comfort and joy wonderlust of Christmas, or the looking-forward raucous solemnity of the New Year, or the (now commercialised, bleah) eerieness of Halloween, or the wondrous holiness of Easter, but it means something, and is, in fact, the only major holiday that has resisted almost every attempt to commercialise it. (One holiday I don't really care about? Valentine's Day. I think it has my least favourite commercialisation, and if any future Signficant Other buys me a stupid singing teddy bear I will just ... our relationship would not survive this. And when you don't have a Significant Other you are stuck with tacky aluminium valentines with television characters on them. I think it could be quite a lovely holiday, if I had a Significant Other and we did something really de-commercialised, because it's a really lovely idea, just ... wow. I can't think about it much or I start seeing pink spots and feeling quite ready to swoon uncomfortably.) 

But anyway. I have been spending the last several days walking around fairly blindly because I can't seem to get enough sleep. Friday I slept for twelve hours -- I went to sleep at eleven (bed at ten) and woke up at eleven -- and still spent the entire day stumbling around trying to wake up. Today was only marginally better; I allowed myself some brief naps, and now feel reasonably awake, which is nice. My head was starting to feel far more uncomfortably jumbled than usual, and I wrote a bit of NaNo that barely even approached logic.

Actually, not much to tell. Life = NANO OMG NANO. One more day, oh help oh help, and I know I'm nearly there, but that makes it worse, because if I somehow do not finish tomorrow I will be in the deepest well of despair, wailing and gnashing my teeth, and taking out my frustration and emo on inanimate objects that may or may not have had anything to do with it. (Carpet: no. Toaster: no. iPod: yes. Internet: totally.)

I have learnt that Mr Caruthers' Sordid Past (which sounds like a band I would totally dig), involves opium, among other things, and so I have got out a book on it from the library. I hope it will be useful. If not, Dad has some books on the history of drugs. Um. They were for a class on American culture. I keep meaning to read them -- for some reason this kind of thing mesmerises me, maybe because of my interests in psychology and mental illness? I don't even know. Anyway I think once I have Mr Caruthers' past down a bit more the current story will sort itself out rather better. His past is rather more sordid than my characters have usually gone -- drugs, vampires, violence, unpleasant magic, and, erm, apparently Leading Young Women Astray? I really don't know what the key is, what gets him into all of these things to begin with (just boredom? resentment? depression? a need to belong? but I think a lot of it he was really actually into, not just Following The Guys Around, and he got involved with vampires in a very significan way somehow, and the Ministry dragged him in and may have rehabilitated him somewhat, but I think there was a catalyst to him letting them, and that was probably because someone got seriously injured or killed by the unsavoury activities he'd got mixed up in BUT ANYWAY.

I am going to be writing this novel until I am in my eighties. *headdesk*

Tomorrow: church, work, and FINISH NANO OH HELP.

Some observations:

i. My father is kind of adorable. Also, his music taste is made of win. (My father's taste in music is primarily responsible for my taste in music, though we listen to quite a lot of entirely different things. My adoration of all kinds of alt folk and traditional folk music is all his doing, though. I grew up singing along to his Steeleye Span tapes.) He's cleaning out his office and blaring the Strawbs' Hero & Heroine, and I have no idea why I have never stolen this album from him before. RECTIFY POSTHASTE. (Aww, now he's playing Once!) 

ii. I'm beginning to worry that the Evangeline story is only a really good excuse to hunt down a lot of alt. traditional folk. However, it does mean that the mixtape I will perfect and post at the end of the month will be really fantastic and full of artists nobody's ever heard of, yay! (Also, freak folk/neofolk/New Weird America is my favourite. thing. ever. We were made to be together, we were!)

iii. Speaking of which? I FOUND MY VAMPIRE BALLAD. After I watched Wings of Desire and alas, did not have the soundtrack at all, I started playing the only Nick Cave I possess on repeat, which is a duet with PJ Harvey I got off audiography ages and ages ago -- the old traditional ballad "Henry Lee" (lyrics), and eee, is it ever fantastically applicable to vampire seduction, except that she only stabs him, she doesn't eat him. Oh well, the version in my altverse could easily be slightly different. Anyway, it is fabulously atmospheric and I heart it to bits. ...I seem to have this problem with loving murder ballads too much, c.f. my wild love for "Little Sadie" in all its cheerfully psychotic glory.

iv. Apparently I am quite ridiculously A SAP. Like, I have had "Full of Grace" stuck in my head today? And I get all flaily and sniffle and yell "ANGELLLLL!" at inappropriate moments? IT IS BAD, I AM TELLING YOU. (Since when did I ship Buffy/Angel this much, anyway?) Also I have this absurd need to write fanfiction. OH HELP.

v. Twilight calendars attract the weirdest people. Seriously. I have had much weirder not-customers since we started displaying them prominently. Several times elderly women have picked them up dubiously and just sort of looked at them, like, "the undead? is that what the kids are into these days?". Also there were Real Live Twihards in handmade Team Edward t-shirts wandering around my kiosk today, at the most caffeine-raging stage of thirteen, and I was beginning to plan out emergency escape routes in my head ("if they make a rush for the front display, I can duck behind the register -- I think it's bulletproof? -- and these keys can totally be turned into a weapon if things get really dire!").

Annnnd the people at FYE keep moving Edward around, and he glowering sinus-infectionly at me all shift today, aieeeeeee. I'm beginning to construct a theory that sparklepires contract some kind of Death Flu which presents itself with symptoms very much like vampirism, except with more sneezing and, um...glitter? That bit's hard to fit it. Then again, it's hard to fit into the original context.

I'm hoping someone will, like, knock over a bunch of CDs, and Edward will be all "THESE ARE NO LONGER ALPHABETISED. AND ALSO YOU CRACKED THE COVER OF THIS JOSHUA RADIN, YOU CRETIN. PICK IT UP." and have to climb out of the poster to go fix them and THEN HE WILL STOP WATCHING ME ALL DAY? 

So yeah: life = job job job job nano job sleep. I am staying up late tonight to write. ...Except so far it has mostly been catching up on the two days of LJ that I missed, good heavens. Tomorrow I plan to: touch up my hair, take some books back to the university library up the hill, SLEEP, bake a cake (what? I really want cake), mayyybe pick up a bottle of Vampire Red Manic Panic at Sally's because they were closed when I got out of work today, NaNo, and possibly attempt to clean the pit which is my bedroom, which I have been putting off in favour of NaNo for weeks now. Argh.

You guys, I am cross and depressed and faintly nauseated, and ABC has proven themselves to be a fat lot of pillocks by cancelling Pushing Daisies, and I've pretty much eaten all of my candy, and I don't want to go to work tomorrow, and, worst of all, my NaNo has a PHD in horribleness, and not in the nifty-goggles, I-will-kill-you-all kind of way. SO MUCH EXPOSITION SANDWICHED IN BETWEEN POINTLESS CONVERSATIONS ABOUT NOTHING. There is no pacing, no imagination, and my characters are all flat cliches who aren't even consistent. Also I don't even know where my plot is. I'm seventy-odd pages in, and still no Primary Vampire. But then, I don't even know what the end goal of this novel is -- or, for that matter, WHY THERE IS A VAMPIRE PROBLEM. Seriously, this is...kind of a big deal. Like, I have this whole idiotic CRAZY LONG section in which people are trying to convince Evy that they really, really need her on the vampire fighting front. Except THEY CANNOT GIVE HER ANY GOOD REASONS FOR HER TO BE DRAGGED INTO THIS. There's a lot of "but!" and "what if?" that is mostly me fishing for ideas as I write.

Seriously, I have absolutely no idea why the vampires are a threat. I have a vague inkling as to why Evy might be especially useful, but that kind of falls flat when THERE IS NO PARTICULAR THREAT. It's just, oh hey, vampires are evil. Some could kill us. WE NEED YOU, EVANGELINE. Also there was a vampire attack on the library and about thirteen people died, but NO ONE KNOWS WHY. ASLJKGDWJDGDGH. And it's especially difficult because I'm trying to walk the line between inconsequential and lame and OBNOXIOUSLY EPIC. This means: no gigantic vampire army trying to overthrow the king and take over England AND THEN THE WORLLLLD. Vampires =/= human, anyway. They don't want the same things humans want. What they want, I have no idea. The only thing I've been able to fall back on in my head is the idea that there's something going on with vampires being experimented on because of the oncoming WWI, except -- did anyone know WWI was coming? At all? There was a lot of tension, though, I suppose, so anyone could be interested in making their own little vampire army. (See? Now I run up against things that sound stupid when you type them up. VAMPIRE. ARMY. *FACEPALM*) Heck, the Russians could be all "LET US OVERTHROW THE VICIOUS ROMANOVS WITH...VAMPIRES!" Even so, that idea hasn't turned into anything more than extremely murky thus far.

So, um, a little help here? I'm not asking for you to fix my plot here, but I am just...defeated. I am at the end of my writing rope. (See? I used a really limp cliche. That evidences how bad things have gotten.) I am desperate for some kind of inspiration.

WHAT YOU CAN DO
Prompt me. Please. Anything. A song, a quote, a poem, a picture, a plot device, a suggestion. Anything. I need to write at least a thousand words before I go to bed.

Today at work I had five whole customers. It was magnificent.

I've also discovered that I really love the cash register -- cash is better than a credit card, because there's more of a rhythm when I get to open to cash drawer (besides, it makes a gorgeous ding! when I push the cash button, and then the drawer flings itself out). I only made one tiny mistake today, and that was such a silly little one that it didn't matter in the slightest. I successfully smuggled in a book, which I never actually got round to opening, my iPod sans headphones -- I didn't want the temptation, but I haven't got a watch or a cellphone and I really missed having an instant-access clock the last time I worked -- and my NaNotebook, which got quite a lot of use. I think I logged more than three hundred words while I was at work, yay! It may have been the jolt of caffeine administered by the anti-migraine medicine I downed just before leaving, or it could have been something else entirely, but I really kind of enjoyed working tonight, despite it being nearly every bit as long and dull and customerless as it was Wednesday.

The mall was busier, if my kiosk wasn't -- it's a Friday night! -- so that offered far more people-watching opportunities than last time, I suppose, and more people came in and looked around, I suppose, even if NO-ONE BOUGHT ANYTHING. (I am trying very hard not to sort the entire world into two categories: people who buy my calendars and people who do not. And a third, special-hell category: people who come into my kiosk, look around for fifteen minutes, and still do not buy anything. Look, I really want to use the cash register! ...You guys, I -- I kind of feel like Anya all of a sudden. I kind of want to run after non-customers and tell them off for not being patroitic enough in these TRYING FINANCIAL TIMES. IT MUST BE BUNNIES.) 

So, let's see: an elderly couple walked by, likely in their seventies; they were holding hands like schoolkids. It made my day. Also I knocked my notebook off the table with the register on it and had to go halfway around the kiosk to get it back -- but before I did, this adorable little girl who looked to be five or six ran up, grabbed it, and gave it to me. People are awesome. Except when they won't buy calendars. Also this twenty-something bloke in a tie and an Important Clerk Badge came up and rather shyly bought a World of Warcraft calendar, looking self-consciously and somewhat adorably nerdy as he did so. I don't know, people are great. I love them. (Also this totally made up for the packs of hipster kids going in circles around the mall for hours, some of whom were just hanging out with friends, but some of whom were noisy and annoying and, good grief, why walk around the mall for four hours anyway? You could be at home having a fabulous time with a book! Or, you know, Trivial Pursuit or something. Why am I suddenly Giles forty?) 

Speaking of people, I was writing along in my NaNo this afternoon, yeah? Evangeline's got a boss at the library, of course, the library director, because she is about twenty-one or twenty-two and female and cannot possibly own a library in that day and age. Thus far he has been A Name without any personality or history or really any place in the story at all, because he appeared without any deliberation in the very first bit I wrote, a journal entry of Evy's back when I thought the story might be told at least partially through journal excerpts. Anyway, he is Mr Caruthers, and he is very important to Evy's life but has absolutely nothing on him and has barely been mentioned at all, even in circumstances in which the library director really ought to be involved (a vampire attack on the library that involved a lot of people being trapped in the library, multiple fatalities, fire, and two assistant librarians out for the count). ANYWAY; this is all nonsense; I am still caffeiney and therefore babbling.

I was writing a bit about him calling Evy on, yes, one of those newfangled telephones, which the Noxes have for emergencies ("emergencies" largely meaning "things relating to a) libraries and/or b) the antiquarian stuff trade), and he was being sort of the awkward geek scholar sort about having her come in. I was about to write something to the effect of "she could practically hear him wiping his spectacles over the telephone" and then I realised what I was doing and laughed at myself. No plagiarism, self! Also, Mr Caruthers isn't Giles ahahaha --  WAIT.

And then I realised that he totally was. Not just Giles, librarian and mythology expert extraordinaire, but Giles of the slightly dodgy past and surprising abilities (and possibly even the bit where he falls over all the time; only time will tell!). THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING. AND MAKES
IT AWESOMER. Seriously, though, it's given the story a nice new boost of energy. Now I know even more about why the whoever-they-are find Evy and are all "PLS TO BE SLAYING ALL OF OUR VAMPIRES NOW KTHXBAI", and Mr Caruthers gets to be her Watcher dispenser of exposition guide and yay. (Soon he will find his own footing and be a bit less of an obvious Giles copy, too, which will be nice. For one thing, his completely awesome girlfriend is not going to be horribly murdered by Evy's vampire ally who went psychotically evil after...stuff...happened. ...I'll shut up now.) 

So, apparently the librarian mentor to the young female vampire slayer is totally the new Gandalf. *nods*

This morning I woke up and lay in bed for a while waking up a bit more. After a while, I stood up, stretched, turned towards the window, and yelled.

It's been snowing all day. This morning we were quite elegantly frosted over, with great gusts of flakes drifting hither and thither (but mainly downwards). Look, I don't think it has ever snowed before mid-November in a place I have lived. October's not over yet! What is this madness? (This is not Colorado!) Even odder: the temperature is supposed to shoot up to sixty degrees by Halloween.

In short, the stripey knit fingerless gloves I bought for three dollars are quite possibly the best investment I have made in quite some time.
 

Anyway, I've been thinking about vampires. (Surprise surprise.) By the way, Victorian and Edwardian London seem like excellent vampire territory -- lots of chances for people to go missing or turn up dead without many people wondering unduly about what happened. I imagine that there are two reasons for vampires to feed on people: one is purely the need for food (blood), and the other, more powerful, is psychological. I'm not entirely sure how to balance the two, or how much I plan to go into it, although I've always been interested in the aspect of the vampire mythos that involves vampires stalking or befriending their prey before finally feeding on them. Also? It takes longer than thirty seconds to drain an entire human body of blood, Joss Whedon. "The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems," says River Tam, only what comprises an adequate vacuuming system of this type? (It's okay Joss, I still love you to bits. Except when I want to SET YOU ON FIRE, but that's -- well, you expect that.) Anyway humans don't usually devour their food without taking time to savour it; why should vampires? But I digress. Some claim that it isn't just blood, but the life source that vampires thrive on through the blood -- so, do happy, alive people have a stronger flavour or sustainment value than, you know, emo kids? This is rather morbid speculation, I know; bear with me. (Or backspace. It's okay!) I imagine that a lot of vampires would feed on the paupers of London to slake their general hunger, but the real feeding would be from people who aren't so destitute that they make absolutely no mark on the world?

Jonathan was here today; we watched some Death Note and discussed each other's NaNo projects. I've come to the conclusion that for my own sanity, I really ought to write down a vague outline of the first few chapters, so that I have some idea of what to write about until the story reaches the unforseeable point when it takes a life of its own. I needn't follow the outline religiously, but it's nice to have a guide. Also I have discovered that I actually know very little about Evangeline's personality or history: there are some wide strokes (she's stubborn and passionate; she loves books; she's very devoted to her family), but all of these are, by themselves, on the level of cliches -- they need detail to make them real. I am, however, reasonably confident that most of these things will establish themselves as I write and discover her voice; if I map out her personality in too much detail before writing even begins, she'll end up stiff and inhuman.

One thing I have discovered, and rather like, is that she is very happy with her life: this is not especially usual for my characters, oddly enough. They always seem to be struggling out of something. She's had difficult times; their family is middle-class in an era when the middle class could be somewhat precarious; but mostly things have worked out in the end and she's dealt with them. She has no great scar or sorrow, but she isn't emotionally and experientially shallow, either. Also: she is happy with her life, but she is not complacent with her life. She's open to and interested in new experiences, and doesn't hate or resent the new life she's thrown into because it's different -- some of it is even better -- the thing she hates is the sudden lack of security, which has been present in her life more or less always. While the family may have had monetary struggles in the past, their lives have never been in danger, and there's always been a sense that no matter what happens, they still have each other -- and anyway the worst that could happen would be sudden illness, or losing enough money that they'd have to leave their home for the country, or someplace else smaller and less comfortable. Now her life is daily threatened, and that threat extends, however slightly, to her family, as well.

Anyway, you lot are weary of reading all of this nonsense by now, but I am in many ways sorting things out as I write them, and quite a lot of the last paragraph was coming clear in the writing down. So.

Also, hair-cut tomorrow, and possibly dyeing as well. Huzzah!

Oh dear, yes, NaNo is all that is on my mind just now; apologies to any of the f-list who are deathly bored of all of this talk by now. So I will talk briefly of things unrelated to NaNo for a minute to appease you. Yesterday Hannah had a birthday party, which was an informal get-together uniting the gang; we talked, cleaned some, watched The Brothers Grimm, and took a walk up the hill. It was terrifically surreal, bicycling to my old house and past the hill and down the road into the parking lot, and then being inside of it, empty of our furniture and very different in many ways, with all of the painting and renovating that's been going on -- and oddly familiar, because things that were Right when the Meholicks last lived in the house are coming back -- the great massive table in the dining room, the couch, the hallway mirrors -- and it's a very odd sort of deja vu. But sometimes I'd have these funny flashbacks; it was very vertigo-y. Especially as all the time we'd lived there, I had ghosts of the old houselife putting their hands on my shoulders at unexpected times. Anyway, grand fun was had, and there was a magnificent chocolate raspberry cake made by the Divine Miss V, and the hill is so lovely in late autumn! 

Now, the main question of the hour comes. I have created a playlist for NaNo, comprised of mood-setting music. I have also set aside (in my head) at least two albums which I will probably have on repeat all next month -- PJ Harvey's spooky, Victorian White Chalk, and Dark Dark Dark's somewhat more whimsical and also spooky and Victoriany The Snow Magic (accordion prominence! banjo! cello! piano! and, once, musical saw!!). The playlist itself contains some Chopin and Debussy, some of the aforementioned artists, Vienna Teng (alas, only one song really works for the era, because Vienna = win), DeVotchKa, Patrick Wolf, the theme from The Illusionist, and a fantastic little Sarah McLachlan instrumental comprised of piano, cello, and musical saw. You all see what's coming, don't you? Yes, absolutely, you are not wrong: I want more music for my atmospheric NaNo playlist.

Piano-based things, mostly, and any music that would fit into the Victorian and Edwardian eras -- actual Victorian and Edwardian music would be amazing, but I will not count on it. Traditional English ballads, chamber folk, freak folk, New Weird America that doesn't sound too specifically American, anything with a musical saw in (well, I have a weakness for that), piano instrumentals that don't sound too modern, classical composers who would have been listened to and played at the time, especially pieces which are predominantly piano -- all of the sisters play, and Briony has a knack for it; I'd love music that evokes the Nox family home. In return I will make a Very Awesome Mixtape and post it all for you lot when November is finished.

Also, if anybody manages to dig up a traditional folk song that either a) specifically mentions vampires, or b) is probably about something else but could be about vampires, you will get a cookie. No, better still: you will get my very best and extremely rich chocolate peppermint pie.

Today was good. I woke earlier than yesterday (though I did not wander downstairs until rather later), and later in the afternoon bicycled over to Jonathan's for a planned informal Bible study. Except I sort of got very, very lost, and ended up arriving at least half an hour after I said I would. The ride was so lovely, though, that I didn't feel especially irritated about the getting lost -- it's gotten cold and a little blustery lately, and the trees are mostly leafless, and more softly shaded, but there are still beacons of October spotting the city here and there. The air was so clear and bright and living; my whole self woke up to it. Also I was listening to Chopin. I kept having the oddest feeling that I had wandered into New England somehow, a postcardy, homey, sugar-cookies-in-the-oven sort of New England, a storybook, but a live one, not a flat, empty, trite sort.

When I finally arrived (dear me), there was some studying of the Bible -- the first chapter of James -- and several hours of excellent conversation, both on topic and off. I have felt much more awake today than I have since my day at Waldenbooks.
( however, the time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things: of shoes and ships and sealing wax, and banui's plotless nano. )

You know you are losing your touch when:

You write approximately half of a fic you have been trying to write without any success for about a month. You go to bed, and by the next morning have no memory of having done this.

Yeah.

Also? I have been procrastinating about this for quite a while, because I'm sort of worried that if I talk about it too much, I will have to write it, and if I write it, it will EAT MY BRAIN, and tuesday_skyline will disappear into The Black Hole of Banui Where Stories Go To Die. However, Skyline seems to be going strong (too strong! ack! despite the fact that it is still missing a plot), and I really can't procrastinate much longer, or one of these days I'm going to make a reference to the bloody thing and no-one will understand what I mean and think I've gone mental(er).

So, the Story That Ate My Brain. I suppose you've all gathered by now that this is a work of fiction. What you do not know is as follows: Once upon a time there was a copper-haired librarian named Evangeline. In her spare time, and mostly by accident, she hunted vampires. Then there's this whole theorising on the actual nature of vampires, because I can't buy the idea of anything that used to be human being soulless and utterly irredeemable. (Neither can Evangeline. This leads to Interesting Things. I have no idea what they are, though.) This sort of stemmed, in a way, from my frustration with gothic novels and how they're either mocking the cliches and, while being utterly delightful, just don't have enough of that dark-cathedral asethetic I'm craving, or they are stupid and contrived and have teenagers in them and I want to throw things at them. (I haven't read the actual content of most of these, just the summaries and, occasionally, Amazon reviews.) Then the rest of this happened because Evangeline hopped into my brain and attempted mutiny. Apparently, she lives in 1913 or so. She's been rabbiting on about odd things like the dark and...I seem to remember something about brooches or something equally mundane recently. I don't write it down (it's too weird), i.e., I don't remember it. We're going to have a nasty row about this eventually, I'm sure: she'll tell me in biting tones that something tangled up in a long spiel about winter or organising books was Very Important and I ought to have paid attention.

Getting headache. Must go read. (I am aware that the one does not necessarily cure the other.)



P.S.: I could do this for hours. Yes, really.