So, about to go down south to visit my parents, and while I’m there, I’ll be going to WorldCon. Awesome!

On a side note, I should be getting the proofs of Book One on Monday for final corrections. Must find a red pen and sweat blood, though preferably not at the same time. Everything’s happening at once! Like buses!

And since my trip down to see parents goes through Birmingham while the Quilts UK show just happens to be on at the Birmingham NEC, here’s to some happy fabric shopping tomorrow. Yay, retail therapy! Yay, future quilts! Yay, spending too much!

I’ve just sent back the notes on the copy-edit of book 1. I will now sit in the corner and twitch.

Or perhaps I’ll have a glass of something alcoholic. That sounds like a better idea.

Back to writing on book 3 tomorrow.

(And maybe I’ll reward myself with a little copy-edit complete present. There’s this haori I saw on ebay…)

All I can say is, if it’s true that we borrow from our own real life to write, then Irene is shortly going to be suffering a backed-up drain in her kitchen and rather dubious water backflowing from her washing machine into the sink (though fortunately not getting any further).

Just saying.

Plumber is due tomorrow. Feh.

I’ve had multiple friends recommend the Monument Valley game to me (for iPad, iPhone, etc) and I now have it. Well, technically I’ve now finished it. It isn’t long.

But it is absolutely gorgeous. Escher art, incredibly simple play, barely visible but implied story, told by gentle implication and a few fragments of dialogue, and an epilogue which had me in tears, even though it was happy.

A beautiful, beautiful piece of work.

I do not tend to post about my day job here. For one thing, parts of it come under confidentiality. I work in the NHS. Patient data. You get the idea.

But for the other thing, I don’t think it would interest most people who might look at this. Yes, it’s relevant to me about how we’re removing limited status square bracket concepts which were created previously in order to provide one-to-one maps for all possible ICD-10 and OPCS-4 codes, but I am not sure it would be relevant, let alone interesting, to everyone else.

On the positive side, at least it means I can spell my medical terms, even if I have to remember the difference between American and English spellings. (For the record, English has oedema, anaemia, and paediatric, while American has edema, anemia, and pediatric. And so on.)

But anyhow. My job is not so fascinating to others that I post at length about it, and this is why.

Dragons and libraries and Fae are much more interesting.

So this entry is belated, and I am ashamed of it.

Last week on Wednesday I was lucky enough to meet my agent, the fantastic and excellent Lucienne Diver. She was in London for a book industry event (the London Book Fair), and I was able to get down from Oop North to hang out with her. We went shopping in various London bead shops and in Liberty’s, plus strolled through Covent Garden and chunks of Soho, and had supper at this very classy and excellent Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, the Plum Garden. Unfortunately I had to make a run for my train and wasn’t able to stay hanging out as long as I would have liked to, but it was a totally splendid day.

(Please pardon the overuse of superlatives. Some days are worth it.)

I have now sent in the manuscript for book 2 (current title The Masked City) to my editor. Next step is to wait for edits.

And to start work on book 3.

(And panic that nobody’s going to like it, etc, waah, waah. You know the tune.)

And perhaps have a bit of retail therapy by purchasing the Phoenix Wright/Professor Layton crossover game which is out tomorrow. I can swap between that (for mental puzzles and storyline) and the also-just-out Diablo 3 Expansion: Reaper of Souls (kill kill kill, loot loot loot). Perfect.

We would gladly have have listened to her (they said) if only she had spoken like a lady. But they are liars and the truth is not in them.

Shrill… vituperative… no concern for the future of society… maunderings of antiquated feminism… selfish femlib… needs a good lay… this shapeless book… of course a calm and objective discussion is beyond… twisted, neurotic… some truth buried in a largely hysterical… of very limited interest, I should… another tract for the trash-can… burned her bra and thought that… no characterization, no plot… really important issues are neglected, while … hermetically sealed … women’s limited experience …another of the screaming sisterhood… a not very appealing aggressiveness… could have been done with wit if the author had… deflowering the pretentious male… a man would have given his right arm to… hardly girlish… a woman’s book…. another shrill polemic which the … a mere male like myself can hardly … a brilliant but basically confused study of feminine hysteria which … feminine lack of objectivity … this pretense at a novel… trying to shock… the tired tricks of the anti-novelists … how often must a poor critic have to … the usual boring obligatory references to lesbianism… denial of the profound sexual polarity which… an all too womanly refusal to face facts … pseudo-masculine brusqueness… the ladies’ magazine level… trivial topics like housework and the predictable screams of … those who cuddled up to ball-breaker Kate will… unfortunately sexless in its outlook … drivel… a warped clinical protest against …violently waspish attack … formidable self-pity which erodes any chance of … formless… the inability to accept the female role which … the predictable fury at anatomy displaced to … without the grace and compassion which we have the right to expect … anatomy is destiny … destiny is anatomy … sharp and funny but without real weight or anything beyond topical … just plain bad …. we “dear ladies”, whom Russ would do away with unfortunately just don’t feel … ephemeral trash, missiles of the sex war … a female lack of experience which …

Q.E.D. Quod erat demonstrandum. It has been proved.

– The Female Man, Joanna Russ

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife… wait, that’s the wrong story. It is a truth definitely universally acknowledged that an author needs good reference books (or other sources). The author does not want to get things wrong, after all.

(Well, unless she’s writing an alternate universe where Things Happened Differently, but let’s shuffle that under the nearest doormat for the moment.)

And yet I have books on my shelf containing passages like the following:

The animal used most frequently in the arena was the legendary Libyan lion: the most magnificent specimens of this mutant species grew to eleven feet in length, with enormous paws armed with razorsharp claws of sabre-size dimensions; even their engorged testicles were as large as a man’s head. The Libyan lion was the ultimate killing machine, especially if deprived of its usual diet: in the wild, on the then-fertile terrain of the Ideban Marzuq, it could lay waste to two hundred wildebeests and ostriches in one sitting. Armies of slaves were expended in the capture of these majestic beasts – they were impervious to tranquillizer arrows […] The captured lions could be pacified by feeding them with almost-infinite quantities of Armenian brandy, the addictive qualities of which put them into near-comatose trances of gurgling tranquility and rendered them amenable to their long journey over the Mediterranean. But as soon as they reached the port of Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber river, their intake of brandy would be abruptly ended, sending them into a state of ever-greater rampant fury which reached its pinnacle at the moment of their entrance into the arena.

– Caligula: Divine Carnage, by Stephen Barber & Jeremy Reed

Now I entirely agree that there may be some slight doubt about the historical, and even biological, accuracy of this excerpt. I just quote it to support the point that just because a reference book is bad (bad to the bone, even) that doesn’t mean it can’t give the writer helpful ideas. As long as she realises that it’s inaccurate, it’s entirely up to her what she does with it.

I can only say that if my protagonists at some point run into an eleven-foot-long alcoholic lion, clearly they need to give it some Armenian brandy while dodging those tranquillizer arrows. I’m sure it’ll spice up their voyage across the Mediterranean.

I have just discovered both the Takarazuka Revue (the Japanese theatrical troupe) and Elisabeth (the German musical). And the best of both together, the Elisabeth production by the Moon troupe of Takarazuka in 2009.

Hopefully the first flush of enthusiasm will abate a little soon, and I won’t be so prone to wandering round humming my favourite numbers or trying to work out where der Tod can make a casual appearance in anything I’m writing. You know how it goes.