Love’s language lost

Words. Love ’em. Why don’t we keep more words? English is good at words, keeping hoards and scraps and tidbits of vocabulary gleaned or borrowed or outright stolen from everywhere else.

Just ran across this one, while skimming excerpts of Beowulf in Old English: unbliðe. It’s translated as “joyless”, but I think that it would translate more literally and, I feel, poetically, to “unblithe”.

It tastes good on the tongue. Unblithe, with a soft, drawn out ‘th’ sound to lengthen the word and make it gentler, more intensely sorrowful.

Why didn’t we keep that one, I wonder?

 

In brief–

Mad ego: JUSTIFIED. Moar later.

 

It counts, dammit!

My first professional sale is the very definition of a baby step, but by God, it counts!

The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities:Exhibits, Oddities, Images, and Stories from Top Authors and Artists contains work by a multiplicity of writers and artists, many of whom are very firmly in that circle of professional creators to which I have aspired to belong for as long as I can remember reading.

I’m in there. My name is in that book, printed in black and white between two hard covers, included in the same volume as Tad Williams, China Mieville and Michael Moorcock. And while my miniature contribution is easily overlooked, it’s in there, and it counts.

It feels… proper. Right, as in: correct. It’s where my name is supposed to be.

So sometime in the relatively near future, my name will be a little bigger, a little more prominent, closer to the front. It’ll be included in the list used to draw readers in and promote sales. It will be one that other writers, early in their careers just as I am now, point to and say “holy shit, I’m in a book with her!” It’ll be a name that, when readers see it, translates in their minds to “there are words in there, put together in an order that will draw me in and make me enjoy myself thoroughly for a while”!

I can’t wait.

Mad ego? Probably. Can you blame me? :3

 

Better now.

What that up there said. Mostly. A little?

Okay, I’m ready to consider the possibility that maybe at some point in the not-terribly-distant future I might be less incoherently upset with myself.

If– and this is a huge if, mind– I can go the fuck to sleep Jesus I need to sleep.

Dear brain: SHUT UP AND SHUT DOWN FOR THE NIGHT or we will no longer be friends. :|

 

Empty head, empty everything

Why the hell am I so dog-fuckingly stupid? I couldn’t make a decent decision if my life depended on it and I still, still keep deluding myself with the idea that everything is going to be okay, if I can just hold on a little while longer, everything will get sorted out and when the dust has all settled, I’ll come out at least marginally on top.

If there is anything the last couple of years have taught me, it’s that this philosophy is a huge, steaming pile of bullshit. I am a loser and I will always be a fucking loser, and every time I try to get ahead, I will always come in second.

Why the fuck do I bother?

 

O hapi dae!

Not bad for off the cuff. Moohahaha.

 

Afterthought:

Aforementioned story has found a comfy home at Circlet Press, lovingly taken in by editor J. Williams. Brief acceptance commentary made me preen; am pleased and proud.

So it looks like my career shall begin in what we shall coyly term explicit romance. If anyone’s startled by this, the line forms to the left; take a number. I doubt they’ll hit double digits.

Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to bed I go.

 

Recurring dreams.

Used to have them in NY, before we moved down here… similar themes. I flew then, too.

My house burned down, this time. Big house, a composite of the houses I’ve lived in over my life; grandparents’ houses, aunts’ houses, certainly the house on Ray. Burned and abandoned with ghosts in it, dead friends or relatives that I didn’t bring with me, nameless and faceless now that I’m awake but bitter and angry in my dream. The house had burned and was blackened and ash-filled, and I’d gone back to salvage bits and bobs and things from the fridge, oddly. And escape meant flying on dragon-wings, leaving the ghosts behind with the lingering remnants and flying higher and away, following the damp from the firehoses that turned into rivulets and a swamp and then the ocean.

I’ve dreamt it twice, two consecutive nights.

Sequoia emerge from the ashes of forest fires. A friend of mine told me once that I’d do the same thing. Maybe it’s time.

 

Hooray for bitchcakes!

Just flung a story into the aether unsupported, in the hopes that it finds a soft landing at Circlet. Old antho that needed a couple more short stories to round it off– my editor from the first round sent me the info, and I managed somehow to write a decent story to meet the criteria in about… four days? Five? Less than a week to write, edit, revise, polish, send.

I think I’m insane.

My brain is vaguely squishy now, however, and so I feel very strongly that it’s bedtime for bitchcakes.

Crossed fingers and toes for acceptance to the antho, and that will be three publication credits to my name, which makes bitchcakes very happy indeed.

Even if the editor doesn’t take it, it’s a damn good story and I know it. So there.

 

The virgin prunes-

-her map of Tasmania. It’s her first show, and she’s terrified and ecstatic. Her mother watches, fretting with glued-on lashes a flurry of spiky black around gem-bright eyes. Sequins and rhinestones catch the cheap-lightbulb fluorescence that surrounds the makeshift dressing-room mirror as she puts her scissors down and picks up a pair of sheer stockings. The fleshtone nylon whispers and scratches as she unrolls it over her skin, encasing herself with a drag queen’s first line of defense.

She stands, smoothing her slitted gown over her bestockinged thighs. The slice in the fabric nearly reaches her naval, and slides as she moves, a shifting peep-show that shows far too much but never quite …everything.

“You all tucked up, honey?” her mother asks, and the virgin queen reaches between her thighs, giving the space there a quick once-over with cherry-taloned fingertips. Nothing comes loose, and she strikes a pose. The line of her posture is nervously perfect, from the tip of her glittering stiletto pump to the peak of her lace-front bouffant. Someone must have bled on her lips to get that color of red, and her lashes are a falsely modest line against her carefully porcelained cheek as she shyly ducks her head and blows her mother a moue of a kiss.

“You’re beautiful,” whispers her mother through proud tears that threaten to make her eyeliner run, and with all the frightened determination of a robin in late spring, she nudges the virgin through the curtained door, down the dimly-lit hallway at the end of which the stage is waiting, dollar bills in hands around it, waiting for a garter to receive them.