Sharpsburg

Unlike Gettysburg, the landscape here dominates the monuments. The Park Service interpretation is hands-on (and far more helpful than at Gettysburg).

The roads, farms, fields and many of the trees are still much as they were and in September, the same time of year as the battle, grasshoppers rustled through the stubble and the peevish shrieks of blue jays echoed in the woods.

At Sharpsburg, the ghosts are not laid to rest.

I spent much of my time walking around the Cornfield, since the research I was engaged on was for a book featuring a member of the First Texas, but it was the Sunken Road that, unexpectedly to me, exuded sorrow. So much so that, entering this relatively short and shallow grass-lined trench, I felt tears come to my eyes and reacted in denial, greeting an Eastern Bluebird fluttering on a nearby snake fence with a too-loud "You're an Eastern Bluebird, aren't you? Yes, you are."

Because the feeling in that place was terrible.

I don't believe in the paranormal, but something happened to me in the Sunken Road that I can only accurately report and leave for others to explain. Now and then, as I walked, my feet felt burning hot. It was a warm day and I had sneakers on with warm socks but there was a contrast, a sudden heat. Once it happened near the monument that marks the spot where an officer fell.

It didn't happen at Gettysburg, or at Port Republic, or at any time since (and I've worn the same shoes and socks, in experiment).

I don't believe in ghosts -- I wouldn't be afraid of the spirits of Civil War soldiers anyway -- but if something does linger in the Road, I would not think it to be ghosts. Reflection; echo, channeled by the lay of the land. Memory. The pheromonal stain of death on death.

Or, of course, I may have imagined it all.

--Kyri

a poem I wrote after hiking in the Blue Ridge this September

My boots on secret leaves, honed rocks
step over hidden water rushing under stone
the wind and the rain on my skin,
the darkness loud inside.
Remember the darklight threshold of the cabin door
Remember my own blood bright on my hands
and only say that you'll be mine
the water knows what happened here
and will it burst in flood?

About Song of Ice and Fire

Of which, woe is me, I just reread the first three books.

There are supposed to be three more to come. I hope that ends up being true.

It's particularly revelatory for me to read these at the moment because I'm writing an epic fantasy, Stealing the Sun.

There's no way I'll ever be able to approximate the complexity of Martin's plots, and I can only hope to create his level of unbearable tension... someday.

Worldbuilding-wise and sentence-level-wise I feel a bit less outdistanced, but what's on my mind at the moment is characters.

In Stealing the Sun, I'm trying to write about adult, ambitious people, people who do bad things for good reasons and also because they are misled, lied to, seduced and self-deceived. But who are not simply villains, because they love, and also because they have reasons for the things they do. I don't have much interest in innocent plowboys who end up being king, and I don't have much urge to write that kind of character. George Martin is eminently successful at writing characters who are both morally ambiguous and, if not sympathetic at all moments, appealing enough that the reader cares what happens to them.

(Like I'm going to spend the next nine months, at least, worrying about what happens to Jaime Lannister. I want that kind of power over my readers, dammit!)

Based on critiques I've read of STS, I'm still working on it.

Sigh.

"Pull up your overcoat, roll up your sleeves, Jordan am a hard road to travel, I believe..."

--Kyri

About Writing, and Sheer Terror

Today, once work slowed down a bit

(We had a visit from a high muckety-muck, and were supposed to answer the phone in four rings or less. Therefore, I, who was the primary cashier and thus unable to look up callers' books or go find books on the shelf, ended up answering call after call and then pleading with the people on the floor to pick up the lines. Feh.)

I took a copy of CLOAKED IN SHADOW and showed my story to people. They were so... impressed. They really seemed to think it was special (probably more special than it really is).

It's awfully nice to get praise once in a while.

Sheer terror: I'm about to get copies made of TRIBULATION'S WAR. Final copies. And send them to Jeff. Who has lunch with a major editor on Wednesday, and wants to hand deliver her a copy.

I am so scared.

What if everybody rejects TW? Is that the sound of my career, stillborn?

What if it gets published as fantasy and then none of the Civil War fans find it, and it tanks?

(Teeny-bopper booksellers stripping my novel, and laughing.)

Real, serious editors are going to see this thing, and I'm getting sweaty palms just thinking about it.

OK. So, about Gettysburg.

I'm doing research for a novel about Ace -- his experiences with the Texas Brigade and then his life in Galveston, some of which orkshoppers will already have read -- and in the process I'm reading Harry Pfanz' indispensable Gettysburg: The Second Day. Bear in mind, I was *in* Gettysburg in September. I was finding Ace sharpshooter positions in Devil's Den; I was looking up at Little Round Top.

And despite that, I continue to find the topography of the battle incomprehensible. Maps, descriptions and having been there notwithstanding, I still cudgel my brain to understand what direction my guys should be going in. After long work I can comprehend it on a micro-level (Devil's Den and Little Round Top are very close together) but the overall terrain still just... loses me. "Culp's Hill is WHERE from here??" It's a vortex of confusion. The Pennsylvania Triangle.

I did not have any particularly imagination-haunted moments at Gettysburg, unlike at Sharpsburg, about which more another day. The sheer weight of marble monuments channels the past, keeps it at bay. But, looking out of the Seminary Ridge woods up to Cemetery Hill, I felt blind. Blank. I could not see. I could not tell what was up on that hill or in the slight dip that it seemed obvious must lie beyond the rise. I can't imagine ordering an attack into a blindness such as that.

And yet they charged.

And here is a link to CLOAKED IN SHADOW on Amazon...

href="Cloaked'>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0971360820/qid=1099370819/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-7206383-3444709?v=glance&s=books">Cloaked in Shadow


You can also order it through www.bn.com.

November 1 - Happy New Year's Day

OK. First.

Go vote. Even if you disagree with what I'm about to say (and you will if you're a conservative, I suspect).

Personally, I'm going to vote for Kerry and Edwards, not because I think they're perfect, and not because Edwards is a hottie with a gorgeous accent (or not entirely), but because I think Kerry is the lesser of two evils.

I am appalled by the total unconcern shown by Bush and his advisors for the well-being of American citizens (those, that is, who are not billionaires) and for the responsible stewardship of our natural resources. I also note that, billions of dollars and thousands of lives thrown down a rat-hole later, Osama Bin Laden, the man primarily responsible for one of the most despicable acts in history, the 9/11 attacks, is STILL AT LARGE.

At the end of Clinton's administration I had a decent job and health insurance, I had lost my child-of-the-1980's foreboding of nuclear war, and I did not know what the word "outsourcing" meant. If someone had suggested I might have to take off a pair of Teva sandals in order to be allowed through an airport security check, I would have stared in wonder.

These things have all changed now.

I don't blame Bush for all of that -- for example, he didn't create the dot-com bubble -- but he sure hasn't done anything to improve matters. I feel the war in Iraq is a colossal mistake and that Bush's environmental policy doesn't even deserve the term 'neglect'; it's more like an attack.

But, anyway. Vote. Whatever you believe in.

Today, I went hiking at Wilder Ranch and saw four coyotes, a buck, a Loggerhead Shrike (my first), several Red-Tailed Hawks and a White-Tailed Kite.

I also got my free copy of the book CLOAKED IN SHADOW, which contains my story, "The Elf Knight and Lady Isabelle".

This is the first story of mine that has appeared in physical print, as opposed to online. I'm very happy with it. I haven't read the other stories yet, but the introduction is by Drew Hayes. Very cool. I encourage everybody to run out and buy a copy now.