Snippets of Story: Cottleston Pie

My August word-count goal of 10,000 words is coming along. Not terribly quickly, but it is mounding up, what with nearly 3,000 words in "Swing It" and another 2,000 in Cottleston Pie, not counting bits of it I am rewriting. For instance, I am switching the setting of Cottleston Pie from England (which wasn't necessary) to America, which means changing some terminology, holidays, etc. Still, after thinking on Cottleston Pie and deciding I wanted to add a couple of chapters from other points of view, I am focusing on wrapping that up and sending it to a final reader or two. I also read back through what I have in Scotch'd the Snakes and decided I need to find my notes and read up on who these important-sounding "strangers" are supposed to be up to, because I stopped writing mid-scene and quite forgot why or if they are important. Isn't that terrible? Should teach me not to suspend action for so long again. So today you get scraps of Cottleston Pie. Enjoy!

He thought he might say a few Clever and Weighty things, but the wren flew off across the purple morning and the King started his exercises: skipping thrice around the Cottleston Pie hill followed by jumping-jacks while humming “The Star Spangled Banner,” which was fantastic for getting your heart pumping if you didn’t suffocate first. When this was finished, the King did push-ups till his arms ached (after four-and-a-try, usually), and then he rolled around in the grass for a while to get the crackers out of his spine. At last, His Majeshty felt up for a stroll to clear his lungs so he’d be able to orate per usual, come breakfast.

-Cottleston Pie

"...if you’ve never taken a walk early in the morning by yourself, you can’t possibly imagine how new the world seems, how scrubbed up and polished, as with a chamois leather. Probably just for you, just this once. And yet every morning you wake up early, the world might look a little different – does look a little different – and so you form a habit of waking with it to see what clothes it puts on today because the one time you miss its wake-up face will probably be the freshest morning of all.

-Cottleston Pie

“An owlet.”

“What?”

“Is what you look like,” the King said. “Or a quail. A small one. Such as might be fixed for my birthday. If you were a quail,” he said, feeling a breakfast-less cavity gape inside him, “I would not eat you. I am magnanimous like that. Kind to my friends. Gentle-hearted. Tender, I have been called now and then.

-Cottleston Pie

Privately, the King felt ready as a buffalo, but it wouldn’t do to lord such feelings over those of the weaker type.

-Cottleston Pie

"...The quickest way to get clean is to take a bath, and wanting to be clean, I took one this morning. But while I bathed – though half the trouble is getting back into them – I took off my clothes and my crown. I put my clothes on, thank heavens!” (And here the King scrabbled his robes around himself and looked severely down on Simpian for having even suggested he might do such a thing as forget) “But I left my crown at some point between scrubbing up and playing bear.”

-Cottleston Pie

About twenty-thirty-six hours later – it had taken the King quite a while to find his crown and even longer to find anything to eat – the King once again made his way down to the field where he’d left the orphaned cloud. It was still there, which it shouldn’t have been.“Good beans,” the King muttered. “I wonder what happened to the boy."

-Cottleston Pie

"And watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by."

(Quote from Rudyard Kipling's "Smuggler's Song") 

"Slowly, slowly, very slowly went the garden snail.Slowly, slowly, very slowly up the wooden rail."

Nursery rhymes seem good at describing my writing pace in the last couple of weeks. I have not written too much new stuff since I was busy editing The Fox Went Out. Now that I've applied the edits, I am slowly, slowly, very slowly easing myself back into the world of Scotch'd the Snakes. At this point, the main thrust of that work is research. I am dealing with two new areas of England in this mystery (alongside my fictional town of Whistlecreig) and want to really get a good picture of what they look like. One of the places is Saltburn-by-the-Sea: a place I stumbled upon by happenstance over Instagram and was instantly charmed by. I spent yesterday morning thumbing through the official website, delighted by each new thing that turned up. Its history has been an eclectic one, and besides lending itself perfectly to a 1930's seaside resort location, there is much material I can work with to lend an air of authenticity to the setting as I write. Perhaps one of the most interesting mechanical pieces of the town has been the funicular Cliff Lift.

The Cliff Lift

I couldn't get enough of reading about it and watching the video included on the site. The entire thing works by counterbalancing the cars with water so when one is going down, the other is going up, and I think it was a purely brilliant invention considering the steepness of the cliff which, I assume, people had to scramble down pre-lift days. I adore things that have been left pretty much alone since the era in which I want to inspect them. Makes my work so much easier, and as the Cliff Lift has been virtually unchanged since its construction well before the timing of Scotch'd the Snakes, I have loads of accurate material with which to work.

Another fascinating bit of Saltburn-ness is its famous (infamous?) history of smuggling. Bwahahaha. I can have fun with this one, can't I? If you want to hear an absolutely thrilling Rudyard Kipling poem ("Smuggler's Song") read by someone with an absolutely chilling voice, go thataway. I found it most inspiring.

The Ship Inn

For instance, John Andrew, most infamous Saltburn smuggler, also ran the Ship Inn, Saltburn's booming tavern, and on occasion "helped" the customs men chase down his smuggler friends. I'm seeing a bit of an ignoble Sir Percy Blakeney thing going on. I'm not certain what I'll settle on as far as using its smuggling past in my own book, but knowing the lore of a place helps wonderfully with drawing its portrait well. I'm so happy that my somewhat randomly-selected beach town ended up having such a rich and varied history, setting, and quality. I'm looking forward to working with Saltburn and using its character to color my own cast.

Snippets of the New Vivi & Farnham!

"Novelists who have struck a snag in the working-out of the plot are rather given to handing the problem over in this way to the clarifying action of the sub-conscious. Harriet's sub-conscious had other coffee to clear and refused quite definitely to deal with the matter..."

-Dorothy L. Sayers Have His Carcase

Most writers have periods where ill health or injury keeps them from much productivity. Most, however, don't gain said injuries from slamming the pad of their pointer finger in a metal post-office door. I have my finger bandaged up and finding that I actually can type because my pointer finger-nail is sufficiently strong and long to allow me to press the keys gingerly without intrenching on the split-open territory. I have officially begun Scotch'd The Snakes: the second Vivi & Farnham mystery. When I began Anon, Sir, Anon, I started by writing the finding-the-body sequence. This time around, I began with a letter. A letter documenting a plague of flies. It might not sound like an auspicious beginning, but it does work well, given the circumstances. I am still feeling my way into this story and haven't entirely tacked down the workings of the plot so I'm afraid you'll have to satisfy yourself with knowing that:
A.) This time it's a case of definitely-attempted-but-not-successful-murder
B.) Someone you'll love after reading Anon, Sir, Anon is a key suspect
C.) It has much to do with Scotland...after a fashion.
I've written only bits of things--none of which really have much at all to do with the actual mystery, but characters are vital so instead of actually telling you anything more about it, I've picked out some snippets of story I managed in September and I'm giving them to you today as a gift for this fine first day of October:

Dear Walter,

    The flies are horrible this time of year.

-Scotch'd The Snakes

Dear old uncle has a new play on. In times of yore, I would have thought that the same sort of thing as what Uncle Hugh meant when he said he had a new deal on. It’s not. It’s rather...well, it’s rather in the vein of feeling the approach of a sneeze and knowing a summer cold will soon follow.

-Scotch'd The Snakes

When childhood diseases came sweeping down London-town each year, Walter had always been one of the lucky few to escape the customary fortnight of bedrest. How well she remembered his impossibly healthy grin as he rode his bicycle round and round and round the garden in circles below the nursery window, and not from motives of entertaining his sick brother and girl-cousins who had all been tossed together in the sickroom like so many mismatched shoes in a car boot. No, the grin was triumphant and Walter Topham seemed to the captives a perfect bicycle-riding Alexander.

-Scotch'd The Snakes

“Considering who you are, Genevieve, you’re probably the last person I’d hit up for advice on wedded bliss.”

If he’d brought his fist into her teeth, it would have shocked her less. “That was low, Walter.” Her voice bent at the end like a twig snapped in two. “That was very low.”

Silence spread heavy wings and flapped a time or two, stirring the dim air of the chamber. Vivi dipped the cloth back into the basin and swished it in the herbed water. The tightness of being scorned knotted her breath, but quietly, deftly, Vivi wrung away the bitterness with the water and folded the cloth on the basin’s edge.

“You have been ill.” False cheer rattled the soul like bad news. “You are not yourself or you would not have said that.”

-Scotch'd The Snakes

A young woman, sturdy, free, and brazen-looking, continued her progress up the row. It did not seem to concern her that she found a stranger in her path.

It seemed the girl might pass without speaking, but Vivi smiled and addressed her: “How d’you do?”

Nipping off her pace, the young woman stopped. She bit free her glove and tucked a riding crop beneath her left arm. “Warmish day, isn’t it?” Her blue eyes seemed unafraid of raw manners as she poured curiosity over Vivi. “Sultana’s Rhombus nearly pitched me at Norton Bavant but I threw the balance forward and it ended nicely. Quite nicely. Wish there’d been an audience.”

-Scotch'd The Snakes

Could one feel a color? If so, Vivi felt quite sure she had turned a spirited shade of beet. “I’m his...cousin. Genevieve Langley.”

Delaney tossed her head in a confident laugh. “You really mustn’t mind me, darling. Walter used to dabble so, but that’s only because them other girls didn’t know how to bridle him. I do. Heaven’s gates, I do. And scarce a day goes by I don’t remind him of it. Bally men.” She took the crop from under her arm and touched the leather tassles to Vivi’s shoulder. The accompanying wink struck Vivi as friendly, which startled her. She had not thought Delaney Graham’s opinion of her very chummy. “Walk with me.”

-Scotch'd The Snakes