Back To Work

Hello, Readers! So sorry for the slack in communication. I signed on for an immense real-life project that has taken up all my creativity and spare time for the last month solid so I'm afraid I have that excuse. In other news, I have a new career goal:

To have material published in the print version of Saveur Magazine.

Seeing that they accept submissions and that they're my favorite food journalism outlet, I decided I'd have a go. Now to get on that. I pulled out The Spindle & The Queen (my "Sleeping Beauty" retelling) recently, being reminded that I should finish brushing it up so that it's actually a finished product and from there making decisions about it. I'll be working on the re-haul and to keep myself inspired, I thought I'd share a few bits of it.

L.A., luridly in need of a power-wash, smelled of swimming pools and half-boiled dreams this morning.

"...you've got to get some hustle, sweetheart, or I'll call another girl to take your place. I can get 'em. Anywhere, anytime. Lot of girls. Lot of guys too. Head of design for Thurman-Fischer. Girl. Step it up like Fred Astaire."

“All right, Princess.” His sly grin nauseated her. He actually made her sick. “But only because you're cute and my Yoda told me my juju's off. Need to balance the symbiotic relationship between my spleen and diaphragm with a series of generous act and a kombucha bath.”

Maria prepared to exit this dark-paneled room with its portraits of the handsome king and his patient-eyed queen. Their long-suffering faces, especially the queen's, gave her the creeps. Like a young fashion maven who hadn't received her customary invitation to the Met Gala and was going to Talk to Someone about it.

Weaver Birds Aren't My Area of Expertise

Just a bit of writing I did for fun. I feel like I hit my best stride when writing fiction for children, even though I've never pursued that avenue farther than "just for fun." I've been pecking away at this the past few days as the mood strikes me and I figured I would share it with you to help you, in turn, pass the time. Happy Monday, darlings!

An Untitled Story (With Birds)

by Rachel Heffington

“The world, my dear, is very full of things you shouldn't touch.” Miss Crust's voice curled back on itself, purring. She pulled her crotchety old fingers through Maribelle's hair.

“Ow!” Maribelle yowled. She didn't think Miss Crust pulled her hair on purpose, but she certainly didn't not pull it on purpose. That was the point on which Maribelle took issue with her nurse.

“Is it my fault if you got half a jar of molasses stuck in it? Your hair's more tangled than a weaver-bird's nest.”

Maribelle wouldn't know. Weaver birds weren't her area of expertise, though they were her father's and Miss Crust's. Her father and Miss Crust were very well-known ornithologists – bird people. They were the sort of important people other important people came to if they had questions about puffin migration (“Do puffins migrate?”) or parrot-speech (“Just how many words can the average parrot learn in its lifetime?”) or the habits of displaced bluebirds. How Miss Crust went from studying birds to untangling Maribelle's hair, Maribelle didn't know. She wasn't quite sure where her father had picked up Miss Crust. Miss Crust just had always been. Maribelle couldn't remember a time when Miss Crust hadn't been part of life at 34 Bleaking Street. In her earliest memories there was sunlight, plenty of dust-motes swirling glitter-like through the beams, and Miss Crust. Funny enough, there was never a memory of a mother. Just Miss Crust, Assisting. She was very good at Assistance – Assisting Father with bird-work and Maribelle with tangled hair and grammar-work and stains on the fronts of her dresses. Sometimes Maribelle thought she might like to do with a bit less Assistance. Maybe only on Tuesdays, because Tuesdays generally weren't the best day of the week. Miss Crust could be on-call the rest of the time and only Assist when Maribelle really wanted her.

“What happened to my mother?” Maribelle asked suddenly. Miss Crust's finger twitched through Maribelle's hair, not in a surprised way but in a “Dear heavens, this again?” way.

“Died,” Miss Crust answered.

“From what?” Of course she knew – galloping consumption – but it was needful to hear it again, just to remind her that there had been a mother once upon a time. It bothered Maribelle sometimes, how often she nearly forgot most kids had two parents.

Here it came -

“Galloping consumption,” Miss Crust said.

There it was.

“Now you,” she pulled Maribelle upright off the stool and smacked her bottom, “get downstairs. Your father wants to speak with you before he leaves.”

Glad to be free of the dreadful hairbrush, Maribelle skibbled out the nursery door and wandered down their great big staircase, pausing on her favorite steps as she went. Her favorite steps were as follows:

twentieth,

sixteenth,

eighth.

The reasons why were these:

The twentieth was the step at the landing with a peculiar, round window looking out onto a bit of scrappy yard and a trashcan that always had a cat of some color turned upside down, fishing for something inside it.

The sixteenth step was exactly halfway which, as anyone can tell you, is a special place.

And the eighth step was the step whereupon Maribelle's front teeth had been knocked out when she tripped on it two years ago. There had been no other six year old girls missing both their front teeth that year so though it had given her a bit of lisp, Maribelle thought the distinction quite worth the trouble of pronouncing “stork,” “sausage,” and other like words.

Maribelle tromped into Father's study without knocking. She never knocked, on principle. People seemed to stop doing interesting things when you knocked first. It was much more gratifying to throw open a door and see someone look like they'd seen a ghost. Maybe you'd see where they hid those scrumptious chocolates, or maybe you'd hear things they wouldn't otherwise have told a little girl. And Maribelle did very much like to know. Knowing was probably the thing she liked most in the world, besides maybe chocolate ice cream and splashing in puddles barefoot when she ought to have worn boots.

Father sat at his desk, balding head between his bird-claw hands. He looked up as she came in. Pale gray daylight flashed at her off the little round lenses of his glasses.

“Hi,” Maribelle offered.

“Oh. Hello, Maribelle.”

“Miss Crust said you wanted me?”

Father perked up a little and ran his fingers through his hair. Two grayish-black puffs of it stuck out on either side of his head and made him look like a ruffled owl. The top of his head was utterly bald. “Just so, my dearling.”

When he put out his hand, she walked to him and settled her little palm in his bigger one. Hot. Dry. Shaky. That was Father's hand. Not liking to keep hers there very long, Maribelle gave Father a quick smile and put her hand in her pocket where he wouldn't think to ask for it again.

“Been studyin' birds?” she inquired.

“Oh, hrm. Birds, birds. Is there anything like birds in the world?” Father's lenses flashed again and his smile was a little less hampered than usual. He did so like birds.

Maribelle wanted to help him in any way she could to not seem so picked-over and trembly. “Well, Miss Crust says there was a sort of dinosaur way back in the dinosaur-days that flew like a bird.” It mightn't help much but Father might find it interesting, and that would at least distract him from whatever it was he worried over.

“Oh, ha!” Father chortled. “Ha! Ha!”

Like a jay, Maribelle thought. Crisp and short and unaccustomed. She liked to think of Father as all sorts of birds. He laughed like a jay and looked like an owl. He walked like a heron and spoke like a wren in terse, tentative chirps. She liked to watch him and he liked to watch birds. It helped to pass the time in the few months of the year when they weren't bopping around the Congo or Peru or someplace.

Even More Snippets!

I've been getting a bucketload of reading done lately, partially because our home wifi has been ought and my cellular data doesn't support overmuch lazy Facebook/Pinterest/Instagram scanning, leaving me way more time for actually productive pursuits. Also, since my sister and I carpool to work most days and she gets off half an hour later than I do, I have spare shreds of time that I've been filling with reading rather than browsing. Maybe by the time we get this sorted out, I'll have reformed to a creature who doesn't fulfill all Millennial stereotypes? Anyway, I've rediscovered the depth of my love for reading which had been forced dormant for a while. I've also been getting a lot of words into The Spindle and The Queen via "word-wars" with friends such as Meghan Gorecki. I had never given much credence to the helpfulness of friendly competition until I tried it and realized I really didn't like losing. Sunday afternoon found me having written three-thousand words, give or take. I like this trend. I also finally dragged Cottleston Pie out of my trunk, discovered my trunk has a leak and the file had become a hotbed of disease and black mold, tied a scarf around my face and extracted blurred words from the page and copied them into a file on my computer, and generally felt like I would fall prey to the Bubonic Plague any minute. Update: I'm fine. I've finished Schindler's List, read Go Set A Watchman in record time, am a chapter away from rounding off Wodehouse's Cocktail Hour, and am the same distance from finishing Wordsmithy by Douglas Wilson. I have so much to say on the subject of all these things...about reading in general, reading as regards writers, about my story, and about the value of other art forms serving as inspiration. In short, I've got a lot to say and about ten minutes in which to say it. So I'm not going to waste my breath. I'll write it out when I have time (tomorrow?) and leave you with a few snippets from The Spindle And The Queen instead.

The producer’s phone rang once, twice, three times. Heath glanced at the minimalistic wall-clock and calculated that if it was seven o’clock here, it would be noon in New York and nine in L.A. Brendan Fischer was likely finishing his second mimosa, wiping his mouth on a monogrammed napkin, calling for Natalie to reschedule his nine-fifteen appointment an hour later so he could cram some yoga into his routine and swing by the juice bar before hitting the office. Heath winced as a deafening crackle birthed a dubious connection between two continents.

“What’s up, man?” Brendan’s voice sounded suntanned.

Silence. Silence so firm and cold you could skate across it.

After confessing the non-plausible plausible solution to Flavian, the man had quietened, suggested he might have someone who could help the case, and invited Heath into the street with him. Every cell in Heath’s composed, civilized brain told him this was what travel guidebooks called “a compromising situation” and suggested the American traveler at all costs avoid. 

They passed skinny boys and gangly men, shapely women with braids swinging to their hips, fat women with hair combed into thick knots at their necks. No one seemed in a particular hurry to close themselves into their homes for the evening. All doors were open to the street. Half the children ran naked, chasing a ball down the center of the street. Dogs skulked between legs and cats hid in potted petunias, their eyes catching odd shards of light leftover from the setting sun. Everywhere the streets reeked until Flavian led Heath and the boy into a clean, white lane set with the most opulent mansions Heath yet seen. The contrast between the sector through which they’d just trekked and this celestial glory hurt Heath’s eyes almost physically. He blinked a few times and caught his breath while Flavian spoke to a slender gypsy man smoking against a gold-painted fence. Daniel climbed the fence and swung by his hands on the top spikes, making faces at the grand house in its beautiful cage.

“I am supposing the spirits brought me to you.” 

Heath looked at him curiously. “You believe that?” 

“Of course. What do you believe? Are you Orthodox?” 

“I’m not saying it’s a popular belief and I’m not saying I don’t sometimes forget I believe it, but I’m a Christian.” He laughed. “The only Spirit I have dealings with is the Holy Spirit.” 

“Oh.” Flavian eyed him slyly. “Ah...Pentecostal.” 

Heath grinned. “Baptist.” 

“Okay.”

At the balancing point in all awkward interactions when some decision or another must be made, the farther door opened the queen who had once been beautiful entered.

Shig Cobb or The Fairy Mumbler

January (thus far) has not been my biggest word-count month. Most spare hours (and there haven't been many) have been spent writing and rewriting my Cottleston Pie paraphernalia like synposes and query letters. Not the most delightful of tasks. I have written absolutely nothing in the next Vivi & Farnham mystery but as soon as I get back in town after my mini vacation to a married friend's, I intend to dig back in. I do, however seem to have a genius for bothering in other stories that I really ought not to be looking at. First there was Darley Coom, the story that begins on a train out of London. I feathered about in that a little more this month...and now I can't find what came of it. This probably means that I wrote it by hand on an obscure piece of paper and will never find it again. *huff* The other night I felt like writing but not writing in Scotch'd the Snakes because I hadn't worked back up to it. What came out of this mood was "Shig Cobb" or "The Fairy Mumbler," and I am unreasonably attached to the one-thousand words that make up its opening scene. Sometime I will finish it...

I even dedicated the first painting with my new watercolors to this scrap.

Few people—if any—believed in fairies those days. The fairies themselves, perhaps, hardly believed, which merely shows how far ignorance can go, left to bite its own hindquarters.

When milk curdled in the cool-sweating dairy, Goody Lindsay invoked curses on heat and drought. When the largest hay-crop went moldy all in one night—and that not even a damp one—Farmer Faggot shook his fist and bemoaned the heavy dew. No one, of course, suggested fairy-mischief, because fairies didn't exist. Hadn't for years. Never had, mayhap.

There was, however, one person quite concerned with the existence-or-not of fairies. His name was Shig and he was a small thing with hands like corncobs and a crumpled left shoulder, and shoes too big for his feet so that wherever he went, he shuffled.

“Daft Shig,” the villagers called him.

“Cobble-fist,” others spat.

“Run along, Cobb.”

“Cob-hand.”

“Shig-Corn.”

So early on in age—perhaps five years, perhaps seven—Shig received a surname: the first gift of his life, beyond that gift of life to begin with. Shig Cobb: fairy-mumbler. The fairy-mumbler part had not come into his story yet. Not officially. It was there, at any rate, but not recognized and appointed as it would be later on, for Shig Cobb, along with his other misfortunes, was mute. Mumbling to anyone, fairies or people, seemed out of the question.

“Won't you speak, Shig?” the baker, whom he worked for, had used to ask him.

He would ask this question every day while pounding out the dough, fat and white like himself, but Shig never spoke. Perhaps he would not. Perhaps he could not. It was difficult to say in the case of such a quiet fellow as him, and so the baker aired the invitation daily.

“Your hands, Shig...what happened to them?” the baker ventured to ask one cloying, hot afternoon in late August. He was not an ill-natured fellow, this baker, just rather nosy, and it irked him to no end to employ and care for a boy with lumpety-crumpety hands and not have the satisfaction of at least knowing what had caused it.

Shig fiercened and narrowed his shoulder upward till they looked like a peregrine's wings, baiting for flight.

“Mind me not, boy.” The baker flumped the white, white dough over again in a floury, cumulus cloud. “Here's me thinking that if you could, you'd tell me to mind my own apron strings, and here's me thinking you'd be right.”

Ever so slightly, Shig's body slid down into its constant shrug: right shoulder lower than the hitched-up left, eyebrows arranged likewise.

“Will you be kind enough to slide these rolls into the oven and mind them while I pass a mead-y hour at the public house?”

Of course there came no answer—silly of him to look for one—but the baker watched Shig slide off his flour barrel, take the stone tray in his stumpy, bumpy hands, and ease it into the oven as gently as could be wished.

“They'll rest easy, won't they, under your care?” He eyed Shig and a beetling fondness for the creature pricked behind his eyes. “I wonder, boy, do you sing to them that they rise so high? Do you save all your sweet songs and pretty words to coax my bread along? For God in Heaven knows bread never tasted better nor lasted longer than Shig's bread.”

The boy was silent. The baker was pensive. But a leathern jug of good, golden mead awaited him at the Red-Shank and before long, all thoughts of Shig and his bread were swept away in a sip of the honey-lipped mug.

As soon as the baker had gone, Shig Cobb dragged his flour barrel to the side of the oven and climbed up to watch the progress of his bread. Shig belonged to no one as far as he could tell, and probably never had. Well, if he had, he could certainly not remember any part of it, so what good was that? But as long as he made sure the dough rose and the coals marked the loaves' cheeks with kisses summer-brown, he belonged. To the bakery. To the bread. Bread did not last long, unlike clay pots or wooden chairs or many another thing. Shig was glad, in his wordless way, that he'd chosen bread. Bread must be made fresh every day. Every day, Shig belonged.

You couldn't say that about many trades.

“...do you sing to them that they rise so high?” The baker's fond question wrestled between Shig's ears and bothered him. He did not sing but he wanted to sing, and it was only just the other night that he had dreamed of singing the only song he knew—a short Latin hymn—for an audience of nodding poppies. He had sung louder and more graciously than anyone he'd ever heard—even the miller's heart-faced daughter—and the baker had called him “son,” and then he'd awakened and realized the singing was not him, but was the miller's heart-faced daughter after all on her passage river-way with the miller's dusty cow.

He had been frustrated. He'd cried.

For it was a true thing that Shig Cobb could not talk. If he stuck his tongue out and crossed his eyes and thought incredibly hard, Shig sometimes thought he could remember having been able to speak. But he had been too scared to say anything when he'd come to this village three years back, and had been too shy to say anything for a long time after that, and had finally stopped trying to say anything at all. No one wanted to talk to him, for one thing. Shig Cobb was the brunt of many jokes, but never invited to speak with the jokesters. Even the baker, lazy soul, did not expect or want answers to his clumsy questions.

So Shig did not speak and he certainly did not sing. Not ever. Not that afternoon. Instead, he perched on the flour barrel and rested his bruised knees against the warm flanks of the oven, and told himself fairy stories with the silent voice in his head that could make words and was fond of it.

There y'are. It's a small thing but a sweet one, and I wouldn't mind finishing it out, though I've no idea where it ought to go from here. This is always a delightful and slightly-frightening stage of a project. Some of my best work recently has come from not knowing what is coming up but loving the characters...think John Out-the-Window. Perhaps this unclarity will bode well for me when I rip back into Scotch'd the Snakes. Because I'm still hung up over a certain little detail of plot. I have been re-reading Anon, Sir, Anon, though, and getting back in the mood, so here's to getting back in town and buckling down to work. :)

Sampling Cottleston Pie

The point of this post was to share snippets of Cottleston Pie but I feel I must interrupt normal programming to make an announcement. Jennifer Freitag, one my most beloved writing friends, is as I write giving birth to a baby Freitag. That's right! Not only does Jenny make books, she makes babies. What can that woman not do? I hope you will join me in wishing Jenny and Tim all happiness. <3 MY news, in comparison, weakens. I finished writing the first draft of Cottleston Pie last night. Or was it the night before? No matter. I finished writing it and immediately about-faced and started in on editing the first three chapters which then went straight to the few readers I selected to beta read. When they are finished, I will analyze their critiques, make needed changes, and send this packet off to the publisher. Then I'll sit for twelve weeks, hoping any day to see an email in my inbox, give up by week thirteen, and try again. But for now, I will glory in small triumphs, such as officially finishing Cottleston Pie. Here are some of the trimmings:

A Pirate is always in need of a warrior...Simpian kept still and quiet after this. He plucked a stem of wood sorrel and thought and thought. Was a Pirate always in need of a warrior? All through history he thought he’d remembered that Pirates and Warriors kept well apart from each other. Black Beard didn’t have a Warrior, and you didn’t hear stories of Davy Jones carting about boatfuls of Crusaders, did you? Simpian twirled the wood sorrel between his thumb and first finger and looked sideways at the mole. Bertram, in his turn, looked back at Simpian.

Simpian stomped eight paces to the soft patch. A pace, at least at Cottleston Pie, was a little more than a walk and a little less than a jog: sort of lippity-lip, like the kind of thing Sylvi the Rabbit had done.

“You might be a Warrior and have a sword that sings,” the King answered, “but you are new here and should not poke fun at our very good ways.”

 

(Simpian) nodded, paired with a nervous glance at the borrowed pen-knife which was rusty and dull and not very steady on its hinge.

Simpian took a step forward and thought how awkward it was, this dueling thing. He could understand how two people in the heat of a moment might come to blows, but it was strange to pick a fight when perfectly calm. How did you do it? “I say, can I stick you now?” sounded too impolite. “Let’s charge at the count of three!” was better, but a little unsure of itself yet.

“We’ll be overcrowded!” the King protested. “We already sent an invitation to a Friendly One to visit. What if the Friendly One comes after all and sees us clogged up with moles and rabbits and all sorts of creatures and decides to go on the side of the Skellingtons? What then? Holy Moly, what will happen to us then? Perhaps the Friendly Ones are unaccustomed to being jealous, and perhaps they will turn green and sneak into our bedrooms at night."

She smiled as only a bird can smile. Which is to say, she spread the flexible corners of her beak in a goodwill-toward-men gape that would have looked frightening on anything that was not a sparrow.

But because trees wondered what they’d look like in gold and the Pirates wondered where they’d hidden their jewels, and the boy wondered if the rabbit had a name, there were Autumns and High Seas and Kings at Cottleston Pie.

It was okay to wonder.

Wondering is a small kind of adventure.

“I SAID,” the King boomed, “That brains are for using, didn’t I?”

Simpian felt himself go pink. “Yes.”

“So Vesper should put a clothespin on her beak, shouldn’t she?”

“But I wonder!” the sparrow wailed.

“STOP WONDERING,” the King shouted.

And Sylvi, for no reason at all, bounced about chanting: “Pink sticks! Cotton fluff! Chalk-dust and ink!”

 

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

Wallaby-Wise

You have probably heard via my Facebook page or Twitter, I finished editing Anon, Sir, Anon on Thursday morning. There is one scene yet to finish (the fencing scene. I have my "terminologist" looking it over.) but for the purpose of saying it, Anon, Sir, Anon is thoroughly edited. Thursday afternoon, swept into the glory of having finished the actual book, I sat down and finished my map of Whistlecreig. I am making attempts to get the map into the print copies of the book, but if it turns out too complex to shrink to size, I will content myself with giving it space on a page on The Inkpen Authoress for those readers who want a closer look at Whistlecreig Manor & Environs.

In other news about Anon, Sir, Anon, I am pleased to announce that the official cover-reveal date will be released this week and there are at least

Two new reviews: 

My Lady Bibliophile

The climax is spectacular. Surprising, deliciously suspenseful, and avoiding the common pitfalls that authors fall into. Rachel held just enough secrets from me so I could enjoy the suspense--and then, when the moment came for boldness, carried it off with aplomb. Bravo; well done!

(WARNING: one advanced reader left quite a lot of spoilers in the comments section so don't read comments unless you want to know everything about the book.

Vintage Novels

This little murder mystery bears all the things I've come to expect from Rachel's books: crackling wit, gloriously well-crafted prose, and quirky, lovable characters. On top of that, the plot was more tightly woven and credible, the character interactions flowed better, and the writing--though I was reading a version which had not yet been polished by an editor--is patently more colourful and compelling than in her other works. In addition, there's a streak of something a little darker in this book. From the plight of the victim, to the identity of the killer, Rachel Heffington proves herself ready to make hard authorial decisions.

Think you'd be interested in my mystery? Add the book on Goodreads and "Remember, remember the Fifth of November." I can't get over how helpful my subconscious was in choosing a release-date so memorable. ^.^ Thank you, latent brain of mine. And, because I'm nice that way and want to tempt you with bits of my "patently more colourful" writing, here are some of those snippets I promised an age ago:

Skirts and bicycles were certainly an invention of the devil’s wife. If it wasn’t the questionable modesty of hitching one’s skirt up to one’s thigh, it was the constant peril of being flipped stockings-over-collar off the front of the thing.

-Anon, Sir, Anon

“Bad things happen in bad weather.” Mr. Owens turned the hat he’d removed round and round and round in his hands and the mist dropped off in pewter slips.

-Anon, Sir, Anon

She took him in, studied him, turned him in her mind like a wooden doll to be examined at leisure.

-Anon, Sir, Anon

“The luggage...” Vivi pressed her fingers onto her eyelids to ease the headache that had advanced on her with the dusk. “Where on earth is it? It must be in the murderer’s possession.”

“High marks for effort, Harriet Vane, but you’re wrong.” He cast his still powerful frame into a chair and knocked on the table with his knuckles. “She left it at the station and said she’d send for it later. The police have it now.”

-Anon, Sir, Anon

Farnham drew his head back into the dining room and squinted at the pale moon-face of the grandfather clock. Eight thirty-ish. No, wait. Half-seven. He rubbed his eyes and glared at the stiff black hands. The last thing he wanted was spectacles.

-Anon, Sir, Anon

On the Kettering side of the road, the stream flowed their direction in blue kinks and ripples; on the left, it ran a few merry paces before hitting the mill-wheel and resigning itself with a peaceful sigh to a rest in the mill pond. Farnham felt a bit of that peace balm his soul. He could think. He could smoke. He would be all right, presently.

-Anon, Sir, Anon

Genevieve Langley, paragon of all things mannerly, was late.

-Anon, Sir, Anon

“Such a gorgeous morning for a ride.” Vivi’s smile was bright, hurried. “Weather so obliging. Barely needed my tweeds at all, which is nice because in London I’m always tweeding and one does get tired of looking like a graham biscuit.

-Anon, Sir, Anon

She drew the word out wallaby-wise and gestured with her little hand.

-Anon, Sir, Anon

Down the curve of her cheek strode a deep shade of rose. Girls could still blush! Fascinating. He’d thought it died out with modesty some years back.

-Anon, Sir, Anon

Snippity-Snaps

It's been a long time since I have done a snippets post and I'm a little sorry to say that is because it's been a long time since I have done any substantial writing. It is understandable, though, that one girl  not in possession of all the time in the world has margin for either the duo of "Publicizing" and "Publishing" or writing itself. All that said, I have had a few spare moments to scrawl things in Anon, Sir, Anon as well as bits and smushes of here-and-theres:

She muttered a few select words that ill-suited the sweet persona she was known for on-stage and slogged out of bed, feeling the new and grossly familiar sensation of nausea that pressed a clammy hand to her belly as if trying to feel the heartbeat of the mistake inside her.

-Anon, Sir, Anon

Her plans were big, sprawling, and certainly did not include bearing the child of --- no. She wouldn’t say his name. That would be acknowledging him and a bigger jerk than that man had never existed on either side of the Atlantic.

-Anon, Sir, Anon

He’d get a doctor. It would all be over in few days. Things would be just fine.

-Anon, Sir, Anon

How far the field stretched and whether it ran uphill or down was a fact obscured by the fog. It was everywhere, the fog, wrapping them in woolen quiet.

-Anon, Sir, Anon

Vivi used her uncle’s arm as a prop to aid her in getting over the brook, then tucked her hair into the back of her coat so she wouldn’t have to feel the breath of the faint wind sucking at her neck. “How could they have seen the body from the road, Doctor?

-Anon, Sir, Anon

Farnham placed his palm against her back and she leaned into it, feeling as  if the fog had crawled into her bloodstream and was lifting her higher, higher, higher into the air.“Whoap.” Breen hands were on her now and Vivi felt quite awkwardly that someone had thrown his coat on the turf and lowered her into a sitting position.“I’m all...right,” she murmured, wishing the wooliness would give way.

-Anon, Sir, Anon

Vivi’s mind began to run in a dull, idle way over meaningless details of the corpse: the style shoe the woman had worn; the way her stocking twisted around one ankle; her red dress and brown coat; her blue-felt cloche.

-Anon, Sir, Anon

“Women’s intuition?” Breen asked with a deal of sarcasm.“Women’s intuition?” Vivi followed, quite curious now.“Women’s intuition,” the Inspector said, marveling.

-Anon, Sir, Anon

“Ain’t you a purdy little...gal...” Lindy knew the real name for she-pups but she’d said it once at Sunday-school and been told that Jesus wouldn’t like her usin’ such words. Lindy didn’t guess Jesus would care that much--’specially since her Daddy taught her that word right along with “mare” and “ewe” and “cow” and “queen”--but all the same she’d quit talking about hunting dogs at church.

-Untitled

“What’ll we do for your birthday?” Lindy asked Dagger as they turned down Pearmont Street when they had finished crossing the parking lot and the last few traffic signs had given way to long, swooping fields.“Don’t know. Might go fishing. Might get a job.”Lindy thought fishing sounded like more fun. “You’re goin’ to be fifteen. That’s half-way gone to thirty.”“Yep.”“And thirty’s half-way to sixty. And sixty’s halfway to bein’ dead.”“Thanks, Lindy.”

-Untitled

Lindy slipped her hand into Dagger’s big, tan one. She liked to feel his callouses. They felt almost like Daddy’s--like a crab-shell around his fingers to protect ‘em from all the cuts and bumps and things you got from workin’ outdoors.

-Untitled

They wound up the tree-lined driveway running along the left side of the Fayette’s yard. You couldn’t see Lindy’s house from Hayden Lane but it was there all right, tucked away behind a tunnel of old oak trees that cupped their branches around the driveway and sent their roots running along the bottom of it like they were trying to hug whoever walked through. Nobody else in Duke Meadows had a driveway this nice, Lindy thought. That’s cuz they all had cars and with cars, people always kept the trees nicely trimmed so’s they wouldn’t scratch paint.

-Untitled

All right, you can have a peep.

Don Pedro: "In faith, lady, you have a merry heart."
Beatrice: "Yea, my lord. I thank it, poor fool. It keeps on the windy side of care."

-Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing

The reason I have kept mum about The Baby in the last few posts is because I have not been working on The Baby. Logical enough. I have been working instead at The Windy Side of Care (currently titled thus), which is my novella for Anne Elisabeth Stengl's Five Glass Slippers contest. The reason for this is that my fall is filling up with several things that will be cutting out a total of at least three weeks' writing time and the final draft of my entry must be in by December. I want to finish the 25,000 words, get feedback, and edit all before that time and since any deadline on The Baby is self-imposed, I figured it could wait. I don't want to give too much of The Windy Side of Care away because if it doesn't make it as a winner in this particular contest, I might just Do Something With It, like publish it so you can have something of mine to read while I wait for all these others things to get properly published. (garump-guddy-rump) I did, however, think you might like a pitch and some snippets so you can see in which realm my brain has been working:
Lady Alis has never accepted the tale that her widowed father died and left her in the care of her step-mother, Laureldina; nowhere in the records can she find a man matching her alleged father's name, and her resemblance to the King of Ashby is too remarkable to ignore. Convinced that she was swapped at birth with the current Prince Auguste, Alis must stake her claim to the throne of Ashby before the prince's twenty-fourth birthday when he will be confirmed as the heir-proper. With the help of an errand-boy, an old woman, and a far-from-fairy godfather, Alis plots to take the throne. For all this careful planing, Alis never thought to fall in love, nor to murder the royal. But sometimes life--and love--is a bit risky on the windy side of care.

"If Auguste Blenheim the Pig had not stolen my birthright, dear Lord, would I be half as patient as I am?"

***

   The door to Laureldina's bedchamber was blocked by Charlotte Russe; it was a modern marvel how that great fat beast managed to get from one place to the other faster than I, a slender maiden, could. I suspected secret passages or teleportation, but that was unconfirmed.

***

   She took a bite of  toast with a dreamy sigh and rested the point of her chin in her hand. "J'adore mi amour."
   "Don't speak French, Vivienne." Clarisse rolled out of bed and pulled a yellow silk wrapper from the chair onto her curvaceous frame. "It's so inelegant."
   "But Clarisse, last month you told me it was the height of fashion."
Clarisse pushed me out of the way and hugged Vivienne's neck. "Of course I did dear. But that was before you started using it."

***

   "Well met, little shrew." William ran a hand over his smooth chin and shook his head, smiling at me. "You are the sort of harpie they write epics about, woman! The tongue on you is enough to cut a man at the knees and leave him begging for more."

***

   I kissed the letter to Lord Humphries with a prayer and handed it to Stockton. "He has agreed to help in any way he can and since I found that not a single Carlisle Bickersnath has ever lived or died in the kingdom..."
   "Never one? Gawwww." Stockton stuffed the last cookie in his mouth and slid off the stool. "Tha's just buildin' they army, ain't tha? First me and Ellen, now 'umphries...gawww."

***

   I pushed away from the wall, pressing my fingers against my temples to still the dizziness. "Well. I am safe...for now."
   "Safe from what?"
   William's sudden, sliding  voice sent a lightning-rod jolt up my spine and I wished for one moment that I was the kind of girl who fainted.

***

    "Ohhhh..blast it--do you know what I want to do? No, you would not guess; you're much too refined." With a quick step, Auguste grabbed Belkin by the jacket and shoved him toward the window, pressing the man's nose against the pane. "I want to go out there and find myself a plump village lass and kiss her--hard. Y'understand? I want to dig my hands in a dirty furrow and bring up a handful of potatoes and...and cook them myself. I want to ride Feather-Fellow at a full gallop and risk breaking my neck if I take a fancy for it, and I want to miss every Cabinet meeting from here till kingdom come!"

***

    It had been a mistake to come that close to him. William wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me close, resting his chin on my head. "Alis, Alis. What's a man to do?"
   Struggle was useless. I folded my wings like a stubborn bird and made my head as much like a stone as possible so he'd not find it comfortable to rest there. "Do about what? Ask Laureldina for the extra two weeks and we'll go up to Weircannon and all will be well; Vivienne and Clarisse know lots of people--I'm sure they could find you a nice girl."
...William released me and pushed me ahead of him toward the house. "I don't know..." he said. "Girls don't like my sisters, y'know. Men trouble and all that."

***

   Charlotte Russe waddled to my feet and batted the hem of my skirt as if to demand some solace after being deposited in a basement kitchen by a dirty cabman who swore and smelled like sardines.

***

   I leaned against the table, hands pressed on the cool wood, and stared at Ellen. "You are a conniving devil!"
   She shrugged her shoulders. "Eh, ah'm a woman. Which is mostly th'same thing."

***

   I patted Auguste on the shoulder and smiled at a passing cab-driver so we might not look like a trio in the throes of a political drama of national importance. "Perhaps we'd better speak somewhere else," I said. "And just a pointer: you really don't know how to speak to a woman."

There you go! I hope you enjoyed this peek at The Windy Side of Care because since it's a contest-piece I can't give you any more than that. (And rest assured, whatever you may think you didn't read anything vital to the plot so tweedle-dee. You're none the wiser. ;) If any of you are entering the contest I'd love to see snippets of yours story. I had two plots going and this one just flew away with me and is probably the strangest Cinderella-story I've ever read. The judges may not like it, but it makes me laugh so I'm glad I've taken the time.