Climbing Plot Mountain

Here, have a helping of the true colors of autumn in Virginia in all their brilliance:



Those are Zelkova, Liriodendron (tulip poplar), Acer (maple), Viburnum, and Prunus (cherry). Needless to say, it's been an absolutely stunning autumn - see my Flickr page for further examples.

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I went to the library today. It had been so long since I felt like I had enough free time to read that my card had expired. *g* Nice librarian lady got me reactivated without a hitch.

Based on a review in Realms of Fantasy, I picked up Joe Abercrombie's debut novel, The Sword Itself a few weeks back. I finished that last week. Verdict: odd, in that it's really, really hard to figure out who you're supposed to root for, but I can definitely see why this novel got chosen for his first. I'll probably pick up the second book, which is out now, if I remember correctly. I want to see what happens to the people I decided I cared about. *g*

Currently on my desk is The Watchmen, which looked intriguing in the book club flyer. I'm not a big fan of comics and superheroes, so getting used to the format is uphill work for me, but thus far I haven't put it on the Not For Me pile. (I have to admit that the banner on the cover announcing it won a Hugo is helping a lot with that decision.) I now also have waiting for me a new (?) Arturo Perez Reverte/Captain Alatriste novel, Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate, Jim Grimsley's Comfort and Joy (a perennial re-read at this time of year, and I think it's about time I chase down a copy for myself) and a novel by an author I used to read so I can see if hir writing has improved or if s/he is still on my Don't Bother list. The odds on escaping the DB list are long in this case.

Help me out here: what would you recommend that's come out in the past couple of years, while I've been head down in novels? What have you read and enjoyed? Here's your chance to plug the favorite that no one else seems to have heard of.

(That I've moved from comfort re-reads to new stuff is a good sign. My poor brain cells are so crispy.)

***

Coupled with the ability to read new stuff is the realization that I need new music. I've bought six new albums in the past week. If you like melancholy atmospheric stuff, allow me to recommend Air's album Pocket Symphony, which had been on my Amazon wish list for a long while based on airplay on Radio Paradise. (Yay for Radio Paradise!) I've also rediscovered a couple of REM albums that I have but never put on my computer and so have not received any play in probably six years. The album called Chants, Hymns and Dances by Anja Lechner and Vassilis Tsabropoulos has also proven listenable. I'm hopeful for the Mari Boine disc, once I get around to giving it some air time at home where I can turn it up (rather than at my dayjob, where one does not raise the volume).

I started to put this in my email archive, and decided I could also archive it here for later retrieval and to perhaps infect others with my amusements.

Calexico is a band I heard first on Radio Paradise (radioparadise.com) and liked very much - so much so that I've ordered one of their CDs (Feast of Wire). This link is to a live performance: http://www.archive.org/details/calexico2003-04-25.flac16

(I don't know if this interest of mine in things Western is due to recent movies (Brokeback Mountain) and books (Emma Bull's Territory) I've enjoyed, or whether those things brought back to the fore a longstanding preference. I suspect the latter. And I'm pleased that the rest of the world seems to be set to deliver more for me to enjoy. ::grin::)

...and what, to my wondering eyes did appear, but an email message from an agent I recently queried, asking for the first 50 pages of Cavalier Attitude.

In a spring that has been non-stop effort on several fronts at the same time, this is a bright spot. I'm trying not to get too excited. *g* Because, of course, she could get those 50 pages and decide the story wasn't moving in a direction that pleases her, and reject it. Rejections will always outnumber acceptances in this business, and it's well to remember that, as well as that it *is* a business. This is not my heart being judged; it's my novel, but it stands on its own. It has to.

So, in addition to all of the other deadlines I'm juggling, I'm focusing tightly on those first 50 pages, making sure they say exactly what I need them to say. Oh, nuance, how I love thee. And how complicated a beast you are to manage!

In other news, and along the lines of that research thing I was doing earlier, I bought some music today that will inevitably influence the writing. Maybe, just maybe, the pirates will come out to play again after listening to Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys. The self-titled Rodrigo y Gabriela cd, an instrumental fusion of heavy metal and acoustic guitars which I heard pieces of on NPR's Saturday Weekend Edition, ought to be useful when it comes to revising the novel_in_90-generated draft of Bells of Leon y Cantara. And I am not sure what Lisa Gerrard's latest, Immortal Memory, will influence, but I'm sure it will. I listen to selections of her earlier efforts with Dead Can Dance and in movie soundtracks (most notably the soundtrack for The Insider) all the time when I want that deep, bittersweet, achingly depressed mood that makes the words flow for so many of my characters.

Onward! (For, of course, there is no going back, and no sense looking over your shoulder. You don't want to see what's catching up.)