Chapter 12

Tolliver found that the only way in was to waltz right up the middle. The opening was simply too narrow …

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Chapter 11

“How many men are there?” Tolliver asked, using the command voice he’d been drilled in during his induction to the Arm…

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From the introduction by the editor Lois Boyle:

I have been chiefly concerned with whether the writer had something of definite importance to say; whether he is concerned with a concrete and immediate realization of life. We have done with theory and abstraction, remote intangibles that do not satisfy or create. The true poet is one, who, having sensed some nugget of truth, can, with the aid of rhythmic language, cause us to know in our innermost being that this is truth.

Disguised

My love, who is a poet

Says that I’m a lily,

Cool and white and slim.

The dear! He doesn’t know it

But I am a skylark singing,

A temple bell that’s ringing,

And a golden censer swinging —

All for him!

—Dorothy Callaway

So Long As There are Homes

So long as there are home to which men turn

At the close of day;

So long as there are homes where children art,

Where women stay;

If love and loyalty and faith be found

Across these sills,

A stricken nation can recover from

Its gravest ills.

So long as there are homes where fires burn,

And there is bread;

So long as there are homes where lamps are lit,

And prayers are said;

Although a people falters through the dark,

And nations grope,

With God Himself back of these little homes,

We still can hope.

—Grace Noll Crowell

“Diezmo”

“…Santa Anna Commuted the death sentence of Captain Fisher and his men to a '“diezmo”…one in ten. The prisoners drew beans from a much, the white beans signifying exemption, the black ones death. Captain Eastland was the first to draw a black bean. Red-Caps did the execution. (It is said that when Mary, Captain Eastland’s sweetheart, heard of the execution she became deranged.” —{Journal of the Texas Expedition Against Mier, by General Thomas J. Green}

"The Red-Caps shot them—one in ten—

Who drew the fatal bean.

The vultures found them, martyred men,

And picked their bodies clean.

But Martyred bones are magic seed

To grow a beanstalk from—

They satisfied her moon-struck need,

So Mary planted some.

She watered them with fervent tears

Until the hybrid bloomed

With white pods that allayed her fears,

With black beans for the doomed.

These black she plucked and hid from sight,

And lo! when Fisher’s men

Drew from the mug, they all drew whites,

None black—not one in ten!

—Virginia Lee McConnell

The Witch of Las Norias’

“Flee to the casa

And shut the door.

La Bruja rides

With the wind’s roar,

Rosita heard

Her screech-owl cry,

Juan saw her lantern

Float in the sky,

Her black skirt fluttered

As she went by

On wings of el diablo

Lent her that night

In the dark of the moon

When he brought her the light

She has gone to the village

To buy of the brew

Mad Pedro sells

When the moon is new.

When she comes back

Somebody—will—die;

And—it might be you!

Hush, don’t cry,

But hide in the casa

And speak no more;

She may think we are gone

And pass our door.”

—Lucie Gill Price

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The seven habits of highly successful scientists chemists authors, oh, who am I kidding? I don’t think there’s seven. There’s probably only one cardinal rule: observe everything. Watch, listen, read if you can, and once you’ve stashed all that information internally, you’ll be able to use it when there’s a call for it. The problem with this is that it leaves one modality of learning out, and that might just be the most important one. Kinetic learning, or hands-on, or whatever you want to call it. There’s a training mantra I’ve seen attributed to the military: See one, Do one, Teach one that is actually very very useful when it comes to learning how to do a task, and in teaching someone else how to do it, you come (usually) to a fuller understanding of it than simple rote learning.

I’ve just taken on a new job. Sadly, this means I’m no longer a scientist, in that it’s not my job title any more. On the other hand, the new job role of raw materials chemist offers me a great deal more room for improvisation and using my understanding of the mechanisms of chemical reactions than my previous role did. I’ll explain a bit more, because this might be useful in a book somewhere. Through no direct planning of my own, I’ve wound up working in the pharmaceutical industry. At first, it was a job, and a job doing science, and I was grateful for it. But as I learned more about the role that quality control plays in producing safe medications for the world (and both the companies I’ve worked for are indeed global), the more I realized that what I was doing mattered. It’s a nice feeling to have your work be significant. However, working in a highly regulated environment brings challenges with it, as some of you can no doubt attest. It’s not just that the Big Gov agency can and will come directly audit your place of work and watch over your shoulder while you’re doing the Thing. It’s also knowing that if you screw up, someone could die. Having set up that background, let me explain why training is vital to the functioning of scientists in these environments.

In science, the gold standard is reproducibility. In Quality Control, everything you do is guided by thoroughly qualified and validated methods, that are themselves based on the Pharmacopeias, huge books (multiple volumes, and these days mostly online, although I was impressed to see them in paper at the new job) full of distilled wisdom on how to make every known approved drug. So what you are doing in a QC lab is, in essence, very careful following of recipes. It has to be done the same way, every time. This isn’t quite as easy as it sounds. Particularly when you add in any kind of bioanalysis, ie polymerase chain reaction (PCR) because biomolecules can have a mind of their own. Training in this environment is a highly structured process. Usually. In my experience. Normally, I’d watch someone (preferably more than one analyst) perform a task. Then, with a trainer watching, I’d perform it, asking a million questions while I did so. Finally, I’d be given a sample and run the analysis without being able to ask anything, but while being observed, and when that was accomplished with results matching the testing previously done on that special training sample, I’d be certified trained. To my surprise, this excellent system is not followed everywhere. I was slightly dismayed to be handed a sheet with instructions on it, and basically told to ‘go do’ in an unfamiliar lab where I didn’t even know where the water was. Water, by the way, is not just water in a lab. Using the wrong kind of water can serious mess up an assay. By dint of asking a lot of questions, which they were fortunately open to, I managed to pass my first training. But it was a disconcerting experience, not unlike a beginning swimmer being thrown into the ocean and told to get to shore. Because I already knew how to swim, I was fine. I had some good habits in place, and that saved me. Had I been fresh out of college? Well, the academic environment and the industry are two wildly different places.

How, you are asking now that you’ve persisted this far, does this apply to writing? Writers can’t exactly be trained. Yes, and no. I’m not a big believer in rules of writing. I do know, however, that you can’t become a good writer without also being a good reader. Observing what works, and then going on to suss out why it is working, will vastly improve your writing as you internalize that enough to get it into your story building. Don’t just stick to one genre, either. You should know, yes, what tropes are expected in romance, fantasy, etcetera. But you can write more interesting and original stuff if you aren’t trying to write to genre. Most of us are lifelong readers, so we’ve already been doing this part, whether consciously or not. Now, it’s time to apply the kinetic learning. put fingers to keyboard, or pen to paper, whatever works best for you. Write something. When you’re stuck on that, write something else, or just push yourself past the block until you’re into another interesting bit. Write every day, even if you only manage 5 words, like Dorothy talked about for her Inktober challenge. I’m doing NaNo, this month. I do not expect to manage 50K words by the end of the month. Not with a job change that is wringing my brain dry trying to keep up with the training (and the open office environment that has me feeling like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs). But it’s very useful to me to keep the daily accountability of words posted. I’m training my brain to write again. I’m still doing daily art, but keeping that short and noncommittal by using prompts a friend helped me with (having a list to work with means I don’t have to put out the mental energy to compose creatively). If you’re struggling to write daily, try writing to prompts. You will find that once you have trained your brain, you won’t have to strain for the creative as much. Take it slow rather than trying to jump right into the deep end. Feeling like you are drowning is not conducive to wanting to repeat that process over and over. Make it fun, make it satisfying, and it will come to you.

My initial response, when I was condescendingly told to run along and create something cosy, was to boil over and retort ‘you realize I got my start with noir? And horror?’ but I didn’t say anything. I retreated, retrenched, and ruminated. The dismissal hit me like a horse’s kick to the chest, and just like that time, I wound up lying on the ground staring at the sky feeling disoriented. It wasn’t just the dismissive tone, the assumption that only real value is in the darkness, the hardness, that anything soft must also be worthless. It was the irony of being told that only portraying edgy, sexy, lean and polished would result in being seen as worthwhile, that old-fashioned was invisible, by someone who clearly had no idea what my past work looked like in art or writing. It isn’t just one person’s opinion. There is an assumption that softness is synonymous with weakness or lack of imagination. It is commonly accepted that cosiness is a lesser category, a pastel diversion for people who can’t handle the “real” work of darkness.

Then, slowly, I began to think about the true value of the cosy world I’d created in Groundskeeper, in my cute art, in the comfort and encouragement I try to give not only here on the blog but in person to friends and those near to me. That world is not an escape from the dark. It is a deliberate counterweight. I’ve been dark places. Far darker than the person who felt they knew what badass was, and dismissed my art because it didn’t fit their version. I know the taste of the air when hope feels theoretical. I prefer not to dwell in the darkness. I hug hope, the thing with warm feathers, close to my soul and I know it’s shape. I know that it’s not all bleak edges. It’s round, and soft, and welcoming. It has bloody knees, bruised knuckles, and a fire in the eyes that cannot be quenched. All those things can be true at once.

That is the part the dismissive voice never seems to grasp: cosiness is not the absence of struggle. It is the refusal to let struggle have the final word. It is the decision to keep the kettle on, the lamp lit, the door unlocked for the people who need a place to set down their weight for a while. In the cosy worlds I spin from my imagination the gentleness is only on the surface, beneath everything is the undercurrent of what the characters have survived and what they continue to carry. The cosy surface is the visible part of a much deeper architecture. The same is true of the little drawings I make, the bread I bake for friends, the steady presence I try to offer. None of it is decorative. It is structural.

My version of cosy might include a bookstore, spiced coffee, and an inconvenient body, but it’s not what most will think of when they open the pages. The body is inconvenient because bodies often are; the coffee is spiced because pleasure is a form of resistance; the bookstore is a place where stories of every temperature can sit side by side without apology. Furthermore, I’m just getting started. I think I will create something cosy. Might be the loaf of bread I have rising, flavored with cardamom, orange peel, and black pepper. Complex sweetness with a bite at the end. Might be a twinkling of an idea I have about grandmothers who belong to a secret society of assassins because they are overlooked (and yes, I adored Mrs. Pollifax, why do you ask?) Those women move through the world as background noise until the moment they are not. Their strength is hidden in plain sight, wrapped in cardigans and practical shoes and the assumption that no one is looking.

Might be stories of a young woman rising to heroic interstellar espionage exploits while serving her apprenticeship to a tailor, a baker, and a shepherdess. The skills that keep people clothed, fed, and safe are the same skills that can dismantle an empire if applied with precision and patience. The possibilities are infinite.

Warm, welcoming, and relentless. Cosy is far more than it seems on the surface, and those are the very best characters, don’t you think? The ones who look soft until you notice the set of the jaw. The ones who offer you a cup of tea and, in the same breath, refuse to let you disappear into despair. The ones whose hope has been tested in the dark and came back carrying light: not the harsh, clinical kind, but the kind that fits in a pocket, that can be shared without diminishing.

I used to think the dark was the only place seriousness lived. I know better now. Seriousness also lives in the decision to keep making beauty when beauty feels frivolous. It lives in the quiet insistence that people deserve comfort even when the world is on fire. It lives in the hidden places, in the overlooked grandmothers, the apprentices who learn more than their trade, the hope that has bloody knees and still gets up. Cosiness, done honestly, is not a retreat. It is a form of strength that does not need to announce itself. And I am only beginning to map its full territory.

Oh, right, the results of the poll on the series title!

Ordering Chaos won the popular vote. However, there were some brilliant reader suggestions, including Rick T.’s “Timeless Shaft” which amused both Sanford and I and it really does sum up what’s going on in the series. Sanford then also suggested “Bohica” but while that also sums it up (so much!) I think we’re going to use Rick’s title. Thank you Rick! Ping me after publication for a signed copy of the book!

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It Couldn’t Be Done

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done,

But he with a chuckle replied

That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one

Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.

So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin

On his face. If he worried he hid it.

He started to sing as he tackled the thing

That couldn’t be done, and he did it.

Somebody scoffed: “Oh, you’ll never do that;

At least no one ever has done it”;

But he took off his coat and he took off his hat,

And the first thing we knew he’d begun it.

With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,

Without any doubting or quiddit,

He started to sing as he tackled the thing

That couldn’t be done, and he did it.

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,

There are thousands to prophesy failure;

There are thousands to point out to you one by one,

The dangers that wait to assail you.

But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,

Just take off your coat and go to it;

Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing

That “cannot be done,” and you’ll do it.

—Edgar A. Guest

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Chapter 9

Tolliver gave up on sleep after a couple of hours lying on his cot trying to rest. The cot creaked each time he shifted. The real bed had felt so good after the timeless hours and endless jolting spent in the trucks. It seemed ironic that his body had adjusted to the comfor…

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The Dryad’s Ball, in it’s entirety, follows a grove of trees through a year, with emphasis on particular events which might occur during the seasons. It opens with a springtime theme:

And continues into summertime, with a beehive humming warmly at the heart of a hollow tree. A dryad of honeycomb and hope.

Summer’s heat brings the harsh reality of drought. I don’t know that I can escape my own life creeping into these projects, and it’s certainly been a dangerous time for my trees here in the garden.

When the hot and dry break loose into the coming of autumn… Storms toss the boughs of the dryads, who dance in the wind, then crouch, afraid, when the branches are ripped asunder by the power of the tempest.

Finally winter returns, and the grove slumbers for a season, resting. They will bloom out into gowns and greens again, to dance on for decades with deep roots and fragrant leaves.

For the full… symphony? Album? Check it out on Youtube! Also, if you want to listen to these songs without having to click at the end, that’s a better way to do it.

However! Due to popular demand, before I start that, quite a few people wanted to know more about this cookbook. So I made up a recipe from it, rambled in the kitchen, and found the White Bean and Roasted Garlic Pate to be very tasty.

I omitted the lemon zest entirely, not having any lemons on hand. Still good, but will try it again sometime with that, because I think it will be better.

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I’ve been slowly reading my way through an excellent book on psychology. One of the studies the author discusses in detail is what should be done for survivors of some mass disaster or trauma. Oddly, the answer seems to be: don’t force them to relive it. People are surprisingly resilient, it turns out. And forcing them to talk about what happened in an effort to prevent PTSD turns out to actually make the problem worse. If you leave them alone, people will recover, come to terms, and when they need it, seek help. This isn’t always true... some people are not resilient at all. They shatter under pressure. I can give you examples of both, in the writing world, from the past week.

One is the young lady who became a victim of a Twitter witchhunt (who would have thought we would traverse from dunking women in ponds to see if they could breathe underwater, which of course meant they were a witch, or would drown, which meant they were innocent, to forcing strangers to endure mocking, humiliation, and career death? Remind me to dig up that article on Medicolegal Death Investigation and Social Media for case studies of suicides influenced by facebook and twitter storms). The young writer dared write from her own experience, and it was outside the accepted narrative. So they drowned her career.

On the other hand, you have someone who, after 23 books in a long-running and popular series, was unceremoniously dumped by his publisher. Anyone want to bet he’s making more money in a year if he goes Indie than he could have dreamed? From his facebook post about it:

Tor-MacMillan dumps Repairman Jack
It’s true. Jack is back but Tor doesn’t want him.

The publisher of 23 Repairman Jack titles says “No mas.” They’ve made it known to my agent that they’ve decided not to proceed with any new Jack novels.

I see this as the result of a perfect storm arising from a confluence of poor sales of the very noir, pure-crime Early Years Trilogy (for which I take full responsibility), plus the death of the long-time editor of the series, plus the sidelining of my long-time publisher, Tom Doherty. I suppose it doesn’t help that Jack is not what you’d call a “woke” character and has no allies in the Tor editorial department.

That’s resilience. Refusal to allow his career to be dunked. Not that he’d have drowned, anyway, unlike the young lady F. Paul Wilson has a solid fanbase that has his back... which brings me to another interesting post, about literary circles. My dear readers. Would you like to be in the Mad Genius Club literary circle? Because you are! We have cookies, and advice, and warm words of pungency when the idiots try to kick you while you’re down. Rawle Nyanzi writes about what makes ‘right wing’ writers more resilient and durable to the twitter mobs than the ‘left wing’ who fall prey to a form of cannibalism. I recommend reading the whole thing, but here’s a pertinent snip:

As we’ve seen with the previous authors mentioned above, hate-mobs often target those they are likely to extract concessions from. In the case of tradpub YA, that means people who want to be seen as progressive and woke. Therefore, attacking a right-wing author is a waste of time since that author is simply not going to care about intersectionality or representation — their literary circles don’t care, their audiences don’t care, so they won’t care either, especially if it boosts their Amazon sales rank. By contrast, a tradpubbed YA author’s brand absolutely depends on being woke since that’s how you get huge publicity and big advances, to say nothing of behind-the-scenes support of various kinds.

Thus any author in the early stages of a career would do well to choose a circle carefully. Make sure they do right by you, rather than hate-mob you based on rumors. And when the hate-mobs do come, make sure they have your back.

I’d argue that it’s not really about the political bent of the circle of people you have around you. Good friends who have your back are worth their weight in gold. Groups of people you can go to for help, to check whether you’re on the right track or barking up an empty tree, to pick you up, dust you off, and give you a little push to regain momentum... you can’t get those on purpose. You find out you have them when things go horribly wrong, but you get them by being a resilient person who has compassion and empathy for others. Because before you got pushed in the pond and held down to see if bubbles came up? You were with the group pulling the assailants off some poor unfortunate soul and helping render first aid. Your innate resiliency, your stubborn refusal to give up and go down into the dark deeps where the plankton would nibble your bones... that’s what drew your circle around you. You get to have the choice to face down the mob, or to kowtow and offer up your life’s work to them in hopes it would placate their ravening appetite for blood.

It’s all you. Stand tall. We’re at your back if you need us.

However! this leaves us with the small and nice problem of not knowing what to call the series. I’ve been tagging the chapters here with “timeless war” but he wasn’t sure that worked. Please let us know your thoughts!

And for something completely different than the military fantasy we’ve been working on…

Papa Pat, you asked for Della’s Sunflower Soup recipe from the Groundskeeper: Fen Dead. It’s included in the booklet which new subscribers to my author newsletter will receive. However, most of y’all won’t have seen that. So! I will put it here, and for those of you who’d like to also get the author newsletter (which goes out perhaps once a month) then you can sign up for the whole thing.

Cedar Writes

Periodic announcements of publications and other exciting news from Cedar Sanderson

By Cedar Sanderson

Also, I want to thank everyone who had been kind enough to leave a rating or review. They are so nice to see. I deeply appreciate them, and they give me a lot of motivation in writing more. Almost a hundred of you! Amazing!

Potato Soup for Cold Evenings and Colder Spirits

When the weather turns sharp or a member of the household has spent too long in damp places, this soup restores both body and temper. It is simple, nourishing, and forgiving of small mistakes in the kitchen.

Ingredients

• 2 pounds potatoes, peeled and cubed

• 1 large head of garlic, roasted

• 1 onion, finely chopped

• 4 cups good broth (chicken or vegetable)

• 1 cup cream

• Salt and white pepper to taste

• Crisp bacon, crumbled

• Toasted sunflower seeds

Method
Roast the garlic until soft and golden by cutting off the top, exposing the cloves. Place this in a small lidded stoneware dish, or wrap it with aluminium foil. Drizzle with oil and roast at 400F for about 40 minutes. Multiple cloves may be prepared at once for use in many dishes.

While it cools, cook the onion gently in a little butter until translucent. Add the potatoes and broth. Simmer until the potatoes yield easily to a fork. Squeeze the roasted garlic from its skins into the pot. Purée the soup until smooth (a careful hand with the masher will do if one prefers not to use modern machinery). Stir in the cream and season gently. Serve hot, topped with crisp bacon and a scattering of toasted sunflower seeds. The seeds add a quiet crunch and a reminder that even small things may be of use.

A Note on Etiquette
Hot soup should be offered without ceremony to anyone who has come in wet, chilled, or heavy-hearted. Do not inquire too closely into the cause until the bowl is empty. Warmth first. Questions later, and only if they are welcome.

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A Psalm of Life

What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,

In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!

Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act,— act in the living Present!

Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait.

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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