Normally I take notes throughout the day, whenever I need a break. This time the notes came after the fact, at first because, well, train rides are unexciting to write about, and later because I didn't even think to take a break.
( Read more... )In other news, insomnia last night gifted me with an idea: I know how I'm going to kill off a character in this book.
I feel quite bad about it.
I suspect this is a good thing.
One unexpected side effect of not having my camera cable: it's surprisingly hard to keep myself entertained in the evenings. I didn't realize how much time I spent last year, sucking the day's pictures down to my laptop, deleting the bad ones, and labeling the rest before I could forget what they were. I find myself at loose ends in the evenings, more than expected, and curse the combination of virtue and light packing that made the only book in my luggage Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down. I cannot brain enough to read about seventeenth-century socio-politico-religious movements right now.
( Read more... )Four days done; four to go. And then onward to Rome . . . .
Today and tomorrow are my museum days. ( Read more... )
And that was my third day. Tomorrow: the Victoria and Albert Museum, and possibly some stupidity in the late afternoon or early evening.
The fire alarm went off today in the Guildhall Library.
While I was there.
Reading about the Great Fire.
Other than that, my day was not the sort that makes for an exciting story. It was a satisfying day -- don't get me wrong. But a quiet one.
( Read more... )Anyway, last night was not enough sleep, so I think I'll call it quits with this brief report. Tomorrow will be museum adventures, and maybe some more hunting of obscure bits of architecture, energy willing.
Coming out of Blackfriars Station, I turn north and head for Ludgate Hill.
Of course I do. I have to say hello to St. Paul's Cathedral.
( Read more... )I early-voted this morning, because tomorrow I'm leaving on a jet plane and not coming back until I've seen England, Italy, Greece, and Turkey -- or at least small samples thereof.
I'm nervous. It's been a while since I've taken a trip this long, and I've never done a multi-stage thing like this, not that I recall. I had to make a second stack of Things To Be Packed, for ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
kniedzw to luggage up and bring to Rome next week.
No doubt I've forgotten something. (You always do.) But my father will be smug; for possibly the first time since I got out from under his thumb enough to avoid it, I made an honest-to-god written list of everything I needed to bring. Yes, Dad, you win.
London trip-blogging to follow. Cruise-blogging will be dependent on how obscenely flagellant the Internet prices are on board the ship. Worst-case scenario: I'll see y'all again in June.
With forty days to go until Midnight Never Come hits the shelves, I've posted the last portion of the excerpt. It's a long one, so keep clicking through. (Alternatively, you can start back at the beginning.)
(Confidential to sora_blue: You can finally get the answer to your question from a month ago!)
That will actually be the last of the MNC promotional stuff for a while. I leave next week for London, where I will have many adventures researching the next book, and then I will be in the Mediterranean, trying to do no work at all. There will, however, be one last nifty thing, just before the book comes out. And in the interim, you will be getting the return of the trip-blogging, which I know many people enjoyed last year. So enjoy!
Your tidbit for today: photographs from my research trip to London last year. You can start here, or browse the entire set.
It's an oddly-balanced set of pictures, for several reasons. First and foremost, I can't take pictures of 99% of the stuff in the novel because it isn't there anymore. The best I could do was to photograph some stuff like what was there. But that got hampered by the restrictions against photography inside Hampton Court Palace and Hardwick Hall; those were some of the most informative places I went, but I have very little to show from them. Finally, I also took a great many pictures I didn't upload, but they're reference shots from inside museum exhibits, and between the lighting conditions and the necessity of photographing through glass, most of them came out very poor-quality. So my apologies for the odd skew of the set. But those of you who have never been to London will at least have a few mental images now.
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My publicist wrote to tell me the other day that [redacted: I think I was not supposed to report this yet. But it had to do with a review.] It turns out that isn't the first review of the book, though. I got myself listed on LibraryThing as an author, and in exploring the links I discovered that two people have already reviewed it. One mixed-to-positive (according to that individual's allocation of stars), one overwhelmingly positive. And then d_aulnoy's ICFA con report includes her reaction; she grabbed the book in ARC while she was there.
Seventy days to street date. It's finally starting to feel like the book is on its way.
Not much of a day to speak of, here; I had to leave by about 10 a.m. in order to get to the airport. But I did manage to do two things.
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Pictures will go up eventually, but that will take a while, since I need to do quite a bit of processing and tagging.
Now I unpack, and hope that kitty_bitch and I are still on for that leg massage tonight. Between moving all my worldly possessions and walking all over central London, my feet and legs are just about ready to pack up and leave me for good. I'm not even going to the gym today; I was intending to do weights and no cardio, but I think today is "don't leave the house" day.
Hee. At lunch today, I wrote a sentence in my notes for Midnight Never Come that still has me giggling. I'd share it, but it would be a terrible spoiler. (Yes, I'm a tease.)
Last day.
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I want to stay, and I want to go. I'm already attached to things here, such as walking home up Ludgate Hill with the cathedral ahead of me. I'll miss that, like I'll miss the Thames. But I'm ready to be home, really home.
Which is generally how trips work.
I'll probably post one more time tomorrow with some final impressions, if you've come here for the account of my trip. Regular blogging will resume after that.
While reading this account, remember that it was probably in the 50's or so and raining all day long.
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One day more. The last forecast I saw had Monday being a degree or two warmer than today, and possibly less rainy. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. I take the Tube to St. Pancras instead of walking. It's cold outside, and I can't be certain how long the walk would take, nor do I have a map that shows the area. So I head for Blackfriars.
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Dinner update from last night: OMG I love Wasabi. Not the green stuff; the restaurant. Not only were they open at the dinner hour (which most of the eating establishments in the vicinity aren't), but they gave me a giant container of yakisoba and a Coke for four pounds forty, which is the cheapest actual meal I've had here, barring the complimentary breakfast from the hostel.
Anyway, Friday. An excellent day that ended with an excellent demonstration of my stupidity.
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Last night I got the arch of my left foot to pop, which cured the shooting pains. Unfortunately, though today contained about half as much walking as yesterday, that was still about 40% more than my feet wanted to do. If I can survive Westminster tomorrow morning, though, I think I'll live. After that, there will be more sitting, less walking.
So let's continue with my perambulations, as taken (mostly) from my journal, whose formerly sleek black exterior is rapidly becoming war-torn indeed.
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Woken up at 6:30 this morning by a fire alarm. Good morning, London.
The rest of my shared room decided they might as well get up, so after a failed attempt to go back to sleep (and mind you, I didn't get to sleep until after 1 a.m.), I get up, too. We might as well get started.
I have many things scheduled for upcoming days, but nothing for today. This is deliberate. Today is just for the City.
For those not familiar with its history, a brief primer: London the city is a sprawling monstrosity, but the City of London is a tiny thing, approximately one square mile, and back in the Elizabethan era, it was all there was. The City; some suburbs beginning to burst out of its walls; Westminster upriver, connected by a thin thread of development; Southwark across the Thames, connected by the one and only London Bridge. I'm staying in a hostel near St. Paul's because I wanted to be in a place that existed back then, and where I could walk the City.
There's almost nothing here that dates back to the sixteenth century, though. The Great Fire saw to that in 1666, and what it missed, the Victorians got. I have to scrounge to find Tudor-era buildings; that's what the next few days are for. But the City is still here, and that's what today is for. Many of the streets are still right where they used to be, even if now they're lined with Starbucks and Pret. Sir Christopher Wren had grand ideas after the fire for how to redesign the city into a more harmonious pattern, but while he was busy planning, Londoners were busy rebuilding -- right where everything had been before. I walk different road surfaces than my historical characters did, but the roads themselves are often the same.
So today was a wandering day, and what you get is a wandering journal.
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Moving has been eating very nearly my every waking minute for over a week now (packing, transporting, unpacking, organizing), but I thought I'd take a moment to post about my upcoming trip, and how incredibly helpful people are being. Once I'm home again and have a complete list, I'm going to post something on my website naming off every individual who has assisted me in planning the research aspects of my trip: both the ones who will be giving me personal tours of sites I'm visiting, and the ones who have helped coordinate those tours. At this point, I've got assistance lined up for when I go to the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Hardwick Hall, and the New Globe Theatre's archives. These people have very busy work schedules, I know, and so I'm deeply grateful for the time they're taking on my behalf.
Regular service of novel-related posts will resume in the not-too-distant future. After I get myself entirely out of the old house, and remember that oh yeah, I have a novel to write.
As I just said to the boy, I feel like I've e-mailed half the population of London now with research inquiries. So far we've contacted Hardwick Hall (okay, not in London), Hampton Court Palace, the Globe, the Worshipful Company of Armourers and Brasiers, and the Tower of London, though that last one bounced and I need to figure out why. I've also made my hostel reservation. The Museum of London I don't have any questions for; I probably don't need a reservation for the Thames River Boat to Hampton Court; Lambeth Palace appears to be almost never open to the public (since the Archbishop of Canterbury still lives there), so I will only be photographing the exterior of the Tudor brick gatehouse.
Oy, research.
If the Londoners who specialize in the Elizabethan period hang out together, I suspect they will make jokes about the crazy American novelist who's been querying all of them.
I still need to look into Westminster Abbey, Whitehall, and various things in Southwark. And yes, this is well in advance of my trip, but I figure the people I'm hoping to ask questions of will be happier if I contact them early.
London, mostly. But also a jaunt up to Derbyshire to see Hardwick House. There's probably an Elizabethan manor closer to London, but I'm not sure I can pass up the chance to see Bess of Hardwick's actual house.
I'M GOING TO ENGLAND!!!!!
I realized a moment ago that I haven't been out of the country since 2002. Which necessitates the world's smallest violin playing for me -- oh, woe is her; she's twenty-six and she's only been to the British Virgin Islands, Costa Rica, England, Ireland, Israel, and Japan -- but it's a bit sad to trade approximately once-a-year overseas trips for multiple-times-a-year domestic trips, especially when the domestic trips mostly mean the hotel the conference or convention is in.
So, yeah. May 22nd to May 29th, flying out of Chicago, so buzzermccain, if you've got Internet access again, be warned that I'll be taking you up on that crash space.
I'M GOING TO ENGLAND!!!!!
Edited to add: Okay, so, trying to type a post while on the phone with kurayami_hime doesn't work so well. I should clarify that I am going to England as research for Midnight Never Come, not that you all probably didn't guess that anyway. I'm going for a week, and will spend most of the time in Central London, Westminster, and Southwark, with the aforementioned jaunt to Bess of Hardwick's house, and things like a riverboat trip to Hampton Court Palace, which still has some Tudor-period architecture left, though not much. (On the other hand, it means I get to float down the Thames. Yay!) Anyway, I'll post more details about my exact plans when I have them more concretely formed. Right now, I'm still giddy. ^_^
I'M GOING TO ENGLAND!!!!!