Sharp Words

I want to write a round-up report to tell about how awesome everyone I met at conference is, and to post pics, and all that. But, unfortunately, I am still on the road with SmartAss.  Which is not to say there is anything unfortunate about being on the road with him. You know it must be true love when the road trips rock. Anyway, next week I’ll be home and stationary and back at my regular sized keyboard (the laptop kb bugs). I’ll make with the conference pics, and some pics of the beautiful, beautiful Pacific Northwest (including Powell’s City of Books in Portland, OR — squee!)

…saying, “There was an earthquake? Huh. Didn’t notice it. I was writing.”

Hello, I’m home from the day job and tomorrow I will embark on four fun-filled days at RWA Conference, where I’ll try to pretend writing is my actual profession instead of just the hobby that consumes all my free time.  Anyway, here is the third and final installment of Terra Obscura. The entire story will be available in the Reads section of my website. www.bettiesharpe.com/reads/TerraObscura.htm

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I’m already in California. Which makes my announcement that I will soon be headed to the RWA conference in San Francisco a little less dramatic. It certainly deprives me of a great blog post title, because I refuse–refuse!–to reference “I left my heart in San Francisco.” On the other hand, three cheers for commuter flights! So, anyway, Yippee! I’m going to a conference. Yay! I may even see La Nora in person!

hearts & butterflies,

b

P.S.  I’ll be posting the final installment of “Terra Obscura” on Tuesday. (Sorry about the lack of post this week, I miscalculated and started the run a week early.)

Dear Texas,

I know we have had our differences in the past. And, ok, I am willing to admit that much of the animosity between us came from me. Me with my mutterings of “It’s so boring and flat!” or “It’s so hot!” and “They should split it into three states just so you’ll feel like you’re getting somewhere when you have to drive through it.”

But this last road trip, I saw a different side of you, Texas. I saw a softer side, a prettier side. I’d like to say I saw a less swelteringly hot side, but you are Texas and this is July–I might as well wish for a unicorn to gallop up to my door with a winning MegaLotto ticket pressed between its pearly teeth.

Anyway, Texas, the point is, even though I know many a kind soul who was born or who lives within your borders, I’d always secretly suspected they were a tad heat-addled when they swore to me that you were “beautiful country” or even “God’s country”. But that was likely because I hadn’t yet been to Texas Hill Country, which aptly illustrates both of the afore-mentioned descriptions. Lovely.

Oh, Texas, I’m so sorry I thought poorly of you. But I’ve changed. I now appreciate your many, many, many miles of smoothly-paved, well-tended roads. Your vast, wide-open vistas, and bright blue skies, and your numerous roadside shrines to oil, cattle and BBQ.

In addition to your many wonderful sights, you are also home to some wonderful people. You are home to the kind yet wise-cracking stock from which sprang my beloved SmartAss, and you are home to the talented and charming Ms Sherry Thomas (who was kind enough to let me talk her ear off for quite a while–Sorry Sherry!) and her wonderful family.

One last thing, Texas: You may not know this, but I once wrote a story that started out in a BBQ restaurant in a small Texas town. The kind with a Victorian-era court house square, and a park with a gazebo and a bronze statue. I gave up the story, or, at least the part that was set in the restaurant in Texas because I figured I just didn’t know enough about Texas to make it realistic. But on this latest trip, Texas, you gave me the town and the courthouse, and the park with the gazebo and the statue. And then, a bit later, you gave me the restaurant, too.

This abandoned Bar-B-Q is pretty much the setting I’d imagined for that long ago story. Everything from the sign to the porch to the windows. The only thing missing is the green linoleum floor on the inside, but I won’t hold it against you, TX. You gave me back a story I thought I couldn’t write. You set my imagination off in a million different directions. When I finish the current crop of Works in Progress on my schedule, you can bet I’m going to dig up that old story. I’m going to resurrect the BBQ, and I owe it all to you, Texas.

I’m sorry I doubted you. Thanks for everything.

XOXO

bettie

The dyehouse is downwind of every other building, but its location does little to diffuse its smell. The building is squat and dark and windowless. Its roof is pierced with chimneys, like arrows sticking out of Saint Sebastian’s chest. The air around it is soaked in the moist, acrid stench of dyestuff, lye and urine. After a day’s work, I’ll carry that same stench, and everyone who walks within ten feet of me will know I have again incurred an Elder’s wrath.

The work is hard, the hours are long; the dying is no easy task. Pilgrims, still wan and weak-legged from their voyage across the ocean, must bring their garments to be dyed black before they can become citizens of God’s kingdom here on Earth. In so doing, the Elders say, they obliterate the sin of pride, and come into the kingdom humble as penitents.

In the dyehouse, we submerge the aristocrat’s bright velvets and the pauper’s faded woolens into the same steaming, stinking tub of boiling water and ammonia which we have distilled from urine and some other sources. We stew the garments longer than a tough cut of meat, until the threads are weak enough to accept the dye. The dying takes time, but we will wait. Within the wall, time is something we do not lack.

Once the garments have been soaked and softened, we submerge them in a vat of black dyestuff laced with arsenic to help the color stick. We stir this pot for hours before it is time to remove the sodden mass of black clothes. The dye makes our hands rough and gray. The arsenic makes our skin pale and our bodies weak.

There is no punishment worse than the dyehouse, save the tannery and the distillery where our chemicals are made. But that work is heavy and hard—the men labor with their coats removed and sleeves rolled back. I have been told that the sight of men working at such labors would be not purify my soul, but cast me deeper into sin. We women are weak, and must be protected from such sights. Thank goodness. Read the rest of this entry »

Before starting the story, I’d like to say a few words about Terra Obscura. It’s as much an experiment as it is a story, and I totally blame Ann Aguirre for it. Her novel Grimspace is written in first person present tense, which is rarely my cup of tea, but I really enjoyed it in Grimspace. A funny thing happened after I finished reading the book, and got back to writing my own stuff: it started coming out in present tense (rather like how my narrative voice came down with a bad case of the word “betimes” after I read Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart in the middle of writing Ember.).

To exorcise the first person present tense from my brain, I sat down and wrote a few paragraphs in it. Overall, it was a good exercise. It helped me make peace with the tense. And when I needed a short story for my short story class, it gave me a nice starting point. However, the ending is rather…open-ended. I happen to like the possibilities of it, but I thought I should warn you.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, part one of Terra Obscura is after the break. I hope you like it.

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I have always considered my ability to read while sitting in a moving vehicle to be one of the greater blessings in my life. Certainly, it has saved my sanity on many long car trip. Now, I’m facing a trip of about 14 hours each way. Looking on the bright side, I can say the trip may give me a chance to finally achieve my lifelong dream of seeing the World’s (3rd) Largest Fire Hydrant in person. Also, it should yield some great reading and writing time. The only problem is: What should I read?

I already have Anne Aguirre’s Wanderlust and Shiloh Walker’s Through the Veil on my list, but that still leaves me 3-4 books short. Please, please, please comment with your recomendations for sci-fi, fantasy, romance or urban fantasy–my sanity is on the line here.

Giving up on Old Yeller (my desktop) means I have to set the laptop up with all my graphics stuff. I’m still trying to get my font collection back to its former glory :(. In the midst of loading up the laptop, I decided to throw together a couple of covers for future freebies.

Terra Obscura is the short story I wrote for the class I took. I’ll run it in three parts, starting Tuesday.  Nieves, the sequel to Ember, is nowhere near finished, and won’t be for quite a long time. But I loved the photo so much, I just had to play around with it.

Sad news: it appears that my beloved desktop is well and truly dead. My Darling Smart Ass has been working on it, but it refuses to recognize its new hard drive. He says we will have to wipe it and reload Windows, which I believe would make it something other than the grouchy machine I’ve been working with for the past five years. (And it would kill the scads and scads of software cracks I loaded on it back before I decided to be an upstanding citizen and pay for all my software–oh, the remnants of my reckless youth!)

Darling Smart-Ass put a comforting hand on my shoulder and said, “It’s eight years old, that’s a long, full life for a desktop. I think it’s time you put it out of its misery.”

Me: “I can’t! You don’t know what adventures we had, what stories I wrote on it, what lovely, lovely software it ran.”

Him: “Do you remember that movie, the one about the dog where the boy had to shoot it at the end?”

Me: “My desktop is NOT Old Yeller.”

Too late. Smart Ass has now christened it “Old Yeller” and is urging me to let it go. It’s sitting beside my desk right now, all hulking and ginormous, yet still outdone in processing power and efficiency by my slim little laptop. Sure, the laptop has most of the programs I need to do my thang, but it just isn’t the same. It doesn’t have the same soul. Me and Old Yeller, we were a team. We stuck together through power-supply issues, dust-bunnies, and tense, nail-biting sessions of anti-vir. I’ll miss it.

Some good news:… Read the rest of this entry »