There are perils in reading which I was never warned about.
For example, have you ever felt a need to use the restroom, and decided to read a book as you sat on the commode?
And then you ended up sitting there reading for so long, engrossed by the book, that your rear end and a foot ‘go asleep’?
No? It’s just me, then?
For the record, the book which caused me a numb butt and number foot is His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik, published in 2006. The writing style for this historic fantasy novel about dragons during the Napoleonic Wars reminds me ofPatrick O’Brian’s style for Master and Commander and the Aubrey-Maturin series. Besides those, I see the same style in CJ Sansom’s terrific Mathew Shardlake series, as well as the historic fiction series by Bernard Cornwell — Sharpe’s rifles, Saxon stories and The Last Kingdom — among others.
His Majesty’s Dragon is set in a world where dragons exist, critical for the plot. These dragons think and speak, and display human personality traits. They’re breed and used in war as aerial forces. The focus of this book is a large black dragon named Temeraire, and his aviator, Captain William Laurence. Captaining the Reliant, Captain Laurence wins the dragon egg in a naval battle. After that, the book is about the developing relationship between man and beast. Along the way, we discover how dragons are employed in war, and the social issues about being a dragon aviator. Such fine, and so finely detailed, it’s wonderful story telling.
If you pick up Her Majesty’s Dragon, you might want to limit your toilet reading time. Trust me on this recommendation.
Greetings to all Earthbound beings. It’s Tuesday, October 10, 2023 — 10/10 — in Ashlandia, where the rain is welcomed and the temperature is chilly. Autumn has swiped brushes over the window’s vistas. Overnight, plums and burgundies have been delivered to compete with green, amber, lemon, and red. Quite a splash for the eyes.
Rain plays metal notes on the roof’s vents. It’s 53 F now and will advance ten degrees up the thermometer before the sun’s retreat.
With this ambience underway, I’ve not checked the news. I’m saving myself for a few minutes more to just ensure my safe little bubble of existence.
I’m eager to continue writing. On the other hand, chords loaded with guilt on sometimes struck. I feel I should be doing more about the house. Part of this is that my wife has a busy week: Food & Friends deliveries yesterday, exercise classes every other morning, and book club Wednesday night, in which she’s the moderator. She takes moderating very seriously.
Besides those pretty standard things, Empty Bowls is on Friday. This is a fundraising effort to fund the city’s charities to help fed, cloth, and shelter the less fortunate and homeless. Local artists and art classes provide bowls. You basically buy a bowl for $25 and fill it with soup. Local restaurants and politicians provide the soups, along with breads.
An annual event, my wife has been preparing the table centerpieces for a decade. The pursuit has become more involved; Peace House, the hosting organization, has less and less resources for the centerpieces. That moves the burden to my wife’s shoulders, so she’s been scrounging for flowers and vases. The ‘vases’ are pint bottling jars. Thanks to one of my friends, we managed to procure enough of those.
All that puts her on edge. But in addition, the Empty Bowls commit also asked her to make some vegan cookies for the event.
Well, my wife isn’t one to refuse such a request. Agreeing added anxiety, though. She went through recipes and made a decision about what to make. We bought the supplies last Friday. The baking will be done Thursday. I wish I could do more to help her, and that’s why I feel guilty for going off and writing.
The cloud-heavy sky has me thinking about the upcoming ring of fire eclipse. Due on Saturday, we’re right on the path’s edge as the eclipse traverses North America but wonder whether the weather will clear enough for us to enjoy a view. Stores and businesses have been selling eclipse glasses for several weeks, but Scienceworks gives them out free. We’ll get them free and then give them a donation, LOL.
I was listening to Papi singing this morning. Papi is my ginger gentlefloof, a slender blade of a feline who exhibits a standoffish air. I’m the only one permitted to properly visit with him, although my wife is making progress with him. He’s skittish and wary to the extreme, a complete 180 from Tucker (our black and white long-haired fellow), who deeply enjoys human company. Papi avoids people and animals.
So, growing cold weather induced me to close the pet door. Papi loves the night and enjoy popping in and out. Coming in to eat kibble, going back out to witness the world. The pet door’s closure forces him to convince me to let him out. He knows I don’t like breaking out of sleep and slipping out of bed to do this, so he now sings the “I Want Out” blues.
The song starts soft and slow, just one gentle note every other minute. Gently the notes build in volume and then begin to come more frequently. Finally, a wail invested with the power of all unfairly imprisoned entities breaks the dark. I usually get up and do as bid with the first few notes. I thought that I’d let Papi sing a while before letting him out, as he has such a beautiful voice.
Naturally, rain and Papi’s blues inspired Les Neurons to conjure blues about rain in my morning mental music stream (Trademark possible). Well, first there was Tina Turner singing about rain on the windows. Then John Fogerty broke in to ask me if I’ve ever seen the rain.
Slipping into the blues, Stevie Ray Vaughn apprised of flooding in Texas. Finally, though, we had Buddy Guy singing “Feels Like Rain”. Buddy’s song struck the right balance of feeling and being so it won honors as today’s theme music. It’s a song I’ve used before as my theme music, basically for the same reasons.
Stay pos, be strong, and keep chill. Coffee has landed; here’s the music. Cheers
Revising my current novel-in-progress continues. I expected to be done by now. I was excited the other day because, hey, only thirty pages remain.
I am over page 400 now, so I have that going for me. But, as I read and revise, I encounter matters of continuity. Like eye or hair color, nicknames, and details relating to the characters’ personal histories.
I don’t know what the right thing to do is, but I always stop, go back, and resolve the issue for myself. It’s one of my personality quirks that if I know that’s still in the book, I become bogged down thinking about it. Better to just resolve it.
A danger to going back to research continuity is that rereading those passages entertains me. I get invested with enjoying the story. Which means that the revising timeline gets imperiled by reading my own stuff for entertainment. There’s also often a little more needs to edit and revise exposed. Like, I’ll encounter a sentence that’s slightly scrambled, just enough for me to question my writing skills and stop to fix those issues.
I also backtracked to a previous chapter. I’d been quite long, so I modified it and re-invented the one big chapter into four smaller ones. Then I did something to another long chapter, feeling that the move would enhance clarity and pacing – win-win.
The final note on this part of the revision is that it’s tying up the story, closing with a large battle, with some matters of other dimensions and time thrown in. I’m a sucker for other dimensions and time. My writer self is amused with our current theories and understanding of these things. Like the growing understanding of quantum entanglement and other quantum matters, I think we have more to understand about time and existence.
The passages in question were also written at high speed: think, write, and press on, with admonitions to myself, don’t slow down to analyze and question. Just get it done and fix it in revision.
And that’s what I’m doing. TBH, I’m a little surprised that it flows as well as it does.
Onward, right? Yeah, just give me a little more coffee. Pass it over; doesn’t matter if it’s cold.
Floofkempt (floofinition) – Being overcome with emotions over news or images of animals, or interactions with animals. Origins: first used in 1991 in New York, borrowed from Middle High Floofman.
In use: “Watching videos of animals being rescued on Flooftube, Jill was clearly floofkempt from the stories being shared.”
In use: “Nancy became a little floofkempt as she talked about senior floof’s final battle with cancer.”
Airfloof(floofinition) – 1. An area secured by animals arriving by air. Origins: Europe circa 1943.
In use: “Using the walls and furniture as a floofcourse, the tabby leaped, jumped, and bounded over the other pets and landed on the bed, showing the rest how to establish an airfloof.”
In use: “Birds were natural at establishing airheads, landing in the birdbath while the cats lounged in the sun.”
2. A silly, scatterbrained, or simple-minded animal. Origins: Floof Angeles, USA, 1971
In use: “True to her reputation as an airfloof, Airy leaped up when the doorbell rang, rushed toward the door, slid to a stop halfway there to wash herself, fell over onto her side, and then trotted over to get her ball as her people answered the door, at which Airy quizzically cocked her head about what was going on.”
In use: “Attacking a ball dustbunnies, Titan slide over the side of the stairs, and then sprinted around in mad airfloof fashion before racing back up the stairs and ambushing the dustbunny ball anew.”
It was The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in our backyard, if that movie was done by cats.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is a 1966 spaghetti western film. That name, ‘spaghetti western’ was given to a series of western films based on the US west, but generally written, directed, and produced by Italians and filmed in Europe. Sergio Leone was one the leaders of this movement. With a string of successful films, he became influential in how westerns were made. This film was one of his masterpieces and judged by film critics to be significant.
Clint Eastwood starred in several spaghetti westerns, including this one. The movie’s morally complex story is that three gunfighters are searching for stolen gold during the American Civil War. The gold is supposed to be buried in a cemetery. The three men are searching and fighting for it while coping with the war going on. They eventually find the cemetery. A final showdown is set up.
It’s a climatic scene, delivered with long shots of the three gunfighters interspersed with tight close ups of the squinting and sweating sunburned men as flies pester them. These movies were always gritty and tense, with impressively realistic details. A music box is playing – yes, it’s part of the story – along with the titular theme song. When the music box finishes, the gunfight commences and finishes the tale.
My cats, Papi and Tucker, aided by a stranger, recreated the scene in the backyard. A jay provided the background ‘music’. Standing in an equilateral triangle about eighteen feet apart, Tucker and Papi faced off against a gray and white stranger.
Tucker is a black and white long-haired/short-haired mix with crazy long, white whiskers. There looks like some Maine coon in those whiskers, along with his ears and face shape. He used to be a fierce fighter but has finally chilled as he’s aged. Papi, the ginger blade, is years younger. He’s been in a few fights – he was in one just last night – including at least twice with Tucker, but prefers to not fight if fighting can be avoided.
A strong wind was blowing. Tucker was in sunlight on a small knoll on which three trees are perched. Their branches blew wildly over his head. The stranger was back by the wooden plank fence between two bushes. Papi was in shadowed dark green grass. The only movement I saw on the three floofs were small eye slides and ear shifts.
Though Tucker isn’t the right ‘colors’ to be Eastwood, his expression was worthy of being Clint’s character. I could easily imagine a cigar in Tucker’s mouth as he stared down the other.
A few minutes into it, Papi slowly settled into a more comfortable watching posture. Tucker followed suit a couple minutes later, encouraging the third cat to do the same. They stayed like that for about three minutes. Then, Papi, I guess growing bored, looked around and discreetly walked off. Tucker lowered his head down for a nap. The stranger carefully shifted, and then went up the fence and away from the scene.
All very anticlimactic. While it reminded me of the famous movie scene, none of these three participants were ugly. I can’t speak for the stranger, but my two can sometimes be good, or bad. Come to think of it, they’re as morally complex as the gunfighters, and just as entertaining.
Floofverize(floofinition) – To reduce, demolish, destroy, or atomize through a floof’s behavior. Origins: Fifteenth century Italy, from the Late Latin, flofverizare.
In use: “Right from the first day in the house, the four rescued puppies showed remarkable destructive skills, completely floofverizing two pillows and a roll of toilet. These were all a surprise because the puppies had to first escape their kennel, which they did like they were beamed from one place to another.”
In use: “Using some inherent drive, the kittens went outside and floofverized the day lilies, leaving petals and leaves strewn around the patio like plane wreckage.”
Floofspotting (floofinition) – Amateur pastime or hobby of looking for animals, done by animals and humans. Origins: London, 1861, when Zoey Chandler began recording a diary of animals she’d spotted, including the date, time, local, and description.
In use: “Michael was an avid floofspotting fan when he went for walks, with an eye out for deer, cougars, bears, and foxes, along with cats and dogs spying from windows in houses.”
In use: “Sharry, a birdwatcher, was amused when she discovered her fiancee enjoyed ‘floofspotting’, which she’d never heard of (and privately considered a little silly). But his enthusiasm soon caught her up, and she soon declared herself to enjoy floofspotting, though, unlike him, she didn’t record the sights.”
A woman in the coffee shop accosted me today. We’re both regulars. We see each other there, sometimes nodding. I’m always at a table, using a table to write. She’s a few years older than me and typically buys something to eat, checks her phone, and reads a book.
Today, we said hello. I was in the midst of revising a page. She asked, “I notice you always a wear a green hat.”
I do; it’s a Tilly. I nodded.
“Is there a reason for why you wear it?”
Deeply seriously, I replied, “Yes. It has a foil lining built into it.”
Puzzlement folded into her expression. “A foil lining?”
“Yes, you know, to protect me.”
She studied me. I think she was trying to decide if I was joking. Smiling and nodding, I returned to my writing.
Floofnight(floofinition) – The secret and mysterious period in the night when animals became magically energized and gallop around, exploring, playing, and having adventures. Origins: First written about by Silence Floofgood in a letter to the editor of The New-England Courant in 1722. Silence Floofgood was later discovered to be the pseudonym of Benjamin Franklin’s cat.
In use: “Leaping from deep sleep to full wakefulness faster than a sneeze, Bob listened to the noises and realized, it was floofnight once again, and his fur friends were having fun.”
In use: “Although first-time pet owners are warned about floofnight, many don’t fully appreciate it until they’ve experienced a two or three AM awakening from their furry housemates running up and down the halls and leaping up on them in bed.”
Michael Seidel, writer 