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I know what I want to do, but the days seem to fly by without me somehow doing it. I’m in major need of sitzfleisch.

A week or two ago, my friend Caitlyn said she didn’t know how I could write, because she had “the concentration of a gnat.” But I was under a deadline; I had to write. And also, since I’d been under two deadlines for several months, I had momentum behind me.

Now, I’m in a new place. We flew out of New York the day Broadway went dark. We’d meant to just come out for a visit while Carlos had his Tuscon Festival of Books, but that got canceled three days before, and I already had my ticket out. So he bought a new one for himself, and we thought we’d make a bit of a vacation about it.

And now it looks like we’re here until May! We’re so lucky to be here. What a wonderful thing, to be in the house I grew up, with my mother, and my brother and sister-in-law, and their housemate. We’d initially camped out in the front room, but when we saw we’d be extending our stay, we took over the “yoga/meditation” room, which happens to have been my bedroom as a teenager. So that’s strange and kind of wonderful.

My mom bought us foam mats for the floor, so between those and the sleeping bags, we’re snug. We packed for a week, so we’re doing laundry a lot, but again, all of this is something to be grateful for.

I miss our apartment in Queens, and I’m worried about our friends, and–O Vanity–I’m starting to dream about dresses. Ball dresses. Froofy dresses. Fancy dresses.

(This happened also when I was living for a year with friends in the Chicago area as I was saving up to move out east. Most of my stuff was in storage, so I was living out of a suitcase. After a few weeks of this, I started dreaming “plague dreams” on the regular: wherein 99.9% of the global population died, and I could go into department stores and just take any dress I wanted off the rack.)

(This told me something about myself that didn’t necessarily surprise me but that I didn’t exactly want to know either. The dreams did eventually stop when I finally moved to Rhode Island and had access to my full wardrobe again.)

>.>

<.<

Thankfully, I’m not dreaming plague dreams these days. (Who needs that when we have the news?) Just, apparently, my subconscious wants to go to the prom or something. Who knows?

Anyway, what I really want to do is revise Fiddle.

I have my outline with me–which is a big win, since I don’t always carry that notebook with me, and it was a handwritten outline. I have my computer. I have time. All of this warm, sequestered, quiet, stay-at-home time. I even have a door that closes. I just have to use it.

Fiddle takes place in the same world as Desdemona and the Deep does, but it’s a good 75 years or so later, in the equivalent of that world’s 1980’s. You can imagine the hair. And the music. And the computer games. Space travel. And sentient demon ships. And an orca mafia. And a drowned city. And a protagonist who’s both just kind of a girl and brown recluse spider at the same time. Because that’s how goblins roll.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I have the revise the danged thing. And after that–who knows what it’ll be?

Plans. I have them. Sitzfleisch? We’ll see.

1.) SAINT DEATH’S DAUGHTER

Since I don’t want to bury the lede, as they say (is that how you spell “lede”?), I will start with the biggest news.

And that is that my novel, once called Miscellaneous Stones: Necromancer and now called Saint Death’s Daughter–which started off as a thought experiment when Marie O’Mahony took me shooting guns in the desert and I was all sweaty and nervous and like “Where’s my silencer?”, and which thought experiment then morphed into a short story (with ROBOTS) in a Science Fiction class at Columbia College Chicago under Phyllis Eisenstein, and which short story then grew into a very light 50,000 NaNoWriMo comedic fantasy romp, and over the following 9 years metastasized was crafted into a massive, monstrous, very-dear-to-my-heart, beautiful and beloved novel–has been picked up by Rebellion Publishing, to be released in 2022.

You can see by the Dickensian length of that last sentence/paragraph what you might be getting into with this book.

Thankfully, I have an EDITOR for that. And her name is KATE COE. And I already love her. But, as Rogers and Hammerstein famously wrote in their musical about undead mice, Cindermancer:

Do I love you because you’re wonderful?
Or are you wonderful, because you like my footnotes?
Are you the sweet invention of a writer’s dream?
Or are you really as wonderful as you seem?

Reader, she’s just great. AND SHE LIKES MY FOOTNOTES!

You know who else is great? Gem Sheldrake, Rebellion’s in-house illustrator, who came up with the aforementioned mouse skeleton in two seconds, and who will be working on EVEN MORE mice skeletons (my protagonist Lanie would be GOOing herself), as well as UNDEAD WOLF PUPPIES! OMG!

Kate also just introduced me to Hanna, Rebellion’s marketing person, and I am so PSYCHED by this team, I can’t even TELL YOU!

My agent Markus Hoffmann at Regal Hoffmann and Associates LLC has been the most supportive, enthusiastic, determined fellow, and also, I adore him. But I’ve liked him ever since he responded to my first fifty pages query with a “I quite like these, please send more.” I MEAN, WHAT’S NOT TO LIKE, RIGHT???

Seriously, my husband Carlos thinks his agent DongWon Song is the best, and FER SURE he’s pretty great, but I’ll fight him on “best.”

So that’s 1.

2.) THE SINISTER QUARTET

Mike Allen at Mythic Delirium, who published my collection Bone Swans: Stories (which won the World Fantasy Award in 2016, which, whoa, feels like such a long time ago), approached me a few years ago about a potential project. We’d both submit novellas to this publishing company, who’d then put the together in a back-to-back collection, kind of like those vintage Sci Fi paperbacks that had two covers, one on the front, one on the back?

Well, that fell through. And while I’d had a novella in mind for it, it was in early raw cake-batter stages, and I got busy, and never went back to it.

But then, last October 2019, Mike approached me again and asked what I’d think about contributing that novella to an anthology of four works of long fiction, called The Sinister Quartet.

Reader, I was INTRIGUED. I’d just finished two rough drafts of new novellas–tentatively titled Fiddle and I Will Make a Ruin of Myself–and wanted to step back from them and let them rise in the warming oven for awhile, or whatever it is first drafts do.

(By the way, I initially wrote “whatever” as “whateffer” and was almost charmed into keeping it, but I didn’t, so you get a parenthetical aside instead–CONGRATULATIONS!)

So I started work on revising that old, old first draft of The Twice-Drowned Saint, which was in NO SUBMITTABLE STATE WHATSOEVER. Basically, it needed a full-body re-haul, or whatever the mechanical term is for it. But a revision from the ground up.

And lo, over the next five months, what had been a 20,000 word first draft became–not a novella, no, nothing so tidy–but a 60,000 word ACCIDENTAL NOVEL! YAY ME! Can you sense a pattern? No? I direct you to my origin story for Saint Death’s Daughter and also to what happened with my “novella” or rather more precisely “very very very short novel” Desdemona and the Deep.

But now the whole anthology is AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER! Both in Paperback and in E-Book. It drops in June!

I am so excited, not only because I love Mike, and I love my story–it has weird angels, rebellious saints, a city made of salt surrounded by a diamond of ice, desert giants, viperbikes, and OLD MOVIES!–but because I also share the Table of Contents with new colleague, fantasy author Amanda J. McGee, whose work I cannot WAIT to read, and my very dear and beloved friend and former roommate, Jessica Paige Wick.

You might remember Jess as one of the founding editors of Goblin Fruit Magazine, along with Amal El-Mohtar and later Caitlyn Paxson. Well, remember how good that magazine was? Jess’s OWN PROSE IS JUST RESPLENDENT!!!

3. RE-ENTRY

Brendan Choisnet of Plywood Pictures approached Carlos and me last December about an independent film idea he’s been mulling over for years. He’d worked with Carlos before through Disney Hyperion–particularly, the Symphony Space event for Rick Riordan Presents in January 2019–and he’d read Sal and Gabi Break the Universe. Listened to it, actually, on audiobook! (Anthony Ray Perez is SUCH a good narrator, everyone.)

To my very great surprise, he’d also listened to Desdemona and the Deep, written (and narrated!) by your very own C. S. E. Cooney. He wanted a husband/wife team to work on his “kitchen sink sci-fi drama,” and TAG! We were IT!

To that end, we had several day-long meetings and hashed out a workable outline we were all happy with. Then Brendan went off to work on our contracts with our agents, and we went off to have a fabulous (and very intense) (okay, sometimes I cried) (but on the whole fabulous) writing retreat in which we WROTE OUR FIRST SCREENPLAY.

We recently turned in both our contracts AND the first draft of Re-Entry to Brendan, and eagerly await his edits.

So that’s huge.

AAAAAANNND, I think that’s about it for now. Did you even READ this far??? YOU’RE ADORABLE! THANK YOU!

More soon, I hope!

So, I saw a picture-post on Facebook about a phone number to call for emergency rent assistance. But when I followed the link to United Way, I discovered that that phone number is for residents of Indianapolis only. But the link is for everyone!

So here is a link to United Way! This goes directly to the Covid-19 Community Relief and Response Fund.

“To support this rapidly escalating need, United Way Worldwide has created the COVID-19 Community Response and Recovery Fund. Our Fund supports communities struggling in the wake of the new virus, by supporting local United Ways and 211, the go-to information resource in times of crisis. Every year, 211 specialists answer 12 million requests by phone, text, chat and email to connect people with disaster, food, housing, utility, health care resources and more. There is no other network in the country with a similar pulse on America’s needs.  So far, some 20 statewide 211 operations have been activated, and 211 is working closely with health officials all over the country to provide accurate updates to the public.

NOTE: You can dial 211 to speak to someone about local assistance at any time. The 1-866-211-9966 number you may have seen on social media is only available for residents of Indianapolis. Please be aware that financial assistance related to COVID-19 is not available for individuals everywhere.“

Here also is a link to the Seattle Foundation’s Covid-19 response. They are “a coalition of philanthropy, government, and business partners has joined together to create a COVID-19 Response Fund that will rapidly deploy resources to community-based organizations at the frontlines of the coronavirus outbreak in the Puget Sound region.”

And here is a link to Modest Needs. They provide grants that go to “the persons in the United States who’ve been most directly impacted by this pandemic are hourly employees – people who generally aren’t paid if a business can’t open.”

Another suggestion that was made to me was supporting local community organizations that provide childcare for kids out of school. The one pointed out to me was The Boys and Girls Club of America.

Other things to keep in mind are your favorite Arts Organizations that cannot go through with planned plays, concerts, dance recitals, and galleries. If you have the time and energy and resources, check in with your favorite–local or national–see how they’re doing, what they might need.

Also, there are your local small businesses–coffee houses, restaurants. One suggestion that was made to me was to buy gift certificates to these places: keep revenue coming in–and give yourself a fabulous night out at some future date.

My mom’s favorite local coffee shop, Grinders, has curbside pickup for coffee orders. What’s your favorite coffee shop?

My favorite bookshop in Westerly Rhode Island–the Savoy–is doing house deliveries, curbside pickup, and they also ship books–for free–anywhere! If you don’t have a favorite Indie bookstore, consider supporting them!

In New York City, also hard-hit, there are several Indie bookstores we ADORE. The children’s bookstore Books of Wonder hosted Carlos’s SAL AND GABI BREAK THE UNIVERSE debut, as well as several events and panels last year. They’re so great.

And Astoria Bookshop, which hosted my DESDEMONA AND THE DEEP book launch, though closed to browsing, is open “11am-7pm each day for online, phone and pick up orders.’

I hope this helps! Please feel free to post your favorite links to relief funds or local businesses in the comments–and if you have a little story about them, so much the better!

Carlos and I stole a chance to sit down and play with the piano for a little while, and we came up with a sprightly madrigal sort of melody for this, which actually works quite well given the creepy content. I will test it out with my brother Jeremy and Faye this weekend.

I’m printing out song-sheets, so I might as well print several extras of this!

I changed the refrain and rephrased a few things for easier singing.

THE FALL OF REYNARDINE 

Lyrics by C. S. E. Cooney
Music by Carlos Hernandez

“Come thou hither, miner’s daughter 
With thy braids as black as night 
With thy face so brown and shining 
And thine eyes so full of light 
Come and see my crystal castle
With its ramparts all gleam
Come and wake me from my slumber
Come and kiss thy Reynardine!”

Reynardine, Reynardine
Come and kiss your Reynardine
Deep within forest green
Come and kiss your Reynardine

What is she who grins so whitely?
What is she who calls so sweet? 
Phantom vixen, shade or shadow—
Are you after love, or meat?
Sure, I am a miner’s daughter 
Came my father long ago 
From the highest flights of heaven 
Made to dig the mines below 

Reynardine, Reynardine
Come and kiss your Reynardine
Deep within forest green
Come and kiss your Reynardine

Dug he deep, and dug he deeply 
Till he struck upon a stone 
Till he found a maid imprisoned 
Broke the rock and brought her home 
So you see, your snare can’t catch me 
O my clever Reynardine 
For I am a miner’s daughter 
And my mother is a queen 

Reynardine, Reynardine
Come and kiss your Reynardine
Deep within forest green
Come and kiss your Reynardine

Yes, my mother has a castle
Crystal walls in crystal glade
Told me, “O beware, my daughter 
O, beware the vixen’s shade
She will find you in the forest 
Lure you to her casket stone 
She will bid you break her shackles  
Kiss her mouth and bring her home”

Reynardine, Reynardine
Come and kiss your Reynardine
Deep within forest  green
Come and kiss your Reynardine

“And her home will be our castle
And our bowels be her bowl 
She will drink your father’s heart-blood 
Sipped from out your mother’s skull 
Oh beware, beware my daughter 
Listen to your mother queen
And do not forsake your people 
For the love of Reynardine!”

Reynardine, Reynardine
Come and kiss your Reynardine
Deep within forest  green
Come and kiss your Reynardine

No, my love is strong and supple
Oh, my love is fierce and wild 
And she’ll meet me in this dark wood
Where we two will bide a while
Walk we two up to your casket
Kneel we there upon your stone
Pledge our love now and forever
Seal you fast to die alone

Reynardine, Reynardine
Come and kiss your Reynardine
Deep within forest  green
Come and kiss your Reynardine

Die, ye shade whose will would smite us
Die, ye poison in the breast
Seven times thy spite turn on thee
Seven times put thee to rest 
Then at journey’s end we’ll travel
For to see my mother queen
At her table, feast and revel
At the fall of Reynardine!

Reynardine, Reynardine
Cursed forever, Reynardine
Deep within forest green
Now is fallen Reynardine

Regarding our upcoming “Ballads from a Distant Star” concept album campaign:

I AM VACILLATING! Indiegogo or Kickstarter?

I went with Indiegogo last time, for the first two Brimstone Rhine EPs. And still, the thought of operating with partial funding and paying the rest out of pocket is still better than doing all this work & having it come to nothing!

But Kickstarter is a bigger platform. Plus they have HQ in NYC. And I’m here. Unlike last time.

This is a bigger project, more ambitious, more moving parts, more collaborators. It didn’t begin as a Brimstone Rhine project at all, but part of the (erstwhile) Banjo Apocalypse Crinoline Troubadours performance group.

I mean, a sci-fi CONCEPT ALBUM! We’ve been working on the music for YEARS! I’m dedicated to this music—partly because a great bulk of it was written and composed by some of my dearest shield-sisters in the WORLD! Plus, I like my own pieces!!!

It’s ambitious—more ambitious than my first—early, fun, beautifully imperfect—attempts at those two EPS, “Alecto! Alecto!” and “The Headless Bride.”

“Corbeau Blanc and Corbeau Noir” was all out of pocket, because it was a present to my backers—as a thank you—and I think the music was often more adventurous, but “Ballads” is next league stuff.

Or so I hope.

AAAUUGHHH!

Ahem. Yes. I’ve been working on campaign tonight. >.> Crunching numbers. Writing emails. Sending texts.

Having just made a little video of Carlos Hernandez reading from his new short story “Your Two Better Halves”–which he was invited to write for the Where the Veil is Thin anthology–I am now doing the same.

For the SAME BOOK!

Yes, we share a TABLE OF CONTENTS, everybody!

Where the Veil is Thin is currently being Kickstarted! If this video (or Carlos’s, for that matter) make you hungry for more, please consider backing!

Today in revising “The Twice-Drowned Saint,” I needed some help visualizing Gelethel: the Angelic City. (Hint: not your mama’s angels.) (Hint: You don’t want to go there.) (Well, most of you.)

Anyway, this is what I knew:

Gelethel, “the Diamond of Bellisaar” is 15 miles on each side, with an area of 225 square miles. It is surrounded by the Gelthic Serac, which is pure blue ice: 50 meters deep and 200 meters high.

I knew that before She “got ate,” the god of Gelethel gave each of Her 15 original angels (there are only 14 left in the city) an allotment, or district, to call their own.

But I didn’t know how to visualize the city, or how to divide it up into 15 equal areas (1 square mile, or 640 acres) without doing a bunch of boring rectangles (the only visual the internet could show me).

Thankfully, I know author (and musician! and math teacher!) Edward Peters Aubry, and I asked him to help me.

And he was SO KIND, and did NOT make fun of my mathematical ineptitude, and he told me to get out some graph paper, and then he told me JUST HOW TO DO IT.

I make the diamond: 15 by 15 by 15 by 15 squares. Every angel gets fifteen squares with the diamond. AND THAT’S ALL! The districts can be any shape I want!

I mean, OF COURSE! A CHILD would’ve known that! But I needed help, and I’m SO GRATEFUL! And now I have a map, and it is TOTES HELPFUL in this present draft I am writing.

After the Richard Thompson concert, the deluge!

One of the songs he ended on (one of three–I think?–encores) was Fairport Convention’s “Reynardine,” (lyrics here), a version of the Reynardine ballad.

So then, I wrote this at midnight on the subway with the idea of adding it to the Distant Stars ballads. (More about Ballads from a Distant Star here!)

The aliens in the Distant Stars abduction narrative present as “face of fox and tail of scorpion,” so the Reynardine ballad fits in well. Or rather, we’ve stolen enough ballads to retell them that ONE MORE feels JUST RIGHT. Maybe WE are the Reynardines.

Of course, given my druthers, I never like to end with women vanishing and villains winning. There’s enough of that in the world.

And so:

MINER’S DAUGHTER VS REYNARDINE

“Come thou hither, miner’s daughter 
With thy braids as black as night 
With thy face so brown and shining 
And thine eyes so full of light 
Come and see my crystal castle
Turrets glitter, ramparts gleam
Come and wake me from my slumber
Come and kiss thy Reynardine!”

Come and kiss thy Reynardine
Deep within the forest green
Come and kiss thy Reynardine

What is she who grins so whitely?
What is she who calls so sweet? 
Phantom vixen, shade or shadow—
Are you after love, or meat?
Sure, I am a miner’s daughter 
Came my father long ago 
Press-ganged from the highest heaven 
To dig down in the mines below 

Come and kiss thy Reynardine
Deep within the forest green
Come and kiss thy Reynardine

Dug he deep, and dug he deeply 
Till he struck upon a stone 
Till he found a maid imprisoned 
Broke the rock and brought her home 
So you see, your snare can’t catch me 
O my clever Reynardine 
For I am a miner’s daughter 
And my mother is a queen 

Come and kiss thy Reynardine
Deep within the forest green
Come and kiss thy Reynardine

Yes, my mother has a castle
Crystal walls in crystal glade
Told me, “O beware, my daughter 
O, beware the vixen’s shade
She will find you in the forest 
Lure you to her casket stone 
She will bid you break her shackles  
Kiss her mouth and bring her home”

Come and kiss thy Reynardine
Deep within the forest green
Come and kiss thy Reynardine

“And that home will be our castle
And our bowels be her bowl 
She will drink your father’s heart-blood 
Sipped from out your mother’s skull 
Oh beware, beware my daughter 
Listen to your mother queen
And do not forsake your people 
For the love of Reynardine!”

Come and kiss thy Reynardine
Deep within the forest green
Come and kiss thy Reynardine

No, my love is strong and supple
Oh, my love is fierce and wild 
And she’ll meet me in this dark wood
Where we two will bide a while
Walk we two up to your casket
Kneel we there upon your stone
Pledge our love now and forever
Seal you fast to die alone

Come and kiss thy Reynardine
Deep within the forest green
Come and kiss thy Reynardine

Die, ye shade whose will would smite us
Die, ye poison in the breast
Seven times thy spite turn on thee
Seven times put thee to rest 
Then at journey’s end we’ll travel
For to see my mother queen
At her table, feast and revel
At the fall of Reynardine!

Now has fallen Reynardine
Deep within the forest green
Now has fallen Reynardine!