A Thousand Glass Flowers … opening chapters.
A Thousand Glass Flowers.
Prue Batten
© 2009
Chapter One
Lalita
Thumping woke her and the dog growled from her bed. The bar across the door rattled and underneath her fingers she could feel the hackles on the animal’s spine. ‘Hush, Phaeton,’ she whispered. ‘He can’t hurt me.’
‘Lalita Khatoun.’ The hated voice boomed from the other side of the door. ‘Bestir yourself, my niece. We have much to do before the Grand Vizier graces the premises.’
What would you know, fat Uncle? I despise you. She swung her legs to the floor, the dog arching his back and stretching. Outside she heard Uncle Kurdeesh walk away, the floor trembling with his bulk and bloated ego. For the thousandth time she wished her guardian Uncle and Aunt were here to share the moment to come, not the gross man outside who lurked like an indelible blemish on her life. She grunted in disgust. I can’t believe he emerged from the same womb as my father and Uncle Imran as there’s not a vestige of goodness in the rolls of his body. For a moment she thought on the parents she had never known but who had loved her, and she blessed the memory. Think of me, Mother and Father and pray for me. But then she allowed the mechanics of rising and dressing to focus her mind for the momentous time ahead, strengthening her spirit as she pulled on each garment. A quick glance in the mirror revealed eyes bright with expectation and lips tense with nerves for this was the day that could change her life, a day that could alter her status beyond recognition. She looped a scarf around her neck, and bent to smooth her fingers over Phaeton’s head as if the action would settle her. ‘Come, dog,’ she said as equably as she was able and lifting the heavy iron bar from her door, she walked down the stairs to the small emporium, her thoughts centered only on this day of chances – perhaps the Grand Vizier would commission her.
The Sultan Mohun was to send the gift of a book to the people of Veniche and there was talk this manuscript would be an illustrated copy of One Thousand and One Nights. For a week she had dreamed of how she would lay out the figurative work, the colours she would use, how she would copy the text, and now she scrutinised the shop display, eager it should represent her well. She unlocked the door to the street, pushing the heavy studded panel back. The townsfolk bustled past calling to her, and she answered them with a smile and butterflies in her belly.
Ahmadabad, City of a Thousand Magnificences, glowed in the desert dawn. The pink walls of the Palace and Seraglio dominated the skyline along with onion-domed minarets coated in gold leaf. The bureaucracy of the Raj squatted close by in marble buildings with shady colonnades and in one entire corner of the city, the Academie spread itself under the shade of aged date palms. Water ran from fountain to rill and quiet porticos provided spaces for the men of the province to debate and philosophise. But like the rest of Eirie, it rested on the whims and wherefores of the Other world that laced through the rhythms of life like a heartbeat and Lalita prayed for such spirits to bring her good fortune.
‘Have you written your fingers to the bone yet, Lalita?’ The baker hurried past, tossing her a honeyed pastry.
‘Not yet, Sulieman.’ She grinned as he jogged on the spot. ‘But I shall try.’
He laughed and winked at her and she watched him leave as she nibbled on her pastry.
‘Lalita,’ a voice called out and she swung the other way, wiping away the crumbs from her chin and brushing her clothes.
‘Mahmoud.’
‘Good morning, Lalita. Are you prepared?’ A young man of her age, studious in his black kurta and trousers, walked toward her.
‘Oh Mahmoud, I have such high hopes but I am merely a woman in a man’s world.’
‘Nonsense. In your heart you know your work is beyond excellent.’ The son of the apothecary, he and Lalita had grown up together, studying flowers and leaves and all manner of things, he for their properties and she for their artistic value. When she needed to examine the famous books in the Academie, it was he who took her as his assistant, for to be a lone woman studying the tomes of men of learning was a difficult thing. ‘Can you remember my father’s delight when you handed him the copy of the Veniche Herbal? Every petal, every leaf and every stamen was detailed so well that you might as well have given him the original. Besides, how often have you said to me that it is the challenge. That you can accomplish this like no other.’
‘That was my ego speaking, Mahmoud, and well you know it. But I understand what you are trying to do and thank you for reminding me of your father. I’ll keep the memory close, if only to believe in myself for just this morning.’
Mahmoud moved toward her, lowering his voice so that she leaned in to hear. ‘Lalita, I have been so worried about you alone with that man . . .’ he tipped his head toward the shop interior. ‘He is strong, you . . . ‘
‘I’m safe, honestly. Your iron bar works admirably on my door and only a djinn could enter my room. Kurdeesh dare not be obvious. Please don’t fret.’
‘I wish Imran and Soraya were here but as they are not, I wish you had agreed to stay in the women’s quarters at our home.’
‘Mahmoud,’ Lalita laughed in spite of her nerves. ‘Would you entomb me in a seraglio? My dearest friend, you have provided for my immediate safety and Aunt and Uncle will be home tomorrow.’ She gave him a tiny push. ‘Call in this evening when you are finished with your business and I shall tell you my news. Wish me good fortune.’
‘Always, Lalita.’ He touched his forehead and chest and bowed slightly over his hand. Lalita felt the eloquence of his gesture deeply, knowing he had feelings for her and would ask her to be his wife. But she knew also that he understood her well and respected her desire for freedom.
She turned back to the store, endeavouring to survey the emporium with the objective eye of a lordly customer. A simple space but one she had enhanced with the quality of its contents. Light glanced off the pure colours of the illuminations and seductive goldleaf glistened. Pots of inks were shelved with precision, the quills, pens and burnishers lying below them, evenly spaced according to size. Lalita walked to an open book displayed on a polished cedar lectern, the page turned to a workday illustration of some bucolic scene, rich in blues and viridians. Some instinct made her fingers flick the page over and there was the illustration of a room of houries in transparent garb, their skin lustrous and draped with silk organza. The piece had taken her two weeks of painstaking work with a brush that she had plucked, leaving only one or two hairs. She believed the painterly rendering of such sheer fabric might almost be considered the touch of a Master.
Kurdeesh bustled into the shop tying a vast green sash around his middle. His turban gleamed white and he had waxed and trimmed his moustache to fly up in two handles on either side of his face. ‘You’ve done well, my little flower,’ he grunted and reached to touch her, sliding his arm along her shoulder and then down so that his fingers brushed her breast. She stepped away, putting the lectern between herself and the man she abhorred.
‘Uncle, I would like the opportunity to speak to the Grand Vizier myself. I am the scribe and I understand what will be required. It makes sense.’
He glanced at himself in the mirror behind his brother’s counter. ‘Perhaps to you, Lalita. But it’s not the way of men and most definitely not the way of the Court. I shall speak for you and for my brother’s emporium.’
‘But I…’
‘No, Lalita.’ Kurdeesh raised his hand and slapped it down hard on a pile of journals and she shrank further behind the lectern as a shadow filled the open door. The street noise faded as the Grand Vizier stepped inside and Kurdeesh licked his lips. ‘Excellent Lord, we welcome you to our humble shop. You do this house much honour by entering the portals. May you be blessed with . . .’
The noble brushed past. ‘Enough, I am here for a purpose as you well know. This is your niece?’
‘Yes, yes.’ Kurdeesh moved to Lalita’s side. ‘This is she. Our little scribe.’ His hand began its vile creep across her shoulder.
‘I am honoured, Lord.’ Lalita shifted away from the impolite grasp and lowered her head.
The Grand Vizier tucked powerful fingers under her chin so that she was forced to look at his face. A strong face with slightly slanted eyes that were as dark and depthless as an oubliette. He was clean-shaven, his head polished to an unworldly shine and when he spoke, Lalita found she could barely stand, her knees as weak as a baby’s.
‘Pretty. Maybe more than pretty.’ The Vizier’s scrutiny burned into Lalita’s skin and her hands twisted together.
‘Ah sir, she is our little flower, a flower just waiting to be plucked by some lucky man.’
Lalita wanted to yell at her uncle. Is it a commission we are selling Uncle, or my body? ‘Lord, please feel free to examine all that you wish.’ She drew the Vizier’s attention away with a sweep of her arm, seeking the confidence that had vanished when the man had entered the emporium.
He stepped away from her, the austerity of his black Raji jodhpurs and kurta arousing an image of some forbidding djinn. He moved with the grace of a panther, examining the odoriferous papers and the tools of her trade, but his eyes lingered longest on the page of houries. He flicked back and forth through the book with slow and careful deliberation, before returning to the page she had marked. ‘How long did this work take?’
‘Not so long, perhaps a week. The transparent fabric on the odalisques required some attention. I can see you appreciate the detail, sir.’
‘I am impressed with your hand here, the use of the quill and brushes, very elegant. And here, the curve of your capitals and your clever figurative design, it is excellent. The colours you have used too, they are very pure.’
‘I make my own sir, when I require a tint peculiar to my tastes.’
‘You handle linen paper well. Most scribes use parchment.’
Lalita was surprised at the man’s knowledge. ‘Yes, but despite its cost paper is magnificent. The grain, the texture . . .’
He glanced at her again. ‘And the binding, did you do it yourself?’ His long fingers ran back and forth over the indented, burnished leather.
‘I did, Lord.’
‘It is unusual to pursue such work. Surely the work of men.’
‘Indeed, but I found I had an affinity with the pen and with paper and binding.’
‘So I have heard. It seems half the well-to-do women of Ahmadabad want your journals and herbals. Even in the Court. Did you know the Valide Sultan was presented with an illustrated herbal? Ah, I see you are surprised.’ He took the book off the lectern and weighed it in his hands. ‘In Fahsi, the paper and ink makers speak of your skill with an admiration they would normally use for a Master.’
‘I am grateful for their praise, Lord.’ Even though they are men and you believe I exist falsely in a man’s world. She could see it in his eyes as he looked at her.
‘Do you think you could scribe A Thousand and One Nights in a month?’
Lalita’s spirits soared and as quickly plummeted at the fragile chance dangling in front of her. A month!
‘She could do it in two weeks with some urging.’ Kurdeesh’s voice dropped like a stone between Lalita and the official.
The Grand Vizier turned and snapped at him. ‘Khatoun, you are not a scribe, not even close. Let the woman speak. Your chance will come later.’
How so? Lalita stood perplexed, wondering what on earth her uncle could add that would make a commission more likely. ‘Lord, there are many stories . . .’
The noble turned away.
‘But yes.’ She crossed her fingers behind her back. ‘It will be close run but I believe I could do it.’
The Grand Vizier carefully returned the book to the lectern, opening it to the page of houries, his eyes meeting hers. This is how a mouse must feel under the scrutiny of a cat. She could almost see a tail swinging mesmerizingly from side to side. His gaze slipped from her face, skimming over her person, quickly at first and then more slowly, examining every inch of her being until a blush burned its way to her cheeks. She was reminded of the earlier touch of fat fingers and as she glanced at Kurdeesh, she almost choked to see a look of complicity in his eyes. The word trust danced before her as surely as if she had picked up a reed pen, dipped it in ink and written it on a piece of blank parchment.
‘Lalita,’ Kurdeesh ordered as if he were the Sultan himself and she jumped. ‘Go to the inn and purchase the best wine available. His Excellency and I have business to discuss. And we shall do it over a repast.’
Don’t, Kurdeesh, you will lose this commission. She scowled at her uncle but he turned away and fingered some of the blank sheets she had piled up and suddenly she wanted to walk out and keep walking because intuition began to whisper. But she chided herself. Don’t be ridiculous. There can be nothing but good business at stake, that’s all. Please Aine, let it be the Sultan’s commission, nothing less.
‘Lalita, this is your big day, is it not?’ The innkeeper’s mouth twitched at her, his eyes as lascivious as any she had seen this day.
‘It is.’ She passed over some gelt and his fingers caressed it off the counter.
‘Kurdeesh told us how he inveigled the interest of the Royal Court. He did well. Imran should have done the same but he hasn’t got the drive. I’ve always said Kurdeesh has what it takes; he is the wilier of the brothers.’
‘Uncle Imran runs a remarkable business with a valuable reputation. He has refined knowledge that Uncle Kurdeesh does not. I imagine that is what brings the Grand Vizier to the emporium, nothing else.’
‘You think?’ The innkeeper wiped his hands over the oil in his hair. ‘Pity he’s away then.’
‘A shop does not stock itself and in any case he and Aunt will be back tomorrow.’ She picked up the wine and headed for the beaded curtain at the entrance.
‘And they’ll have missed all the fun. Such a shame.’
Lalita deigned not to answer. The innkeeper was part of Kurdeesh’s coterie and it could only tarnish a day that had potential. Back in the emporium, she took a tray and made an arrangement of pleasant things for the Grand Vizier and her uncle to nibble on, her hands shaking as she assembled the dates and fine nougats, the wafers and pastes and the decanter of wine. Carrying it in to the two men who had seated themselves on coffers between a selection of her bound journals, she wished she was covered in a burqua from neck to knee because she sensed their eyes upon her – every move she made, every gesture. She felt as naked as one of her illustrated houries and chafed that she hadn’t left the book open to a more commonplace illustration.
She removed herself to the back patio where she sat hugging Phaeton, taking deep sustaining breaths. To be sure the Grand Vizier had surveyed her work in detail and his questions had been knowledgeable and pointed but his gaze had been bold and suggestive. Phaeton licked her chin as she went to bury her face in his velvet-smooth neck and he turned and pushed against her hand, anchoring her with his comfort so that she found she could think beyond the odd exchanges of the day. She remembered the copy of A Thousand and One Nights in the Academie Library and she knew, as sure as a dust storm preceded the Symmer wind, that she could do it so much better. A tingle fizzed through her – nerves, excitement, fingers twitching. She wanted to hold a pen to frame the first word. Allow the sharpened end of the reed to sweep up and down; creating, shaping, to then fill the hollow parts of the capital with gold leaf and rich tint – ruby red, lapis blue, verdigris green. The pinnacle of achievement for any scribe.
She sat for a minute, allowing the humming of the bees in the oleander flowers to fill the peace of the arbor. But the insidious touch of Kurdeesh’s hand crept from behind the cover of her anticipation and she collapsed against her dog, sucking in a sigh and soughing it out through gritted teeth ‘My chances will spoil through his covetousness,’ she muttered to her dog. ‘And if they do, I swear I shall make him suffer. I will, Phaeton. I swear.’
The doves cooed on the roof and the sun dropped golden coins between the shadows of the grapevine as Kurdeesh called her. At that moment every single thing engraved itself upon her mind. Kurdeesh was tucking a vast wad of gelt into his sash as she entered the shop and when his eyes met Lalita’s they were as cold as a storm on Mt.Goti. ‘Lalita Khatoun’ he said. ‘Pack your equipment and anything personal. The Grand Vizier will escort you back to the Seraglio.’
‘Of course, but I need nothing personal, only my pens and inks and if I miss anything I can take it back tomorrow.’
‘No, Lalita Khatoun,’ the Grand Vizier spoke from where he was again looking at the page of houries. ‘Once you are in the Seraglio, you stay. If you need anything it will be sent for.’
An unbelievable notion began to fill her head, dismembering her sense of achievement but she pushed it away. ‘How long am I to be employed within the Seraglio?’
The Grand Vizier gave a glimmer of a smile, an oily lift of a mouth that would brook no disagreement. ‘You are not employed to work at the Seraglio, woman,’ the words dripped on her from a lofty height. ‘You are to be one of the harem. Your uncle here has sold you.’
‘I’m sorry?’ Her knees began to buckle and she held onto Phaeton’s collar.
‘It is fortunate you are talented enough to take up the commission of A Thousand and One Nights as it will bring you to the notice of the Sultan that much earlier and we shall all benefit.’ The Grand Vizier flipped a flywhisk against his thigh with impatient fingers. Tap tap, tap tap, the sound punctuating his words. ‘Get your things, the guard waits.’
No, you can’t. But she knew he could and asked only one desperate question. ‘My dog?’
‘Bring him. The Seraglio has dogs. Five minutes please.’ The Grand Vizier walked out of the door, taking her life with him.
Kurdeesh bustled around bowing and scraping and thanking the highborn visitor. Lalita wanted to stab her uncle with the paper knife that winked on the counter but she was numb, as rigid as a block of ice. She unfroze her limbs and with dignity she knew was only skin-deep, she packed a satchel, called Phaeton and left.
Chapter Two
Finnian
‘What is it?’ Finnian of the Færan’s hand closed around the chamois bag.
‘Yew bark and leaves, it’ll kill any living thing. You must want to kill someone pretty bad to use this stuff. Be kinder to garotte ‘em.’
The dealer’s features were blurred in the dark of the alley. The man was short but even so, gusts of his breath wafted upward – sour, smacking of rotting teeth, stale food and ale. He had been sentenced to hang in Veniche as a trader of poisons but escaped to Castello’s iniquitous surroundings and Finnian thanked Aine for it.
‘I have no wish to be kind.’ Far from it. ‘And I don’t like the garotte. How do I use this?’ He rattled the bag, the ingredients hissing like a basilisk as they slid around inside the leather.
‘Grind them to a powder then mix the dust in red wine. With some honey if you want. Warm it and it will be so much the quicker.’
‘How long?’
‘Two days at most and it won’t be nice. There’ll be fast breath, probably a galloping heart like they’d run for their life. And if you give ‘em a second dose, the heart’ll slow right down. There’ll be vomiting, body cramps and a violent and bloody flux. Eventually there’ll be convulsions and death.’
The gelt jingled as Finnian passed it over.
‘The body’ll empty of everything, you know. An ugly sight if ever there was and there will be a stinking mess.’
A mess is nothing but just desserts. How many times had he soiled himself in fear as a child and then been beaten for it? Beaten, always beaten, for that and so much else besides.
The dealer turned to fade away into the sea mist crawling up the alley and Finnian mesmered. The need was great and his fingers tightened in excitement as he wafted his hand through the air as if he wiped moisture off a windowpane. The shadowy man froze and he squeezed past. The dealer wouldn’t remember him nor would he remember the transaction and his pocket would be filled merely with twigs.
Within his grandmother’s fortress, Finnian pulverised the yew with a mortar and pestle, his heart jumping as he thought of what he must do. He placed an empty goblet by the fire to warm as the old woman, Isolde, sat hunkered at the table. ‘Pour me a wine. I am in need.’ She rarely looked him in the face.
He took the goblet, tipping in the red Raji wine and the dust, stirring it with his stiletto. The plan was audacious. She asks me to outwit her . . . ‘Do you want honey?’
Isolde of the Færan bent over one of her small aged grimoires, her knotted finger tracing the text. ‘Of course I want honey. I always have honey.’ Her voice still had the capacity to flay inches off his back as her whipping had done when he was a child. His hand shook as he added a scoop of the sweetener, the liquid falling into the goblet. He watched the thick gilded drop as it fell, seeing a lifetime of opportunities reflected, watching a lifetime of brutality dissolve. Isolde reached for the wine. ‘A good vintage,’ she muttered as she drained the goblet and held it out for more.
As the meal progressed he watched her covertly, sweating over every change in expression, every movement of a hand that eventually reached to rub a distended stomach.
‘By Aine, my belly! Get the maid, I need to go to my chamber.’ She stood and leaned against her chair, her goblet dropping to the floor. ‘It’s tainted. Tell the factor. There may be . . . oh,’ she held onto the maid, her hand white with effort. ‘I’m so dizzy. The room spins.’
Finnian watched her lurch on the maid’s arm out the door, heard her vomit as she went to climb the stairs and was happy. He poured his own wine, another decanter, his grandmother’s tipped through the window casement, and remembered other escape plans – so many.
As a boy – midnight, creeping down a cold stone stairwell in bare feet, heart thumping in a startled rhythm learned at birth. Out kitchen doors, through front entrances, across rooves high above rocks that would shred and ganch him to a pulp should he fall.
Always she would be waiting.
But he persisted. As an adolescent, cannier – daytime, hiding amongst the wine casks on a galliot, the smell of tannin and oak filling his nose. Or amongst a crowd, disguised with burnois amongst the camels, mingling, bending, tucking in a strap, smoothing the animal’s course hair with fingers that shook in expectation. Hoisting himself into the creaking saddle of a prone beast, heart singing a song of freedom. But on the camel’s other side she would wait and the song would cease abruptly.
‘Outwit me boy,’ she laughed before the beatings began again.
And despite her enchantments, despite her immortality, it seemed he had at last succeeded, by using the poisons of mortal men.
He sat alone in the dining hall next morning. Outside, the searing Raji sun fried the dust off Castello’s walls. The factor came in with a tray, breathless and disgruntled. ‘We’re a bit pushed this morning, sir. Lady Isolde’s very ill, there’s a filthy mess upstairs and we’re drawing straws to clean.’
Finnian contemplated the strange world he inhabited: a fortress town ensconced in the mortal Raj but filled with the seedy and disgusting, both mortal and eldritch. The inhabitants drifted in and out of each other’s lives, as they did in the rest of Eirie, but here it was a potent brew of the worst kind. His grandmother deserved this; she had created the place, she must die here.
He wondered at his own feather lightness of heart, whether he should care at all, maybe even a small measure of disgust at his own obscene actions. But he could dredge up nothing except satisfaction, his palm slapping the table with a whack.
He headed for the front entrance but a worn voice called him back. Isolde’s physician, a fallen man like the rest, stared at him with bloodshot eyes and pouches of loose skin beneath. ‘She’s dying,’ he growled. ‘She’s got blood in her shit and she’s shaking as if she’s got the deadly ague and her heart beats so light it’d barely keep a babe alive. She’ll be toes up by moonrise I reckon. But then I can’t see that you care. Not sure I do either really.’ He dragged a cheroot out and lit it. ‘Never liked being a mortal mixing with you Others. Seems odd. Your grandmother could click her fingers and I’d be dead. When she’s gone I’m leaving. This place with its sordid mix of Them and us, it’s unhealthy.’ He began to make the sign of the horns but coughed on the cheroot smoke and ground the stub under his booted heel. ‘You should get out, despite being of the Færan. This place’ll be a madhouse when she dies.’
It’s been a madhouse all my life and I am getting out.
He disguised himself in a longshoreman’s dirty clothes and leaped aboard a galliot, piling gelt into the bosun’s hands, affecting the persona of a mortal. ‘I’ll double it if we leave now, triple it for speed and every oarsman will be the richer for their loyalty and silence.’ He would have dived in off the gunwhales with the line in his teeth and towed the vessel if it would make it go any faster.
He didn’t bother to look back. Relief rolled through his body in waves. Oh she wouldn’t say as much, but Isolde of the Færan his grandmother, had somehow fettered him by a mesmer as strong as links of forged iron and he’d done what he had to do.
The bosun called commands, the starboard oars feathering as the port oars pulled the vessel around the seawall and south toward Bressay. The sea stretched like mottled silk, the journey promising to be smooth and Finnian chafed for the vessel to fly so he could escape his memories.
The evening delivered a safe anchorage in one of the shoal of islands dotting the Pymm Archipelago. A massive hook of dolomite, its leeward waters gave shelter to smaller craft and the bosun ordered the anchor lowered close in. The crew hopped across a causeway of rocks to the shore, broached a keg of rum and lit a fire with driftwood and dried dulse from amongst the tumbled boulders. Bawdy songs drifted out to the roanes sitting on the furthest edge of the causeway and Finnian laughed when their iridescent tails slapped the water in disgust.
‘Here, you want some?’ A sailor held out a tankard.
‘As much as you want to give me.’ He grabbed the mug of rum and tossed it back, then held it up for more.
The sailor grinned and splashed in another tot. ‘Now here’s a man, fellas, didn’t even wince as he downed the stuff.’ Heads turned in Finnian’s direction. ‘When folk drink like that, they’re usually running away from summat.’
Finnian tossed the next one back and the crew applauded. ‘You’ve seen Castello, anyone’d run from that,’ he said.
‘My oath,’ chipped in a voice. ‘It’s like Hades, all them Others driftin’ around with suspicious mortals . . .’
‘Take a look at yerself, Jack. You’d be as bad as the rest.’
‘Aye but there’s something sick in that place. And deadly.’
Finnian sipped at the third mugful and felt the edges of his panic blur. ‘Sick and deadly don’t cover it.’
‘Tell us what yer seen, mate. Cos we all got some bad stories o’ that place. I tell yer, if the bosun hadn’t left when he did, I would’ve swum away mesself.’
Finnian surveyed the crinkled and tanned leather faces. ‘It’s full of murderers.’ As if I care.
There was a stretched silence and then the night exploded with a roar of laughter.
‘Well yeah, we’re all murderers. Every one of us, we all killed someone, it’s why we stayed away in that place fer so long. But just lately it’s got worse,’ one sailor said.
‘Yeah,’ said another. ‘The old woman, that Isolde, she’s after summat. No one knows what, but she’s been haulin’ in people from Veniche and quizzin’ em and if they don’t answer her questions she tortures em by enchantment and it’s been frightful. She mesmered a man’s leg off the other day, they say. Split another’s head in half with a sweep of her hand. Left ’im looking at his brains on the floor.’
‘I poisoned her.’ Finnian reached the bottom of the third mug.
‘Yer did yer say.’ A huge brawny arm went round his shoulder as a communal breath was sucked in. Finnian looked up into the pig eyes of a giant who could strangle with one hand whilst scratching his groin with the other. ‘Who are yer?’ the fellow said.
A sense of power swept over Finnian on the crest of a rum-soaked wave, power he’d never felt when Isolde had dominated him. ’I’m Finnian, the crone’s grandson. I poisoned her with yew and she was dying as I left. She’s lying in a pile of vomit and shit as we speak.’
Another silence developed as the sailors stared at him. Fingers twitched as if the sign of the horns would be invoked but there was grudging respect as well. Finally the bosun spoke. ‘I heard she was terrible ill. Why’d yer do it?’
‘She brutalized me all my life. You want to see?’ He stood and ripped off the stolen coat and smelly shirt. Turning, he allowed them to look, a communal breath sucking in.
‘Looks like a bloody keel-hauling.’
‘Like a flogging afore the mast I reckon.’
‘Why’d she do that to yer?’ The giant leaned close and the rum went the rounds again.
He shrugged his shoulders, loath to talk more. He drank the rum but this time felt none of its comfort and a curious sense of dislocation settled over him. He was hardly sure of where he was or whom he was with.
‘And yer poisoned her, yer say.’
He nodded.
The silence descended a third time before the crew finally applauded with gusto, slapping his scarred back and emptying the rum barrel. As the night deepened, one after the other of the sailors fell into a deep sleep, leaving Finnian feeling nauseous until the rum poured itself back up his gullet and into the rockpools. Some faint vestige of sense saw his hand sweep in a mesmer to erase all his talk from the sailors’ minds. No one should know of him, it suited him best. He wove away from the men to find a pool out of sight and deeper than the rest and plunged in his head as if the water would wash away his previous life. He came up gasping as a voice as soft as a seductress sighed by his ear. A water-wight with a pretty face and trailing locks of silver stood watching. ‘She’ll find you, Færan.’
‘Then she’ll be a shade with little power and it matters not,’ snarled Finnian, head throbbing, bile burning his throat. ‘Bain as.’
The woman smoothed her sea green robes and sat by him, her mouth in a moue of displeasure. ‘But I would talk with you. Come sit.’
He had no desire to talk but collapsed on a boulder anyway.
‘Tell me, Isolde’s Finnian, why do you think your grandmother is like this?’
‘Was. Was, I tell you. Anyway, what do you mean by ‘this’? Brutal? Insane? Aine, she was all that. She hated my father. My mother died in childbirth. Maybe that was enough. Why else would she steal me from my twin’s side? Surely that implies madness. And for what?’ He swore, muttering, ‘She knew how to vent better than the Ice Winds.’
‘You know, Isolde’s Finnian, we wonder why you did not escape earlier, mesmer yourself away.’
‘It wasn’t possible. She always knew. Every time . . .’ his voice dropped as he remembered.
‘A sick soul. Lost in her madness, her obsessions, ah yes, we know that much.’
‘Obsessions,’ Finnian sneered. ‘Do you know she fancied she could dominate Eirie, mortal and eldritch and her a feeble old woman? A bloody delusion.’
‘That’s no delusion, Isolde’s boy. If she lays her hands on the Cantrips of Unlife, she will do exactly that.’
‘Aine woman, why do you speak as if she lives? When I left she was breathing her last.’ He bent over the stilled pool, as brightly reflective as a mirror in the moonlight. He flicked up a face-full of water and blinked as the drips fell, the water rippling then settling. ‘And besides those Cantrips are gone.’ He knew that was what Isolde had tortured and murdered for and looked up at the water-wight, his head thundering with a wretched ache.
The story of the fateful enchantments ran like a litany through the days of his life. They were created by a Færan Master and were intended to subdue an entire world – those in the air, water and earth when Eirie had been a vortex of chaos. Subsequently the Cantrips were hidden in a secret abyss because the charm master had created enchantments that were above destruction. History said they were lost for the greater good but according to Isolde, apparently not and he tired of hearing about it.
‘Many seek,’ the wight answered, ‘but there are whispers Isolde is closer than most.’ The woman’s lips slid back, her lovely countenance spoiling in an instant as she revealed teeth sharpened to a stake point. ‘And you ask why I speak as if she lives? She does, Isolde’s boy, she does. Weak to be sure, but patently your poison was not her bane. Have no doubt, as soon as she is strong she will find you. And what do you imagine she will do by way of punishment?’
Finnian’s heart collapsed. Instantly he was a little boy, desperate for a family that cared for him, running, hiding, fear racketing like a mob of horses through every inch of his child’s body. I gave her enough to stop a herd of oxen. ‘It’s impossible. She had the bloody flux when I left. Her physician said she was passing blood as if someone had pulled a cork.’
‘She lives. Cannot you feel her eyes upon you even now? Just like before?’ The water-wight whipped around him, disorienting him so that he leaned back. She whispered close by his ear, her breath ice-cold. ‘Aren’t you disappointed you weren’t successful? What would it take do you think, to kill Isolde?”
The woman smiled at him, a deathly grin. Isolde’s grin, the wight’s, it was all of a piece. He pushed himself away from the rock and stared down at the sea-nymph. He could barely think. His audacious plan: rotten, useless.
The sea-wight laughed. ‘Finnian, Isolde’s grandson, you are scared. Ah well, you should be. They say Isolde describes your death in livid detail from her convalescent bed. That she plans to find you and kill you and then secure the charms. Even now she mesmers herself well with every spell in her rotten grimoires. Does that not create the tiniest measure of panic in you, brother of Liam?’ She turned her back on him and flowed like a stream of chilled water into the sea.
Breath eluded him, his chest tightened and he looked at his hands as they knotted themselves on the edges of the rocks. The moonlit pool lay still before him and he looked into it as if the answer would spell itself out. What can kill her? Some mesmer, some charm? Desperation clawed at the back of his throat and he retched, the sour taste of rum filling his mouth. Some charm, some irredeemable charm?
The answer when it came, was bold in its simplicity. He almost laughed as relief snapped at the heels of his fear.
The Cantrips of Unlife.
He would find them. He would beat her in the race to recover them and then he would use the Earth Charm. He would kill the woman who had blighted his life like some stinking, maiming disease. He wiped his face and the sense of throttling panic began to recede as he slid down the rockface and sat with his legs pulled up to his chest, thinking on the water-wight’s words.
Liam. Brother of Liam. He had never known what his twin had been called. He repeated the name as he tried not to care that Isolde lived. He mouthed it now in the dark of night, surrounded by a chorus of inebriated snores from further down the shore. He could have known the man Liam, they could have shared a real life, family life, instead of an imagined one, if it hadn’t been for the sick machinations of a raving old woman. But it was too late now because Liam was dead. Long since. He brushed impatiently at the hair that was cut into his nape, as if the action could smooth away uneasy thoughts, and then rubbed his hands back and forth over the black stubble covering his chin. He could have done with a woman, it was what he craved after a drunken bout and when tension was high. In the taverns, he would glance their way and they’d fall at his feet for he knew he attracted them; it was a bright spot in an otherwise dark and drear life. But there was no seduction to be had in this cove and instead he reached for a square of parchment from within his coat. He unfolded it, smoothing the creases that marred the surface. The night-breeze lifted a corner and played with it for a moment but he shifted his body to protect it.
Raised with the idea that he was tainted offspring, the bleak emptiness had only ever been leavened by the solace of Isolde’s library, filled with shadows in which he could hide. Hours of his life had been spent lying on the floor, books spread out, as he talked to an unknown, imagined brother – sharing the cruel and the indifferent. The illuminations of the many manuscripts coloured the greyness of his growth and one in particular aroused his interest.
He stared at it now, the page he had torn out and carried forever like a talisman. The moonlight brightened and a beam shone down upon the fragment. It showed a woman at a table with a reed pen in her fingers, her hand curved eloquently over a sheet of white paper. Her black hair draped in a skein across her shoulders and he allowed her beauty and tranquility to cosset him as if she were his love, removing the fear of Isolde that hovered forever like a foetid fog. He ran a finger along the text that he knew by heart:
‘I saw her stare
on old dry writing in a learned tongue . . .
(and) move a hand as if that
were some dear cheek.’
The breath of the dying breeze drifted down over his face and as he slipped into sleep, he wished it were the woman’s finger.
Wow!!!!
I want more 🙂
No matter which path you choose, choose something that feels right for you. So if that means tradpup, be prepared for lots of shopping around to a, quite frankly, dying dinosaur (just look at what happens at del Rey!), and lots of time ticking away.
Self publishing on kindle asks a lot of your own energy, and may require for you to put in a lot of work marketing it (which you still have to do whether on kindle or traditional.
Good luck choosing! (and I will be in queue to pick it up 🙂 )
What happened with Del Rey, Sylvia? I used to contribute to the online forums and peer-reviews but haven’t for years.
POD with YWO.com and Kindle have been interesting exercises. Both require a presence, hard work, and some sort of brand. It tires me out, especially when I want to just go write more of Gisborne or my other WIP but the minute you stop engaging, sales slow down and you are forgotten.
But as you say, I would have to do the same thing mainstream, and get far less royalties. Oh, tough decision.
They must have been mad! This is spell-binding. The only thing wrong with it is not an airport thriller cum bonkbuster and I guess that’s the only sort of books they are picking up now..
This must have hurt so much.
Others will give you their thoughts on what course of action to follow as I have absolutely no knowledge of the subject.. I only remember all the stories of famous authors and their multiple rejections and hope there are still editors out there with a little foresight and imagination.
Giselle, I think editors get a bad name from all of this. I think they do have the foresight and the imagination but in the big houses, I think its the marketing department that calls the final shots.
I think you’re right though, if it was an airport thriller or bonkbuster, it may have survived. And when the world’s economy was rock solid, the publishers took risks enabling newbies to get known. That doesn’t apply now. But irrespective of what the economy does to mainstream publishers, there is a whole new environment waiting to be engaged with and that’s the decision I have to make.
In addition to your writing, I really enjoy your descriptions of the process. (And of the entire writer vs publishing industry headache!)
Thanks Fitzg. This is the first real heartache i have had, so i’ve been really lucky. I opted to go the indie-route with my first two novels, but decided to give this one a go traditionally. i think I am about five or six years too late!
You yourself recognize (and your readers agree) that the quality of your writing is not what’s at stake here. That has to hurt. We want to live in a truly meritocratic world, most of us, and be recognized for our talents and our ability to execute on them. Our desires notwithstanding, I think we live in “interesting times,” and that a lot of stuff that would have been a sure thing for a publisher, or at least worth taking a chance on (which would involve staying with an author for a few novels until she established herself) in the 1980s or 1990s, is now being ignored. This is true even in my own field, where saleability has never been a seriously important category in a publisher’s decisionmaking. My own professional writing gets published in a world with entirely different rules than this (my academic book will have an initial print run of 500 copies, and the contract I have for it was not calculated on the basis of its likelihood to become a bestseller). Thus in the academic world self publishing is the sign that you can’t convince anyone else of your ideas. I think that is unlikely to change anytime soon, academics being above all traditionalists.
But the world of popular readers is an entirely different one, where people vote with their feet and now, it seems, with their mouses. And we live in a time of change, where it seems that traditional publishers have a very hard time determining actual saleability. Since it’s agreed that your work is sellable, the question is who’s going to sell it, right? If I were in your position — i.e., it appears that you have a living apart from your writing, so you don’t have to sell it to live — I’d ask myself above all how much energy I have, and I’d ask that question in several ways: (1) Do I have the energy to keep on being rejected by traditional publishers? (2) Do I have the energy to keep on writing if I have to do all of the sales work myself? (3) Do I have the energy to keep on writing for the electronic reader / blogosphere, which makes IMO peculiar demands on the writer? (4) Assuming that my goal is to make money off the writing, do I have the energy to learn the necessary skills (software, marketing, etc.) for promoting my own work in the blogosphere (assuming also that I cannot yet pay an expert in these areas to do these things for me) and then use those skills aggressively?
I think where these questions are going is in the direction of asking: what is the relationship of the energy you clearly derive from writing and from being read to the energy you would have to expend to market yourself to be read more widely, OR what is the relationship of the energy you get from writing and being read to the problem of energy drain from not being published as you might wish to be? To whom does it matter, and in what ways, if you don’t get picked up by a traditional publisher? Will you not be a “real” author in your own mind if you don’t achieve the goal as you have expressed it up till now?
Because I think it’s clear that you *are* a “real” author in the eyes of your audiences here. And in your own self-estimation. So what’s the relationship between those perceptions of your work, and the goal of being published by a traditional publisher?
If I had known, when I started my own work, that the ratio of constructive work to design, webmastering, sales, shipping, record keeping, maintenance, bookkeeping, and nitpicking was about 1:50, I’m not sure if I would have gone ahead. But mastering the boring support skills became a satisfaction in itself, eventually.
But I was most surprised by how much selling meant to me – a direct jab of current directly into the pleasure center of the brain. After a big sale, I’m more imaginative, energized, and driven than any praise or encouragement can make me.
I think there’s a lot of truth in the old joke about the man who complains about his job cleaning up after the circus elephants, and replies to a friend who advises him to get a job that doesn’t require shoveling tons of elephant poop, “What? and give up show business?”
It’s also true that no one cares as much about the success of your work as you do. 🙂
I agree with you Pat. I constantly surprise myself when technology is mastered, even in the most simplistic way. And yes, you do feel energised by increasing sales on Kindle, by good reviews, by an increase in a support base.
On reflection, those sales, those reviews have occurred without the support of ‘Legacy’ houses and agents. Which brings me right back to Servetus’s point: can such a writer claim therefore to be a ‘real’ author? I bet there’s a whole host of mainstream writers out there who wouldn’t like that at all.
My goodness, servetus! You are my analyst!
The energy is a key issue. I write because I love writing and can’t imagine not. Have I got the energy to market myself? To a point. Have I got the energy to ‘be’ an e-writer with what that entails. To a point. Can I learn the skills required to move forward in this e-age? With advice and assistance from stalwarts, yes.
But of all the points you raise, the question ‘To whom does it matter if you don’t get picked up mainstream?’ is the vital one. I have given that some serious thought. Till this very moment, no matter that I have begun to build a loyal and supportive following, it seemed that to consider myself a writer, I needed to be contracted (ie: recognized) mainstream. But after this rejection and after reading the three reports again, after reading the comments on Gisborne and on this latest ‘taste’, the whole concept of needing that mainstream endorsement is changing.
Where any adjustments will take me is unclear, but such points posed by yourself are certainly food for thought. Thank you.
Perhaps this will be one of the occasions when the book publication follows the movie…
The time with the consultancy wasn’t wasted — the power of your words and story has been refined and there is good in that. But it is time for the book to see daylight and for your fans to have the opportunity to read this eagerly awaited third book in the Eirie Chronicles. If its initial entree is electronic, then I will finally buy a Kindle so as to own a completed copy. But I sure want that physical copy to stand next to the other two on my bookshelf.
NEVER, EVER abandon your writing. You’re far too good.
Rebecca, it’s so very true. The time with the consultancy was crucial! It changed a sow’s ear into a silk purse. And I would return to them again for advice on further manuscripts because by heaven their editors know their job.
I think the manuscript is a victim of the times and as such deserves to be kept alive and if that requires going the e-way then it will most likely happen. i am always impressed with Ray Rhamey’s idea that if you go the e-way, you should always have a your novel available in print for those who want it.
Abandon writing? I don’t think I can.
Abandon my old hopes and dreams? i reckon that’s entirely possible.
Prue
You are a very good writer – just love your descriptions – they are so rich – and you have many admirers – please keep going.
Love
Mike
Thank you Mike! The chocs and wine are helping the pain!
Don’t lose heart Prue. Easy to say, I know, but your dream really can happen.
Oh Lynn. I do sound such a wet-blanket, don’t I? It really comes down to the question of where-to from here. I think the economy, the genre and the subject matter were all issues. Patently for an editor to think that with a good editor behind the work it could find a niche in the marketplace then the story did have legs.
It’s why I am tossing up going the e-way with it, so that it doesn’t die. And its also why I have decided to change genres after this.
Thank you so much for thought. From someone as successful as yourself with ‘Murder at Mansfield Park’, that’s tremendously kind!
I do honestly believe that e-publishing is the way forward. The paperback simply doesn’t sell as well now. I am selling more kindle copies than paperbacks and I doubt having a big publisher behind me would change that much.
e is the future. I do think that’s sad, but it’s also useful.
Oh and I shall tell wifey about the dinosaur thing. That’ll make her giddy with excitement.
Much support from the YWO.com writers, Si. The balance is in favour of a print-publish via YWO.com along with an e-publish via Kindle etc. But could take a while as all things do!
I agree with you about e-books. Have found some wonderful authors via Kindle that I’d never have found otherwise.
Prue,
What a treat to enjoy a bit of the color and aroma of “A Thousand Glass Flowers”, I look forward to the full manuscript in whatever form you choose for publication. I selfishly hope that you’ll go the e-pub route because no matter what, it will hit the market sooner!
The handful of writers I know who have had the “backing” (and I use that term very loosely) of traditional publishing houses have told me that aside from the initial euphoria (“I got an acceptance letter!!”) and “ego stroking” (“Oh, you’re with a REAL publishing house!”), they’ve reaped few benefits from being with a tradpub. They still have to do all their own marketing (aside from receiving a thousand or so bookmarks), own organization of book tours, horrid speaking engagements at conferences, blogging, and banging on doors.
So why is it that we place such importance on the tradpub houses? Why is our writing “not good enough” until some editor from a company with a couple of names of long ago dead people gives his/her blessing? And, in your case, do you not take joy in the great reviews from people who actually read and enjoy your writing?
I say absolutely consider giving up your “old dream” because it may no longer be relevant. I love the term “Legacy House” because at least in my “computer geek” terminology, “legacy” doesn’t just mean “handed down from the past”, but means “obsolete and outdated”!
You are a writer (that’s established already). and you have an audience that wants to “hear” you. Why in the world let something obsolete and outdated get in the way of connecting you two. We are very lucky to be living in times when we can dream a new dream and make them reality.
I look forward to the rest of “A Thousand Glass Flowers”. Don’t disappoint me by making me wait any longer than necessary.
The argument against mainstream is huge, isn’t it? Not the least point being how little an author actually gets to bank after all the middle-men take their cuts. It puts some of our favourite authors’ incomes around the level of an e-book writer on 35% royalties. And we’ve all heard the stories of those e-book writers who sell at a certain price and secure 70% of the royalties without agents’ and publishers’ cuts!
The downside is the HUGE amount of time needed to market oneself. If I go down this e-road then I shall take a designated time out of my year to do nothing but market.
Two points you make with great force and which are similar to Servetus:
1. Why is our writing ‘not good enough’ until we sign in blood with traditional publishers?
2. Why hold on to an old dream when a new one is as enticing as the thought of a new world to the explorers of old?
I’ll now add a third…
3. I AM a writer! I should just get on with it regardless!
The downside you mention to ebooks of the enormous efforts required toward marketing are equally demanding with the Legacy Houses. The thousand bookmarks I mentioned were no exaggeration! That was what one writer I know (whose book was with a large publishing house) received as marketing support from her publisher.
I remember another first time Legacy House author saying that now that she was published, she felt so much pressure by her publisher to sell that she couldn’t find time to write the next book she’d already sold as part of a package — which she was worried about as her deadline was looming ahead. When I (half-jokingly) said, “Ah, so then your reason for writing and selling books is now to satisfy your publisher?” she stopped and admitted she had to ponder that.
It’s no wonder the e-book trade looks so attractive. One not only retains control over one’s life and how much or how little one wants to expend in terms of the whole life of the book, but one also doesn’t have to worry that the nice advance that fell into the bank will be reclaimed when book-sales don’t reach the target. Does it all come down to control, I wonder?
I wrote a novel a long time ago and it’s currently languishing in a drawer, its handwritten pages slowly yellowing. But now that I have a Kindle, I am considering preparing it for uploading. The thought of having it available on Kindle has motivated me to look at it again. I had put it away “indefinitely” because I felt it wasn’t good enough for mainstream publishing, and I couldn’t bear to rewrite / edit it. But maybe it’s time. After all, I have nothing to lose.
I love the first chapter of “A Thousand Glass Flowers”! It’s so vivid. I felt as if I was stepping through a window into another world. Yet I’m at work right now… um… had better rejoin the real world….
Thanks Nikalee. It’s taken so long to get to this point. And I realise that I still have far to go with it: more editing, then a line-edit, cover designed, formatting for the UK print publisher, formatting differently for Kindle … it’s a big process that has to be carried it by one’s own self!
Mesmered, I confess to knowing nothing about the world of publishing but you must keep going. I guess rejections are par for the course, for less established writers especially, and in this climate but you are an amazing writer, so never give up. And incidentally, I simply can’t imagine your writing being a sow’s ear under any circumstances!
Clearly your writing is of quality and in a different economic environment things might have been different, but perhaps your recently rejected work is considered as something of a niche work and not considered mainstream enough for the current economic circumstances?
You know, it seems to me that bookshops are disappearing so fast that perhaps it doesn’t mean what is used to do to be a published author on paper? I noticed today with some sadness that an independent bookshop near me that I like to haunt is closing. We seem to have hardly any left now and I love bookshops, especially ones with little cafes!
I guess, after having asked yourself the numerous and searching questions posed in this thread, if it is ultimately important enough to you to be recognised ‘mainstream,’ maybe you will indeed find yourself writing in a different genre, such as historical fiction, which you mentioned and which is popular. But it doesn’t help with the current climate.
As one who does not yet own a Kindle, I am happy that I have the paper copy of The Stumpwork Robe and The Last Stitch should be winging its way to me as I write. Even had I read them as e-books I’d be wanting want a paper copy, as I would of any book that I suspected I would want to revisit. I know E -readers are wonderfully convenient and when my eyes get any worse, I am sure I will be glad of one but nothing seems to me to be quite the same as a ‘real book.’
Please do not lose heart. The way forward may not turn out to be the one you originally hoped or planned for, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one, only that it may be different.
Finally, I am sorry that we won’t be getting much more Gisborne on the blog, but hope you don’t abandon him, as I am loving your skilfully woven tale.
Ladyj,
You do seem to have nailed the issue on a number of levels. Niche work without doubt. (it might make a good movie, I suppose. Three dimensional characters, exotic and beautiful settings and the capacity for subtle FX)
Bookshops vanishing? Oh indeed and definitely adding to the change in what it means to be published on paper. As a reader, I too can’t get by without favourite books on my shelves. Re-reading is part of the pleasure. And yes, you can re-read on an e-reader, but for me there is the total sensation: smells, sounds, sight, even the touch of paper against my fingers. But I love my Kindle. It fits neatly in a weekend bag and as an embroiderer, for those days when my eyes are strained, I love the way I can enlarge the text size.
As a writer, I am amused by this new technology but also blown away by the equalising of a marketplace. It must be akin to the euphoria that countries feel when they final assume a democracy!
Which means that I’m not afraid of the e-pub market as such. What I am afraid of is the monumental effort required to extend readership of my novels. It won’t be easy. But… nothing ventured, nothing gained!
I am so delighted you enjoyed TSR. Enough to order its conclusion. I adored writing TLS. I loved creating the settings and the tension and I probably created my single most favourite character: Gallivant the hob. I’ll be interested to see what you think.
Thanks so much for your support and for taking the time to write on Mesmered.
In the midst of this watershed week in the life of a writer, The Stumpwork Robe secured another top review on Amazon. I don’t know who the reviewer was, but if she (FairLady) ever reads Mesmered, I hope she sees this and realises how gratified this writer is.
Prue! I am afraid that I cannot spare any time at the moment – you’ve noticed the scarcity of my blog posts lately, and most weeks I barely have time to glance at the blogs I follow, nevermind actually read them – so I am unable to read for pleasure (which makes me want to cry sometimes) and have been for some months and that means I am unable to read your first chapter. But what I’ve glimpsed and skimmed has made my mouth water!
I’m not here to praise you for something I’ve not read – that wouldn’t be valuable to anyone – but I am here to say … don’t quit!!! (Though the wine and chocolate does sound good.) We are writers. We have to plod on, even when the way gets so tough it really is plodding beyond weariness and any energy or hope. We have to keep going, because it is what we are and because the thing we (or some of us, anyway) seek (that ‘official’ publishing dream) is bloody tough. It always has been and I daresay always will be.
It’s not a mistake to be rejected – the only mistake is to stop trying. Keep trying, Prue – you’ve got those great reviews, those fantastic editorial comments; the only thing you haven’t got is the backing of that one consultancy (though it sounds like they wish they could give it to you!). Write, polish, rinse, repeat; submit to agents, submit to editors, rinse, repeat. And start all over again!
Keep it going, Prue – I really hope you do.
Clare
x
Thank you, Clare from the UK (as opposed to my own Clare, daughter). To be truthful, quitting isn’t in my blood, it’s more what i should do with what i am writing. Do I walk away from mainstream submissions until they get their houses in order and the industry frees itself up a little?
That’s the way I’m thinking right now. The e-industry is democratic, rambunctious and offers a wealth (not in a money sense) of opportunity and experience… that has to be as good as it gets.