Add clutter. Vamp a while. Thanks, Atthys.

John Dee, Elizabeth’s Royal Astrologer, said by some scholars of the period to have been one of Francis Walsingham’s undercover operatives. (He is, in my book.) See that globe there? On my website (still in progress) I am going to replace it with a period engraving of a cat’s head. A very special relationship has a confirmation in the historical record!

_____________________________________

Well explored territory here, but my Sly-addled brain isn’t kicking in right now.

I’m hammering away at a very difficult chapter. I’m trying to organize it into a logical progression of conversation, A leading to B leading to C, making sense of a stack of sticky notes, my low-tech method of story-building.

So, how goes it with your work? We haven’t talked about that for a while, have we? What have you written new? What are you pleased with? What are you bummed about?

I am optimistic about my latest nonsense, but also saying to myself, Crap, girl! You’re digging another hole for yourself. I see a place to insert some astrology, way prior to the point at which I thought I’d need to start reading my huge, historical (first published in the eighteenth century, I believe) definitive work. I’ve flipped through that monster, it’s dense, it’s a bit like reading Chaucer, trying to figure out what’s being said. But all I need for now is a good line or two that I can run with.

Also: after my husband’s stroke, our budget must reconfigure. I had planned to buy a full line edit of Sly. I’m having second thoughts on that now. Here’s what I’m going to do:

I work at a place lousy with editors. I’m going to post a help wanted sign in the break room, find someone to give me a line edit, piecemeal, of areas I am concerned about. I already spent nine hundred dollars on a developmental edit. At this point, all I can bring myself to pay for is general guidance that I can absorb and carry on with myself.

I look forward to Kris’ post on promotion. My big strategy is still the bumper stickers, and related stick-em-up materials. My sister in Tallahassee volunteers at a community theater, she can put up a poster there. A guy from my group house in Boston still lives up there. Maybe I can get him to roam the subway system, plastering stickers around. I have a brother with connections, he’s a well known figure in Asheville NC. I myself will tackle NYC, I’m an hour north.

A grinning cat head has to get a lot of attention. (This isn’t Sly. This is R. Crumb)

Whether anyone reads after the first page, que será, será.