Just because...
Yeah, baby...Thor.
There was not enough of this in this movie and there is not enough of it on the Internet:
And Sif's wearing way too many clothes, but still hot:
And there was a distinct lack of this:
Now for some random hotness:
Well, this is an appropriate card for a fantasy writer to pull. :)
In the Russian Tarot of St. Petersburg's Seven of Cups, the central figure is that of a serf observing cups overflowing with a wide array of fantastical objects: what might be imperial jewels; an unlikely dragon; the severed head of a despot, perhaps; the golden cupolas of an Orthodox cathedral; a viper ready to strike; a wreath of flowers; and a burst of fantastical stars floating off into the ether.
I think it's interesting to note (and you'll have to take my word for it, since you can only see it up close in these fabulously painted miniatures by Yuri Shakov) that his gaze is on the flowers: the essence of the Russian spirit, beauty from the land itself that a price cannot be put on, and something the poorest peasant might have for the taking. The serf seems least of all interested in the imperial jewels.
The general meaning of the Seven of Cups is about dreaming of what might be, and not focusing on what is. This isn't always a bad thing. Without our fantastical dreams, what would we writers be?
I think what the Russian Tarot of St. Petersburg's Seven of Cups is saying is that the wildly out-of-reach dreams and the dark and frightening fantasies are irrelevant. Each of the other cups contain something the serf can never attain, or need never worry about. He keeps his eyes on the one thing he knows is within his grasp, a creation he can take pleasure in and one he can cultivate to bring beauty and joy to others.
When I first arrived in St. Petersburg in 2006 for my summer study abroad, this lovely sight greeted me on the balcony of my room:
They were just a few simple flowers, but it was a touching gesture and made me feel instantly at home. In Russia, it's important to give a gift to someone when you visit, as well as when someone comes to visit you. The people we met there shared with us happily though they had little to give. When it was time to return to the States at the end of this enchanting trip, my roommate and I wanted to give something to our "khaziayka," Yelena Volfovna, to thank her for her hospitality. Andi and I had both given Yelena chocolates when we arrived, and she laughed and showed us the cupboard full of chocolates from other students she'd hosted; she set them out every night with tea before bed to try to get us to eat them so she wouldn't get fat.
We ended up buying her flowers for our thank-you gift, and we didn't have much money left by the end of the trip, so it was a very small bouquet (you can just barely see them in the bottom left in the picture, and you can also see the typical painting of flowers on the wall behind Yelena). Yet she was moved when we gave them to her, as if we'd brought her two dozen red roses.
The lesson of the Seven of Cups is something I needed a particular reminder of right now. Today I received the official ebook copy of The Devil's Garden, and while it ought to have made me jump for joy, instead I focused on the imperfections of the words that are now permanently set in type, and on the pieces of my dream that I haven't yet attained. I have to try to remember that it's just a little story I put down in words to entertain someone. It doesn't have to be perfect. It can't be perfect. I'm never going to have the imperial jewels of literary talent, nor do I need them. I just need to keep cultivating what I do have and enjoy sharing the simple pleasures of my gift.
So much more easily said than done.
Another Jane I admire posted on her blog some time back about the importance of professional headshots for authors. I bookmarked that post, and promised myself I'd get professional photos done one of these days. But I put it off as long as possible because I hate having my picture taken almost as much as I hate getting my hair cut. It always seems to change how I see myself, and makes me self-conscious about the way others see me. In short, it messes with my proprioception in a big way. (Yes, I'm sure I'm using that word incorrectly, but it's one of my favorite words to misuse.)
But I finally bit the bullet and suffered the indignity and angst of soul-stealing fancy-magic, because my most recent pictures were so old I was beginning to feel like a liar whenever I used one.
I chose the fabulous Patty Nason of Gåvaphoto to steal my soul this time, appropriately enough at the San Francisco Columbarium where I hope to leave my ashes one day in the distant future. (Look! There's dead people right next to me in the photo on the left!)
These are my favorites from the photo shoot, along with the new official author photo I've added to my bio page. Maybe these will make up for the lack of words on the blog last week. (I just knew saying I had a blog posting schedule out loud would derail the whole thing.)
Say what, now? Well, I have this deck, the Osho Zen Tarot...which I bought in St. Petersburg. It was the only Russian-language tarot deck that Dom Knigi carried, and I really wanted a Russian deck, so I bought it. But it's been nearly impossible to use. Not only are the cards different from the traditional tarot deck, but the commentary in the companion book is both Russian and zen. Even after I've translated to the best of my ability, I have to sit and stare at it and ponder what the heck it's trying to say. So...
Card of the day: Loneliness
(Odinochestvo)The level of Russian in this book is far beyond my ability, so I resort to Google Translate. It takes me quite a while to type my transliteration of the Russian text from the companion book into Google and try to get it to re-transliterate into Cyrillic, and then get the translation itself. Invariably, the translation comes out rather mangled. As near as I can figure, this card is about recognizing the difference between the negative state of feeling alone (loneliness) and the positive state of being alone with oneself (solitude).
Then it says this, the one paragraph I was able to get clearly:
When we don't find support from others in the truths that we feel deeply, we can either choose bitterness and isolation, or realize that our vision is strong enough to overcome the core human need for approval of family, friends, and colleagues.
Wow. This is totally for writers. Writing is a very solitary pursuit, and even when we do have supportive people in our lives, they can't totally get how immersed we become in a world of our own making—that drive to make the story as true as we can. So the Zen Tarot is telling us that it's up to us to believe in the story we're compelled to tell without expecting or relying on external validation. That's a really hard one for me, and it hits home with what I was thinking about in my last post: how to believe in the good stuff people say about my work as much as the bad. In the end, no one can tell me if I've told the right story. I have to believe in it whether anyone else does or not.
So it took me several hours to get this post out and it's no longer Friday, but there it is: your Friday fortune, a day late.
Lately I've been noticing a trend of mine when it comes to my writing: I believe every negative word someone says about it. I have no problem taking criticism; rejection notes and editing notes all ring true to me—unless it's something that really feels fundamentally wrong, like a rejection I got once saying Belphagor and Vasily's love story was a distraction that weakened The House of Arkhangel'sk. That kind of note I can look at objectively and realize the reader was simply the wrong reader for me. But if the criticism is that I didn't create strong enough goals, or a character's motivations aren't clear, or the writing isn't captivating enough, or a character is too passive, or any of those reasonable sounding, justifiable criticisms, I take them straight to heart. Because who am I to read such criticism and decide it doesn't apply to me? It seems like the height of arrogance for me to dismiss any of it, particularly if it's coming from a professional in the industry. They know their business. If they didn't love my story, it's because I failed.
Then there's praise. I've received it from critique partners and beta readers. I receive it in abundance from my wonderful agent. But I tend to think these people are a bit prejudiced. I mean, yes, they'll tell me when reading a draft if something doesn't work, but they like my work and I already know that going into it. Still, for the most part, I can accept that praise, though there is a point where I begin to dissociate from it. Sure, sure, I tell myself. They liked it. Maybe they even liked it a lot. But they know me and they know I need external validation to keep going. And if it's particularly high praise, I start to feel like I'd be a conceited jerk if I actually take it to heart.
And then there's praise from people who don't have a vested interest in boosting my ego. As much as I crave it, that really wigs me out. I recently received a blurb from one of my favorite writers that knocked my socks off. It didn't come out of the blue; I asked if she would consider reading the manuscript and giving it a blurb. Obviously, I was hoping she would like it and say nice things.
But here's the thing: I find myself cringing just posting that link. I'm not sure I can even complete this blog post. I don't think I have the right to believe that praise, let alone tell someone else about it.
Now, I'm not totally crazy. A more reasonable part of me is smacking the back of my head in frustration. Do I honestly think everyone who says anything positive about my writing is blowing smoke up my ass? Of course not. But who am I to read such praise and believe it applies to me?
Clearly, I have a strange relationship with my writing. It means everything to me, and I long to be good at it and to have others think so too. And at the same time I get physically ill at the thought of sharing my work with someone for the first time. The conversation between my loony personalities goes something like this:
Self 1: What if they hate it?
Self 2: Shut up. Why would they hate it? It's a good story!
Self 1: Oh, so now you're the arbiter of good fiction? You can't possibly know if it's any good. That's for them to say. And they'll probably hate it.
Self 3: Oh my God. I hate you both.
Yeah, I didn't say it was pretty.
Okay, writer friends: tell me I'm not alone. This is normal-crazy, right? Right?? Anyone? Beuller?
Last spring, while I was still writing up my ideas for The Demons' Daughter, Book 1 of the Queen of Hell trilogy, the main character Ola Vasilyevna suddenly informed me—very insistently—that this is what she looks like: This is Rumer Willis, daughter of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis. And it is also, as I have been told in no uncertain terms, Ola Vasilyevna of the House of Arkhangel'sk.
She has the most fascinating face.
The pictures I've chosen, of course, are Rumer with auburn hair, because my Ola, daughter of Vasily, is a fiery redhead.
For another glimpse of Ola, here's the opening scene from The Demons' Daughter in its current incarnation (note that this contains some spoilers for the events in the first trilogy, so if you hate that, look away, quick):
My father is a Seraph’s bastard. And I am his, born of the Queen of Heaven. Whether my mother loves him, I have never known. He is a member of her court—gotten on the wrong side of the blanket or not, his blood is angelic—but he was raised an orphan among the Fallen and the people see him as one still. His emotions are worn with as much restraint as the fire-red locks of his hair, and so it is no secret that he loves my mother in his way, yet his heart and soul belong to a demon named Belphagor.
While this picture isn't representative of the air of royalty Ola normally projects, it's one I particularly adore. I think Ola may have to escape her current predicament for a bit and have a brief romp in the modern-day world of Man wearing dark shades and a black leather jacket.
Searching for an image of my Hades, I came across this insanely androgynous beauty, model Andrej Pejic:
His androgynous look is so perfect, he almost doesn't look human. Instead he calls to mind Storm Constantine's Wraeththu.
Like Danila Polyakov and Bartek Borowiec, he's frequently photographed in deliberately feminine attire, makeup, and poses.
I am loving this trend in male modeling. :D
I decided to try a different deck tonight from my usual favorite, so I chose The Mythic Tarot. Strangely enough, I pulled the same card as my first Friday Fortune two weeks ago. Unlike the Russian Tarot of St. Petersburg, however, the Star of The Mythic Tarot augurs the usual interpretation of "hope," but through this deck's unique association with Greek myth, it has a bit of a twist.
The Mythic Tarot's Star depicts Pandora unleashing the Spites upon mankind. Like Eve, Pandora is the creation of a vain, paternal god, and like Eve, she is blamed for all the miseries of the world because she just can't obey the authority of the man to whom she's given as a bride when he gives her a simple order.
Does this bug anyone else but me? I choose to interpret the stories of Eve and Pandora a bit differently. I think it's pretty clear that the miseries of the world were there all along, otherwise women would not be the pawns and property in these stories of the battles between petty gods and foolish men.
Instead what these much maligned women represent is a refusal to "keep one's place" and an insistence on independence and the right to self determination no matter the consequences. Thinking for oneself is bound to include some mistakes along the way; if you never take a chance on opening the box of potential and possibilities and facing the mistakes and failures that might be part and parcel of the journey, you risk never seeing your brightest hopes realized.
As writers, we have to allow ourselves the bad first drafts, the darlings we may later have to murder as part of the process of perfecting our craft, the queries and submissions that will amass a pile of crushing rejections. Because only in allowing ourselves those mistakes will we be able to experience the joy and beauty of reaching for that star and discovering worlds we never dreamed of along the way.
So go ahead, open that box, eat that apple, and to hell with any critical, disapproving voice that tells you you're being foolish to pursue your dream. There's enough misery in life already without keeping hope buried and playing it safe.
I just realized Tuesday was exactly one year from my first post on this blog. I was sitting down to talk about gardening today, and remembered my first post had been about gardening. And what do you know? I started gardening almost the same day last year. It was the end of a long saga of building painting and deck rebuilding on the part of my landlady, wherein I ended up with my "Solomon's step":
I also ended up with a brand new deck I was told I could not water plants on lest the wood rot. San Francisco gets enough moisture from fog and rain that I thought I'd just let things go and see what happened. They did okay for awhile. Then my autumn depression set in and I stopped going outside and everything died.
A couple of weeks ago I was surprised to see bright orange flowers peeking through my back fence and I went out to find that one of the planters I'd left out behind the fence to toss out had spontaneously sprouted a lovely crop of nasturtiums. So I brought that one back onto the deck and enjoyed the lovely color among all the dead things. Then a couple of days ago I spotted more nasturtiums growing in two additional planters that had been full of weeds. I love it when, as Jeff Goldblum's character said in Jurassic Park, "life finds a way."
Today I finally got the yen to go out and deal with the weeds and see if there was anything to salvage. Most of my succulents are actually thriving. My Betty Boop roses are beyond dead. :( But my little "unintentional bonsai" fig tree is still struggling along and sweet alyssum has popped up in several of the pots. I spent an hour weeding, and pruning down the rosebush in hopes that maybe there's a tiny bit of dormant life in the roots, and then watered everything.
I'd forgotten how much I love spending time in the garden, even if it's just weeding. It's a little like editing, finding all the useless things sprouting among the good and tidying it all up so the good stuff can thrive. You're still there engaging with the creation you love even if you're not actively growing it at the moment. And sometimes you'll find unexpected surprises, things you'd forgotten or have a new appreciation for. Maybe something you thought wasn't going to work out turns out to be a lovely blossom.
This weekend I'm planning an outing to a plant nursery to get some petunias and lavender and mint, little things I can plant around in the small pots on the deck to give it some color, and then I'm going to look through their roses and flowering vines and see what strikes my fancy. I'm hoping for a nice jasmine plant, and maybe I'll give the bougainvillea another shot (haven't had much luck with them, but I love the profusion of bright pinks and purples and crimsons I see in other people's gardens and can't quite give up on them). This part will be more like the excitement of starting a new story, choosing the elements that will be in it and imagining how they're all going to fit together.
And then along with those, I'll go through my seed packets and see what I've got. Then the real fun begins: putting it all together and watching it grow. At that stage it's "first draft" and I don't have to worry yet about the weeds that will invariably crop up among the things I meant to plant or the pests I'm going to have to deal with down the line when the garden is in full bloom. It's just me and the fertile earth.
Lately I've been wondering how much boffing is too much boffing for traditional fantasy. Because right now my WIP seems to need a cold shower.
I've always had a bit here and a bit there in everything I write, but really, I'm not writing erotic fantasy. I may even have erred on the side of caution in some of my books for fear of bringing too much sparkly-girldom into my fantasy, because heaven forfend my future fans upset the status quo at sf/f cons by having, you know, vaginas.
And yet even as romantic vampires are supposedly ruining conventions all across America, we have columnists like Ginia Bellafante in her recent review of HBO's Game of Thrones telling us no self-respecting woman could possibly enjoy traditional fantasy, and that if we like it it's because it's been "sexed up" and we ren-faire losers are too stupid to notice we're being fed pablum to keep the boys happy.
Meanwhile, self-hating-woman columnist Liz-something of the Daily Mail tells all of us stupid boorish sex-positive feminists that women pretty much hate sex and only do it to get a man to take care of us. So really, HBO can't possibly be engaged in imaginary sexing-up of George R.R. Martin's writing to get women to watch, cuz we're all frigid. (Welcome to somewhere in an orange and avocado polyester jumpsuit in 1972, and grab yourself a valium and a vodka tonic because the last 40 years were all in your head.)
It all has me a little confused. Do I dance around the sex to avoid being accused of (gasp!) writing for women readers or do I sex it up for the hordes of Lifetime watchers I might be able to lure into the genre?
The problem is, I keep doing this silly little thing where I write what I enjoy reading. And right now in The Palace of Wisdom, all of my characters are going at it like they're at a South of Market sex club in San Francisco on a Saturday night.
But maybe it's okay, because Jacqueline Carey has a fabulous anal scene in Kushiel's Justice. Whether it's because women writers and readers are tarnishing fantasy's good name or not, it looks like the sex kitten is out of the bag.
And now as bonus post-script eye candy, and apropos of nothing, Maroon 5's Adam Levine seems to have a little something Belphagorian going on:
Thanks to the lovely ladies at Cup o' Porn for turning me on to this yumminess. ;)
Last summer while working on rewrites for The House of Arkhangel'sk, I briefly veered off onto a storyline where Anazakia meets a rusalka before I realized it had nothing to do with the story. I was sad about it, because I really liked my rusalka Lyudmila, but she had to go. Today Lyudmila surprised me by reappearing in the middle of The Palace of Wisdom. She has none of the sassy dialogue of her first appearance, but wow, does she do a number on Vasily's head.
If you aren't familiar with rusalki, here's what Wikipedia has to say about them:
According to most traditions, the rusalki were fish-women, who lived at the bottom of rivers. In the middle of the night, they would walk out to the bank and dance in meadows. If they saw handsome men, they would fascinate them with songs and dancing, mesmerize them, then lead the man away to the river floor to his death.
...associated with the "unclean force" [nechysta syla]... The ghostly version is the soul of a young woman who had died in or near a river or a lake and came to haunt that waterway. This undead rusalka is not invariably malevolent, and will be allowed to die in peace if her death is avenged.
Rusalki are known in other traditions as sirens, mermaids, and nymphs. Here are some of my favorite images of rusalki I found while surfing about:
Update: I should learn to do my research before hitting "post." And it should have been obvious to me that Viktor Nizovtsev's paintings were not in the public domain. D'oh. He's my age. :) So as lovely as those were, I had to remove them. (You can see my favorite, "Mermaid With Lanterns" on the Fox Hall Gallery website.) But I found another rusalka I adore:
In Slavic mythology, a rusalka (plural: rusalki or rusalky) was a female ghost, water nymph, succubus or mermaid-like demon that dwelled in a waterway.
According to most traditions, the rusalki were fish-women, who lived at the bottom of rivers. In the middle of the night, they would walk out to the bank and dance in meadows. If they saw handsome men, they would fascinate them with songs and dancing, mesmerize them, then lead the man away to the river floor to his death.
I almost forgot my new weekly feature. The day is almost over, but the card I ended up drawing is the sort of card that's best to contemplate overnight anyway.
It's interesting that I chose this card just now. I just finished watching this week's episode of Supernatural, which featured a phoenix. And here on the Russian Tarot of St. Petersburg's Hanged Man, the phoenix (or Firebird) is featured prominently, sitting atop the apple tree from which the hanged man is suspended. (And I just got done complaining on Twitter about how the writers of Supernatural used the phrase "hung by the neck until dead" in that episode, which is a pet peeve of mine. It should be "hanged.")
I love this kind of odd little synchronicity.
The traditional meaning of the card is the suspension of will, a period of inactivity in which the querent has no choice but to remain still and contemplate where she is on her path. As the Russian Tarot of St. Petersburg companion book puts it in one of my favorite phrases: it's the dark night of the soul, a period of doubt that precedes profound change.
The phoenix, too, is a symbol of profound change, experiencing the dark night of the soul in as profound a manner as possible: the total destruction of the self. But it also promises a glorious renewal, the phoenix rising from the ashes.
The other addition to this card, the apple tree, is a reference to the Russian folk tales of the Firebird in which a tsar's son proves himself to his father by watching over the orchard to catch the creature devouring his father's apples. Ivan Tsarevich faces a literal dark night, but stays faithfully on watch, rewarded by plucking a feather from the Firebird that ultimately allows him to defeat an evil sorcerer. The apples are at once a Christian symbol (the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil from which Eve ate) and a pagan symbol of the goddess, representative of Kore descending into Hades.
In another bit of synchronicity, the Firebird, or Zhar-Ptitsa, is a key element in the books I'm writing now in the Queen of Hell trilogy. This mythical creature becomes a symbol of my fiery heroine, Ola. Ola is my version of Kore.
I can only say what the card represents for me. Each person has to experience the dark night of the soul for herself, and as writers we may have many such nights. We certainly have to give them to our characters. But I love that this spoke to me so personally about where I am at this moment. It's this kind of synchronicity that makes me wonder about connections and the nature of reality. It's very Philip K. Dick.
I have a confession to make. One that will shock you, I know: I’m not that into blogging. (I've been making an attempt to blog on a more regular basis, but who knows how long that will last.) I spend a little more time on Facebook than I do here, but not much. Mostly, you’ll find me on Twitter, but even then, compared to most of the Twitterati, I’m barely there. My non-writer friends who don’t use Twitter for conversations are probably laughing at that, but it’s true. I tweet far less than any writer I know. I suppose it’s no surprise I should be a social networking wallflower since I’m even more so in person. It’s not that I don’t like spending time with friends, it’s just that it seems to take a gargantuan effort for me to engage with anyone. The very idea of “hanging out” can exhaust me, let alone the prospect of a party or club. The most I can manage is a quiet weekly tea with a very small group, and even that I sometimes have to force myself to do because of all the other people I might incidentally have to interact with along the way.
So when it comes to socializing for an actual purpose—the whole “building a platform,” networking, and marketing shebang—you might as well tell me to get a clipboard and go down the street and schmooze with the other “do you have a moment to sign this” clipboard people who frequent my neighborhood. (Confession #2: When I see the clipboard people, I sometimes go blocks out of my way to avoid them, no matter how worthy the cause.)
Ultimately, I have my doubts being social actually sells books. Maybe I’ll feel differently once my book is for sale, but I know I personally don’t buy books because the author blogs and tweets. After I buy a book and fall in love with it I might go looking for the author’s blog because I want to know more about them, find out what they’re working on now and when the next one’s coming out, and maybe where I can meet them at a local book signing.
Do I buy books because I already know the authors through social media? Sure, if it’s something I’m interested in. But even if every single person following me on Twitter bought my book, while I’d be flattered and humbled and pleased as punch, it wouldn’t make much of a dent in the numbers publishers look at (and sadly, not even in my pocketbook.) Most people following me on Twitter don’t even read my blog. In all honesty, outside the Robert Downey, Jr. Effect, I get about three hits every time I post an entry, even after tweeting it from both my author and personal accounts and with an auto-post on Facebook.
I read a blog this morning from an author whose recent post on self-publishing got over 2,500 hits and ended up getting a mention in Jane Friedman’s weekly round-up of the Best Tweets for Writers. Agent-mate Roni Loren was also recently featured on Jane’s Best and regularly gets multiple retweets and comments—and deservedly so. But I can tell you now I’ll never end up on that list, because I don’t write the kinds of posts that merit such attention. I considered it early on and decided I simply can’t give advice—not on writing, not on querying, and certainly not on publishing. I feel profoundly uncomfortable doing so when there's so much advice out there from so many people better equipped to give it.
What I do instead is more like an extended Twitter feed. I post pictures that inspire my writing, I talk about oddities I’m researching (last night it was the distance across the English Channel and how long it takes to swim it), and every once in a while I share the vagaries of my writing habits, like using the tarot to solve plot problems or taking a shower to talk to my muse. I suppose it’s as much a stream-of-consciousness babble as anything else. But, hey, that’s who I am. If you’re one of the “lucky” few I sometimes see socially, you’re probably used to it. ;)
My point (er, really, I do have one) is that in the end, I wonder if it matters. There’s so much buzz in the social mediaverse that it begins to blur together. I feel the same way at an office party with all the simultaneous conversations going on and the slowly rising voices as each person attempts to be heard above the rest: I don’t hear anything at all but noise and I quickly find an excuse to get out. Maybe everyone else is able to tune out the conversations they aren’t following and focus on the ones that interest them. And maybe those are the same conversations that build true buzz as more and more people at the party gather around to see what’s so interesting. Either way, those are conversations I’ll rarely be in on, as speaker or listener. Most of the time, I’ll just be talking to myself. And that’s okay.
Since I posted his picture on Looking for Belphagor, Robert Downey, Jr. has been responsible for the lion's share of keyword search traffic leading to this blog. Fully 78% of keyword searches are now robert downey jr. Let's see; what other keywords are leading people here?
Another 13% include Robert Downey Jr., Robert Downey, Jr., robert downey, robert downey junior (how cute; they spelled it out), downey, Robert Downey Jr. 2011, and robert downey jr 2011. An additional 4% end up here by typing роберт дауни and роберт дауни мл. (Guess what they spell in Cyrillic?) That's 95% of all keyword searches devoted to RDJ. Oh, wait; there's one more: robert downey site:http://www.janekindred.com. (Huh?) So, 96%.
What's bringing the other 4%? Bartek Borowiec, santi Waine, mateus verdelho interview, two searches for tattoos, and...wait! Look! Two instances of demon porn! One of which includes my name!
That clinches it. I obviously need to start writing demon porn starring Robert Downey, Jr. Do you think he'd mind?
One of the fun things about being a writer is the strange places research can take you. In editing a single page, I may fact-check anything from the name of a district in St. Petersburg to death rattles to whether bodies make noise after death. Yes, you read that correctly: whether bodies make noise after death. Google is my friend. I typed it right in there, and I came up with this:
Pushing 50 in the Death Car, Life's Blood: Dead Bodies Make Noises
Darn; I so wanted to embed that, but it said no. Anyway, it's a series of videos by an embalmer about what happens with our bodies after we die. If you're squeamish, don't worry, this particular video doesn't contain any dead bodies. But really, if you're squeamish you probably shouldn't be here, because it's only going to get worse. ;)
After learning about postmortem exhalations, I looked up "death rattle" and found this interesting page:
Pulmonary Breath Sounds: Actual recordings of various kinds of breathing, from normal to pathological.
What started all this? I wanted to describe a character's moan as being somehow like a sound from a corpse...or something well on its way to being a corpse. I ended up going with "stridor," the word I'd started out with as my placeholder. It may have been a complete circle, but as always it was a fascinating trip.
Like Lisa in Weird Science, I often find myself asking my characters, So, what would you little maniacs like to do first?
*Hey, look, another picture of Robert Downey, Jr., you little maniacs. (71% of the traffic on my blog is now from people looking for his picture. But I'm guessing they weren't looking for that one.) Or this one:
OMG, the 80s hair!
Ooh. I just found my young Belphagor:
Isn't he sweet? Of course, he should have dark brown eyes, and young Belphagor had no tattoos, until...oh, right. You have to read the second trilogy to find that out. Sorry for the horrible tease. (notsorry)
To make up for it, here's a brief excerpt from young Belphagor's introduction to the world of Man:
“His skin is as smooth as a girl’s.” The angel watched him from the low light through the sheer-curtained window.
So that was how it was. On Earth as it is in Heaven. He had paid for his supper in Raqia in much the same way on more than one occasion. Belphagor gave them a winsome smile. He was not above playing whatever part was required to the hilt.
And because I just happened to have some spare nekkid tattooed people "lying about," I thought I'd post a few bits of candy for everyone:
Personally, I don't think he's nearly as hot as Mateo, but...OMG...I'm typing right under his groin!
Seriously, though, I prefer this one:
And in keeping with the theme of my ume tattoo, this one's not too hard on the eyes either:
But this one is my favorite:
Sigh. Tattooed girls in love.
You may thank me now.
On Wednesday, I blogged over on Here Be Magic about using the tarot for plotting. It got me thinking it might be fun to feature a weekly tarot post here, so I've pulled one card for the day from the Russian Tarot of St. Petersburg.
Traditionally the card of hope, in the Russian Tarot of St. Petersburg there are additional elements that refer to the continuity of the cycle of rebirth of the soul (the empty clothes on the bank, the butterfly), and triumph over a seemingly hopeless situation (the Napoleonic army tents in the background). In this context, hope becomes the certainty of renewal. As Napoleon wrote of the Russians after his failed attempt to conquer them, "What savage determination! What a people! What a people!" Yes, Russians would rather burn their own cities to the ground than submit to a foreign invasion, no matter how relentless. Talk about murdering your darlings.
The Star follows the upheaval of The Tower in the tarot hierarchy. The message for today, then, is that though things may have been all atumble yesterday—maybe you thought that synopsis was going to be the death of you, or you fell in a plot hole so deep you couldn't see light—we've managed to survive the breakdown of everything we thought was important. Today we have a new vision of reality and a fresh start. We pour our souls into our writing, so let the words flow, and they'll return as something new that wouldn't have become clear without The Tower's disruption.
Write with savage determination.
So an interesting thing developed while I was writing the Queen of Heaven series. The beginning of The House of Arkhangel'sk opens on a card game. It was one of the first images I had of this world: a den of "iniquity" in heaven, where an angel of the ruling House of Arkhangel'sk, disguised as a local in heaven's ghetto, played cards with a demon. I thought my demons should have a deck of cards more suited to heaven than earth, so I invented one that used the angelic orders in four suits for the cardinal elements, and called the game "wingcasting." (Don't ask me where the name came from. It's lost in the primordial soup of the book's beginnings. All I remember is that I was looking for Victorian card games, and something put this combination of words into my head, and it stuck.)
The game is played much like poker, but to make it more complicated, I added a twelve-sided die with a different animal representing one of the four cardinal elements on each face. The play of each hand is preceded by a cast of the die, giving one's opponent the opportunity to call out a symbol before it lands. If that symbol appears on the face, the casting player must surrender a card. If it doesn't, the opponent must increase his bet to continue to play.
This was all well and good, and deliciously impossible to win. My naughty demon Belphagor became a master player—through both skill and tricks—and beat the pants off my little angel. (Or rather, beat the pants onto her...well, you'll have to read it.)
Little did I know, there were other demons hanging around the slums of Raqia who used the cards for something else entirely. One demon in particular likes to keep things from me until she springs them on me at the last minute out of the blue, and she was busy turning this harmless little deck of cards into a much more useful tool. Thus the divination system called the Chora (for the choirs of angels depicted on the cards) was born. More than just a device for fortune-telling, it became a means of communicating between the spheres, when such practicalities as the Internet and cell phones could not be had in my late-Victorian Heaven.
Why am I telling you all this? Heavens, I don't know. You're the one who came to the blog; don't blame it on me. What do you want, pictures of half-naked tattooed men every day? Well...okay, then!
Oh, and I'll be blogging over at Here Be Magic tomorrow about plotting with the tarot.
Belphagor turns out to be much harder to find than Vasily...and I never thought I'd find Vasily. Sigh. But here's a model who has a certain Belphagorian look to him:
Is that a gun in his pocket, or...?
And here's another one; no tattoos, unfortunately, but he has a little something of Belphagor in the eyes. Interestingly, both of these models are Brazilian. Is Belphagor Brazilian? Who knew?
But if I could find a 30something, tattooed, cigar-smoking, pierced Robert Downey, Jr., he'd be perfect.
Whaddya think? Can you see any of these guys spanking Vasily? Ah, well. The search continues.
Jane Kindred is the author of the Harlequin Nocturne series Sisters in Sin and of epic fantasy series The House of Arkhangel’sk, Demons of Elysium, and Looking Glass Gods. She spent her formative years ruining her eyes reading romance novels in the Tucson sun and watching Star Trek marathons in the dark. She now writes to the sound of San Francisco foghorns while her cat slowly but surely edges her off the side of the bed.
