The Three-Ring Night Circus

Falling so in love with The Night Circus means that it deserves to be a hardcover addition to my library. I dropped the hint for my birthday in 2014 and no one picked it up. Then I forgot about it until Christmas, when I re-read the paperback. I dropped the hardcover hint again and, again, no one picked it up. I suspect this was because my presents had already been procured. I got some neat books in lieu and forgot once more about TNC in hardcover.

Earlier this year, I searched online and discovered that new hardcovers no longer exist. Used ones, however, are available from various sellers in various conditions for various prices. I didn’t order one because online options can be boggling and I still have my paperback. A hardcover is a nice to have, but certainly not mandatory.

My tea fairy, Treena, usually coordinates her birthday/Christmas prezzie shopping with Ter; they compare notes and such to ensure that no duplications occur. Only this year, they didn’t consult on my birthday until it was too late. Each of them had remembered my request, and each of them had gone ahead on the assumption that the other would never think of it. Once they consulted, they realized that, uh oh, a duplication was in progress. Ter’s had already arrived when Treena came by for tea—a celebration which included my acquiring season three of Orphan Black, thanks to Treena, who shares my hope that one day Ter will become equally addicted to the series and we can all be addicts together. Ter certainly knows the series’ premise, well enough to coin a clone joke when referring to the duplicate prezzie gaffe. She and Treena decided to give me both “clones” of the gift and let me choose which one to keep.

Meanwhile, bearing in mind that I had no idea what they were up to, I quietly decided to pursue my own hardcover edition of TNC. There’s a great used bookshop on SSI called Black Sheep Books, and if there was a hardcover edition to be had, surely it would be had there. Ter dropped me after lunch one day and I went over the store from floor to ceiling in search of my treasure.

No luck.

No luck at Salt Spring Books, either—though I did score a copy of Plague by CC Humphreys (murder and mayhem in Restoration England).

When we got home, Treena’s clone had arrived, so she and Ter contrived to present me with two wrapped packages on Sunday afternoon. I was a little concerned about them being wrapped. Since they were the same item, where was the element of surprise on the second package? Oh, the thing about clones, I was reminded, is that they aren’t exactly identical.

True enough. The book pictured on the right is the North American release, courtesy of Ter, and the book on the left is the UK release, by way of Treena. They’re each so beautiful that I’m keeping them both.

And I’m keeping the books, too.

Fried Egg Friday

My all-time favourite sandwich has to be fried egg. From the time I was a kid, I’ve loved them: semi-runny yolks, whites crispy-fried in bacon fat, and thick mayo on good white bread. Bond Bond’s bakery here in Victoria makes the perfect white bread, the best I ever tasted, which elevated the relatively simple fried egg sangie to something celestial. In my glutenous glory days, my bi-weekly Friday off regularly featured a killer fried egg sandwich, sometimes with potato chips to poke in the yolk. Culinary heaven.

Alas, those days are gone. I tried it with GF bread and promptly abandoned the notion of creating a reasonable facsimile. Honestly, there are times when substitutes are just not acceptable. Gluten free bread is smaller, far more dense, a lot more fragile, and quite frankly not that great unless it’s toasted first. Toasted, it assumes a similarly crispy-crusty texture and stability that emulates “real” toast well enough to make it an occasional treat. What I can’t figure out, however, is why peanut butter just sits on the surface like a sticky puddle of goo rather than sinking into what tiny pores exist. If my complexion was as smooth as a slice of GF toast, I wouldn’t need makeup.

It took me more than a year to find a solution to the fried egg dilemma, a solution that existed long before I went gluten free though I didn’t see it at the time:

The next best thing to the perfect fried egg sandwich is a tiger’s eye – white bread with a hole cut in the center, fried in bacon fat with an egg cracked into the middle. Since GF bread toasts up so well, logic suggests that it will fry up equally so, yes?

Yes! Eureka, it’s not the monarch of all sandwiches, but it’ll do.

Today is my last day of solo vacation. I have a week remaining, but Ter is also on vacation starting tomorrow, and while we won’t be living in each other’s pockets the whole time, my run of the house will require, well, clothing. I got the first scene of the new story done yesterday, plan to write more today, plus catch two more episodes of Orphan Black … which may or may not have inspired the theme for said new story. It’s not about clones, but there is a theory out there that everyone has a double. If that’s so, says I, why not more than one, and do they all exist in this dimension?

Enquiring minds want to know … but can certainly wait until after lunch.

Guns and the F-Bomb

That was Rob Thurman’s answer when she was asked why she chose the urban fantasy genre for her novels. “Guns and the f-bomb,” she said. She loves guns, and UF allows for flagrant cursing which, if your hero is consistently targeted by the same monsters he’s been hired to kill, is a justifiable offense.

I don’t know much about guns—my nephew is my go-to guy when I need weapons advice—but I learned how to cuss in earnest while working the night shift at a local radio station twentysome years ago. That said, my desire to write within the genre has more to do with bending the rules than unleashing my inner foul-mouthed schnook. It’s a place where I can explore alternate realities and meet wondrous characters who aren’t human, yet who face similarly human dilemmas.

My plan today was to walk straight home from the village after Ter dropped me off, getting my flânerie in early and snapping a few pictures on the way. No Asian Mist, no journaling; just a walk in the sun while I sorted the next scene in Calista’s story.

Problem is and as usual, another story is surfacing. It’s one that I’ve glimpsed in hints like shadows in a dark corner but haven’t been able to see full-on. Some details have begun to present themselves, so I grabbed my scribbly journal and a fiver, then sat at Moka House to purge my head of the voices. (The drink in the pic is an apple pie carmello and, no, I won’t be doing one again. Too sweet.)

I got a bunch of stuff on paper, including the lyrics to a Durannie B-side called Secret Oktober because the song has long intrigued me and I think may have inspired some structure for this tale. I’ve got two characters, a premise, and a beginning—what comes afterward is still in the dark. As with most of my stories, it will develop as it’s written and that’s okay. I watched an interview with the creators of Orphan Black—you’d think a story about clones would have started as a story about clones, but it didn’t. One guy said to the other, “What if you saw your identical twin just before he stepped in front of a train?” Now they’re two seasons in and a third has been ordered … but I digress.

The opening scene of this latest is so vivid in my mind that it has to be written before I can do anything more with anyone else, so that’s my plan for the morning. Two more episodes of OB and some domestic stuff is on tap for the afternoon, and it’s already 9:30 so I’d better get it in gear.

Who has time for a day job???

Out of Office

“I am out of the office until Monday, September 8, 2014. Neither email nor voice mail is being monitored, so if you want me, you’re SOL …”

As of yesterday at 4:30, I am on vacation, semi-regularly monitoring my home email, and still running phone calls through the machine to avoid those pesky (why do we pay for an unlisted number?) telemarketers. My grand plan is to get very well acquainted with my recently acquired keyboard – the one with a working “B”. I started yet another story last weekend, this one about … well, let’s just say that all the work I did a decade ago seems to be relevant to stories I’m inspired to write now. “Black in Back” is likely to get some attention into the bargain; it certainly hasn’t fallen off the radar, but this new one is, as are most new things, shinier and therefore of more interest at present.

Speaking of which, I’ve got season two of Orphan Black scheduled into lunchtimes next week and the latest in the Leandros bromance to finish – I’m almost halfway through Downfall and it’s painful to tear myself away for things like work, food, and sleep. I was telling Ter this morning how volume nine has introduced some very cool points that tie in with our ongoing Philosophy Quest, things at which a lot of urban fantasy fans may roll their eyes, but with which I am completely on board. Multiple lives figure prominently, of course, and a character who has run the gamut with Cal and Niko throughout the series is sharing the narrative with our hero. I was initially lukewarm at the prospect of the world’s biggest braggart taking the wheel, but he’s turned out to be more sympathetic than I thought. And Cal … what can I say about Cal? I’m scared to death for him, more scared than he is – or claims to be; I’m fairly sure he’s more afraid than he dares let on, but his rage is absolutely on target.

If I haven’t said it a hundred times before, I—love—this—guy.

As for Orphan Black, wow, who knew? Apparently I did; I recall my ears pricking at trailers when the first season ran on Showcase, but I couldn’t find it on the schedule so let it fall by the wayside. I caught the first season on DVD last month; it’s gratifying when my instinct for unique and brilliantly-done TV/movies/books proves to be bang-on. I am now as deeply hooked by Sara Manning’s ongoing adventures as I am by Cal and Niko’s. Lemme tell you, with competition this fierce, the “real world” has got a lot of catching up to do.

Maybe without me in it for a couple of weeks, it’ll try harder to keep me engaged when I’m forced back into it.