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The attack scene? I'm nearly 10K words into a commedia dell'arte. Well, maybe. It can't decide whether it's angsty romance or romantic comedy. So far though, I'm juggling a neighborhood in a made-up city (is it the same city as Bella and Chain live in? But there's no fantasy element in this, unless you count the initial sex scene): librarian procedures (which I have to check at some point with the librarian I know from Emma's band days): jokes about cladistics, art gallery stuff, and philosophizing about romance novels.
Yes. Jokes about cladistics. Don't ask. It's Frank's fault. I wanted a conversation about plants, and when I checked with Frank about just what cladistics entails, he said, "Just remember, according to cladistics, you're a tree shrew," and from there, it all fell into place.
I seem to write casts of thousands, though. I have, so far:
1. My protagonist (the unsuitable lover, Our Guy)
2.His high school ex, and high school ex best friend, who have been together ever since the high school breakup, which involved some callow bad behavior on the part of Our Guy -- really bad, not just cheating
3. Our Guy's college ex
4. Our Guy's college ex's friend, who engineered the breakup between Our Guy and the college ex, and somehow managed to stay friends with the college ex (well, I know how. The ex is much more forgiving than Our Guy knows, because Our Guy took the ex literally when he said he never wanted to be in the same room with him again)
5. Another friend of the college ex
6. The future lover
7. The future lover's uncle and owner of the gallery where the future lover works
8. The current best friend, who is also Our Guy's immediate supervisor at the library
9 and 10. Two other library staff
11. -- possibly a cameo only -- a library patron who reads a lot of romances and explains the concept of the unsuitable lover to Our Guy.
Which means, roughly, I have introduced a new character every thousand words.
On another front --
I don't suppose I've ever gone into Every Other Tuesday. This is the day when the nice fellow and Frank jointly host a Shadowrun game in our livingroom. The livingroom is the size of some people's bathrooms. It's also the day MC, our outside homeless guy, comes over for dinner and reassurance. I cook dinner, therefore, for up to ten people on that night. Before you get up in my nose about sex rolkes, remember that I share the trait of cooking-as-soothing avocation with my father and my brother. What's not soothing about it is that it's like one of those logic puzzles in the crossword books, where you make a giant grid and eliminate possibilities until you know the first and last names, ages, destinations, and lunchbox designs and contents of the passengers of the bullet train, along with the colors of their umbrellas and the purpose of their trips. This is because we live in the Land of Dietary Restrictions. Consider:
§ Frank can eat no seafood or eggs. He has reason to think he's allergic to invertebrates, and he just doesn't like fish. He can eat eggs that are part of a whole, though.
§ Anton can eat no poultry or "tree nuts" (which is a culinary category,not a botanical one, but he's afraid to test its real parameters. It does not seem to include pine nuts). He has been told these foods will exacerbate herpes.
§ Tom can eat nothing spicy. He's from Chicago.
§ MC can eat no pork. It's his nod towards being Jewish.
§ Brian won't eat anything that doesn't share a plate with a large amount of meat. He's -- well, he's Brian.
§ Zac has to eat ten times his body weight in high-quality food every 24 hours. He's an athlete.
§ I don't like cooking large slabs of meat, usually. And I won't deepfry anything except at Hannukkah.
Well, this is the only time of year you can buy brisket anymore -- the stores insist that corned beef is St. Patrick's Day food -- and I love brisket. I like the way the meat forms into these D'Arcy Thompson growth-and-form almost-hexagonal-in-cross-section strings. Like the Devil's Postpile. So I made the biggest lump of corned beef I could find, and too many potatoes, and not enough carrots, and the biggest cabbage I could find which wasn't big enough, and a bowl of peas with parsley and green onions and butter. And because I was clever I managed to squirrel some away so we could have corned beef hash with an egg on it with Midwestern "chili sauce" (lumpy tomato catsup).
Tomorrow we're taking Gloria from the hospital to the nursing home, and thence, supposedly, home, when she's stronger. She's less confused,but that leaves a lot of room for confusion.
And:
My ceanothus is the most beautiful thing in the whole wide world. I'll get pictures sometime soon and show you.
Orchestra Baobab is not the group that did the insane Spanish-language rant about eating regional delicacies. I am sure of that. But they sure are fine.
Yes. Jokes about cladistics. Don't ask. It's Frank's fault. I wanted a conversation about plants, and when I checked with Frank about just what cladistics entails, he said, "Just remember, according to cladistics, you're a tree shrew," and from there, it all fell into place.
I seem to write casts of thousands, though. I have, so far:
1. My protagonist (the unsuitable lover, Our Guy)
2.His high school ex, and high school ex best friend, who have been together ever since the high school breakup, which involved some callow bad behavior on the part of Our Guy -- really bad, not just cheating
3. Our Guy's college ex
4. Our Guy's college ex's friend, who engineered the breakup between Our Guy and the college ex, and somehow managed to stay friends with the college ex (well, I know how. The ex is much more forgiving than Our Guy knows, because Our Guy took the ex literally when he said he never wanted to be in the same room with him again)
5. Another friend of the college ex
6. The future lover
7. The future lover's uncle and owner of the gallery where the future lover works
8. The current best friend, who is also Our Guy's immediate supervisor at the library
9 and 10. Two other library staff
11. -- possibly a cameo only -- a library patron who reads a lot of romances and explains the concept of the unsuitable lover to Our Guy.
Which means, roughly, I have introduced a new character every thousand words.
On another front --
I don't suppose I've ever gone into Every Other Tuesday. This is the day when the nice fellow and Frank jointly host a Shadowrun game in our livingroom. The livingroom is the size of some people's bathrooms. It's also the day MC, our outside homeless guy, comes over for dinner and reassurance. I cook dinner, therefore, for up to ten people on that night. Before you get up in my nose about sex rolkes, remember that I share the trait of cooking-as-soothing avocation with my father and my brother. What's not soothing about it is that it's like one of those logic puzzles in the crossword books, where you make a giant grid and eliminate possibilities until you know the first and last names, ages, destinations, and lunchbox designs and contents of the passengers of the bullet train, along with the colors of their umbrellas and the purpose of their trips. This is because we live in the Land of Dietary Restrictions. Consider:
§ Frank can eat no seafood or eggs. He has reason to think he's allergic to invertebrates, and he just doesn't like fish. He can eat eggs that are part of a whole, though.
§ Anton can eat no poultry or "tree nuts" (which is a culinary category,not a botanical one, but he's afraid to test its real parameters. It does not seem to include pine nuts). He has been told these foods will exacerbate herpes.
§ Tom can eat nothing spicy. He's from Chicago.
§ MC can eat no pork. It's his nod towards being Jewish.
§ Brian won't eat anything that doesn't share a plate with a large amount of meat. He's -- well, he's Brian.
§ Zac has to eat ten times his body weight in high-quality food every 24 hours. He's an athlete.
§ I don't like cooking large slabs of meat, usually. And I won't deepfry anything except at Hannukkah.
Well, this is the only time of year you can buy brisket anymore -- the stores insist that corned beef is St. Patrick's Day food -- and I love brisket. I like the way the meat forms into these D'Arcy Thompson growth-and-form almost-hexagonal-in-cross-section strings. Like the Devil's Postpile. So I made the biggest lump of corned beef I could find, and too many potatoes, and not enough carrots, and the biggest cabbage I could find which wasn't big enough, and a bowl of peas with parsley and green onions and butter. And because I was clever I managed to squirrel some away so we could have corned beef hash with an egg on it with Midwestern "chili sauce" (lumpy tomato catsup).
Tomorrow we're taking Gloria from the hospital to the nursing home, and thence, supposedly, home, when she's stronger. She's less confused,but that leaves a lot of room for confusion.
And:
My ceanothus is the most beautiful thing in the whole wide world. I'll get pictures sometime soon and show you.
Orchestra Baobab is not the group that did the insane Spanish-language rant about eating regional delicacies. I am sure of that. But they sure are fine.
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