LookingLand

snowy windy day ~ beautiful indeed! and the perfect sort of day for hunkering down at the desk to get some work done. but i wanted to check in with my lovely lj peeps since you may not hear from me again until the new year and i wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas and all of that peace and love business before i vanish off into my own holiday.

i received a beautiful handmade card from scarlite, which was a great joy! and the gift of books from another wonderful and considerate lj friend (you know who you are!). thank you both for being such great friends out in the big bad world ~ you are some of the best parts of the beauty in it.

i am almost finished with my annual sappy Christmas story (this one's pretty amusing, though written rather "lite" for what it ought to have been. nevertheless, it's good grist for a future edit and completely worth it just for the scene in which the goat eats the head off the papier-mâché Jesus from the manger. who says Christmas "romances" have to be all lovey dovey anyway? i'll be wrapping this one up tomorrow in time for the due date (this was for a challenge at work).

also, i'm trying to play a little catch-up with Reconstruction because i have been naughty and not working on it lately. the time away was good though, and even though the work that will carry into the new year is still going to reflect some older choices, i'm looking forward to when the changes arrive and it starts moving along quicker.

finally, i've done a lot of work on the paper dolls that i started last week and they are coming along fairly well. i should have scanned something to share, but i want to have something more substantial finished before i put them here. if i get anything done by tomorrow i will try to come back and post.

if not, once again, happy holidays all! enjoy this season!

: D

i thought the time away would help me to form a plan for my lj ~ make some decisions about what to use it for, etc. but alas, i am no more clear on this point than when i left off of it back in december.

i've been writing for a month now. wrote a (long) Christmas story called To all a Good Night (not sure that title is quite right for it though). it was inspired by an episode of Dream On (anybody remember that Showtime series?). there was this great Christmas episode where the character Eddie, in a particularly grinchy, chip-on-his-shoulder mood winds up in a bar with a drunk in a santa suit. it was brilliant. one of the best tv moments of all time. anyway, i couldn't possibly hope to top that, but it gave me an idea for a story about a formerly popular minstrel hired to play Saint Nick for the asylum Christmas party who turns out to be a bitter drunk who resents working for "the people I ran away from forty years ago" (i.e. slave holders ~ fie on the copperheads and scalawags who infest my stories). of course it all works out in proper Victorian fashion, complete with bright-eyed ogling children, a deliriously lit-up tree, and enough sugarplums to kill a diabetic or two. i'm generally satisfied with it (that's saying a lot!). there are details in the last ten pages to iron out and the end note is kinda sketchy. overall it's a little heavy on the exposition and light on action, i think, but maybe a good change of pace from the last full Christmas story I wrote (Let Nothing You Dismay) in which there were Indians and a shootout that left at least one person dead. they can't all be gunfights!

i had started working on this one as a sequential. then changed my mind (because nothing's changed since 2007, obviously). anyway, here's the original opening set of panels. i liked the sign and the sleigh.


i'm working on another short story (trying to work in short form more this year if i can make it work), while i let the Christmas one settle for a few weeks. then i guess my intention is to illustrate the Christmas story (just straight up illustrations rather than graphic novel style) and post it (egads!).

everything else is up in the air. i am working on In Pursuance of Said Conspiracy, thinking more seriously of treating that one as a sequential since the text is coming largely from the trial and i fear anything i add to it becomes editorial and speculative (and so tainted with my own prejudices). sometimes, where history is concerned, their own words are the best ones after all. i am considering doing it in a simpler, slightly more cartoony style ~ black and white ink, very eddie campbell-ish. doodling recently, i found that Poppet is easy to draw. he has such a particular face (easy to caricature). i had less success with Burnett and Chammy and some of the others, but i was drawing from memory, so prolly if i had a picture i could do a better job. some of the characters have no existing pictures, so that's a bit of a challenge, but i still think i could do it. i made a final cut on Poppet's closing argument and i think i will actually start with that scene and then work my way backwards (beginnings are always such a struggle).


so that's the update on the projects. sorry for the long post.

i am job-hunting. i am content.

winter makes me happy.

: D

guess i have gone into hibernation mode. days away from my final presentation (which i have somehow managed to make about J. F. Hartranft ~ yes, i amaze myself sometimes), i am not thinking much about anything except finishing school and getting to the holiday. so i am sorry for my absence, though i can't promise i will be much better in the coming weeks.

for the bookchallenge:

no. 63 ~ Child of God by Cormac McCarthy. i had tried to read McCarthy many years ago and couldn't get beyond the first four pages. had better luck this time, though with mixed results. loved the writing, but the story was rather, hmmm, gross? basically it's about a sorta crazy loner who, increasingly isolated, becomes a serial killer who practices necrophilia with his victims. lots of beautiful language for such an ugly story. i feel sort of meh about it overall in the end. not recommended for the squeamish.

i have a couple more books i would like to finish before the end of the year, but overall i am pleased that i read as many as i did. i know some of you out there read a gazillion books a year, but i am a pretty lazy reader and while i can occasionally read a really good book in one sitting, i am more inclined to take weeks and weeks to get through something. i've been reading Quicksilver since last Christmas and i may or may not finish it by the 31st (i am thinking "not" at the this point, but miracles do happen).

as with every year, i want to write a Christmas story. i have one in mind (nothing fancy), but i will prolly get started on it this weekend. in the meantime, here's a nice holiday picture for you to enjoy!



Troika on St. Petersburg Street
19th Century
Carl von Hampeln (1808-1880 Russian)

for the 50bookchallenge:

no. 44: Our Simple Gifts by owen parry ~ this was a fun Christmas present to myself: a book of short stories about Christmas set during the Civil War. owen parry is prolly best known for his Abel Jones mysteries (also set during the Civil War), but i've never read them because i don't like mysteries and there are aspects of the war that don't interest me much; pinkerton and the secret service being among them. anyway, parry's style doesn't endear me to him anyway, so it's not likely i will pick up his stuff again. it's almost as if he tries too hard to affect the victorian construction of the era and it just comes off stilted for the most part. he's also prone to repetitions and long-windedness (the first story, 72 pages long, could have easily been told in half as many). nothing new in these stories: small acts of kindess, chance encounters, and ghosts (the usual fare). i enjoyed "Tannenbaum" perhaps the most (a nice reversal in which a much-picked on Dutchman prepares a surprise Christmas feast for his company and we discover at the end that he's actually Jewish).

this was a fun quick read. i'm a sucker for Christmas stories. and i still intend to write a handful of them eventually if i ever get them out of my head. i meant to finish last year's, but never even got around to opening it.



i've got three more books almost finished and a handful of standbys. still don't think i will make it to 50, but am hoping to get a lot of reading done this weekend.

: D

a nice Christmas present for America

The first battle of Gettysburg, from July 1 to July 3, 1863, ended with a murderous barrage of cannon fire that killed tens of thousands of American soldiers and changed the course of the Civil War.

The most recent battle of Gettysburg ended yesterday with raucous applause and a standing ovation at a small tavern that was once occupied by Confederate sharpshooters.

it's good to know people value this place enough to fight for it. i've only been to Gettysburg once (and in a rush, unfortunately), and even then my impression was that it's the most touristy of all the battlefields i've visited, but it's touristy in its own vein, not by way of roller coasters and waterslides ~ and i'll take that any day over the latter.



the Gettysburg battlefied in the snow
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the book is at $38.42.

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last night i worked on my brother's gallery. it's coming out rather boss patois (if i might say so myself). i'm hoping to upload it before Christmas. fingers crossed.

building the rest of the site is going to be slow for a while. i'm having a brain-bending over how to get my nucleus templates to work with my design templates. not sure that's going to work out, but that's okay. there are other solutions.

happy thursday everyone ~ are you all ready for the holiday?

: D

the essential update: Orthopaedic Injuries of the Civil War: $42.91 (yes, this has become my new hobby)

City sidewalks, busy sidewalks.
Dressed in holiday style
In the air
There's a feeling
of Christmas

Children laughing
People passing
Meeting smile after smile
and on every street corner you'll hear

Silver bells, silver bells
It's Christmas time in the city
Ring-a-ling, hear them sing
Soon it will be Christmas day



~ * ~

like every year, i want to write a Christmas story. i have several in mind, but this morning, as i walked in to work, i think i decided which one i wanted to set down. now if i can just find the time to do it!

: D

read two books last night to get back on track for the month with the challenge, bringing my total to 3 (yay!)

okay, they were very short books, but a book is a book. and i really love the novella form.

Beasley's Christmas Party by Booth Tarkington ~ an immensely charming story (how could it not be?). i loathe tarkington. he's one of my favorite authors. i was originally going to re-read Penrod because it's been a while, but there's so much of tarkington's stuff that i haven't read, i thought i ought to poke into something new. glad i did. this is a strange, but wonderful little book!

Underground Christmas by John Hassler ~ (i was on a Christmas story kick, i guess) this author is new to me and an interesting find so far. i had really gone to the library to check out his North of Hope (which is on the Loyola Classics list), but picked this one up first just to test him out. i really like his off-hand style: simple, straightforward and with a nice sense of humor. his people are flawed and human. i thoroughly enjoyed this little book even though the story was really very depressing in a lot of ways (had a nice upbeat ending, but man it's a kitchen sink of disasters). i'll hand it to hassler ~ he really takes a grim aspect and makes something beautiful out of it. i think i'm ready to move on to North of Hope now.

: D