Hello! I am Malorie (you may call me mal, if you want). Bi, they/them, AuDHD, and all around silly goose. This blog features dinosaurs (media. paleontology, avian dinosaurs), music, random special interests (Jurassic Park [see first item], The X Files, Hannibal, kaiju, etc.), personal ramblings, crafts, and basically whatever happens to interest me at any given moment.
I am also an editor and a publisher of speculative fiction, though I tend to keep that mostly to professional accounts on other platforms. That said, I may emphatically yell about reading occasionally. Consider yourself forewarned.
I guess as far as I'm concerned, Emerald Fennell can do no wrong. Even when I have criticisms, I just love her work. Finally watched Wuthering Heights, and despite what I have seen around the book girlie spaces, that movie is good actually. I will be brokering no objections at this time.
We are a country where 2 parties have decided that it is okay to either starve its populace or deprive them from life-saving healthcare. Or, as will likely be the case, both. May no incumbent be secure in their position. May they all feel the weight of their decisions for the rest of their lives.
Tonight, I will believe in my curses, Tomorrow, I will wake up and do everything I can. In the meantime, I love you all.
can we please appreciate their t-shirt though holy
[ID: A photo of Mayor Owen Hurcum, a person with bright green hair. They are smiling and holding up a white mug with a rainbow symbol on it. They are in a black t-shirt that reads, in white letters, THEY/THEM/THE MAYOR]
Send Diane Duane to the Reichenbach Falls to outline a cyber/steampunk Sherlock Holmes novel
...Well, they say you're supposed to declare the challenge in the topmost sentence. Will that do, you think?
So let me tell you what's going on, as sometimes when an idea sneaks up behind you and hits you over the head, you should, you know... just shove it out there and see what people make of it.
Background: Once upon a time, I wrote a short story for this Holmes & Watson anthology. Here's the first paragraph of the story.
It was early autumn of the year 1895 when Holmes and I, having been caught up in the events earlier that year that surrounded the return of the abominable giant “rats” of Sumatra III, were at last able to return from deep space to the familiar environs of Baker Street. After months of headlong flight among too many planets of five systems, being caught up in not merely one or two but three major on- and off-planet engagements, and pursuing (or being pursued by) malefactors and their minions through the unexplored catacombs of an anciently abandoned alien city, the prospect of resuming something like our normal routine came as a great relief.
...So who'd like to see the prequel novel?
But first (because I am a career-long outliner, as discussed at some length here) will, of necessity, come the outline. ...This is because I don't want to waste my readers' time, any more than I'm willing to waste my own. (Not least because as too-recent events have reminded me: Art's long, but life's too damn short.)
Adding a break here, because the logistics on this are a touch complex. WARNING: contains very time-sensitive changes to travel plans (six hours, and the clock is ticking!), multi-national rail journeys (on senior-citizen discounts), writing work done to good effect in foreign places... and the Falls.
...First: a shade of meta background here. For the past week and almost-a-half I've been away (again) from the rural cottage I long shared with @petermorwood, to see if I could start to break through the shock and grief into starting in on writing work again. It's been a tough quarter-year since suddenly losing him: and what's increasingly been feeling like "the Empty House" has not been—as you might imagine—a place terribly conducive to the imaginative life, when for nearly three decades there was always another mind, and voice, imagining things in there with me.
Getting away, though, seems to have helped. And without warning, this last week or so, the novel for which that paragraph up top served as an inadvertent precís has abruptly stood up and said, "Let's go!"
Problem is: right now I'm terrified that going straight back to the Empty House will strangle it in the cradle.
...Here, though, is a thought that came to me abruptly when I started work on the pizza in this post.
Why not extend your stay here for a week and see if you can nail the outline down in that time? The flight back to Ireland can still be changed, and at no additional cost... for (glancing at the clock) the next six hours.
And (glancing over the European horizon) Reichenbach is right there... just a few hours away on the train. What an energizing place to do such a work! (I've been there before—a story that will come out over the process to come—but not for nearly fifty years. Again: Art is long but life is so short...)
So who's in to help me make this happen?
Over the next six hours, I need to raise enough $ to put me up in the hotel in Reichenbach for a week. (Looks like about US $1000 at the current exchange rate.) This doesn't seem like appropriate territory for a GoFundMe. Never mind: I've got a Ko-Fi.
Want to send me to Rechenbach to get this job done?
Go over here and drop something into the pot. Tag your contribution as REICHENBACH so I know what it's for.
Please bear in mind that you need to do this within the next six hours of my uploading this post. Otherwise I can't reschedule my return travel without it costing me various arms and legs.
Who knows, maybe this will come to nothing. But without putting it out there for people to see, I'll never know.
What you get: Daily, probably multiply-daily, updates. Chunks of the outline as, day by day, it gets written. And the complete final outline, when it finishes up within a week of my getting back to Ireland. (Because a few days of polish probably won't kill it.) ...And probably some food posts, because (shrug) writers gotta eat, yeah?
And yeah, of course I'll go up to the Falls, and post video for those who've assisted in this endeavor. I've been before: I know the way. :)
...So there it is for you, folks. The ball's in your court(s) now.
These surrealists who made the early films were shooting in the dark, they were feeling their way. But they've left behind a sign on a door that said: once this door is opened, in the future, it will make a way for a brand new kind of film. I'm very happy to be a fellow traveler with any of these guys.
David Lynch in Arena - Ruth, Roses and Revolver (Feb 20 1987)
