Stephanie Burgis

Quick Saturday post

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com — Sat, 4 Oct 08 15:45:00 UT

I love, love, love the comments I've gotten on my last entry. Thank you so much, and please keep posting and forgiving me for not replying individually to them right now. Reading them has made me alternately smile, laugh (we would SO love to find some Iron Maiden onesies - although it may be a few years yet before he's ready to go to the concerts w/his dad...), wince in empathy for other people who've gone through similar birth stories, and mostly feel just so warm and supported by every comment. Thank you!

Today, our little boy is 1 week old. It's been one of the most incredible, joyful, terrifying, miraculous weeks of my life. Wow, is the parental learning curve steep...but oh, it is amazing to have him here, and he's being very patient while we learn to take good care of him. (We're also working on a good internet pseudonym for him - right now, "Mr Darcy" is leading the race, because he is gorgeous and deeply lovable, but he is also enigmatic and says very little on first acquaintance.)

Lat night, thanks to Patrick's self-sacrifice in taking almost all of the evening baby shift, and the baby's amazing good nature, I got a full 5 hours' sleep for the first time in over a week. It's astonishing what a difference that makes!

Thank you so much to whoever sent me the lovely Amazon congratulations package. I couldn't find a name in the gift note or packaging, but I'm already halfway through reading Not Flesh nor Feathers, I'm absolutely loving it, and I'm really looking forward to watching the DVD tonight. Thank you!!!

Now to see if the baby will let me set him down in his basket for a little while...knock on wood!

Baby!

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com — Thu, 2 Oct 08 12:04:00 UT

Thank you so much to everybody who commented or emailed on Patrick's post! I wish I had the energy to reply to each comment individually. Since I don't, I will just say: reading your comments felt absolutely wonderful. Thank you!!!!

I am typing one-handed while cuddling our baby boy with the other, and I'm still pretty exhausted from the c-section, so this will have to be a short entry. Right now I'm more tired than I've ever been, but also more intensely happy than ever before in my entire life, and so, so in love with our beautiful son. And oh, am I grateful for modern medical technology. Friday night, just on my way to bed, I realized that I hadn't felt him move inside me for 24 hours. I was convinced I was only being paranoid and silly, but we drove to the hospital just in case...and within 3 hours, he was being delivered in an emergency c-section, just in the very nick of time. The doctor told us that if we'd waited even just 1 more day to come in, there might not have been a heartbeat anymore.

I am so, so grateful to have our baby safe and sound and wonderfully healthy. He was born tiny for his dates - 5lbs 7 - and spent his first several hours in the hospital's Special Care unit before I could even hold him, but now he's at home with us, constantly in my or Patrick's arms, thrilling us more every single day.

After long and hard thought, we've decided that it wouldn't be fair to share details like his exact name in a public forum - as writers, Patrick and I have made the decision to make a lot of our private lives public, but that's not a decision we can make for our children. But you guys have been so wonderful & supportive through the pregnancy, I really wanted to share some of the love! :)

I owe lots of friends long, individual emails, and I promise to write them all as soon as I can. (Just typing this is really tiring me out right now.) But in the meantime, meet our baby!

Day 1:

Day 2:

News

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com — Sun, 28 Sep 08 22:00:00 UT

Okay, this is Patrick temporarily hijacking Steph's journal to pass on the news:

Steph gave birth early Saturday morning to our little boy. The birth was by C-section, but both Mom and baby are doing fine. They should be back home on Monday or Tuesday. More details (including too many photos) then!

Today's entry...

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com — Fri, 26 Sep 08 11:19:00 UT

...is my first entry on the SF Novelists blog: Different Kinds of Limbo. There are some big names posting regularly on this blog, which makes it more than a bit nerve-wracking for me to get started there. Please come on by and leave a comment so I don't feel too intimidated on my first attempt!

The tired month

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com — Wed, 24 Sep 08 17:14:00 UT

Oof. Every day for the past few days, I've planned to write a journal entry...and every day, I've ended up feeling way too tired and brain-dead to manage it. Sigh. This ninth month of pregnancy is no picnic. (And really, how ironic is it that women are incapable of good sleeping in this last month of pregnancy, right before the months of real sleep deprivation actually begin? Wouldn't it be more sensible if our bodies went into full-out hibernation mode to get us into tip-top, well-rested shape beforehand? There are sooo many things I would change about pregnancy if I were in charge of the universe...)

Still, I've had a good week so far. Monday I had a great lunch out with a couple of friends and their adorable 18-month-old, who's always a great reminder of how much fun little kids can be. We talked about writing and publishing and ate delicious pizza and tiramisu. Mmmm! Tuesday, our birthing pool arrived in three huge boxes - that'll be poor Patrick's next big DIY job, along with the 10,000 other things waiting to be done to the house - men definitely don't have an easy time in this last month of pregnancy, either. I keep saying: "I'm ready for the baby to just come out. I want this pregnancy to be OVER!" and Patrick keeps saying, "Not until the house is ready!"

And we had our very last prenatal class this morning. It was a very strange feeling to realize that the next time we all see each other, at the post-birth reunion, we'll all be carrying babies with us...wow. Very real.

In the meantime, I'm having a great time re-reading old Georgette Heyer novels. I'm midway through The Unknown Ajax right now, which is even more fun now that I'm actually living in Yorkshire myself. (The snobby Sussex nobles in TUA are absolutely appalled that the hero has come from vulgar Huddersfield, just next to Leeds. The hero, well-aware of their prejudices, teases them throughout by putting on a thick Yorkshire accent just to watch them blanch with aristocratic horror.) I'm also brainstorming more ideas for Kat by Ghostlight, stocking up on light, fun movies to watch after the baby comes, and taking as many naps as possible.

Hope everyone else is having a good week!

Morning out

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com — Sun, 21 Sep 08 15:29:00 UT

Yesterday, for once, the weather was absolutely perfect - gorgeously warm and flooded with sunshine. Maya and I spent two hours lying outside soaking in the sunshine, I napped for most of that time, and ohhh, I felt so much better afterwards!

Today I'm still pretty tired and generally knocked out, but it's another beautiful day, and it started just right. We meant to get a whole bunch of Important Baby Preparation Errands run, including a trip to a big baby-items sale, another trip to Mothercare, etc., etc...but it was just so beautiful outside that we ended up throwing it all over and going to Bolton Abbey instead. Bolton Abbey is one of my very favorite places in the world, a medieval abbey set deep in the Yorkshire Dales, with a manor house next door and an absolutely gorgeous estate, including a large woods. (And for anyone who's seen The Duchess, one of the stone seats in the woods is called "Georgiana's Seat", because the estate is owned by the Devonshires, and according to legend, that was the seat where Georgiana liked to sit and sigh romantically. You can take that story for what it's worth...)

Bolton Abbey was my inspiration for the abbey/manor house combo where I set Kat by Moonlight, and it always makes me happy to go there. So Patrick and Maya went on a big hike in the woods, and I started out inside the beautiful Tea Cottage:

but then moved to a table outside the cottage, as the morning warmed up, to do my writing in front of this view:

It was just heavenly. I ate a freshly baked scone with homemade butter and jam, washed it down with tea, and then, an hour later, ate a big bowl of leek & potato soup served with warm, crusty bread. I alternated between brainstorming Kat by Ghostlight in my notebook and just gazing out over that amazing view, feeling wonderfully inspired. It was just the most creatively stimulating place we could possibly have gone.

It was a long drive back, and of course I didn't sleep again last night because of all the normal pregnancy issues, so I'm back to feeling limp and achey and knocked out again now...but it was an absolutely perfect morning out, and I'm so glad we went. Despite my tiredness, I feel like I'm buzzing with Story inside - and I'm about to head back outside with Maya to take another nap in the sunshine. It doesn't get much better than that. :)

And some (surprisingly addictive) Saturday fun...

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com — Sat, 20 Sep 08 16:53:00 UT

Via Gwenda Bond, check out Hero Machine 2.5 to create your own hero or heroine! It's surprisingly addictive. Here's my personal heroine:

Coming up with Rowena was waaaay too much fun. Now I have to write a story for her!

tired but linky

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com — Sat, 20 Sep 08 11:34:00 UT

Between a really late night on Thursday and a 24-hour stomach bug (or food poisoning? not sure...) that hit both me and Patrick late Friday morning, I am feeling completely knocked out. The worst part, of course, of being hit by bugs and late nights during this ninth month of pregnancy is that I can't just sleep them off anymore - there are way too many pregnancy pains keeping me up through every night.

So in other words, I haven't been up to much in the last day or so! But I have been reading online to escape a bit, and here are the links I liked best:

Laini Taylor's lovingly-described remote writing cabin fantasy.
Many of you might know of it. It is a place that exists in our minds -- we daydream about it, this magical cabin in the woods where there are no distractions, where writing is easy and joyful, where stories are written in fountain pen on creamy paper, while foxes look on from the edge of the trees. Phones don't ring. There's no wireless. Comfort food is on the menu. You hold hands with your husband while snowshoeing (never having snowshoed, I don't know if this is really practical, but let's go with it). There's a fireplace. You know it, don't you?
Ohhhh, how I drooled as I read the full description (and looked at the pictures she'd posted for her fantasy cabin, too). There's only one thing I would change - unlike Laini, I just don't have the willpower to have a cabin entirely free of books, no matter how helpful it might be for my own writing. Instead, I'd have to come up with some magical compromise - maybe the crows would fly in books for me every evening after dinner, and then take them away again after I fell asleep? Read her full entry here.

Another Laini Taylor item: she's been interviewed at Everread. She makes some really good points about what it really takes to make dreams come true, including the willingness to step outside our comfort zones. And of course, because it's Laini, it's also really charming. I have to get hold of her novel - I love her blog and writing style so much!

FabulousFrock's latest entry has accomplished the impossible: it made me actually crave a salad! Check out her Brief Guide to Quick Salad. Next time we place a grocery order, I'm definitely getting an avocado and some good cherry tomatoes and trying out her recipe for salad dressing, too. Yum!

Finally, here's a link that feels slightly like cheating - at Wired.com, you can now download a free copy of Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette's SF pirate story "Boojum". The only reason I feel like I'm cheating by linking to this is that I haven't actually read the story yet - but I am a HUGE fan of Sarah Monette, I just read and enjoyed Elizabeth Bear's short story collection New Amsterdam, and so I'm really interested in any story they might write together. I have downloaded the story and I'm looking forward to reading it soon.

What about you guys? What are the most interesting things you've seen on the web lately?

Memes 'n more

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com — Thu, 18 Sep 08 16:25:00 UT

OK, I didn't really plan to do this, but since everybody on LJ is doing it, and my will is weak... ;p

The Rules of the Meme:
Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don't change your clothes, donât fix your hair...just take a picture.
Post that picture with NO editing.
Post these instructions with your picture.

As you can see, Maya helped! :)

***
It's been a shockingly sunny day, so after my shower this morning, I took Maya outside to sit for half an hour reading in the sunshine. Inside our house, I needed to wear my hooded sweatshirt on top of a tank top and long sweatpants, just to stay minimally warm; outside in the sunshine, I shed the sweatshirt, rolled the sweatpants up to turn them into almost-shorts, and kicked off my sandals to bare my feet.

Maya was in absolute bliss. As far as she's concerned, in weather like this, there is no good reason to come back inside the house EVER! The moment we got to the grass outside, she flopped straight onto her back with a Here I Stay! attitude. She spent the whole time basking in the sunshine with an ecstatic expression, and was terribly frustrated when I eventually decided to go back inside.

Poor pup. At least she's gotten a LOT of attention and petting today (to make up for yesterday), and some excitement, too, with more home deliveries as the house reorganization progresses. Our living room and end room (soon to be baby's room) are terrifying places, crammed full of boxes, bubble wrap, and large pieces of furniture. (You can see the new mattress propped up behind me in the picture.) Urk. Let's hope the baby doesn't arrive too soon...!

Construction dust

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com — Wed, 17 Sep 08 18:37:00 UT

Poor Patrick! You can click to see what he's been working on this whole afternoon, while I got to hang out on the couch playing with final line edits for KbS (based on his excellent notes) and begging Latin translations to fill in my last few bracketed bits. Yes, there are definitely some advantages to being visibly & heavily pregnant...the IKEA deliverymen didn't even think of asking me to carry any of the boxes, and I've been completely let off the hook for all the hard construction work. But oh, it is great to have more bookcases! I came in at the end to admire the final product, and immediately got distracted by all the books that had been unearthed from our monstrous piles and stacked neatly in the shelves...some of them were books that I'd forgotten we even owned! I wanted to re-read them all, immediately! It was a very near thing, but I did finally manage to stop myself from completely emptying out the new bookcases only minutes after they'd been filled. How cool, though, to feel like we've just been given a bunch of new books - it had been years since I'd come across some of them!

(But I felt very, very virtuous for the fact that I managed to take two of my books off the shelves to put in our pile of charity shop donations - see, I can help reduce the chaos in our house, too! Of course, over the past month, between Norton Award books and my own purchases, I've brought at least 35 new books into our house...but hey, at least I'm balancing it out a little bit, right????)

(And ohhhh, I am so jealous of the bookshelves in Christopher Rowe and Gwenda Bond's study.....)

Poor Maya, though, is NOT pleased by any of this. First we left her all morning while we went to our prenatal class (today was all about how to say "no" politely to medical professionals, and what exactly to do at the end of labor when you're suddenly presented with this tiny, helpless creature and expected to take care of it!)...then we came home, moved around all of her familiar Stuff (those piles of books have been there since before we got her!), AND we both ignored her for our own separate pursuits! Poor puppy. She's going to get a lot of attention tonight and tomorrow to make up for it. But she is still dissatisfied with the whole house reorganization. Just wait until she gets next month's Big Surprise! (We keep telling each other that she will be happy about the baby. Eventually. Maybe when he/she is about 2 years old or so...)

Quick Latin help?

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com — Wed, 17 Sep 08 15:49:00 UT

Can anyone give me a quick 'n dirty translation into Latin of an English half-sentence? It doesn't need to be correct - in fact, I'd actually prefer it to be a little clumsy, because I have a Classics scholar tut-tutting about it in the context of the novel. So the order of the words could be off, or the form of the verb or address could be wrong, or...basically, don't worry about being too neat with it!

The half-sentence is: "Divine Goddess, we offer you..."

If anyone can help, I will owe you my undying gratitude! And although we are very, very broke right now, I will at least be sending you virtual chocolate and champagne in thanks...

ETA: I've just had two people send me translations. You guys rock!

pregnancy nightmares and dangerous research

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com — Tue, 16 Sep 08 16:35:00 UT

Huh. So, pregnant women in their 3rd trimesters are notorious for having strange, vivid dreams. Last night I had my most vivid and uncomfortable yet. It was one of those dreams that felt absolutely real, down to going through it in what felt exactly like real time - and, of all the things to go through in real time, I dreamed that I was going through a difficult and painful 30-hour labor. Some of the highlights included: an extremely untrustworthy midwife who was drinking heavily while making obnoxious jokes; a long span of time when I couldn't even get in touch with Patrick, so he didn't even know our baby was being born; oh, and of course the pain...

...and then I woke up, feeling absolutely traumatized and exhausted by the whole experience. But the most traumatic part, by far? Realizing, a moment after waking up: Wait a minute - I went through all that, and the baby STILL isn't out???? Sigh... Sleep isn't so restful anymore.

On the other hand, my homebirth assessment went fine (scary but fine) (those midwives are INTENSE), today's prenatal appointment was nicely reassuring, and most of all, I've been having waaaay too much fun with the old Bath Guides I found online through the Leeds University Library. I've got issues of the Bath Guide from 1798, 1799, and 1800 right now, and they're just delicious. Of course, they're really useful - not only did I find a bunch of good info about the Baths themselves, but also I managed to get lists of all the hotels in Bath (including their prices) and lists of distances from Bath to various cities around the UK, both of which were things I genuinely needed to know.

But! There's also so much more. How much it cost to hire a sedan chair from different parts of the city, how much it cost to attend the balls in the different Assembly Rooms...of course, Kat never rides a single sedan chair or attends a single Assembly Room ball in Bath, but how can I resist lapping up all that lovely information? This is exactly why research is so dangerous - it sucks me in and I can't get out! Oh, and did I mention that the 1800 version of the Bath Guide is in verse???? There's a whole lascivious poem about a guy's fantasy of watching women change for the Baths..all rhyming, of course, all astonishingly bad, and all written as a fake "letter to a friend". It's utterly horrible, and yet, somehow, also horribly compelling....

Right now Maya is sleeping on the couch beside me, and I'm listening to the Samuel Ramey recording of Kismet. It's a nice afternoon, despite the gray sky outside.

Today's entry...

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com — Mon, 15 Sep 08 15:53:00 UT

...is over at the 10_ers: my personal favorite Top Ten Romantic Comedies. It's my first public post there since my intro, so please come on by and leave a comment to keep me from feeling too lonely! :)

Good news weekend!

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com — Sun, 14 Sep 08 16:37:00 UT

Drumroll, please... Yesterday morning, I FINISHED Draft 2 of Kat by Starlight!!!! Wooooooot! Ohhh, this makes me happy. I'm going to wait a few days for Patrick to read through the new versions of the last few chapters (to make sure I haven't introduced any huge & glaring logic issues or major inconsistencies) before I send it off for other critiques...but I am feeling really, really good about it right now. Whew! There will be many, many more drafts in the future, but I'm so glad to have gotten this particular one done.

Then, yesterday afternoon, after my morning-long writing session, we spent 2 hours in the mall, shopping for boring-but-necessary pre-baby stuff. (We're doing a lot of that nowadays!) At the end, we stopped off at Sainsburys, a big chain supermarket. While Patrick did some grocery shopping, I used the excuse of heavy pregnancy (8 months today!) to sit down and rest in the store cafeteria...and as I waited there, I ended up making pages of notes on Book 3, Kat by Ghostlight. Eee! I'm really excited about it. And I also need to find some good pictures and maps of 18th-century country estates. Hmmm....

In other - even better - good news, remember that sweet black Labrador puppy who desperately needed a home? Well, she's found one! She's been spayed, found a new human mom, and (I think) has even moved in. Yay for happy endings! And yay for Amy Sisson, who put in the time and energy (and money!) to make it possible.

What about everyone else? I would love to hear any more good news to brighten up a gray, chilly September Sunday!

Nearly there...in so many ways

stephanieburgis@yahoo.com — Thu, 11 Sep 08 13:00:00 UT

It almost feels like tempting Fate to admit this, but today has been one of those rare, wonderful, white-hot revision days. I am SO close to being done with this draft of Kat by Starlight, and it's making me tingle with anticipation. Today I stormed through logic problems that had been defeating me for the last few weeks, tied up character arcs, filled in bracketed historical questions...all I still have to do is finish re-choreographing those scenes in the King's Bath and the building around it. Of course, I still don't have a firm historical layout for that building, which makes the task a lot harder, but I'm at least making progress - I found a wonderful Bath Directory from 1792 the other day, and today I'm planning to read issues of The Bath Guide from 1800 and 1804, with high hopes of discovering useful information. I also read a fun article about the Baths in an old issue of Jane Austen's Regency World, which is just the kind of magazine I'd normally find really tempting but feel far too guilty to buy. (Not enough real research value, too much silliness!) So I loved having the excuse to buy this particular issue. I've dutifully read and taken notes on the relevant article...and this afternoon I get to settle in and just squee over the totally irrelevant articles about Georgette Heyer, various Austen movies, etc.

I can't WAIT to be done with this draft. I want to be able to send it off to my agent and other critiquers...I want to have a few weeks off from it...and I really, really want to start writing the first draft of Book 3, Kat by Ghostlight. Soon!

In the meantime, I had something really nice happen the other day - I was invited to join SF Novelists, an invitation-only group of science fiction and fantasy novelists that includes a bunch of my favorite writers. I've been reading their group blog for a really long time now, so it felt like a total thrill to be invited to join. I don't think I'll start blogging there myself until closer to Kat's publication in 2010, but I'm really excited about being part of the group.

I'm also starting to feel the strangeness of the transition period I'm in. Yesterday morning, as I was making myself oatmeal for breakfast, I remembered my own mom making me and my brothers oatmeal for breakfast on cold winter mornings, and how warm and comforting that always felt. Then I thought: How weird. I'm going to be a mom, making oatmeal for my kids! And then, of course, it hit me: I AM a mom, already...because of course I am, with a baby kicking and rolling inside my stomach almost nonstop nowadays to remind me of it. (And in fact, he/she is even eating the oatmeal, through me! ;p ) But of course it's not the same yet, before he/she comes out...it really is a strange, liminal period I'm in right now, halfway between childlessness and parenthood. And it could be less than 5 weeks before I move to the next stage... Wow.