February 2020 Dispatch

[Kyell Gold]

January Recap

I had a very nice New Year’s in that it was spent at home with just my family,  less nice in that it involved two of us blowing our noses and falling asleep right after midnight. But hey! After a couple decades of fun and exciting New Year’s, it was okay to have a lower-key one.

 

Further Confusion was a blast! I worked the Sofawolf table and signed a lot of Titles and other books, sold a bunch of Patterns in Frost, did a bunch of panels, and hung out at the Night Market for a while. If you somehow haven’t heard of that, it was FC’s adult dealer room/low-key dance Saturday night. The line when it opened was huge, so I went later, around midnight, and it was a ton of fun. In general, FC feels like it’s really growing into its space. I think lots of people had a really good time and came away energized.

 

Most of the rest of January has been working on The Revolution and the Fox. I’m close to the end of it now and I think I will be able to make my self-imposed deadline of getting the draft done before TFF at the end of February. Really excited about how this one’s going and looking forward to getting it out this summer.

 

Meanwhile, my writing group is working on getting me feedback for Love Match volume 3 (2013-2015), and I’ve started working on the art, so fingers crossed, that’ll be out at BLFC. And I’ve started a new story on my Patreon called Return From Divalia, which picks up the story of Coryn from “Stolen Away” (the concluding story in Weasel Presents). Coryn got himself in some trouble as a young wolf in that story, falling in with a thief and ending up caught naked in a cathedral.

 

Two notable shows ended in January: The Good Place and Bojack Horseman. I haven’t watched the end of Bojack yet, but I have finished The Good Place and so I’ll say a few words about it. But only a few words, because if you haven’t seen it, I don’t want to spoil it.

 

From the outset, the writing and acting in this show grabbed my attention. By the time the first season was over, it was clear that it was something special. They set themselves the challenge of finding arcs for six (SIX) main characters over four seasons of a half-hour network sitcom, while exploring all kinds of different areas of human ethics, and they crushed it. The finale balanced heartfelt emotion with humor and also left me with a lot to think about and maybe a new way to think about some actual important real-life stuff. I have a couple go-tos when you talk about favorite finales of shows: Cheers is one of my favorites, Adventure Time a recent addition to the list, Newhart for the way it recontextualized the entire series, Scrubs (with the asterisk that I’m talking about the season eight finale, which IS the series finale, and not the last show of the tacked-on season nine). This one gets added to the list for sure.

 

What a good finale has to do (I think) is answer the question posed at the start of the series (or at least one of them that drives the series) in an interesting way, or give you a sense that the search for the answer will keep on going even though this part of the story is over. Cheers does both, answering the question of “will Sam ever find love” but also giving you the sense that the friendships and relationships will keep going. Scrubs completes JD’s journey and gives unexpected depth to his imagined scenarios. The Good Place also gives you closure on the stories of all the characters while at the same time answering most of the questions it posed in a poetic and beautiful way.

 

The Good Place is on Netflix (first three seasons, and the fourth presumably soon). If you haven’t watched it, you should go do that without reading anything more about it.

Release dates

Audiobooks: If you don’t have an Audible account yet, check out my new Soundcloud page (https://soundcloud.com/user-710305036-429996600), which has samples and links to all my audiobooks. Those links help me get extra money especially if you use them to sign up for a new account. Savrin is working hard on new audiobooks, and once Love Match 1 is up, we hope to get Titles and Ty Game out shortly following!

 

Here’s my best guess at the 2020 release schedule: Love Match 3 is targeted for BLFC (paws crossed). The fourth and final Calatians book, The Revolution and the Fox, is slated for Anthrocon 2020, and I hope to get the “Dude” sequel out next year as well. I’ll be a guest of honor at Megaplex 2020, so maybe it’ll be then!

Appearances in 2020

My full list of upcoming appearances is at http://www.kyellgold.com/contact.html, recently updated (or soon to be updated).

 

I will be at Texas Furry Fiesta, and of course Megaplex in August. Also planning on BLFC and I am in discussions to maybe go to ConFuror in Guadalajara, Mexico, this October, which would be really exciting!

 

Spotlight: No spotlight this month.

 

 

Excerpt: Here is a bit from The Revolution and the Fox.

 

The sweet rolls were delicious, and vanished quickly (a few morsels finding their way into the beaks of the ravens). And then it was time for Malcolm and Alice to go to the Athæneum, and for Kip and Emily to meet their French nobles in Paris. They embraced, Kip and Alice sharing a longer embrace while Emily and Malcolm did likewise. “Take good care of yourself,” Kip said.

“You too.” Alice nuzzled him. “Trouble has a way of finding you, so do try to keep out of its way.”

“I’m going to a French noble’s estate,” Kip said. “But I will do my best, yes.”

They kissed and then stepped back from each other. Emily took Kip’s paw. “We’ll see you two soon,” she said. “Good luck.”

And in an instant, she and Kip were in Paris.

They appeared in a basement room similar to the room at the Athæneum, for similar reasons, Kip assumed. “I talked to Master Debroussard at the Exposition,” Emily said.

“Debroussard?”

Emily walked toward the door. “The one I met on my mission for Abigail Adams during the war. He’d said I could use this room any time I pleased, and I just confirmed it would be available at this time. We won’t have time to spend with him, as the Dieuleveults are sending a carriage to meet us here right away.”

On the other side of the door sat an apprentice, a stocky young man in white robes eating a croissant. He dropped the pastry as Kip and Emily emerged, and asked their business in French. Emily replied that they were here by permission of Master Debroussard to travel to Paris, and her French must have been bad, because the apprentice wished them well in English.

They emerged into what looked like a reconstruction of an old city. There had been old buildings in Amsterdam, but here the entire city was made up of hundred-year-old square greyish-tan buildings, darkened with streaks from the drizzling rain. Identical tall rectangular windows stretched along the façades in a regular grid, a few open but most closed and reflecting the cloudy sky.

The French school resembled a large fortress, but Kip only had time to think that even in an old city, it looked ancient. A carriage waited in the street in front of the fortress, a velvet-clad footman standing smartly before it while a black-cloaked driver, hooded against the rain, sat on the driving board. Two jet-black horses stood patiently in the harness before the carriage.

The footman, watching the door, straightened as they approached. “Miss Emily Carswell?” he asked, and when Emily nodded, he opened the carriage door and spoke in French-accented English. “Please enter.”

He offered to help Emily up, but she ignored his outstretched hand and made her own way, gathering her dress around her. Kip followed her up into the otherwise empty carriage, sitting on the seat across from her.

The footman held the door open. “Mme. Dieuleveult regrets that she could not be present to meet with you herself, but the demands of an estate leave her very little time to herself. She asks me to present her most sincere apologies.”

“That’s all right,” Emily said. “Thank you.”

The footman stayed standing there in the light rain. “Have you no luggage?”

“I’ve taken it home.” Emily smiled. “When we arrive, I will go fetch it again. It’s safer there than being transported.”

Charles nodded and then stepped back, preparing to close the door. “If you would prefer privacy, I would be pleased to ride with the driver.”

“Oh, no.” Kip tucked his tail around to one side of the hard cushioned seat. “Please do join us. There’s plenty of room.”

“Thank you very much, sir. It would be my pleasure to describe the wonders of Paris as we drive, if you and Miss Carswell would prefer.”

“That would be lovely,” Emily said with a glance at Kip. “Master Penfold has never seen Paris.”

“Oh!” The young man sat beside Kip and pulled the door closed from the inside, then rapped on the ceiling. A moment later, the carriage jerked into motion behind the clop-clop of horse hooves.

“Fortunately,” the footman said, “the most spectacular sight will be early on our journey. There.” He pointed out the left-hand window. “You can see the Hotel de Ville, the center of Parisian government, and beyond it the towers of Nôtre-Dame de Paris, the great cathedral that ministers to more souls than any other church in the world.”

Kip met Emily’s eyes with a quizzical look; she replied with a minute shrug. It was easy to claim such a thing, but in this case it might be true. “How old is Nôtre-Dame de Paris?” Kip asked.

“A church has stood on that spot for nearly a thousand years,” the footman replied, “but the cathedral that you see now was completed only a few hundred years ago.”

“‘Only,’” Emily laughed. “There aren’t any buildings in America older than two hundred years.”

“The Hotel de Ville is less than two hundred years old,” the footman said, pointing. “That is, this version of it was completed during the reign of Louis XIII.”

“How long ago was that?” Kip asked.

The footman paused. “Er…I believe in the environment of one hundred and ninety years.”

“Practically modern,” Emily said.

Kip smiled at the footman’s embarrassment. “We are proud of the newness of our country just as you are proud of the endurance of yours,” he said.

This seemed to put the young man at ease. “Thank you, sir.”

“You’re very well educated. What can we call you?”

“Oh! My apologies. I am called Charles, Master Penfold.”

“Then proceed with the tour, Charles,” Kip said, and leaned back to watch the beautiful old buildings of Paris pass him by.

Charles called out building after building, but Kip began to see groups of people huddled in the mud at the edge of the street, some with arms outstretched, and these Charles did not mention, nor even seem to notice. They crossed a majestic stone bridge (“the Pont Royal, Paris’s third oldest bridge”) soon after passing the Hotel de Ville and the ancient palace of the Louvre, and thereafter seemed to have left the heart of Paris behind, because the buildings diminished in grandeur on the other side of the Seine.

Emily pointed out a spire that Charles had not described. “What’s that?” she asked.

“Ah, that is the chapel of the…” He paused, looking down. “Hospice des incurables.”

“Hospital?” Kip asked. “For…incurable diseases?”

“Yes, sir. I apologize for my deficiency in English.”

“No, no, you’re doing wonderfully.” Emily reached over to touch Charles’s knee, but this contact did not help; the footman stiffened. Emily withdrew her hand and folded it with her other in her lap.

“Do you know this area well?” Kip asked.

“Sir, I grew up in Neuilly-sur-Seine.” He pointed past the hospice. “To the west and north of the Seine. But I know the Hospice—the hospital—well. My mother spent the end of her life there.”

“Oh.” Emily glanced out again at the hospital and then back at Charles. “I’m so sorry.”

“It was not a bad thing. They kept her very comfortable. And it led me to the service of the Dieuleveults and allowed me to be here in the carriage with you.” He smiled and pointed out the other side of the carriage. “Here you will see the trees of the lovely Luxembourg Gardens. You cannot see the fountain from here, but if you have the chance, I pray you take a walk and find it. It is lovely and very peaceful.”

The trees were visible past buildings, at the foot of which sat another collection of beggars. Kip didn’t like thinking of them that way, but there was no other way he could imagine to describe them.

As they left Paris, he thought there would be fewer beggars, but there were not; the difference was that they were walking rather than sitting. Even through a patch of harder rain, the ragged-clothed people slogged through the mud at the side of the road. After the rain had slackened and then stopped, they passed farms where farmers, in tunics that at least had fewer holes, walked through the fields sowing.

Charles continued to speak. “These lands belong to M and Mme de Clamart, who are good friends of M and Mme Dieuleveult. They are great patrons of the musical arts and have often brought gifted performers to soirees at the Dieuleveult estate.”

Emily’s gaze, too, rested on the farmers, and when she turned back to look at Kip, he saw that she had the same questions he did about the poverty of the people and the wealth of their lords. He saw too that she held back those questions, because they didn’t know if they could trust Charles; any perceived ingratitude might make its way back to the Dieuleveults, and if they were in competition for a donation, they couldn’t afford any missteps.

When they passed into the Dieuleveults’ land, only Charles’s words signaled the change. The farmlands looked just as dreary and the people just as unhappy, although at around this point the rain did stop and the sun broke through, leading Emily to ask Charles with a smile, “Did the Dieuleveults arrange for nicer weather for our arrival?”

“I am certain that M Dieuleveult prayed for it,” he said without a trace of a smile. “To Saint Médard, if I am not mistaken.”

“I can never remember all the saints,” Emily said. Her eyes flicked to Kip, but she kept her expression neutral because Charles was looking at her. Kip, at the footman’s side, did not stop his ears from splaying to the sides; he was sure that even if Charles noticed, the man wouldn’t understand the expression of bemused surprise.

“Nor can I, but Saint Médard is one that M Dieuleveult invokes often.” Charles waved outside. “He looks after the weather.”

“M Dieuleveult is quite devout, then?” Kip asked.

There was the barest pause before Charles replied, “Exceedingly. He has devoted his life to the Church. The Dieuleveults’ chapel contains no fewer than three Holy relics.”

“Which ones?” Kip leaned forward.

“I am certain that M Dieuleveult will wish to show you the relics himself, and he will give a much more thorough explanation than I am able to.” Charles pressed his face to the window. “In another few minutes we shall come in sight of the estate.”

By “estate,” Kip expected to see a large house in the midst of many fields and orchards. But when Charles said, “Here we are,” the carriage passed by orderly rows of trees into farms that looked a little more well-off than the ones they had been riding past. The ground below the carriage wheels did smooth out noticeably, but little else seemed to have changed. Kip searched the horizon for a house, and then asked Emily, who was looking out the other window, “Can you see the house from there?”

“Oh,” Charles said with a small laugh, “the Chateau Dieuleveult is some ten miles down the road.”

He pointed out the window, which afforded Emily the chance to mouth, “chateau!” at Kip.

Now Kip didn’t know what to expect. He had seen the palaces in Paris and London; would it be a low, sprawling building that impressed with its reach, like the Louvre? Would it be a grand, modern building like Windsor Palace?

It was neither. As it turned out, the Chateau Dieuleveult bore a closer resemblance to the White Tower than to either of those other great palaces. Calling it a castle might be deemed a slight exaggeration, if not an outright lie; it did have a great round tower from which two men stood guard, and a large wooden gate in its outer wall. But the tops of the outer walls showed wear from the weather, and the area they enclosed was scarcely larger than the Trippenhuis.

Just inside the wooden gate, the carriage stopped and two men ran up to take charge of the horses. Charles hurried to disembark so that he could reach up and help Emily down, and Kip followed her.

They stood in a courtyard small enough that the carriage could not have proceeded much further without running into a finely carved wooden door upon which a heraldic coat of arms had been painted. Another carriage sat against the wall nearby, and behind it stood a small stable.

Ignoring the grooms and the driver, who clambered down behind them, Charles tried to take Emily’s arm. When she refused, he settled for leading her and Kip to the emblazoned door and opened it for them. “On behalf of M and Mme Dieuleveult,” he said formally, “I bid you welcome, honored guests. Please enjoy the hospitality of Chateau Dieuleveult.”

The world on the other side of the door could scarcely have been more different. Blue and gold velvet wallpaper lay behind several immense oil paintings, and a white marble statue in the Roman tradition stood at the center of the room with its arms outstretched in welcome. Beautiful Persian carpets covered the floor, and a couch that matched the wallpaper lay against the wall. A fire crackled in a large fireplace, filling the room with warmth and the smell of wood smoke.

Another servant in livery similar to Charles’s hurried up to them with several cloths draped across his arm. “Please,” Charles said, “if you would be so kind as to remove your shoes...”

He removed his own, as if to show them how it was done. Emily reached down, but the other servant stopped her with a phrase in French. He motioned for her to lift her leg; she did, and he gently removed the shoe from her foot, guiding her to step on the carpet. They repeated the process for her other leg, and then he knelt to dab at her stockings with a towel.

“This isn’t necessary,” Emily said.

“Mme Dieuleveult insists,” Charles explained. He barked something to the servant, who ducked his head and finished quickly. “Please notify me if he should touch you inappropriately.”

Kip was glad he’d worn shoes; these days he often went without footwear, but for visiting Amsterdam he’d opted to protect his feet. The servant moved to him next, removing his shoes and hesitating for a moment at the bare feet below.

“It’s fine,” Kip said, meaning that the servant didn’t have to clean his feet, but Charles misinterpreted his permission. The footman spoke in French, and the servant replied, “Oui, oui,” and set to rubbing a warm damp towel over Kip’s fur.

When this ordeal had finally concluded, Charles led Kip and Emily out of that room and down a long hallway hung with tapestries, many of which looked ancient, several of which depicted saints, if Kip’s recollection served him correctly.

Through a sitting room, through a large ballroom, up a staircase, down a short hallway, through a parlor-type room, and then down another hallway—all of them carpeted—to a door that Charles opened for them. “These will be your rooms for the duration of your stay.”

Inside, more of the blue and gold wallpaper, more oil paintings, and two more of the long couches. No Roman statue greeted them, but a young woman did get up hurriedly, brushing her skirts down. “This is Claudine,” Charles said. “She will attend to your needs while you are a guest here. Her English is not very good, but she understands better than she speaks.”

“Welcome, Monsieur and Madame.” Claudine’s English was heavily accented, but she spoke properly despite being clearly distracted by Kip’s appearance.

“Oh, we don’t need a servant.” Emily stepped into the room.

“Mme Dieuleveult insists.” Charles bowed. “It has been my very great pleasure to make your acquaintance, Master Penfold and Miss Carswell. I hope to renew it soon in the future.”

 

Questions From YOU

 

If you’ve got a question about my books or my writing—or anything else you want me to talk about—shoot me an email and I’ll answer it here. But this month—no questions!

 

QUESTION from Fate, via email: “One thing I've noticed in your writing is how "real" the relationships seem - you describe the daily struggles, the difficulty with interweaving personal relationships and the demands of work, how communication (and miscommunication) can impact a relationship, how the parties in a relationship mature over time (as best evidenced, in my opinion, by the OOP series). What writing techniques do you think are critical to really make Dev and Lee's relationship, for instance, "jump off the page"; what do you draw upon - personal experience, other novelists, etc. -  to convey these emotions?”

 

Thank you very much for the compliment! I am always trying to make my characters more real, so this is a lovely thing to hear.

 

There are a couple things to keep in mind. The first, as with any writing, is about details. I talked about this last month as well. Details—concrete details—are what connect readers to the story. In the context of a relationship, this means digging down into specifics of emotion. Rather than simply say, “I was mad at Dev,” try to interrogate why Lee is mad (for example). There are a lot of different flavors of mad: did Dev not do something Lee hoped he would? Did he do something Lee perceives as out of character? Did he say something Lee took badly? Did he break a promise or betray a principle? And note too that all of these things are viewed through Lee’s lens, so there’s an aspect of him in being mad as well. How do his experiences inform his expectations of Dev? What specific things did Dev do in the past that have accumulated to this moment? What specific things have happened to Lee that made this moment especially difficult?

 

Because often when we’re mad at someone, it’s because they’ve spoken or behaved in a way that we didn’t expect or want. Maybe those expectations are societal norms (“don’t make a scene in public”) and maybe they’re personal within the context of the relationship (“I don’t like it when you’re late”). Either way, behaviors will affect us more strongly when they resonate with something in our past (“my mom used to embarrass me in public all the time”) and that’s part of it too.

 

That leads into the second thing: you need to have an understanding of characters and relationships. No interaction in a relationship is as simple as “Dev did one thing and Lee reacts to that one thing.” Different people will have different reactions to the same scenario; the same person will have different reactions at different times. Everything echoes back into the past and taps into our specific problems. If you are insecure about your relationship, you’ll be mad about things that accentuate that insecurity. If you’re worried about money because of your childhood (whether you were poor or just had parents who passed their money worries on to you), you’ll be more sensitive to money issues. If you equate money with love, you’ll be more sensitive to your partner NOT spending money on things for you. And so on, and so on.

 

Dave Barry (yes, the humor columnist) wrote a very affecting piece about falling in love online in the book “Dave Barry in Cyberspace,” that includes a bit about fights in relationships that has stuck with me. The main character’s husband has come in angry because his muddy golf shoes were moved to the patio, and the main character reflects, “This is of course not really about the golf shoes; this is about your most recent argument, which was about why there was only one-sixteenth (well, Max says one-sixteenth; you see it as closer to an eighth) of a tank of gas left in the minivan. The argument is over, but the Earth hasn’t rotated much, and the anger is still in the air.” Fights—and everything, good things too—in relationships are accumulations. Little sweet moments and gestures add up.

 

Something that really helps with this is drawing from your own experience with friendships and relationships. Does it bother you more when one of your friends flakes on you than when another does? Why is that? Does it mean more when one of your friends does something nice than when another does? Figure out why you react in certain ways and you’ll be able to translate that logic to your writing.

 

You can also read advice columns and that will help out quite a bit. These are real people with real problems, being answered by someone with a lot of experience in relationships.

 

So you end up with something like, “I couldn’t believe Dev forgot to pick up dinner. I’d spent the whole day running around making phone calls and setting up interviews for him, I called in a favor from Hal even, and he couldn’t even remember to do that one thing for me. It made me wonder if he thought of me as often as I thought of him. I know he has a lot on his mind, but I thought I was usually one of the things on it. Like last night when I had to remind him about the show I wanted to watch.” Here Lee is mad ostensibly because Dev broke a promise, but the heart of it is the insecurity of wondering if your boyfriend thinks of you as much as you think of him.

 

Which actually makes it easier to write about a relationship once you’ve been writing about it for a while. When those moments are written down on paper, it’s easier to refer to them than if you’re just making up the history in your head. However you do it, you need to understand the characters and the relationship as almost a character in its own right, and be specific about the feelings your characters have. That'll give your written relationships the reality you're looking for.