Mating Rituals: A Family Discussion

The boys are in the living room playing video games; Beautiful Wife is on the couch, reading. I have come in to bring tea to Beautiful Wife.

Secondborn: "I have a poem for you."

Me: "Okay."

Secondborn: "Roses are red, violets are blue. I spend a lot of time thinking about you."

Me: "That was very nice."

Beautiful Woman: "It was."

Secondborn: "Thank you."

Me: "And someday you will repeat that poem to some young lady, and she'll say, 'Awww. I'm keeping this one.' And she'll take you home..."

Secondborn: "Oh?"

Me: "...and wrap you in her webs..."

Secondborn: "What?"

Me: "...And feed you the still-beating heart of her latest kill."

Secondborn: "No!"

Beautiful Wife: "Oh, yes. That's how your dad and I met."

Me: "Absolutely."

Firstborn: "I could have done without that image. Let us never speak of it again."

Secondborn: "For once, I agree with you completely."

Music: Chosen

VNV Nation, from Praise The Fallen:

This is one of the albums I go back to for certain kinds of writing.

Speech: Saladin Ahmed, Shadows of FRANKENSTEIN

Given at Longwood University on February 26, 2018. I was not there, though I wish I could have been:


He's been working in comic books more recently, but if you haven't read Throne of the Crescent Moon (novel) or Engraved on the Eye (short story collection) then you should do yourself a favor and pick them up.

Music: God Is A Bullet

Concrete Blonde. It's an old song, but I stumbled over it again last night and it seemed... strangely relevant to the current moment. (Content warning: talking about death by gunfire.)I dunno, maybe it's just me; I'm a Concrete Blonde fan from a long ways back.

Music: Irish Ballad

...Courtesy of Tom Lehrer, and accompanied by commentary on folk songs:

Dear Diary: Dinner with Grandma

Year 331, Twelfth Age
Leaffall, Day 23

Dear Diary,

I decided I needed to work with some friendlier ghosts while I'm polishing my skills and increasing my power, so I took Grandma Butterblossom out to dinner last night. She was my father's mother, and an accomplished wizard in her own right, and she's only been dead for three years so it was pretty easy to bring her back.

Diary, it was wonderful. I know, I know: I'm mastering the arts of death and bending the darkest forces to my will, so I'm not supposed to feel sentimental about the living, or even the recently-living. I know. But Grandma Butterblossom was always good to me, and it was really nice to see her again. She seemed really happy to see me, and she didn't object to calling me Grimbad Willowisp. She didn't even quirk her mouth when she said it, the way the kids at school do when they bother to use my name at all.

She's a ghost, so she didn't really eat; but it turns out that she could sort of sip from a bowl of soup and a cup of tea, and get the experience of the flavors. I told her about the rest of the family, and school, and my studies, and it was just so nice (there's that word again) to have someone to talk to about all this stuff. Besides you, I mean.

Plus, she had some advice for the situation with Mrs. Puffblossom, and some general advice on honing my powers. Necromancy wasn't really her thing -- she was more of a generalist -- but she was still a wizard and her ideas were really helpful.

I have to tell you, Diary, this was the best night I've had in a long time. And when we were done, we went back to the graveyard and she let me put her back down. So everything's fine, at least for the moment. At least as long as my dad never finds out.

Music: Old Blevins

I made a reference to this song on Twitter a couple of weeks back, and it turns out that the person I was tweeting to had never heard of it. So, since I think it deserves as wide an audience as possible, here are the Austin Lounge Lizards with Old Blevins: