M.K. Wiseman's Blog

And suddenly we were to remain at home, socially distance, sanitize… and hopefully not go stir crazy over it.

I have been very lucky in that, during the lockdown (and all that followed) we had a treadmill. We had just gotten the thing and, while I’m 1. prone to walking outdoors whenever I can and 2. not a runner, it was fortuitous. (And the source of many a ‘hamsters in a cage’ joke at our house for March-May 2020.)

Months back, in the depths of all this staying-at-home, I decided I should take up running again. My tricky heart was driving me a bit mad and I thought that, maybe, I could work myself out of some of the odd blips and flips it was prone to if I put enough miles in me.

Now, I’m a terrible runner. Really really terrible. So most of my runs were mostly walking punctuated by short sprints. This went on for a good many months. But I was running! That counted for something.

And I had fun doing it. YouTube virtual running vids became my carrot-on-a-stick. I’ve been all over the world without leaving my house.

A quick shoutout to my fav video for running:

By July I had managed my first “10 minutes of uninterrupted running” in my adult life.

And then, through a fun little series of interconnected Tweets, I found out about the current 221km challenge from Medal Mad.

So I joined that challenge in August. How could I not???

I’ll have you know, though, 221km in 90 days is a LOT of running. A lot MORE than I had been doing… (and I thought I was doing splendidly these many months.)

So here I am, a hamster on a wheel of sorts. Doing a 5k every other day, on average.

I have been taking walks outside, too, with the coming of autumnal temps. But, apparently, in spite of everything, I have become a runner at long last.

(Wish me luck in finding that finish line. I’ll get a keen t-shirt, too. )

I’ve always loved garden tomatoes. And not just from that old song, from the romance and idea of it. Two summers back, I started gardening. I finally had the space for it and, by gum, I was going to have some home grown tomatoes just like my grandparents grew!

The thing is, I’m the only person in my household who likes tomatoes. And, while I’ve tried for a very very modest little patch, my plants are looking like, well… like they belong to a farm stand.

Of course they’ll all come due more or less at once! (I’ve three sitting on the counter as I type this… and have eaten… so. many. tomatoes.)

But…

Tomatoes, M. K.? That’s nice, but … aren’t you a writer, and that’s what this blog is supposed to be about?

You see, this morning I had the pleasure of tossing another story idea into the queue.

(Realistically? I panicked. I’ve 4 books in the works -not counting the one that will release this coming December. Okay, well, that’s not counting the 16 or so that live in my “soon as I can get them done” folder on my hard drive of various projects.)

I’m buried in story tomatoes. I’m swimming in a marinara sauce of prose.

I’m … torturing metaphors.

But if you see nothing of me for months? Don’t worry, I’m off trying to learn canning. And by canning, I mean: flipping a coin on what comes next book-wise; pitting characters one against another in a bracket of winner takes all; trying out various divination techniques on plot.

And you’re looking at someone who doesn’t even have a green thumb.

(& thank goodness I love tomatoes.)

I surprised an author friend today by saying I felt ’empty inside’ over the upcoming release of The Fatewreaker — book 3 of the ‘Bookminder’ trilogy.

I mean, I can’t complain. I write books for a living. It’s marvelous. It’s fun. It’s challenging. But . . . it’s emotionally draining, too. And so often in unexpected ways.

You see, I hadn’t expected to feel sad, either. (Okay, maybe I anticipated it a little bit. After all, these wizards of mine have been with me since mid-2004.) Triumph. Excitement. Joy. These are the emotions I knew would come as I typed the final word in the draft and knew it Done. When I saw the cover art for the first time; held the ‘proof’ copy in hand and then shelved it with its fellow volumes on my office shelf; heard the audio book roughs… Wonderful experiences all.

But, too, each moment had a tiny ‘goodbye’ in it.

This book, this story and these characters– I love them. Dearly. Liara, Nagarath, Anisthe, Krešimir, Amsalla . . . they are my first. Dvigrad? Limska Draga? The ‘Bookminder’ series is likely to be my only ‘Croatia story’. (To that end, everyone who was in the Milwaukee CFU Tamburitzans with me will attest that, after the annual concert, we had a horrid empty little feeling the next day.) To be done with the trilogy is to, potentially*, be done with something incredibly precious to me. Something that I have given so much of my time, energies, and heart to.

(*potential as I do have a second trilogy arced and in consideration . . . but I have yet to determine if I’ve strength enough to tackle it. As the last year+ has brought into new focus: the future is never secure.)

And then there are the people. The real people, and not my fictional wizards. The folks of Xchyler Publishing whom I have loved working with. My cover artist, my narrator, all whom I hope to work with in the future. But it won’t be this project, in this time.

Each book is different. A person only gets one ‘first’ of a thing.

The publishing process, funnily enough, moves so glacially at times that it’s easy to be lulled into a sense of timelessness. I fell into the error of believing that the ‘Bookminder’ would go on forever for me, that I could always come back to Parentino and see Nagarath working his messy magicks, or Liara pouting and making argument over this or that nonsense.

And, perhaps, I am being silly. For isn’t that the marvel of books? That you can go right back in and read them over and again whenever the mood takes you.

See you on page one.

O more duboko

Sva moja radosti

Po tebi meni plovi

Cvite moje mladosti

I have been putting off my proof read of The Fatewreaker. Not the proofread proofread. The book is available for preorder. It is done. It is complete. What I mean is my manual read-through of the physical proof copy. I do so every time, with every book. It is a ritual of sorts, a formal finishing of the story in my mind, permission to start The Next Thing and archive my file folder of materials.

I’ve been putting it off because I already miss it. And if I close the file, if I put away the things that I used to put together this third book of the Bookminder trilogy . . . then it’s really over.

I already miss this story and its wizards. I miss its location and the meaning it holds for me. These books . . . they are personal in a way I never expected or anticipated.

That’s on me, of course. I should have seen it coming. Setting things in Istria, choosing to highlight Croatia as a place of wonder and mystery, desiring to put into print that vague sense of romance and magick that I had long felt when connecting to my heritage — that’s on me that I didn’t think it would hurt to type “The End” eventually.

Nagarath and Liara are my friends. And these make-believe friends have led to more friends, real people in the real world. Talented and lovely people from across the globe who, if I don’t have my Croatian wizards to connect us . . . will we stay in touch?

The books I can return to, sure. That physical paperback proof I am avoiding? It’ll wait for me on my office book shelf. But the time in which I wrote these stories, the person I was when the idea developed? That time is gone; that ‘me’ is a memory. You can read its shadow in a trilogy of fantasy books set in 17th century Istria.

And, I suppose, that’s alright. After all, I write stories set in a forgotten, fictionalized past. Which is all that present ‘us’ ever truly remembers.

And therein lies the beating heart of tradition, of the idea of ‘heritage’ really. Stories told and retold, reimagined, remixed, repurposed and enjoyed by the next generation . . . Impressions and memory, blended inside the soul and shared with love.

So maybe, in the end, I’m only avoiding finding the inevitable typo which somehow managed to sneak past multiple edit passes and many eyes. Or, maybe, I’m simply ducking the massive amount of work which the next book will require. Because the story, this story . . . it keeps going. Which was the point of the whole thing anyway.

I recall my parents cooking in the kitchen years back and my dad stealing raw potato chunks on the sly before they could make it into the pot. I, impressionable youth, copied this action, finding satisfaction in the eye-roll that my mom would give. “They’re no good that way.” Then she would shake her head and position herself just so, so that it’d be a little harder for us to steal more starchy, crunchy bites.

Turns out that … delicious or not … potatoes really are no good raw. (I sent a text to my mom the other day to the effect of ‘What does it feel like, this being right all the darned time!’ — it was on an unrelated matter.

The publication date for Sherlock Holmes & The Ripper of Whitechapel did not happen by accident. More like happenstance, I suppose. It needed to be a Tuesday (why do books release on Tuesday?) and in November. (The latter qualifier due to mood and tone of book, overall placement within the yearly calendar, distance from my other releases… all sorts of calculus went into this.) My own birthday was out of the question- that just seemed a bit too indulgent. No, I needed something Holmes-adjacent, something a little more recherché.
And so November 3 was selected all those months back.

At the time I hadn’t realized that Mr. Brett would have been gone 25 years as of this past September. Somehow, for me, it still feels rather immediate. But then, that’s the power of storytelling, I suppose. A good story, told well, will continually renew its lease upon a heart and I, for one, am comforted by the idea that Sherlock Holmes stands tall forever.

So I’m starting over on an old knitting project. Again.

I’ve a number of older pieces that I have abandoned along the way. Hats. Socks. Intricately-patterned scarves…

This one, I believe, reigns supreme for how long it has waited for completion, how many times I’ve moved with it in partially-completed mode, and for the sheer number of times I’ve completely undone it and begun anew. And on something so utterly simple as a knit/purl scarf.

I’ll be honest, my brain had forgotten how to knit–oddly enough, my fingers knew the way, once begun–and had to look up how to cast on, how to knit, how to purl…

I’m 4 rows in as of this posting and so far, so good.

It’s a strange thing, this never-finished scarf. The material itself is a bit off. Very ‘late 90s M. K. thought this was super cool’. Why, yes, I began this scarf in high school. It is, I believe, the first of my uncompleted knitting projects. Which is how it has managed to move so many places and been re-started so often. This incomplete scarf predates my first relationship. My first move away from home. It has witnessed a series of jobs, cars, degrees, and other major life events.

I almost don’t want to finish it at this point.

But here I am.

Five skeins of project yarn, the color and texture of which would make even the Muppets’ Animal jealous of this phantom scarf, and many wasted hours. What else should I do but complete the dratted thing?

Of course, then I’ll have to wear it, this furry, orange, garish nightmare of a scarf that high-school M. K. thought would be really neat and autumnal once upon a time.

I’ll let you know how it turns out.

… if I finish it.

Twenty five years ago, on Sept 12, 1995, Mr. Jeremy Brett passed away.

When I was eight…

I was an eight-year-old who adored Sherlock Holmes. I cried at the conclusion of the Final Problem and cheered for the Empty Room (as one does). And when I discovered there was an actual end to the canon, that the stories were not limitless? I simply flipped back to the front of volume one and started over, discovering new favorite moments along the way. I allowed myself to swept up in the words, characters, and stories again and again.

At some point, I’m not certain as to when and under what circumstances, I discovered that there was an official fan club: The Baker Street Irregulars. But you couldn’t just send in a membership application and get your magnifying glass equivalent of a secret decoder ring or something, oh no. One must merit membership. Okay. Well then! I set myself upon the lofty task of solving one of the immortal questions surrounding the great detective. I was to determine, through science, deduction, intense study of the canon, whether Holmes was right- or left-handed! (Remember. I was eight, so this seemed a fantastic and fully worthy idea.)

Several days crouched on the floor of my bedroom with half a dozen volumes, a pack of sticky notes, graph paper, pencils, pens, and little labeled cutouts meant to represent the various furnishings of 221B… I concluded that Sherlock Holmes was more than likely right-handed with a tendency towards ambidextrous-ity when the situation called for it.

Case closed.

(Also, my being eight years old and it being the early 90s, I did not publish my findings.)

When I was nine…

The Walt Disney company gave full endorsement to us littles who thought it perfectly acceptable to walk around with our “nose stuck in a book”.

via GIPHY

My reading obsession continued, the basis of it being Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s works, of course.

But, by then, my love of my new public library — and the joys of summer break + the family room VCR — led me in a roundabout way to the Granada Sherlock Holmes series.

I was stunned. My favorite stories… had been put on film??

One by one, the tapes made their way through our house. I discovered I was not the only person with such interests. Far too often, the episode I wanted to watch next was unavailable by the time I had returned the tape which I had checked out. In all likelihood, the same mild inconvenience was felt by this other mysterious Sherlockian (whom I never did encounter.)

(Gosh, one episode per tape! It was quite the game to try to make it through the series and I had to watch it all out of order. In many ways, it made the whole endeavor more rewarding in that I couldn’t ‘Netflix’ my way through it all in the space of a day.)

Honestly, I think I might have imprinted on Jeremy Brett’s Holmes like a baby chicken. His mannerisms, his patterns of diction, expressions– these all spoke to me, they gave me permission to sit in a chair a certain way, to wave my hands thus.

When I was fifteen…

Knowing my keen interest in all things Holmesian, my mom saved for me the morning paper on January 4, 1996. “Happy Birthday, Mr. Holmes” the headline proclaimed. I, of course, read the article with great interest. And then my breath caught in my chest–I remember the moment with such clarity even now. Halfway down the article, the phrase ‘the late Jeremy Brett’ caught my eye. The late? What?! No! I simply could not be. Words fail me even now. That heartache, that stunned sadness, refuses to be put onto the page in any clear form. This was how I found out. Months after the fact. For our local papers had not even marked Mr. Brett’s passing. (In this age of trending topics and instant news, this lag in information now feels unreal. I guess I could say that, for me, Mr. Brett lived a little longer.)

Now…

I have dared the impossible. Correction, improbable.

That awkward moment when you log into your digital sailing voyage and find that you’ve gone from this

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to this

That said, my boat has managed to cross the Atlantic at long last. Currently headed south by way of the Bay of Biscay. (And with the aid of some frightful winds. I honestly did not know you could capsize in this simulator.)

Hey, ho, away we go!

I’ve been encouraged to share some pics of my writing space. To which I replied– well, that’s because you haven’t SEEN my writing space! hahahah

Seriously, I seem to have accumulated the most amazing collection of oddities and comfort items. An example of the clutter/cozy blend? I have, just now, counted the light sources in my room. Discounting both the window and ceiling fan light (the latter of which I never use save for when I’m vacuuming), I have a desk lamp, floor lamp, three atmospheric lanterns, a fake fireplace (powered by a nightlight bulb), and four ‘Dept 52’ Literary Classics houses. Oops, I forgot. I also have a ficus tree covered in little white ‘Italian lights’.