The Phantom Librarian

Chapter Nineteen (That Awful Man) is up at SQ. Added a brief commentary on the loss of Remus's job, a little more description of Mrs. Pettigrew's house, and changed the quick description of Scrimgeour so that he wouldn't be mistaken for Williamson. Since of course, Scrimgeour was never meant to be that Auror Harry saw, who was of course Williamson. Nothing major. About four added sentences total. I also put that Tonks ficlet about detention with Snape (the one I did for mafdet's birthday; I hope she doesn't mind) up at The Pit.

I'm almost finished with what I promised ZP--I'll send it off tomorrow afternoon--then I'm going to settle in and write that Neville/Marion story. I don't know how well it will work as a romance (as per the ithurtsmybrain guidelines), though they will at least kiss, but honestly... I plotted it out today, and I sort of dig the story, so yay, writer's block has passed, and I'm looking forward to starting something new. Plus, it's going to work in Voldemort's parents while they're still together... and I'm not going to write her as poor, put-upon little Mrs. Riddle.

So, hey. This is a good thing. I'll post it a scene at a time here.

The friendsditto thing: Since I more or less go through every few weeks and re-friend anyone who friends me who doesn't have a username like hpsucks (I really have to stop doing that, though; the old f-list is getting unmanageable), I'm not all that much less careful in f-locked posts than I am in public ones. And private posts tend to just be drafts of things I'm writing. And in the odd case where it actually is private, my life is so bloody boring that I doubt anyone would save it anyway. So, shrug. However, giving one's password to anything away=bad, bad idea. Please don't do it. The service is unnecessary anyway. Just add things you like to memories. And when you search, toggle the little drop down to change what level of security you're looking for in memories.

Question for British friends (or those used to hearing the sort of accent Neville Longbottom would be accustomed to in his rather insulated world): How would a kind of rough northern U.S. accent sound? (Marion in Raiders.) I don't mean as in, "Ugh, ugly!!!!" I mean more along the line of, would it sound clipped? Slurred? Flat? It's hard to hear what stands out about what's, to me, close to my own default accent, if a bit rougher and less heavy on the r's (yes, even as a speaker, I can pick up on the harsh Great Lakes r; when your RL name has two of them close together and it sounds like a cartoon growl--RRRRRR!--it's hard to miss, but I guarantee there are a lot of other things about my accent that are completely invisible to me).

I re-read Stephen King's Insomnia recently, and it's better on a second read-through. It still has places where, as a writer, I was saying, "Oh, come on, King--do you think we missed that you changed your mind about something and didn't bother to go back and edit out the old clues?" But now that I've done a couple of long pieces myself, I'm a lot less annoyed about it, more just... noticing it. But you have to dig an action story where the heroes are both well into their retirements. Also, it closed with an image that I think sums up what I love about Stephen King's books. I don't have it with me, so no quote, but it harks back to a memory Ralph has of waking up in an old barn and seeing sunlight coming in between the slats in dazzling rays, and basically, Lois (his best girl) realizes that no matter how dark it seemed, there was always light all around and ready to break through with great brilliance at every seam. All of his books just seem to have this profound optimism about them, this notion that darkness is transient. It always surprises me when I read literary criticism of him that dwells on the monsters and bogeymen, and sometimes goes so far as to posit pessimism (because the evil rarely dies completely). It strikes me as very seriously Missing The Point.

Guess that's it for the morning.

After work, I felt like a walk, and I wandered down to Fanueil Hall. I noticed a lot of people wandering around in colonial era costumes. You see them down there sometimes, tempting tourists to get their pictures taken with them for a buck, which goes to the schools. But there were a lot, and I never recalled seeing so many British soldier costumes down there. When I came out after having dinner in Quincy Market, there were even more costumed people from both sides milling around, and I scratched my head and said, "Hmmm. This is meaningful. What is... Oh."

See, it's the fifth of March--the two hundred and thirty-fifth anniversary of the Boston Massacre, which occurred only about half a block from Fanueil Hall, in front of the Old State House (I was standing on the plaza you see in front; every year on the Fourth of July, the Declaration of Independence is read from the balcony). This isn't one of Boston's odd historical holidays; I'd forgotten totally. But all the folks down there were doing a reenactment.

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