I Hate Hamlet

No, actually, I don't. It's the name of a play. Which I've done. But sometimes I do hate history.

So there's several thematic threads that are running through Fox and Hounds. One of them is Shakespeare, and particularly Hamlet. Another is Doctor Who.

At the emotional climax of the story, Penny quotes from the Gravediggers Scene. She even goes on about Yorick's skull; why it shouldn't be some plastic anatomy model but should look like something that came out of a grave.

Finished the scene, finished the edit, compiled, uploaded. And then I hit something in my Quora feed.

The Royal Shakespeare Company has a real skull. It was bequeathed by Andre Tchaikowsky, a pianist and composer. It took them twenty years to finally use it in a production, but in 2008 it starred as Yorick in a production of Hamlet, alongside -- David Tennent in the title role. David, who previous played The Doctor in, of course, Doctor Who.

And I'm actually glad I didn't know about this before I wrote the scene.

Oh, right. Yes, book is uploaded and I've ordered pre-release copies. I want to give my Dad a crack at it before I hit the "publish" button:

I also took the chance to tweak the cover for the Athens book:

For some reason they both ended up looking rather dark. Well, so with two down and a third in planning, I've got a general scheme. Artifacts when possible. Athena and/or her fedora in the image in some disguised form -- if possible (it wasn't in Hounds).

Space; particularly, in a tunnel form. For the third book, this will be the line of torii gates from the famous hilltop shrine outside Kyoto. Color grading; Knows is the old teal and orange, Hounds is more in the umbers, and Wedding will be greens and reds. And the Owl of Athena.

***

So that's up. The first big step on the Japan book will be pre-planning. Looking at what I've learned with an eye towards finishing faster and being happier with the results.


***

The Apple crazies continue. You can't buy an older OS from them, exactly. You buy a license, and three days later they email you twice; a pdf, and the key to the pdf. Which when you open it with that password, gives you another code, which you then "redeem."

Says Apple "the Redeem link is right there in the Quick Links drop-down." Dudes, if there was anything in the drop-down tabs I'd click it. Turns out you have to be in the "Please buy whatever shit we think is hot this month" part of the Ap store for the particular tab to be visible.

So hooked up the Mac Mini again. And this time, after going through all the agreements to re-install Lion, instead of popping up with "That item is not currently available from your selected store" (seriously, you call that informative?) it starts downloading it. Whew!

If the contractor hadn't given me twelve-hour notice he needed access, I'd now have three computers and three monitors and two keyboards and drawing tablet and optical drive spread around the desk. Instead of three monitors, two computers, and one keyboard...

***

Ordered a hank of black horse hair from Amazon and made up a new string for my Gue. After a bit of trial and error, I now have a pair of strings that sound decent and can be tuned a fifth apart. Now I should write some music for it.

Once the Japan novel is properly started.