“Can’t get enough of you, Love,” chapter 9 of Martha’s Children, is now available. Martha warned Ned to stay away from sorcerers. By reputation, they are dangerous, devious, and capricious. All of which describe the sorceress named Make Love Not War quite well. So why is Ned asking for her help? And how is she going to treat the request of a mere vampire, let alone one who’s on the outs with her friend Martha? The answers to those questions surprise them both!
If you’re not been following Martha’s Children, my serialized story of cops and vampires in 1969 Chicago, you can start reading here. A new chapter goes up every Friday.
I’d planned an essay on “new age” spirituality, but my head’s a bit rattled this morning. Much of the region is shut down while they hunt for the surviving suspect from the Boston Marathon bombing. So we’re relying on news feeds, laden with uninformative fragmentary facts, rumors, and falsehoods, to figure out what’s going on. Turns out one of the suspects was living and going to school within a fifteen-minute walk from where I live in Cambridge. So much for the violence being only across the river in Boston.
Still, this is the second time in five days we’ve been going through crisis reaction in the area. I’ve read how people subjected to repeated crises become blasé about them, with London during the Blitz being a famous example. I’m seeing the same thing happening to myself. Monday was a horror. Today, we’ll just live through it.
I’d carefully considered Ned’s psychology, waking up to find himself a vampire, and wondered if I had got it right. I can still wonder, but I know that what I’ve portrayed is possible. People do adapt to horrors. Whether that’s good or bad is worth thinking about.
Sillyverse 
A dreadful day, Brian. Stay safe: I hope you and your city are liberated soon.
Thank you, Donna. Margo Shea and I have been talking on Facebook about how, as historians, we react to this situation. She’s concerned, but out of the country. I’m in the lockdown zone, but not directly involved in anything actively going on. It’s true: history can be a lot more exciting in retrospect than while it’s actually going on!
If you’re feeling anything like I was when caught up in the Xmas bombings of 1983 (or was it 84?), then your nerves are shredded. That day, with every unattended car a suspected bomb, with tube stations closed, everyone was trying to make out that they were handling it. I was a visitor, but my companion, a Londoner, had already experienced 2 others, close-up, slight injuries, and he might have looked ok but he was tighter than an overwound watchspring. Just reading the reports from Boston, it all came back. No, we don’t get over it. It never becomes ‘just one of those things’. The wounds go deeper than flesh. But on a brighter note, it sure is experience for a writer. Glad you’re ok – if only on the surface. 🙂
It’s weird: one is genuinely bored and tense at the same time. Gave myself permission to break into my stash of high-alcohol IPA at noon, just to chill out.
🙂 Sense of humour does not depart.
Oh, I’ve been compiling a list of inappropriate songs: Bobby Fuller’s “I Fought the Law and the Law Won;” R. Dean Taylor’s “Indiana Wants Me;” and Steely Dan’s “Don’t Take Me Alive.”
I like it. But can’t think of any off top of head.
Apparently he may be driving a green Honda Civic. Latest on Yahoo News
Better choice of vehicle than the Mercedes SUV they used last night, which would be quite conspicuous around here. A green Civic, on the other hand? Just another small Japanese-company car.
Yahoo has quite a bit, spooling as it happens. Had I visited there first . . . I’ve been offline much these past 2 days.
Busy, tired, or both?
Hate to say it. Honest, it’s not copycat, but I’ve had a bug. And a bug on top of CFS is a bug indeed. Such interesting dreams I’ve had!
I think I can guarantee you didn’t copy me on getting a bug, certainly not the same one I got. Sorry to hear that.
The only time I’ve ever had interesting dreams when I was sick was during a high fever after I fell and injured myself; I was fighting with Emily Bronte against the French in 1851 while trying to restore the normal time flow. I hope yours are as interesting. 🙂
And the lockdown has ended, and as I write, they seem to have the second suspect cornered.
Yea, I’ve justr caught the news. He was hiding out on a boat in the harbour.
As to my dreams, I think I dream in plots cos it has no bearing upon my life. The great action hero, me. But considering my health, that’s probably wish fulfilment
What better kind of dreams to have? I’d prefer them to the two dreams I’ve had in which I was killed, once by a handgun, once by a Star Trek transporter. Had to do some fancy mental footwork to recover from those.
That sense of humour just keeps coming! I once shot into space with Bob Hope but I think that was a comment on my aspirations. Aiming too high, some hope. But how to explain John Cleese (Monty Python and Fawlty Towers) coming to tea in my Hobbit-type burrow. More usual is the triumphant solution to some unspecified problem. Yea, no comment there either.
Now, John Cleese and Bob Hope in the same dream . . . 🙂