Christmas
The holidays were kind of a bust for me this year. I got sick about halfway through the month and just wiped out. My head felt so empty I thought I could hear the wind whistling between my ears, and then after a day or two of that it started to fill up with liquid. I rallied just in time for Christmas, and while I’ve stopped coughing and breaking out into feverish sweats, I still feel overcome by a powerful sense of lethargy.
About all I was able to do yesterday was bingewatch Frasier. It’s actually a pretty great show. I can’t remember if I’ve written about Feydeau in this space or not, but it’s the same farcical energy. A lot of running and hiding in closets and pretending you’re a colonel or whatever just to keep some dumb, faint hope alive. I dunno.
My point is I really didn’t want to write this newsletter but I also know I can’t go on bingewatching Frasier forever.
Good dog names. Open secret of the pyramids. A short film about crabs.
Accomplishments
Alright, it’s the end of the year so it’s time to take stock or whatever.
Since 2020 my goal has been to publish two short stories a year, and I managed to pull that off again this year. I sold “The Grave Robbers of Eidelhlem” to Malarkey Books for their Hellarkey 2 anthology, and I sold “Diary of the Wolf” to Old Moon Quarterly for their sixth issue, which will be coming out in January. Watch for a cover reveal this week. “My Daughter, Prepper Bucket” was reprinted in a small anthology, and I had a fourth story accepted elsewhere, but that publication looks like it’s since folded (their website is still up and they’ve assured me it’s still coming out, but I haven’t heard anything since June, so I’m chalking it up as a loss).
My other accomplishment is this newsletter, which I’m surprised I’ve stuck with since August. It turns out it’s actually quite fun to write, and it’s been getting a positive reception and more readers than I expected.
2024 Goals
My novel project took a back seat this year. It needs a lot of retooling and that put me off working on it. But it’s something I think I can do and something I really want to do, so I’ll give it more attention next year. I also want to publish two more short stories, and right now I really only have one on file that I think is good enough, so I’ll have to try some short stories again.
I want to keep putting out this newsletter, too. I feel like I’m starting to find a niche and I’ve got a fun chanson de geste to share with you in January. But I find myself frustrated over Substack’s Nazi problem. I’m not sure that boycotting Substack is the right answer—that sort of thing only works if they feel it in the wallet, and it’s not like they’d notice my absence. On the other hand, I don’t want to be associated even tangentially with a site that caters to a Nazi contingent. From what I can tell, Substack is the only platform that’s completely free to use, and I’m not sure if Adam’s Notes would continue if I had to switch to some paid service. Right now I’m in sort of a holding pattern, watching a handful of trusted leftwing, news oriented Substacks, waiting to see what they do. I’m also interested in your thoughts. Feel free to send me a message on twitter or an email if you have any thoughts on the matter.
Elephant cave. Holy procrastination.. Celebrity bird.
Pepys Show
Meal of the month: ‘a great chine of beef and half a dozen of tongues,’ on December 19. Although that gifted turkey ‘not at all roasted’ that needs two women to shift it on a spit sounds good, too.
Claire Tomalin’s description of December 1660, from her biography of Samuel Pepys:
December 1660 was a month of intimacies: on the 1st Pepys, finding the house untidy, let his anger rip and beat her with a broom until she cried ‘extremely’. This upset him – can he have supposed she would take it as another bit of sporting? – and he felt obliged to appease her (his word) before he went out. Not long afterwards he describes the delightfully peaceful scene in which, while Elizabeth was away with friends, he lay in bed reading himself to sleep while Jane sat companionably beside him darning his breeches. Two days before Christmas she and Elizabeth struggled together to get a great turkey on to the spit; and after Christmas Pepys was ill in the night (‘I think with eating and drinking too much’), called up Jane to bring a basin and recovered fast enough to be charmed by the innocent way she ran up and down in her night smock, presumably showing a good deal of arm and leg.
Pepys also oversees some workers doing some painting in his home, finishing just in time for Christmas.
Politically, it’s a different story. Charles II has been back on the throne and consolidating power for a few months now, and everyone who holds a different vision for England is starting to get desperate.
On December 4, Pepys records, “This day the Parliament voted that the bodies of Oliver (Cromwell), Ireton, Bradshaw, &c., should be taken up out of their graves in the Abbey, and drawn to the gallows, and there hanged and buried under it: which (methinks) do trouble me that a man of so great courage as he was, should have that dishonour, though otherwise he might deserve it enough.” You can see Pepys justifying his earlier stance as a roundhead, a Cromwell supporter, even though he’s now firmly on the King’s side.
Then on the 16th a plot against the King is uncovered:
since last night there are about forty taken up on suspicion; and, amongst others, it was my lot to meet with Simon Beale, the Trumpeter, who took me and Tom Doling into the Guard in Scotland Yard, and showed us Major-General Overton, where I heard him deny that he is guilty of any such things; but that whereas it is said that he is found to have brought many arms to town, he says it is only to sell them, as he will prove by oath.
A close friend of the poet John Milton, Overton was a Parliamentarian who sympathized with the Fifth Monarchists. He’ll be in and out of jail for the next few months, until finally the government imprisons him on the Isle of Jersey for seven years. I don’t buy Overton’s excuse that he was just trying to turn a profit, because in Januray 1661, the Fifth Monarchists will launch a short-lived coup, headed by the cooper Thomas Venner. Venner also has a very small role in my story for Old Moon Quarterly next month.
Plays:
Ben Jonson’s The Silent Woman. “The play is about a man named Dauphine, who creates a scheme to get his inheritance from his uncle Morose. The plan involves setting Morose up to marry Epicoene, a boy disguised as a woman (though none of the other characters know this until the final scene of the play).”
Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. Pepys’ comment: “the humours of the country gentleman and the French doctor very well done, but the rest but very poorly, and Sir J. Falstaffe as bad as any.”
Shakespeare’s Henry IV. Pepys’ comment: “in Paul’s Church-yard I bought the play of “Henry the Fourth,” and so went to the new Theatre (only calling at Mr. Crew’s and eat a bit with the people there at dinner) and saw it acted; but my expectation being too great, it did not please me, as otherwise I believe it would; and my having a book, I believe did spoil it a little.”
17-century party trick? “in discourse I learnt a pretty trick to try whether a woman be a maid or no, by a string going round her head to meet at the end of her nose, which if she be not will come a great way beyond.”
Maternal poetry. Sumerian copper. PDF cult.
Some Bluesky invite codes:
bsky-social-g7koc-nh4cb
bsky-social-mjito-ch7hn
bsky-social-nfedt-xau5i
bsky-social-3tytx-xvfdj
Thanks for reading, especially if you’ve made it this far. This has been Adam’s Notes for December 30, 2023. My name is Adam McPhee, and you can find me on Twitter, Bluesky, Letterboxd, and Goodreads.