Good day, dear reader.  Today in badass literary history, in 1816, to be exact, Lord Byron signed a deed of separation from his wife, Lady Annabella Milbanke.  I can tell by the nonplussed expressions on your jaded faces that you lack historical perspective and/or proper appreciation for this event, so let me help you out.  Your first issue is you don’t know how badass Byron was.   Byron was the rockstar poet of the Romantic era…all fiery passion and scandal.  Maybe the most efficient explanation of Byron’s badassedness comes courtesy of Lady Caroline Lamb, a British aristocrat and novelist, who described Byron as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”  She wrote this in her diary in 1812 after meeting him at a ball, following the publication of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, which made Byron a literary sensation.  Lamb, who later had a tumultuous affair with him, captured his notorious reputation as a charismatic yet scandalous figure – prone to reckless behavior, defiance of social norms, and a string of controversial relationships.  His split from Lady Milbanke would have made your great-grandmama’s corset pop.  It wasn’t some limp divorce of tea and crumpets…’twas a full-throated, middle-finger war cry against the suffocating chains of societal decorum and bourgeois bullshit.

Picture it, man: 1816, a year absolutely drowning in gloom, Europe’s skies choked with Tambora’s ash, crops rotting, famine creeping, the whole deal.  Without warning, into this mess storms George Gordon Byron, a swaggering badass who’d rather fistfight a hurricane than kiss the ring of convention, signing off on  year-long marriage to math-nerd Christian Lady Annabella Milbanke.  Byron was all fire – his latest publication had hearts thumping.  Annabella was a prim little saint who thought she could tame his wild soul.  Their clash was a trainwreck – her rules versus his chaos – ending with her hurling accusations: infidelity, incest with his half-sister Augusta, even sodomy – charges extreme enough to get him hanged.

Did Byron grovel?  Hell no!  He bolted to Switzerland, hit the Alps with Shelly and Mary, and partied like a rockstar, birthing Frankenstein in a stormy, booze-soaked summer.  The balls!

While Annabella clutched her Bible, Byron turned exile into a roaring middle finger to the prigs, penning verses that still echo.  So cheers to Lord Byron.

In local news, the schedule is more demanding than ever, and I’m struggling to meet these fairly ridiculous deadlines.  Fortunately Mgmt did give me a couple of “buffer days” on some of the more demanding aspects of the current book.  I will definitely be using those days.  I’ve been frustrated, because I’ve been getting words on the page, but there hasn’t been “magic.”  But that’s starting to change…glimmers of the magic have been appearing more frequently.  I shall keep at it.

N.P.: “Für Elise” – Marcin Jakubek