Sunday, October 13, 2002
I was supposed to write about this yesterday, and I forgot. Exactly nine years ago yesterday, I sat down and began writing Silk. Nine years. I hadn't yet moved to Athens, Georgia, and lived in my old apartment on 16th Avenue, on the side of Red Mountain in Birmingham. That apartment's located just a little ways from the water works tunnel that would figure prominently in Threshold, and right about where I imagined Chance Matthews' grandparents' house was located. Spyder Baxter's old house on Cullom Street would be a few blocks southwest. I still remember, very clearly, that morning. I used to get up very early to start writing and the room I was using for an office (I lived alone), was large and the walls were a pale blue. Two of the walls, the eastern and southern walls, were almost completely occupied by tall windows. That room got great morning light. I even remember the album I was listening to when I started to book — Star by Belly. Of course, that album had a lot to do, years later, with the genesis of Low Red Moon, a novel that takes it's title from one of the tracks. I already had an agent by that time, Richard Curtis, thanks to Melanie Tem having shown him the manuscript of The Five of Cups. He'd liked my work, but wanted to see something different from me and I'd spent much of the summer trying desperately to think of a novel. I'd sold my first short story that summer, nine years ago, and about two months after that bright October morning when I started Silk, I'd sell my second short story. My old Macintosh Color Classic was brand new then. I'd been reading Ancient Images by Ramsey Campbell. The weekend before (and I can't recall what day of the week October 11th, 1993 was, and don't feel like looking it up), I spent in Athens with a friend, who was trying to persuade me to move there. And I did, the following April, a few days after Kurt Cobain's suicide, about seven months after I started Silk, nine years ago. I wouldn't finish the novel until January 1996. I was easily distracted in those days and still trying to find my voice. Things took longer, but there was a lot less pressure. Anyway, in just a couple of weeks Silk will be reissued as a trade paperback. If you'd told me, that morning in October in 1993 that so much would follow from so first few sentences, I would have scoffed. If you'd told me Clive Barker would do illustrations for a limited edition and Peter Straub and Neil Gaiman would praise it, that it would win two awards and launch my career as a writer, I'd have probably punched you. But I did start it, though I can't quite remember why, what drove me so hard in those days. And I thought that day ought to be noted.
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