Thursday, October 17, 2002
I'm still too sleepy to actually work, but I can at least write about working in here. We went to Atlanta last night for dinner with friends and didn't get home until about 1 a.m. Which is better than we do on most trips to Atlanta. I re-read "Jerusalem's Lot" on the way there and back; I'd forgotten what an effective story it is, save, perhaps, the silly and unfortunate 1971 epilogue at the end, that "The End?" ending stuck on at the close. It almost turns an otherwise chilling story into a long and tiresome joke with a weak punchline. Almost. But not quite. The description of the town itself remains very effective.
Yesterday I almost finished "Andromeda Among the Stones." I wrote almost 1,400 words, the prose racing from my head to my fingertips and onto the page in a frenzy that I rarely experience when writing. But then I had to leave the apartment for an appointment and was forced to stop with maybe 500 words to go. Which I will do today.
My exit to Rhode Island may be delayed by a few weeks, because, although Low Red Moon sold in September, the contracts are still shuffling about the Byzantine labyrinths of Penguin, and until the contracts are signed I don't get paid. That's one of the other joys of publishing. The delayed gratification effect writers get to experience regularly, whether we're into delayed gratification or not. It doesn't usually bother me. Usually, I just accept it as part of the territory, like the pinched nerve in my shoulder from sitting at a keyboard almost every day for the past ten years or the copyeditors who try to rewrite my books or the constant stress. But, at the moment, it's a little inconvenient. Being a Southerner (fate's a bitch), I fear making the move to New England in November; the deadly white spectre of snow looms large and exagerrated in my Southern imagination. But I may have no other choice at this point. Which sucks for more reasons than I have fingers and toes.
Time to go stick pins in my nipples until I'm awake enough to finish the story.
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