Monday, February 17, 2003
The cold has returned, but I've read the news and know how much worse it is for much of the East. Atlanta dodged another bullet.
Inertia. I give myself an inch, then take a mile, and half a forever is required to get moving again. Moving in earnest. I'm trying to write the introduction for Gemma Files' Kissing Carrion, but everything I wrote yesterday was trite nonsense. So I'll start fresh today and try again. Maybe a little absinthe will clear my head of all these Distractions. It worked so well while I was writing "La Peau Verte." And one day, someone will say, "I remember the days before Caitlín Kiernan was entirely seduced by The Green Fairy, when she didn't smell like licorice all the time. Oh, you haven't heard? Yes, these days she's entirely dissolute, poor old thing. Someone should have taken the bottle away from her years ago." There are worse dissolutions, though. Anyway, this morning I read the preface I wrote in January 1999 for the Gauntlet edition of Silk, trying to get my head back in that essay-preface-introduction place. The trick is not to sound as full of shit as you actually are.
Spooky and I sat on the floor of her sewing room last night and read the Gloomcookie Christmas Special (my comic store took for bloody ever to get me a copy) and the new issue of Courtney Crumrin and the Coven of Mystics. Then we watched The Hunger (I'd not seen it in years), and listened to Louisa John-Krol's Alexandria. Jennifer spent part of the evening on a bunch of proofreading she's doing for Subterranean Press.
The trick is also not to embarrass or annoy the author you're trying to flatter and introduce.
There's a big yellow ladder lying on its side in my office, because I'm supposed to be hanging pictures, but I haven't hung one in days. The hall is lined with them, still wrapped from the move. You'd think a painter lived here, or some poor fool with an art gallery.
Last night I watched reports of the anti-war protests on CNN. It was encouraging. Escpecially the 1-3 million who marched in Rome. That was almost unbelievable. Bush will do what he damn well pleases, but at least the world is letting him know what it thinks and, perhaps, how we will remember him.
God, why don't I shut up. Enough people dislike me already.
Oh, yeah. Don't forget the eBay auctions. Sophie needs dentures.
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