Monday, March 03, 2003
Already, it's Monday. But at least it's a bright, sunny early spring Monday. By next week, it should begin to feel like spring proper.
Death. Rebirth. Renewal. Fertility. Death. Rebirth. At least something still makes sense, for the time being. The older religions got it mostly right. It's a shame we had to come along and muck it all up by cutting non-human nature out of the picture entirely and inserting our various avatars in place of the truer masks of the universe. Easter wears a thin disguise, but thick enough that those who don't want to see to original meanings of rabbits and eggs and reborn gods have no difficulty remaining ignorant. Spring is the most holy season, I think.
Yesterday, Spooky and I made it through chapters Thirteen and Fourteen, and the Epilogue, and finished the book. Today I shall pick through it, finding all the annoying little things that have to be made right. I'll be out of town tomorrow and probably have to come back to it again on Wednesday to finish up the loose threads. Hopefully, on Thursday I can send the revised ms. off to New York. Then I have a short "chapette book" to do for Camelot Books, which I think they'll be giving away free to their customers who buy something of mine. That'll be my palatte cleanser before getting back to that which might yet be called Murder of Angels. To that end, here's an e-mail from Franklin Harris:
It may well be, of course, that Murder of Angels is not the right title for the new book. Obviously, when others and I say we prefer it, we are judging it in isolation, without reference to the book it names. But it has a certain intrinsic interest to it, mainly, and if for no other reason, because it is clever. It has the double meaning and, of course, the allusion to ravens going for it, which conjures an oddly sinister notion of angels. (This, of course, fits with Spyder's experience with "angels" in Silk.)
That said, The Queen of Shadows, regardless of its appropriateness, has an intrinsic sameness to it. As I glance around my library, I see books with titles like Queen of the Damned, The Book of Shadows, etc.
Ah, but what do I know? I preferred Trilobite to Threshold.
These are good and salient points. I also preferred Trilobite to Threshold, obviously. But the new title has sort of grown on me. And speaking of Franklin Harris, he sent me a beautiful tarot deck for Xmas (yes, I should have mentioned this two months ago, but I have been remiss), The Victoria Regina Tarot by Sarah Ovenall. I did my first reading with it yesterday. So, thank you Franklin, on both counts.
Finally, I have a new short story up at Gothic.Net, "La Mer des Reves," which I hope you enjoy. It's a somewhat experimental piece, which may be very indicative of the direction my work will be taking in the future.
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