Sunday, May 11, 2003
Sunday morning and here I am on the cusp of a headache. If I ignore them, they usually go away. If not, Excedrin's just another word for caffeine. A decent day yesterday, complete with sushi and a good movie. Today will be a day of tying up loose ends so that I can move along to all that which needs writing. Jennifer and I have to go over "Riding the White Bull" one last time before I send it to the editor. We also have to go over my corrections to TFoC galley. Spooky has to photocopy the CEM of the Roc edition of Low Red Moon so I can get that back in the mail to NYC tomorrow morning. Working on three books and a short story at once is, to say the least, disorienting. That's today.
Yesterday, I got the news that my story, "The Road of Pins," has been nominated for an IHG (International Horror Guild awards) for Best Short Story 2002. I was very pleased. Almost without exception, those stories of mine that are selected for Year's Best anthologies and nominated or win awards are not my personal favorites. "The Road of Pins," however, first published in Dark Terrors 6, may have been my favorite story (of those written by me) from last year. So I am grateful for the nomination.
Tomorrow, I have to set myself on the road to getting Murder of Angels moving again. Many of the Deady Sins (see earlier posts) are involved here. Several notable transgressions disguised as more innocent things. The novel is due in December. I'd planned to have it written by the end of August. Now I'll be lucky to have it done by the end of September. These are the wages of sin. I have to put myself back in that place where Writing The Novel is the only thing that matters. All other considerations have to become secondary, tertiary, quarternary. The book becomes my nexus, my sole focus, my lover and god and nemesis until I find The End. No more excuses. No more setting it aside for a day that becomes a week that becomes a month that has - ahem - become three months and a quarter. I write the book and the book repays me in kind. This is the way that I move from here to there, and I have been neglecting it. Even the reasons behind my neglect are beside the point. Speaking them only adds to the crime.
It's time to write the goddamn book.
Period.
Daria Parker. Niki Ky. Spyder Baxter. All those characters I thought I was done with when I found The End of Silk in January 1996. But, stories don't end. Not really. And I knew there was more to be written even as I pretended that Silk was finished. But time was required, for the characters to move ahead without me. Now it's my turn.
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