Saturday, October 11, 2003
Last night we saw Kill Bill (Volume 1) and I found it so perfect and amazing that I'm still not sure I can put my thoughts about this film into words. In fact, I think my thoughts on it are still waiting to solidify. But, it was truly excellent, and certainly worth the long wait since Jackie Brown. Tarantino is at the top of his form.
Also, we got trailers for The Matrix Revolutions, which I think will be very good and not suffer from the "saggy middle" problems of the second film, and The Return of the King, which I know will be wonderful. It's good to have movies to look forward to.
Today I have to proof the "extra" material of the Subterranean Press lettered edition (notes made before I began the book, blogger excerpts, my afterword, etc.). Outside, the weather is misty and grey, more Novembery than Octobery. Of course, November will be on us before we know it. It's good to have something simple to work on, like this proofreading, so I won't be tempted to go out into this crappy excuse for an afternoon.
Yesterday I got my first look at Shadows Over Baker Street, the anthology of Lovecraftian Sherlock Holmes stories to which I contributed "The Drowned Geologist." My story is written entirely in epistollary form, a letter dating from 1898. As I always do when writing period fiction, I took great care to write in a voice suited to the time. This was, of course, a lot of trouble. And now I find that someone at Del Rey, who published the anthology, has "corrected" a good deal of the purposefully antiquated language and spelling in the piece. They didn't ask first. They didn't show me galleys. They just fucking did it. I've run into this sort of shit from Del Rey before. Worse, actually. My story "The King of Birds," first published in The Crow: Shattered Lives and Broken Dreams, was essentially rewritten by someone at Del Rey. I entirely disowned the story as it appeared in the original hardback edition. It wasn't mine. It wasn't what I wrote, or what I sold them, or what I'd granted them permission to print under my name. I bitched a lot and the story was restored to my text for the trade paperback. Anyway, it's always disappointing to see this, that some editorial feeb has taken the liberty of undoing something I've done, something I've done on purpose, and once again I'm tempted to disown the story until such time as it appears in the form in which I meant for it to be read. Indeed, it's tempting to post the text of the story to my website, so you have the choice of reading it as I meant it to be read. I think Shadows Over Baker Street may be the last Del Rey anthology I agree to write for. The world is annoying enough without have to contend with publishers who think they're writers.
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