Wednesday, November 05, 2003
"Why are there dinosaur teeth on the kitchen table?" That's the first thing Spooky said to me today.
Yesterday I did the cover for the "Mercury" chapbook, and Bill Schafer likes it. That's more than I thought I'd get done. I watched a show on the unreality of "reality" television; more on that some other day. Spooky and I spent most of the evening, into the morning, with MojoWorld. I made a snowy, red-rocked world with an icy sea, beneath a red sun and a huge and scabrous moon. Spooky made a majestic world of violet half-light, deep canyons, and glaciers. I forced myself to stop at 2 a.m. We went to bed and she read me McElligot's Pool. Is that a perfect day or what?
I spent a lot of time watching how Low Red Moon was doing on Amazon. It's doing better than Threshold did its first week, and Threshold did quite well. About 10 a.m EST. yesterday morning, its Amazon sales rank was 9,198. At 7:07 p.m., it had climbed to 3,746. I decided to track it for a few hours. 8:14, 2,746; 9:27, 2,915; 10:03, 2,191; 11:12, 2,301; 12:04 a.m. (today), 2,349; 1:02, 2,399. The last time I checked before bed, at 2:01, Low Red Moon was ranked at 2,428. This morning, Jennifer noted that it was ranked 3,086 at 8:11 (I was still in bed). I started keeping up with it again at 10:21, and it was at 3,108, before climbing to 2,141 at 11:00. I shall probably continue to watch it all day. Does that seem silly? It isn't. Does it make for a more tedious blog entry than daily word counts? It probaby does. But these are figures that I'm pleased with.
I wish I could say the same of Daniel Jolley's "review" of the novel, which he posted to Amazon sometime yesterday. I'd already seen it, on a website with the informally august title, Rambles: A Cultural Arts Magazine. Yeah, well, anyway. I will say up front that Mr. Jolley's "review" is, for the most part, positive, and he gave the book four out of five stars, which seems fair. However, to begin with, I take issue with being called a "rising star of horror." But we won't go there. I don't really care what you call me, as long as you buy my books. The "review" reads more like an 8th grader's book report than a review (there is a difference between book reports and reviews, but many people seem unaware of this), and the author is far too fond of purple speech. Let me say again, I see that this is a positive "review." I acknowledge that. What got me, and is still getting me, is Mr. Jolley's statement that "my enjoyment of the story was limited somewhat by the fact that I simply did not like a single character in these pages."
Clearly, this is a shibboleth that seems determined to dog me forever and then some. I'll grant you, the undead of The Five of Cups are a hard lot to care about (though I did). But I've gotten this particular comment so many times: with Silk, with Threshold, in comics with The Dreaming and The Girl Who Would Be Death, with the stories in Candles for Elizabeth and Tales of Pain and Wonder, and now, to my actual surprise, with Low Red Moon. It would seem, if there is any truth in this oft-repeated criticism of my work, that I don't know what a sympathetic character is. Never mind that I have loved most of them. Many others seem to find them distinctly unlovely. Mr. Jolley, for example, sees Chance as "nagging" and has a "rather low opinion" of Deacon (presumably, as best I can tell from the "review," because he's an out-of-work, recovering alcoholic who tries to keep unpleasant secrets from his pregnant wife). And what really got me, was Mr. Jolley's comment that "if there is love in this relationship [Chance and Deacon], it is not easy to find." Speaking as the author, I can only shake my head and mutter "bullshit." But it's possible I exist so far out on the periphery of humankind that I cannot fathom true love. Apparently, Chance and Deacon's sacrifices, unto death, are not ample evidence. Apparently, Mr. Jolley is here to show me how wrong I am in believing that love is often, perhaps most often, uneasy and painful and hard, espcially when strong-willed people with difficult personalities and deep-rooted problems are involved. And I know I should take Mr. Jolley's word for all this. After all, he is an Amazon "Top 100 'Reviewer'" (currently ranked 78, but he seems ambitious to me, so I'm sure he's destined for bigger and better things).
Forget what I've learned from life, or from writers like Joyce and Faulkner and Steinbeck and Fitzgerald, Woolf and Shakespeare and, hell, "even" Stephen King. Mr. Jolley knows far better than I do, and far better than they.
Meanwhile, thanks to Terrell Garrett, Larne (Llar'en) Pekowsky, Chris Simmons, Matt Spencer, and all the other people who have been writing me privately to express their appreciation for the novel or posting their thoughts on the phorum and in their own blogs.
So, why are there dinosaur teeth on the kitchen table?
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