Thursday, October 28, 2004
Yesterday, even though I didn't start writing until 3 p.m., I did an extremely respectable 1,479 words on the prologue, making it all the way through sections V and VI. All that's left is VII. I've suspected, since I first began imagining this novel, that this would be a somewhat longer book than I'm accustomed to writing. The prologue seems to be confirming that. Already, it's 11,473 words long (54 typescript pp.), more than twice the length of any of my earlier novels' prologues. In and of itself, this is neither good nor bad. But, still, I look askance at those doorstop fantasy novels. Many years ago, sometime in 1993, I think, Kathe Koja told me, and I quote, "six hundred page books ought to be shot on sight unless the writer's last name happens to be Faulkner." I rather took that to heart, if only because I was so hard in love with Kathe's prose back then. For a few years there, The Cipher and Skin were practically my Bible. But, anyway, like I said, I took that to heart, and my novels have always been of modest length. Hardly anyone has complained. But this one might actually push towards the six-hundred page mark (currently, Murder of Angels is my longest book, though Low Red Moon came out longer in print by two pages @ 337 pp.). Harlan blames computers for those painfully long, long books. But I think it's just the same "superisize" phenomenon we're seeing with just about everything else — food, cars, waistlines, etc. Anyway, with luck and no interruptions, I shall finish the prologue today. Oh, and it will be written to David Bowie and Doris Day, because my life isn't weird enough already.
I also have to talk to my publicist about an interview/review of Murder of Angels thing, and I have to talk to Ted Naifeh about "Alabaster," and I have to talk to Fiddler's Green about programming. But otherwise, all I shall do is write.
Spooky scored two nice fat pumpkins yesterday (she had to dig for 'em). Now they only have to be carved.
Last night, of course, was the Full Hunger Moon and the last total lunar eclipse until 2008. After Spooky cooked an enormous pot of chicken stew (chicken, carrots, mushrooms, kale, onions, many cloves of garlic, green bell pepper, a pint of Bass, and so forth), we went outside to watch the shadow of the Earth slip across the moon. I had one of Those Moments (the last one was standing in the sea at the base of the Beavertail Lighthouse in Rhode Island back in July), one of those Moments of Utter and Transcendent Insignificance. Here I was, gazing across hundreds of thousands of kilometres of near vacuum, so very small on the face of this troubled blue planet, only a speck of the mass casting such a great shadow. Out there (not up there), the orangeyellow autumn gloom spread quickly from left to right, swallowing the Mare Humorum and Crater Tycho, then sweeping out across Mare Nubium and Mare Procellarum, finally claiming the Sea of Tranquility, and then, finally, there was only a sterling bright rind near Crater Endymion. And I wanted to be standing on those dusty gray plains, those "seas" that have never known water, watching as the autumn-coloured twilight claimed that world. Spooky took some photos with the digital (while I watched through the binoculars), but you can't make out any details. We need a better camera. I need a frelling telescope. Just as the eclipse reached umbra, a bank of clouds swept in from the north and obscured our view. Later, about midnight, the clouds were gone, and we watched as some vast cosmic serpent spat the moon out again.
Later, Spooky read me Moon Mouse by Adelaide Holl (1969; illustrated by Cyndy Szekeres), one of our favourite children's books. And that was our Full Hunger Moon. I fell asleep to Blade Runner, thinking about Daughter of Hounds and how the prologue ends.
There are photos (by Spooky):
The swallowing of the moon.
Moon Mouse! (and some freak in goggles)
Sophie, who couldn't give a dren
I was going to say something about Dominar G. W. Bush and the New American Gestapo, but this has turned into a longish post and, more importantly, I'm in a good mood I don't want spoil'd.
It's there that no one will stare
At your jaws and your long hair, the claws on your fingers...
1:21 PM
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