Thursday, September 30, 2004
Having written so much about yesterday while yesterday was still going on, I find myself with little to say this morning. Which is fine. Time to give it a rest. If only for a few hours.
At last count, 104 people had voted in the "Best Novel" poll. Yeah, this thing was about as scientific as a creationist textbook, but it was still interesting. If we pretend these numbers carry any sort of actual statistical significance, then Low Red Moon would be my most popular book so far, with 46 of the votes. Threshold comes in second at 24. Silk and Murder of Angels tied with 16 votes each, and The Five of Cups came in last with only 2. The reasons that these numbers don't really mean a great deal, the many biases involved, the shortcomings of the methodology, etc. are, of course, too numerous to mention. I could start with the fact that Sissy has confessed to having voted twice. But what I find interesting is that, if we omit the results on Murder of Angels, citing its very recent release, the places where the books fall out perfectly express my own feelings about each novel relative to the other. Of those first four, Low Red Moon is by far my favorite, with Threshold in second place, Silk behind it, and The Five of Cups at the rear. It's an interesting coincidence, if you believe in coincidences.
Anyway, my grateful thanks to everyone who took part.
Today is a "day off," which means that as soon as I attend to a few writing-related e-mails, I can do with this day as Spooky and I please. She's leaning towards the botanical gardens. I'm leaning towards a bar stool.
Argh. These frelling allergies!
Last night, we watched the pilot episode of Dead Like Me, which we both found quite entirely delightful. I wasn't sure whether I'd like this one or not. I'd avoided all the reviews, etc., so I had no notable preconceptions. I thought it was very funny, and the ending of the pilot actually gave me chill bumps. It helps that I'm a Mandy Patinkin fan from way back. Between Dead Like Me and the entry tagplazen made about LSD, ferrets, and dildoes, I laughed much more yesterday than is healthy. After the DVD, I tried out Armed and Dangerous. This is far from the perfect game, but it is a lot of fun. Think the events of Star Wars run through a blender via some "Unrealized Reality" and spat out in something that bears a very vague resemblance to a Monty Python skit or a Terry Gilliam film. Having seen a review of this title on G4, I knew pretty much what I was getting into. Lots of moments where Lucasarts is allowed to poke fun at the cherished franchise, but the game ultimately seems to pull its punches. Which isn't a shock or anything, just a disappointment. The action's nice, the animation's so-so, the weapons are cool (though we're not talking Ratchet and Clank here), but the game is loaded with invisible walls, which gets frustrating very quickly. Probably worth a rental, especially if you, like me, just get a kick out of blowing shit up.
Okay. I think that's about it. Eat your Wheaties.
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Addendum: This day has been crazy hectic so far. I just got off the phone with my film agent at UTA and my lit agent at Writer's House, about this whole thing with The Dry Salvages. Also, we've been talking to a couple of indie filmmakers in Toronto who want to do "Two Worlds, and In Between," so I've been having to make decisions about that as well. We managed to read through all of "Bradbury Weather," which I'm very pleased with, I think. It needs a few nips and tucks, but it's a clean story (well, not a clean story, as it actually contains more references to sex than most of my stuff, but anyway). I had a scare with the iBook that turned out to be something really stupid, something that was just me being a dumbass. I had to call my editor at Penguin. I remembered that I haven't sent in the first round of Bookslut interview questions, though I'd promised to send them yesterday. That's the sort of day it's been.
I think I'm about to flee the apartment just to catch my breath.
But. Yes. Stuff I forgot earlier today.
First, just a dream. And occurring as it did amid my usual array of big-budget nightmares, it seems very tame and of little consequence. But it's stuck with me all day. I was looking at a photograph of myself, taken years ago when I lived in Athens. My hair was bright, bright neon red and in dreads. I had some really beautiful tattoos on my right arm and the right side of my face and neck (in fact, I have no tattoos whatsoever). And I just looked so much younger and prettier than I've ever looked in my life. Softer. Anyway, when I awoke, this is what stayed with me. I lay in bed, waiting for Spooky to wake up, feeling a strange sadness that it was only a dream of a memory of a former me, that that former me had never actually been (unless...but let's not go there just now).
Also, I received this e-mail yesterday, which I shall post in order to fulfill the request it's author has made of me (from mrs.logic@gmail):
I'm e-mailing to ask if you could possibly mention on your blog that the deadline for registering to vote is this Saturday, October 2nd 2004 in many states.
A lot of people, maybe a lot of young people, don't realize that the deadline is a month before the actual election day, and they lose their chance to vote.
I read your blog enough to know that you would love a change of leadership in this country, and perhaps many of your readers would too.
Well, I should hope so, at least. Consider yourselves warned. If this deadline applies to your state (I don't have a list, but I know Georgia's one of them), register by Saturday, or you'll be sitting this one out. And, on the one hand, I've ceased to be one of those "participate or you have no right to complain" people. This system is just too entirely screwed to justify that attitude. But. On the other hand, we must consider the lesser of the two evils, and that one evil may be far, far greater than another. You may dream of better things and ideal systems, but you have to live in this world. And, right now, the most powerful man in this world is a war-mongering, theocratic, fascist bastard with no regard for your life, your liberty, or the future generations who will inherit this planet. You can change that part.
By the way, if someone has the list of state's with Saturday deadlines for voter registration and will e-mail it to me at lowredmail@mac.com, then I'll post it here later.
Addendum to addendum: Thanks to Zpydah Violent, who just e-mailed me a link to the site with deadlines for voter registration. It is here. Also, I've just learned that my old publicist at Penguin is leaving the company, and I'll be getting a new publicist. The flux continues.
It's done. Finally, it's done. I finished "Bradbury Weather" about 5:30 p.m. yesterday. I did 1,351 words yesterday, bringing the total length of this story to 15,097 words, which, in my estimate, makes it a short novella instead of a short story. Today, Spooky and I will read through the whole thing, beginning to end, to see how it works as a whole, looking for errors, etc. It will be published in a few months in the second issue of Subterranean Magazine, along with a new interview and a reprinting of "Andromeda Among the Stones."
This morning, I got word from my film agent that a couple of Very, Very Big producers want to see The Dry Salvages. I shouldn't say who, of course, but they don't get any bigger. I doubt this will come to anything, but it's a good feeling, nonetheless.
The cold Spooky and I caught at Dragon*Con has left me with one of my interminable, lingering coughs.
What else happened yesterday? I fell asleep on the sofa again. We cooked a big pot of chili with lime, fresh jalapeno, and tequila. We rented Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, one of those films I'd refused to see in a theatre for fear of it being spoiled by cretinous, loud-mouthed fools. It was worth the wait. Brilliant. Beautiful. More poignant than I expected. A film that is simultaneously frightening and sad and sweet. Sweet is not a bad thing, if it's not handled by a hamfisted moron. Whoa. I just used "moron, "cretinous," and "fools" in the same paragraph. Good for me. Anyway, I thought Jim Carrey's performance was very strong. A very, very fine film. Afterwards, Spooky told me the story of Hobart the One-Footed Duck of Piedmont Park and Frank the Luminous Goldfish of Doom (who is, you see, responsible for Hobart's handicap). Then we went to bed early, around midnight, and I fell asleep to Lisa Gerrard and candlelight.
Thanks to everyone who voted in the "Best Novel" poll yesterday, all fifteen of you (a total of 89 people have voted so far) . But I still need eleven votes to reach 100. So, please, if you haven't voted already, click here and scroll down to "9/24/04 12:51 pm." Thank you.
Back to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for a second. I really did love this film. I think Joel Barish will be added to my list of heroes.
I was just reading about some cretinous, moronic fool (yes, all three at once) giving Douglas Clegg shit for not blurbing his book. Poppy has already expressed my feelings on this sort of thing quite well, so I shall be lazy and quote her:
I understand that it can hurt when, after you've sweated blood writing a book, someone who could help you says they don't have time to read it. I know that. But as a writer yourself (I'm addressing the imaginary rude person here, of course), you should know that writers often need to exercise careful control over what goes into their heads. It may not be that your book doesn't interest me, but that I'm in a phase where I need to read about a certain subject, or in a certain style, or can't read fiction at all for fear of having someone else's voice bleed into mine. It's never personal. Furthermore, when you ask a writer for a blurb, especially a writer you don't know, you are intruding on his life and putting him in a slightly awkward position, because he remembers when he was young and hungry and had to do that kind of thing himself. (He's likely still hungry, but never mind.) That's not necessarily bad or wrong -- it's a hazard of the trade -- but the writer owes you nothing. Even a polite refusal is gravy. Being rejected and ignored are hazards of the trade too, and you'd do well to learn that early.
Damn straight.
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Yesterday, I did 1,074 words on "Bradbury Weather" while it rained and rained and rained. 1,074 words. And that should have felt good, should have been a day's work granting me the smallest degree of satisfaction (the best I ever get). But. It was a climactic scene around which the entire story had accreted. To my mind, the success of the story turns on this one scene, which is to say it is pivotal. Which is to say, I want what's in my head to be there on the paper. I want the reader to experience exactly what I "see" with my mind's eye. Not some approximation. Exactly. Only, I know this isn't remotely possible, because, regarding audience, literature is one of the most profoundly subjective arts. Tell someone that the brown dog ate a biscuit, and no two people will see the same shade of brown or the same breed of dog or even the same sort of biscuit. The artist is a tyrant (see John Gardner), but she is a tyrant who must content herself with the fact that the stringing together of nouns and verbs and adjectives isn't an exact science. So, it's the end of the day yesterday, five o'clock or so, and I've been writing for six hours. I haven't stopped to eat lunch or check my e-mail or stretch my legs. I've hardly stopped to take a piss. And I have these 1,074 words. And I know the writing's good, and Spooky agrees that the writing's good, but my reaction, though I am so exhausted I lie down on the sofa and almost immediately go to sleep, is that this isn't necessarily about good. It's about converting a complex mental image into mere, inexact words. Imagine you have a photograph of a beach and six crayons (black, white, green, blue, yellow, orange), and you're obsessed with communicating to someone exactly what that beach looks like, but you may only do so with those six damned crayons. No. Wait. You don't even get a blue crayon. You only get five crayons. And that's how I felt yesterday.
I haven't read back over the pages this morning. I might have done better than I think, but I fear much of today will be spent rewriting yesterday's work. And because I'm only about 1,000 words from THE END, this is even more frustrating.
There is a central perversity in this story, an obscenity, that only ocassionally manifests in my work. It's the heart of this pivotal scene. The complete and utter violation of the flesh, the transmutation of flesh, loss of self, and so forth. There is an undeniable eroticism. Well, at least there is for me. I'm guessing lots of people didn't find anything erotic about "Persephone" or "Tears Seven Times Salt" or "Andromeda Among the Stones" or "A Redress for Andromeda," but I did. Yet, I need that perversity not to overwhelm the story. It can't stand out. It must fit seemlessly with everything else. You may want. to look away, but if you do, I've failed. At least, I've failed you.
And that's where it stands.
After a two-year lag, I finally renewed my subscription to Wired again. I let it lapse because I was finding the magazine less and less readable, as it worked to cater to the business of the internet, shedding its edge and becoming a sort of Fortune for geeks. But, the dot bubble having burst, Wired seems to have improved. So I'm giving it another try. However, it would figure that the cover story of the first issue I get in two years is about fucking creationism's new strategies for dismantling science education. We will be fighting a losing fight with these idiots for at least another century or three, at which point I suspect they will mysteriously fall silent, and I try not to allow myself to notice that they exist. I didn't need Wired reminding me.
Seventy-four people have voted in the "Which Is My Best Novel" poll. I'd really like to see one hundred votes; we only need twenty-six more. So, if you haven't yet voted, click here and scroll down to "9/24/04 12:51 pm." It doesn't matter if you haven't read them all. Of the one's you have read, which is your favorite?
I haven't said much about Morrowind lately. Truth is, I think I'm parting ways with this game. I've accumulated 300+ game days (and I don't even want to know how many RW hours that might be), reached seventeenth level, and become all but invulnerable. I can kill a frost atronach easy as swatting a fly. I have piles of gold and cool weapons and assorted loot (I suspect consumerism is the dominant subtext of this game). I've walked from one end of Vvardenfell to the other fifty times over. I've been given control of the Blades, am a single assassination away from controlling the Guild of Fighters in Vivec, and have quite a lot of people believing that I'm the fulfillment of the Nerevarine prophecies. And yet I am bored, bored, bored, bored to frelling death of this game. I'm bored with the tedium, the crappy stick-figure animation, the limited and often lame dialogue spouted by the NPCs, the fact that fighting involves no skill, only time and button pushing. No one can say I didn't give it a fair try. I am not entertained and I am not challenged. So I'm moving along to something I actually want to play. I suspect that videogame RPGs might reach what I want from them in another decade or so. I'll be waiting. Meanwhile, I'd rather be having fun.
And on that note, kiddos, it's time to hurt myself again.
Monday, September 27, 2004
Okay. So. Like I said. Bad idea not writing yesterday. I shall not make that mistake again today. Today I will get back on that zeppelin with Dorry, or get her off of it, and move her like a Queen's rook towards THE END of "Bradbury Weather." She's almost there. She only needs a little push.
Yesterday, desperate for the company of someone as sour as myself, I pulled Dorothy Parker down of the shelf. I read through her poetry and part of "A Telephone Call." I was looking for something which I failed to find. But that really didn't matter. I found a few other things I needed to find. Dorothy Parker's wit and disgust can lift me at times and make me feel less alone. She is as kindred a spirit for me as Lovecraft. She'd probably disagree. I expect she'd hate me entirely. But that seems right, too.
I do not like my state of mind;
I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn's recurrent light;
I have to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;
I do not like me anymore.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men....
I'm due to fall in love again.
In 1973, Brendan Gill wrote of Dorothy Parker:
There are writers who die to the world long before they are dead, and if this is sometimes by choice, more often it is a fate imposed on them by others and not easily dealt with. A writer enjoys a vogue, and, the vogue having passed, either he consents to endure the obscurity into which he has been thrust or he struggles against it in vain, with a bitterness that tends to increase as his powers diminish. No matter how well or badly he behaves, the result is the same. If the work is of a certain quality, it survives the passing of the vogue, but the maker of the work no longer effectually exists. Even though he goes on writing, he dwells in a limbo of the half-forgotten, and his obituary notices are read with a flippant, unthinking incredulity: who would have guessed that the tattered old teller of tales had had it in him to hang on so fiercely? What on earth had he been waiting for? Hoping for? Dreading?
In 1997, Poppy and I spent a few days at the Algonquin Hotel, just before it was remodled and the prices jacked up so high that no decent writer would ever again be able to afford a room there. We drank sidecars and imagined ourselves members of some latter-day Round Table. It was wholly pretentious, of course, but then so were the members of the Algonquin Round Table. Or, rather, they exist now so utterly in another time and place, so lost and removed from us in every sense, that we can only perceive pretension.
That was the year before Silk was published, thirty years after Dorothy Parker's possibly belated death.
Into love and out again,
Thus I went, and thus I go.
Spare your voice, and hold your pen--
Well and bitterly I know
All the songs were ever sung,
All the words were ever said.
Could it be, when I was young,
Someone dropped me on my head?
Gill writes that Dorothy Parker "was given to making reckless remarks..." I can't help but find that admirable.
The nightmares were bad again last night. I thought the rain would help me sleep, but I suspect the wind conspired against it; I just hope we don't lose power today.
Okay. That's enough for now.
Sunday, September 26, 2004
Addendum (on the folly of leisure): Addendum: It was a bad, bad idea not to write today.
I did the things that needed doing that writing would have left me with no energy to do, things that pertained to writing, but are not writing. I did those things, so it wasn't a waste. But...
I hardly slept last night. Maybe three hours, total. And those were three hours of nightmares. I was awake at seven-thirty, up at eight (though I did manage to let Spooky sleep until about a quarter till ten).
We are beginning to see the first hints of H. Jeanne. Perhaps the tension riding the edges of the storm is affecting my mood as much as anything. I should have gone to Mars today. Dorry is alone somewhere high above the Solis Planum.
Maybe I can lift my spirits with a meaningless meme (ha, ha, ha, oh never mind), snurched from Franklin and Robyn:
Usually Found to Be: At my desk, on my iBook
Favourite Colour Jelly Bean: red
Favourite Chocolate: I'm not a big chocolate fan. Hershey's Kisses w/caramel, I guess.
Always has in hand: Nothing.
Slightly Embarrassing Experience: Acting like a total fangirl when I met Johnette Napolitano.
Favourite Movie: Blade Runner
Favourite Book: Ever? Sheesh. I don't know. That's dumber than the movie question. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.
Favourite TV Program: In a word, Farscape.
Favourite Music: futurepop, darkwave, goth, new wave, movie soundtracks, Kate Bush, Bjork, Nick Cave, P. J. Harvey, Buddy Holly.
Favourite Colour: Burgundy (or some yellow-green or another).
Always Dressed In: Tank tops or dresses. Lots of leather. Goggles.
If She Could Live In One Country/Go On A Holiday There: Well, which? There are lots of places I'd like to visit, but wouldn't want to live. France.
Favourite Joke: I don't know any jokes (no, seriously).
If She Were A Food: Asparagus.
Favourite Saying Or Quote: "One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly." -- Friedrich Nietzsche
Best Suited To: Time travel.
Often Confused For: Those who seem certain. ( I suspect this question meant to ask, "Often Mistaken For," but there you go.)
Most Prized Possession: I lost it years ago.
Nickname: Tai'lah.
Middle Name: Ramey or Rebekah, depending.
Classic Quote: How the hell is this different from "favourite" quote? Um. "His eyes were hard as porphyry..." -- Dorothy Parker.
Unique Talent: There is nothing I can do that could not be done by at least one other, somewhere. There are no "unique" talents.
Nope. That didn't work.
In a move fraught with misgiving and risk, I've decided not to write today. That's not saying I'm taking the day off, not precisely. There's non-writing stuff in need of doing that I won't have energy to do if I write. This story is taking everything from me. Hyperempathy, remember? But there is a strange strength to be derived from finding oneself swapping places with an unpleasant person of your own creation. After all, she came from me. She is of me. She is nothing that doesn't reside in me, even if that residence is latent. Like Salmagundi Desvernine, Deacon Silvey, Dancy Flammarion, and Narcissa Snow before her, Dorry is only an exercise in self-realizing, literary shamansim. I should not say "only," as that diminishes the importance of an important thing. Through her, I can express things I am myself fearful of expressing, fearful of acknowledging, things of which I am simply fearful.
Yesterday, I wrote 712 words on "Bradbury Weather," which might not be so impressive as the two days preceeding, but I am having to force myself to slow here at the end. Momentum. If I don't step back to see the whole, I'll crash headlong into THE END and ruin the whole damned thing. That's one reason that today will be a not-quite day off. I'll finish the story on Monday and Tuesday. Then there will be nothing remaining between me and the beginning of Daughter of Hounds.
Last night, in search of Phil Hines' books on Chaos Magick, Spooky and I went to Borders on Ponce. The constant reader will recall that I tend to stay out of bookstores. It was one of the sacrifices I made to become a writer. Nowadays, I order books from Amazon or send someone to get whatever I want. Bookstores are, generally, a monument to everything that drives me bugfrell about being an author, everything that makes me wish I were a welder or a bartender, instead. I try not to check to see how many of my books are in stock, but I almost always fail. I almost always look. Last night, there was a single copy each of Murder of Angels, Low Red Moon, and Silk, cringing in the shadows cast by all the King and Koontz. To say that it's disheartening would be a terrible understatement. And then, all about me, stacked like building blocks set up to define that area relegated to the ghetto of horror/sf/fantasy/manga/graphic novels, were towering mounds of those bestselling dark-fantasy authors, some of whom I can respect (Susanna Clarke and Neal Stephenson, for example) and some others I can only loathe (whom I will not name, as it would be poor form, and few authors have ever benefited from bad-mouthing other authors). Stacks. Of course, though these books are bestsellers, most of those copies will be returned by Borders, redeemed for credit, and either pulped or sold in those discount joints specializing in remaindered books. Anyway, I was left feeling as though I should at least be grateful there were three copies of my books, as space is precious and there must be stacks of the books that publishers have chosen the push. Moral: I should stay out of bookstores.
And it turns out, they didn't have anything by Hines, though they had mountains of warm and fuzzy, easy-access Wicca books. Were I Wiccan, I would be seriously offended at titles like The Complete Idiot's Guide to Wicca Craft, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft, and The Girls Guide to Spells: Making Magic Happen in Your Life. I'm not making these up. I really wish I'd written more of those titles down. I was immediately reminded of Kate Bush's song, "Sat in Your Lap." You will recall, she wrote, I want to be a lawyer. / I want to be a scholar. / But I really can't be bothered. / Ooh, just gimme it quick, gimme it, gimme gimme gimme gimme!. I know full well that I am an "elitist intellectual" (those were the words my mother used a few months ago), and that's one reason Chaos Magick may appeal to me, but, this is surely enough to set even more egalitarian teeth on edge. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft? Does not the "complete idiot" part make us desirous that the target audience should have no interest in the "Wicca and Witchcraft" part? Can I get a copy of The Complete Idiots Guide to Bioterrorism and Thermonuclear Weaponry?
Some things are hard for a reason.
(A pause here for a phone conversation about Many Impending Projects with Bill Schafer of Subterranean Press.)
Crap. I didn't want to write an angry post today.
What I wanted to do was start promoting The Henson Company's Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars, which will air in two-parts on the Sci-Fi Channel on the evenings of October 17th and 18th (9 p.m. Eastern/ 8 p.m. Central). Scapers know this is going to rock, that this is the beginning of the reward of our campaign to save the series, that it will be Farscape realized on an epic scale. The rest of you take heed. If you can gain access to a television that gets the Sci-Fi Channel on those two nights (two hours each night) without actually having to kill someone, do so. The trailer, which can be reached by clicking the link above, should be enough to whet your appetite. This is the wondrous, beautiful, utterly enthralling thing that television sf can be, when given the chance. If you'd like to help promote the series, you might place this banner somewhere online (your website, blog, whatever):
Also, as a lead in to the mini-series, the Sci-Fi Channel will be airing all 88 episodes of the series, Oct. 1st-15th, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and here's another banner:
And if you'd like to learn more ways to help promote the show, visit WatchFarscape.com. I'll be saying much, much more about Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars as October 17th nears.
I received the following e-mail a few days ago, which should stand as a shining example of how to deliver praise to a vain and insecure author while bolstering her insecurity and excessive self-consciousness iat the same time:
Have to say with the picture that you added to your journal from dragon con that you are looking good! But I must admit I think your much sexier and better looking with darker hair! What a cool thing to be gourgeous and an awesome writer! Keep it coming! And I will keep reading! From one of your many, many fans! Love ya babe, Mean it!
I can only respond by saying thank you, your kind words are appreciated, I'm very happy you like my work, but the overall effect of your e-mail was rather like being smacked hard across to face with a bouquet of roses, and I might also suggest you read something by, oh, say, Miss Manners? But, as long as we're on the subject, I do agree with you, that I'm better off with black hair, and it will be black again by the time I reach San Francisco on Halloween.
Also, before I sign off to write my proposal for The Complete Idiot's Guide to Complete Idiots, let me remind you that the eBay auctions to get Spooky to Minneapolis continue. Sunday is a very good day to buy my books on eBay, especially using "Buy-It-Now." And I'm still watching the poll you can reach by following this link and scrolling down to 9/24/04.
Saturday, September 25, 2004
Yesterday, I did 1,276 words on "Bradbury Weather." I have reached the point where I can feel the pull of The End. It threatens to make me sloppy, and I have to take extra, extra care with each and every word. Momentum can lead me astray, make me overconfident, lead to my missing some crucial path the story should take. Which is to say, I did not fuck off to the cinema yesterday to see The Forgotten. I wrote. I am deeply tied up in this story's protagonist, which is disturbing, because she's a total frelling asshole. This happens sometimes, I begin to identify very strongly with a character. No. That's not right. I almost always identify very strongly with my characters. I mean to say that sometimes I begin to see myself as them. Hyperempathy. Were I not a writer, this would be labled schiziform behavior or some such dren. Anyway, this character, a woman whom I only know as Dorry, keeps swapping places with me as I write her. I know she's doomed. She knows she's doomed. So which of us is the bigger asshole. Afterall, in this situation, I am Creator, and I can change the direction of her life. I can redeem her. I can lead her away from her doom. But I won't. Because that's not what happens. If I believed in God, per se, which I don't, per se, I would have to wonder if It's not bound by the same stricture. A story, to be true, must proceed along a certain path. A story is this reality, constrained by laws, natural and otherwise, and to be a true story (not to be confused with a factual story) it must proceed along a particular path. If that path is bound for doom, then that God could not intervene and divert it without becoming a liar, and all this casts suspicion on freewill, of course. At least, it brings up questions about the consequences of freewill. Can God change the rules? If God is ominpotent and omniscient, can It keep a secret from Itself? Can I tell myself I was wrong all along, and Dorry gets to sidestep her fate? Only if I'm willing to be a liar.
This is like leading Chance and Narcissa to the warrens. Did I ever have another choice. Another true choice?
And, also, this story is an ambitious one. What I mean by that is that it wants to be one of those stories like "Tears Seven Times Salt," "Onion," "The Road of Pins," "Andromeda Among the Stones," The Dry Salvages — one of those stories that stands up above the rest. I can't promise it will, but it does have ambition, and that can be a terrible, weird thing.
Jennifer is proofreading the first issue of Subterranean Magazine for subpress, which inclues an interview with Thomas Ligotti and an excerpt from a new book by Joe R. Lansdale. Cool stuff. Spooky's being frustrated by a pair of Halloween pants she's trying to make, researching Chaos Magic, and managing the eBay auctions (please, buy something today). We are busy little creatures 'round here, all of us.
Thanks to everyone who took part in yesterday's poll. It's still open, of course. I'd like to see it active for a while yet. At the moment, 63 votes have been cast. Low Red Moon is far ahead, with 44.8% of the votes. Threshold and Murder of Angels are not quite neck-and-neck (25.9 and 20.7%, respectively). Silk has only 17.2%, and The Five of Cups has a mere 1.7% (more than I expected it to get). There are some curious things here. To start with, Silk has, according to my editor at Penguin, been my most successful book. Low Red Moon has been my least successful. This is in terms of sales, of course, which only matter because I like to eat and go places and buy things. But in the poll, their positions are essentially reversed relative to their sales. A bias is at work somewhere, somehow. For that matter, Threshold, the book that won an award, was nominated for another, brought me more critical attention than any of my other books, and led to my entanglement in Hollywood, is lagging behind in second place. This dren fascinates me. Anyway, it's not too late to vote. Please do. I'd like to see a hundred votes, to perhaps approach a total that might be quasi-statistically significant. You Blogger people can take part, too. Just follow the white rabbit (and scroll down to yesterday).
I find myself actually wanting to write today. You don't have any idea how rare that is. Normally, I'd rather go walk in Piedmont Park or visit the dinosaurs at Fernbank or play Morrowind or read Dr. Seuss or Lovecraft or vacuum up the dust bunnies in the hallway. But, today, I want to write. The pull of The End and the pull of the darkness waiting there.
Thanks to Maureen for the following photo, me in Graceland, wearing Desire's red (and soon to be auctioned at Fiddler's Green for the benefit of the Comic Book Legan Defense Fund) Docs (sorry it's so large, but I didn't have time to resize the photo):
Oh, and, from Dragon*Con, this one's for Sissy, Kat, and Jean-Paul, just because I felt like posting it:
(Gotta love the squeaky hedgehog, left, which is not a porcupine.)
Ah. I need to go write, and I haven't yet talked about the Kid Night movies. Quickly, then, we picked Requim from the Darkness, the first four eps of an anime that would only be so-so (think Tales from the Darkside as anime), except the art was really superb, lots of heavy lines and black, creating a beautiful luminescence for the color. It kind of made me think of Steve Leiloha's art for "The First Adventure of Miss Catterina Poe" (The Dreaming #56). Anyway, our second choice turned out to be a truly superb adaptation of Thomas Middleton's Revenger's Tragedy, directed by Alex Cox (Sid and Nancy) and set in a post-Apocalyptic Liverpool instead of an Elizabethan wherever. Both Chistopher Eccleston and Eddie Izzard were superb, and I strongly recommend you seek out this DVD. If Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juleit had been a much better movie, one not lost in its own distracting excess, this is the sort of movie it would have been. It has the darkness and cynical wit of, say, Shakespeare's Titus Adronicus. Not a typical Kid Night film, but we were very pleased.
Friday, September 24, 2004
Jesus. It's really frelling autumn. Yeah, I know it's been autumn for two days, but I've been trying to pretend otherwise. I wish I didn't hate autumn. I would like to love auitumn. I love a lot about autumn, but the thing as a whole freaks me out. Yes, the colors are nice, and Halloween is wonderful. But the skies. The skies take on that bottomless blue, and I have to walk around always looking at the ground for fear of falling up. Since I was a child, I've equated autumn with death and other unpleasant things. I don't hate it as much as I hate winter, but I do wish August led directly to May.
Yes, well.
Yesterday I wrote a fairly impressive 1,413 words on "Bradbury Weather," and that was after I'd rewritten much of what I wrote on Wednesday. It was a day when the words just kept coming. If only I could have four or five of those days every week. I was still writing at nine o'clock p.m., working on the interview for Bookslut.com, and Spooky and Jennifer told me to stop. Also yesterday, I talked to Neil about what Delirium's charm should be (the rest have been easy to figure out), talked with Storm Constantine about magick, forgot to call Harlan Ellison, and e-mailed Voltaire (he's asked me to be a guest writer on an upcoming issue of Deady: The Malevolent Teddy, and how could I refuse?). I also worked with the Fiddler's Green people, making mine and Spooky's travel arrangements for November. Oh, and I stole music off the internet. But there's a bunch of dren I didn't get done, because so much time was spent writing. We didn't get more stuff up on eBay. I didn't exercise. I didn't write to Sa'jathan, who is "rediscovering" the Nebari language and has created a beatuful Nebari font and whom I really do owe a letter this very frelling day. A few other important e-mails weren't sent. But I did write, and (repeat after me) the writing is all that matters.
Well, writing and cheesy popcorn.
And free porn.
As to yesterday's post, I am now aware that it never showed up for those of you who read it via your LJ friend's lists. Apologies. I think I know why. Blame the redesign. I meant to preview, accidentally posted an unedited version (they've moved buttons), deleted it, and and then reposted after editing. I think that's what did it. So, again, apologies. If you still haven't seen yesterday's post, follow this link.
Right now, it's all I can do not to fuck off to a matinee to see The Forgotten. But that would be bad. Bad is easy, good is hard. Only that which is hard is worthwhile (I know these are lies, but bear with me).
Speaking of Neil, he recently wrote in his own blog, in reference to this whole sordid Anne Rice/Amazon.com/Blood Canticle kerfuffle:
I suspect that most authors don't really want criticism, not even constructive criticism. They want straight-out, unabashed, unashamed, fulsome, informed, naked praise, arriving by the shipload every fifteen minutes or so.
Well, duh. Of course, I think this is one of those things that people aren't supposed to know about writers. We're supposed to take to negative criticism like ducks to water. We're supposed to have thick skins and be impartial about our work and not go all insanely bugfuck homicidal when some anonymous webcretin takes a steaming piss on one of our children. I know that's how you like to imagine we are. It's noble and dignified. However, I will confess, if we could somehow quantify praise and scorn, a hundred glowing reviews would do less good than the damage inflicted by one bad review. Naked praise, I say. That's all I need. I promise, I am my own worst critic. The rest of you should only concern yourselves with expositions on my genius. Nonetheless, and with all due respect, someone obviously needs to tell Anne Rice that Lestat de Lioncourt is a fictional character. I think she may have forgotten.
If you haven't already, check out the current eBay auctions, which are making it possible for Spooky to accompany me to Minneapolis in November for Fiddler's Green. My supply of Murder of Angels is going fast. And, today only, I'm offering the The Five of Cups, both the lettered and numbered editions, with free shipping if you use Buy-It-Now, which is essentially the same as offering it for $5 off. Please, be generous and take advantage of my generosity.
I should go now. Bye.
P.S. -- It does one no good to get up at 9 a.m., after playing Morrowind until 2 a.m., if one is then too asleep to make sense until 11 a.m. Do the math.
Thursday, September 23, 2004
They've changed the format on the "Update Journal" page at LJ. That's what humans do. They change things, as though familiarity holds no comfort, or as though comfort frightened them. And humans are far more comfortable changing things of little consequence, like the update page at LJ than things of great consequence, things that need changing, like their hearts and minds and the presidency.
Yesterday, I wrote 1,097 words on "Bradbury Weather," despite an astounding array of distractions and interruptions. Today, I am shutting out the world with somewhat more force than I did yesterday. At the moment, the story stands at 9,105 words, and if I'm right about this story going to about 15,000 words, that means I should be done with it, at long, long last sometime on Tuesday. There are only a couple of other things which I have to attend to today, like the first few questions for the Bookslut interview and a few e-mails (Sa'jathan, I'm getting back to you this evening, I promise).
I don't write this journal for myself, which sort of makes it something other than an actual journal when you get down to it. I write it for you to read, and that means I usually put the same effort into it that I put into my books and stories. Keeping this in mind, I found myself regretting how entries become history so fast. There's some good stuff in the comments (talking to LJ folks here) over the past few days, but I figure most of you read these entries once and move on, which is reasonable. But I thought I'd dig out a couple of comments from the last couple of days that you might not have seen otherwise:
On the subject of the less-than-perfect astrophysics in The Dry Salvages ARCs (which, by the way, has been entirely corrected for publication), pinkteaset3 wrote:
I have a book of sci-fi stories from Victorian times through to present day. One of my favourites was written when the theory of the "big bang" was first being popularised. The science of the story is not accurate according to what we know (or think we know) today, but the emotional impact of the concept, and the storytelling itself, hit me where it counts.
Your comments about factual "errors" [in The Dry Salvages] in relation to art are wonderful. Making art is (among many things) a way to try to solve a problem that the artist is continually being addressed with, finding a means to an end when there is no end [italics mine--CRK]. It is in my experience deeply psychological and unexplainable. Stories are art that you get to live in, which is why I feel it is the greatest thing anyone could possibly be good at.
I can understand why you would be pissed off about not noticing the error before it was sent to reviewers, however, the book still put me on the floor.
I think that the best science-fiction authors recognize that the science must be peripheral to the heart of a story, which must remain characterization, mood, tone, theme, etc. The story comes first, the science comes later. Otherwise, if you really are writing stories about science, obsolescence will be swift and unforgiving. Science is, by its very nature, a transient thing. Fact and theory are not eternal truths, but only temporary necessary fictions in pursuit of truth, which may be unobtainable. Scientists understand this, but I think a lot of science-fiction writers don't. Then again, a lot of them do: Bradbury, Asimov, Clarke, George R. R. Martin, Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick, Dan Simmons, William Gibson -- these are authors who do understand, I think, that science fiction is about science's effect upon mankind, rather than being fiction about science per se. But still, I also believe a science-fiction writer has an obligation to get the science as "right" as she can at the point in time she's writing a story. Hence my distress over the problems in the ARC of The Dry Salvages.
And regarding Murder of Angels, redredshoes writes:
One thing I think you as a writer don't get enough credit for is how many genuinely funny moments in the book there are. It was kinda awful, but while they're in the drowned underwater kingdom I'm shrieking at Scarborough moaning, "I hate fucking boats...."
...I freely admit I'm a sucker for characters with inappropriate senses of humor -- you got another shriek when poor Niki says "What about 12 and 13 together?" and he says 25, "unhelpfully." It's the "unhelpfully" that gets me. On the trip through oblivion and screaming chaos and old night, you need a smartmouth.
Thank you. I never really plan on the humour, or work at it, it just seems to come, usually at seemingly inappropriate moments. It's like gravy. On the trip through oblivion and screaming chaos and old night, you need a smartmouth. Nice. I think that would look good on my tombstone.
Anyway, I encourage everyone reading this on LJ to regularly read back over the entries from previous days and their comments. Some of the best stuff is in there, I think.
Here's an oddity. I know that Amazon.com sales ranking system is totally frelled, but Murder of Angels has sat at 9,502 since late on Saturday. This seems a) impossible and b) at odds with their explanations of how the ranking system works. But whatever. 9,502 ain't so bad, though MoA has charted much, much higher on Amazon since its release. Frankly, I think one of the webmonkeys at Amazon needs to slip their ranking system a laxative.
Thanks to everyone who's taken part in the get-Spooky-to-Fiddler's Green eBay auction in its first 24 hours. Today, we're going to try to get a couple of unusual items up, including a slipcased hardback of Silk (long ago sold out at Gauntlet Press). Meanwhile, we have plenty of Murder of Angels, The Five of Cups, In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers and suchlike. We have sold out of Threshold, though, as of yesterday.
In closing, I've been thinking about what a peculiar position working authors (and other artists who depend upon their art for their income) find themselves in with respect to any incentive to become better authors. It's not like I'll get a raise or a promotion if Daughter of Hounds is a better novel than was Murder of Angels. I know this from experience (that bitch). Low Red Moon was vastly better, in my opinion, than Threshold, which, in turn, was vastly better than Silk. Why? Because I feel the need to continually best myself, regardless of the fact that there has been no financial reward for doing so. How many non-artists would labour under such conditions. Scientists often do, but their almost artists, even if they don't like to admit it. What if I walked into an office somewhere and told a secretary (or whatever they're called these days) or a data entry whatever-their-called that they should work harder, should work longer hours, should become better typists or accountants or managers or what have you because, goddamn it, it's just the right thing to do. Manage for managements sake. Type for the sake of typing, if you mean it, if you're sincere. Do you think they would laugh at me, or would they simply spring forth from the prisons of their cubicles to fall upon me like ravenous zombies?
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
The Ellison nanobot had almost quieted down. I was only mildly angry all day yesterday. And then resonantserpent drew my attention to the fact that a London to Washington D.C. flight was diverted to Maine on Tuesday "when it was discovered that passenger Yusuf Islam — formerly known as singer Cat Stevens — was on a government watch list and barred from entering the country." You can read the whole story here. Well, not the whole story, but you know what I mean. The reason this thing about Yusuf Islam came up was that I listen to music while I write, even while I write in my blog. And yesterday morning I was listening to Cat Stevens' "Father and Son" while I wrote my entry, and on LiveJouranal there's a place to list music you might be listening to (sadly, Blogger lacks this feature). So, that's why I was alerted to the Transportation Security Administration and Homeland Security Department's harassment of Yusuf Islam.
Is there even any point in saying that this makes me sick? That it's one more thing that makes me ashamed that I'm an American citizen? That Canada, The Netherlands, and New Zealand are looking better ever frelling day? This man, who publicly condemned the actions of the 9/11 terrorists and has spent his life working for peace, was denied entry into the United States and treated like a criminal because he is a Muslim who has spoken out against our invasion of Iraq. Following 9/11, Islam made the following statement: "No right thinking follower of Islam could possibly condone such an action: The Quran equates the murder of one innocent person with the murder of the whole of humanity." But I suppose that's not good enough for the Bush Administration.
Are "we" really going to allow this thuggery to go on for another four years? My fear is that "we" will, that "we" will ask it in again, because most of America has no problem with the DHS equating Yusuf Islam with Osama Bin Laden, simply because both men are Muslim. Does this mean no one can ever again question my equating George Bush with Adolf Hitler, since both chose Christianity as their faith? Of course, the truth is that islam would not have been turned away on Tuesday if he'd never spoken out against our actions in Iraq. That's what has made him an enemy of the State (which should not ever be confused as being an enemy of America). Is this "watch list" public? Can I see it? Because I'd really like to know if my name's on it, and if it's not, I'd like to demand that it be placed there. I am surely an enemy of this fascist administration and can't imagine it wants me sullying its sacred fucking ground with my infidel's feet.
So, this morning, I'm listening to Cat Stevens again and hating George Bush just that much more.
Meanwhile...if I can calm the bot for a few moments...
Yesterday, I made good on my vow and wrote 1,101 words on "Bradbury Weather." It's on track again, and I am greatly relieved to be able to say that. Hopefully I'll do as well again today. I feel like a person again. When I am not working, I feel like a dried up lump of yellow Play-Doh.
Maureen McCarty, whom I first met at Dragon*Con two years ago, is customizing a set of Doc Marten boots for the big CBLDF (Comic Book Legal Defence Fund) auction being held at Fiddler's Green in November. There will be a pair of Docs for each of the Endless. At Dragon*Con, she asked me to model Desire's, which I did:
More and better photos will be available later. The boots are a lovely deep red with gold chains and hearts. I'd love to own them myself. My own contribution to the auction will be an Endless charm bracelet that I'm making (yes, with my very own hands).
And speaking of auctions, today we are beginning the big auction to buy Spooky's plane ticket to Fiddler's Green. Click here to see what we're offering. If you don't see it, just ask. And if it's within your budget, I ask that you please make use of the Buy-It-Now feature. This wouldn't be necessary, of course, if publishers could be bothered to pay working writers advances and royalties that are commensurate with the work that they do (there's the bot again). Your assistance in this matter will be much appreciated.
By the way, if anyone feels motivated to send me pro-Bush, anti-Yusuf Islam, pro-war in Iraq hate mail, please address it to gothgrrl@aol.com. I never, ever read that account anymore, so I'll not be bothered by the noise.
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
My mind is everywhere at once this morning. Scattered. Fragmented. Something from the dreams, but I'm not sure what. Some neuroscientists (a suspicious lot of wizards, I say) claim that a dream that may seem to last a long, long time occurs in only a fraction of a second. There's something terrible and wonderful and breathtaking in that thought. My life is only a dream the cosmos/god/goddess is having, only a fraction of a second and I'll be gone. That makes it all a little less awful. But I'm drifting, aren't I? Yes, I am. These dreams from last night, they were so long, months and months it seemed, so surely they lasted at least two whole seconds, and they left my mind everywhere at once. So you will excuse the ill-focused nature of what follows.
My thanks to greylit for providing this link to a review of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. It actually made me want to read the novel, but also addresses the issue of hype I was discussing just the other day and addresses it well. And, for anyone who doubts the potential efficacy of hype, I have this bit from Variety, by way of Dark Horizons, by way of grandmofhelsing:
Susanna Clarke's 800-page novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which is getting a major push from its publisher, is now a hot commodity in Hollywood. New Line, Warner Bros., Dreamworks and Sony are all pursuing the film rights, according to Variety. Clarke is already penning a sequel, and the studios smell a potential franchise.
Of course, in 2002, New Line, Warner Bros., Dreamworks, and a host of other Hollywood entities "purused" the film rights for Threshold, and that has led nowhere so far. Same with everything I've written since Threshold, and I had no "major push" from my publisher. So, with hype, your mileage may vary. Of course, it's also worth noting that I have a long history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And just let me say again, 'cause some folks hearing ain't so good and their reading comprehension may be even worse, I have nothing whatsoever against Susanna Clarke or this Very Large Novel.
Poppy called night before last, because her Sony Vaio died while she was in Washington D.C., and she was trying to decide whether or not to finally get a Mac and part ways with her PC past. Jennifer and I advised her as best we could. I'm a card-carrying, dyed-in-the-wool, been-this-way-since-1986, absolute frelling Macintosh evangelist, but I put all that in the back of my mind and at least tried not to be pushy. But, still, I'm happy to see she bought an iBook after all. Drad.
Yesterday, I made a large number of corrections to the existing portion of "Bradbury Weather," things Spooky and I discovered needed correcting when we read it on Sunday, and today I shall get back to work on the story. I swear. Cross my heart. I will write at least one thousand words, or I will stand (figuratively) before you all tomorrow embarrassed and ashamed. There were other things yesterday, e-mail with my agent in NYC about the contract for Daughter of Hounds, e-mail to be sure that the uncropped author's photo for The Dry Salvages had reached Mesa, Arizona in one piece (it had). That sort of stuff.
This morning, a few minutes after waking, after the aforemetioned long, long dream, four lines of poetry came into my head. That hasn't happened in a while. I groggily scribbled them down before breakfast. I'll look at it later today to see if it's anything worth pursuing. If so, I suspect the poem may serve as an epilogue of sorts for To Charles Fort, With Love.
How can it be 12:30 already? It was 9:30 only a moment ago.
Here's an interesting thing. One of the criticisms that has been leveled at Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is that the film contains a number of references to World War I. Now, it's admittedly a dumb mistake. In the alternate history of the film, it would appear that WWII never occurred (if only), so the character would not think of WWI as WWI. They would most likely think of it as "The Great War." This is a small but annoying thing. It's something the filmmakers could have easily gotten right. But that's not my point. My point is to draw a parallel with my own work. Recently, Subterranean Press sent out about twenty ARC (advance reading copies) of my forthcoming short novel, The Dry Salvages, to a group of my more avid readers. Now, shortly after I got my own copies of the ARC, I discovered that I'd made a really, really dumb mistake regarding relativity and travel at near lightspeed, a bad calculation, that had thrown off the chronology throughout the book. It wasn't a little thing, not as small as the WWI thing in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. It was a Really Big, Stupid Thing, and when I saw it I screamed and threw things. I'm plenty intelligent and educated enough not to have made the mistake, not to have let it wind up in the copy that went out to all the reviewers, but there it was, anyway. And still, this is not my point. My point is that not a one of the readers who were sent the ARC, who read it and commented on it online, caught the error. Nary a one. And yet there it was, staring me in the face. Why didn't they see it? It's a pretty obvious mistake, echoed throughout the book, and I know that these readers are a smart lot. So, what gives? I have a theory. It's a simple theory. No one went into the book expecting an error of such magnitude. They assumed, incorrectly, that, given my past as a scientist, all the science would be perfect. They didn't see the mistake because they were not predisposed to look for the mistake. There was not hostility or resistance between them and the book, so they sailed right past the error, unphased. It's presence did not diminish their enjoyment of the story. And this is what I want you to think about. All "art" is filled with mistakes. Perfection escapes us all. But if a tree falls in the forest, is the sound it makes relative to our desire and/or expectation to hear falling trees?
By the way, if you've not yet bought your copy of Murder of Angels, now would be a really, really good time. And I would be quite grateful. And, after all, Charles De Lint called MoA "...that rare book that gets everything right." I figure if the book sales poorly, that'll make Mr. De Lint look bad, and he's a really nice guy and very fine writer, better than I am, so we don't want that, him looking bad, I mean. So. Please. Buy the book and save Charles De Lint's reputation. Thank you.
Also, we will be beginning a new round of eBay auctions in the next day or so. The purpose this time is to raise enough cash to get Spooky a plane ticket to Fiddler's Green, so I don't have to go to Minneapolis alone, and also to allow me to get a new cell phone, because my old one, which was a trooper and had served me well since May 2001, gave up the ghost at Dragon*Con. Any remaining money will go towards the coming move, which, by the way, has been mercifully delayed until November/December. And the call for a webmaster and designer for my website is still open. I have a good candidate for a webmaster in the Netherlands, but no prospect for a designer, and I'd like to talk to a number of people before making any decisions. If you're interested, e-mail me at lowredmail@mac.com .
And now, I have to brush my teeth.
Monday, September 20, 2004
Addendum: This week's Publisher's Weekly includes the following review of The Dry Salvages (the reviewer's name was not given, or I'd include it here):
THE DRY SALVAGES
(Caitlín R. Kiernan. Subterranean Press, $25 (128 p)
ISBN 1-59606-006-9
An interplanetary expedition pays an unexpected visit to the dark side of science fiction in this gripping genre-jump by horror specialist Kiernan (Murder of Angels). In the 23rd century, Earth has just discovered signs of the first nonhuman civilization on Piros, a moon in a star system some 15 light years away. Extrasolar exopaleontologist Audrey Cather and three other crew members of the starship Montelius are dispatched to rendezvous with Gilgamesh, the exploratory ship that made the discovery, but when they make port they find that half the Gilgamesh crew has vanished on Piros while those on board are struggling with madness. Something has frightened the scientists to irrationality and driven at least one to spouting portentous passages from Blake's Book of Urizen. Suspense mounts excruciatingly as the crew of the Montelius hastens to Piros to confront the horror themselves. Echoes of other first-contact stories-from the transcendent 2001 to the paranoid gothic Alien cycle-reverberate through the narrative, setting the mood for an eerily unpredictable close encounter. Kiernan also draws on her training as a paleontologist for her rigorously plotted extraterrestrial environments. But this tale's focus is squarely on the human, and it asserts an authority that will convince readers of all tastes that "the alien" is a fundamental fear that can conjure primal horror out of a sophisticated SF setting. Agent, Merilee Heifetz. (Oct. 30)
Very nice. But am I really a "horror specialist"? That sounds so sordid.
The nanobot is working overtime, lodged deep in my amygdala (yes, Nebari have those, too), whispering to my forebrain, reminding it how I ought to be angry, how, in fact, I ought to be furious.
For example, this morning, half-asleep, I picked up this week's issue of Creative Loafing, Atlanta's "alternative" paper (hardly perfect, but a far sight better than the good-ol'-boy neofascism of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution), and with my squinty, unawake eyes beheld (on p. 50, left-hand side) a top-to-bottom ad for the Southeastern Literary Journal and Small Press Fair. Oh, yeah. Try talking to most of these people about fantasy and weird fiction, and see how long it takes them to get that why-must-I-endure-such-riff-raff, annoyed cat expression on their faces. But, hey, you can attend workshops for "aspiring writers," fiction and poetry workshops (Americans feel a lot better about writing if they use good, solid Proletariat words like "work" and "shop" when doing so). "Well," I said to Spooky, who was making her coffee. "I shouldn't be so judgmental. They're better than me, aren't they? I mean, it's not like they have to write for their supper. I'm a whore. They're just sluts."
So, the next thing I encounter in Creative Loafing, turning to page 61, is a snotty, half-assed review of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. I knew, when I saw it, that it was the sort of film that would drive the art film/film snob/film geek bozos bugfrell. That it was the sort of film they'd see, knowing they'd hate it, just so they could complain. And I was right. And the best this asshole, this Heather Kuldell, could come up with was criticism on the order of "Capt. Franky [sic] Cook (Angelina Jolie) sports a form-fitting uniform and an eye patch, disproving the long-held belief that pilots need two eyes for proper depth perception." Flippant crap like this, masquerading as criticism, drives me nuts. It's like the people who complained that, in Batman Returns, Michelle Pfeiffer never could have made Catwoman's outfit from the stuff in her closet. Or they complain that Star Wars was a bad film because there's no sound in space, and X-wing fighters wouldn't bank, and Han Solo doesn't understand that a parsec is a measure of distance not of time, and, while we're at it, the dialogue is simplistic, hokey, and the plot is unoriginal. The sort of people who complained because automobiles in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence had three wheels, or because the crow in The Crow is actually a raven. In short, the people who just don't get it. "It," in this case, being that sometimes, in art, aesthetics and symbolism outweigh inconvenient, irrelevant fact. Sometimes things happen that way because it's just fucking cool, or pretty, or meaningful on a completely unscientific, unconscious level. A good story, which Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is most assuredly, is not to be bound by the tyranny of fact, unless that is the author's reasoned choice and intent. I was, however, quite pleased to see that Sky Captain... did well at the box office this weekend, and that Ebert gave it four stars.
My gods, the cryosphere has been activated. There's no denying it. I can't feel my feet.
I need a drink. It's only 12:54 p.m., but I need a drink.
Yesterday, Spooky and I read all the way through "Bradbury Weather." I was relieved to find that I still like it, two weeks after I last wrote on the story. Bill Schafer (at subpress), whom I let read the first seven thousand words yesterday, thinks I should stop having my first-person narrators draw attention to the weaknesses of first-person narration, but I'm not yet ready to do that. Stop, I mean. I want to write today, and I will try. The next scene is very clear in my head. Actually, the next two scenes are very clear to me. That's a good thing. I also updated the news page on my website for the first time since frelling March. I desperately need a webmaster, someone who could stay on top of things and maybe even do something about my butt-ugly, mid-nineties design. Right now, there's a gap between March and September that I shall fill in later. Gaps piss me off, and, obviously, we need no more of that. Also, yesterday, I began talking with the guy who's doing the Bookslut interview, prequestion questions. I think this is going to be a very good interview. I haven't done many, hardly any, since Spring 2002. I'd done so many, and it was always the same lame questions, that I finally just stopped giving them. I just couldn't stand to answer the same silly questions for the umpteenth time, because interviewers couldn't be bothered to do a little research and see that everyone else had already asked that question, and the answers were archived on my website.
Last night, in an attempt to curb Spooky's rather alarming addiction to Morrowind, we got old school and played Scrabble until after three a.m.
Okay, this has gone on way too long. I spend far too much time on this journal. I have more to say today, but it'll have to wait for a second entry, later on. Someone please get this thing out of my head...
Sunday, September 19, 2004
I spent, wait, let's see...yes, I spent about seven and a half hours at the iBook yesterday and managed to write not even one goddamn word on "Bradbury Weather." Not one word. I updated Nebari.net (adding Chapter IX of the Nar'eth manga and new costume photos), edited and uploaded Dragon*Con photos for the blog (which I really wish I'd saved for today or tomorrow), and lots of other stuff that has no direct bearing on my writing. But I was at the computer all that time. I was right here where I'm supposed to be, even though it was warm and beautiful outside, the last of summer fading in the aftermath of Ivan, and it was cold and icky, already, in my office. My feet hurt from the cold, but I can't bring myself to admit the cryosphere is kicking in already. I can't bring myself to put on warm socks in September. That's just too frelling depressing.
Today, I shall sit down with Spooky and we will read everything I've written so far on "Bradbury Weather," and, hopefully, that will kick my brain into gear again, and tomorrow I'll be writing on it once more. It's easy for the doomed to be gallant. Screw you, chaos. You will have none of me. You will flow over me like water over glass. I know all Nine of the Seven Deady Sins of Writing, and I know how to do this thing, this wordsmithing, storytelling thing, even if I know damned little else. I know, too, that the storm around me is beyond my power to control, but the storm within me, a sympathetic twister spawned by those external winds, is something I can control. It might take great will and resolve and strength and drugs, but I can hold that storm at my mercy.
My last therapist would have called that self-talk. My high-school history teacher, the one who was really a football coach, would have called it a pep talk. It doesn't matter what I call it. It only matters that I listen.
Last night, after the seven and a half hours at Hinderance, Spooky and I went to our favourite Thai restaurant and had three very delicious dishes, then rented Twelve Monkeys on DVD. Neither of us had seen it since the original theatrical release back in 1995, and I was very pleased that it was even better than I remembered.
I am always an Angry Person. But lately I have been remarkably angry, even for me. I think Harlan did it to me. I think when he kissed me at Dragon*Con, he slipped me a nanobot programmed to maximize righteous indignation at the rampant stupidity of mankind. It's becoming almost unbearable. I've been angry for two weeks. For example, just this morning I found myself livid at how Storm Constantine, one of the best fantasists living today, has been so little appreciated. Her stories of the Wraeththu, the Eloim, the Grigori, the Artemesians, these are far better than that purile crap Mercedes Lackey churns out, but Storm has not enjoyed Lackey's success. Storm's a smarter writer than Anne McCaffrey, but McCaffrey's endless stream of dragon novels gets all the praise. It pisses me off. Then there's this mammoth Susanna Clarke novel, the supposed second-coming of Thomas Pynchon, and, no, I haven't tried to read it yet myself, but Harlan (there he is again) declared at Dragon*Con, in so many words, that the Emperor --in this case, the Empress -- has no clothes. The hype and promotion lavished on this novel would "feed" most of us for ten years, would feed our egos, our books' needs, but here it's all spent upon one book, for whatever reason. It's not a question of whether or not Susanna Clarke deserves it, but simply the fact that if some of us didn't get so much, all of us might have a little more. I should shut up. This is going to get me into trouble. But it pisses me off, that publishers treat most of their authors like shit, and our books are thrown to the indifferent masses without so much as a good-luck kiss, while a handful, who are, largely, no better or worse writers, are given book tours and red carpets and so on and so forth. And it's not suprising that those books are the ones that are more likely to succeed. It's Wonderland logic. You only have to stand on your head and think backwards to see the sense of it.
Disclaimer: The preceeding was not an attack on Susanna Clarke or her work, which I've not read and am therefore not fit to judge. Wait. I did read "Stopp't Clock Yard" way back in 1996 and quite liked it. So, please, do not go telling people how Caitlín Kiernan was saying nasty things about Susanna Clarke, because she wasn't, and the words are right here to prove it. The preceeding was an expression of my anger towards a) the publishing industry and b) the elitist tendencies of some genre critics and literary critics who occassionally stoop to decide some book or another has "transcended the genre" (this has been said of my own work, and it pisses me off) and c) readers who often behave like sheep, if only they can find a willing shepherd.
Read a Storm Constantine novel. Read Thomas Ligotti. Read Jeffrey E. Barlough. Read Ramsey Campbell. Stop thinking so much about what everyone else is reading, what the Village Voice has decided to applaud, and look for the authors who work just as hard, or harder, than the "brightest stars." And if you are not guilty of literary sheepism, please ignore everything I have just written. It was not aimed at you, obviously. I'm tempted to begin a Most Overlooked Book Club, as a token antidote to the hit factory that is contemporary American publishing.
I am angry, and I blame Harlan. I think that I shall call him and tell him so.
Saturday, September 18, 2004
Addendum: Because a lady writer should always try to keep her word, eventually, here are four shots from Dragon*Con '04. I think they were all taken at the Gothic Journeys' "Goth: 1980-2004" panel on Saturday, and the one in the hallway right after.
(Left to right: Storm Constantine, Rogue, me drinking water)
(Left to right: Rogue again, me again, and Anne Sudworth)
(Left to right: Kat, Sissy, Nar'eth, and Jean-Paul)
(It's only appropriate that this photo is out of focus.)
Actually, the third photo was taken on Sunday. Nar'eth hadn't even made earth orbit on Saturday.
I'm going to try to get some Nar'eth photos up on the Nebari.net costuming page in the next hour or so. They'll be down at the bottom of the page. None of them came out good this year. Problems with lighting and me being too tired to pose.
Finally, the ninth chapter of Leh'agvoi's Nar'eth manga is finally online! I move at the speed of shifting continental plates, but by the gods, I move!
It is with great, great delight that I can honestly say that Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is one of the most spectacular films of the year (or in recent memory, for that matter). A dizzyingly diverse mixture of influences are brought into play: Flash Gordon, the Fleischer Brothers Superman cartoons, MGM's The Wizard of Oz, King Kong, The Lost World (1925), Metropolis, Terry and the Pirates, various 1940-'50s serials including Commander Cody and King of the Rocketman, and numerous film noir classics -- and still, I suspect that's just a beginning. This is a beautiful, amazing film which manages to do what George Lucas did so long ago with Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, but has failed to do more recently. It takes the past and makes something new and brilliant and breathtaking from it. Some might mistake this for camp, but Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is emphatically not camp. Which, I fear, will make it even more unfathomable to many of today's moviegoers. I think Gene Shalit has best summed it up: "If you don't like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, you just don't like movies."
Kerry Conran's direction is spot on, and his script is, by turns, tight, suspenseful, humorous, bold, and minimalist. The casting could hardly have been better. Jude Law has just the right kind of good looks to pull off the role, Gwyneth Paltrow is the plucky reincarnation of a hundred lost movie goddesses, Angelina Jolie's "Frankie" Cook is a perfect mix of sexuality and no-nonsense airwoman, and Bai Ling's presence dominates much of the film, though she never utters a single line. Are the SFX good? They are beyond all expectation. They are such a seamless fusion of Fritz Lang's Bauhaus/Deco sensibilities with a CGI/post-Matrix paradigm one finds it hard to believe the marriage wasn't there all along. I know a lot of film critics are giving this one the boot, but trust me, they're wrong. See this movie. Please see this movie. But don't see it with a chip on your shoulder. You know what I mean. That, "Okay. Here I am. Entertain me." bullshit. Allow this movie to show itself to you on its own exquisite terms. It's a film that more jaded, cynical filmgoers will never get, because many of them have forgotten that it's okay to have fun at the theatre and spend 107 minutes smiling until your face aches. Without reservation, I adore this film. Oh, and Crimson Skies geeks, you might love it the most.
It's been a hit and (mostly) miss summer for movies. There has been brilliance, such as The Village and Spider Man II, and there's been unspeakable abomination, such as White Chicks and Open Water. Okay, mostly there's been unspeakable abomination. Maybe I'll do a best and worst list tomorrow.
Today, Leh'agvoi, by Va'ganor's burning eye, I swear that I'll get your latest Nar'eth manga up.
Yesterday, we got the print off to Mesa. I spoke (via e-mail; I rarely use the frelling phone) with Voltaire, Ramsey Campbell, and my editor at Penguin. I tried to think of something to contribute to the Fiddler's Green charity auction (proceeds go to the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund; suggestions welcomed). Mostly, I thought about how badly I need to complete "Bradbury Weather" and begin Daughter of Hounds. Oh, and the new Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology arrived, and that's always a good thing. Sadly, the chaos continues unabated.
I wanted to pass along the following excellent observations on Murder of Angels from my online discussion phorum, courtesy Matt Spencer:
I think the most surprising realization for me was that this story is, of all things, a fable of sorts. And not of the "and the moral of the story is ..." variety, but rather a demonstration of the need to recognize moral gray areas, of the dangers of too narrow a perspective, of tangling good intentions with skewed personal motivations. In a lot of ways, the more I think about Spyder, you successfully conveyed with her what I believe George Lucas was attempting with Anakin Skywalker; too much power, a genuine desire to do the right thing with that power, a genuine desire to love, be loved, to make everything right, yet also that tragic skewing of notions of the greater good with personal hang-ups, a lack of perspective of what it is or isn't one person's place to decide for everyone else, and so forth.
Which brings me to another point ... the Joseph Campbell myth approach is more pronounced here than in any of your previous novels. In Silk, there were parts that I sensed it, though it never quite materialized. Not that it needed to do so overtly, but now that I've read MoA, it seems clear; Silk is, and always was, only the first half of the story.
I never, ever thought that I'd see MoA compared to Star Wars, but, looking at this, I think the boy may have a point.
Friday, September 17, 2004
For Atlanta, H. Ivan seems to have been fairly anticlimactic. I don't think we took nearly the hit we took from Frances. Spooky and I, being idiots at heart, ventured out into the rain yesterday, right after our lights went off at 4:10 p.m. We needed batteries for the boom box, so at least we can pretend we had an excuse. By the time we reached Target (ugh, shudder, whimper), the rain was falling so hard vision must have been down to about ten feet. The store was deserted and running on a back-up generator. Which was actually pretty cool. It had this whole Dawn of the Dead vibe going for it. I was kind of sorry we couldn't sit out the storm in that vast empty temple to consumerism. We bought our batteries and headed back out into the blue-silver-grey veil of the storm. There was a huge tree down across Briarcliff, and it took us two hours, two switchbacks, and a detour to get home again. When we finally returned, the lights were back on. Ah, well. It was better than sitting in the damned dark apartment for all that time.
I did more work yesterday than you might think. More work than I expected. Spooky and I had to take the negatives back to Wolf Camera, because the print we had made made for the author's photo for The Dry Salvages was cropped funny, and we needed an uncropped print. Spooky bitched a lot about not still having her own darkroom. Today, we pick up the new print and take it to the post office and next-day it to Bill's design person in Tempe, Arizona. There was other dull business type stuff I had to deal with. Blah, blah, blah.
This chaos thing. The writing has to start again soon. It's all I am, the writing. Yes, the bullshit chaos that has afflicted my life of late stands in my way, and I can't imagine writing around it. But I have to write. And it shows no signs of getting the hell out of my way any time soon. I detest being forced to do the impossible, because other people can't be bothered to do the possible and get their collective shit together. Which is really what this all comes down to. That's all beside the point though. The point is, I have to fucking write, because no one's going to hire me to tend bar or weld or teach population genetics. I have to write. I have to find a way to cope with the chaos (though I should not have to) and write.
Last night, Spooky read me the beginning of And the Ass Saw the Angel (yeah, I know I wasn't supposed to do that). I was very tired, and the words washed over me like sunlight and thunder, pushing me towards sleep. And I thought, these words are so perfect, so right, so beautiful, it doesn't matter if I'm too tired to catch the story. The words themselves are more than ample. The words are an end unto themselves. Oftentimes, writing is like that for me. When I'm not trying to bully the words into telling a story, when I just let them come. It's a bloody shame words are so bound by the tyranny of communication, that they cannot be free to affect our minds the way that, say, music is often free. I can appreciate Wagner perfectly well without tending to the libretto. Likewise, I can appreciate James Joyce or William Faulkner, Angela Carter or Kathe Koja, T. S. Eliot or William Shakespeare, without tending to the story. They wield words with such skill that the story becomes almost an afterthought. Sure, there's a story in there, sometimes a damned good one, but the real star of the show is, simply, the words. Most people aren't ready for that. And that's their loss, but it's mine, too.
Speaking of words, if you haven't yet picked up a copy of Murder of Angels, I'd be very grateful if you would. I hate having to push a book, because I am not a salesperson, I'm a writer. But when the advertising budget is as small as Murder of Angels', it falls to the author to promote, if there's to be any promotion.
Now, I have to do some things, send some e-mails, then go to Wolf and get the print off to Mesa, and then Spooky and I are going to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and the chaos can damned well go fuck itself sideways.
Thursday, September 16, 2004
We have wind and rain from Ivan, no more so far. But it's a peculiar wind and rain, not at all the sort one normally gets in Atlanta in mid-September. It's a gentle herald, and if I could rise up above these outlying clouds, I could look south and west and see what remains of the hurricane as it drags its dying cloudbody across Alabama. I spoke with my mother this morning. She's in Leeds, near Birmingham, and the eye will pass directly over her (or whatever's left where the eye would have been). The center, let's say. I told her I'd come if she wanted me to, and she said no, they were fine, wait, maybe come afterwards. She has a good, strong house, a generator, lots of camping equipment, things that are needed to weather a dying hurricane. We are preparing to be without power again. Since I'm not writing, Ivan won't be such an interruption. Other distractions have stolen her thunder, so to speak. And yes, all hurricanes are feminine, regardless of their names.
The apartment that I'd really hoped would be The New Apartment won't be, so the hunt continues.
I did manage a little work yesterday. No writing, but "work," nonetheless. I looked over the layout for the cover of The Dry Salvages, found a typo, and made some suggestions for changes. I read my Dreaming essay, revised it slightly, and sent it off to the people at Fiddler's Green. There were e-mails and phone calls. I talked with Bill Scahfer about an illustration to accompany the publication of "Bradbury Weather." I'm pleased to see that Murder of Angels is still selling moderately well nine days after its release; if I can keep this up, if the book can keep this up for a month or so, things will be okay.
I want to start reading Nick Cave's And the Ass Saw the Angel, but I'm holding off for fear of the degree to which his prose will inevitably colour my own, should I read it now, on the eve of beginning a new book. I'm very bad about this, picking up other writer's voices, and it's one reason I read so little. I think that only in the last few years have I really begun to find my voice, and it's largely because I've essentially stopped reading. It's a sort of artistic "contamination." I seem incapable of avoiding the osmotic aquisistion of another's style, some portion or facet of her or his style, if I read an author with a strong voice, and where's the point in reading an author with a weak voice? Gods, I used to love to read.
I still need to get up some Dragon*Con pictures. I still need to get up the new Nar'eth manga pages.
It's easy for the doomed to be gallant.
I love that line. Myrna Loy says it in Test Pilot (1938), which also stars Clark Gable and Spencer Tracey, as well as Lionel Barrymore. I needed old movies last night, so I turned on TMC and lay on the living-room floor for a few hours, lost in black and white. I watched Manhattan Melodrama (1934) before Test Pilot. It also stars Gable and Loy. Mostly, aside from enjoying these films on their own merits, I needed to briefly pretend the world could work the way it was in old movies. Some think they've outgrown such celluloid fairy tales and the need for them and consider such things passé and comedic. But that's only because they're empty, hollow people lost in an empty age. In old movies, there is justice, and bravery, and duty, and selflessness, regardless of the evil that men might do, or the corruption in "the real world."
And it's easy for the doomed to be gallant.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Not much to report about the last two days. Moving-related chaos that keeps me from working. Getting farther behind. Etc. & etc. I figure, soon I'll be so far behind that I'll have circled entirely around and come out back there somewhere, a couple of weeks ago, allowing me to catch up.
On the way to the market yesterday, I heard a somewhat appalling cover of the Cure's "Lovesong" by Tori Amos. Ouch. I wish she'd not done that. There are other things she might have done, instead. One cannot help but suspect that she missed the point of the original entirely.
There's actually something about Amazon.com that annoys me even more than the customer "reviews," something I find even more offensive and baffling. It's that "Our Customer's Advice" thing. What a load of dren. "See what customers recommend in addition to, or instead of, the product on this page."
Why???
Are you really going to go to Amazon to buy a copy of book Y, see that someone (you don't know who, just someone) has suggested you'd also like a copy of X, or, better yet, should buy Z instead of Y, and follow that advice? Is anyone out there that easy to lead around by the nose? Or is this just another way that Amazon.com suckers customers by providing an "interactive retail experience" that deludes them into thinking that it's somehow appropriate and good and right for them to offer anonymous "advice" to perfect strangers? For example, someone (we'll never know who) thinks that you should buy something called Pandora's Box: A Novel by someone named Allison Hobbs instead of buying Murder of Angels. Now, this is mystifying as, near as I can tell, Pandora's Box is a romance novel with pretty much nothing whatsoever in common with MoA. But you should buy it instead. Odds are, of course, Allison Hobbs is the "customer" who's offering this advice. I have more than once seen authors online bragging about using this feature to try and increase their sales. Yes, it's true. People abuse these silly Amazon features. A cursory examination of the reviews of Pandora's Box, for example, will reveal that most of these reviews were probably written by the same person. But, really, that's beside the point. This is yet another example of Amazon.com being perfectly willing to fuck over an author if they think it will net them more overall business by "enriching and enhancing the consumer blah blah blah." In truth, it's like going into a book store, (you know, the kind with shelves?) and, as soon as you pick up something you want, having some maniac in you're face "advising" you to buy something else instead. I don't really think that the "customer advice" feature will lose me a lot (or any) sales, but, Jesus, it fucking pisses me off that my novel is being used to advertise books I had no hand in writing, have never heard of, and shall never read.
Anyway...
Night before last, Spooky and I watched Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning. It was disappointing. Very pretty, moderately atmospheric, and the last half hour was pretty good, but, overall, there's too little of quality here to have justified a third Ginger Snaps film. Basically, it's Ravenous (a wonderful and superior film) with werewolves and the Fitzgerald sisters. As Spooky said, it's as if the makers of Ginger Snaps looked at the people who liked the first film, saw that it could be divided, roughly, into horror fans and goths and decided to make one sequel for each demographic group. Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed was made for the horror buffs, and Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning was made for the people who've always wanted to see what would happen if Dame Darcy made a werewolf film. It has its moments, and it might be as good as Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed, but I was left, regrettably, feeling as if they should have been satisfied with the success of the first film. But if you're a Ginger Snaps fan, you'll probably want to see it. At least it's pretty, and there are some fun extras on the DVD.
Last night, we watched The Punisher, because I needed something violent. And I can say, without reservation, this is one of the dumbest, dullest films I've seen in ages. It's nowhere near as daring as the various revenge films it constantly borrows from (Mad Max, The Crow, Unforgiven, etc.), the acting is awful, the pacing inexplicable, the dialogue is mindnumbing, the plot is a confused, meandering mess, and so forth. I'm just glad I didn't pay to see this at the theatre, though it's a film that might actually have been improved by a rowdy, obnoxious audience. Blegh.
Here's something I've snurched from Neil's blog, for the three people here who don't read it, regarding Fiddler's Green: And a couple of people have old me that they'd like to come to this one, but they're too busy or too broke, and plan on coming to the next Fiddler's Green; and I've had to explain that there really aren't any plans for a next one. This is it. It's special.
Meanwhile, Hurricane Ivan has set its sights on Mobile Bay, and I expect that Atlanta will be feeling the storm by Friday, at the latest. Hang on, kiddos. It's gonna suck (or blow, if you want to get all literal about it).
Monday, September 13, 2004
The loft we'd hoped would be The Loft isn't, and today we're looking at an apartment that will hopefully be The New Apartment. Someday, I'll sell a book for enough money that I can finally buy The House, and that will be that, once and for all. No more nomadism. The hardest part of being a reclusive alien writer is that when, inevitably, I am forced to move, the shell of security that I have wound about me, Woolf's room of my own, my safe place, is ripped away. It actually makes me phsyically ill to consider, this transition, the coming days of uncertainty and disorder. I just want a hole. I just want a hole dark enough that no one will be tempted to stick his hand inside.
I am almost well, as is Spooky. That is, we've almost shaken off this illness, whatever it might have been. I'm not sure Dragon*Con was worth losing the last week, time I might have spent finishing "Bradbury Weather." I'm thinking that earlier plans to do local signings for Murder of Angels were a bad idea and will be discarded. One signing could result in another sick week, which is ridiculous. I will still be doing SpookyCon and Fiddler's Green, though I may do them in biohazard suits, especially given that, in both instances, I have to spend time on germy aeroplanes.
It seems unlikely any significant amount of writing will get done until after this move, which is alarming, as there is so much writing to do, and I've left off on "Bradbury Weather" halfway through. But I can't write in confusion. I just can't. I've tried, and it never happens.
I think I'd like to trade this life for my Morrowind life. Nar'eth the Dunmer has a nice little house in Balmora filled almost to overflowing with loot, and since she murdered the pillow lady, no one ever bothers her there. She never has to write a word. She has a snazzy green glass longsword, an Orcish helm, and a Dadric shield she took from a demon. No one messes with her and lives to tell about it. She has enough scrolls and potions to charm her way through Hell and back. She just made Level 16. She never has to worry about Publisher's Weekly or Amazon.com or the next book or the last book or money. If she needs money, she steals it. Nar'eth the Dunmer is blessedly free of morality and guilt and duty. Last night, Spooky and I went out at about ten o'clock for salad and slices at Fellini's. Afterwards, walking back to the car, I looked up at the night sky and was shocked that where were no aurorae, that I could not find Vvardenfell's familar constellations or its two moons. I actually felt an instant of genuine disorientation. Am I playing too much? Or have I merely recognized, with even greater conviction than before, the illusory nature of "reality"?
Sunday, September 12, 2004
We may have found the new loft yesterday. I don't which I hate more, the act of moving or the sleazy realtors and property owners one has deal with while moving. I'll not get into details, but as the constant reader may recall, the old school where I live has been sold off for condos. Fine. If there are idiots willing to invest a quarter million in one of these apartments, whatever. But I do resent that I'm being forced to move so that some asshole buyer can turn around and lease the unit I was renting at an increased rate! No fooling. A number of the lofts here will be available for lease. But the rent's been raised significantly. For example, $1200/month to 1,450/month, and they actually think I should be interested in renting it. It's a renter's market here in Atlanta, and I have no idea what these assholes think they're doing. But they are, undoubtedly and forevermore, assholes.
Spooky went to see Siouxsie last night, though she was really too ill. She went with Jim and Byron. Siouxsie, who's recovering from a sinus operation she had last year, asked that the air conditioning not be turned on. So, the Variety Playhouse quickly became a hellish sauna of human-produced heat and humidity. I'm glad I stayed home. Spooky hid up in the balcony, where at least there was a fan. She said the show was very good and turns out it was a "no-smoking" show, but I still can't imagine subjecting myself to the heat and people. She said that from the balcony she could actually see a mist rising from the press of bodies. That's the nastiest thing I've heard since I learned that Dick Cheney was actually sired via sexual reproduction, instead of via Disney's animatronics people, as I'd suspected.
So, last night I played four hours of Morrowind while Spooky was gone (I frelling hate this game) and found a glass longsword which will replace my steel katana as Nar'eth's weapon of choice. There was also a bizarre incident in Gnisis where I was caught stealing my own skooma. I'd hidden it in a crate so a street merchent would do business with me, then a guard noticed me "taking" it back. I paid a fine, but the guard also took two valuable books from me (The Vampires of Vvardenfell, vols. 1 & 2), so I killed him. When asked to pay a fine for his death, I continued killing until, I dren you not, everyone in Gnisis was dead. I even chased one poor fa-pu-tah to the river west of town where he was attempting to hide near the legs of the silt strider, and I murdered him in the river. And then I realized there was a 12,458 septim bounty on my head (it's expensive, slaying a town), so I decided to return to the point where I'd last saved (thank you, Einstein), and just deal with the goddamn missing books (again).
For dinner, I had Skittles. But, hey, that's okay, because I had a whole can of Campbell's soup for breakfast on Saturday. Since we returned from Rhode Island, my weight has dropped from 185 pounds to only 174 pounds. I lost most of it in the last two weeks.
Murder of Angels has now been out (officially) for six days. It's selling very well on Amazon. The four reviews that count were all stellar. If my life were not a steaming pile of chaos right now, perhaps I would pause to be happy for the book, to be surprised that it's doing so well because it really is a very strange book, to feel a sense of completion, having completed what I began with Silk in October '93. But there really hasn't been any of that. Nope. Just hot, steaming chaos.
I still haven't quite gotten over the assertion by one of my fellow Dragon*Con panelists on Saturday, at the "Connecting the Dots" panel, that, "unlike literary fiction, genre fiction must offer a resolution." I don't know who told the writer in question that such a thing might be true, or if perhaps she'd imagined it herself, but this is exactly the sort of shit that, if I can do nothing else with this journal, I hope I can at least steer you clear of, both as readers and aspiring writers. "Rules" like this are for people more interested in being writers than in writing, who think it can all somehow be reduced to a mere science. They are to be avoided like leprous armadillos. Their hackery serves only to underscore the worst misapprehensions about fantastic and weird fiction. That, for example, a distinction exists between "literary" and "genre" fiction. "Unlike literary fiction, genre fiction must offer a resolution." No. Don't buy that line of shit for even a moment. There's a reason that The Empire Strikes Back is, by far, the superior Star Wars film, and that's because it's able to end without damn'd resolution, and from the quandries it presents arise all the most important questions that we must ask ourselves about ourselves. Because that's what art does.
Fairy tales are fine things, for children. They're a fine thing, for practice. But adults must have something more, and they must trade the moralizing certainties of the sanitized Victorian fairy tale for the infinite shades of grey and general lack of "endings" that adulthood manifests.
The same woman who uttered the "genre fiction must offer a resolution" nonsense, also opined that Joseph Campbell was "dry, academic, and unreadable" (I write these things down while they speak; I'd never recall them otherwise), and she recommended some popularizer or another whom she thought had rendered Campbell's such that "normal people can understand what he was trying to say." She really said these things, and no one in the audience rose to complain about the fact that she was insulting them. This sort of thing makes me not want to do another writing panel, ever.
Saturday, September 11, 2004
It seems incomprehensible that so much time has passed since September 11th, 2001. But, then again, that's what time does. It passes, carrying us along. In time, all points become distant; in infinity, all points become effectively equidistant.
I feel better this morning than I've felt since the last day of Dragon*Con. I think that I'm finally through the worst of this thing. Mostly now I just have coughing and sneezing. Spooky's still feeling pretty rough, though. But she's going to see Siouxsie tonight at the Variety Playhouse (she's had her ticket for weeks), and right now she's trying to get herself together enough for the show. I'm staying home. I'm just not much for live music these days, mostly because of crowds and cigarette smoke, both of which I try to avoid. The great thing about seeing bands at Dragon*Con is a) I'm backstage, away from the crowds, and b) there's no smoking permitted (unless you're Voltaire and have a pyrotechnics clause in your contract). Anyway, I've heard Siouxie's been great on this tour, so hopefully it'll be a good night out for Spooky, sickness or no.
I got the news yesterday that Monica Richards (of Faith and the Muse) will be doing the vocals on the song I contributed to Chris Ewen's (of Future Bible Heroes) side-project, The Hidden Variable. The song, "Twelve Nights After," is one of the old Death's Little Sister tunes I wrote back in 1996, though Chris has given it new music. I'm extremely excited about this and more than a little flattered. When I learn more about the progress of The Hidden Variable, I'll let you know.
I have to be in San Francisco in six weeks, and before then I need — nay, must — complete "Bradbury Weather" for Subterranean Magazine and get started on Daughter of Hounds. No if's, and's, or but's. No more sick days. No more anything but work. Today, I shall try to read back through "Bradbury Weather," so that tomorrow I might get back to work on it. I need to relocate all that stuff about Martian zeppelins that I was working on before the con and the crud. I'll also do my very best to get the new Nar'eth manga pages up (until then, check out the latest installment of Setsuled's The Adventures of Boschen and Nesuko). And I've not forgotten my promise to post Dragon*Con photos. They'll be along soonish.
Last night, for Kid Night, Spooky and I made fish sticks and watched the two-disc special edition of The Lost Boys. I count it as one of the Six Great Vampire Films of the '80s, along with Near Dark, Fright Night, Vampire's Kiss, Vamp, and The Hunger. I'd not seen The Lost Boys in ages and was surprised at how well the film holds up after more than a decade and a half (with the exception of Corey Haim's wardrobe). There's lots of great extras in this special edition, including scads of deleted scenes, interviews, neat make-up stuff, and so forth. Definitely worth a rental. Afterwards, I played Morrowind, and Nar'eth the Dunmer fighter ascended to 15th level. Now if she could just catch up with this Rels Tenim fekkik she's been chasing these last two nights...
Friday, September 10, 2004
By yesterday afternoon, I was feeling better and made the mistake of going out into the heat with Kathryn on a run to Wolf Camera to get the photo enlargement for the back cover of The Dry Salvages. By the time we got home again, I was feeling, well, odd. I took my temperature, and it was one-tenth of a degree below the one-hundred degree mark. I spent the next nineteen or so hours on a fevery rollarcoaster ride. Though she still wasn't feeling so good her own self, Spooky nursed me with Gatorade, fruit cups, and homemade mac and cheese. We went to bed about two, after some rather woozy Morrowind, and the chills hit me as I tried to go to sleep. I passed the night aching and shivering, hardly sleeping, as my temperature went up and down, up and down, staying always between 99.1F and 100F. I finally awoke at eleven this morning in a pool of sweat, my hair matted like the fetlocks of a wet yak, and realized that the fever had broken at last. But I'm taking things very easy and very slowly. I shouldn't have underestimated this bug. It's a nasty little thing.
When people ask why I don't do more conventions, my number one answer is, "Because I almost always wind up catching some horrid crud and lose days and days of work that I can't afford to lose."
I did get quite a bit done yesterday before the fever hit, even if none of it was writing "Bradbury Weather." I did an interview about absinthe with someone from the BBC. I tackled more of the languishing e-mails. I dealt with some confusion surrounding who would be handling film and television rights on The Dry Salvages. I agreed to an interview for Bookslut that will be appearing, I believe, in the November issue. I finally chose the author's photo for The Dry Salvages. I'd really wanted to use a Nar'eth photo, but none of them were absolutely perfect, so you just get me and an Argentinosaurus, instead. I have got to be well by Monday, at the latest, as there's just too much to do. Oh, and we're supposed to look at a potential new loft this weekend, because my life is not currently insane enough without having to frelling move again (this will be move #4 since August 2001, which is bloody ridiculous).
Today, my greatest aspiration is to keep the fever at bay.
And tonight is kid night, thank gods.
By yesterday afternoon, I was feeling better and made the mistake of going out into the heat with Kathryn on a run to Wolf Camera to get the photo enlargement for the back cover of The Dry Salvages. By the time we got home again, I was feeling, well, odd. I took my temperature, and it was one-tenth of a degree below the one-hundred degree mark. I spent the next nineteen or so hours on a fevery rollarcoaster ride. Though she still wasn't feeling so good her own self, Spooky nursed me with Gatorade, fruit cups, and homemade mac and cheese. We went to bed about two, after some rather woozy Morrowind, and the chills hit me as I tried to go to sleep. I passed the night aching and shivering, hardly sleeping, as my temperature went up and down, up and down, staying always between 99.1F and 100F. I finally awoke at eleven this morning in a pool of sweat, my hair matted like the fetlocks of a wet yak, and realized that the fever had broken at last. But I'm taking things very easy and very slowly. I shouldn't have underestimated this bug. It's a nasty little thing.
When people ask why I don't do more conventions, my number one answer is, "Because I almost always wind up catching some horrid crud and lose days and days of work that I can't afford to lose."
I did get quite a bit done yesterday before the fever hit, even if none of it was writing "Bradbury Weather." I did an interview about absinthe with someone from the BBC. I tackled more of the languishing e-mails. I dealt with some confusion surrounding who would be handling film and television rights on The Dry Salvages. I agreed to an interview for Bookslut that will be appearing, I believe, in the November issue. I finally chose the author's photo for The Dry Salvages. I'd really wanted to use a Nar'eth photo, but none of them were absolutely perfect, so you just get me and an Argentinosaurus, instead. I have got to be well by Monday, at the latest, as there's just too much to do. Oh, and we're supposed to look at a potential new loft this weekend, because my life is not currently insane enough without having to frelling move again (this will be move #4 since August 2001, which is bloody ridiculous).
Today, my greatest aspiration is to keep the fever at bay.
And tonight is kid night, thank gods.
By yesterday afternoon, I was feeling better and made the mistake of going out into the heat with Kathryn on a run to Wolf Camera to get the photo enlargement for the back cover of The Dry Salvages. By the time we got home again, I was feeling, well, odd. I took my temperature, and it was one-tenth of a degree below the one-hundred degree mark. I spent the next nineteen or so hours on a fevery rollarcoaster ride. Though she still wasn't feeling so good her own self, Spooky nursed me with Gatorade, fruit cups, and homemade mac and cheese. We went to bed about two, after some rather woozy Morrowind, and the chills hit me as I tried to go to sleep. I passed the night aching and shivering, hardly sleeping, as my temperature went up and down, up and down, staying always between 99.1F and 100F. I finally awoke at eleven this morning in a pool of sweat, my hair matted like the fetlocks of a wet yak, and realized that the fever had broken at last. But I'm taking things very easy and very slowly. I shouldn't have underestimated this bug. It's a nasty little thing.
When people ask why I don't do more conventions, my number one answer is, "Because I almost always wind up catching some horrid crud and lose days and days of work that I can't afford to lose."
I did get quite a bit done yesterday before the fever hit, even if none of it was writing "Bradbury Weather." I did an interview about absinthe with someone from the BBC. I tackled more of the languishing e-mails. I dealt with some confusion surrounding who would be handling film and television rights on The Dry Salvages. I agreed to an interview for Bookslut that will be appearing, I believe, in the November issue. I finally chose the author's photo for The Dry Salvages. I'd really wanted to use a Nar'eth photo, but none of them were absolutely perfect, so you just get me and an Argentinosaurus, instead. I have got to be well by Monday, at the latest, as there's just too much to do. Oh, and we're supposed to look at a potential new loft this weekend, because my life is not currently insane enough without having to frelling move again (this will be move #4 since August 2001, which is bloody ridiculous).
Today, my greatest aspiration is to keep the fever at bay.
And tonight is kid night, thank gods.
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Addendum: I think that I am, at this moment, approaching some sort of frustration critical mass. I'm having to waste so much energy breathing through my stuffy nose, and breathing is proving such a distraction, that trying to get back into "Bradbury Weather" seems next to impossible. Sometimes, next to impossible is worse than genuine impossible. If it were merely genuine impossible, I could just go lie down somewhere and moan. I'd settle for that. But I feel just good enough that I'll have to deal with Guilt and it's brethren if I slack off just because of a snotty nose, racking cough, and sore throat. To make matters worse, I need to read through what I've written on the story thus far, about 7,00 words, to get the tone, the mood, the feel of the story back into my head. And I need to read it aloud, or have it read to me aloud, but Spooky and I both sound like frogs right now, and reading aloud only leads to coughing, anyway. So. Crap. I want to finish this story, because I like where it's going and because I want and need to get started on Daughter of Hounds, and I am cursed with this frelling summer headcold. I am imminently distractable, kiddos, and nothing distracts me like discomfort.
"Snot" is a four-letter word,
My grateful thanks to everyone who's posted a review of Murder of Angels in the last twenty-four hours. You're all very kind and have built for me a nice bulwark against the shit weasels. And the things you've written mean a lot to me, above and beyond being a response to "FruitLoop." All you have to do is look back over the journal for last summer and spring ('03) to see how hard this novel was for me to write. It was the hardest, by far. I spent months going to places I didn't want to go, and my reward is to see the book appreciated and to see it sell well enough that the next book, and the book after that, will sell.
I've a few lingering thoughts on "FruitLoops" comments, and it's easier to express thse thoughts here than to ignore them. Mostly, if this person wanted to accuse me of stealing from other authors and sources, they might have chosen something more appropriate than Kate and Leopold. I mean, really. Start with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice Through the Looking Glass, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever, Baum's Oz books, Paul Thomas Anderson's film Magnolia, Neil Gaiman's A Game of You, H. P. Lovecraft's entire ouvre, C. S. Lewis' Narnia books, and the works of Clive Barker and Charles De Lint. These are books that did strongly influence the story that I tell in Murder of Angels. Some of them are acknowledged in the "Author's Note" in the front of the book. But a reader and qualified would-be reviewer with a background in American fantasy would have recognized these influences without my pointing them out. Just as Murder of Angels is a novel about syncretism, so it is a novel that was written, as are all good novels, syncretically. It's a quilt I've made. That's what writers do. We quilt, stitching with all we've read and seen and hope and fear. Anyway, if you're going to accuse me of theft, please stick to those books and movies that have anything worth taking.
I was pleased with Robyn Ma's observations about how I allow myself to get so very bent out of shape by the Amazonian shit weasels (Mustela coprophilas). I quote:
Fundamentally, these forums exist for people without an official forum to vent, positively or negatively. But what of the possibility of shills? For all we know, studio plants are writing some of the incomprehensibly positive reviews of sludge like Without a Paddle on imdb ... and for all we know, some idiot with an ax to grind against greygirlbeast could post a negative review of Murder of Angels on the grounds that it's "a rip-off" of Kate and leopold or some such asshattery. And the Amazon.com reviews are more insidious, because what a potential buyer reads on that product page could influence whether s/he buys the book. That means fewer sales for greygirlbeast, who, although not all about the benjamins, would at least like to avoid having to eat ketchup sandwiches because a few nosepickers sprinkled their duh-ness all over her work.
I could not have said it better myself. I know that Amazon has made some cosmetic attempts to make their "reviewers" more accountable. For example, you can now see those people supposedly posting under their own name. We would be better served if the "reviews" were dropped altogether, at least until Amazon is willing to impose strict rules regarding who can and cannot write "reviews." I do not say this because I hope never to have another negative Amazon review (though I do), but because I'd prefer those negative reviews at least not be written by people who are obviously unprepared for the task.
I also noticed this morning that Amazon is offerring a discount if you buy Murder of Angels with Poppy's Liquor. I think anyone would have to admit that's an odd combination. Liquor is a wonderful novel, but bundling it with Murder of Angels seems to display a notable ignorance of the substance of both books. Hell, what do I know. I'm just a writer. I can only dream of being something as indespensible to society as an Amazon.com employee.
I would also like to take a moment to complain about Amazon allowing dealers to sell used copies of a new book on the same page where one is meant to buy new copies of that same book. In short, this undercuts sales figures and makes my publishers very unhappy. And then they proceed to make me unhappy. Yes, you can save a few bucks, but those used copies do not figure into the sales figures that Amazon generates and which are becoming increasingly important to "the industry" (shudder). Amazon could at least do the author the courtesy of offerring the used copies elsewhere on their site. And how the frell can there even be "used" copies when the the novel was just released on Tuesday!?
Yes, I am in a snotty mood this morning. It's because I've swallowed about a ten gallons of the stuff since last night. I'm feeling much better, but not yet good. And Spooky's still more under the weather than I am. She spent most of yesterday camped out on the sofa, playing Morrowind. I managed to work all day yesterday, catching up on neglected correspondence, giving an interview to someone who's doing an article on blogging for a French magazine, arranging another interview, selecting an author's photo for The Dry Salvages, and finishing with the last batch of monster doodles. It was a very full day for someone with a snot factory running full tilt inside her head. About ten o'clock, I abandoned work, took a hot bath, and played Morrowind until about 2:30, when I got fevery again and went to bed. I was going to watch Gladiator again, because I've been in the mood for it, but opted for Morrowind, instead. Nar'eth the Dunmer has left Balmora and Ald-Ruhn for the time being and relocated to Sadrith Mora, having grown weary of Fighter's Guild politics and backstabbing and suchlike. Last night, I helped Larienna Macrina rid the ruins at Nchurdamz of a particularly nasty Daedric monster named Hrelvesuu. I also poked about the ruins at Shashpilamat, killed an assortment of Daedra, and scored some very nice orc armour.
I still don't have any Dragon*Con photos for you. They're all on Spooky's iBook, and neither of us have felt like resizing them in Photoshop, transferring them via thumbdrive to my iBook, and uploading them. Maybe later today, after I've made an effort to get "Bradbury Weather" moving again. Maybe I can also find the time and energy to post the new manga pages to Nebari.net. Maybe I can pull a rabbit out of this hat.
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
Addendum: Jesus frelling Christ on a bright red, rocket-powered pogo stick. You'd think the shit weasels could at least wait until the book's been out a day or two before they start. This from Amazon.com (the shit weasel inserts a spoiler, so be warned):
Reviewer: Fruit Loop (Down South)
(two stars) The word "ripoff" comes to mind immediatetly....
....Somebody jumps off a bridge into another world! WOW! This was done much better in the movie "Kate and Leopold" and Kate and Leopold were much more likeable than these characters, a drugged-out-stereotypical rock singer and her psycho lover. Sci-fi fans may be mildly entertained, but "portals into other realms" have been done much better in scores of other books. If you like entertainment, this is too dark - and dull.
So, because this anonymous, trolling asshole with a mouth has too be heard, the book's rating just fell from five stars to 3.5 stars.
And I'm not at all sure why "sci-fi fans" might be "mildly entertained," as this is not an sf story. I won't get started on the "likeable" thing again. Or how anyone could possibly imagine some similarity between Murder of Angels and Kate and Leopold (though I confess to not having seen the latter). Gods, why do I let this shit get to me?
Oh, and "ripoff" should be hyphenated, or it should be split into two words, so it's actually a phrase, not a word. And there should be a comma between "This was done much better in the movie 'Kate and Leopold'" (and movie titles should be italicized) and "and Kate and Leopold were much more likeable than these characters, a drugged-out-stereotypical rock singer and her psycho lover." Of course, there should also be a comma between "drugged-out" and "stereotypical." Idiot.
Like I said, kind words regarding Murder of Angels would be appreciated. I am loathe to ask such a thing, but I understand there are actually people out there who buy books based on Amazon reader comments. But please, be sure to meet the high and exacting critical and grammatical standards set by "Fruit Loop."
First things first: Due to Dragon*Con and the fact that it left both me and Spooky crud-stricken, the latest batch of eBay packages have not gone out. For this we apologize. They will be mailed tomorrow. We thank everyone for his and her patience.
Second things secondly: Yesterday was the official release date of Murder of Angels. Sales are good, but I have a favor to ask. So many of you have taken the time to send me your thoughts on the book, or to post them to your blogs or to my phorum. I would be very appreciative if you would please repost those comments as reader reviews on Amazon. I'm hoping to get a number of positive reviews before the usual trolling shit weasels show up to drag things down. The more positive reviews there are, the less damage the negative reviews can do. Thank you.
Also. I have four more pages of Leh'agvoi's Nar'eth manga that I've not had time to post. I hope to get them up this evening.
I think I might have made it through the worst of this cold, but Spooky's about where I was yesterday. With luck, by tomorrow we'll both be better tomorrow (WHAT???!!!). Neither of us has time for this dren.
And I suppose I owe you all an account of the con, hmmmm? I'm so lousy at this sort of thing. It's like trying to write a synopsis, all plot ("a what and a what and a what") and no substance. No style. No characterization. But I'll give it a shot anyway.
Friday: I wasn't scheduled for anything until Friday evening, and, of course, I was running late. We made it to the Hyatt about 5 p.m., and I rushed down to VIP registration while Spooky looked for a place to park. I was delighted to see that Penguin had purchased a full-page ad for Murder of Angels in the Souvenir Book. And that the layout people had placed it on the page opposite my bio. Drad. In fact, I was so excited that I sat my purse/backpack down on a countertop and walked off without it. I didn't realize I'd done this until several hours later. Though I feared I'd soon be bidding for it on eBay, someone found it and was kind enough to take it to lost and found. It had my passport. It had all my credit cards. It had my social security card. It had my lipstick. Losing it would have been a certified disaster. Anyway, after losing my bag, I did the "Welcome to the Journey" panel for the Gothic Journey track. After that, I had some especially lame writing panel, "Connecting the Dots," in which I was actually expected to describe the process by which I make a story from such elements as plot, character, mood, setting, and so forth. I'm getting really, really tired of these panels. I can't do this. No honest writer can do this, because writing is not a "connect the dots" book. You don't set your pen down here and move easily along from point to point to point. It just doesn't work that way, and I said so (again). Also, I was truly and openly appalled at one of the panelist's assertion that "unlike literary fiction, genre fiction must offer a resolution." This comment is both trite and wrongheaded, but it also stands as a good example of what's wrong with the writing panels at Dragon*Con. After the two panels, I loitered in the hallway outside Greenbriar for a bit with Sissy, Kat, Jean-Paul, and crew, and Rogue (of The Cruxshadows). Voltaire (the only man I flirt with on a regular basis) and William Faith (of Faith and the Muse) stopped to say hello. Then some security Nazi wookie guy growled at us all for blocking the hallway, and I spent the next hour and a half (with the help of Sissy) searching in vain for the missing purse. That was Friday night.
I'm already bored to frelling death with this. Okay, let's try something different. Here's a list, post-Friday night, of my favorite moments/things @ Dragon*Con '04:
01. Getting to see Harlan for the first time since 2001. I have to say, that is the most violent kiss I've ever gotten. Oh, and learning of the rumours that he and I were once lovers. I collect these rumours. I can now put Harlan on the shelf where I keep the rumours that I have bedded (or been bedded by) Poppy, Neil, and Clive.
02. Having William Faith dedicate "Annwyn, Beneath the Waves" to me during Faith and the Muse's acoustic set on saturday afternoon.
03. Crashing the superb "Goth: 1980-2004" panel on Saturday (which also included Rogue, Voltaire, Storm Constantine, and the very delightful and talented Anne Sudworth).
04. Modeling Desire's Doc Marten's for Maureen (these will be auctioned at Fiddler's Green, proceeds to go to the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund) late on Saturday.
05. Reading passages from Murder of Angels at my Saturday reading.
06. Having dinner late on Sat. with the Tampa crew, even if we didn't get sushi.
07. Letting Nar'eth out of her cage for the fifth time, even though it meant getting up at 7 a.m. on Sunday, after going to bed at two, and even though this was possibly the most grueling make-up session I've ever endured (four very long hours).
08. My very well-attended Sunday afternoon reading, where I read all 10,000+ words of "La Peau Verte." It was surely one of the best readings I've ever given, and I realized that "La Peau Verte" is one of the best short stories I've ever written.
09. Meeting Sa'jathan and his terribly cute son and being given the fundamentals of the Nebari alphabet and numeric system, which he has been working on.
10. Me and Spooky having dinner on Sunday night with Ted Naifeh and his "extremely clever and attractive" girlfriend, Kelly.
11. Posing as Nar'eth for about a thousand photos.
12. Being backstage for the Sunday night Faith and the Muse/Voltaire/Cruxshadows show. Spectacular!
13. All the beautiful, brilliant costumes, which will drive me to fine-tune Nar'eth even further.
14. The "Farscape Fan" fans.
15. Having someone named Gregory recognize Nar'eth as Nar'eth, instead of as Caitl?n-in-costume.
There are many other things, but I feel too icky to list any more. And there were the downsides, too. Like catching this cold. And having to listen to people mispronounce "Cr?xshadows" until I thought I'd scream. And losing my Hello Kitty purse (though I had it back by Saturday). And being 45 minutes late for my signing on Sunday (because the make-up took forever). And not getting to see a lot people I'd meant to hook up with, such as Berni Wrightson, Charlie Vess, and Bill Stout. And not having time to see any of the Farscape cast or the Firefly panels. But, all in all, it was a wonderful con, and my thanks to Spooky and Jennifer for getting me through it.
I'll try to post some photos tomorrow.
Can I stop being sick now? Please?
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
We lost power at about 3 a.m. last night, and we only got it back at 7:45 this evening.
What was left of Hurricane Frances came rolling up the Chattahooche in the night and made a messy last stand. The rain and wind were nice enough until the electricity went away. I lay in bed, not sleeping well, having several dreams of violent death, waking to lie in the darkness with no sound to greet me but the storm and the unnerving, stranger sounds that arose from the storm from time to time. Sunrise brought only a washed-out grey excuse for daylight, that sickening sort of wan light that is made bearable only by the glow of incandescent bulbs and tasteful lampshades. Which is to say it was an entirely unpleasant sort of day. The silence was even worse than the murky light. I cannot bear silence for very long. I sleep to music and movies, my hatred for silence is so intense. With the storm gone and only light rain remaining and the whole neighborhood without power, it was very quiet. Spooky and I spent most of the day driving about Atlanta, looking at the damage, all the trees the wind had brought down, all the dark windows. The car radio made things a little better. I just couldn't stay in our huge, dark, quiet apartment.
But now the lights are on again, and I have noise to keep me company.
Did I mention that I'm sick? It isn't terribly surprising. Put 25,000 people in one place, people from all over the world, many of whom have questionable hygenic habits, and people get sick. Especially people who talk to a lot of said people and shake hands beyond counting and find themselves hugging (or being hugged by) total strangers. Fatigue, sore throat, low fever, aches, etc. Probably just a low-grade rhinovirus, so I'm swabbing my nose with zinc again.
In many ways, my eleventh Dragon*Con was wonderful. In many others ways, it was kind of awful. I want to write out some sort of account of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but I feel like ass, and I'm still not sure if I'm up to it.
I will say that I am very, very weary of how little writers seem to matter at Dragon*Con, far less than they seemed to matter way back at my first D*C in 1994. Well, unless you're Anne McCaffrey. If you're Anne McCaffrey, Dragon*Con seems to matter a great deal. The rest of us get stuck in the lowest levels of the Hyatt and act as though we should be grateful to be thrown such an extravagant crumb. Think about it: 25,000 people. And yet a reading is lucky to draw fifty or sixty. That's only .2%, right? Out of all those thousands of people, only .2% actually give enough of a crap about writers to attend readings. I wonder if they pause to consider that all their various fandoms begin, always, with a writer. That all this fantasy arises from the minds of authors, whether they're writing for books, television, motion pictures, video games, or what have you. I think that they don't. Too few of them can be bothered to buy and read even one book a year.
Like I said, as always, there were many wonderful things about Dragon*Con, and I love this convention, but it has increasingly little interest in the work of the artists who lie at the root of what Bill Sheehan (and probably many people before him) called the story tree. I love the spectacle, the costumes, the unexpected encounters with TV celebs I'd thought dead ten years, the bands, and so forth. But it's impossible to ignore that it all serves to rather violently underscore America's general lack of interest in written fantasy and science fiction.
Maybe tomorrow I'll manage an actual account of the con. I just needed to get the smallest portion of that off my chest first. The first .2%, let's say.
I will say a quick and already overdue thanks to Sissy and Kat, Jean-Paul, Rogue and Jessica, William Faith, Voltaire, Maureen, Storm Constantine, Harlan, Ted and Kelly, Sa'jathan, and everyone whose name I've forgotten (because I am -0 and ill) who helped to make substantial parts of the convention wonderful.
Monday, September 06, 2004
I'm really far, far too beat for a long entry, so this is just something short to say I've survived my 11th consecutive Dragon*Con. I'll try to post a full report, with photos, tomorrow. I lost three pounds in two days. I think it's mostly dehydration, mostly from being Nar'eth all day yesterday. I might be coming down with something, and I might just need to rest. Three days non-stop convention isn't as easy at -0 as it was at 30. I shall drink large quantities of liquid, eat real food, and hope to feel better tomorrow morning. See you then (speaking euphemistically).
Thursday, September 02, 2004
Addendum: And as an example of how "news pollution" serves to maintain my perpetual astounderation at the antics of them zany human types (from Reuters.com):
Shares of mobile home manufacturers rose on Thursday as investors looked ahead to the potential destruction Hurricane Frances may inflict on Florida and the task of rebuilding.
Waka, waka, waka.
So, today will be consumed with all the last-minute, getting-ready-for-Dragon*Con type stuff. Right now, Spooky's packing up the books I'll have for sale (a few of just about everything). Me, I'm just trying to scrape up a bit of enthusiasm for the weekend. Usually, I'm very enthusiastic about Dragon*Con. The last few years, it's been a bright spot for me, a welcomed relief from the monotony of being a writer. This year there's so much stress that my mind has simply refused to downshift into Dragon*Con mode. I keep trying to force it, and it keeps not happening. Or I'll almost get there, and then some new, stress-inducing shitstorm comes along to bump me back out into the Real World. The frelling Real World will still be here on Tuesday when the con is over. The frelling Real World can get along without me for four goddamn days.
Anyway, my first panel is at 5:30 p.m. tomorrow.
I understand that the anthology Darkside III: Walk on the Darkside is now in stores. It includes my story, "La Mer des Rêves."
And we have only five days (four if you don't count today) until the release of Murder of Angels. I'm still not ready.
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
One cold, wet night in downtown Birmingham, sometime in November 2002, I was standing on the sidewalk outside my apartment with Rogue (he of The Crüxshadows). We were on our way to see the second Harry Potter movie, but that's not here, there, or anywhere else. We were standing on the sidewalk, damp and shivering, talking about the stresses of being a writer and the stresses of being a musician, and which was worse, which was better, and so forth. We began to talk about getting older and finding ourselves in a situation where we at least feel as though it's very important that we appeal to people much younger than ourselves and how that required a certain degree of glamour. And, at some point, he said "You're sort of like the Oscar Wilde of dark fantasy," not meaning to imply that I was a foppish Victorian man with an acerbic wit and a taste for pretty boys, but rather that I have gotten a reputation for a decidedly flamboyant, decadent mode of dress in a field where most of my peers dress very, very, very casually. Okay, well I do have a thing for pretty boys, and I love Victorian fashion, have, in fact, often dressed Victorian, and if I weren't a woman I'd certainly be a fop...but, in this case, Rogue was talking about my disdain for the default writerly uniform of our day — a t-shirt, jeans, athletic shoes, etc. I am, in short, a goddamn clothe's horse.
Anyway, the reason I'm bringing all this up is because I intend to be a little bit more casual at Dragon*Con this year, and I don't want anyone keeling over in disbelief. I'd feel responsible. No, I'm not going to be wearing T-shirts or jeans or athletic shoes, but, for one thing, I won't be having my hair colored, because of the recent sinus trouble (the airbrushed makeup on Sunday is already going to do a number on my sinuses). So you might see roots. You might even see grey hair. I have a lot of it these days. I'm not in the mood to be the Oscar Wilde of anything at the moment. I hope you'll forgive me. I'll try to be truer to my reputation in the future.
I'm having one of those mornings where a lot of stuff I mean most sincerely comes out sounding somewhat sarcastic. Oh, yeah. Oscar Wilde.
I am getting a haircut today, though, 'cause this sheepdog thing just isn't doing it for me.
I sort of worked on "Bradbury Weather" yesterday. I say sort of because unless I'm actually writing prose I rarely feel like work is work. I spent several hours researching zeppelins, Martian aerodynamics, hydrazine, nitrogen tetroxide oxidizers, entomopters, and the problems one encounters with propellers and rotors in a thin atmosphere. Turns out, putting zeps on Mars is not as easy as I'd hoped (but nothing ever is). Consider the following:
On Mars, with a sea level equivalent pressure of only 0.7 percent that of Earth, a ten-foot cube of hydrogen would weigh about seven one thousandths as much as on Earth, or about 3.5 thousandths of a pound. But even the Martian atmosphere, at a near vacuum, only weighs in at about a tenth of a pound. So the net difference in weight would be about ninety-six and a half thousandths of a pound. This means that to get a full 73 pounds of lift, we would need about 760 such cubes. Fortunately, Martian gravity is only thirty seven percent that of Earth. So we need even fewer cubes, about 280 cubes. So to carry the same payload on Mars as on Earth we are looking at a design that begins almost 300 times as large as a similar vehicle on Earth [italics mine - CRK]. This sounds extreme, but amounts to a cube of hydrogen on Mars of 67 feet on a side producing our net 27 pounds of lift. Ignoring such pesky add-ons such as structural weight, a dirigible made to lift one person of 200 Earth pounds, or 74 Martian pounds, would need about three Mars-sized cubes for lift. Four people would need a dozen, plus another dozen for payload, and another couple of dozen for fuel and structure. This means a spherical balloon would need to hold almost 50 volumes of a third of a million cubic feet each to be useful. A dirigible of 17 million cubic feet is called for, about triple the size of the Hindenburg.
And I need zeps that can carry dozens of people and a significant cargo payload.
I also talked with Bill Schafer, for whom I am writing "Bradbury Weather" for the Subterranean Magazine. He's decided do make the second issue a "Caitlín R. Kiernan" issue, which will include "Bradbury Weather" and another story, plus the first real interview I've given since the spring of 2002. I'll tell you more about this when I know more, but it'll be cool.
I'd tell of my most recent exploits in Vvardenfell, but I should probably do something less annoying.
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