Friday, January 14, 2005
Suddenly, my day is filled with news which needs relating. But first, yesterday was a very frustrating but, ultimately, very productive writing day. I managed to do 1,247 words on Chapter Two of Daughter of Hounds. I think I spent about seven hours at the keyboard and by 3:30 p.m., four hours in, had all but given up hope of writing anything significant. But then it came in a great rush, as sometimes happens, and most everything was written in the last three hours. I think I actually like this book. I'm not used to liking my books. I may love them and think them fine things worthy of attention and respect, but I rarely like them. This one, though, I think I like. The scene yesterday was even funny. However, after doing a whole chapter about Emmie Silvey, suddenly cutting back to Soldier, which entails, among other things, a great deal of profanity, is something of a shock to the system. I suspect I'll try to weed out a little of the fouler language today. It was really over the top at times. I don't mind giving readers whiplash, but I don't know that I want to break their necks!
Okay, on to news. I've just gotten word from Bill Schafer that the Subterranean Press edition of Low Red Moon will absolutely, definately, finally ship on February 8th! Better very late than never. I'm looking forward to having this one in hardback and to seeing Ryan Obermeyer's work on it. Low Red Moon remains my favorite of my novels to date. When people ask me which book they should read first, I always point them towards Low Red Moon.
Also, thanks to some judicious formatting of To Charles Fort, With Love, Richard Kirk is back on board. He'll do three interior illustrations and the end papers. Obviously, I'm very pleased about this.
Yesterday, I received copies of my most recent scientific paper, "First record of a velociraptorine theropod (Tetanurae, Dromaeosauridae) from the Eastern Gulf Coastal United States" (coauthored with David R. Scwimmer), which appeared in The Mosasaur: The Journal of the Delaware Valley Paleontology Society (Vol. VII) way back in May 2004, but I've been so out of touch with paleo' that copies are only now just finding me.
Of course, the big news of the day is that the Huygens probe has survived the plunge through Titan's atmosphere and is alive and well. I am elated, truly elated. We'll watch the coverage tonight on Discovery (or whatever it's calling itself these days). I suspect that Titan is about to show us marvels, beamed back across more than two billion miles of space. We will see the surface of a new world! These are the days I live for.
And I guess that's just about it for today. I need to read over what I wrote yesterday, to be sure it holds up.
I don't suppose there's any chance of the Bush Administration issuing an apology to the Iraqi people now that the absence of WMDs in Iraq has been officially confirmed. I didn't think so. Not that it would bring back all the thousands of soldiers and civilians who have died in our president's War on the Wrong frelling Target. Of course, Rumfeld wants us all to believe that they might yet be out there somewhere. He'll still be saying this in 2025, I suspect. "Well, yeah, but there are still three large boulders in Salahuddin that no one's looked under. What about those?" Bush is a liar, at the very least, and I think impeachment would be too kind a fate for these thugs. But, hey, I'm just a screechy liberal dyke writer mouthing off when I don't "have all the facts." I know this, because people keep telling me that those damned WMDs are out there somewhere. You know, maybe Sadam had a Stargate, and as soon as the US invaded he chucked all the WMDs into it, zapping them into another galaxy. Why the heck hasn't Rumsfeld thought of that?
Maybe they're on Titan...
Click here for eBay goodness in the service of emergency dentistry.
1:12 PM
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