Friday, March 18, 2005
So, my body decided to make up for having not slept by sleeping eight or nine hours straight last night and this morning. I'm not sure which leaves me feeling worse, sleeping too little or sleeping too much. But, at least I don't recall the dreams this afternoon. Small frelling mercies.
Chapter Three of Daughter of Hounds is written. I did 1,342 words yesterday, winding it up. Now I will go on to Chapter Four, back to Soldier and Saben White, Odd Willie Lothrop and the Bailiff. I did have an alarming sort of epiphany regarding the novel on Wednesday night, the sudden awareness of a possibility that, after only a moment's thought and the speaking of this possibility to Spooky, suddenly became a probability. This realization, this understanding of what's to come of one of the characters, will violate, to some degree, my promise to my agent that this book wouldn't be so "grim." But I'm pretty sure it's what's supposed to happen, and if I do otherwise, I'd be forcing the story somewhere it isn't "meant" to go. I know this is vague, but I'm not about to drop a spoiler of this magnitude when the novel's still only about a third written.
Also, I had a good conversation with my editor at Penguin, regarding Daughter of Hounds and other things. I told him this book would be longer than any of those so far, and he's asked me to try and keep it down to 150,000 words, so we don't have to come to that point where things have to be cut. I think I can manage this, maybe. Maybe not. Right now, the ms. stands at 46,093 words. That gives me 103,907 left before I'm over the line. One thing all this means is that there might be scenes in the Subterranean Press edition that won't be in the Penguin edition. It's possible, in the end, I could have a ms. of 200,000 words, and have to excise 50,000 for the Penguin edition. We'll see. In my head, this is a very big story. And, too, it's the tying up of many loose ends begun way back in Threshold. Anyway, he also told me not the worry so much about the sequel thing. He's pleased with the novel thus far and doesn't see it as a problem.
Before I begin Chapter Four, though, I'm going to do another couple of the erotic vignettes for Frog Toes and Tentacles. Hopefully, I can do two of those by Monday, which will mean I'll have five done and only three or four left to write. I have to deliver that ms. to subpress by May 1st. Also, I need to read over "Alabaster" again (remember that story?), decide what I'm going to write for John Pelan's Cthulian Singularity anthology, and finally decide if I'm doing any revision to the end of "Bradbury Weather." The latter is most urgent, as subpress has already laid out the cover for the second issue of Subterrean Magazine (I'll post it here a little later). So, far too much work, far too little time.
Today, Spooky and I will be reading through Chapter Four for typos and continuity problems.
Last night, after dinner and beer, we watched the deliriously dumb Mansquito on the SFC, which had fairly nice creature design and make-up effects, but absolutely no sense to it whatsoever. I rarely ever watch anything on the SFC these days. My anger over Farcsape runs much too deep, and all those Stargate SG-1 commercials drive me to want to mutilate small woodland animals. But I was flipping channels and there was Mansquito, which I'd read about in Wired many months ago, and I was helpless not to watch such silliness unfold.
It's still cold.
Okay. Time to buzz. Thanks to everyone who's bought stuff or bid on eBay that last 24 hours or so. It helps. Also, a big thanks to Bill Schafer for his generous and unexpected contribution to the "car fund." The auctions will continue for a few more days and then we'll be taking a break. Sunday will be the very last day we'll be offering Silk for only ten dollars.
12:56 PM
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