Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Yesterday went as well as one can ever expect a tedious day filled with the tedious busyness of writing which is not writing to go. I went back through "Bradbury Weather" again for Subterreanean Magazine. I read over "Alabaster" and decided it was as polished as it should be. I made arrangements for an interview. Spooky and I made plans for the author's photo for To Charles Fort, With Love. Stuff like that. But I did get through a very rough outline for Daughter of Hounds. Right now, I'm thinking 170,000 words is a more realistic final word count than 150,000, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
By the way, should you like to read "Alabaster" before the Dancy collection is released this autumn, you should go to the Subterranean Press website and sign-up for their free e-mail newsletter. The story will be serialized in the newsletter in two parts, beginning next week.
Ah. What else. I'm having to be quick about this, because I have an 11:30 thing with an editor at Marvel Comics. I keep shoving this project to the proverbial backburner, and it keeps getting pushed back to the front again.
Last night I read "The Night Ocean" by R. H. Barlow (and H. P. Lovecraft; this is one of his "collaborations") to Spooky. It's a very, very effective piece, despite the fact that Barlow too often veers into excessive simile, metaphor, and wild flights of exposition. I am always especially impressed when a story is so very effective when it's not particularly well worded. Sometimes, clumsy, inexpert magic is the best magic. "The Night Ocean," which Ramsey Campbell recently brought to my attention, is truly haunting, and I expect I shall have it in my head all day.
Spooky used the last of our credit at Criminal Records yesterday (credit from trading in all the CDs I got rid of when we moved) to get the new Moby and the new CD from The Wedding Present. I am especially enjoying the latter. The Moby is a two-disc set, one of which is ambient and reminds me of a blending of the soundtracks for Blade Runner and The Fifth Element (which is a good thing).
As though I needed some evidence that my...let's not say hate...let's say extreme disdain...for humans is in large part justified, I happened to bump into a joke about the Red Lake Reservation school shooting this morning. A joke. A child murders nine people, and it's fit matter for humour. I think humans will never need Great Cthulhu (literally or figuratively) to finish them off. They'll be laughing the day they finally get their shit together, organize, and hit that Big Red Auto-Extinction button. And I have no doubt that they'll still be laughing when they're but radioactive dust blowing through burned-out cities.
I'm beginning to suspect that consciousness simply drives some species insane. It might be as simple as that,
Okay. I gotta go. It's already nine after. Ugh. Telephones. Ugh. There's still a copy of the hardback of Low Red Moon on our eBay auction. Check it out, please and thank you.
11:21 AM
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