Thursday, June 30, 2005
The writing went decently yesterday, despite the fact that I'm presently writing two characters (one female, one male) who have been stripped naked, beaten, raped, and left to die in a wet, damp, lightless tunnel far underground from which they must now escape. Neither of them can see a thing, so all sensory descriptions have to follow from their other senses. These are not characters who are accustomed to feeling helpless, and I think that's my greatest source of tension in the scene (I hope). Anyway, I did 1,270 words on Chapter Six of Daughter of Hounds. I hope to do twice that today.
After the writing, Spooky and I caught a matinee of Speilberg's adaptation of War of the Worlds (HERE BE SPOILERS, you've been warned), and we were both very pleased with it. My gripes are few, and I won't go into them. The only major logical flaw remains the one that H. G. Wells put there to begin with, that a civilization as advanced as these aliens wouldn't take all those nasty earp joims into consideration when planning their attack. The film is visually astounding, breathtaking. There are many moments of genuine terror and awe, and it's a far, far darker movie than I'd expected. A few scenes, such as the Fortean rain of human clothing (and later, rains of blood) and the moment when Tom Cruise's character realizes exactly what all that dust on him is, are deeply unsettling. This is a film that manages to make the sinking of a ferry almost as momentous and horrifying as the sinking of the Titanic. The sight of the alien tripods striking across wasted landscapes and through shattered cities is a fine marriage of beauty and terror. And the scene beneath the old house, when Cruise (Ray Ferrier) is forced to kill the "Artilleryman" (in this case, a demented ambulance driver from NYC, Harlan Ogilvy, played by Tim Robbins), is absolutely spellbinding. And someday, if I have any say in the matter (which I won't), Dakota Fanning will play Dancy Flammarion. I simply loved this film, flaws and all. Sure, the ending's sappy and should have been avoided by the director, but I think post 9-11, post Indian Ocean tsunami, at least a few members of the audience will be able to grasp that even this ending — aliens dead, family reunited — is emphatically not a happy ending. Most of the world has been laid waste. Much of mankind has been slaughtered. The world's great cities lie in ruin. The course of history has been forever changed and can never be the same again, no matter how many tearful family reunions occur. Those tears are small consolations, at best. Indeed, I think the film leaves you with good reason to suspect that the worst is yet to come (disease, famine, homelessness, rioting, marshall law, psychological trauma, war, possible contaminants from the aliens, etc.). Speilberg has crafted the best adaptation of Wells' novel that anyone has managed (though I still regret it didn't retain the original Victorian setting), one that also manages to be a remake of the classic 1953 George Pal film. And whereas much of the punch of the Pal film arose from the cultural consciousness' nearness to the horrors of WWI and II, as well as the growing Cold War, so much of the effectiveness of this film will follow from our memories of the 9-11 attacks and the wars that have followed (and the wars and attacks we dread are yet to come). It doesn't take an artist to feed on fear, but it does take an artist — or a small fleet of them — to do so in such a way that the audience learns something about their fear in the process.
After the movie, after dinner, Spooky and I began proofing To Charles Fort, With Love and made it through the preface and "Valentia." And after that, we turned on IFC and watched Auto Focus (2002; based on Robert Graysmith's Auto Focus: The Murder of Bob Crane). Afterwards, I wanted to bathe. To quote Spooky, "Oh god, that was nasty!" Which pretty much says it all, but both Kinear and Dafoe are creepy and pathetic and excellent, and the film does, I believe, what it sets out to do.
My head is still half in a long dream that came just before I awoke. I was back at the Red Mountain Museum in Birmingham (I'm often there in dreams) and was sent out to excavate the remains of an archeocete whale from an Eocene-age rock outcrop in Mississippi. In the dream, the fossil had originally been located by a German paleontologist many decades before, but had never been completely excavated. I exposed the back half of the skull from the light grey clay and remember pointing out the sagittal crest and occipital condyles to someone (not a paleontologist) at the site. The animal was a peculiarly adapted archeocete, and the front half of the skull resembled that of a walrus (not such animal has yet been found). The German scientist had named the beast, but I can't recall what the binomen was, though I heard it clearly in the dream. I have at least one of these paleo' dreams per week. I never dream about writing...
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
I thought I was going to lose yesterday, that it would slip between my fingers, and hardly a word would be written. It was very close. There's usually a point, a moment, a window of moments, and I know that if pages are to get done, I must get past that window without succumbing to the frustration and annoyance and noise and chaos and crap, I must write in spite of those moments, and if I do persevere, the troublesome window almost always passes, and the words come to me. Monday, I slipped. Yesterday, I hung on and did a respectable 1,415 words on Chapter Six of Daughter of Hounds.
Meanwhile, I've done a fine, fine job of procrastinating on all the editing and suchlike for To Charles Fort, With Love, and now, of course, I have to deal with the fast-approaching July 15th deadline. I still have most of the proofreading to do (anyone out there with an ARC catches typos, feel free to let me know — lowredmail@mac.com), as well as the author's photo to shoot (that's Spooky's department) and an illustration for the dedication page. I figure if we do a short story a night, and squeeze in the preface and afterword somewhere, we'll just make it.
Congratulations to Uncle Peter for bringing home a Stoker for In the Night Room.
Between the unbidden chaos and all the work on Daughter of Hounds, Nebari.net has been languishing. But at least I finally I got the new pinup posted last night. Click here for Nar'eth, Tomb Raider. Thank you, Setsuled.
Regarding all future eBay auctions: I know that I've been very open in the past about writing pretty much anything in a book that I'm asked to write, but, from here on, I'll be limiting my inscriptions to short bits such as "Happy Birthday to Whoever" or "Happy Anniversary" or "Don't eat the oysters." I will also inscribe passages from published poetry and prose by other authors, but only as long as I can attribute the quote to its rightful author. I've begun to worry that some of the longer, quasi-poetic inscriptions people have asked me to make could be taken for something that I composed myself, and I'd rather avoid even the possibility of that sort of confusion coming back to haunt me. I hope that everyone will understand. If you're in doubt, feel free to clear an inscription with Spooky before a book purchase or bid. Thanks.
Finally, a trailer for Peter Jackson's King Kong has finally been released. It looks splendid.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
I should be almost finished with Chapter Six of Daughter of Hounds by now, at least seven or eight thousand words into it, but instead I've barely started it. I rarely ever work well when my immediate environment is regularly disrupted. I'm not one of those writers who can write anywhere, anytime, though I often wish that I were. Which is to say, nothing of any significance was written yesterday.
I've been sitting here for almost an hour, trying to think of something interesting to say. Which means it's long past time to give up and move along to something else.
I don't often offer "practical" writing advice, because I know very little about writing that's practical. However, Barry Graham posted a nice little list by Dennis Cooper to his blog yesterday, to which I will now refer you. Here. I'm especially fond of the ones about life not having a plot and characters not being real people...
Monday, June 27, 2005
I managed to spend two full hours on Chapter Six yesterday morning, though almost all of it was spent rewriting the first two paragraphs. I think that now they might finally meet with my satisfaction. At least I hope so. I haven't yet looked at them this morning. Anyway, it was all polishing and fixing and no "progress" forward. Within a sentence or parapgraph, which are really no different from any other sort of continuum, there is an infinity, even if it's only the infinity of options. There are times when investigating this infinity — the inward spiral of rewording — seems a more valid pursuit of art than chasing THE END. But today, I return to the latter.
The D&D session went very well, a nice pool of pretend in the midst of the RW trials of the last month.
Not much more to say this morning. I'm not quiet awake. I need caffeine and the a.m. walk. But I did want to mention that The Crüxshadows Shadowbox DVD/CD set will be released by Dancing Ferret on July 5th, and is now available from Amazon. Just click here.
Sunday, June 26, 2005
After a brief, angry space of wasted days (chaos, the fallout of chaos, etc.), I finally began Chapter Six of Daughter of Hounds yesterday. I did a respectable 1,233 words, the start of what promises to be a weird and difficult chapter, in which Soldier attends to some long overdue business. I'm considering abandoning linear narrative for the remainder of the book. As for this morning, I'm hoping to have a couple of hours with yesterday's pages and maybe time for a few more, at least time to go back over what I did yesterday, before leaving for an evening of D&D. I ought not. I ought to spend the whole damn day writing.
It's Pride weekend here in Atlanta. Spooky and I have managed to avoid the festivities for the third year running, but it's still nice seeing the city entirely swamped in queers. Also, I've been listening to the Billy Corgan solo disc, The Future Embrace. It's nice, I think. But mostly it makes me miss the Smashing Pumpkins. Spooky and I saw Land of the Dead on Friday afternoon, but before I say more, I should state two dictums:
1) Beauty really is, ultimately, in the eye of the beholder. Xtina Aguilera and the stuff I've written for Frog Toes and Tentacles is all the proof we'll ever need of this.
2) People get crazy about George Romero zombie movies.
I've never been much of a Romero fan. I've always been impressed and frightened by the original Night of the Living Dead, but, in my opinion, the second and third films were neither half as scary nor a third as smart as most people seem to think they are. They were, however, a bit better than Land of the Dead, which Spooky and I hated with such unexpected force that we both admitted, afterwards, that we wished we'd walked out and demanded our money back. Problem is, we were too busy being bored senseless to act upon our better judgment. I actually drifted off twice during the film (I never do this). This film is not frightening. It's not funny. It's not a clever, timely satire of America under W. It's not even successfully gory. Mostly, it's just dull and witless and not very well done. The makeup effects weren't even very good, which seems the very least one should ask. When I can spot the lines between skin and latex, something's amiss. The acting's missing as well. I'm pretty sure that Dennis Hopper was reading his lines off a teleprompter. He was actually more menacing in Waterworld. And as long as we're talking about things that were missing from this film, what about the script? Missing. The whole thing comes off like some drunken improv. Indeed, in the end, I find but a single redeeming feature of this silly film — Asia Argento, and even she looked bored. Land of the Dead bolsters my contention that the shambling zombie film is dead. Twenty Eight Days Later frightened me. Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead scared the beejeesus out of me. More importantly, both these films were well-written, well-directed, and well-acted. Both had vision and passion. Both were artful. Land of the Dead is none of these things. At times, it felt as if Romero was purposefully making the sophomoric mistakes he makes in this film in dogged defiance of more recent, more effective zombie films, staging some bizarre die-hard display of old-skool guts and gore. Whatever. I say wait for the DVD, and then think twice.
However, we did get a pleasant and unexpected surprise Thursday night, when we rented Cursed (Wes Craven, 2005). I came to this film with no expectations whatsoever, and was rewarded with a thoroughly enjoyable movie. Think Fright Night and The Lost Boys, that sort of '80s horror spoof, toss in some pretty good werewolf effects, Christina Ricci, and the surreality of Scott Baio as himself, and out comes Cursed. And Shannon Elizabeth's death early in the film is far more disturbing than anything you'll see in Land of the Dead. Plus, there's a great "documentary" on becoming a werewolf, which includes Greg Nicotero (who did makeup for both this film and Land of the Dead) making banana bread. Definitely worth a rental. I say, skip the zombies. Cursed may lack the painfully superficial sociopolitical commentary of the new Romero film, but at least it's fun and occasionally creepy. Oh, I should also mention that the costume party scene in Cursed includes masks crafted by the amazing E. L. Downey.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
I hope that it will ruin no one's image of me that I would like, when I am old, to have a roses garden and to spend my days planting and pruning and spawning new varieties of rose. I do hope that. I will have a wide-brimmed straw hat, gloves to guard against thorns, and a mean pair of shears. Anyway, here's a photo I meant to include in yesterday's entry, but forgot, from the rose garden at Fernbank:
Ugh. What a splendidly terrible morning. Up too early again, hungover, an hour or so of iBook drama, and so on and so forth, etcetera, etcetera. And now I'm trying to clear my head for the day ahead. What of yesterday? I got most everything done I was supposed to get done. I'm in love with Chapter Five. I rarely ever say that about anything I've written. I might occasionally say that I like something I've done, but rarely am I so pleased to say that I actually love it. I think the last time I was this happy with a bit of one of my novels was Chapter Three of Low Red Moon ("Haunted"), which I believe I wrote early in 2002. Chapter Five of Daughter of Hounds is just right, and it bodes well for the YA novel. So, yes, we read through it yesterday, and started the proofreading on To Charles Fort, With Love. I managed to deal with all th backed-up email. I looked over my notes for Chapter Six of DoH, though we didn't get to Seven and Eight, as I'd hoped. I'm just going to wait untl Six is written, which is more natural anyway. And the first half of the novel has been sent away to my editor and agent, which is nice, because now I will be paid the next bit of the advance.
My thoughts on Batman Begins, before I run out of time (tick, tick, tick): Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed the film, but no, I don't think it's the best Batman film so far. That's still Batman Returns (1992). But this film does have a lot of good things going for it. Christian Bale is always good ; Michael Caine was nice (though I still prefer Michael Gough's Alfred); Gary Oldman was superb; and Liam Neeson stole the show. Really, this was the Liam Neeson we should have seen in Star Wars: Episode One. In some ways, his was the most sympathetic character in the film, and I had a hard time not believing that maybe he was right about Gotham. Katie Holmes was annoying and utterly disposable, but maybe that was on purpose. Cillian Murphy was quite nice as Crane, but all I could think was, Johhny Depp could have done this better. It was nice to see Rutger Hauer in something this good. The hallucinatory shots of Batman were wonderful. So, what are my complaints. The script, for one. At his best (Dark City), David Goyer is a delight. At his worst (Blade: Trinity), he's intolerable. This script was somewhere in between. Too many dumb one-liners, too many jokes that fell flat. One or two truly memorable lines. And Morgan Freeman should really aspire to play someone other than Morgan Freeman. I thought that the death of Bruce Wayne's parents has been handled better in earlier films, and I was also disappointed to see that the director failed so entirely to make Gotham itself a proper character, as Burton managed to do so wonderfully. It was just a big city with a nasty, Blade-Runneresque underbelly. Really, it looked like it belonged in a Superman movie, not a Batman movie. Even Arkham Asylum was visually disappointing. The maggoty Scarecrow mask was shocking for, oh, about five seconds, yet it was an image used again and again and again. All in all, I loved the first half hour or forty-five minutes, but the movie seemed to lose a lot of what it had going for it once it started actually being a Batman film. It could have been better, but it surely could have been much worse.
Last night, post-writing, I spent the whole evening with TCM, watching Soylent Green, Westworld, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. I wanted to stay up for Logan's Run and No Blade of Grass, but we all must have nightmares sometime.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
For a day off (usually a bad idea for me), yesterday went quite well, thank you. Spooky and I spent the late morning/early afternoon wandering about L5P. We stopped by Abbadabba's and looked at shoes (but only looked, mind you). We had lunch at The Vortex (shared the huge nachos). We spent a little time in the rose garden at Fernbank and were scolded by a mockingbird; I avoided the museum itself because I simply wasn't up to the noise and clamour up to school children yesterday. We made a 3:55 matinee of Batman Begins at the Plaza (more on this in a moment). Not a bad day off. And after Chapter Four, I'd surely earned one.
Unfortunately, I awoke this morning about seven and couldn't get back to sleep, so I go up and went to my office, so that Spooky could get some more sleep. She needs it more than I do, anyway. But I do feel a little like eema just now. No caffeine yet. No breakfast yet. Outside, the sky is grey, but clearing. The world is wet. We had thunderstorms last night. There are tea-colored puddles in the gravel driveway. The shingles on the house next door are glistening in the stingy bit of sun that's getting through the clouds (my desk now faces an uncovered window, an unprecedented affair). It woul be nice if the whole day isn't like this, if the sun returns, but I've not looked at the weather yet.
Sophie's vet visit went very well. We know now that cat's may experience "transient diabetes," and Sophie's has, for the time, crawled off somewhere else. We were told to stop the insulin shots until her next visit, which is a relief.
Looking back at the last month, it's at least half a wonder we've all three survived, me and Spooky and Sophie. But I think that the wretched chaos and upheaval that briefly threatened to bring everything down about my ears has been contained and is being dispersed. A new Age of Me has begun. Which is a very odd thing to type, especially in a public place. But it's true. The previous Age of Me (which was, by my reckoning, in the broadest sense, the Fourth Age of Me, making this new one dawning the Fifth) has found it K/T moment, and now we're all little furry survivors scrambling about on the far side of catastrophe. Yes, I am waxing dramatic. Anyway, the new age will be heralded in a number of ways. My first tattoo, for example, which will happen this summer. I considered a fews things far more drastic. Okay, enough about that.
Vince Locke sent the inks for the Frog Toes and Tentacles illos this morning, and they're gorgeous. Here's an example, an ornament for the cover (and speaking of tattoos, Spooky's thinking she wants this illustration as her fifth tattoo). I think this one rather nicely catches the spirit of the whole project:
And speaking of art, I still have to get "Nar'eth Croft" up on Nebari.net. But mostly, today will be spent reading over Chapter Five of Daughter of Hounds, making corrections, talking through chapters Six, Seven, and maybe Eight, making a few contingent notes, and, finally getting started proofreading To Charles Fort, With Love. And there's a bunch of neglected e-mail. So it shall be a busy, busy day. Tomorrow, I can start Chapter Six; I hope to have it finished by the end of the month.
Ah, there's actual sunlight outside. Nice. I haven't gotten to my thoughts on Batman Begins, but I can save those for tomorrow. It gives me more time to ponder, anyway, which is usually a good thing. I will say that I liked it a lot, but there were problems, and I didn't like it as much as the first two Tim Burton Batman films (Batman Returns remains my fave). Okay. I suppose I have gone on much too long.
Monday, June 20, 2005
Because of the aforementioned research regarding the abandoned East Side railroad tunnel in Providence (if there are any RISD students or alumni reading this, you probably know what I'm talking about), it was about two-thirty p.m. before I actually began writing yesterday. And the end of Chapter Five proved to be extremely difficult. At five o'clock or so, I still wasn't finished, though I'd written about 1,700 words, and my sentences were beginning to stray. I was getting as lost as Emmie in the snow. So I did something I rarely ever do. I made myself stop, with the intention of talking to Spooky for a bit and then coming back to it. However, Spooky was in the tub and I didn't feel like sitting in the bathroom, so I took the egg timer and went to the living room. I set it for half an hour, put it on the mantle, and then lay down on the chaise beneath the window. I just lay there, watching clouds, letting my head clear. When the egg timer rang, I went back to the iBook, somewhat refreshed, and wrote until about seven. I finished the chapter. Chapter Five is done, which means, as it turns out, that Part One ("Parallel Lives") is finished. I did a very solid 2,059 words yesterday. Chapter Five came to a whopping 13,948 words; so much for it being shorter. What was it I said earlier in the week? That I hoped the chapter would run no more than eight to ten thousand words, and here it is longer than Chapter Four! At this point, the novel, the first half of the novel is about 73,411 words long, which means the finished book should be about 140,000 words, still ten thousand under my "limit," and a little longer than Murder of Angels, so everyone should be happy. I like Chapter Five a lot. It might be the best part of the novel so far. But now I have to go back to Woonsocket and the Very Bad Shit that's going on up there, the fate of Soldier and Odd Willie Lothrop and Saben White at the hands of George Ballou. I've left them hanging for what seems like a long, long time (though it's actually been hardly any time at all).
Sophie had to be back at the vet this morning, just a routine glucose-level monitoring. She seems to be doing very well. Again, my thanks to everyone whose helped us out with her condition.
Last night, though I was so tired I considered just going straight to bed after dinner, Spooky and I finally watched Ed Harris and Paul Newman (and lots of other people) in Part One of Empire Falls on HBO. Quite good really, though it's very much Northern Exposure in New England (but, of course, Northern Exposure was only Local Hero in Alaska). I hear that Season One of Northern Exposure is out on DVD, so I'll have to track it down, and I don't think Spooky's ever seen Local Hero, one of my favorite films. One thing leads to another. Inch worm, winch worm, measuring the marigolds....
Don't mind me. I'm usually harmless.
After Empire Falls, I made myself take a bath before bed, during which I somehow managed not to nod off and drown. And that was yesterday, tiddley-pom.
Oh, I almost forgot. Setsuled (that's Leh'agvoi to us Nebari-types), has finished a new Nar'eth pin-up — Nar'eth as Lara Croft! I'll try to post it to Nebari.net tonight. I love crossover. And this reminds me that I never got the "DVD extras" for our winter special up on the page. Grrrr. Bad me. Anyway, I get a day off today, for having written so goddamn much in only eight days. I must find mischief.
Sunday, June 19, 2005
The thing about having a freakishly good day, a day when I write more than 2,200 or 2,300 words, as I did on Friday, is that for some time thereafter all other days pale in comparison, unless I can repeat the same trick. Yesterday, I did a perfectly impressive 1,742 words on Chapter Five of Daughter of Hounds. Nothing to sneeze at, as far as my personal writing pace goes. But I felt like I hadn't done enough, even though it actually took me longer than what I wrote on Friday and was considerably more difficult (lots and lots of troublesome description). Anyway, with just a little luck (and restraint), I should finish Chapter Five today. And, I've discovered, that will probably mean that I've finished Part One of the novel. I'll be halfway done, and the first half will go away to my editor in NYC. I will have reached the top of the hill, so to speak.
While I was working yesterday, I came across the following lines in a preface to an edition of The Arabian Knights: Their Best-Known Tales (edited by Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora A. Smith):
The Empire of the Fairies is no more,
Reason has banished them from ev'ry shore;
Steam has outstripped their dragons and their cars,
Gas has eclipsed their glow-worms and their stars.
I suspect that it may have been written by either KDW or NAS, or the two in collaboration, but the preface makes this unclear. I love these lines, but I'd very much like to know who the author is. They read a bit like Algernon Blackwood, but I'm pretty sure he's not the author. I tried Google, with no success.
Though it is a sort of a sequel to both Threshold and Low Red Moon, there is very little pertaining to fossils or to paleontology in Daughter of Hounds. However, day before yesterday, I did mention a trilobite, Cryptolithus gigas, which had been discovered and named by Chance's grandmother, Esther (the trilobite is first mentioned in Low Red Moon). I'm not sure how the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (London) treats binomens that are ficticious in origin. Maybe it's never come up before. Here's a photo of a RW species of the genus, C. tessellatus from the Late Ordovician of New York (Green, 1832):
from the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard (MCZ 146480)
Back in the day (as they say), I collected specimens of Cryptolithus from the Ordovician of Red Mountain in Birmingham, but never a specimen this outstanding. At any rate, when the writing was done yesterday, I rushed over to the Emory Library before they closed, because I like working on my pen-and-paper journal over there, and, besides, I needed to track down a particular bio of Charles Fort. Last night, Spooky and I watched Stacy Peralta's Riding Giants, and then I gave Area 51 a try on the PS2 for an hour or so. The design's okay (even if we've seen all this before), the voice acting's better than average (real actors), and the controls are decent, but I just don't think I can stomach another Doom-clone fps right now.
P.S. — Has anyone else noticed that LJ deleted the "stoned" emoticons, but left the "drunk" ones? That's so American...
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Yesterday was a remarkable writing day. I did 2,420 words on Chapter Five in a mere three hours and forty-five minutes. Afterwards, Spooky and I spent an additional hour proofing the new pages. I'm not sure if this is The Record for me, most pages, most words, in a day, but it well might be. I just kept going, even after I felt I should stop. The scene was hard (emotionally) and important (narratively), and I didn't want to have to let it sit unfinished all night long. Were it not for the need at this point to do some research on the old railroad tunnel beneath College Hill in Providence, research which will slow me down today, then I'd easily be able to finish this chapter this afternoon — in a mere seven days. I'll have to settle for eight.
It became clear to me yesterday that, despite a half-hearted attempt at outlining this story a month or two back, it will go where it needs to go, and my intentions are none of its concerns. Not my conscious intentions, anyway. Too much cause and effect getting in the way. Which is to say, once this chapter is finished, I have to sit down again and try to get a handle on what's going to happen in the second half of Daughter of Hounds, but it won't precisely be what I thought it would be. Did I ever tell you how Low Red Moon was supposed to end in Chance and Deacon's apartment, that the big showdown was to be between Deacon and Narcissa, and it was supposed to happen there, after Narcissa performed a c-section on Chance? That Scarborough was supposed to live? That Sadie was supposed to die? Well, that's what I mean. Outlines, synopses, notes, whatever, are at best contengent, if a writer is doing his or her job. Blueprints are for architects, who have need of them.
At this point, what worries me most about DoH is the degree to which this novel truly is a transitional novel between my early work (Silk, Threshold, Tales of Pain and Wonder) and my more recent mork (Low Red Moon, Murder of Angels, To Charles Fort, With Love). I thought MoA was the real point of transition, but I see that it will be DoH. Some readers, I fear, will be put off by the shift in style. Since Threshold, I've been working towards a different voice. In part, it's been a natural evolution. It just started happening one day (my short story "Spindleshanks" was one of the first signs of what was coming), and I knew I'd be a fool to try and stop it. And in part, it was a fear of becoming a self-parody. I was beginning to write like me, if you know what I mean, and if you don't, don't let it bother you. So, I have allowed change, and change is at the core of good art. I've said all this before, but after the last week or so, watching this book unfold, I felt it should be repeated. Some things about DoH will be familiar (characters, settings, tone, etc.), but some things are very different (primarily style and an increased emphasis on dialogue and story, a preference for more traditional fantasy and the Dusanian/Lovecraftian weird over "horror"). If you've been a constant reader of my work, it won't be too much of a shock, but if you come to DoH immediately after having read Silk or Threshold, you're likely to be a little surprised at what you see. And with the next novel, the YA novel for which I still have no name, the changes will be even more pronounced. Of course, I'm very much afraid that I'll lose readers (and there aren't that many of you). I have to hope that you'll bear with me. I couldn't write the way I wrote Silk or Tales of Pain and Wonder forever. It would have been forced. It would have been a sort of lie. I miss that old voice at times, its density, its lush attention to every detail, its unorthodox tumbling of words and fragmenting of sentences. But, back then, I was doing what felt right, what felt natural, and that's what I'm still doing now.
Last night, after all that writing, Spooky and I celebrated Kid Night with Luigi Cozzi's dopey Contamination (1980) and the surprisingly creepy Infection (2004; Kansen), directed by Masayuki Ochiai. And, by the way, Shirô Sano is the Japanese Christopher Walken. After the movies, I was so beat that Spooky read me Burt Dow: Deep Water Man (1963) by Robert McCloskey, her all-time fave children's book, and I fell asleep as soon as she was done.
Just one more thing before I go. There's a new chapter of Boschen and Nesuko up at Anelnoath. Have a look.
Friday, June 17, 2005
I did 1,712 words on Chapter Five of Daughter of Hounds yesterday. Not bad. That makes 7,521 words for Chapter Five, so far, which means I'm still right on the New Re-Revised Schedule. But I am now having some trouble imagining how I'm going to keep this chapter as short as I'd hoped to keep it. An awful lot needs to happen in that last 2,400 or so words. And that's after I trimmed a bit off the "outline" for the chapter (a slightly dogeared 4X6" note card). But Emmie has met the Daughter of the Four of Pentacles. It's snowing. I have reached a point where THE END is at least conceivable. Perhaps by August 1st, it will be visible.
Vince sent some of the inked illos. for Frog Toes and Tentacles yesterday. Sweet. And we watched the last two episodes of Season Five of The Sopranos, which were superb. I spoke with Jada, far away in Arkansas. And Maureen sent me the draddest thing, a kit from which to build my own motorized Martian lander. Sadly, no launch vehicle is included, so I'll have to settle for exploring the backyard, but that's why Albert Einstein invented Imagination. Thank you, Maureen.
Here's a link to the Bookslut interview from back in November. I agree to so few interviews these days, and I kind of like this one, so I thought I'd try to get some more mileage from the thing.
And as long as I'm posting links, Ryan Obermeyer's been redecorating his website, including new takes on a familiar image.
I am being guardedly hopeful about Speilberg's coming adaptation of The War of the Worlds. It's not even close to the version I wanted, which would be set, like Well's novel, in Victorian England and probably wouldn't have Tom Cruise, but this could be a fun film for some sizzling summer afternoon. It could certainly be as good as the George Pal version (though hopefully less Xtian). It looks gorgeous, but last summer The Day After Tomorrow taught me to always beware that which glitters, as it may only turn out to be the sun sparkling of a frozen turd. But I'm hopeful.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Yesterday, I did 1,125 words on Chapter Five of Daughter of Hounds. I am now on the farther side of manuscript page 300. I may put an excerpt from the first part of the novel up on the website soon. But the website is in direst frelling need of total revamping, and there's been hardly an update there in months.
Once this chapter and Chapter Six are done, I have to pause from DoH just long enough to write a short story that I promised to an anthology (the deadline is long past, and the editor is being very understanding). Then, when I go back to DoH, I'll also be working on a synopsis for the next novel, the YA dark fantasy, hoping that I can have the proposal for that book in my agent's hands by the time my editor gets DoH. It's sort of like playing leap frog in the dark. In slow motion.
I think that's about it for this morning. Unaccustomed brevity. Oh, in case anyone's wondering, there will be no ARCs of Frog Toes and Tentacles. That was my decision. And this round of eBay auctions ends in just a few hours. Tell you what. Whoever buys a copy of In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers today using the "buy it now" feature will get a free signed copy if Silk. Not to mention all those drad Dame Darcy illos.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
As has often been the case, when things get weird and chaotic and stressful, as they have been the past month or so, as they have especially been the last month or so, I rearrange furniture. It's one of my time-honoured methods of dealing with stress. I think that I inherited it from my mother. Sometimes, my sister and I would come home and discover that the living room or dining room or one or another of our bedrooms had been entirely rearranged. It was sort of like a weird holiday. Suddenly, everything was different. Anyway, the last two days, I've been rearranging my office, and now my desk faces east instead of north, and a bookshelf has been rotated 90 degrees left, and there's a "new" chair (it used to be in the bedroom), and now I feel like I have a new office, which helps distract me from the chaos. It's all very silly, but it seems to help. And Spooky says there's more space and things look better this way, so there you go (even though I suspect she's just being nice).
Yesterday, I did a very satisfying 1,949 words on Chapter Five of Daughter of Hounds. So far, I'm finding the Emmie chapters easier to write than the Soldier chapters, perhaps because there's not so much action. I often feel that "action" scenes are the most perilous, that they're the places where all the contrivances of plot are most likely to show through, so I fret about them enormously. It'll be interesting to see what happens when I pass Chapter Six and the Emmie/Soldier chapters begin. After all the writing, Spooky and I went to the Fox Theatre on Peachtree to see Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden. I love the Fox. It's one of those things about Atlanta I genuinely adore, like the botanical gardens. I remember when Christa took me to the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood (we saw Twister, and I met Tony Todd), I was actually disappointed because it wasn't nearly as snazzy a movie palace as the Fox here in Atlanta, and who'd have ever thought such a thing?
Da Fox
My thanks to Derek c.f. for bringing news of the discovery of another planet orbiting Gliese 876 to my attention this morning. Can Piros be far behind? I wonder if anyone at NASA's read The Dry Salvages?
Want to see a trailer for Dave McKean and Neil's new film MirrorMask? Then click here. It's a truly gorgeous thing.
And I think that's about it for today, except to say that there's only a couple of days remaining on the current eBay auctions, which include an ARC or To Charles Fort, With Love and a copy of the Camelot chapette of "Alabaster." The platypus is looking nervous.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
I did a respectable 1,404 words yesterday and finished the first scene of Chapter Five (which is, incidentally, titled "Angell Street"). So, it was a very good writing day. I think I'm going to like this chapter, which means that perhaps it won't be as much of a chore as the last one. It's good to be away from the violence and bluster of Soldier and her cohorts for a bit. But they are converging, these two narrative threads, each being driven ever nearer the other.
There was a lot of other stuff yesterday. A conversation with Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press about Creative Commons. A long e-mail from Peter Straub that I must make time this morning answer properly, possibly after my morning walk (I take those now), before I begin writing. E-mail from Vince about the art for Frog Toes and Tentacles, which he's inking now. And the hunt for a photo of Charles Fort, and permission to reprint it on the dedication page of To Charles Fort, With Love, continues.
Speaking of which, the cover design that's up at Subterranean Press isn't the final design, and the one that's up with the auction is the final one, but not a very good photo, so here's the final front cover (it's a little dark, but you get the idea):
Rasputina fans should recognize the image. Anyway, I've also been reading Anansi Boys, because Neil was kind enough to send me the ms. a couple of weeks back. So far, it's brilliant. I think it's actually better than American Gods. I'll say more when I've finished. Anything else? Four more episodes of The Sopranos last night, and I began playing God of War, which may not be the best game I've ever played (though the graphics are gorgeous), but at least it's not dull. The weather is bright and sunny today, so far. We got some rain and thunderstorms off Arlene the last few days, and it's nice to see things drying out. As for Micheal Jackson, other than to say that I was in Junkman's Daughter at L5P when one of the girls working there announced the verdict over the PA, I have no opinion.
Sophie's doing fine. She's doing so fine, in fact, that she decided, yesterday, to take up urban spelunking and attempted to scale the inside of a chimney from one of the fire places. Spooky stopped her, but not before Sophie had managed to cover herself in soot. She walked about all night, sooty and grumpy, as if it were somehow our fault she looked like a chimbley sweep.
Oh, and because I am an eBay whore, thank you, I should say that the latest auctions continue. Only about three days left on this round, and this copy of "Alabaster" may well be the last we auction. Please help me keep the platypus off the streets...
P.S. (1:16 p.m.) — A number of people are having difficulty getting the cover image to load. Sorry. I'm not sure what's up. It seems to work on Safari, but not on IE (personal observation). Anyway, I'll try to fix it this evening.
Monday, June 13, 2005
Yesterday was a day off, the first in eight days, though we did little but spend some time at the Emory Library. I'd thought of going to see Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle, but it never happened. Day before yesterday, I started Chapter Five. It's off to a very good beginning, and I did 1,238 words on Saturday. I'm thinking this chapter will be shorter, probably only 8-10K words, and I hope to have it done shortly after Father's Day. Daughter of Hounds has finally managed to pull free of that part of the book that's all about getting things started. It's a lot easier to keep up the momentum when things are unfolding, and you know the only way you'll ever understand how it all turns out is to keep writing. Gods and goddesses would probably do the same thing.
Spooky and I have been watching Season Five of The Sopranos. We should have been reading Shardik, but whatever. We'll have breezed through the whole season in another few nights and go back to reading. Last night, I played what may well be the dullest videogame of all time. Oh, I've played videogames that were worse (recently, Stolen, for example), but LucasArts' Gladius, which looked like a nice mindless hack-and-slash filled with gore and violence, beats pretty much everything else I've played for sheer frelling dullness. I don't understand these games that are meant to simulate pencil-and-paper d20 rpgs, where one has no real control over one's own characters, where the computer moves them about for you. This was the main thing that drove me away from Knights of the Old Republic and The Sith Lords. When I play a videogame, I want my thumbs to hurt. I want to have to perform all manner of dexterous acts with my actual RW fingers. I want issues of hand-eye coordination to come into play at some point. Add to this the fact that Gladius looks like crap, is jammed with badly animated cut scenes, and characters with the most generically Nordic sounding names imaginable, and you get the picture. This game made me want to hurt someone, for real.
If you haven't checked out the latest eBay auctions, please do. This ARC of To Charles Fort, With Love may be the last I sell. And after that, you'll have to wait until September to read the collection. Also, if you've always meant to read Silk but have just never gotten around to it, we have copies for only $9.99 (and I'll write in them and everything). And there's other good stuff, too. Okay, time to get back to Chapter Five...
Saturday, June 11, 2005
The reading went well yesterday. It must have taken about five or six hours to do Chapter Four and what remained of Frog Toes and Tentacles, but now it's frelling done. I think that I like Chapter Four of Daughter of Hounds. I think it points me towards the rest of the book, and I think that I can trust it. Those are some of the most reworked pages of my entire writing career, scenes written and rewritten in a way that is very unusual for me. I just sense that a lot is at stake with this novel, both for me, personally, and for my characters and the universe I've created (or found, whichever — maybe goddesses don't create universes; perhaps they only stumble across them and claim ownership). So, I am taking great care, even greater care than usual, obsessive care, not to lose control of these proceedings. Even now that I've scaled it back from my original conception of the book as a 200K-word behemoth to a modest 130K-word giant, still, it's a complex story with lots of characters and subplots and so on and so forth. Stories within stories. Grave magics (literally). Regarding the parallel narratives, St. Sisyphus wrote on the phorum:
I'd take the criticism as a charming suggestion that your readers and reviewers are greedy for more reading material. Still, I can't see why a reader would refuse to deal with the fact that there may be converging storylines. Or even totally unrelated storylines existing parallel to each other with no possibility of convergence. I'm gonna lump this inability to deal with the more sophisticated elements of narrative design (and not even fantastically difficult design, just not basic design) with those people who think that "genre" fiction must have a resolution. Hell, red herring us a few times, C. Don't let us get too complacent.
It's just that I've seen this very complaint in the past, with novels that didn't even really have two independent narrative threads. Look back over the Amazon "reviews" of Silk and Threshold. I'm sure you'll likely see people who were annoyed because I kept "jumping back and forth from one set of characters to another." The fact that novels have been written this way for a couple of centuries doesn't really seem to make them any less ashamed to admit that such a simple narrative structure confused them (and, you know, it's okay to admit ignorance, but it's not okay to wear it as a badge of honour). I mean, Stephen King does it, ferchissakes. I wonder how those people would deal with, say, The Stand? Anyway, I don't write books so that they will be easy on the reader. I also don't exactly write them to be hard on the reader. I write them the way that it occurs to me that they should be written. As for red herrings, there are a few in Daughter of Hounds, but I don't think that they're there in a terribly obvious or purposeful way. They fell from the sky. I didn't see the point in sweeping them away.
Today, I have to get these line edits on Frog Toes and Tentacles e-mailed to subpress. That is Thing #1. Reading over it yesterday, I was struck again by how very pleased I am with this book. I very much hope it does well enough that I can do a second volume, perhaps as soon as next summer. Thing #2 is starting Chapter Five, which will be a violent shifting of gears from Chapter Four. Emmie and secrets beneath a bed, Deacon and the past. I have some notes here, which I'm kind of ashamed of, as they feel like a cheat sheet. Most of the ARCs of To Charles Fort, With Love have gone out. Mountains of them. The post office trembles when it sees Spooky coming.
Last night, we gorged on all three Poltergeist films, which, I'll admit, is a peculiar thing to do. The first one holds up better than I'd expected, and the early '80s millieu actually adds a new sort of surreality to the affair. Craig T. Nelson is funnier than I'd remembered, and appropriately pitiable in his role, and Zelda Rubinstein is still creepy, twenty-three years later. But, aside from one or two visuals and the superb performance of Julian Beck, the first sequel is entirely unnecessary and painfully goofy. The third film is simply awful, stem to stern, tip to toe, no redeeming qualities, and I spent most of it feeling sorry for poor Tom Skerritt trapped in such a dumb film. It helps that I know his career got somewhat better afterwards.
I'll leave you with the cover for the forthcoming dark sf anthology, FutureShocks, due out early in 2006, which includes my short story, "The Pearl Diver" (I like this cover; it looks like a '70s sf book):
Friday, June 10, 2005
I had a good writing day yesterday. I did 1,630 words on Chapter Four and at last finished the chapter. It only took me 12,840 words to get there (and from here on out, I really need to work to keep these chapters under 10,000 words). Now I can get back to Emmie and Deacon. Perhaps my greatest worry about Daughter of Hounds is that, for the first six chapters or so (and there are probably only ten chapters, plus a long prologue and an epilogue), there are two stories moving and unfolding parallel to one another. There's Soldier's story, which is also the story of the hounds and the Children of the Cuckoo, and there's Emmie's story, which is also Deacon's story. There are very important points of contact between the two narratives, and in Chapter Seven, the two narratives will unite into a single thread. But people can be weird about stuff like this. I can already see some of the reader comments on Amazon, and maybe some actual reviewers, saying things like, "The greatest flaw in this novel is that it should have been two novels." But the very fact of the parallel narratives is at the heart of the book, and I can only hope that people will be patient and bear with me, and that each chapter is, in and of itself, engaging enough that readers will exist only in that moment, not fretting over what's come or what is to come.
So, today Spooky and I will read all the way through Chapter Four, and then we'll finish proofing the galleys for Frog Toes and Tentacles, which I should have done a couple of days back. So, today will be a day of reading aloud, and I will hopefully begin Chapter Five tomorrow.
And speaking of birthdays, Spooky's is only two weeks away, June 24th. She has a wishlist.
Last night, Spooky and I listened to Moby and New Order and did the first make-up test for my proposed drow costume. It went well. We may do the make-up for this one ourselves. I still have to get the red contacts. Afterwards, we watched Stephen T. Kay's less than admirable The Boogeyman. There's not really anything good to be said for this film, so I'll say very little. It had a small number of moments, but the number was small indeed and did not even begin to compensate for the whole. No script to speak of, bland acting, bad CGI, numerous plotholes, really bad CGI, no detectable pacing, non-existent characterization, really, really bad CGI, and so forth. But the worst of it was the sloppy, obvious way that the film borrowed heavily from a number of better efforts, notably They (2002) and Darkness Falls (2003). Not even worth a rental. I dozed three times.
Oh, yes, it looks like I will be doing Dragon*Con this year (September 2-5). This will be my twelfth consecutive Dragon*Con. And it's beginning to look as though I'll be doing it without Nar'eth, which will be very strange, indeed.
We've started up eBay again. If you take a look, you'll find the second ARC of To Charles Fort, With Love, the third copy of the "Alabaster" chapbook, as well as The Five of Cups, Silk for a mere $9.99, the hardback of Low Red Moon, In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers (signed by me and Dame Darcy), and From Weird and Distant Shores. Please and thank you. Now, it's time to read.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Yesterday, I wrote 1,067 words on Chapter Four of Daughter of Hounds. I've always written books with relatively long chapters, but this time out the chapters are running long; next book, I think I'll make a point of keeping chapters to 2,500 words or less.
The foolishness with eBay and nonauthorized auctions of ARCs of To Charles Fort, With Love has been resolved, and I'll probably get the second of the ARCs I'd planned to sell up sometime today. Selling a couple more of these has taken on a new urgency, as the hd on Spooky's iBook, which we rely on for all sorts of writing-related business, has developed some sort of twitch or tick or stammer, and it's going to have to go into the shop. And after all the other bulldren lately, well, it's beginning to feel as though the Lousiest Winter is bleeding over into a Dubious Summer. So, we'll try to get the ARC up today, and perhaps a few other items, as well.
I just saw the trailer for the Russian dark fantasy, Night Watch, which looks like it might be cool. It's the first film in a trilogy.
Also, a bit of classical Fortean weirdness. Frogs from the sky are old news, of course. Frogs from the sky are the dandelions and clover of the damned. And it's annoying when, as is the case here, no real documentation is given. When did this happen? Fort was very concerned with indicating where and when and who, pointing the reader to the source from which he'd recovered the event. Frogs from the sky. Hell, show me a day without frogs...
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Yesterday, I did 1,181 words on Chapter Four of Daughter of Hounds and managed to finish the scene at Odd Willie's place. Today, we reach the top of a hill in Woonsocket, a hill I've been dreading for months, because the story — or, rather, one thread of the story — will shift here, and there will be more action, and action is the most difficult thing for me to write. Also, I had a very good, very long conversation with Marvel yesterday. That project is still progressing, and perhaps I can explain before too much longer. And I proofed the first two vignettes in Frog Toes and Tentacles. So, it was a busy day. I proofed the third vignette before breakfast this morning.
Word is the ARCs for To Charles Fort, With Love were a hit at BEA. I'm told they were pretty much all scarfed up by Friday. And that's cool. But it also means that we're now dealing with copies on eBay that shouldn't be there. Legally, only subpress and I have the right to sell these things, and until we get the paper work through to halt their being auctioned by those who do not have permission to do so (which should have been done before BEA), I ask that you please not bid on them. The little bit of money I'm bringing in from selling these ARCs is going to Sophie's medical bills and to help pay for promoting the book, and these unauthorized sales will cut deeply into my ability to make anything from them. I wrote the book. Bill Schafer is printing it. We are the only two people who presently have any business making money off the ARCs. I'll have another ARC up as soon as this mess is resolved.
Set me aflame and cast me free,
Away you wretched world of tethers...
Monday, June 06, 2005
Yesterday, I did 1,723 words on Chapter Four of Daughter of Hounds. I'm well into the next to the last scene of the chapter (and I have no idea if other authors mentally break their chapters down into scenes, but I do). Soldier and Odd Willie Lothrop in his sqaut on Federal Hill. The asking of a dreadful question. I'll finish that scene today. Late last night, I began proofreading the galleys of Frog Toes and Tentacles, which I need to get back to Subterranean Press sometime this week. And speaking of FT&T, here are some of Vince Locke's preliminary sketches/pencils for three of the vignettes:
Pencils for "Los Angeles, 2162 (December).
Pencils for "Untitled 12".
Sketch for "Untitled 7".
I have been so concerned that I'm taking such a long time to write Daughter of Hounds. I began research on the novel last summer, and started writing it October 1, 2004, and here I am, seven months later, with only a prologue and four chapters, 256 pp., 55,324 words. But, certain financial considerations aside, these concerns are largely unfounded, and they are exagerrated by the fact that I wrote both Murder of Angels and Low Red Moon rather quickly. Here's a breakdown of how long each of my novels have taken to write. I scribbled it on my day planner last night:
The Five of Cups — June 1992-April 1993
Silk — October 1993-January 1997
Threshold — August 1998-May 2000
Low Red Moon — November 2001-August 2002
Murder of Angels — January 2003-October 2003
It's very weird seeing it all laid out like that. And, actually, the dates on MoA are slightly misleading, as I actually began work on the book in July 2000, wrote the prologue, two chapters, a bit of Chapter Three (later discarded), and then shelved it in the spring of 2001. So, really, MoA really should read July 2000-October 2003. But my point is that I've only been working on Daughter of Hounds a scant seven months. Even the books which I've written relatively quickly, took me eight or nine months, and others have taken much, much longer. Which is to say that I shouldn't fret. The book is taking the time it needs, though it has been hampered a bit by recent, and hopefully finished-for-now, upheavels.
Anyway, I was awake by a little after 7 a.m. this morning (ugh), because Sophie had to be back at the vet at 9, and Spooky had to give her breakfast and her first insulin shot of the day before she went. Her glucose levels are being monitored today, and we'll get her back this evening. I'm sure she'll be grumpy after a day of being poked and prodded and having barking dogs inflicted upon her. And I'm more awake than I ought to be.
Last night, I began playing Advent Rising, because I'm a sucker for a good space opera, even when penned by a homophobe like Orson Scott Card. The game is gorgoeus, and the gameplay smooth and intuitive. So far, I like it. It's sort of Titan A.E. meets Halo, in tone and look and subject matter. Actually, there's a lot of Halo in this game, and if that sort of thing bothered me a great deal, I'd probably be annoyed. Afterwards, Spooky and I began reading Richard Adams Shardik, which I've not read since I was a kid and which she's never read.
A belated birthday thank you to Marrije Schaake, who is far away in the Netherlands where I have never yet been.
Okay. Time to write...
Sunday, June 05, 2005
The long silence was primarily the result of a) having made no forward progress on Daughter of Hounds and b) taking an LJ break as part of my recovery from the chaos and maelstrom of the last three weeks. Oh, and it rained or was overcast for six days straight, which put me in a mood to say nothing much pleasant to anyone or anything. The sun came back late on Friday. It's patchy today, partly cloudy, but at least we're back to what is to be fairly expected of late spring in Atlanta. The sun is a relief. The mildew was growing bold.
Anyway, yesterday I did 1,062 words on Chapter Four. I creep towards THE END.
Also yesterday, I finished the pr letters for To Charles Fort, With Love (thanks, Poppy), and Spooky stuffed copies of the ARC into mailers and addressed said mailers for several hours. These are the copies that are going out to buyers at bookstores across the US. Most of the reviewers should already have theirs.
Has there been anything interesting in the period of my silence? Not much. I've been trying to steer clear of "interesting" things and just rest. But, let's see. Spooky and I finished To Kill a Mockingbird and then read We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which remains one of the most beautiful, horrifying novels in English. It is truly haunting, and though Shirley Jackson died far too young (46), at least it can be said she went out on the highest note of her career. Also, I'm still working on The Silmarillion, having just begun the Quenta Simarillion. I finished Rise of the Kasai, which, despite somewhat buggy controls and witless AI, was, overall, a very fine game, and is worth the effort if only for the exquisite animation, both during actual gameplay and in the cut scenes. On Friday night, we watched Antoine Fuqua's almost unwatchably lousy King Arthur. The only thing in the film that even approached redemption was the presence of Keira Knightley as warrior Guinevere; she was at least pretty to look at, even if there was no evidence here that she could act. And really, that's about it for the last few days. I've hardly left the house.
Sophie is doing very well, better than before she got sick, really, and I thank everyone who's inquired and offerred advice and assistance. I think we're sort of settling into the two shots a day routine. It's beginning to look like we've made the decision to hang onto to her and employ a sitter whenever we have to be away. I've been with Sophie too long to adopt her out. At least, this is the arrangement we're going to try to make work.
Oh, here's a link worth posting, the official site for the Peter Jackson remake of King Kong, including the production diary. At the moment, I more eagerly await the release of this film than any other.
And as long as I'm making links, there's a new Boschen and Nesuko (Chapter 21). Check it out.
That's it for now. See you tomorrow.
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