Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Poking about the web yesterday, I came very unexpectedly upon a review of Silk and Murder of Angels at BlogCritics.org, the two books reviewed together. A right grand review, at that, which I'd never before seen, even though it was posted October 8th, 2004. Someone who — mostly — gets it, and the review is intelligent and insightful. Being described as "H.P. Lovecraft's spiritual granddaughter" made me smile for hours, even though I suspect I'd probably scare the bejesus out of poor old H. P. ("At least," says Spooky.) By the way, my offer of free signed copies of the tpb of Silk still stands for any new Sirenia Digest subscribers, by the way.
Today, I begin an experiment in which my usual morning post is replaced by an evening post. Here's the deal. There's so goddamn much work right now, the only hope I have of having time left to walk and exercise during the day is to bump the blog entry to the evening. And exercise I must. So, we'll see how this works out. But it's only temporary. I'm gonna go back to morning entries sometime this spring, at the very latest.
I wrote 1,188 words yesterday, and 1,341 today. Then Spooky and I spent the rest of the afternoon getting started on the proofreading of Low Red Moon for the mass-market paperback. We made it through the prologue and chapters One and Two. I had forgotten how much I love this book. At this point, it's my second favorite of my novels, after Daughter of Hounds. I do hope that this new edition (the third since 2003!), gives it another shot and a wider readership. Many typos and errors will be corrected in the text. Also today I dealt with the last bit of Tales from the Woeful Platypus, which is no longer mine to deal with. It's out of my hands now. Which is a relief. That's one thing off my plate.
In the comments to Tuesday's entry regarding my reworking of Wicca, my use of the Sindarin word sigil rather than the "traditional" athame for the black-handled ritual dagger, someone noted the parallel with the English word sigil and all its connotations (some of which I admit I find annoying, because of chaos magick's use of the word). Today, I recalled the name Sigel, which, despite spelling differences, is actually closer to a genuine homonym of the Sindarin sigil ("see-geel"). Sigel is the Old English incarnation of the Norse sun goddess Sól, which actually works out very nicely. I'm sure Tolkien must have been aware of this parallel.
Someone else asked what I thought would be left when I'd finished purging Wicca of all Gardner's Judeo-Xtian elements. Which is a good question. The answer is likely complex, though I might, for the time, say "Very little, I suspect." Indeed, so little will likely remain that I shall have to abandon the name Wicca in favour of something else. A lot of the elements in question are not only to be found in Wicca, but in NeoPaganism, in general. The pentagram or pentacle, for example. That's not a pagan symbol. Though it is not impossible to imagine that some Celtic or Norse or Eastern European architect or proto-mathematician might have stumbled upon this geometric configuration, it comes to Wicca directly from ceremonial magick, Freemasonry, the Order of the Golden Dawn, etc. Instead, I am employing a simple circle to define "sacred" ritual space. Many other basic elements of Wicca have already been discarded — calling to the four quarters, for example, another thing which Gardner borrowed from ceremonial magick. And the "Rede," which likely comes to Wicca via Aleister Crowley's formulation of the Laws of Thelema. The "Three Fold Law" seems more like a weird marriage of Buddhism and Xtianity than anything else, and is a concept which I find fundamentally absurd (for reasons discussed in earlier entries). Likewise, I have no use for Wicca's obsession with gender duality, which is, at best, dated and rendered irrelevant by transgenderism and over-population and a number of other things. At worst, it is sexist, homophobic, and skewed towards the cisgendered. The system which will work for me must regard gender not as a duality, but as a continuum.
So, as you can see, it looks less and less like Wicca all the time. I am keeping many of the ritual tools — the black-handled dagger (as mentioned above), the chalice (as it has mythic resonance beyond the Xtian "grail"), the cauldron, the broom, the altar stone, and so forth. In the end, this is about my belief that a) NeoPaganism should not be infused at every turn with Judeo-Xtian elements, b) that a Nature religion should be a Nature religion, reflecting the complexities of the natural world instead of outmoded human dualisms, and c) the belief that while a NeoPagan may reach back for myth and tradition and history, sheheit must also reach ahead. As I've said before, we need a paganism for the 21st Century, not the 17th or 5th.
We shall see where all this leads. Comments and feedback is welcome on all these points, by the way.
I'm still giving Heroes a chance. The last couple of episodes have hooked me again, as they have seemed less bland, less televisiony. Maybe I just have a crush on Hiro.
The anticipated press release from NASA confirms new photographic evidence for liquid H20 on Mars within the last seven years!
NASA Images Suggest Water Still Flows in Brief Spurts on Mars
NASA photographs have revealed bright new deposits seen in two gullies on Mars that suggest water carried sediment through them sometime during the past seven years.
"These observations give the strongest evidence to date that water still flows occasionally on the surface of Mars," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program, Washington.
Liquid water, as opposed to the water ice and water vapor known to exist at Mars, is considered necessary for life. The new findings heighten intrigue about the potential for microbial life on Mars. The Mars Orbiter Camera on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor provided the new evidence of the deposits in images taken in 2004 and 2005.
"The shapes of these deposits are what you would expect to see if the material were carried by flowing water," said Michael Malin of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. "They have finger-like branches at the downhill end and easily diverted around small obstacles." Malin is principal investigator for the camera and lead author of a report about the findings published in the journal Science.
Martian microbes ahoy!
I've got a whole bunch of science links that have been piling up the last few days, things I've meant to post and haven't...but this first one is the biggest and the best of the lot:
From Nasawatch.com: Water Spotted on Surface of Mars: That is, liquid water. Aqua vitae. The wet stuff. I quote:
According to an item first posted by Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine: "NASA is ready to announce major new findings about the presence of water currently emerging onto the surface of Mars.
If confirmed, this would increase the possibility that microbial life could have existed recently or possibly exists now on the Martian surface. The potential seepage of ground water onto or near the surface has been a key area of investigation by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft (AW&ST Nov. 27, pp. 53-55).
Also...from NewScienSpace: 13 things that do not make sense. Which is to say, the mysteries of science that make science so damn wonderful. Dark matter. Dark energy. Tetraneutrons. Etc.
And...at Geotimes...Meteorite pre-dates solar system.
Finally, another bit of good news: House GOP Pulls Offshore Drilling Bill:
House Republicans abruptly pulled from floor action Tuesday a bill to open a large area of the eastern Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling after it became clear the legislation lacked the two-thirds vote needed for passage.
It would open 8.3 million acres of the Gulf that is now off limits to drilling...Republicans leaders gave no reason for the decision.
But an aide to a lawmaker strongly supporting the legislation said that a number of Republicans withdrew their support at the last minute and some Democrats also had signaled they would not support the measure.
That's 8.3 million acres that are safe...at least for the time being.
Okay. Brush teeth. Beg Spooky for story. Sleep.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
I am at this moment exceedingly groggy, though I've been awake now for more than an hour. I did get about seven and a half hours sleep last night, which is much better than my average.
If all my days were like yesterday I surely would give up this writing thing and become a bartender. I wrote 2,264 words (3,324 if you count the blog entry), which is about the best I can ever expect from any single day. I also had to deal with last minute corrections to the galleys of Tales from the Woeful Platypus and the cover copy for Low Red Moon. I'm sure there were other things as well, but I'm too groggy to recall them all. I was still working at 12:12 a.m. (CaST), when I finally decided enough's enough and called it a day.
Sissy and Spooky have been working on the new website design. There's a temp front page up right now. You should have a look. I like what they're doing with the place. By the way, the Whitman's Salmagundi tin in the photograph was a gift from Poppy in 1996 (?autumn). To quote from an old interview I did sometime in 2000:
Poppy Z. Brite sent me one of the original [1920s] tins, which she'd come across in a Magazine Street antique store [in New Orleans]. She bought it for me, even though she had no idea whatsoever that I'd used Salmagundi as a character or that the box had any significance to me. It sort of freaked us both out just a little, I think. Anyway, I guess that's not so much who Salmagundi Desvernine is, as the inspiration behind her, isn't it? Doug Winter has called her my 'avatar,' which is partly true. Like Jimmy DeSade (another recurring character and Salmagundi's consort), she's a focal point for certain ideas. But she's also a character I care about a great deal, that I think of first as a person. To me, Salmagundi is something beautiful and strong that the world has lost or given up, like faith and hope, something that we're not likely to see again.
By the way, anyone who subscribes to Sirenia Digest today, any time before midnight (PST), will receive a free signed copy of the trade paperback edition of Silk. All you gotta do is click here, read the somewhat out of date FAQ (the stories are longer, it comes on or about the 21st of each month, not the 14th), then subscribe.
I continue to try to take Wicca apart and rebuild it, reconstruct it, making of it something more suited to my needs (at least until something better comes along). Part of this is systematic expurgation of those many elements in Wicca which Gerald Gardner borrowed from Judeo-Xtian mysticism, specifically from the Ordo Templi Orientis, Rosicrucianism, and Freemasonry. All this stuff would be fine, if I wanted to study ceremonial magick or the Golden Dawn. But I do not believe it has any place in paganism. For example, for the time being I'm still using the "black-handled knife" of Gardner's Wicca, but I'm choosing never to refer to it as an athame, a term which can be traced back to The Key of Solomon, where the black-handled knife is referred to variously as arthanus, artamus, and (most tellingly) arthame, depending on the ms. copy in question. Instead, I'm using the Sindarin word sigil (= dagger or knife; pronounced "see-geel"), as Tolkien's mythos resonates with me much more strongly than does Judeo-Xtian mythology (despite Tolkien's own Xtianity). Indeed, ultimately, I may use Sindarin as my ritual language. All this may seem like "mere" semantics, but words are magick, after all, in that words carry powerful conscious and unconscious connotations. If magick is truly the "art of changing consciousness at will," then I would argue that the precise words involved, and all their connotations, are of the utmost importance. And as all mythologies are equally fictional (and therefore equally "true"), it hardly matters if I draw upon terms gleaned from Hebrew mysticism, ancient Greece, the Elder Edda, or The Silmarillion, excepting in that these different mythologies have very different subjective meanings to me.
As with most of the country, the weather here has turned bitter cold. I did not even leave the house yesterday. I think the low last night was 26F, and the forecast is calling for even colder temperatures tonight.
Okay. That's it for now. The platypus is looking askance, and that's never good.
Monday, December 04, 2006
I'm sitting here, trying to wake up, and David Bowie's singing "Planet Earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do," and that sent me straight back to the continental-drift dream (see yesterday's entry), and somehow that got me thinking about James Lovelock and his Gaia Hypothesis (and really, hypothesis here should appear with quotation marks), and that led to thoughts of Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky, who was thinking along these same lines long before Lovelock, and thinking about Vernadsky led to thinking about a song on the new Decemberists CD, "When the War Came," which inevitably led to thoughts of Vavilov (Nikolai Ivanovich), and then that reminded me of Vavilov Crater in the Hertzsprung Basin on Mars, which led me right back around to thoughts of the continental-drift dream. All in about five minutes, which is a fair look at how my brains rolls round and round before the coffee comes to rein it in.
By now, though, I've moved along to the Smashing Pumpkins:
Time is never time at all.
You can never, ever leave without leaving a piece of youth.
And our lives are forever changed,
We will never be the same.
The more you change the less you feel.
Anyway...
Yesterday isn't a blur. It's a smudge. There are hardly any bits worth saving, much less mentioning here. I never did say anything about coming upon Eryut Village in Final Fantasy XII, did I? That was Saturday night...or Sunday morning. Oh, and thank you, Leh'agvoi, for all the drad new Fran icons. But I was saying, Eryut in the Golmore Jungle. Think Lothlorien relocated in the Amazonian canopy, if the Amazon were on some other planet where everything wants to kill you, and if the elves were digitigrade and had long rabbit-like ears. The place from which Fran came. A whole frelling forest full of Viera. If I am entirely mistaken about the mortality of mind and some conscious portion of ourselves remains after death, I should very much like it if Eryut were my Heaven. Gorgeous. The trees dripped with their haughtiness. I never wanted to leave. But leave I did, last night, to journey on through Golmore, fight a dragon thingy that looked like a moldy, moss-covered ankylosaur, and wind my way through the high, snowy wastes of the Paramina Rift to Mt. Bur-Omisace. By then it was two a.m., bedtime for nixars. That was the only bit of yesterday worth not forgetting.
There was a bit of talk here recently about how I'm not keeping this blog to pass on Sage Advice from the trenches regarding How To Become A Published Writer. However, I think I will now break with my own tradition and offer one bit of advice. When you begin to sell stories and maybe even novels, you will be asked to write biographies of yourself. No, it's true. Generally, writers write their own little bio blurbs, the ones that you see on the dust jackets and so forth. It's sad, but true. But that's not the point. They point is that when — or, rather, if — you find yourself writing such a fifty -word encapsulation of your Life Until Now, take care. Think before you commit those thoughts to publication. Choose your words carefully. In parsing the fiction that is your personal history, consider how This May Look a few years further down the road. For groan you will, kupo, if you stumble into this all willy-nilly and topsy-turvy (as did I). For example, if you've worked as a hooker and intend to include that information, say that you were a hooker, not a "sex industry worker." If you were a stripper, do not say you were an "exotic dancer." And if you were a drag queen, do not say that you were, instead, a "female illusionist." Likewise, if you were a garbage man, do not say you were an "urban sanitation technician." If you were a drug dealer, resist the urge to say you were a "freelance recreational pharmaceutical consultant." Do not try to pretty up the past with double-speak. Just open your mouth and spit out the dirty truth. In the long run, you'll be glad you did. Better yet, just leave all this silly dren out and stick to the pertinent facts. Well, the "facts." No one wants to read the Truth, but neither do they want to read wordy attempts to dodge the truth. Avoid that which is irrelevant.
(Reading this back to Spooky, she just asked, "Now from whence to did that come?" to which I replied, "Shut up, you'll see in a moment.")
Do not include the name of your pet hamster, unless you want a terrifying phone call from Harlan Ellison.
Avoid politics.
And pause to consider, when making soaring declarations and proclamations of personal belief that will be printed in these bios, that fifteen or twenty or fifty years from now, someone may read said bio, and even though you are no longer head-over-hills in love with, oh, say Discordianism or the South Beach Diet, that's still what it will say, if that's what you wrote. And most readers perceive an author's bio, regardless of the year it was written, as The Present. Case in point, in the biography for To Charles Fort, With Love, I say that I am a transhumanist. I put it down for the benefit of all posterity (if any). And yet, having now read much more widely from transhumanist literature I discover that I am not a transhumanist after all. Indeed, I discover that, ultimately, I find transhumanism such a generally loathsome, damn near idiotic -ism, almost completely at odds with my deepest beliefs, that I feel I owe the whole world an apology for ever have included myself among them. I may have meant parahumanism (we'll see), but really, what I may have meant is neither here nor there, because it says "transhumanist" and it always will. It's in print, at least until the big space rock vaporizes all examples of The Written Word and I am at last freed from my unfortunate association with that spot of anthropocentric Apollonian nonsense. Stop and think. Blogs may be deleted or revised*. Printed author's bios are forever (or at least until the coming of said space rock).
You don't have to thank me. At least not all of you at once.
Yes, it's going to be an absinthe day...
*Unless they are illegally archived somewhere you cannot access. Ahem.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Yesterday turned into an unexpected day off. Not merely one of those terrible days when I sit at the iBook all damn day trying to write, to no avail, but an actual unexpected day off. Exhaustion and a series of especially nasty dreams on Saturday morning left me...what's the right word or phrase? Shell-shocked, I think. I sat here for two hours, staring at the computer screen and finally said what the fuck. I sometimes — very rarely, much more rarely than I once did — allow myself that luxury, of saying "what the fuck," being "my own boss" and all. I just could not find the heart (or, perhaps, the stomach) to drive myself forward yesterday. The deadlines and bills and Other Practical Matters just did not seem as important as my getting some rest and trying to clear my head. So, yeah, that's how yesterday began.
It was a little warmer out than I'd expected it to be, and Spooky and I took an especially long walk. We crossed Moreland and followed Sinclair Ave. past the dinosaur all the way down to Carmel Ave. NE (just south of the Carter Center), where we turned northwest, then turned northeast and followed North Highland Ave. NE back to L5P. The day was so bright. The sky was too clear for comfort.
I can't remember much about the dreams, as I made a concerted effort yesterday not to remember them. Just let it go for once. Let it fade. As Deacon would say, "It's only brain garbage," anyway. Today, I can recall only one small bit. Drifting in space far above the Earth, watching the continents and seas shift their positions. Supercontinents broke apart and glided silently across the globe, smashing into one another and forming new supercontinents, configurations which were, in turn, once again torn apart by subduction and sea-floor-spreading. The break-up of Rodinia, then Pannotia — splitting into Baltica, Siberia, Gondwana, Laurasia. The formation of Pangea, and then watching Pangea fragment. Eventually, the continents and seas were in their present-day positions, but they continued moving. And I didn't want to watch anymore. The dream, all of it, was beautiful beyond my ability to describe beauty, but it was equally sad and terrifying. Whatever else I dreamt, before or after this bit, I can't recall. But I said that already.
There's not much else to yesterday. We had Thai for dinner. I dumped the soundtrack to The Fountain onto my iPod. I went to two DVD rental places, but rented nothing. I heard news that there's a special edition of The Cure's Disintegration coming soon, which made me happy. I played roughly with Hubero. More Final Fantasy XII. At sunset, the moon was the most startlingly bright shade of white, and the lunar geography seemed especially clear (to the naked eye), while the western horizon turned a colour that was almost turquoise, streaked with pink clouds. I think that's everything that is in any way significant about yesterday.
And I should probably wrap this up.
I'm reposting (below) the information regarding the new subpress mini interview, in case you missed it yesterday:
The aforementioned Sirenia Digest mini interview is now up at Subterranean Press. Just click here. Also, subpress has kindly posted an excerpt from "The Cryomancer's Daughter (Murder Ballad No. 3)" (from Sirenia Digest No. 8, July '06), which you can reach by clicking here. Or, you may reach both from the subpress news page (click, then scroll down). I'm hoping we see a few more subscribers. As They say, our operators are standing by. Also, Saturday Dec. 2nd, proclaims the platypus, is a grand day to pre-order Tales from the Woeful Platypus.
Note that part of the fourth question is missing. It should read: SubPress: And just what do you mean when you talk about what the Sirenia Digest website calls "darkly fantastic erotica"?
Saturday, December 02, 2006
The aforementioned Sirenia Digest mini interview is now up at Subterranean Press. Just click here. Also, subpress has kindly posted an excerpt from "The Cryomancer's Daughter (Murder Ballad No. 3)" (from Sirenia Digest No. 8, July '06), which you can reach by clicking here. Or, you may reach both from the subpress news page (click, then scroll down). I'm hoping we see a few more subscribers. As They say, our operators are standing by. Also, Saturday Dec. 2nd, proclaims the platypus, is a grand day to pre-order Tales from the Woeful Platypus.
I did 1,201 words yesterday, despite all manner of distractions.
Friday, December 01, 2006
I was actually in bed by midnight thirty last night (CaST). I think Spooky almost had a heart attack, seeing me in bed so early. I was asleep by one, though she sat up reading (Francesca Lia Block) until 2:30 or so. Almost 8.5 hours sleep I got. Not miraculous, but badly needed.
Yesterday I wrote precisely 1,000 words. I should have done far better, considering I spent almost the entire day in front of the iBook. But I was afflicted by something that I can only describe as "spring fever." The temp here in Atlanta went all the way up to 73F. 73F on the last day of November. The office window was open, and the air certainly smelled like spring (it remained open until late last night). Every little thing seemed to distract me. So, the words came in fits and starts. There was wind and rain last night, and it's a bit cooler today (though not yet cold).
Monday, we have to begin proofreading Low Red Moon for the new mass-market paperback edition, due out August 7, 2007.
Today, before the writing can commence, I have to take care of the last bit of business with Tales from the Woeful Platypus. I do hope that everyone who bought Frog Toes and Tentacles will order this book. I'm pretty sure it's the better of the two. Certainly, it has the surer voice.
At this point, all 21 stories and the one poem in Tales of Pain and Wonder have been adopted for hypertexting. My thanks to everyone involved, all 22 of you. Now, I have to consider how to make the links as unobtrusive to the reader as possible. How they can be plainly seen, yet not so dominate the page that they become distracting.
There's not much else to be said for yesterday. We had a long walk in the false springtime. I played more Final Fantasy XII, and, as I've already noted, fell asleep unusually early. I think we get Byron tonight. Hubero says "hi," by the way.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
The last day of November already. Scary, scary.
I'm not good with telephones. I'm especially not good with telephones first thing in the morning. But, to my credit, Bill Schafer from subpress called this a.m. and we had quite a good, longish talk.
Yesterday, I wrote an absolutely exemplary 2,263 words. Go me. Also, last night I did a short interview about Sirenia Digest which will be appearing at some near-future date on the subpress website. So, it was a busy day, was yesterday.
As of this morning, lots and lots of people have claimed stories for the hypertexting of Tales of Pain and Wonder. Indeed, they're almost all taken. Right now, the list of spoken and unspoken for stories looks like this (a strike-thru indicates someone's already volunteered to work on that story):
"Anamorphosis"
"To This Water (Johnstown, Pennsylvania 1889)"
"Bela's Plot"
"Tears Seven Times Salt"
"Superheroes"
"Glass Coffin"
"Breakfast in the House of the Rising Sun"
"Estate"
"The Last Child or Lir"
"A Story for Edward Gorey"
"Paedomorphosis"
"Salammbô"
"Postcards from the King of Tides"
"Rats Live on No Evil Star"
"Salmagundi"
"In the Water Works (Birmingham, Alabama 1888)"
"The Long Hall on the Top Floor"
"San Andreas"
"Angels You Can See Through"
"Lafayette"
"...Between the Gargoyle Trees"
Epilogue: "Zelda Fitzgerald in Ballet Attire" (poem)
So, yeah. Just six left to choose from. If you want in on this, speak now. My grateful thanks to everyone who has already volunteered. I'm quite excited about this project. Remember, if you volunteer to do the hypertext on a story, I need an e-mail address. I'll be sending out text files to people, along with instructions on what I do and don't want, at some as yet undetermined date. By the way, you may choose more than a single story, if you think you can handle it.
I also wanted to put in a plug for the limited edition of Tales from the Woeful Platypus. Remember, not only will it be leather bound, it will also include an extra story — "Excerpt from Memoirs of a Martian Demirep" (spectacularly illustrated by Vince) — plus the chapbook edition of The Black Alphabet (pts. one and two united). Don't miss out. Yesterday I got the pencils for Vince's cover art for the book, which he's inking today, so here's a sneak peek:
Copyright © 2006 by Vincent Locke
When I was done with the interview last night, I watched Clerks II with Spooky, which I enjoyed tremendously (though Dogma remains my fave Kevin Smith film). Afterwards, I took controller in hand and plowed through a couple more hours of Final Fantasy XII, and belatedly the Star Wars parallels occurred to me — that Vaan is Luke, and if Balthier is Han Solo (roguish sky pirate) then Fran must be Chewbacca. Which makes perfect sense, as I've always had a thing for Chewie, too.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
I do not know why it happened, but last night's sleep was accompanied by the sort of delirium that usually requires a 104F fever or a dose of some unpleasant entheogen to produce. So, I'm a bit off my feed this morning, so to speak.
Yesterday, I wrote a perfectly respectable 928 words.
During our walk in Freedom Park, we were passing by one of the big oak trees and realised that it was filled with blue birds (Sialia sialis). I'd not seen even one blue bird since...I'm not even sure. Maybe the late 1980s, at my mother's old place. She put houses up for blue birds and lived at the edge of woods and pastures, so blue birds were not uncommon. But I never saw more than two at a time, even then. There were at least four or five in this oak. We watched them for a time.
That was likely the best thing about yesterday, the blue birds.
A number of people have volunteered to work on the hyperlinks for stories for the e-version of Tales of Pain and Wonder. Below is a list of all the stories. The ones that have been spoken for already have been struck through:
"Anamorphosis"
"To This Water (Johnstown, Pennsylvania 1889)"
"Bela's Plot"
"Tears Seven Times Salt"
"Superheroes"
"Glass Coffin"
"Breakfast in the House of the Rising Sun"
"Estate"
"The Last Child or Lir"
"A Story for Edward Gorey"
"Paedomorphosis"
"Salammbô"
"Postcards from the King of Tides"
"Rats Live on No Evil Star"
"Salmagundi"
"In the Water Works (Birmingham, Alabama 1888)"
"The Long Hall on the Top Floor"
"San Andreas"
"Angels You Can See Through"
"Lafayette"
"...Between the Gargoyle Trees"
Epilogue: "Zelda Fitzgerald in Ballet Attire"
A few people said they wanted to help out, but then didn't choose a story. Please, if you're interested, pick a story. I don't want to assign them. And if you volunteer to work on a story, be sure to leave an e-mail address. Also, the question of whether the e-version would be offered as something other than a PDF was raised, if it would be available in other formats. The answer is, "Not unless someone comes forward who wants to do all the work on those conversions." I understand PDFs, and I can see how this book can still look and feel something remotely like a book as a PDF. I can't say the same for a version that could be read on, say, a cell phone. I think that's just a little too 21st Century for a collection of short fiction concerned in part with the deleterious effects of industry and technology upon cilvilisation and art. I would like to at least pretend that people will download the PDF and print it out and read it as hard copy. However, I'll consider other formats, if there's someone to do all the work required. And if subpress is amenable to hosting more than a single format. I haven't yet asked. Thanks, by the way, to everyone who has volunteered so far.
The weather here is very warm. The high today is supposed to be near 70F. But I just checked weather.com and saw the headline "Strong cold front slams door on warmth." I knew that was coming, the rain and then the long cold, but I wish it were not so.
Speaking of cold, we watched Ice Age: The Meltdown last night, but I think the first one was much better.
I should wrap this up. The day is slipping past...
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
So, if like me, you're being driven slowly insane by the canned Xmas music which bombards our senses from all directions, boring its way inside of brains, infecting us with good cheer and the urge to spend, there's a cure. Why go slowly insane, when you can cut to the chase, unleash Cthulhu, and go quickly insane! The kind folks at the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, makers of that marvelous "silent" film version of The Call of Cthulhu, are now offering two CDs of carols perfectly suited to those of us who have chosen to embrace our inner cephalopod — A Very Scary Solstice and An Ever Scarier Solstice. You can even download sample songs for free. Well, one whole sample song, anyway (lyrics below).
I'll have a blue Solstice, Cthulhu.
I'll be so blue thinking what you'll do.
Sacrifices of red on the blue open sea,
Won't mean a thing until you're here with me.
Until your blue nightmares awake me,
And all my blue angels forsake me,
You'll be down in your tomb, in cyclopean gloom,
And I'll have a blue, blue, blue, blue Solstice.
(spoken) Oh Cthulhu, baby, c'mon up out of that tomb. I can't stop thinking about your huge flabby claws, them little wings of yours, that grotesque scaly body, and them big ol' tentacles wrapped around me. Oh darlin', I can't go on without you.
You'll be down in your tomb in cyclopean gloom,
And I'll have a blue, blue, blue, blue, Solstice.
(Really. It's only November 28th, okay, and already the frelling Xmas carols have me thinking extremely antisocial thoughts...).
I find myself rather annoyed that there's not yet a Wikipedia entry for Cephalopodmas. I suppose that I will have to remedy this, unless someone out there beats me to it.
Yesterday was proofreading, editing, slight rewriting, that sort of a day. A lot of e-mail. Spooky and I need to begin proofreading Low Red Moon for the mmp edition. We need to begin very, very soon, as I supposed to have my corrections/changes in by December 15th. The new paperback will be released August 7, 2007, by the way.
I also spent some time yesterday figuring out just what will be required to produce a downloadable free e-verson (PDF) of Tales of Pain and Wonder. Short answer, quite a lot. I don't think I'll be able to get this out until sometime late in the Spring, given all my other writing obligations. What I'm thinking is that the PDF will include the original text from the Gauntlet hardback (2000), plus a second revised, corrected text. In short, two complete versions of the collection, back to back. The revised, corrected version will include lots of hypertext, end notes, etc. In fact, I was thinking I'd ask for volunteers to help out with the hypertext links. If you're interested in "adopting" a story and can handle simple HTML, speak up. First come, first served. It would speed things along, and you'll earn a spot in the acknowledgments. You may volunteer right here by claiming a story via a LJ comment. Subterranean Press has agreed to host the PDF (it will also be available on my website). I still have to speak with Richard Kirk about reprinting his artwork, and with Doug and Peter about reprinting their introduction and afterword, respectively. There will be a new author's preface, and if there's time, a new story for the revised, corrected version, possibly the "missing" Salammbô Desvernine story I never got around to writing for the original Gauntlet release.
Oh, and I spent some time working with Vince on the cover/title-page illustration for Tales from the Woeful Platypus.
Spooky spent a good deal of yesterday on photos for my website redesign. I am doing everything in my power to insure it won't look like a "horror writer's" website. I think readers will be pleasantly surprised. Or they will be indifferent. Either is fine.
I was inexplicably pleased this morning to encounter the word "discombobulated" in the description of today's Astronomy Picture of the Day (which happens to be a gorgeous shot of Galaxy NGC 1313, by the way). It's a word which I often use to describe my mental state, "discombobulated," but I hardly ever hear anyone else use it.
No Final Fantasy XII yesterday (I think I almost OD'd on Sunday), but Spooky and I did get into an argument over whether Fran was her girlfriend or my girlfriend, because we're such frelling big dorks. (Fran is my girlfriend, though. I even have the icon to prove it. I cannot help that Spooky is delusional).
The weather here is warm and will remain so at least until Thursday, when the cold returns. The park was good yesterday, except I think it made me long for some genuine wilderness. Trees that have not been planted by men. Land that has not been scaped. But, hey, I'm procrastinating, and all good gardas and nixars know that's one of the Nine Seven Deadly Sins of Writing. The platypus is eying me from the top of a bookshelf, where sheheit has been amusing herhimitself with a volume of William Blake and an action figure (Christopher Walken as the headless horseman, if you must know). So I better go. You know how sheheit gets...
Monday, November 27, 2006
This morning, I am so over winter (and here it's only the end of November) that not even Jethro Tull and the approach of Cephalopodmas and all its wriggling, besuckered holiday tentacles will console me.
One reason that I take so few days off is that, usually, I find myself in a foul mood about halfway through. That said, yesterday wasn't a total loss. Lots and lots of Final Fantasy XII. I reached the Tomb of Raithwell, recovered the Dawn Shard, had it stolen from me by Marquis Halim Ondore IV, who then attempted to "test" it and managed to nuke the entire 8th Archadian fleet. The day went pretty much as I'd planned, all in all.
The high point was seeing Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain (at the Plaza). Indeed, that may have turn out to be one of the high points of the whole year. It will not suffice to say that I loved this film. This is one of those movies that makes me regret the fact that I lack the requisite language to properly discuss cinema. It will not do, in this case, to say that it was brilliant. Or that it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever laid eyes upon. Or that Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz were spot on. Since last night, I've been trying to find the words I need to describe this film, and I just cannot seem to summon them. For me, it was a revelation. For me, this is a film that is both magical and magickal. I suspect it is the best film I've seen this year, and that it is one of the best films I have ever seen. But maybe I'm biased. Maybe I just happened to intersect with The Fountain in a way that all those people who are hating it and leaving theatres baffled and pissed off cannot. Maybe it's just where I am right now. And maybe not. Maybe this film is objectively superb, if such a thing is possible. Every frame, every line of dialogue, seemed a thing of genius and perfection to me. Clint Mansell and the Kronos Quartet fashioned a soundtrack that could not have been better suited to its task. At the very least, Matthew Libatique deserves an Oscar for his cinematography. I have adored two other of Aronofsky's films — Pi (1999) and Requiem for a Dream (2000) — but, in my opinion, neither comes close to the achievement that is The Fountain. It joins Gilliam's Tideland and Shyamalan's Lady in the Water on a shortlist of truly astounding 2006 films that I have loved unconditionally, and that, to their credit, leave virtually no one straddling the fence, even if they have inspired far more more contempt than the appreciation they deserve. In the end, I can say only that I have been profoundly affected by this film, and for that I am grateful.
Too many things to do today, and I'd rather not do any of them. But the platypus waits for no nixar. Please pre-order Daughter of Hounds, if you have not already. I have a feeling that this may be the "sink or swim" book. Also, I ask that you please request that your local public library/ies order it, as library sales can make a huge difference. It doesn't suck, I promise.
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