Cloudy here today. Cloudy and rainy and currently only 64˚F. The only upside is that Memorial Day weekend has been ruined for the tourists flooding into South County.

---

Yesterday, I wrote 1,636 words and finished Alabaster: Boxcar Tales #13. Which finishes Alabaster: Boxcar Tales.

Spooky and I both got weepy, reading back over the last script.

Last week I spoke with my editor at Dark Horse and told him that it was time for me to step back from both Dancy and comics for the foreseeable future. That, after almost two years of pretty heavy involvement on this project, it was time to refocus my attention on my prose work. It felt a lot like I was tendering my resignation, like quitting a job, though it doesn't truly amount to quite that. It just means that, for the time being, I'm choosing to concentrate on other projects. In a lot of ways, working in comics is far more stressful than prose publishing, and, right now, I've got to decrease the stress in my life.

That said, working with Dark Horse has been a marvelous experience, and I thank everyone I've worked with – Rachel, Jemiah, Daniel, Shantel, Mike, Steve, Greg, Rachelle, Augie, and Spencer – for making Alabaster: Wolves and Alabaster: Boxcar Tales happen. I'm not an easy person to work with, and you've all shown admirable patience. I especially thank the many readers and reviewers who've believed in the books. Thank you. And if you are a fan, don't be sad.

There will be additional Dancy material from Dark Horse, but I'm not yet at liberty to announce what it will be or when it will be released. I'll make those announcements when I'm told that I can.

Into the Light of the Dark Black Night.
Aunt Beast

We who revel in nature's diversity and feel instructed by every animal tend to brand Homo sapiens as the greatest catastrophe since the Cretaceous extinction. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

---

I don't trust new houses.

---

This morning I dreamt Kathryn and I were standing on the shore of one of the Great Lakes. I don't know which one. Foamy white waves were surging all around our feet, and I was telling her how those lakes were the remnants of an ancient sea. I was telling her they were exceptionally salty, the Great Lakes. A turkey fluttered past, settling on the beach not far away. It looked as if it had been molded from green milk glass, that precise color and opacity. There was also something oddly dragonfly-like about the bird, though I can't now say what. The sky was brilliant with noctilucent clouds, though it was the middle of the day. Earlier, I'd dreamt of finding the skull of a mosasaur*, but most of that dream has faded away.

---

Yesterday, I wrote 1,432 words, which got me halfway through the thirteenth and final installment of Alabaster: Boxcar Tales. Only four pages to go, and I'll be glad to put this one behind me. Well, I'm always glad to put them – the novels, short stories, etc. – behind me, but sometimes I'm extra glad. I also had to proof the art for #9 and then send my editor at Dark Horse my notes. Oh, and script notes for #10. And there was some weirdness involving tax forms for foreign editions, blah, blah, blah, but Spooky and Writers House kindly dealt with that.

The weather here was so-so yesterday. A little worse than so-so today. I was spoiled by Tuesday. Presently 72˚F and cloudy here in Providence. More eighties, please.

Last night, Spooky and I finished watching Hemlock Grove. Lots of fun and surprisingly well done. The acting has odd moments of unevenness, but that hardly distracts. All in all, the performances and writing are very good. Famke Jensen is especially delightful as the villainous matriarch. Some of the best werewolf transformation SFX ever. So, yes. Hemlock Grove. Angela Carter does Dark Shadows. I know I've invoked the name of Angela Carter twice in as many days, but she is, after all, one of my patron wantons. Also, we're watching Season Seven of Dexter. I've cut way, way back on gaming. It's all become horribly boring again. Even for a recluse, there must be be more to life than this (to quote Freddy Mercury).

---

An odd thing. I was complaining to Spooky about baffling online slang, and that led to a general discussion of slang as a phenomenon associated more with subcultures than with linguistic evolution, and to a discussion of slang that attended various times and scenes and geographical regions (the Jazz Age, hippies in the sixties, Cockney rhyming slang, surfer slang, etc.), and that led to a rather peculiar realization: As a child and teenager, I used very little – virtually none – of the slang that would be associated with the seventies and early eighties. Almost none. I began trying to list words. I came up with "cool" and "man" (before the ubiquitous "dude") and one two more. I used a tiny bit of older slang I got from my mother – "neat," for example. Hell, "cool" and "man" weren't truly of my generation. It's all became very confusing. Sure, I used Southern Appalachian/Alabama euphemisms and dialect, but there was very little that followed from pop culture/subcultures. I'm still racking my brain over this. I didn't even truly discover profanity – another facet of slang – until I was in my mid teens (which might seem odd, what with me now being such a connoisseur of dirty words and all).

But, this was long before the internet. I posit that the internet has forever changed the evolution, propagation, and longevity of slang. It's an interesting problem. One at which I'm sure a million graduate students with a million typewriters...well, computers...are banging away.

But...I have a script to finish. I have red velvet theatre curtains to close.

Uncool,
Aunt Beast

* I have some variant of this dream at least once every two weeks.

1. Yesterday afternoon, we saw J.J. Abrams' Star Trek: Into Darkness, and I loved it. Delightfully superb! Do not listen to the nay-sayers.

2. Yes, I'm very sorry to hear that Christopher Eccleston will not be part of the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special. The Constant Reader will recall that Nine is MY Doctor. But to these people who are acting pissy about Eccleston's declining to take part in the special I say fuck off. To paraphrase Neil, Christopher Eccleston is not your bitch. So, get over it. Also, he's still the coolest Doctor ever (I give Ten second place, and Benedict Cumberbatch is the best Doctor Who Never Was).

3. On Monday, I wrote 1,594 words on Alabaster: Boxcar Tales #12 and finished it. Today, I begin the thirteenth and final installment of Boxcar Tales. I may actually try to write the whole eight pages today.

4. There have been a lot a movies and TV lately. I get into these "watching moods." I finally saw Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty (2012). It was sort of like being hit in the face with a brick. An astounding, unrelentingly brutal film. It has surely deserved every awards nomination it received. Jessica Chastain's performance was especially impressive (also, the parallels between Maya and Claire Danes' Carrie Mathison are somewhat eerie).

And as it happens, the night before we saw Zero Dark Thirty, we'd seen Andrés Muschietti's Mama (2013), which also features Jessica Chastain – though you can hardly recognize her, her appearance is so different in the two films. Mama is one of those very, very rare dark fantasy films that gets everything right. A faerie tale for adults (the film begins with "One Upon a Time..."). Angela Carter meets Guillermo del Toro (who was an executive producer on the film). I've seen a lot of kvetching about the ending, and all I can say is that many people don't actually understand that when one enters the realm of the faerie tale – even when it's dressed up as a ghost story – one must, generally, play by the rules of Faerie. I thought at once of Tolkien's "On Fairy-Stories" (1939, 1947), in which he wrote:

It is at any rate essential to a genuine fairy-story...that it should be presented as "true."...But since the fairy-story deals with "marvels," it cannot tolerate any frame or machinery suggesting that the whole framework in which they occur is a figment or illusion.

Now, true, Mama does not strictly adhere to this rule. It does begin with doubters. But the film opens with two children – the central characters – existing completely within the realm of the genuine fairy-story, and, before the story's done, the adults have followed them irrevocably down the same path. We are left in the end with no possible conclusion except that "the whole framework" of the film was, of course, true. Hence, the ending, with it's complete absence of the sort of "resolution" that would violate the rules. Here, the faerie tale is a transgressive force, chewing up the delusion of a world not subject to the laws of Faerie, and the only resolution is that of a ghostly, changeling reunion. What happens to those who are left behind is irrelevant. Okay, I could also get started on Bruno Bettelheim, but I have gone on far too long about this film. Just see it!

As I said, we saw Star Trek: Into Darkness. There's nothing about this film I didn't love. Even the gimmick shots that were obviously placed there for 3D didn't distract from my enjoyment, and I strongly recommend a 2D viewing. 3D not only destroys cinematography, it's also – especially – anathema to story and character. I'm going to avoid all spoilers (which is more than I can say for a lot of people online), but I will say that Zachary Quinto and Benedict Cumberbatch continue to amaze me and make me smile. Also, the continued exploration of events familiar to Star Trek fans is handled with aplomb, truly going where we haven't gone before. And....okay, little spoilers...KLINGONS! I grew up on Star Trek, even seeing the original series' in syndication only a year or two after its cancellation. And Star Trek: Into Darkness is true to the spirit, moreso than some of the non-Abrams films with the original cast and...okay, let's not even talk about the abominations that were Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise. Anyway, collectively, Spooky and I give it four thumbs up.

We continue to follow SyFy's Defiance, which is, honestly, like the Second Coming of Farscape. If you're not watching it, you're missing out. I'm especially impressed by its use of "old world" music (id est, music predating the post-apocalyptic events of the series). Also, Spooky saw the Netflix original series Hemlock Grove and convinced me to watch it. It's something else that I highly recommend. Another dark fantasy that gives "pararom" and "shifter" pr0n the middle finger (Brian McGreevy, who wrote the novel on which the series is based, and who is a co-writer, producer, and developer on the series, has said as much).

Finally, we've made it through Season Three of True Blood, and you won't believe what I have to say about the series. You may want to brace yourselves. But it's gonna have to wait for another entry. Time to write, says Das Schnabeltier. Oh, the weather finally got sort of warm in Providence (83˚F yesterday). There was a beautiful thunderstorm last night.

Watching,
Aunt Beast

Note: I've just learned of a "racefail" (hate that phrase) controversy associated with the film. Not gonna go into spoiler specifics. But the people claiming racism in casting are...I'll be polite, and I'll just say they're wrongheaded.

If you should doubt
My heart,
Remember this:
That I would lie to you
If I believed it was
Right to do. ~ Wye Oak

I see my last entry was made on the 17th. And this would be a longish one, but I'm pressed for time. I'm several days behind, and I very much need to finish Alabaster: Boxcar Tales #12 today. A bad headache all day yesterday. Two nights in a row I've gotten to sleep early and easy, but then a sudden roller coaster of nightmares that's left even me impressed, before awaking six hours later, cold and disoriented and unable to get back to sleep. None of this, obviously, is conducive to the tedious, painstaking task of making a movie at a measly five-seven frames-per-page. But there's actually a lot I want to put down. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe Wednesday. These are the maybes that just get me farther and farther behind.

Only six – or seven – days remaining until birthday -09. I say six or seven because I was born on a leap year. Technically, most years, my birthday isn't the 26th, but the 27th*. And I didn't figure that out until last year. Which is pretty weird. Anyway, if you are the sort who wants to send an aging curmudgeon a distraction on her birthday, I do have an Amazon wish list with nice distracting stuff. I was going to post this earlier, but I forgot. I forget a lot these days.

I haven't gamed/roleplayed in five days. Go me. I think the last time was Wednesday. It was time to unplug for a bit. Time to remind myself there's a real world out there, and that I'm neglecting it for a pixel simulacrum. To the people I have been rping with, apologies for the sudden absence (though I did leave stsisyphus with an ic notice). I'll likely be back, probably very soon.

My hair is now a rather wonderful steely grey. Three days ago, I'd had enough of the pale yellow mess the salon made of it a month ago, and I'd see a girl last Thursday on Thayer Street with wonderful steely grey hair. So, Spooky did research. And, behind the cut, is the result. Note that this is a temporary wash, because we wanted to see if I'd like it before committing. I do. So, next step, semi-permamnet. Note, in the photos, I was not really in a "look at my face" mood. I've lost too much weight this winter and cold spring, and I need sun...

( Grey on PurposeCollapse )

Here are Spooky's instructions for how we got this color: We used Roux Fanci-full in True Steel. I got a couple of tubes of Ion Color Brilliance in Titanium, which is a similar shade of grey, if the sample is to be believed. It's a semi-permanent dye, like Manic Panic. That will be the next step. I would note that my hair had been bleached platinum blonde beforehand. This will not work over dark hair.

Grey,
Aunt Beast

* My late Grandmother Ramey's birthday. She was not born on a leap year.

Brown Bird's David Lamb has become seriously ill from a condition that has yet to be diagnosed. As a result, he and Morganeve have already had to cancel the remainder of their tour after he wound up hospitalized in Houston. They've returned to Rhode Island and are awaiting the results of further tests, and having to deal with the $29,000 medical bill that's already been incurred, plus lost income from the canceled tour dates. The band has set up a donation page. Brown Bird has brought Kathryn and I both a tremendous amount of enjoyment, and we urge you to consider making a donation. Thank you.

---

Day before yesterday – which would be Wednesday – I didn't begin Chapter 12 of Boxcar Tales, as planned. Late on Tuesday night I'd had a bolt-from-the-blue revelation about what's actually going on in the last third of the story, which meant that I had to do rewrites to #9 and #10. Yes, this is called making work for myself. But this idea is so, so much better than what I originally thought was going on. This is also a great example of how I make it all up as I got along, with virtually no forethought-outlines-etcetera. Anyway, I spoke with my editor, and he said, yes, it wasn't too late to make the changes. Fortunately, Steve Lieber had not drawn that far ahead. So, I spent the day rewriting – which I loathe doing. But, in the end, I was sure I'd done the right thing. So, I sent the rewrites along to David Chabon, my editor at Dark Horse, and, by the way, Michael Chabon's brother, along with the script for #11. Plus, Danielle Stockley – my editor at Penguin – and I have begun trying to put together decent flap copy for Red Delicious, because what the copy writer came up with was...well, I said it "sucks." But that's a very me thing to say. Plus more work on the Centipede Press edition of The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, so a hectic, busy day on Wednesday.

---

Is this the way my mind works,
Forwards, always forwards?
Is this the way my brain waits,
Backwards, sideways? ~ Wye Oak

---

Yesterday, the temperature here in Providence soared to 82˚F, and thank fuck. Spooky and I left the house and just...wandered. I couldn't afford a day off, but I took one, anyway. We went back to Paper Nautilus Books (again, I was good and bought nothing) at Wayland Square. We walked up and down Thayer Street. We drove and listened to Wye Oak and R.E.M. I went into a head shop for the first time in years. The sun was brilliant and white and hot on my winter-pale skin. I looked at green trees and ancient houses and birds. I thought about the sea, and we should have gone. Anyway, at Paper Nautilus I decided to take photos of things that were not (well, mostly things that were not) books. Marvelous and ordinary things you might not expect to find in a bookshop, but which help to make Paper Nautilus so cool. This is just one reason I hate the sterility of ebooks.

( 16 May 2013Collapse )

---

I have notified my agent of my very, very tentative thoughts of writing a fourth Siobhan Quinn novel. If writing Cherry Bomb doesn't kill me. Partly, this is because I'm nowhere near emotionally ready yet to write another novel of the same caliber or personal investment as The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, nor have I an idea yet for a novel of that sort. Were I to do this, it would possibly be called Wild Strawberries. But it's just an "if." Treat it as such.

---

PLEASE have a look at the current eBay auctions, which end today. I have remiss in speaking of them. Thank you.

Loving the Sun and Air Through My Window (Even If It's Much Cooler Today),
Aunt Beast

The Drowning Girl: A Memoir has been nominated for the 2013 Mythopoeic Award* for Adult Literature. The announcement was made yesterday, but I didn't know until this morning – when Liz Hand congratulated me on Facebook – because I didn't check that email account yesterday afternoon. Very, very cool. I'm going to stop here and take stock. Thus far, the novel's received the James Tiptree, Jr. Award and the following nominations:

~ Nebula Award (Novel)
~ Shirley Jackson Award (Novel)
~ Locus Award (Fantasy Novel)
~ Mythopoeic Award (Adult Literature)
~ Bram Stoker (Novel)

This makes even me smile, just a little.

---

Yesterday, I wrote pages 5 through 8 on Alabaster: Boxcar Tales #11 (1,404 words). Only two chapters to go until THE END. This chapter has been written to R.E.M.'s Fables of the Reconstruction.

It was so chilly in the house (only high 50˚sF Outside) that I had to run the space heater in my office for an hour or so. This isn't spring. I know the midwest and the planes are getting a heat wave, because the jet stream is being odd, because that Greenland "block." The first day of summer is only a little more than a month off (37 days, to be precise).

They think it's right,
But they don't think like me.
When I concede
It is a victory. ~ Wye Oak

Not much else to yesterday. Not really. From the November 2012 JVP I read "The maxillary depression of Pholidosauridae: An anatomical study" and "Developmental biology enriches paleontology" (the latter concerned primarily with the Hox gene).

Oh, the signature sheets for The Ape's Wife and Other Stories just showed up. And today is Selwyn's birthday. He wants a harmonica.

Ah, we did see this delightful sight in our neighborhood yesterday (the guy's not dead, just passed out). It was rather amusing, in a skeezy sort of way:



Presently Conscious,
Aunt Beast

* For those unfamiliar with the award: "The Mythopoeic Society is a national/international organization promoting the study, discussion, and enjoyment of fantastic and mythopoeic literature through books and periodicals, annual conferences, discussion groups, awards, and more. We are especially interested in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams, prominent members of the informal Oxford literary circle known as the 'Inklings' (1930s-1950s)."

Spooky just told me that Rift is going free-to-play. So, there goes one of the last bastions. The floodgates will open, and the children will pour in. I mean, it's bad enough now, without the twits who are just coming to grief and treat the game like a giant chatroom.

"I expect to never have general chat on after this takes effect," said Spooky just now.

Over breakfast, it occurred to me...well, here's what I said: "I don't like comics, but I write comics. I hate gaming, and I game. I hate the cold, but I moved to New England." That says a lot about me, actually. I miss the days when my masochistic needs were met at the end of a whip.

Yesterday I wrote pages two, three, and four of Chapter Eleven of Alabaster: Boxcar Tales (1,532 words). Today, I think I have to tear page three out and come up with a different approach. Probably. I've been going for a Reflecting Skin sort of tone in this last arc, and Page Three ruins it. Worse part, to stay on schedule – and the publishing schedule for Dark Horse Presents is tight – I should have finished #11 yesterday. I needed to write the final three issues in six days. Already, that's expanded to a minimum of... oh, fuck it. Fuck the numbers, and fuck the deadlines. When it's finished it will be finished, and if that's too late, that's too late.

For a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself.
Phew. For a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself. ~ Radiohead.

Though, definitely more than a single minute. Anyway, a lot of yesterday was also talking with Jared at Centipede Press as we continue to work out the design of the CP edition of The Drowning Girl: A Memoir. Micahel Zulli was already Phillip George Saltonstall, and now Matthew Jaffe will be Albert Perrault. This is the Jaffe painting that sold me. Also, it was decided that I'm going to delay the CP edition of The Red Tree (because I need much more time with it), so in-between their editions of the novels Centipede Press will be releasing the collection of my "Mythos" (id est, HPL) stories, a project I think I mentioned here a while back.

The contracts for the Polish edition of The Drowning Girl: A Memoir arrived yesterday. Oh, and this author's profile thingy went up at Nightmare Magazine, in which I talk about Steinbeck, R.E.M, and beginnings. Go. Read. Leave comments.

And this, from Amazon's page which is presumably devoted to selling The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, not providing the marginally literate a public soapbox from which to wail their confusion:

I had an open mind when I started reading it, and I was expecting something pretty interesting because of the reviews on the covers. The story started out interesting, but then in the middle and end the plot line became more about just one character, her name would pop up everywhere. It was boring and kind of annoying when the author worked the reader up to feel excited about the plot but it turned out to be kind of a flop. It is also kind of uncomfortable to read because the narrator is "crazy" and she gets rather annoying. Sorry if I offend anyone.

Um...yeah. Those damned, annoying schizophrenics.

The apology was, I admit, curiously novel. Though I long ago learned to stop apologizing for being offensive. Apologizing takes all the fun out of it.

Unapologetic,
La Cabrita (a.k.a. Aunt Beast)

You make plans, but they don't always mean much of anything. Which is to say that, on Saturday, I only made it one page into Alabaster: Boxcar Tales #11. There was too much of the story still to be worked out in my head. Mostly, issues of pacing. And that consumed a huge chunk of the day. Then, yesterday, I had to get Sirenia Digest #88 together and "out the door." It was emailed to subscribers this morning, so, if you're a subscriber, it's waiting on you. Today, I have some editing to do on Alabaster: Boxcar Tales #10 before I can get back to work on #11. And...there's other stuff.

Please have a look at the current eBay auctions, because this gig doesn't pay as much as most people think.

The cold has returned, after our very short flirtation with spring. Right now, 59˚F, which is our forecast high. Here on the 13th day of May. Which leaves thirteen days until my 49th birthday, unless....in truth, most years – this one included – my true birthday is on the 27th, not the 26th (which means my Grandmother Ramey and I have the same birthday). This epiphany occurred to me on my birthday last year:

"Indeed, it is my birthday. And here I am, some -08 years after my unlikely birth in the year 1964 (of the Gregorian calendar). And, oh my motherfucking god, I just fucking realized something amazing! 1964 was a leap year, so, on years that are not leap years (unlike this one), my birthday is actually May 27th. Motherfucker. Weird."

So...technically, yeah, fourteen days, but I'll still be "celebrating" on the 26th. Point is, it's damned weird to have lived this long.

Spooky went for a walk around the neighborhood yesterday. I wanted to go, but there was almost enough of a chill to the air it would only have served to put me in an even fouler mood than I was in already (once again, it's too cold to open my office window). But she took photos, and if you look at them and pretend it's in the high seventies or low eighties out there, it'll seem like spring:

( Cold Spring, 12 May 2013Collapse )

Wrong Just Seems So Right,
La Cabrita

Both The Drowning Girl and my short story "Fake Plastic Trees" have been nominated for the 2013 Locus Award (this makes four nominations and one win for The Drowning Girl).

It seems like a long time since I made an entry here, but I see that it was only Wednesday. A hop, skip, and a jump. Hardly seventy-two hours ago. I'd meant to take two days off. I took four. Well, mostly. There was some spotty work yesterday and the day before. Thursday and Friday. They were uneventful days off, and not even in an especially restful way. Infirmities kept me and Spooky inside, until yesterday. Even yesterday we only made it as far as the other side of town.

Yesterday we went out, to Wayland Square and Angell Street. My goddamn rotten feet are giving me fits again, but I hobbled about, determined to get as much sun as I could. We made it to Paper Nautilus Books and Pow Science and just walked a bit. We stopped in at Acme Video on the way home to get movies for our weekend long Ray Harryhausen film festival. I was very pleased to see the shop had pulled all his films and may a special "R.I.P." display. We began, last night, with 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), to be followed by It Came From Beneath the Sea (1955) and The Beast from Twenty Thousand Fathoms (1953). Anyway, yes....wonderful yesterday. After the long, foul fucking winter and this Cold Spring, yesterday felt wonderful. Here in Providence, the temperature climbed almost all the way to 80˚F. Today, it's cloudy, very windy, and almost ten degrees cooler, but still, not so bad. The air yesterday – and today – is filled with cherry blossoms, like whirling clouds of pink snow. Almost everything is green now. Which makes the sky a little less heavy. I don't feel quite so pressed down. There are a few random photo from yesterday below, behind the cut.

And here is Saturday, and I have to get back to work. In theory, I'm doing the first four pages of Chapter Eleven of Alabaster: Boxcar Tales today, and then finishing Chapter Eleven tomorrow. In practice, I'm not actually sure what "happens next" in the story. I guess I'll find out. Also, I have to talk (via email) with Jerad at Centipede Books. We're working out an onlay for front cover (cloth), using an etching by Fritz Hegenbart.

I'm reading The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times by Adrienne Mayor.

( 10 May 2013Collapse )

“The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies.” ~ Stephen Hawking (1995). Lovecraft would have adored that quote.

Now, work.

Conveyer Belt,
Aunt Beast

Yesterday was an utter failure as a day off. The main problem is that Spooky's had a migraine since last Thursday night, which prevented us from doing...well anything. She's better today, but there was no planning yesterday. So...we're here, with incoming thunderstorms.

I've extended the "vacation" (hahahahahahah) until Friday, in hopes that tomorrow might yet bring some relief from the monotony.

Why am I still keeping this journal. No, yeah...I know you read it. You don't have to remind me that you do. But the blog is dead. Long live Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr! Long live the shortest imaginable attension span! You have a hundred friends! Less more is more! Who has time for blogs? How wasn't that true ten years ago? Fast! Speed! So little time! That toxin "quick and easy" wins over substance!

Where are you going in such a hurry?

Day before yesterday, my two contributor's copies of Centipede Press' Arthur Machen volume arrived. I wrote the afterward. Fuck, it's a beautiful volume, limited to two-hundred copies (I was given actual numbered copies). Seeing it lit a fire under my ass to get CP everything they need for their edition of The Drowning Girl. They have the revised manuscript...but there's still a lot of other stuff. As the book came about as the result of a deal between CP and Penguin and I'm not being paid for it, I've had to keep it low on my list of priorities. The afterward, by the way, was actually written for a Bloodletting Press edition of Machen stories, but was, inexplicably not used. My thanks to CP and S.T. Joshi for seeing it found such a spectacular home.

The Machen book is really the only news I have. I did, last night, finish Richard Ellis' superb Singing Whales and Flying Squid. The upshot of the book, concerned largely with marine fishery statistics, is that the seas – from which Homo sapiens derives most of the protein it consumes – aren't just dying from our depredations. They're almost dead. Ah, and for some reason I tried to watch Tom Holland's 1995 TV mini-series adaptation of The Langoliers (1995). The only good thing I can say about this mess is that it actually was better than Stephen King's awful novella. Still, I was just barely able to make it through half of it.

I now return you to the cataclysm that is the world, already in progress.

Smile,
Aunt Beast

I just heard the news that Ray Harryhausen has died. He was 92. 1920-2013. I will always be grateful to Harlan Ellison for introducing me to Harryhausen one night long ago (the same night he introduced me to Ray Bradbury). One of the very first films I ever saw was the remake of One Million Years B.C., filled with Harryhausen's marvelous anachronistic saurians. In that age before CGI virtual worlds, Harryhausen made magic, by imperceptible, stop-motion degrees, here in this world.

Yesterday, I finished Chapter 10 of Alabaster: Boxcar Tales. I wrote 1,751 words. The last page is the best comics page I've ever written. Yeah, I do say so myself.

So, it's a day off. I left the house for the first time since April 30th. We went to breakfast at the Classic Diner on Westminster. Well, it was noon, but they served us breakfast, so. In my absence, the world turned green. Anyway...later taters.

Of Dinosaurs and Sinbad,
Aunt Beast

Postscript (5:15 p.m.): I hope to send Sirenia Digest #88 out to subscribers on Friday. It will include the next chapter of Fay Grimmer, along with a new vignette.

Yesterday, I wrote the first four pages of Alabaster: Boxcar Tales Chapter 10 (of 13), which comes to nine manuscript pages, or 2,348 words. Today, I'll finish Chapter 10. And tomorrow, goddamn it, is A DAY OFF. I'm taking at least one. I finished a novel day before yesterday, and now I'm writing this, and the deadlines can bite me. Oh, also...the original title of Boxcar Tales and Grimmer Tales, but there was concern that confusion would arise with Fay Grimmer. And it fucking sucks how that turned out. Each of the three stories in Boxcar Tales is a riff on a fairy tale: 1-5 are "The Little Mermaid," 6-8 are "Little Red Riding Hood," and 9-13 are "Snow White/Sleeping Beauty."

Now you know.

Not much else to yesterday. A huge amount of Mexican food. I made my signature guacamole, though I did use lime instead of the usual lemon. Spooky made salsa fresca, and there were quesadillas. We still have quite a lot of guacamole and salsa in the fridge. There was Dos Equis and Jose Cuervo Gold, though I rarely allow myself alcohol these days. But, fuck I do love good tequila. Even decent tequila. Fuck, I love shitty tequila.

There weren't the usual fireworks in the neighborhood, not really, because we have a burn ban in effect, because Rhode Island currently has drought conditions.

So, we ate too much. And I played too much Secret World, though not as too much as the night before. There were a couple of good RP scenes with Isaac. He might not be quite so insane if that Dr. Zurn at the Illuminati HQ in Brooklyn would stop slipping Isaac megadoses of LSD every time he's put under for another round of highly experimental treatments for his plethora of congenital disorders. Though, we all know this is just Zurn and Muñoz looking for a way to weaponize Isaac's DNA. And then there's the pharmacological cold war.

The weather yesterday was...slightly better than the day before. I am told by the Weather Channel that we'll reach 66˚F today. In May. 66˚F. But see, in Birmingham it's only motherfucking 52˚F! Blackberry winter my ass. It's that secret volcano.

Anyway...here's eBay. And now, I should go brush my teeth, make my feeble attempt at a "work out," and get to work.

Love and Thumbtacks,
Aunt Beast

For those who have not seen this post, I finished Red Delicious yesterday afternoon. It's done. I've not yet calculated how many days were actually spent writing it. I'll do that later. All that matters is that it is finished The last sentence typed. The first and the last and the always draft. I'm emailing it to my editor as soon as I finish this entry.

Do I get today off as a reward? Um...no. Today I have to begin Alabaster: Boxcar Tales (Chapter 10) for Dark Horse Presents. No one celebrates here when a book is finished. It's happened too many times. Oh, wait. I did allow myself one extra Vicodin.

I'm hoping that I can take Tuesday off. There's meteorological innuendo that the weather may vaguely approximate warm on Tuesday. Right now, it's 58˚F here in Providence. Which is great, you know, for MID FUCKING FEBRUARY. Not May 5th. But I see that it's even worse in Birmingham, only 53˚F. Which is all manner of disheartening. I have begun looking at Alabama...that Hell I spent so much of my life trying to escape...as an Edenic paradise I'd cut off a foot to reach.

I "celebrated" last night by spending seven and a half hours in The Secret World. The first hour and a half, those were RP, but the rest was just grinding, repeating quests I'd already repeated fuck knows how many times. Because (this is pathetic, but...) this weekend you get double AP (ability points), and since I already have a boost that increases my AP, I get triple AP. Plus, I have another boost – for XP – that's only good for one hour a night, I use that, and it briefly ups the rate at which I gain AP still more. Can we all say whoopee? Isaac Snow, my Illuminati sociopath, finished the "bounty hunter" skill deck. At two a.m., I said "Fuck this" and went to bed, but then I could get to sleep until sometime after four-thirty.

Funny thing is, I don't even enjoy gaming. I enjoy RP. Gaming is dull, repetitive, tedious, et al. PvE is the least annoying, because in PvE I can zone out and let my mind crawl wherever it wants to go. I can play on autopilot. PvP, on the other hand, is unbearable. But only RP actually engages me. The game, it's just...there...to create a world in which I can RP. And TSW has created a very good RP world. Of the MMOs I've played, it ranks – and possibly surpasses – Rift as, by far, one of the two best. But, when I can't get RP, gaming, well, it kills time, and either you kill time or it kills you.

Cut myself on angel's hair and baby's breath. ~ Nirvana

If you have not yet ordered a copy of The Ape's Wife and Other Stories, you might want to do so...especially if you want to get the limited edition that comes with Black Helicopters. The limited will almost certainly sell out prior to publication. Just a reminder.

Oh, and the current eBay auctions.

Now...yeah. Back to work.

Smeared.
Aunt Beast

At approximately 4:50 p.m., I finished Red Delicious. I began it on 6 February.

Jesus God on a moped, it's currently 45˚F in Birmingham, while it's 60˚F here. Honestly, where is the secret volcanic eruption? Or asteroid impact (the Russian meteor was much too small, maybe by an order of magnitude)? When I was a kid, we called this sort of mess a blackberry winter. Anyway, I am actually, very temporarily, pleased that I'm not in Alabama.

Also, I do not give a shit that Taylor Swift is moving into her goddamn $17 million dollar house in Watch Hill. I am amused that she's bought a house that truly is due to tumble into the sea during the next brisk wind. Honestly, the only thing I know about Taylor Swift is that she ruined that song on the Hunger Games soundtrack. "Safe and Sound," the thing she did with the Civil Wars that would have been beautiful had it only been the Civil Wars.

Do you have any idea what I could do with $17 million dollars? Buy a chunk of hurricane bait in Watch Hill isn't on the list.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,275 words on Chapter Seven of Red Delicious. No, I won't finish it today, but I should finish it tomorrow. I have the two scenes left to write, and the second one's an epilogue sort of thing. The ms. will be ~71k words long. Also, my thanks to everyone who offered their congratulations on the news of The Drowning Girl: A Memoir's nomination for a Shirley Jackson award. There were an awful lot of you (~95% on Facebook).

Pull the blindfold down
So your eyes can't see.
Now, run as fast as you can
Through this field of trees. ~ The Editors

I do stupid shit. A lot.

For example, for those who were paying attention to the silly minutiae of my life, I had this plan to have my hair bleached white. Yes. Stupid. It started as a joke. I had no idea you could get hair white. Unless, maybe, it was already white to begin with. But then Spooky did some research, and she was told sure, it can be done. No big deal. The whole process was explained. A month or three went by and I decided, fuck it. Sure. Two weeks ago (Thursday) I went to a reputable local salon that I'd used for hair coloring in the past. First, I let them cut about a foot off. Yes. I regret it tremendously, and I have no idea what I was thinking. Anyway, the bleaching process began and went on for two hours. Or more. It's all a blur. Anyway, in the end...despite promises from the colorist...my hair was a sort of lemon blonde. Truly fucking hideous. My hair has been many colors in the long history of the torture I've visited upon it, but I have never even once before been unhappy – much less horrified – at the results. My hair now matches the yellow walls of our bathroom. Pretty much. I was told after a couple of weeks we could lighten it again, but it was already extremely damaged, so...no. Plus, after only two weeks I have a full centimeter of dark roots.

I've been keeping all of this to myself, because it's embarrassing as hell. I'm only telling you now because last night UPS brought the ARCs for The Ape's Wife and Other Stories – which are gorgeous – and, normally, there would be a photo here of me holding one. But it may be a long while before anyone sees a new photo of me. A long, long time. So, that's why I told the embarrassing story of how I fucked up my hair, with the help of a colorist who promised one thing, then did another. The good news? My hair grows fast, and at a centimeter every two weeks my hair should be back to something approaching normal (only a lot grayer) in about a year. It'll have returned to it's pre-April 18th length in about a year and a half.

I'd say there's no one to blame but myself, and I am largely to blame, but the colorist did, make no mistake, lie to me. Regardless, it might be a long, long time before I post any more photos of myself.

Anyway, yeah. ARCs of The Ape's Wife and Other Stories. Bill Schafer and I both this, my twelfth, is probably one of the best collections I've ever done.

Kid night last night. We saw an interesting, odd little film. Fifteen writers, eight directors. It's like an enormous film school project, is V/H/S (2012). It combines two things that fascinate me – the "mockumentary" and the idea of lost films – with one thing I hate, the anthology film. The results are uneven. Forget the frame tale, because it's just dumb. But the first segment, "Amateur Night," it's actually very good, and it had me thinking I was about to sit through two hours of surprisingly cool film. A lot of what works about "Amateur Night" is a British actress named Hannah Fierman. She was creepy as hell. Spooky described her as the daughter of Angela Bettis and Rose McGowan. Unfortunately, there are four additional segments of V/H/S/, a couple of which aren't so bad, a couple of which aren't so good. But coming after "Amateur Night," they're all a disappointment. I do recommend the film, because "Amateur Night" is, I think, kind of amazing, and if only because it's streaming free on Netflix (well, free it you have Netflix), and it is an interesting experiment. But there are far, far, far too many cooks in the kitchen, and it shows. It is worth noting that the film does invert several of the "horror/slasher" film tropes, in that the prey/victims in four of the five segments is exclusively male.

Now...I have to put my blindfold back on.

Running,
Aunt Beast

The Drowning Girl: A Memoir has been nominated for the 2012 Shirley Jackson awards. This makes three nominations for the novel and one win. I do, of course, consider a nomination for a Jackson award one of the highest honors for fantasy/dark psychological novels, and this is my fourth nomination for the award.

Little victories.

1) Last night, I took the red pill. Which was actually sort of stupid. And I slept something like six hours, which was at least an hour – and maybe two – short of the time I needed to sleep off the red pill.

If you'da told us the truth, we woulda told you to shove that red pill right up your ass.

Pretty much.

2) And Outside? Outside, the Fahrenheit has struggled all the way up to (drum roll) 55˚. So, yeah. It's February again. On May 3rd.

3) I'm trying to figure out why the internet reduces apparently intelligent, sane adults to baby talk. It's a mystery for the ages. Where's Leonard Nimoy when you need him? I considered posting samples from the forum of the Secret World cabal to which I belong, but I suppose that would be shitty of me. But I'm not talking of "lolspeak" here; I'm talking about something even more odious.

4) Yesterday, I posted to Facebook: I have about two days to finish the next novel, RED DELICIOUS, which I should have finished weeks ago. I have no idea how it ends, because plotting isn't what I do. So..it's time to just make stuff up. Which was in no way an exaggeration. Oddly, lots of people failed to understand the post translated into "I am well and truly fucked" and gave it the thumbs up, with all sorts of "that's why we love you" crap. Anyway, so...I sat here and I made stuff up. I pulled stuff out of my ass. I gave the tyranny of plot the middle finger – better than it deserves – and "wrote" 1,608 words on the final chapter. Which, in theory, leaves ~2,900 words. because you buy them by the bushel, buy them by the pound. This is about filling in the blanks. If I don't take time to breathe, I might finish the novel today.

5) I tell myself, "Someday, I will write another good book."

6) A first. On eBay, a collaborative monster-doodle painting between me and Kathryn. There's an image behind the cut:

( One Big EyeCollapse )

The photo was taken before I signed it, but if you look at the photos on eBay, there is one with my signature. Anyway, this will hopefully help offset the impact of a recent vet bill.

And I think that's enough damage for one day.

Dreaming Awake of Green,
Aunt Beast

Sunny today. Birds. Air sweet through my open office window. Outside, so I am told, it is 66˚F, which I get the impression I ought feel guilty for not appreciating. I'm told, just look out west. Though, yesterday in Wisconsin, from Fond du Lac to Madison, temperatures rose as high as 82˚F. This in advance of a May winter storm. I keep looking for the secret volcanic eruption behind all this. No one wants to hear about climate change. Anyway, here I am, and today it will be 66˚F or so, and tomorrow perhaps over 70˚F, and then...57˚F. Jump from March back to February. I don't want to be here.

I might mean, by here, everywhere.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,222 words, beginning and finishing "Turning the Little Key," a new piece for Sirenia Digest #88. It felt about as good as the writing ever feels. Writing completely free of the tyranny of plot or reader expectation or editorial opinion.

Today, I need not to be here. Instead, I'll try to get back to work on the final 6,000 words of Red Delicious. I'll attend to several tedious emails.

Email seems to have two plural forms. "Email" and "emails." I far prefer "email," as I prefer "squid" over "squids" and "fish" over "fishes." But "I'll attend to several tedious email" looks somehow odd. Oddish, at the least.

Yesterday, one comment seemed to see in Siobhan Quinn some sort of parallel with my own life, as though with her I were continuing my habit of fictionalized autobiography. I don't believe this is the case. Her story isn't mine. Sarah Crowe's, yes. Imp's, yes. But not Quinn's. She gets her own. Of course, I can draw her from no source but my own self, knowing as I do almost nothing of people who are not me. This isn't necessarily a negative criticism of the commentator's observation. It was an interesting observation. It just happens to be wrong, as are most interesting observations.

For example, another recent comment here suggested that the name Dancy Flammarion was meant to signify one who "dances in the flames." Which is interesting as Hell. And someone might make recourse to subconscious intent when I named her, way back in 1998. But knowing as I do the two sources from whence I took her name, I have to say this very interesting attempt at decoding the name is mistaken, only a coincidence (and, yes, Virginia, there are coincidences). A file that just happens to be 777k long, for example.

I went outside yesterday, though the trip was brief and dull. I smelled the sea from a distance. Last night, panini for dinner, which was nice. Then far too much RP in The Secret World. Isaac Snow, who is where, these days, I tend to hide from myself and the world all around me. How do people ever bear to be themselves?



(1989)

Next.

Wanting To Go Back To the Dreams,
Aunt Beast

I just read a report by a linguist confirming what I have known for some time, that "LOL" is no longer used to mean "laughs out loud," but as a sort of quasi-punctuation mark signifying "basic empathy between texters" (I am heartened that LJ can't spell "texters," but wants to substitute "textures"). Here's a short and telling quote:

Jocelyn texts "where have you been?" and Annabelle texts back "LOL at the library studying for two hours." How funny is that, really? Or an exchange such as "LOL theres only one slice left" / "don't deprive me LOL" -- text exchanges often drip with these LOL's the way normal writing drips with commas. Let's face it – no mentally composed human being spend his or her entire life immersed in ceaseless hilarity. The LOLs must mean something else. ~ John McWhorter, Columbia University

Oh, and good day to you all.

Not late April here. The middle of March, perhaps. But the trees are bright green (and red, and pink, and white, and so forth), and the air smells good. Chilly, but good. We limp along in the low to mid to high sixties, and people pretend it's spring. I see, too, that another storm is about to wallop the Rockies and the Plains. I don't think the meteorologists are even bothering to name this one. After all, they reached Z, and, besides, you can't have "winter storms" in May.

Yesterday, I finally sent the revised, expanded manuscript* for The Drowning Girl: A Memoir to Jerad at Centipede Press. And I feel the hardest part of this project (which I'm making no money off, by the way; the arrangement is between CP and Penguin) has just begun. Designing the book – which Jerad says is "going to be a masterpiece" – and gathering the art and artifacts. Deckled edges, anyone? Hells, yeah. We're discussing whether or not the pages will be presented as a facsimile of Imp's typescript, set in a monospaced serif typeface that would approximate that of a 1940s Royal MM. Take THAT, Kindle! Books, damn you. Not ones and zeros. Anyway, planning it is fun, but tiring. Then again, these days, everything makes me tired.

A big shipment of eBay books will be going today, says Spooky, and she ought to know, because I won't go to the post office.

Or the bank.

I've been talking to Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press about the second "best of" me volume, and we're still on schedule for a 2014 release. No idea what the title will be, but I've begun playing around with the potential ToC. So, yes, there's that. And I have to write a vignette for Sirenia Digest #88 (I think I have a title and three sentences somewhere), and I HAVE TO FINISH THE LAST GODDAMN CHAPTER OF RED DELICIOUS!!!!!!!

Because, sooner or later, you keep missing your deadlines, they send the people to repossess your internal organs and your broken car and all your toys.

We saw a truly wonderful film last night, Martin McDonagh's Seven Psychopaths. Smart, funny, exquisite.

But now...yeah. That.

Blah,
Aunt Beast

Note: The MS Word file I sent Jerad came to precisely 777k. How weird is that? I know, right?

Note to Note: "I know, right?" is one of the most loathsome phrases to recently become overused.

Okay, well, I'm beginning this entry now, but at any second I'm going to eat a fucking English muffin with strawberry preserves (NO HFCS!). Not precisely warm here in Providence, cloudy, but we might have a high of 65˚F. And at least the clouds are hiding that wide carnivorous sky from view. The plan is to get a little work done, finishing up the very last line edits on the Centipede Press ms. for their edition of The Drowning Girl: A Memoir and email it to CP, and then emailing the [muffin break] script for Alabaster: Boxcar Tales (Chapter 9) to my disturbingly eager and on top of shit editor at Dark Horse. And...I think that's all. But we won't be going south to the shore, because it's always substantially cooler down there. Fuck this Cold Spring. I am so close to moving back to Alabama. Hell, back to fucking Leeds. We could rent a house in Leeds for $750 a month, a fraction of what we're paying here. Yeah, it's in Leeds, but at least that haven of xenophobia is WARM.

I suppose there ought be a day-by-day recap. No one but me will care, but, ten years from now, I might want to know:

Friday, April 26th:

I wrote two more pages on the script for Alabaster: Boxcar Tales (Chapter 9), which came to 986 words. I'd hoped to finish it, but I didn't. Beginning with Chapter 6 of Alabaster: Boxcar Tales, I became determined to slow down and do this thing as right as I can, given I'm having to write it in eight-page increments. The first five issues, the mermaid story, was horrifically rushed and mushed up. It needed to be a five-issue mini-series (~110 pp.), but, instead, I only got 40 pp. And it shows. So, I've thrown out the whole each-installment-has-to-be-self-contained foolishness, and I'm allowing this story, here at the end, to take the time it needs. I am not proud of those first five installments. To my memory, I did nothing else of note on Thursday. I'm thinking. Oh, I'm still working on the November 2012 issue of JVP, and I read "A new species of Waengsjoeaspis (Cephalaspidomorpha, Osteostraci) from the Early Devonian of Northwestern Canada, with a redescription of W. nahanniensis and implications for growth, variation, morphology, and phylogeny." I cursed the weather, but actually left the house. We had pizza from Fellini's, tiny chocolate cupcakes with star-shaped sprinkles, and we watched Andrew Weiner's The Frankenstein Theory (2013), which was much, much better than I expected.

Saturday, April 27th:

I wrote the last two pages of Alabaster: Boxcar Tales (Chapter 9), which came to 1,065 words. I cursed the weather.

Sunday, April 28th:

Spooky did most of the remaining line edits on the ms. for the Centipede Press ms. for their edition of The Drowning Girl: A Memoir (8-Back Pages). Then I took over and did a bunch of stuff that only I could fix. Then I did line editing on Alabaster: Boxcar Tales (Chapter 9). Dinner was burgers from Five Guys. No, we're not exactly eating healthy, but fuck it. Oh, and I pissed off several people on Facebook by posting:

My life is dominated by three emotions, essentially to the exclusion of all others: anger, regret, and depression. Of these, I consider anger the most positive, and so allow it to lead me whenever possible.

I actually had to ban some happy-talk Christian bitch, because she wouldn't shut the fuck up about how this was all my fault. I should have banned several others, but I displayed remarkable self-restraint. You know, you don't have to agree with what I say, but you do have to respect my right to say it. Anyway, there's Sunday.

---

Here's a tiny preview of the images that will accompany the special edition of The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, a letter from George Phillip Saltonstall to Mary Farnum (created "Indrid Em"):



Push the Sky Away,
Aunt Beast

Twenty years ago yesterday, almost one million people showed up for the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. I was twenty-eight years old. The night before, I'd driven up from Birmingham with a couple of friends, Jada and Katharine. The sun was bright, and I got an astoundingly bad sunburn. I snuck away from the crowd for about an hour to race through the vertebrate paleontology halls at the Smithsonian. I saw much of the AIDS quilt spread out on the Mall. It was a long, strange, sad, and hopeful day. It was a life ago. And day before yesterday same-sex marriage was legalized here in Rhode Island. Well, pending Governor Lincoln Chafee's signature – which will come next week. The Senate voted 26-12 in favor of the legalization, and those twenty-seven included all five of RI's Republican Senators. Which means gay marriage is now legal in every New England state. Of course, in Alabama, not much has changed since April 25, 1993. Except there are fewer gay bars. Most of the country, twenty years after the march, remains determined to enshrine bigotry and homophobia in the name of "protecting" heterosexual marriage (though the current het divorce rate is ~40-50%). To quote the article I linked to above:

Thirty-one states have enacted Constitutional amendments barring same-sex marriage and undoing those could take a lifetime or more. (Dorothy J. Samuels, the New York Times)

But I was there, and the sun was hot, and it was something to see and to be a part of. Maybe it helped and maybe it didn't. But we tried. Twenty years later, I no longer march, and I am in New England where GLBT people are treated better than most places. And, sadly, I'm not the idealist I was.

---

Still cold spring here in Providence. Currently 61˚F and clear. Fuck you, cold and wide carnivorous sky.

What the hell did I do on Wednesday? Oh, Kathryn sat at The Desk and typed in line edits to the latest Drowning Girl ms., the one for the Centipede Press edition. She's faster at this sort of thing than and I, and, besides, I can't stand to look at that book anymore, not even in ms. form. She's made it through 7. By the way, expect this edition to sell for somewhere in the neighborhood of $250. Just want to warn folks upfront about the sticker shock. I sat in the middle parlor and tried to read a few short stories from Ellen Datlow's Blood and Other Cravings. I managed to make it through Kathe Koja's "Toujours," Michael Cisco's "Bread and Water," and Carol Emschwiller's "Mrs. Jones." I liked the Koja and Cisco quite a lot (no surprise there). Also, I read (from the November 2012 JVP) "The taxonomic identity of the type specimen of Crocuta sivalensis (Falconer, 1867)." But it was, all in all, a very shitty day and night.

Yesterday, I wrote the first four (of eight) ms. pages of Part 9 of Alabaster: Boxcar Tales (1,967 words), as the script is due on the 29th. I am determined this third part of Boxcar Tales will be, by far, the best of the three stories. It will take its time, which, unfortunately, I can't say about the first two. I should finish it today – if I can set aside this black mood and these evil memories. Then, tomorrow, I have to go back to Red Delicious. I have about 5k words remaining to finish the novel. Then, I'll be getting the remaining four installments of Boxcar Tales written for Dark Horse.

I don't want to be here. I don't want to be writing. Not anything at all.

My weight has, since February, dropped from 195 lbs. to 178 lbs.

Yesterday, I read (also from the November 2012 JVP) "Fossil evidence for earliest Neogene American faunal interchange: Boa (Serpentes, Boinae) from the Early Miocene of Panama" and "The braincase and inner ear of Placodus gigas (Sauropterygia, Placodontia)—a new reconstruction based on micro-computed tomographic data." That was yesterday, more or less. Spooky made a Thai curry stir fry for dinner: ground pork, coconut milk, garlic, asparagus (in season now), red chili paste, and portobellos. I haven't left the house in eight days (if we count today, and maybe we ought not).

Okay. Enough of this.

Enough,
Aunt Beast

Yesterday, I wrote 1,179 words on the final chapter (oh, thank fuck) of Red Delicious. Probably, I'm no more than four days, at most, from The End. But, I have to stop today and make all the line edits to the ms. for the Centipede Press edition of The Drowning Girl: A Memoir. It occurs to me, just now, that I need to make sure that this is the version of the ms. the translations are made from (minus the additional 10k words), not the original Roc text. Shit, if it's not already too late. And I have to pray no one publishing the book in a foreign language resorts to optical character recognition, a process that ought to be illegal.

I digress.

It's pretending to be early April out there. Bright, sunny, a too-blue wide carnivorous sky, the first real spray of green in the trees, the mercury straining to reach the day's high of 64˚F. I am so fucking sick of this endless cold weather.

My thanks for all the comments the last two days. They're appreciated. I've tried to reply to most.

Oh, you should have a look at the latest Subterranean Magazine, free and online, which includes "The Prayer of Ninety Cats," which is probably one of the three or four best short stories I've written in the last several years. Which makes it one of the best I've ever written. I say so myself.

Last night, we saw the second episode of Defiance. I'm truly loving this show. Last night, the use of Nirvana's "Come As You Are" at the end, that was brilliant. When people ask me what Defiance is like I say, "Just imagine Battlestar Galactica, Farscape, and Firefly, with a dash of the MMO Rift."

Also, I read an article in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, "Dentition of Late Cretaceous shark, Ptychodus mortoni (Elasmobranchii, Ptychodontidae)." Ptychodus has long been a mystery, in part because the skeletons of elasmobranchs, being primarily composed of cartilage, don't tend to fossilize. Usually, you're lucky to get teeth and vertebrae. Ptychodus has massive teeth obviously adapted to a diet of shellfish, possibly augmented with sea turtles. The individual teeth were arranged in the upper and lower jaws in impressive batteries, and any given Ptychodus had ~500 teeth in its mouth. When I was doing paleontology in Upper Cretaceous of Gulf Coastal Alabama, the teeth of Ptychodus were extremely common in some strata. On average, they were probably about 3-4 cm wide. A decent size for a shark tooth. But on one occasion, we turned up a tooth that was 7-8 cm. wide, and with a crown probably 5-6 cm tall (keep in mind, I'm working from memories that are thirty years old). Big damn tooth, so we knew there had been some impressive individuals of the genus. Anyway, this new study finds, based on some fairly complete tooth plates, that Ptychodus could reach lengths of at least 13.7 metres (44.9 feet). Now, the modern Whale Shark – the largest living "fish" – only reaches lengths of about 12.65 metres (41.5 feet) and the much ballyhooed ?Carcharodon megalodon likely grew no longer than 16 metres (52 feet). Back in the day, we tended to think of Ptychodus a rather humble creature. No, it was quite an impressive beast. The JVP paper made me even more nostalgic than usual for my days as a scientist.

Nor Feeling Especially Impressive,
Aunt Beast

Punching something would feel good, especially if that something would bleed afterwards.

Anyway...

Yesterday, I wrote 1,353 words on Red Delicious. It's the first time I'd written anything on the book since April 13th. That's a lot of wasted time.

Having just read through The Drowning Girl: A Memoir again, I'm a bit more prickly about idiotic remarks than usual. I don't mean remarks by people who had thoughtful, considered reasons for disliking the novel. It's not for everyone. Nothing is. I mean idiotic remarks. To wit, from Amazon:

This book goes nowhere, and stays there. It is boring and goes on and on about nothing. I was excited when I saw the plot but very disappointed when I started reading the story. ("Felineflirt"*; April 17, 2013)

– and –

Boring!! Stupid!! How many times can you repeat the same thing? Over and over again, page after page. I only finished reading it because I belong to a book club and we chose it. Probably the worse [sic] book ever! There was no actual real plot or subsdtance to it. Sorry - but it was horrible!! (Saundra Barrett; April 22, 2013)

Yeah. See, those are not thoughtful, considered "reviews" by intelligent, articulate people. Those are to literary commentary what baby vomit is to haute cuisine. It's spatters of words coughed up by people who barely know how to read, much less write, much less write coherently about what they've read. And really, that's what this is all about: Reading comprehension. Okay, well, that and an openness to texts that move beyond fireside A-Z narratives. And I say "Fuck them." I learned to write reading William Faulkner, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., William Blake, T. S. Eliot, Philip K. Dick, William S. Burroughs, Angela Carter, J. G. Ballard, and a hundred other authors that I'm sure "felineflirt" and Saundra Barrett would find "boring" and "stupid." Because they are what another brilliant literary mentor of mine, Harlan Ellison, calls "scuttlefish." They want pablum. They want to "know what happened." When they can't puzzle it out, they publicly spew twaddle. And, truly, I wish to fuck they wouldn't read what I write. If a book makes you feel stupid, go back to school. When I read something I clearly do not understand, it's almost always my failing, not that of the book's author.

Oh, good morning. How are you lot?

Selwyn has a cold, and Spooky's taking him to the vet today.

The best things about yesterday, honestly, were Ben and Jerry's cannoli ice cream, Vicodin, and the last two episodes of Season Four of Nurse Jackie. Most of the rest of the day can fuck off and die a screaming, unspeakably painful death.

Along with the screaming inside my head.

Into a World That You May Not Remember,
Aunt Beast

*Gotta be a "Neko."

Since I began posting my blog at LiveJournal, way back in April 2004, I don't believe I've gone this long without making an entry. I see that the last actual, substantial entry I made was back on April 14th. Anyway, there are reasons, which I'm neither going to detail nor belabor. I will say, simply, this month has been a Very, Very Bad Month, and physical and emotional stresses collided with writing deadlines, big badda boom. And then the shit in Boston. And this lingering chill in the air. All of it. But I've seen murmurs, whispers, and innuendo on FB, and no, I'm still here. Should that change, I promise someone will eventually – well, probably eventually – report my exit. Am I "well"? No. But I abide. I've gotten a disastrously tiny amount of work done, and I've "squandered" many nights in RP on The Secret World, doing my best to forget I'm me. Every now and again, it even works.

Oh, and I've always wanted to say this: Zeus, you can blow me.

Red Delicious isn't finished. I probably have only about 8,000 words to go. But I locked up on The End, on those final events that draw the story to a close. Regardless, I have to finish it this week. Before Friday. I'll be able to reveal the cover of the novel in just a few days.

Yesterday, we finally finished the read-through on The Drowning Girl: A Memoir that was necessary for the Centipede Press edition. I love the novel. Yeah, I actually said that about something I wrote. But, I fucking swear, I'm never reading it again. Every time I've had to read back over the novel, I see how truly it is indeed a "fictionalized autobiography," and I never need to go there again. I have looked "...longer still at what pains" me. No, I'll never be unhaunted. I'll always be coughing up that bathwater, but it's time to move on.

I have to get the next installment of Alabaster: Boxcar Tales written later this week, and the last five installments all need to be written by the end of the first week or so of May. I also have Sirenia Digest #88 to produce. As regards the latter, I have managed to write three sentences on a new vignette, "The Theatre of the Big Puppet." Wanna be me for a while?

---

On Friday, we managed to make a matinée of Oblivion. I hadn't expected to like it, but I did. It continues the long tradition of Tom Cruise, whom I do not like, starring in movies I do. In many ways, this film is reminiscent of both Steven Spielberg's Minority Report (2002) and also the SF films of the 1970s. I do recommend it, but I also wish it could have been as intelligent a film as it clearly wanted to be. It is a visually stunning film.

We've been watching the latest seasons of Nurse Jackie and Weeds. I've gotten little reading done, little reading not related to work, mostly technical paleontology stuff. For example, "Postcranial anatomy of Jeholosaurus shangyuanensis (Dinosauria, Ornithischia) from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation of China" and "A new large pterosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Patagonia." Oh, I also finished Paolo Bacigaulpi's Drowned Cities; I fear his YA novels just aren't for me.

I had the first round of bleaching on my hair, pushing it towards white. Right now, it's sort of light, light blonde, and I have another visit to the salon in two weeks or so to try to get nearer white. Not there yet.

And really, that's about it. I've been wishing for warmer weather, but it hasn't yet truly arrived. At least the trees are greening.

This is Why We Fight,
Aunt Beast

Kathryn, here. Just a reminder that we've got a few auctions up on eBay that will be ending on the 18th. Thanks.

Sorry guys, but, right now, I simply have nothing to say that won't sound trite.

Please have a look at the current eBay auctions. Thank you.

Here in Rhode Island, I know of no one who was able to see the Aurora Borealis light show last night. We had clouds, on and off. There was some passing talk of driving down to Spooky parents' place, where we'd hoped there might less clouds and far, far less light pollution. But the clouds hit South County, too. I've never yet in my life seen the Northern Lights. Someday, perhaps.

---

Here is an interesting article on the interesting results of a new study: Do e-Readers Inhibit Reading Comprehension? A quote:

...evidence from laboratory experiments, polls and consumer reports indicates that modern screens and e-readers fail to adequately recreate certain tactile experiences of reading on paper that many people miss and, more importantly, prevent people from navigating long texts in an intuitive and satisfying way. In turn, such navigational difficulties may subtly inhibit reading comprehension. Compared with paper, screens may also drain more of our mental resources while we are reading and make it a little harder to remember what we read when we are done. A parallel line of research focuses on people’s attitudes toward different kinds of media. Whether they realize it or not, many people approach computers and tablets with a state of mind less conducive to learning than the one they bring to paper.

But you should read the entire article because, obviously, I'm extraordinarily biased in my selection of that quote – because I love actual books – and the quote is likely taken out of context. Oh, wait. I love this line: “There is physicality in reading,” says developmental psychologist and cognitive scientist Maryanne Wolf of Tufts University, “maybe even more than we want to think about as we lurch into digital reading — as we move forward perhaps with too little reflection. Yes. Okay, now read the whole article. Or not.

---

Yesterday, I wrote 1,154 words on Chapter Seven of Red Delicious (aka, Raisin' Hell). I only have about nine thousand words to go, but they are going to be, by far, the most difficult of the novel. Once I'm done with Cherry Bomb and this whole Kathleen Tierney diversion, I can once again be free of the tyranny of plot. And Tierney can blow me.

Today, as I try to puzzle out "what happens next," I'll be working on the revised text of The Drowning Girl: Memoir for the Centipede Press edition.

Last night, we finished Season Three of Archer, and fuck me sideways but that show is so much funnier than it has any right to be. To quote Entertainment Weekly (an admittedly vile thing to do), it is a "wittily raunchy spy spoof." Though I'd have said a "witty, raunchy spy spoof." But yes. Witty. Yes. Raunchy. Yes. Holy shit snacks, yes.

Okay. As the cloudy 51˚F Fahrenheit day smothers me, I crawl back into the pit of words.

Not Warm,
Aunt Beast

I'm not even going to get started on idiot neighbors who have a crew of workmen show up to reroof a garage at seven ayem on a goddamn rainy goddamn Saturday morning. Thanks to the miracles of modern pharmaceuticals, I more or less slept through four hours of incessant hammering about ten feet from our bedroom window. It was like sleeping with a severe headache or maybe food poisoning. BAM BAM BAM = incredibly (even for me) bright and detailed dreams of knee surgery and Walter Bishop helping me excavate a pterosaur.

Can there actually, genuinely, really and oh-my-fucking-god truly be people in the world who think "s's" is a good idea? You know, as in, "The bowl of used condoms in the top drawer, those are Francis's." As opposed to the ever so much more elegant, easy on the eyes, and grammatically correct, "The bowl of used condoms in the top drawer, those are Francis'." There must be those people, because they keep trying to "correct" my manuscripts...

Yesterday morning, I got the cover for Red Delicious from my editor. You may recall that, all things considered, I actually sort of liked the cover for Blood Oranges. It was a good match for the book. Yesterday, looking at the cover for Red Delicious, only half awake, to Spooky did I say, "Hey, that's not so bad." Four seconds after that, "Wait, Quinn has startlingly blue eyes." And four seconds later, "Hold on, the cover's goddamn purple!" Yes, I can go from pleasantly surprised to rabid in about eight seconds. Over a stupid book cover. Anyway, I wrote my editor – a fine and patient woman – and did a halfway decent job of raising my objections without coming off like a total jackass. I didn't even ask how they found artists from a planet where Red Delicious apples and blood are various shades of phlox and mauve. See? I was nice. She said she'd have a talk with those responsible, and that the issues would be addressed. Still frothing, I said that if they weren't I was going to pepper the novel with jokes about the garish purple cover and think of a new title referring to a purple fruit. She suggested, Raisin' Hell*, which is what finally talked me down off the ledge. Now, I just have to wait...and hope someone gives said artist/s a color wheel and an actual copy of the ms.

Yesterday, I wrote the first 1,053 words of Chapter Seven (last chapter!), "Bad As Me" (thank you, Tom Waits). I seem to be back in the saddle, after six more or less lost days.

It helped that I received word from another friend about whom I'd been very worried, and from whom I'd not heard in months. He's safe and sound and hard at work, and, yeah, that was another load of bricks off the shoulders.

Thursday night, Kathryn and I finished Season Three of The Walking Dead, and, fuck, but I love that show. I felt the first season was very "ho hum," then loved Season Two (yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it's cool to hate Season Two), and was very impressed that Season Three was even better. I think what saved the series and made it good was the realization by the creators that it couldn't go on and on and on being this zombie chomp-fest. That it had to be a story about people trying to survive in the ruins of the world, about the day after the end of the world, and the day after that. About survival and existential shock. About humanity being humanity's worst enemy. The zombies are still there, and they're an omnipresent threat. But they're not the worst of it.

And now...the words...I hope.

Still Falling,
Aunt Beast

* Yes, I know that raisins aren't exactly purple, but don't be a pedantic fuckwit.

As with the several days preceding it, there was a lot wrong with yesterday. So, I'm not going to write about any of that Shit What Was Wrong. Fuck it all to Hell (where it can, please, say hello to Margaret Thatcher). I do not advocate "looking on the bright side." It's an idiotic way to go through life. However, I'm giving myself a small break today, in hope that it will snap me out of this bullshit lock-up before my schedule takes more damage than it can recover from. So...the good:

Yesterday, my agent sold Brazilian and Polish rights on The Drowning Girl: A Memoir. Which means the book is about to be translated into Turkish, French, Polish, and Portuguese. Hopefully, with more translation rights to come. German, Arabic, Japanese, and Mandarin are on my wish list.

Far more importantly, this morning I received news from a friend in Birmingham that she isn't sick, that the scare was nothing serious after all. How does one say "I'm relieved" in these situations without sounding trite?

Today, the plan is to go back to reading through The Drowning Girl for the Centipede Press edition. I'm about to write my editor at Roc to let her know why Red Delicious is late. And the rest...well...we'll see. Frankly, almost everything is wrong, and one good day won't make it right. Good news won't make it right. I start thinking that way, I get fucked over and shit gets worse. Just gotta try to keep moving ahead, falling. Falling should be easy.

Oh...here's something (behind the cut):

( Eye KnowCollapse )

Falling Forward,
Aunt Beast