Today, Ray Harryhausen is 88 years old. 1920 all the way to...here. To now.

Yesterday, I did 1,349 words on Chapter Two of The Red Tree, which made it quite a decent writing day. I think I'm coming to that point where the book begins to build the momentum that will carry me to THE END. And yes, all the fears and doubts are still here with me, but the story grows louder, so they become harder to hear, harder to feel. The critics and reviewers and "reviewers" will say what they will say. My agent and editor will react as they will react, and those reactions are beyond the realm of my control. The novel will sell better or worse than Daughter of Hounds, and there's almost nothing I can do to influence which it will be. I have only one part in this affair. I create the book, and send it out into the world.

I have ideas, I think, for the two vignettes for Sirenia Digest #32 (July). I suspect I will not get to them until late next month, which gives them a good long time to steep, to brew.

In all ways, yesterday was better than the day before. It was, by and large, unremarkable, as most good writing days tend to be. I did get my contributor copies of Realms: The First Year of Clarkesworld Magazine (Nick Mamatas and Sean Wallace, eds.). A truly beautiful book, which reprints (first time in actual print) my story "The Ape's Wife" (voted best short story published by Clarkesworld in 2007, by the way), along with pieces by Holly Phillips, Elizabeth Bear, Jeff VanderMeer, Cat Rambo, Catherynne Valente, Ian Watson, and many others. You should pick up a copy. After the writing, Spooky and I hung pictures until we were too hot and sweaty to hang pictures, and we stopped and played a couple of games of Unspeakable Words. I did an hour of rp in Second Life while Spooky fixed dinner (thank you, Larissa). After dinner, we watched the mid-season "finale" of Battlestar Galactica (via Spooky's laptop), "Revelations." Wow. That was worth the wait, and the episode's ending rather knocked the breath from me. Were I the creator, I would have been sorely tempted to allow that to stand as the ending for the entire series. Later, I carried a table down into the basement, and took some photos down there. Richard Upton Pickman would adore our basement. I'll post some of the photos tomorrow, maybe. Anyway, then I did some more rp in SL. It was a night of oddly sad rp. omegamorningsta caught onto the fact that the Nareth/Labyrinth thing is meant to parallel the Fred/Illyria dichotomy (from Angel, Season 5), and that pleased me. Though, Fred was a far, far better person than Nareth, of course. Hell, I'm not sure Nareth was ever a person of any sort, really, which changes the equation a bit. Anyway, that was yesterday.

It's hottish here in Providence. Presently 89F, though the projected high was only 87F. Without ceiling fans or air conditioning, 89F in the place feels like 95F. The theromstat says it's 80F here in the house, but it feels quite a bit warmer in my office. There should be rain this evening.

Anyway, time to make the doughnuts.