A very good turn out last night at Pandemonium Books in Boston, and many books were sold and signed, and I read Chapter One of The Drowning Girl: A Memoir aloud (all of it), and I talked long into the night (well, well after nine p.m., I think) about making the book trailer, fictional autobiography, cover art (both exquisite and wretched), Alabaster: Wolves (that's a new interview, by the way), the 75th anniversary of Lovecraft's death (I read one of his poems, "Where Once Poe Walked," written about the old graveyard, circa 1720, behind the Cathedral of St. John in Providence), and we talked about ReaderCon 23, wondered why there's an Irish pub in Boston named the Asgard, and I played my role as Grand Proselytist (drum roll) for RIFT (free to play to Level 20!!!). It was a very fine evening, and I thank everyone who made it possible and took part. Oh, I got two issues of Locus for 30% off, the two with Gary Wolfe's reviews of Two Worlds and In Between and The Drowning Girl: A Memoir (though I'd already read the reviews).

As for the day itself, well, though we'd been promised warm weather in Boston, it was cold and cloudy. Spooky took me to a rather incredible used clothing place in Cambridge, the Garment District. We walked about. I saw things I'd not seen before. I was just sort of getting used to the cold when the sky turned jerky and an icy rain began to fall. Yeah, a crappy, crappy day, weather-wise. I did spot a couple of intrepid blooms, though, and the fuzzy grey-green buds on a tulip tree (right now, I'm missing the Southern spring so much it hurts). We had to camera, but took no photos. So, the evening wasn't documented photographically. The camera was forgotten. We are all to "in the moment," as it were. On the way up from Providence, I read from David Rains Wallace's Beasts of Eden: Walking Whales, Dawn Horses, and Other Enigmas of Mammal Evolution, and on the way back I stared at the car lights and the night sky. Venus and Jupiter have been very "close." An optical illusion, I know, but still. Rapacious Jupiter, seductive Venus. The romance of celestial spheres. Of course, I saw neither stars nor planets last night, as all was bloody clouds.

Tonight, I begin (I hope) the first "Cherry Creek" story I've written since November 2008. I hope I'm not embarking upon a grand folly.

Day before yesterday, my contributor's copies of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year (Vol. 6, edited by the inestimable Jonathan Strahan). It reprints my story "Tidal Forces."

And if you've not yet preordered Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart, the platypus says this is a friendly reminder.

Spooky has a dental appointment in South County today. Cracked tooth. Then, we're aiming for whatever sort of kid night we can scrounge.

And, by the way, again...an important reason I do so few signings/readings. It cost just less than $50 for us to travel to Boston yesterday for the Pandemonium event. And that's a nearby city. I'm not the sort of author (very, very, very few are) whose publisher helps foot the bill for book tours. So...if you're in Indiana or France or Japan, I apologize. This is just the way it is.

Just the Facts,
Aunt Beast