Day before yesterday...well, it was near twilight...we crossed the Providence River, which was frozen over. There were ducks and seagulls standing in the ice, gazing downwards, and I imagined fish underneath them, gazing upwards, making faces, mocking them.

The sight of frozen rivers is, to me, almost unreal.

Yesterday was, essentially, a waste. I sat here. At the desk. At the keyboard. All day. And did almost nothing. I managed to read through and proof "The Road of Needles" (though Spooky actually typed in the corrections later, just before dinner). I'd realized Friday night that the closing scene (written on Friday) was probably a mistake. Yesterday, I saw that I was almost certainly correct. It wraps everything up, all neat and tidy. And removes the ambiguity instilled by the final line of the section before it (the sixth section). The final scene is pat. And it explains. And, worse, it's cliché. Actually, it's two or three clichés wadded up together. So, I'm going to do something I can't recall ever having done, with a short story (or anything else): I'm cutting the final scene (253 words) before I email it to the anthology's editor this afternoon.

On Friday evening, I received a copy of Molly Tanzer's superb A Pretty Mouth, which has a recommendation from me on the back cover. Molly kindly sent it to me, so thank you Molly. The envelope has a post mark from my old Boulder, Colorado zip code: 80301. I was already in a bad place, as they say, but I believe seeing that five-number sequence tipped the scales (as they say). It seemed like a sort of catalog number for a life that might have been.

Yesterday, I received a contract from a publisher in Madrid. Madrid, Spain. Fata Libelli. For the past two or three months there has been what seems like an awfully drawn-out process of granting permission to allow said publisher to translate "Houses Under the Sea" into Spanish. I assume this is for some anthology or another, but I haven't been told, and it never occurred to me to ask. I will be paid €140 ($188.50).

Yesterday, I also learned that Romantic Times gave some manner of positive review to Blood Oranges Which is ironic, since the book mocks and denigrates the romance genre (especially PR), and contains no romance. It is ant-romantic (in the modern sense of "romance"). I have asked my editor never to send them ARCs again.

Frightfully sunny today, currently 30˚F, feels like 14˚F. So we're sort of having a heatwave. Humidity 29%, which, I think, is the highest it's been in a week or two. Dew point 1˚. A full moon tonight.

I may be silent for two or three days. I just don't think anyone will want to hear what's going on in my head, and I don't think I can manage much of a pleasant façade. I may, or I may not. Manage silence, that is.

I'm adding Brave and Looper to the "honorable mentions" list of my favorite films of 2012. I almost typed 2007, and now I wonder what that means.

Later,
Aunt Beast