By now, everyone who is a subscriber should have Sirenia Digest #29. It went out about 11:30 p.m. last night. It would have gone out earlier in the evening, but there was a slight hitch (Spooky forgot to attach the file, which is funnier today than it was last night). Comments are welcome, especially as regards "Concerning Attrition and Severance."

Today, I'll finish "Rappaccini's Dragon" for Sirenia Digest #30, and then, tomorrow I get a day off, the first in eighteen days, I think. And then I'll finish up the ms. for A is for Alien and get back to The Red Tree.

And now it is May again, and Beltane. Last night, there was something I wanted to write out about how I've come to view choice as regards belief and paganism, but now it's mostly slipped away from me. For a long time, I could not allow myself to involve choice in matters of belief, as I held belief back for objective science and material concerns. I did not see how one could ever choose to believe. Partly, the epiphany simply required a different perspective on things I've been saying for years. The Cosmos (=tripartite goddess/horned god/divine adrogyne/etc.) may, in my veneration of it, assume any form. It contains all forms within it that can be realized or conceived. It hardly matters if I "worship" Brighid or Mórrígan or Aphrodite or Kali. They are all merely attempts of a conscious being to sum up an incomprehensible and nonconscious universe. They may, perhaps, each function like characters in a novel, avatars that grant access to the story of existence. It does not matter if they are not factual in their existence, as their existence is true, if they are true in our minds. If they contain within them useful truths, as is the way with all myths. It is not their objective existence which makes them useful avatars, but their subjective truth, what these deities mean to each of us. For me, this is the heart of Neopaganism. Designing ritual and godforms to function as conduits between conscious organisms and the remainder of the Cosmos, which is generally a nonconscious entity. Anyway, it went something like that, and today is Beltane.

A beautiful first day of May. The sun and all the green. It's 75F outside. The holly bush below the kitchen window has a nest of fledgling robins.

I did not leave the house yesterday, which makes five days straight, I think. I wrote the prolegomena, did everything else that needed doing to pull the digest together. We finished the chili Spooky made on Monday. I got no packing done.

Some good roleplay last night. I am shifting away from trying to functon in large roleplay communities (such as Toxia or the late, imploded Dune sim), in favour of rp with a small group of individuals with an especial talent for it (and no, I haven't forgotten the "Sirenia Players": just let me get moved to Rhode Island, and I'll get that going). This way, I avoid the idiots and all the noise and strife that idiots bring. Last night, well, we were in 1920s New Orleans, a beautiful house with a grand piano. A street car rattling past outside. There was Paganini and a game involving truths and falsehoods, and blows from a walking stick, and blood drawn with obsidian sharp nails. A game, and a dance, and a cold tile floor. Sublime. Oh, and I also began planning the pterosaur exhibit for the new and expanded Palaeozoic Museum in New Babbage.

I was in bed by two ayem, so good for me, and asleep shortly after two-thirty, with is even better. Today, the moving guys are coming to look at all our furniture and junk and give us an estimate on the move. I'll slip out to Starbuck's or the park or someplace until they're done.

Another amusing Nick cave quote: "A man without a mustache is like a woman with one."

The platypus is grinding beans, so I guess that means I should wrap this up. The wheel of the year turns...

Happy Beltane, if you are so inclined. I have lived to see another May. Another winter's gone.

Yesterday was all work, and today it's sort of a blur (thank you, dreamsickness). I signed the signature sheets for The Day It Rained Forever, and those should go back in the mail to England today. Then I did the Edward Gorey interview, which was easier than I expected. I have gone on record as saying that my two favourite Edward Gorey books are The Loathsome Couple (1977) and The Insect God (1963). I'll post a link when the article goes up.

I got back to work on "The Ape's Wife," and was very pleased to discover a way for the story to proceed that allows me to keep those pages I wrote back in April. The meeting with D went very, very well, and now it's time to actually start writing the screenplay for "Onion." Also, the final round of revision notes relevant to the Forced and New Consolidated marches arrived yesterday, so the dreaded rewrite is now imminent.

Last night, we watched Alan J. Pakula's The Parallax View (screenplay homework), which I'd somehow managed never to see. I liked it a great deal, and realised I like quite a few Warren Beatty films, even though Warren Beatty sort of makes me itch. I forgot to mention that Saturday night we watched Martin Campbell's remake of Casino Royale and loved it. This is the James Bond film I've been waiting for. I was already a fan of Daniel Craig's, and he moves through Casino Royale like the second coming of Steve McQueen.

After midnight, we attended to our modest Beltane ritual. It did not involve the stove or wooden spoons, I am happy to say.

We've begun reading The Children of Húrin, which looks likes it's going to be a delight. My grateful thanks to Rachel Keane for the early birthday present. Because it is May. And May is the month when -2 becomes -3 — May 26th, to be perfectly blunt — and surprises in the mail help to take the sting away.

If you haven't yet received Sirenia Digest #17, please e-mail Spooky at crk(underscore)books(at)yahoo(dot)com right away. I hope readers are pleased with this issue. "Night Games in the Crimson Court" is one of those stories that began life as one sort of idea, and turned out to be something almost entirely different. It was good to be with Scarborough and Saben again, even knowing how it all turns out for them farther along. And I was very pleased to be able to offer a new story by sovay, especially since it's steampunk, which I hope she will write more of in the future.

And now for an announcement: I have reached the point where I desperately need a web guru. Mostly, I need someone to handle the website and my MySpace page, and I need that someone yesterday. I can't pay, except in books (Roc, subpress, etc.) and a free Sirenia Digest subscription. This someone I need should be skilled in web design, Photoshop, etc. and have the time and enthusiasm necessary to get the initial job done and then handle the day-to-day upkeep. Anyone interested should e-mail me at greygirlbeast(at@)gmail(dot.)com as soon as possible. The more experience, the better.

Okay. It's 12:22 p.m. here in Atlanta, and the platypus says it's time to make the doughnuts.

By now, Sirenia Digest subscribers ought to have #17, which Spooky sent out at about one a.m. this morning. However we had at least five bounces, so if you are a subscriber and you have not received #17, you should promptly e-mail Spooky at crk(unnderscore)books(at)yahoo(dot)com. I'm very pleased with how this issue came together. Comments encouraged, as always.

Yesterday was sort of a day off. But not really. Byron called about 11:30 and we joined him for "brunch" at Grandma Luke's. Yesterday was Byron's birthday. He has not yet reached the dreaded -0, so it was not a day of mourning for him. I had blueberry pancakes. Yum. Spooky had the banana bread French toast, which she says isn't nearly as heavy as it sounds. I am not accustomed to being out and about so early (or eating such huge breakfasts); the whole thing was sort of weird.

Otherwise, yesterday was spent finishing up #17 and getting it off to thingunderthest for PDFing. The part of the day I didn't spend resting and having half a day off. Last night, we finished re-reading Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, which impresses me more with each reading. It's that sort of brilliant.

And here it is the day before Beltane. Perhaps I'm missing the spirit of the thing, the liberty of isolation, but I find being a "solitary practitioner" of Wicca incredibly annoying. But. And on the other hand. I have intentionally steered clear of covens, because I know I would only piss everyone off after they exchanged the favour (or whatever). Ah, but to be in Edinburgh tonight, where they do this sabbat up right. Spooky proposed we set the four burners on the stove to high and dance about it naked, waving wooden spoons. Likely we shall not.

My thanks to sovay for pointing me to a positive mention of Daughter of Hounds in STLtoday.com, which is the website for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. An article (or column, I'm not sure); "Genre Fiction" by Dorman T. Shindler. I was especially pleased that Mr. Schindler notes that Threshold and Low Red Moon are "not so much prequels as novels linked by characters and theme." Anyway, you can read the whole of the article here.

Today I have to do the Edward Gorey interview, and I have a meeting with D at 5 p.m., so I have to go over all my notes on the "Onion" screenplay again. And I need to get "The Ape's Wife" started. There are also the signature sheets for the PS Publishing edition of The Day It Rained Forever, which I need to sign. They arrived here on Saturday, and Bradbury has already signed them.

A peculiar dream this morning. Turned out, I'm not the alien. Rather, I'm one of the last surviving earthlings, and almost everyone else (including Spooky) are the aliens. But I'm not buying that for a second.

Yesterday we did only a single chapter, Chapter Six. It has a title, but not one I like or intend to keep, so it's best considered presently untitled. Soldier and Odd Willie trapped in the warrens beneath Woonsocket, Soldier as a child being led up to the attic of the yellow house on Benefit Street. And now the Zokutou whatchamadoodle looks like this:

404 / 691 (58.5%)

With luck, we'll make it through chapters seven and eight today. At this point, counting today and the day the ms. is supposed to be back in NYC, I have only fourteen days remaining before it's all pumpkins and mice again. And I shouldn't count the day it's due back, even though I am being allowed to e-mail the edited ms. back to Penguin. So, less than two weeks.

As we've been reading the novel this time, Spooky and I have been playing the "casting the movie" game. Here are our picks and blank spaces, our dream cast (so far) for a Daughter of Hounds film adaptation:

Emmie Silvey (eight years old) — uncast
Soldier (as adult) — Katee Sackhoff
Soldier (as child) — uncast
The Daughter of the Four of Pentacles — uncast
Deacon Silvey (now in his fifties) — Steve Buscemi
Sadie Jasper (now in her early thirties) — Clea Duvall
Odd Willie Lothrop — uncast
Saben White — uncast
The Bailiff — Jim Broadbent
Madam Terpsichore — Alice Krige
Sheldon Vale — uncast
George Ballou — Wilem Dafoe
Esmeribetheda — uncast

Hmmmm. I'd thought we had fewer blank spaces than that.

We had a very pleasant Beltane. We picked flowers late in the day. A huge feast for dinner and then the ritual around eleven p.m. During the ceremony we had blueberry cornbread and fresh, locally grown strawberries with lambic ale flavoured with black currants. I'll post the text of the ritual later, behind a cut, if anyone's interested. Still, I wished we could have been out on a field or a wood or on a beach somewhere, a bonfire and all. Ah, well. Someday. Someday, we'll see the Edinburgh Fire Festival, which is Beltane frelling done right. This afternoon, we'll take the last of the ale and bread and a few of the berries to the two oaks, the ones I posted a photo of earlier, the ones from my dream.

And now we have now reached that dread part of the year when May 26th looms vast and ugly on the horizon, and I'm beginning to fear that -2 will be an even traumatic birthday for this particular nixar than was -0, and, you know, gifts always seem to help to soften the blow. Should you be so inclined, there's this Amazon wish list thing.

Hold on, platypus. I'm coming....