Yesterday, I wrote 1,210 words on "The Bed of Appetite," a new story for Sirenia Digest #23. Which was a great fucking relief after all those days of not writing anything much at all. And it occurred to me that while it's entirely unremarkable that I've had difficulty writing the last few months — in the wake of the long nightmare of the Beowulf novelization and the mountain of editing/reworking of older projects. No, what is remarkable is that, during this extended period when I've felt all but unable to write, I have in fact written "Outside the Gates of Eden," "The Ape's Wife," "The Steam Dancer," "In the Dreamtime of Lady Resurrection," "Anamnesis, or the Sleepless Nights of Léon Spilliaert," "Scene in the Museum (1896)," "Salammbö Redux" (née "Little Conversations"), "Untitled Grotesque," and "The Madam of the Narrow Houses." That's nine stories during what has felt like one of the most unproductive periods of my writing career. For that matter, I wrote over 15,000 words in The Dinosaurs of Mars before I shelved it in July.

And here's another reminder that Stiff Kitten T-shirts are now available from Ziraxia. I will point out, these shirts are silk screened, not those iron-on decal things like you get from Cafe Press, and that these are high-quality American Aparrel T-shirts.

While I was writing the above paragraph, Hubero precipitated a pet-related disaster of near-apocalyptic proportions, which has rather put a damper on me finishing this entry.

I'm not even sure what I was going to say next. Anyone want a slightly used Siamese/Tonkinese pyschopath?

Well, Byron came over last night, and first we watched a bunch of David Bowie videos, and then we watched Little Britain on BBCA, and then we watched Kill Bill Vol. 2, so at least last night was a good Friday night.

I'm going to go now. I think I need a drink...

This will be one of those "I have too much to write about" entries, which means some things must be pared away. If ever there is a DVD release of this entry, all the omitted material will appear thereon.

1. The hand-corrected, drawn upon , etc. Silk auction has a little bit more than three hours until it ends (though by the time I finish this entry, it'll have quite a bit less, so you might want to check it out now and come back here afterwards).

2. Yesterday I wrote the title page, dedication, and epigraph page for The Dinosaurs of Mars, so I know that, at last, the game's afoot. The rest of the day was spent gathering last minute bits of research — never mind that my office currently strains under the weight of Mars-related books. My thanks to Sonya Taaffe (sovay) for the eloquent Rilke translation and to David Kirkpatrick (corucia) for sending me William K. Hartman et al.'s 1999 letter to Nature, "Evidence for recent volcanism on Mars from crater counts." This story has quickly gone through a number of permutations, mostly born from the realization that it should be the sort of story I want it to be, not the sort that might (or might not) make Locus reviewers happy. The setting has gone from present day to near future (though the past weighs heavily), and it has become a story of exploration and discovery, which is what it should have been all along. I'd thought it would be primarily concerned with Victoria Crater in the Meridiani Planum, but then the six "skylights" were discovered on the slopes of Arsia Mons a little while back, and I could not resist shifting the main action of the story west to the Tharsis Montes. Unfortunately, I need caverns that have been more or less stable for at least 65 million years, and the great Arsia Mons caverns might be as young as 40 million (though they might be as old as 100 million). So, I needed a new locale, which led, yesterday, to me moving the story still farther west to Apollinaris Patera, a roughly three-billion-year-old volcano, three miles high and a mile across. And it shall have caverns, as well, though, of course, no such discoveries have (yet) been made. They are plausible. So, yes, yesterday was spent reading Mars lit, and also emailing back and forth with the book's cover artist, Bob Eggleton (among many, many other things, Bob did the cover for From Weird and Distant Shores). Here's a wonderful rough sketch of the cover (which ought to make this project seem nearer to publication). We've intentionally taken a "retro" route with the tyrannosaurid's design:



3. Good sleep again last night, so thank you zolpidem tartrate. I think I got another seven hours.

4. My thanks to Bob Strootman, who fronts a Minneapolis band with the august title, The Dunwich Whores. They've recorded two songs based somewhat on Alabaster, one which I heard yesterday. Drad.

5. Spooky has finally gotten back to dollwork, and before getting down to a long-delayed owl commission, she turned out an adorable sort of Cthulhu hatchling thing, which you may see here. It's not for sale, though she might make more and they might be. Also, Madam Spooky has a birthday fast approaching, and, conveniently, she has an Amazon wishlist right here, for those who may be so kindly predisposed.

5. About 2 a.m. this morning, one of the six or seven Second Life Nareth Nishi's had what alcoholic's refer to as a moment of clarity. I blame my blasted work ethic, but it seemed to make sense to me that I should support my second existence with an SL job, and few SL jobs are as lucrative and as easy to land as stripping. So, that's what I've been doing, first at the Dark Goddess in Dorje, then at Club insureXtion in Bro City. And I have made some decent money. But I've grown sick of the people, most of whom seem unaware they've come to a strip club, and that strip clubs have strippers, and that it is customary to tip the dancers, who are, in fact, working to entertain them. And there's a certain inevitable level of assholery and sleaze and dimwittedness that one finds in such an environment, which I might have been able to tolerate, had the tips been better. Add to this the realization that even my best nights netted me only as many Linden dollars as I might have bought outright for about $5 US, and the fact that I'm dancing so much that I've hardly had time to allow the other Nareths to explore the vastness of SL. So, in short, I think I'm done with stripping. Instead, Dr. Nareth Nishi will be taking up residence in a quiet little steampunk town and having adventures and so forth. My thanks to netdancer for directing me towards Grendel's Children in Avaria, where I got a magnificent gazelle skin, an experience that played a role in the aforementioned moment of clarity. Also, I am smitten with the Isle of Wyrms, with the rambling NeoVictorian splendor of Caledon, and with the sadly abandoned cyberpunk metropolis of Gibson. So, yeah, there will likely be no more titty bars for me...unless they are suitably strange and accommodating to qualify as adventures in their own rights. The experiment continues.

And I wanted to post this comment by blu_muse, in response to the complaints I made on the 12th about the pervasive "normalcy" one encounters throughout much of Second Life, but I'm putting it behind a cut, because this has gone on a bit, I see:

( truer words )

I am, in almost all ways, feeling better this morning. I was in bed before 2 a.m. The first tablet of zolpidem tartrate (the new generic Ambien) only made me very stoned, but the second one, which I took maybe half an hour later, put me to sleep, and I slept well until almost ten a.m., so I got at least seven good hours sleep. I hope for eight tonight. And no nasty dreamsickness; mercifully, I can not even now recall whatever dreams I might have had.

Yesterday, we read over and proofed "The Steam Dancer," and then I made some corrections and sent it to Vince. I still need to tweak the story just a very small bit, and read over "The Daughter of the Four of Pentacles," but with any luck Sirenia Digest #19 should reach subscribers somewhere in the neighborhood of June 21st. And if you are not yet a subscriber, this issue would certainly be a good place to begin. There will be more than 15,000 words of fiction, delivered straight to your inbox. Just follow the link above, read the FAQ (which is a little out of date), and sign up. Easy.

Today, I hope to begin work on The Dinosaurs of Mars, which I'd like to have finished by the second week of July. I spoke with producer D yesterday about the "Onion" screenplay, to ask if we could put yesterday's meeting off until today (as I was nearing delirium and all but useless), and he proposed we wait until Thursday so that I'd have another day more to recover from the insomnia, which was very kind of him. Anyway, I'll likely be getting back to work on the screenplay tomorrow evening.

Sometime after six p.m. last night, a bank of clouds moved in from the northeast, and Spooky and I sat out on the front porch and watched a vortex of blue-greys and purples and dusky pinks swirling overhead. The wind was wonderful and smelled of rain and ozone. The clouds brought a heavy, cold downpour and a little hail. Today the sun is back, but the temps are much cooler. Hopefully, the drought is over.

The hand-corrected Silk auction has only about 26 hours left to go, so if you're interested, take note. This is not the sort of thing you get a second chance on (unless, of course, you buy it from whoever wins this auction). I'll repost photos of the book sometime this evening. This is, truly, a unique item. There will only ever be just this one.

And I have read the news that Mr. Wizard (Don Herbert) has died at 89 years of age.

I think I'm fairly infuriated at the makers of FTP Thingy. I was running the original freeware version on my iBook, and it was a great programme. So, when I got the iMac, I downloaded the new version. But now it's nagware, and it's nagware that doesn't really work unless you pony up the registration fee. Frell that. I'll find some way of uploading images to my website URL without paying for the privilage. Blah, blah, blah. Never mind. There's a whole lot of annoying this a.m., following from insomnia and nightmares and the fact that there's so much to be written that we're having to pass on New England this summer, even though the same accommodations were offered to us as last summer. Maybe we can make it up sometime in the autumn, maybe.

Yesterday, I did 1,577 words on "The Steam Dancer," which is sort of funny, because I'd made a note in my day-planner to write today about how nice it is to only be doing about a thousand words a day again, now that all those marches are behind me, but then the story had to go and have an Unexpected Conversation. So that's another never mind. The story's working out well, though. I'd planned it to go to four-thousand words, but now it's going to be at least five. Still, it needs to be finished by this evening, so that I can get started on The Dinosaurs of Mars. Also, there's a meeting with producer D tomorrow about the "Onion" screenplay, and I'd like this story to be done by then. I cannot think about more than three stories at a time, and right now I believe I have about seven in my head. This will, by the way, be my first Second Life story. Which is to say, that I've found that the sim has considerable potential for inspiration and character development, and this is a story that wouldn't have occurred to me had I not started taking part in Second Life during the late lamented vacation.

This comment from robyn_ma, following from last night's Steinbeck quote about writing, as opposed to writing for someone:

There's another school of thought, though, that all writers write with an Ideal Audience in mind. Could be a spouse (I think Stephen King considers his wife to be his Ideal Reader); could be oneself or someone like oneself. In any event, it doesn't seem as though you write with any particular thing in mind, but rather go with wherever The Writing goes — more organic and flowing than plotted-out and set in stone — so I imagine you don't sit down with the thought of pleasing some hypothetical reader, as ideal as s/he might be. Though I do wonder if, after having finished a particular passage, it occurs to you to think, 'So-and-so will like that bit.'

It is true that I have an Ideal Audience in mind. Me. I am my only Ideal Audience, and there are only rarely exceptions.

And returning to the subject of subversion in my writing, wolven writes:

The subversion of the standard concepts, and the subsequent dissolution of boundaries and blockages seems like something integral to everything you do. It's an intent like breathing, that then gets coupled with any and all other intentions, in your work. Or so it seems to me...

You are right, I believe. I was thinking about this after my response to mech_angel, and it's very hard for me to think of a story or novel or comic or novella I've done that does not somewhere and at some level display the intention of breaking down or, more truly, simply disregarding the boundaries that most people seem to live by. Which gets back to the whole problem of writing for anyone but myself. I write from my private internal perspective, and oftentimes this means I do not even know that I'm disregarding barriers (say those between dreaming and waking consciousness, or those between past and present and future) because my native perception of them is so different than that of many people who will likely be reading what I'm writing. To write for anyone, I would have to stop and learn how other people think about these things, a prospect which bores me to tears. If I'd wanted to study how human beings think I'd have become a well-paid psychotherapist or neurophysiologist or politician or marketing exec instead of a poorly paid writer. Now, this does not mean that I do not appreciate my audience, because I do. Very much so. But they have to accept me on my own terms, the terms by which I am able to write fiction. I cannot invert that model in hopes of gaining a wider readership. Not only would the attempt make a liar out of me, I just would not be able to do it, not with all the workshops and theory and method and seminars in the whole goddamn world.

Too hot here yesterday. We're trying not to run the air conditioner any more than necessary, both to keep the power bill down and help minimize our carbon footprint. Thank Edison for ceiling fans, and it helps that this place has very high ceilings (maybe 12', though I miss the 18-20' at Liberty House). We're having to take our walks after sunset. The parks are dry and brown. Anything else about yesterday? I've been hogging our only portal into Second Life (though soon this should be remedied, the having of only a single portal), so I let Spooky have the iMac all evening and I went back to the long-neglected Steinbeck bio, and had a cool bath, as well. I didn't have to dance until midnight (9 p.m. SLT). Despite certain annoying customers, I earned something like $1,300 Lindens in tips before I logged off about 3 a.m. I remain transfixed by SL. Captivated. It only increases my fascination that my dancing there has come to feel like a real job.

My thanks to everyone who recommended the latest Placebo album. I think "Meds" might be my new theme song. I've even loaded it onto my MySpace profile page.

Okay. Time to make the doughnuts. And here's the link to the hand-corrected Silk auction, which I forgot to repost yesterday.

Ah, where do I begin! Treachery and worse, and but for chance and fortune and the overheard mutterings of the pirate crew on whose ship I had become a passenger, hoping thereby to reach the mouth of the Caranduin...my words are a tumult. Even now, I shudder at how near this mission was brought to ruin. Yesterday I chanced to notice a very large crow perched in the rigging, a foul thing watching me with contempt. And shortly thereafter, I was was working on this blasted manuscript in what passed for the fo'castle of that leaking tub, writing by what light one can wring from tallow, when I heard the Captain and his First talking above decks. Whispering between themselves, thinking I would not hear. I was a fool to believe I would so easily evade setsuled, and more than a fool to trust the scum that ply the waters of this black sea. I had been recognized in Thaurband and word was passed from ship to ship by crow heralds. I listened in horror as the Captain plotted murder and mangled the Sindarin tongue, stuttering and stumbling over the name bestowed upon me a year ago by the elves who yet remain in East Lórien. I set the ship ablaze, trusting we were near enough to shore that I might survive the swim, and made my escape in the confusion and pandemonium that followed. Now, believing myself only a short ways east of the marches where the Caranduin empties into the Núrnen, I will turn north. I know now that I am discovered, though I have yet some dim hope that my purpose remains a mystery to setsuled. By now, I should have passed the peak of Morigost and reached the Gorgoroth. Instead, I am countless leagues west of that course, half lost or more in these desolate lands...

Or, to put it another way, the Mordorian Death March has become a sort of Mordorian Death Meander, as I wait for word from Los Angeles and New York about exactly what must be done and why and how and by when. Since I have no time to waste in waiting, I resolved yesterday, after speaking with my editor at HarperCollins, that while I wait I will attend to other projects. Yesterday, I read through "The Ape's Wife" again and made what I hope will be the final revisions to the manuscript. I really do love this story. And I am determined to get it right. Anyway, today I will try to get a head start on Sirenia Digest #19 (June) and begin a new vignette. Once again, The Dinosaurs of Mars has been derailed — or at least delayed — and at this point I can't imagine I'll be able to begin Joey LaFaye before July.

A good walk yesterday. Last night, we watched Stuart Rosenberg's Cool Hand Luke (1967). This has long been a favourite of mine, but Spooky had never seen it. When I am old and finally sit down to compile my list of the 500 best American films, Cool Hand Luke will be somewhere on that list. At midnight, we caught an old Nova episode about the creation of the Channeled Scablands by the catastrophic failure of the ice dam that held back Glacial Lake Missoula 15,000 years ago. And then I read another chapter of the Steinbeck bio. And that was yesterday — pirates, tattling crows, burning boats, and all.

Onward...

Postscript (1:09 p.m.) — I have just learned of the death of Lloyd Alexander. Another light is gone from the world.

Eight hours sleep last night. That seems nothing short of miraculous, and I didn't even have to use Ambien, and today I do feel somewhat better.

I am accustomed to being busy. I generally much prefer being busy to not being busy. But, since December or so, the level of busy has taken on brobdingnagian proportions. I guess it began with the Forced and New Consolidated marches, but now there is no end in sight. I am having to learn new ways to work, new ways to write, as there is so much that has to be written and in such a time-frame that does not allow for my work habits of yore. Was a time, not so long ago, I wrote one thing at a time then moved along to thing number next. Now, this seems like a grand luxury, a leisure I can no longer afford. Maybe in a couple of years I will be able to afford it again. But like I've said, when it comes to work, too much is to be preferred always over none at all. I just have to keep reminding myself that this is true.

I do have some very cool news. Since November, I have been talking with a producer in LA — we shall for now call him simply D — who contacted me via my film agent at UTA to learn whether I'd be interested in writing a screenplay based on "Onion." And I am. And any day now I will finally be starting work on it. Of course, being asked to write a screenplay does not even begin to guarantee there will be a film, but it is a step in that direction. The first part of the process is figuring out how to expand the concept, how to open up a 12,000-word short story into an approx. 120-page screenplay for a two-hour film. But D is acting as mentor, and I am hopeful that it can be done.

Meanwhile, I have The Dinosaurs of Mars to write for Subterranean Press. Spooky and I spent part of yesterday working out the remaining plot wrinkles. This is a good example of how I'm having to learn to write a different way, as, before, I never would have spent time puzzling through the plot prior to actually writing the story. Granted, The Dinosaurs of Mars seems to have become a particularly complex story, but it still feels very strange working out a plot a priori. Anyway, also meanwhile, I have to write "The Ape's Wife" for Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy, and there's a June 1st deadline on that. I need to begin Joey Lafaye by early July, as I have an April '08 delivery date on the book, and I never know how long a novel will take to write. And, of course, there's Sirenia Digest. Someone asked, when I announced that there would likely only be one more erotica collection, whether that meant the digest would also be ending. The answer is no, it does not. I suspect the digest will continue as long as people are reading it, as I have grown very used to having it there as an outlet for those stories that might not otherwise find a home.

The meanwhiles continue. Corrections for the forthcoming Murder of Angels mass-market paperback are due on May 15th, but I've handed that manuscript off to Spooky to proofread. I have an interview for an article on Edward Gorey to finish by Tuesday (generally, I only do interviews by e-mail). And I've promised a short story to Clarkesworld Magazine, which I hope to write late this summer. Plus, there's going to be a rewrite following from the marches of January and February, and I'll likely have to drop everything and attend to that in May. We're waiting on the last round of notes from the relevant production company, as I already have my notes from my editor at HarperCollins and from the people at Paramount.

But looming most large of all these is Frank Woodward's Lovecraft documentary. Yesterday, before the work on The Dinosaurs of Mars, Spooky and I drove over to Oakland Cemetery where Frank wants to film. It is truly a beautiful place, filled with great Victorian mausoleums, enormous magnolias, and graves dating back to the Civil War. I realised yesterday that there must surely be a ghoul necropolis below Oakland, so perhaps that's the story I'll be writing for Clarkesworld Magazine. Anyway, I'm meeting Frank there about three o'clock tomorrow afternoon to find the best spot to shoot the interview, which will actually be filmed on Saturday afternoon. He's flying out today. This is the sort of thing I look forward to and dread at the same time.

So, yeah, that's a fair idea of what my life's going to be like for the immediate future. I'll be spending today reading Lovecraft, which is a pretty fine way to "have" to spend a day. I know I'm going to be asked questions regarding a couple of stories I'm not so familiar with ("Herbert West: Reanimator" and "The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward"). Last night, I read "The Call of Cthulhu" aloud to Spooky, though I know it practically by heart. It just seemed like a good way to get this thing started. Oh, and time was spent yesterday writing the prolegomena for Sirenia Digest #17. I have Sonya's story, "Odd Sympathy," a fine bit of steampunk, and Vince is working on this month's illustration. I hope to have the digest out to subscribers on Monday. And I also spoke with my new editor at Roc, Anne Sowards, for the first time yesterday.

Okay. HPL and the platypus beckon. I need to get moving, as we have dinner with "Hannah" and Jim this evening. Behind the cut, you will find some photos I took yesterday at Oakland Cemetery.

( Gardens of the Dead )

Almost all day yesterday was spent trying to get the (still unnamed) iMac just the way I need it to be. I say almost all yesterday, because Google Earth has become an enormous distraction/source of procrastination. Today, I still have files to move off Hindrance, because I'm having to shuttle them on a temperamental one-gig thumb drive, not having the proper FireWire cable to simply transfer everything directly. Also, I haven't yet registered the new machine with AppleCare. Stuff like that. Eventually, I will be writing again. The grinding monotony of daily word counts shall return.

And hopefully, when I am ready to start writing again, I will have at last figured out the beginning of The Dinosaurs of Mars. The narrative structure and voice of the story are proving damned elusive. I begin to fear I may have too much story for a mere 35K-word novella, but I'm not ditching any element just yet. I only have to find my way in.

I am getting lots of reading done, though most of it is related to The Dinosaurs of Mars. Reports of the MER Mission, Spirit and Opportunity, Victoria Crater, Martian geology, terran taphonomy, all sorts of nutty UFO/ancient astronaut/Iapetus is an spacecraft-type stuff, film history, etc. Oh, and Steven Bach's Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of Heaven's Gate (1985; also relevant to The Dinosaurs of Mars), which I believe robyn_ma first suggested I should read. I am enjoying it quite a lot. Also, though unrelated to the book, Spooky and I finished Lemony Snicket's The Bad Beginning last night and will now proceed to The Reptile Room.

Still working on the marked-up hb of Silk, too, and that will be on eBay before very much longer. Also, I have half the lettered editions of Tales from the Woeful Platypus (L-Z), and we're planning to auction them with somewhat adorable little hand-sewn paisley platypus beanbags that I'm going to make (given I obviously have oodles and oodles of free time in which to sew platypuses). All this is Coming Soon.

Last night, Jim and "Hannah" dropped by, and we walked to L5P for dinner at The Vortex. We had not seen them since Halloween night, so that was a treat. Ah, the tattered vestiges of my social life. I'd been planning to hook up with them later via Aundair and D&D Online, but it turns out there's no Mac version of the game, and I refuse to buy and load either Windows XP or Vista onto a perfectly good Mac. I will just have to make do with Final Fantasy XII for the time being. There are already enough geeky time sucks in my life, anyway.

I think that's it for now. Huzzah.

I think this entry shall have need of partitions...

---

Yesterday was the worst sort of writing day. First I sat and stared at the iBook's screen and keyboard for two hours, trying to find the place where The Dinosuars of Mars begins. Then — haltingly, tentatively — I wrote for another three hours. In the end, I had 575 words, none of which may prove to be usable.

Later in the day, I ended up back at the Woodruff Library at Emory, looking for answers I'd thought I already had. And that was work yesterday.

For dinner, Spooky made a very excellent pizza, and we finished off the bottle of serviceable merlot. We watch Cannery Row (1982) on VHS, a copy rented from Movies Worth Seeing because Spooky had never seen it. But the tape was in awful shape, the picture quality extremely poor, and pan and scan besides. Someday, I hope to see the film on DVD. It's a darling romp of a movie and moderately true to Steinbeck, even if David Ward found it necessary to burden the story with his baseball obsession. Back in 1982, Ward was still trying to get someone to bankroll Major League (1988), and I suppose his preoccupation with that project was allowed to creep into his Cannery Row script. Most of the rest of the evening was spent reading, first one book and then another.

---

So, yes, Oprah Winfrey has chosen The Road for her book club thing. And, somehow, she's finagled an interview with Cormac McCarthy. She has even deigned to say of the novel that "it's fascinating." How utterly fucking insipid. I suppose — to put on my Lemony Snicket hat for a moment — fascinating is a word which here means almost unutterably horrific, brutal, and uncompromisingly bleak, an ode to the end of humanity. I admit I am disappointed that McCarthy accepted her invitation for an interview, but what the hell. I expect his agent and publisher would have had massive fucking coronaries and dropped dead if he'd done otherwise. I must accept that I live in a world where Oprah Winfrey is the ultimate arbiter of what one should read.

---

I've been meaning to write more here about Children of Men. I think it's going to be with me for a very long time, that film, as well it ought. More than anything, and like The Road before it, Children of Men stoked my conviction that we are indeed living at the end of the Golden Age of Mankind, or at least the end of this particular human civilization. That almost everything we take for granted today may, only a couple of decades farther along, seem entirely remarkable, that our most mundane artefacts and toys will stand as incredible examples of luxury and excess. That all of this will pass away, and the "simplest" bits of our day-to-day lives will become miracles of a half-remembered past. A past which will be responsible for that future-present misery. It is difficult to force myself through the trivial routine of my days when these thoughts are front and center. It is difficult to see beyond the veil they draw up about me and difficult to push it all aside long enough to write my silly little stories.

Postscript (1:27 p.m.): If, in 2027, I can look back at that last paragraph and be completely appalled and embarrassed at how completely wrong I was, because everything turned out just fine and fucking dandy, well, then I can die a happy woman.

A little dreamsick this morning. Just a little. Nothing I can't shake off.

By now, everyone should have Sirenia Digest #16. It went out late last night, about 2 a.m. As always, a big thanks to thingunderthest for the PDFing. I hope to read some comments here today regarding "In View of Nothing" and "Untitled 26." There's also species_of_one, set up for just that sort of thing. Personally, I think #16 is one of the best issues yet. I do apologise for the misspelling of persistently in the prolegomena. Chalk it up to all manner of distractions yesterday.

Indeed, yesterday was a day of varied and frequent distractions, but the work got done, anyway.

Today, at last and finally, I will begin work on The Dinosaurs of Mars. It seems like forever ago that I first conceived of this story. It's been at least a year, I think, since I first used the title here. Last night, late, Spooky and I spent about an hour talking through it. This morning, I have the first lines in my head.

Last night we watched Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men. I could probably talk about it all damned day, but, instead, I will just say this. Coming to this film, I was skeptical. As a proponent of zero population growth, and with the world's human population quickly approaching 6.6 billion, it just seemed to me like the very last thing human beings need to worry about is infertility and a shortage of offspring. But. Regardless. Children of Men is a stunning piece of sf and a beautifully made film. It is quite possibly now my favourite film of 2006 and certainly one of my three favourite, together with The Fountain and Pan's Labyrinth. It is exquisite and terrible, deeply humane and completely devastating. It wasn't what I was expecting, and that's a good thing. Clive Owen is superb, and Chiwetel Ejiofor is quickly becoming one of my favourite actors. So, yes, a brilliant and important film, and I wish I had the time right now to write about it in depth (though it's hard to do that sort of thing without generating spoilers), and I am grateful to everyone who said that I should see it.

I think that's all for now. I need coffee.

We've gone straight from early spring to early summer down here. Days in the '80s. Spooky is not pleased.

Yesterday, because there was insomnia and Ambien the night before, was both slow and late getting started. I did eventually make it to the Woodruff Library at Emory — more research for The Dinosaurs of Mars (metallurgy, mostly, but also some other stuff, history and Native American archeology). On the way home, we stopped by Books Again in Decatur, having forgotten that they are closed on Sunday. Octavio was curled up in the windows, sunbathing, and all we could do was talk to her through the glass.

Last night, after a hurried dinner, we watched the first three episodes of Planet Earth on the Discovery Channel, "Pole to Pole," "Mountains," and "Deep Ocean" (this series aired in the UK in 2006, by the way). Superb. I was especially pleased with the way that images of humans and mention of humans was kept to a bare minimum (and then mostly as a cause of extinction or species/biodiveristy decline). We were given a view of the Earth in the late Cenozoic, free of those pesky hairless Fancy Apes, what Earth could be without humans. An Earth that at least seems unspoiled. Anyway, I do strongly recommend this series. There are still nine episodes to go, continuing with "Deserts" and "Ice Worlds" on April 1st. Then we watched The Dresden Files, and I was delighted to see Claudia Black, even if she was affecting some weird American accent. And then, of course, the season finale of Battlestar Galactica. I have to say that I think last night's ep ("Crossroads," Part 2) was one of the best of the whole series, and I actually cheered out loud at the last scene. Though I know that the SFC has greenlighted another thirteen eps, I would personally be satisfied had that been the series' conclusion. But you probably already know how I am about conclusions — less is always more. It makes me think that the series' creators knew they might not get a renewel and wanted to end the season in a way that would work as an ending for the series in a pinch, if it came to that. Seeing it last night, it made me wish the creators of Farscape could have done the same, and then that whole rushed, garbled wrapping-things-up mini-series (with which I have become increasingly annoyed) would never have been necessary. But yes, very, very good Battlestar Galactica, and now we have to wait until 2008 for more.

After all that television, we read more of Sweet Thursday, and I drew monsters, and Hubero pondered how one makes gold from lead...and why the sea is boiling hot...and whether pigs have wings.

Today, I will get Sirenia Digest #16 together, and it will go out to subscribers today or tomorrow. Vince sent the final version of his illustration for "In View of Nothing" yesterday, and it is eerie and gorgeous and perfect. I am very fortunate to have Vince along on this ride.

Also, I wanted to pass along this bit of news from Richard Kirk (richard_a_kirk), whom you will recall as the illustrator for Tales of Pain and Wonder, From Weird and Distant Shores, Wrong Things, and To Charles Fort, With Love:

Hi Everyone! Well after months of work, the images for my April show at the Strychnin Gallery in Berlin are now available for online preview. There are two places to do this, at the Gallery website under works for sale, or on my website, where I have posted larger format images. I'd love to hear your thoughts, comments and reactions.

The show opens in Berlin on April 13, 2007 and runs until May 9th. It is a two man show with artist Kris Kuksi. The opening reception will be on April 13th from 7pm to 11pm, if you happen to be in the area.

Okay. Yeah. I hear you, platypus. You don't have to raise your voice.

I forgot to mention that on our walk yesterday we realised that the wild violets (Viola spp.) were blooming, and we also spotted a male Eastern bluebird (Silia sialis) flitting about Freedom Park.

Two more chapters of Silk edited today, chapters Ten and Eleven, which means that the Zokutou thingy looks thusly:

276 / 354 (78.0%)

We'll do the last three chapters and the epilogue tomorrow, and then...a couple of days free of proofreading before I have to get to work on the ms. following from the Forced and New Consolidated marches. I do not know how I thought I'd have time to do 15,000 words on The Dinosaurs of Mars this month. Well, yes I do. This reprinting of Silk hadn't been worked out yet, that's how.

"A Season of Broken Dolls" (Sirenia Digest #15) has been reprinted in the new online version of Subterranean Magazine, and you may read it free. Which, among other things, gives non-subscribers a free opportunity to have a peek at what's going on in the Digest. Do note that the formatting has been altered for subpress. Originally, Schuler's journal entries were written as single paragraphs, but Bill thought that would probably be a bit overwhelming online, and he's probably right. I've tried to place the graph breaks as unobtrusively as possible. Also, the story was not originally subdivided into two sections. Anyway, I'm excited about this online incarnation of the magazine, and my thanks to subpress for the reprint. I'd love to hear some thoughts on the piece from non-subscribers and subscribers alike.

There were some thoughtful comments to this mornings entry, and I figured I post a few of them, as I know some people don't read the comments (though they should):

sovay writes: It is incredibly painful to watch people self-destruct, but I found that to be one of the truest aspects of the book.

And yes, I think that painful sense of helplessness, as felt by Niki and Daria both, and to a lesser degree by Spyder, was something I was trying to capture in the book. Cthulhu knows, I had to watch enough of my friends self-destruct back in the early '90s, and no small number of my friends had to endure my own self-destructive binges (the stuff of bar-room legends and sea chanteys).

docbrite writes:

I mean, when I look at Lost Souls now, even I want to smack Nothing around and tell him to go mow the lawn or something. But that's old-farty 40-year-old me with years of experience and hard work behind me. Nothing was 15 and, it seems to me, a fairly realistic disaffected suburban 15-year-old who knows he isn't where he belongs. It's as if there is no room in some readers' worldview for realistically broken children, for young people who don't fit any mold and feel certain that ONLY THEY have ever felt this way, for characters who simply haven't done their growing up yet. It makes me suspect such readers were the kind of people who have a great time in high school -- "These are the best days of our lives!" -- and are bitter forever after that they're no longer the prom queen or the Chief Beater-Up of Geeks, Faggots, and General Losers.

and

...I didn't mean readers had to have lived lives identical to Cait's (or my older) characters in order to sympathize with them, but only that an intelligent reader of any fiction must have the compassion and imagination to identify with characters outside his range of experience, characters who might tax his patience in real life (anybody wanna hang out with Madame Bovary? Spend a weekend on the Lido with Gustav Aschenbach, perhaps?), but who nevertheless have a great deal to teach the reader about human experience and emotion. I believe Cait's characters fit this description very well.

There is a certain type of reader, generally with a certain background, who will immediately recognize, identify with, and cherish the characters of a novel like Silk. However, you needn't be this reader in order to appreciate the novel or learn from the characters, and I maintain that people who dismiss them as "soulless conformists," "whiners," etc. have a deeply limited and — I daresay — prejudiced worldview.

And I do not think I could have said that much better. This afternoon, I was saying pretty much the same thing to Spooky, only I was citing William Kennedy's Ironweed as an example of an outstanding novel with characters that a) exist in a world I've never experienced firsthand, b) endure a good deal of suffering and self-destruction brought on, to greater and lesser degrees, by their own actions, and c) with whom I can nonetheless identify and certainly sympathize. Sure, Francis Phelan is a bum and a drunk and he can be a total asshole and he once murdered a man and he cowardly deserted his family when he accidentally killed his infant son, but, still, he's a better man than most. I think too, too many readers have no interest whatsoever in learning anything at all about "human experience and emotion."

jtglover writes:

With so many people coming to horror or fantasy looking to have Evil and Chaos beaten back, it's no wonder some of them dislike Silk, or Naked Lunch, or Wraeththu, or Fight Club, or whatever. Not that I think of Silk as an explicitly "transgressive" novel, but I think it meets that same kind of incomprehension among readers who get something completely different from it than what they're used to getting.

And embereye writes:

I don't agree that you necessarily have to have lived that particular lifestyle (goth, depressed, addicted or any others) to understand and empathize. I certainly did not (although I loved some of the influences and music and some of what's come out of it and oddly many of my friends are former/current goths these days). I think the main point is that your characters are human with all of humanities foibles and weaknesses and strengths, and those who are saying that they had no empathy for them perhaps came into the story expecting characters that at the end of the long drive of pain and anxiety and fear just stood up, brushed the dust off their shoulders, said "well, that's all right then" and strode off into the sunset with their trusty steed at their side. I don't know, but maybe it's just that they came to the story with expectations of how the characters should act based on how they themselves would act. I guess that's just a very limited way of reading a story, isn't it?

Yes, indeed. Those sorts of expectations, I would say, entirely defeat the purpose of reading fiction. And I wish this entry were not getting so long, as there are other comments I would like to quote. Anyway, they're there if you want to see them.

Today we will begin proofreading Silk, and it's going to weird as hell. Like going back to a town where you lived most of your life after being away for ages, only to discover that you're the only thing that's changed. I have said this before, but there was a time when this novel was almost all the world to me. Anyway, I'm going to track our progress through the photostat (which seems, oddly enough, to be taken from the 1998 mmp, not the 2002 tpb) with one of those goofy-ass Zokutou word-meter thingies. Just keep in mind I'm counting off pages, not words. Here is where we begin, grey on grey:

0 / 354 (0.0%)

Ideally, this needs to be done by Friday. We shall see.

Let the tyranny of commas and hyphens begin.

Some preparatory work on The Dinosaurs of Mars yesterday. Reading mostly. I fear I have so much material for this novel, so much background, so much I want to put in, that the "story" will be entirely overwhelmed. This is why, usually, I try never to begin a story with plot, but with simple mental images or with characters. Plot, more often than not, is the enemy. Give it as little "screen time" as you can get away with.

The sun is bright this morning. The trees are going green.

Last night, Spooky and I began reading Steinbeck's Cannery Row (1945). It's one of my very favourite books, and at the moment I am more in need of old comforts than new discoveries. I think we read the first six chapters.

If you've not yet picked up a copy of Daughter of Hounds, today would suit the occasion, says Herr Platypus.

Despite a bit of panic here and there — because I always go and wait until the last possible handful of minutes on these sorts of things, and then there's always panic — I wrote my piece for Locus yesterday. My gracious thanks to the three folks who kindly read the article for me. Today, I will send it away to the magazine and move along to the next thing (mostly, lots and lots of proofreading).

There has been a good deal of feedback regarding "A Season of Broken Dolls" (Sirenia Digest #15), which pleases me. It also pleases me to announce that the story will be appearing in an upcoming issue of the free online version of Subterranean Magazine. I do not yet know just when, but quite soon, I think. I shall keep you posted.

I am also very, very happy to announce that Bob Eggleton will be the cover artist for The Dinosaurs of Mars, with interior art by J. K. Potter.

My thanks to Samantha Collett of Shropshire, England for sending me the complete set of UK marine life stamps, along with a fabulous page of sea creature stickers, four of which now adorn the "lid" of my iBook (the Giant squid, Architeuthis dux; a viper fish, Chauliodus sloani; a dragonfish, Grammatostomias flagellibarba; and an angler fish Lophuius priscatorius). Also, congratulations to the industrious tjcrowley on landing the new job! Also also, the four new Sirenia Digest subscribers to whom I owe copies of the Silk tpb — you guys need to email your snail-mail addys to Spooky at crk_books (at) yahoo (dot) com. Thanks!

Yesterday evening, when all the writing and writing-related work was finally done, Spooky and I had a late walk from Candler Park east down McClendon Avenue NE, turning north onto Clifton Road NE, then west again onto Marlbrook Drive NE, which we followed back to the park. A nice sunset walk. After dinner, there was Scrabble, then I sat up later than I should have and watched Nancy Drew — Detective (1938) and Nancy Drew - Reporter (1939) on TCM, neither of which I'd seen before. It was sometime after four before I finally got to sleep. "What a dorky evening," says Spooky.

Anyway, I must now go polish the Locus article one last time and attend to other authorial tasks.

Yesterday was somewhat all over the place, workwise. I had to make a trip to the library at Emory for more research on The Dinosaurs of Mars (which will easily be the most researched book I've ever written). I sent "In View of Nothing" to Vince to be illustrated. E-mail to docbrite trying to locate the current e-mail address of my first agent (who was also her first agent). E-mail with Liz, my editor at Roc. Having recently remembered that my website has been languishing since the theft of Spooky's iBook waaaay back in December, I e-mailed the second page photo to scarletboi so he can make an image map of it. Stuff like that consumed yesterday. But mostly the library. Trips to the library are one of the better parts of being a writer. Jeez...still groggy. Finally, I seem to be catching up on my sleep. More than seven hours last night. Anyway, I came back from Emory with only a very modest stack of books:

Howard Philips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside by Frank Belknap Long (1975)
A Guide to Barsoom by John Flint Roy (1976)
Recent Vertebrate Carcasses and their Paleobiological Implications by Johannes Weigelt (1927;1989)
Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan by Irwin Porges (1975)
An Agenda for Antiquity: Henry Fairfield Osborn and Vertebrate Paleontology... by Ronald Rainger (1991)

Today I have to write the piece for Locus, which, predictably, I've let go until the last minute. And speaking of my my occasional snippets of non-fiction, the next issue of Weird Tales (#344) will include a short essay regarding a peculiar experience Spooky and I had during our month in Rhode Island last summer. Another damned experience (sensu Fort), and one I have not previously discussed. Also, note that from now through April, you may score a one-year subscription to Weird Tales, newly redesigned, for 66% off the newsstand price. That six issues for a paltry $12, just two bucks per. But the offer is only good through April 31st. Oh, here's the cover for #344:



Last night, after the library and a quick Thai dinner, we watched Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), a film I loved when it was first released and which I still find delightful. Sure, there are flaws. For example, far too many things happen for no reason whatsoever other than that they serve to drive the story forward or set the stage for the familiar adult Holmes. But, like I said, still delightful. Also, the film was scripted by Harry Potter director/producer Chris Columbus, and you can see that he brought much of the look and feel of Young Sherlock Holmes to the Potter films.

papersteven asks, "Quick question regarding the four editions of Silk: I only have the Roc tpb and the Gauntlet hc. Which is the third?"

Here are the three editions of Silk so far:

1) Silk (Roc, mass-market paperback; May/June '98)
2) Silk (Gauntlet, limited-edition hardback; August '99)
3) Silk (Roc, trade paperback; November '02)

I see it's already after one p.m., and I need to wrap this up. But I did want to pass along this link: David Roberts' ("The Huffington Post") response to The New York Times' recent attack on Al Gore and the science behind An Inconvenient Truth...or rather, the NYT' attack on the claim that the scientific consensus is that yes, global warming is real, and yes, human beings are the primary culprit. I admit, I do tend to expect better journalism from The New York Times.

This morning the weather has turned just a bit nasty. It's only 51F out there right now, with a projected high of only 63F, about ten degrees cooler than yesterday's high. And it's cloudy. But. Truthfully, hearing how awfully cold it is at Spooky's parents' place in Rhode Island, I shouldn't complain about 51F. When her mother woke this morning, it was 8F. Ugh. That makes 51F seem positively balmy.

I am taking the day off. The writing went very well yesterday, 1,831 words on "In View of Nothing." I think I finally found my way into the story, and yesterday was the first day I've worked on it that I wasn't left feeling frustrated and depressed afterwards. I will finish it on Saturday, I suspect. But not today. Today, I think Spooky and I are going to see The Host and then meet up with Byron for 300 later on (I was encouraged by curt_holman's reviews of both films in the new Creative Loafing). We might even have dinner, somewhere in there. I am glad to be done with the March, so that my writing may now resume its usual pace, and I may only write too much, as opposed to writing too, too much.

Drinker (the chosen name) ate at least one snail yesterday, so it looks like sheheit is here to stay, at least for now. Sheheit is named for Prof. Edward Drinker Cope, one of the preeminent herpetologists, paleontologists, and ichthyologists of the 19th Century and long a personal hero of mine. Also, there is a genus of Late Jurassic hypsilophodontid dinosaur named Drinker (also in honour of Cope, natch), so I can say sheheit's named for both Cope and the dinosaur genus named for Cope. Spooky just came in with another snail and a slug, a regular Storeria dekayi molluscan buffet!

Congratulations to faustfatale and nathan_long on the occasion of their Scribe Award nominations!

Last night, we watched Christopher Guest's For Your Consideration (2006), a marvelously wry look at Hollywood and hype, and we also watched Ace of Cakes, because Geoff is just so damned cool. And then I read, more of Lewin's Bones of Contention. Soon, I have to set aside the paleoanthropology and get back to my Mars reading, as The Dinosaurs of Mars looms ever larger on the horizon.

Okay. The platypus say if I'm not gonna work today, I have to get off the iBook so sheheit can "surf the web for sizzling monotreme porn." Also, says the platypus, if I'm not gonna write today, doing anything else at my desk is just mocking the poor beast.

But...do please pick up a copy of Daughter of Hounds, if you have not done so already. Thanks!

This is one of those rare mornings when I just want to go back to bed. Grab Spooky and go back to bed. Stay in my dreams, and never mind the goddamn wet tile floors and blinding fluorescent lights and missing syringes and legless albino women. Stay in my dreams, anyway. I'm not awake. Not awake, but not asleep. Ah, well.

It just occurred to me that today is not Monday.

I have learned that "Bainbridge" (from Alabaster) earned a spot on the Best American Fantasy 2006 recommended reading list. Only twenty-five stories made the list, and mine is the only one from a single-author collection. It's nice to see so many small/literary magazines on this list, by the way, not just genre publications. Though long since sold out at the publisher (subpress), you can still order the trade hardcover of Alabaster from Amazon.com (for only $16.50!); just follow the link above.

Speaking of Subterranean Press, yesterday afternoon Bill Schafer informed me that twenty copies of the limited of Tales from the Woeful Platypus were recently and unexpectedly located, hidden somewhere in the bowels of their stock. So, just barely, the limited is not yet sold out after all. But I expect it will be very soon, so if you want one of these, this is a "you snooze, you lose" situation. Red leather. You know you want it.

Yesterday was spent recuperating from the trip and answering e-mail, getting ready to descend once again into the words mines today. Now that the object of the long March is behind me, I should proceed at once to Sirenia Digest #16 — do not pass go, do not collect $200 dollahs — because as soon as it's written, I need to get started on The Dinosaurs of Mars, which has been long delayed. I spoke with Bill Schafer about that book yesterday, discussing the matter of illustrations and cover art. That's my goal for March — Sirenia Digest #16 and at least the first 15,000 words of The Dinosaurs of Mars (plus an article for Locus and some proofreading). It will be a busy month, but the good sort of busy.

Let's see. Yesterday. Well, I can say that I'm right proud of my landlord for dealing our noisy tribe of attic-dwelling squirrels by calling a humane "pest" control service, namely Animals B' Gone. Here is their page on squirrels. Were it actually my house, I'd probably just let the squirrels have the damned attic. But I'm like that.

At sunset yesterday evening, Spooky and I headed over to Freedom Park, hoping for a decent view of the lunar eclipse. But there were too many clouds in the east, and we were only afforded glimpses. The temps have turned cool again, and there was a bitter wind blowing. Hopefully, the weather will be more amenable to viewing during the second lunar eclipse of 2007 (August 28th). There's a partial solar eclipse coming on March 19th, but it will only be visible from eastern Asia and parts of northern Alaska.

Last night, we watched Ryan Murphy's Running With Scissors, which I will say, belatedly, was surely one of the best films of 2006, though I don't think the Oscars took note. The Golden Globes did. Anyway, this is a must see, I would say. Oh, I almost forgot. Byron dropped by yesterday. We have made plans to see 300 and The Host next weekend.

Anyway, here's my hard hat and lunch pail. The platypus says it's time for the word mines — down, down down....

Postscript (2:12 p.m. CaST: Two statistics I find fascinating, both from the March 2007 issue of National Geographic. 1) "The size of an average American home has increased 63% over the past three decades." 2) "1,210 U.S. Protestant churches have weekly attendance over 2,000 — nearly double the number five years ago." I don't know which number is more disturbing.

Yesterday I wrote 1,774 words, which isn't so bad. Better than "That'll do pig." Still, that number, two more words and it might have been mistaken for some bizarre act of patriotism. Blah, blah, blah. I've been at this two solid weeks now, the 1,500+ words every day and no days off for good behaviour thing. It's not so very different from prison, I would imagine.

Despite the remarkable weather, there wasn't time for a daylit walk yesterday. And walks after dark, they seem too much like someone I used to be. Our high today is supposed to be 69F*, last I checked, but then the cold and wet comes back. Weather like that is good for little but writing. So I must get out for an hour or so today, even if it means a lower word count. Because we're in for a week and a half or so of highs in the 50s, lows in the 30s, drizzle and clouds — ugh. Anything else about yesterday? I signed a box full of signature sheets for Tales from the Woeful Platypus, finishing up about 10 p.m. (CaST) only to remember that the mail isn't running today, so I can't get them back to subpress until tomorrow.

Oh, I also got a PDF galley for Subterranean Magazine #6, which includes my sf story "Zero Summer" (formerly known as "Night"). I have to make time to proof it it sometime this week. I like this story a lot. It's a piece I wrote during the bleak and dismal summer of 2005. The title comes from T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets." I also did the three illustrations (photomontage) which accompany the story.

Today would be a good time to order Daughter of Hounds or snag a copy at your local bookshop, if you've not done so already. Thanks.

Late last night, as we were getting ready for bed, I began to ramble on about the coming year, what I will and won't be writing. Dinosaurs of Mars and Joey LaFaye. Those are definite "wills." Also, I began thinking about the next two collections. Likely, they will not be finished before 2008, but they are taking shape in my mind. The sf collection, which I was going to call A is for Alien