Yesterday, I was reading John J. Pierce's Odd Genre: A Study in Imagination and Evolution (Greenwood Press; Westport, CT, 1994), when I came across this rather wonderful passage:

Cordwainer Smith's opening passage from "Scanner's Live in Vain" (1950) may be the acid test of a reader's taste for science fiction. A genre reader, coming across this scene for the first time, will think, 'I don't know what a "scanner" is, or how he adjusts his blood away from anger, or why he has to "cranch," but I've got to find out.' A nongenre reader, by contrast, is more likely to think, "This is gibberish — I don't know what's going on here, and I don't even want to know.' Smith's technique of plunging his readers into such a strange situation is not universal in science fiction even today, yet "Scanners Live in Vain" illustrates a principle that is universal to sf: It is a literary juxtaposition, even a synthesis, of the strange and the familiar.

I wrote somewhere around 1,000 words yesterday. I don't have an exact count. I spent the entire day trying to write an afterword to A is for Alien. And then, finally, having finished the first section, and having had Spooky read it back to me, I realized that it was pedantic, and wearisome, and that mostly I was grinding an axe I have with a particular reviewer at Locus, which is not the sort of thing that a) I should be doing in public or b) expect anyone else to want to read or c) should burden the collection with. I'd had in mind an afterword that accomplished a number of objectives — justification of dystopian sf, examination of mankind's innate hatred and fear of the alien in itself (making the idea of "first contact" with an extrasolar civilization absurd), an explanation of why I feel science fiction should not be expected to have predictive value, and, lastly, confess that it does not bother me that I wear my literary influences on my sleeve. But...it would have gone on for at least four thousand words, and, as I said, it was terribly pedantic. I stopped writing and called Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press. We talked about the problem. I suggested I find someone else to write the afterword. He agreed that would be a good idea. A number of authors were discussed, people we might approach, and finally we settled on one we were both pleased with — Elizabeth Bear (matociquala). I asked her last night, and she kindly agreed. So, that's one thing I don't have to do in May.

Actually, I also spoke with the fellow who's publishing Joshi's Machen collection, and my deadline is not until July 30th, and he'll settle for 2,000 words, so that's something else I don't have to do this month. This means that today I can go back to work on The Red Tree (thanks, in large part, to the package of reference material and photos of the Moosup Valley region of western Rhode Island, which Spooky's mother helpfully gathered and sent to me). So, huzzah!

Also, note that subscribers can expect Sirenia Digest #30 a week or so early this month, sometime around the 21st, as I'm going to have to get it out of the way well ahead of the move (we leave Atlanta on the 29th, a mere 20 [!!!] days away, if we do not count today). And if you are not a subscriber, now's as good a time as any to correct that.

A couple of links. I wanted to repost the Green Porno link, Isabella Rossallini's bug porn, as it really is marvelous stuff. I've been making myself watch only one or two a day, so it'll last a few days (so far, my favorite is "Snail"). Also, my thanks (again) to robyn_ma for this link to Evan Dorkin's take on the phenomenon of furcons. Spooky and I laughed until we bled. Truthfully, I had nothing at all in particular against furries until I started Second Life, where they are, quite simply, a plague. Just try helming the bridge of a Federation starship when your captain is an anthropomorphic "funny animal" fox. Just try! Sure, I'm a pervert, and I have more than my fair share of parahuman and paraphilic turn-ons (Isabella Rossellini bug porn, for example), but really people.

My cold is much, much better.

Last night? Byron dropped by with Season Two of Millennium on DVD, so we can watch it as quickly as we want and don't have to wait on Netflix. We watched the first three eps — "The Beginning and the End," "Beware of the Dog," and "Sense and Antisense." As good as Season One was, Season Two is much better. Later, I did maybe an hour, an hour and a half of SL rp, so my thanks to Pontifex and Omega. Then Spooky read to me from House of Leaves until we were too sleepy to think anymore.

Postscript (3:05 pm): I meant to include this in the morning's entry, and forgot. The opening monologue for the first episode of Season Two of Millennium, which gave me shivers (behind the cut):

( Beginning and the End )

Yesterday, I did a very respectable 1,277 words and finished "Rappaccini's Dragon," which you may read in Sirenia Digest #30 (May 2008). I do like this story, though its voice and directness, the very matter-of-fact way it approaches plot, surprised me. It's a sort of revenge tale, and I have subtitled it "Murder Ballad No. 5."

There's a wonderful line of storms bearing down on Atlanta. I am tempted to get my willow wand, go to Freedom Park and stand beneath the oaks. I would scream my frustration to the roiling sky and dare the lightning to touch me. Of course, I will sit here, instead, and finish this entry.

I just counted. I've done 43 stories specifically for Sirenia Digest (not counting "Rappaccini's Dragon"). This means I've published, since 1995, about 130 short stories and vignettes (short hardbacks, such as The Dry Salvages, were not included in the count). And fully 33%, almost a third, have been done for the digest. 130 stories in 13 years. That's insane.

What else to yesterday? Well, after the writing, I packed about 4 boxes, mostly paperbacks, in my office. Spooky made her yummy Spanish rice dish for dinner, and pintos. I got a check for $330.17 from Candlewick Press, royalties on "The Dead and the Moonstruck" from Gothic! Ten Original Dark Tales (it's a very rare short-story sale that actually earns me royalties). I read Chapter 7 of Chris Beard's book on the search for the origin of anthropoids. I had a long phone conversation with my mother, mostly about moving. Byron had to be at a party in Athens, so we watched the new episodes of Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica alone. My tooth hurt, but not as bad as the day before. Then I did just a dab of Second Life. We drove over to Videodrome around midnight, but couldn't find anything we actually wanted to rent. Instead, we read more of House of Leaves, and I got to sleep about 3 ayem. That was yesterday.

Today will be a day off, as will tomorrow. My first days off in nineteen days, and likely my last until after the move. I still have to pack books, but no writing.

Had a short, but interesting, conversation with a fellow New Babbagite last night, who has also, independently, come to the conclusion that Second Life simply is not ready, yet, for "full immersion" roleplay. I would say it's only ready for rp on this level of intensity in very small groups. Three or four, and things seem to go just fine. But large-scale rps inevitably get idiotic. For rp to work, there must be complete suspension of disbelief (as with literature and movies), which means I do not rp with people who constantly slip out of character, or who use 133t, or who stop everything to IM with friends, or to chat ooc with friends who wander by, or who are illiterate, or who are not capable of keeping up, or who think "we're getting too serious," or what the hell ever happens to get in the way of good rp. It's a shame, because I'd love to see epic rp in SL. But there are just too many factors holding it back, the most serious of which may be the average age of SL users, and the tendency towards exceedingly short attention spans. Good rp sessions, I have found, require anywhere from 2-6 consecutive hours, and few I've met on SL (and I have met many) are up to that. Right now, I have a small number of people I can do exquisite rp with, and, as soon as I can get to it, we'll have the "Sirenia Players" up and running, but I am done with sim-level rp for the time being, until SL grows the hell up (which seems an unlikely proposition, at the moment).

I'd still love to hear some thoughts on Sirenia Digest #29.

Okay. Coffee. I've only just discovered that the damned platypus grinds the beans in hisherits bill...

Seems one of the cracked teeth has refused to heal. Dr. Booth warned me this was very possible. The damage was just too great. I awoke at 5:45 ayem or so, in something at least approaching agony, and it was near 7 am before I was asleep again, and the only thanks to pain pills and Ambesol. So, in all likelihood, I'll be going to have this tooth extracted sometime in the next two weeks, right in the middle of packing and all these deadlines, and I'll be losing at least a few days to recovery when I should be packing and writing.

I've been meaning to mention that "A Season of Broken Dolls" has been selected for a forthcoming trade paperback "sampler" of stories from the online version of Subterranean Magazine.

No writing yesterday, not really. We took Hubero outside on his leash, and it was good to be out in the spring sunlight, listening to the blue jays and the robins. We had someone from United Van Lines coming to give us an estimate on the cost of the move to Providence. He needed access to all rooms, and I knew I couldn't work through that, so I took a book and went to (boo, hiss) Starbuck's (and they may not have enough sense to use the apostrophe, but I do). I don't remember how many months ago it was that I laid aside Chris Beard's The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey: Unearthing the Origins of Monkeys, Apes, and Humans (University of California Press, 2004), but shame on me. It's a wonderfully written thing, and I sat there and drank a white-chocolate mocha (too sweet, but not bad), and read Chapter 6 ("The Birth of a Ghost Lineage"), which was mainly about collecting fossils of the omomyid primate Shoshonius cooperi from the late Eocene Willwood Formation of Wyoming's Wind River Basin. Meanwhile, Spooky got our estimate from a guy named Ron Goodbub, a retired Pepsico salesman from Kentucky who grew bored with retirement and went back to work (I think it's very suspicious that LJ knows how to spell Pepsico, but not Shoshonius; hell, it can't even spell "Starkbuck's" without the apostrophe). Here's a bit from Chapter 6 of Chris Beard's book I wanted to quote:

"It hardly ever makes sense to refer to a given species — whether living or fossil — as being 'more primitive' than another, for reasons that go beyond any value-laden connotations the comparison carries along with it. Tarsiers are more primitive than humans in having three premolars on either side of their lower jaws and in lacking a complete mandible formed by bony fusion at the chin. Humans are more primitive than tarsiers in retaining a separate tibia and fibula and in having much smaller eyes. The important distinction here is that, while entire species can rarely be arranged from primitive to advanced, individual features usually can be. In fact, paleontologists rely on exactly these trait-by-trait comparisons to decipher the biology of extinct organisms, as well as to reconstruct how they fit on the evolutionary tree."

Myself, I prefer to speak of character states being more and less derived from a given ancestral state than to ever use the word "primitive" or "advanced," as any given organism's evolutionary "status" can only be assessed or judged relative to how well it is adapted to its environment. Tarsiers have been around a lot longer than humans (by tens of millions of years), but they are no less well adapted to their environment than are humans, and therefore no more "primitive" (which, of course, is just another way of saying what Beard is saying above). Yes, that was a tangent.

Mr. Goodbub took longer with the estimate stuff than expected, and it was after 4 pm before I got back to work. I read over the pages I did on "Rappaccini's Dragon" on Monday and Tuesday, made some corrections, and then decided I'd spend the rest of the afternoon packing, give up a Friday off, and plan to finish the story today. I packed something like seven large boxes of books, hardly the tip of the fucking iceberg. Then again, Mr. Goodbub was telling Spooky about having just moved a mathematician who had 500 boxes of books, which makes me feel a little better.

How I'm going to cope with my schedule this month — especially with the bum tooth — is sort of beyond me. I have to finish "Rappaccini's Dragon" for Sirenia Digest #30. I have to do the line edits and introduction on A is for Alien, and an introduction for an Arthur Machen collection that's being edited by S.T. Joshi. I have to get back to work on The Red Tree and make some real progress. I have to go to Birmingham and have a tooth pulled, then recover. And Spooky and i figured out yesterday that it's likely the pace of packing will have become so hectic by the 20th that I'll be forced to stop working. We will probably leave here on May 29th, a Thursday. It's insane, truly. I'd wait and have to tooth pulled after the move, but after the pain last night, that may not be an option.

I was in bed a little after one ayem, and we read more of House of Leaves, because I needed to hear the words. I was asleep by 2:30, only to be awakened a few hours later, which is where we came in...

Ah, and only a few weeks until I hit -4, on May 26th. I do have that wish list at Amazon.com, even if it does mean more packing. Distractions are always welcome, even when i have no time for them.

Coffee, platypus. Coffee, you fool!

As predicted, no writing yesterday, but plenty else. And, best of all, Spooky's mom (whose name is Carol) emailed her to report of her field trip, on my behalf, to the Moosup Valley area of western Rhode Island. Here's a quote from the email:

Actually, I've been working on the "journey" all day--gathering old plat maps, topos, putting photos in contact sheet format, etc.

The trip itself was fine. It's very rural and wooded out there. About the only outstanding features along Moosup Valley road were in Moosup Valley, which consisted of a large graveyard, library, church and grange. All of which I photographed. The whole area is an historic preservation district, so there are old places around. Just not too many out by the road. I did photograph the Mount Vernon Tavern ca 1760 along Rte 14, and then all the buildings in "town." There was a house opposite the end of Barbs Hill Road, which I photographed. It was probably 1800's. No date visible. Barbs hill road itself is a narrow gravel road which I decided not to go down. Heavily wooded on both sides and I know that some people out there are really touchy about people using their private roads as a "cut through". I'm a coward.

If you go to Terraserver (put in Moosup Valley road as the location) and look at ariel photos of the area you will see that the whole area is heavily forested, so you don't see a whole lot from the road. The photos were taken when the leaves were off of the trees so it's possible to see the distribution of white pines among the predominantly oak trees. There are also hickory and red maple and cherry. The latter two are probably more prevalent in the swampy areas. There are alot of swampy areas at the bases of the large hills. I am going to send you some topo maps that show the size of the hills. Just like what you encounter out along 102 as you go west past 95 and into CT. The hills are totally boulder strewn down their sides with the trees growing up amongst them. The higher places, along the tops of the ridges, or hills, have more soil and seem to be good farmland. Every low spot seems to have a swamp filled with skunk cabbage.

So, I'll write one more piece for the May issue of Sirenia Digest (#30), then get the last bit of work done on the A is for Alien ms., and then it's back to work on The Red Tree. Maybe in as little as a week. Of course, the pace of packing is picking up, and sooner, rather than later, that's gonna start seriously messing with my ability to writing (and never mind the thousand other moving-related things that have to be done by the end of May). Ah, and Spooky's dad (Richard) has returned from Thailand.

Yesterday, we read all the way through the new piece, the one for Sirenia Digest (#30). It works much, much better than I thought. And Spooky likes it a lot. But it is brutal, even by the standards of the digest. I sent it to sovay, and she helpfully read it and wrote back (and I hope she doesn't mind this quote), "I don't know all the reasons it worries you, but if one of them is because the piece might not work as a story, that at least is unjustified. It's probably the most brutal of any of the pieces I've read for Sirenia and it works very well: 'We need not note the screams.' I actually really like it...If you are more comfortable locking it away in a drawer, I cannot argue with that. But as a piece of story, it is certainly worth the reading." In response to my trying to second guess my readership, the digest's readership, and my fears that the piece is too dark, Sonya replied, "However the audience reacts is its own responsibility. Yours is to the story." Which is a) true, and b) not especially comforting. It still needs a title.

Also, I packed four more boxes, mostly old issues of National Geographic, because I never throw anything away.

After the work, there was dinner at the Vortex (@ L5P) with Byron, and, then, back home, we watched the (for us) new episode of Doctor Who. And I just gotta say, of the companions we could presently have — Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Sally Sparrow, and Astrid Peth — we get, instead, Donna Noble. Who just annoys me. Hopefully, she will annoy me less, as time goes by. Byron left, and we watched the new Battlestar Galactica, which was good, but somehow felt like it should have been better. I think commercials simply ruin the flow of this show. I finished reading "New bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera) from the late Eocene and early Oligocene, Fayum Depression, Egypt" in the new JVP, and we read more of House of Leaves, Navidson's attempt to rescue Holloway's doomed expedition. Later, there was some work on the Palaeozoic Museum in New Babbage (Second Life). My interest in the Museum project has been reawakened, now that some of the sculpty software (namely, Archipelis) has caught up with my needs, as regards creating /recreating SL facsimiles of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins' Crystal Palace/Palaeozoic Museum dinosaurs. There was a brief "absence" seizure last night.

Coffee. Red Bull. Speed. Cocaine. Whatever you got, platypus, throw it my way.

There have been previous Earth Days when I've had a great enthusiasm for reporting just how awful the state of the planet is. Today, I just can't seem to muster the gumption (as they say back in Alafuckingbama). Sure, I could point out that as of 14:57 GMT (EST+5) today, the Earth's human population had reached 6,662,970,347 (with the US population accounting for 303,912,188 of those humans; that's one birth every 7 seconds in the US)*. I could get started about all those damned plastic water bottles, or the melting ice caps and rising sea level, or the fact that humans have triggered one of the most dramatic mass-extinction events in the planet's history, or the fact that populations of large shark species have declined more than 50% since the 1970s, with many coastal species, including the tiger, scalloped hammerhead, bull, and dusky shark having lost 95% of their worldwide populations in this thirty-eight year period. But. I think numbers and facts just make people act stupider, to tell you the truth. If you'd like, have a look at my Earth Day entries from 2004 and 2005, days on which I had more "gumption" than I have today. Oh, and this quote from my Earth Day entry last year:

"And today is Earth Day. And it seems to me that people are more concerned with finding 'green' solutions that will permit business as usual, and continuing technological escalation, rather than drastically scaling back this runaway civilization, which is the only truly 'green' solution. The only solution at all. I might as well be asking for world peace, and I know that. Humans hate. Human breed. Humans consume. Humans spoil. There are other things that humans do, and some of them are wonderful, but the global effects of these wonderful capabilities pale by comparison with all the hating, breeding, consumption, and spoilage. I do not hate humans, and I don't want to give that impression, but I see no point in denying that today, on this Earth Day, I'm rooting for the other team."

* courtesy the US Census Bureau's US and World Population clocks.
---

No writing again yesterday. A lot of reading. Thinking. And dithering. And the dithering has to stop today. I have come, very reluctantly, to the conclusion that I may have to set The Red Tree aside, write all the pieces I need to write for the next four or five issues of Sirenia Digest (say May-September), and then go back to the novel once we're in Rhode Island, where I can do the research that needs doing for me to write the prologue, which needs to be written for me to finish Chapter One. It really doesn't matter, as all this stuff has to be written, either way, but I am loathe to set the novel aside without even Chapter One finished. Regardless, no more dithering. Oh, and I also have to get the introduction to A is for Alien written, and a couple of other things, as well.

Yesterday, we mostly read House of Leaves, though, about 4 p.m. or so we drove over to Decatur, to Books Again, where we still had more than $78 in credit from the more than $500 dollars in credit we got when we took in mountains of books after the move from Kirkwood in December 2004. I had this fear of forgetting about the credit and not remembering again until we were in Providence. Anyway, yesterday we picked up the following (because, you know, we need more books to move):

The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer by Doron Swade (2000)
A Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable by John Steele Gordon (2002)
Three Men on the Beagle by Richard Lee Marks (1991)
Return of the Crazy Bird: The Sad, Strange Tale of the Dodo by Clara Pinto-Correia (2003)
Deadly Beautiful: The World's Most Beautiful and Poisonous Animals and Plants by Laurence Gad (1980)
Crossing Over: Where Art and Science Meet by Stephen Jay Gould and Rosamond Wolff Purcell (2000)
The Nature Companion's Rocks, Fossils, and Dinosaurs (2002)
Cabal by Clive Barker (1988; to replace my battered paperback of the same)

Books Again (and it's bookshop cat, Octavio) should be added to that very short list of things I will miss about the South. There's a photo (by Spooky) behind the cut:

( Books Again )

The lease for the apartment in Providence arrived this ayem. Thank you, Deneise and Kurt. Also, my thanks to whoever answered my wish and purchased the copy of Soderburgh's Solaris for me yesterday, and to Steven Spector for a copy of Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian.

Last night we stopped by Videodrome after dinner, because I had an urge to see Robert Harmon's They (2002) again. It's not a Very Good movie, but it has its moments, and the creature design and SFX are quite effective. It all works much better with the alternate ending, by the way. And that was yesterday, and now there must be coffee. And, also now, all I need are five or six or seven or eight really good ideas for vignettes for the next few issue of Sirenia Digest.

I did not write yesterday. Instead, I stepped back and tried to see the source of my doubt regarding what I have written thus far on The Red Tree. In part, it's the absence of the prologue/ forward/ introduction/ editor's note thing I'd planned to write after we get to Rhode Island. That seems clear now, as that part of the book is the part that sets the stage for the reader, and, it would appear, the writer. So, I need to backtrack and try to write it now, though it may be tomorrow before I get that far, far enough to begin it.

Instead of writing, yesterday was almost all reading. Many more chapters of House of Leaves, plus a bit of Stephen King's Carrie (1974). Because I wanted to see how King handled the "book about the book embedded within the book" problem with his The Shadow Exploded: Documented Cases and Specific Conclusions Derived from the Case of Carietta White by David R. Congress. Spooky read aloud to me, as is usually the case, what with my left eye being blind and the right eye tiring so quickly. And I packed a few boxes of books. I stayed off Second Life until after midnight. I fear I am at long, long last losing patience with SL, but that's an entry unto itself.

We made a trip out to Videodrome, because I wanted to see Stephen Soderbergh's superb adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's Solaris (2002) again, mainly to try and pick up a little of the mood. It's such a perfect film. I need to add it to my Amazon.com wishlist, and seeing it again also reminded me I've been meaning to put together a list of my "Favourite SF Films Since 1980."

Yesterday felt like a "seizure day," and I kept waiting, but it never came. I do not know how to explain those rare instances when I feel as if they're coming. But I'm usually right. Maybe I ought to call it "seizure weather." Anyway, I'm very glad that I was wrong yesterday.

First, an apology, of sorts, to the people who read this journal via MySpace. A few days back, MySpace mysteriously jettisoned the login cookie that prevents me having to remember my password and which email account I use for MySpace, and because I do actually rather hate MySpace, it was this morning before I could be bothered to try and remember what was what.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,267 words on Chapter One of The Red Tree. And I think that I have decided that there will not be footnotes, because too many people complain that footnotes break up the flow of the text. Instead, there will be endnotes for each chapter, which are really the same thing as footnotes, only they come at the end of the chapter instead at the foot of each page. Yesterday, I completed the first section of the chapter, and today I will begin the second.

It's that time again, time to point you to the places where you can easily acquire copies of all of my novels, and one of the short-story collections, so that no one has to utter those dreaded words, "I can't find your books." (shudder)

Daughter of Hounds

Silk

Threshold

Low Red Moon

Murder of Angels

Tales of Pain and Wonder

Not a bad day yesterday. I was done with the writing by 4:30 p.m. or so, and it was one of those perfect spring days outside. All those shades of fresh green bursting forth against the blue sky, and the sun so white and dazzling. I left the house for the second day in a row. We walked to Videodrome to return Enchanted (which I still name grotesquely charming). Then we got Thai for dinner, and then we watched the first two episodes of Millennium (now that we're done with Angel). Though I truly loved the second season, I missed most of the first. I think Millennium might have been Chris Carter at his creepiest, and I'm just glad it didn't show up on television until more than two years after I'd written my first Deacon Silvey story.

I passed much of the remainder of the evening in Second Life, rping with the Omegas in Toxian City. Really, it was all too complex and wacky and peculiar to try and recount, though Nareth's victorious battle against the sentient interstellar fungi that had infected her thrall's brain was quite invigorating. Later, Spooky read me more of House of Leaves. "Which is exactly when Karen screams." Such a sublime line. Oh, there was a very brief "absence" seizure following dinner, but I think I'm actually getting used to those little ones. So yes, a fine yesterday.

Today marks the fourth anniversary of my having begun keeping this LiveJournal on 15 April 2004. You can see that entry here, if you're interested. Since that day, I have made 1,706 entries in the journal, received 19,503 comments, and made 5,484 comments of my own. When it began, I was waiting for Murder of Angels to be released and had not yet begun writing Daughter of Hounds. We were living in a loft over in the old Kirkwood school. Of course, this journal, sensu lato, actually goes back to 24 November 2001, when I was just beginning to write Low Red Moon, and Neil talked me into keeping a blog. You can read the very first entry, on Blogger, here.

This line from Danielewski's House of Leaves:

We all create stories to protect ourselves.

I think it's going to end up being an epigraph for The Red Tree. Speaking of which, I spent an hour or so talking over the narrative structure with Spooky yesterday, first person and the problems thereof, the ins and outs of an epistolary narration, and a bit about my protagonist, Sarah Crowe. I already knew that the novel would be set in rural west-central Rhode Island, and after talking with Spooky, I spent an hour or so with Google Earth, tracking down just the right spot. I found it off Barb's Hill Road, north of Coventry, southwest of Foster and Moosup Valley. Unlike all my previous novels, this one shall come close to observing Aristotle's rule regarding "unity of place" in drama. Almost all the story's action will occur on the old farm where Sarah is living. The house standing there now was built around 1850, I think, though it was built on the foundation of a house that was erected on the spot in the late 1700s. After all the talk and Google Earth, I wrote what I hope will prove to be the first 705 words of Chapter One. So, work yesterday.

Having done the Beowulf novelization last year, I'm getting some curious sorts of offers. I've just passed on doing a Guild Wars novel. I will not go tumbling down the slippery slope of media tie-ins.

The postman brought me cover flaps for the mass-market paperback of Daughter of Hounds, which will be released on September 2nd, 2008. It looks good. Also, the signed contracts and IRS forms for the German translations of Threshold and Low Red Moon went into the mail.

Once again, I did not leave the house yesterday. I have to make myself go outside today, as it has now been...almost five days. Spooky spent much of yesterday packing. Yes, the packing has begun. It makes me antsy.

Last night, I watched two episodes of How It's Made on TLC, which I find very oddly soothing. I watched part of an episode of Spongebob Squarepants (which I just find odd). And the rest of the evening went to some rather intense rp with the Omegas in Toxian City (Second Life). Nareth took out her straight razor and gave a...demonstration...in control, and in anatomy, and also in self denial. Her thrall, Nicholette, having committed a rather grave insult against her, was the canvas. It might actually make a nice piece for Sirenia Digest, with just the right sort of tweaking. But, still, I was in bed by 2:30 ayem.

I think I need to read Le Fanu's "Carmilla" again...

No break in the insomnia, and it was at least 5:30 ayem before I found sleep last night, this morning, despite extra Ambien. And my efforts to gain weight are being met with little sucess. I'm still hovering around 170, a good fifteen pounds underweight for me. My rings fall off, so I've stopped trying to wear them.

After yesterday's entry, I realized that I'd completely failed to provide any idea of the actual storyline for The Red Tree. It simply did not occur to me to do so (and the Old Timers know how I hate synopses). I'd say it's a vampire novel, but that would be utterly misleading, as it's hardly in the "traditional" vampire mode, whether, to you, that means 'Salem's Lot, Dracula, Anne Rice, Lost Souls, Laurell K. Hamilton, Sonya Blue, or even The Five of Cups. It won't be like any of those sorts of vampire novels. There may or may not be any actual vampires, for one thing. If you've caught some of my treatments of vampirism in Sirenia Digest or Frog Toes and Tentacles, well, it'll be a little like that, at least in tone. I'm thinking of pieces like "Ode to Edvard Munch," "Untitled 12," "Orpheus at Mount Pangaeum," and maybe even "The Bed of Appetite." The protagonist, Sarah Crowe, is drawn to a fallow plot of farmland in Massachusetts (or Rhode Island) on which grows a tree, an ancient oak, with a very unsavory history. It's about history, and insanity, lost love, and hauntings, werewolvery, peculiar paintings, witch trials, and maybe even the Hounds of Cain. And yet, in some thematic sense, it will mostly be a "vampire novel." I want to make the protagonist 45 or 50, but marketing would probably have a coronary, so I'll probably settle for 37. She will likely be a lesbian. And more than that I can promise with no degree of certainty. Well, except it will be much darker and less whimsical than Daughter of Hounds.

If you've not yet seen the new interview at Fearzone, it's here.

Also, Daughter of Hounds is eligible in the "Best Fantasy Novel" category in the 2008 Locus Poll and Survey, and your votes would not be unappreciated, should you feel it is so deserving. Also, Tales from the Woeful Platypus is eligible in the "Best Single-Author Collection" category, but you'd have to write it in, as it's not in the drop-down menu thingy like Daughter of Hounds. And, of course, various of my short stories and "novelettes" are eligible. I'd especially like to point you to "The Ape's Wife." You do not have to be a Locus subscriber to vote, but if you are, it'll net you a free issue, I think.

Yesterday, I read the first two chapters of Michael E. Bell's Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England's Vampires (2001), which begins with the whole Mercy Brown affair in Exeter. Then we got a call informing us we were on the guest list for Colin Meloy's solo show at the Variety Playhouse, and knowing this might be our last chance to see a show at the Variety before the move, we stopped everything and got dressed. A quick dinner at the Vortex (fish and chips and pink lemonade for me). There are a couple of photos from the show behind the cut. The one of Mr. Meloy is awful, because it's very low light and I absolutely cannot hold a camera still. A wonderful, sweet show, despite the performer being stricken with an awful cold. We were introduced to Cornwallis the Crystal and Consquela the Mermaid.

( 10 April 2008 )

After the show, well, stuff, and then Spooky read me the first chapter of House of Leaves again, because I needed to hear it, and then I did not fall asleep until five ayem.

And I shall remind you, 'cause Herr Platypus says I should, that if you subscribe to Sirenia Digest by Sunday at midnight (EST), you will receive issue #28 FREE. And now I drink the coffee.

I've been up since 9:45 a.m., and I'm still trying to shake off the dreamsickness. An IV drip of taurine might help. I'm settling for coffee. Don't write it down. Forget it all. Push it away.

But at least frelling Xmas is mostly passed and will not come again until next October.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,462 words on "The Sphinx's Kiss." It's going quite well. Spooky likes it a lot, which is almost always a good thing, that especial enthusiasm she gets sometimes. I'd hoped to finish the story yesterday, but got distracted reading Oscar Wilde's Salomé.

Not much else to yesterday (the familiar refrain). Spooky made gingerbread. I did some Wikipedia. I forgot to go outside. I taught my mother (via e-mail) how to make a hyperlink. We watched Anthony Bourdain's Beirut special, which was really very good. We have fallen somewhat is love with him. Spooky and I have agreed we would consent to be the wives of Anthony Bourdain. Or, hell, just the kept women of Anthony Bourdain. Oh, and we watched Ron Howard's adaptation of The DaVinci Code.

Going in — knowing as I did that all that business about the Priory of Sion has been shown to be a hoax and so on and so forth — I resolved to watch this simply as an action/adventure/fantasy film. Like, say, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, with which is seemed likely to share a good deal of common ground. Problem is, Ron Howard's film is dull as dirt, Tom Hanks makes a lousy Indiana Jones, and I absolutely could not force from my mind the knowledge that millions of people genuinely believe this stuff. I can't recall the last time I saw performances that felt so phoned in. Really. Tom Hanks appears to be asleep through most of the film. Audrey Tautou is lifeless (and I didn't think that was possible). Jean Reno looks baffled and bored. Only Ian McKellen brings any iota of passion to his role, but even he seems to be on autopilot, going through the motions, falling back on Gandalf more than actually trying wrangle something from the character of Sir Leigh Teabing. And it's no wonder. This is not a film about people. There is hardly a smidgen of characterization to be found anywhere. This is a film about an idea. Indeed, the film simply grinds to a halt once Sophie Neveu and Robert Langdon reach Teabing's estate, so Gandalf can recite a litany of pseudohistory, double talk, and conspiracy nonsense in a lecture that must have lasted a good half hour. Even Hans Zimmer's score falls flat. In the end, there is very little good that can be said about the film, which should not come as a surprise, really. I think the only thing that continues to surprise me is that a book and film which posits that all of modern Xtianity is built upon a vicious, murderous hoax and that falls just shy of suggesting "the pagans" had it right to start with has been so incredibly popular in the Xtianized West.

Also, has it occurred to no one that a geneticist could not use the body of Mary Magdalene to confirm that Sophie Neveu is the last living descendant of Jesus? For that matter, one likely could not even use the remains in the sarcophagus to demonstrate that she was related to the historical Mary Magdalene. Genetic testing could only confirm or deny her relationship to that corpse, which might well be anyone. Even if irrefutable documentation existed to demonstrate that the corpse was Mary Magdalene (and it's hard to imagine how it could), without a genetic sample that could be unquestioningly attributed to Jesus with with Sophie's genotype could also be compared...well...the best one could determine is that Sophie Neveu is related to the woman in the sarcophagus. Period. Isn't this obvious? At any rate, the film is, at it's least annoying, a wishful but debunked fantasy and further evidence that people will believe just about anything, no matter how dumb, as long as someone presents it with a straight face.

We're working our way through Mirkwood, and I'm astounded that in all his footnotes Mark Z. Danielewski never once makes mention of either The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, when so much obvious resonance exists between House of Leaves and particalr portions of Tolkien's novel. Mirkwood, Moria, the House on Ash Tree Lane. It's an odd omission. I can't believe that Danielewski is unfamiliar with Tolkien. Maybe I just missed it somehow in my two readings of HoL.

Anyway, time to make the doughnuts.

Well, 133 votes are in from yesterday's poll, and I'm happy to announce that the winner of Least Favorite Food Network Personality is the freakishly perky Rachael Ray. It couldn't have happened to a more deserving soul. Except maybe that simpering idiot Jim O'Connor, and he didn't get a single vote. I suspect it was a matter of name recognition. Emeril Lagasse takes second place with 27 votes, and Bobby Flay comes in third with 25, though the two of them were neck-and-neck and are probably equally annoying. That was fun.

And I am not even going to mention the nightmares this afternoon.

One year ago today I "finished" Daughter of Hounds. Time does fly, indeed. A whole frelling year. Wow. And in only six weeks or so, the whole frelling world can read it. Of course, you can be the first on your block and all, but not unless you bid in this auction (all proceeds go to the Platypus Rehab Intervention Project).

The writing wasn't so bad yesterday. I did 1,179 words, finishing up just before 7 p.m. (CaST).

I hear Subterranean Press is having a big ol' 40%-off sale today. Unfortunately, none of my books are included, because, well, they've pretty much all had the gall to go and sell out. Sorry. But there are lots of great things by the likes of Poppy Z. Brite, Elizabeth Bear, Charles DeLint, Joe Lansdale, Norman Partridge, and oh so many others. Check it out. Also, issue #4 of Subterranean magazine is now available as a free PDF download. You'd think Cephalopodmas had come early this year.

After the writing yesterday, I soaked in a tub of hot water and thought about the end of the world, while Spooky went out to kill something cute for dinner. Then we watched a new ep of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends (Spooky hated the musical number).

We read Chapter XVIII of House of Leaves. Of all the things in this book that scare the freakin' bejeesus out of me, it's the brief bit about the Jamestown Colony that gets to me the most. The old journal discovered in a Boston bookshop. The three doomed and starving hunters stumbling upon something terrible in a snowy field way back in 1610, almost four hundred years before Navidson began exploring the house on Ash Tree Lane.

Later, speaking of the Food Network, I could not resist a new ep of Iron Chef America, wherein Mario was teamed with the aforementioned Rachel Ray and Bobby Flay got stuck with Giada De Laurentiis (I have a morbid fear that the last thing I will see before I die will be her grotesque carnivorous smile) for Battle Cranberry. Then I played Final Fantasy XII until sometime after 2 a.m. Oh, Fran. I'm going to compose sonnets to you.

Before sleep, I read from J.E.A. Tyler's The Tolkien Companion (Bell Publishing Co., 1979).

Remember that gargantuan hurricane at Saturn's south pole, the one Cassini photographed? Want to see it in motion? Just click here.

Yeah, platypus. I know, I know...

Jeez.

I'm supposed to remind you that the eBay auctions end tomorrow. This includes the Daughter of Hounds ARC and the lettered copy of Alabaster which comes with "Highway 97" and Spooky's green-haired boy doll. I should especially like to draw your attention to the latter. Presently, it's quite near to meeting our reserve price, and the doll alone is worth at least that. The platypus has herhisits dear four-chambered heart set on recuperating at Betty Ford, and I'd hate to tell herhimit that settling for less has become a necessity. Please do bid. On behalf of this poor pr0n-addled monotreme. You'll feel better about yourself, I promise.

I am, indeed, much, much better this morning. I would say that I am almost fully recovered, save a bit of congestion and this knife lodged deeply in the convolutions of my right sinus. The fever was the worst of it, though. No more fevers for a long time, please.

I spoke with Bill Schafer at subpress late yesterday, and he has very graciously agreed to let me postpone the delivery of The Dinosaurs of Mars for several months. There is so much else I have to write, and TDoM grows in my head by leaps and bounds (rather like Charles R. Knight's famous painting of a dueling pair of "Laelaps"). It has become The Project which I most want to be working on, and I don't want to rush any part of it. There's going to be a crucial multi-media aspect to this story, which I'll explain later. It is a relief, to know I'll be able to continue my research for the book, but don't have to actually write it for some time yet.

And I actually wrote yesterday. Huzzah.

Jack Palance is dead at age 87. He was long a favorite actor of mine. Indeed, so great was my adoration of Mr. Palance that I was known for more than a full year as "Aliesha Palance," way back when (long story, some other time). Meanwhile, Kurt Vonnegut is alive at age 84 (as of today). Vonnegut is another long-time hero. They have not yet all passed beyond the veil.

We had a nice walk yesterday. It was marvelously warm. Almost 80F, I think (much cooler today). We saw one of the hawks in Freedom Park, and Spooky found a four-leaf clover. The exercise left me feeling only slightly woozy. Byron came by about 7:30 p.m. (CaST) and helped us finish off the last of the pot of soup Spooky made on Wednesday. Then we watched a new ep of Spongebob Squarepants (the Second Coming of Jerry Lewis) and Dr. Who, and then Byron left for Athens, and we watched Battlestar Galactica. After that, I played Final Fantasy XII, and let me just say that I have a new videogame crush. Sorry, Manah. Sorry, YRP. Sorry, Lara. Now my heart belongs to a certain Viera nixar named Fran. Those ears. That nose. Those...sigh.

Also, I am becoming ever more obsessed with the role of Norse mythology in House of Leaves. Yesterday, I realised that Kyrie is a reference to the [Val]kyries (I don't know why it took me so long to see that one), and that, for Johnny Truant, this is essentially the role she plays. Only, in the end, Johnny forsakes the ride to Odin's hall for that other ride.

The leaves are all falling so fast. The roof of the house next door is littered with splotches of gold and yellow, cranberry and orange.

Gotta go write now. But please have a look at the eBay auctions. Thank ye.

No walk this morning. Insomnia is back. I made a valiant effort to get to sleep early last night, and was, in fact, in bed by 12:30 a.m. (CaST) But Spooky was taking a late, hot bath and something in our dark bedroom gave me the creeps, so I got up and sat with her until she was done bathing. Still, I was back in bed by 12:50, doped up on my usual meds plus a kava. And I proceeded to toss and turn until two, when I took the last Ambien. I almost fell asleep shortly thereafter, but a truck out on the street revved its motor and woke me. And so I tossed and turned until almost four.

In my case, insomnia is integral to understanding the Writing Process.

The better part of yesterday afternoon was spent searching for the story that Sonya (sovay) and I will be writing for Sirenia Digest 12 (November). We exchanged e-mails. We'd already decided it would be another bit of what has become the "Jacova Angevine Cycle." We're thinking it will be epistolary, told in letters, written in the 1940s or thereabouts, exchanged between a relative of Jacova's and someone else. Mostly, I sat here in this room and stared at the iBook, trying to will the story from Nothingness into mere Being. I also read a great deal of Norse mythology (primarily Norse Mythology by John Lindow, also Tacitus' Germania, etc.), particularly bits related to worship of the goddess Nerthus (i.e., Hertha). I got distracted (which was easy to do, wrestling the third day of a mirgraine) and corrected some Wikipedia articles on Nerthus and the vanir. The whole thing with Nerthus may or may not have relevance to what Sonya and I will write. We may stick with Mother Hydra, Dagon, etc., more familiar ground. We shall see. I wrote the opening epigraph for The Dinosaurs of Mars, a story which continues to unfold in my head like some crazed origami. The other piece for SD 12 is probably going to be an erotic vignette inspired by "The Pied Piper of Hamlin."

Spooky went out and got me a heating pad, and we put it on the floor under my desk, so at least my feet won't freeze.

I worked until 7 p.m., and after dinner, Spooky read to me from House of Leaves until almost midnight. I also imported a bunch of Dead Can Dance onto the iBook. Then I watched the last few minutes of the first disc of The Two Towers, because I figured that was much preferable than going down to the Sleep Monster with the House on Ash Tree Lane in my head. So, there was a little bit of the emptying of Edoras before the flight to Helm's Deep, Frodo and Sam and the oliphaunts, Faramir. But I still got the willies when I tried to go to bed. I was awake by 9:30 this morning and wrote in my pen-and-paper journal a bit until Spooky woke. Before breakfast, I read some of Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea, a book about the sinking of the whaleship Essex by an 85-foot sperm whale in 1820 (which inspired Moby Dick). Then there was noodles. And now I am here, typing.

There's rain on the way.

We have this plan of moving my office to the back of the house, where it's warmer, and turning what is now my office into a dining room, because we're tired on eating our meals in the dreary kitchen. Spooky's been moving stuff about for a couple of weeks, getting ready, but I look at the shelves and shelves of books that will have to be relocated and the motivation deserts me. We hope to make the switch later this week, hopefully with the help of Byron and whoever else we can con into lending a hand.

Okay. Well, time to write. If you've not pre-ordered Daughter of Hounds, I ask that you please do. Also, my thanks to Jason Erik Lundberg (jlundberg) for posting kind words about Alabaster, and to Gordon (thingunderthest) and an anonymous benefactor for giving me 18 more months of 113 LJ icons.

Does it seem to anyone else that LJ has been kind of quiet lately? I've noticed it mainly in fewer comments to my entries. I hope this isn't a sign of some great exodus to MySpace. Right now, I'm mirroring the blog over there, but I'd truly hate to think it's actually The Shape of Things to Come. Between the seizure-inducing adverts and the general meat-market atmosphere, I can't imagine it ever becoming the main site for this journal. I just don't think I could make that switch. Anyway...for those reading this from Blogger or MySpace, here's a link to the elf pr0n photos I posted last night. I was entirely too tired to mirror the entry. Comments welcome. I mean, I do read them. Often, I reply. Some days, they even help me keep my head above the rising water.

Though this latest issue of Sirenia Digest was especially difficult to get out, it also seems to have had the fewest difficulties on the distribution end of things compared to past issues. By the way, next month — well, actually, this month — Sirenia Digest 12 (which may also be counted as issue #11 or #13, depending how one chooses to count these things) will include one solo piece by me and a new collaboration with Sonya Taaffe (sovay). I very much hope that it will be out by the 21st. By the way, Herr Platypus says that anytime November 2nd should happen to fall on a Thursday, it's very good luck to subscribe to Sirenia Digest.

I had no idea that Ray Bradbury's short story "The Homecoming," long a favorite of mine (and the basis for his 2001 novel, From the Dust Returned), had been released as