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...

I don't know what I'd do without Paul Riddell (sclerotic_rings). He keeps me informed, as I squat here in my book-lined niche, afraid to go out into that wide, wacky world of wailing Xtians and Wal-Mart shoppers. For example, without him, I might have missed that Bill Stout (who I've not talked with since Dragon*Con several years back, when we had dinner together) is publishing Prehistoric Life Murals this October. Yay! But, then again, I also would not have to know about Rachel Donadio's article in the New York Times, which reports that even though the number of readers in the US keeps dropping (and don't get me started about illiteracy and functional illiteracy rates in the US), the number of people publishing books keeps going up. Well, skyrocketing, actually. Some 400,000 books were "published or distributed" in 2007 (up from 300,000 in 2006!), but, it should be noted, this figure includes print-on-demand and strictly self-published authors. As of this ayem (16:34 GMT [EST+5]), there are 303,957,569 people in the US (according to the US Census Bureau's "U.S. POPClock Projection,") so this means that slightly more than one tenth of one percent of the US population is being published. This despite "a recent report by the National Endowment for the Arts which found that 53 percent of Americans surveyed hadn’t read a book in the previous year." And maybe it ought not, but somehow, to me, this just all doesn't add up. It freaks me out, even if I can't quite say why. To quote Mark McGurl, an associate professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles (quoted in the NYT article), "...given the manifold distractions of modern life, we now have more great writers working in the United States than anyone has the time or inclination to read.” It seems like everyone wants to talk and be heard, but very few want to listen. As Gabriel Zaid, author of So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance, has said, "Everyone now can afford to preach in the desert.”

Anyway, yesterday I wrote 1,174 words on "Rappaccini's Dragon." Not too bad. I also packed five boxes of books and gave my set of the British Museum prehistoric animals a much needed bath. They get dusty. This collection was assembled between 1984 and 1997, and includes specimens purchased in museum gift shops from Kansas to New York City to London — but I'm still missing the ultra-rare Dimetrodon. Spooky took a photo, because the whole thing seemed to amuse her. I think she's putting it in her LJ tomorrow.

I did not leave the house. We watched the ninth and tenth episodes from Season One of Millennium, and I want a T-shirt that reads, "Frank Black lived for your sins." I did a bunch of Second Life, which I'm actually trying hard to cut back on, if only because I'm growing bloody fucking puking sick of Leetspeak, "txttlking" morons with "names" like Ididyomama229 Potroast, Sexyslut Fishgold, and Restroom Janitor. But...the Museum's coming along quite nicely. In more annoying news, one of the teeth I cracked during the Great October Seizure has started aching again, despite the work done on it in February, and so now I have to contemplate having it extracted and recovering during the same month we have to ready for the move, while I also have to try to keep up with all my deadlines.

Today, we sign the lease on the Providence apartment.

Oh, something cool from Spooky's mother and father. They set up a infra-red camera with an motion sensor on their farm (in RI) to catch wildlife photos. They got the following of a red fox and her cubs (behind the cut; and warning, they are LARGE photos, as I didn't have time to edit them):

( Vuples vulpes fulva )

Somehow, this post seems horridly unfocused and meandersome, so I think it best stop now.

Postscript (4:38 p.m.) — Was I not just extolling the virtues of Mr. Riddell? Well, now I have him to thank for alerting me to this article at the Washington Post, reporting the discovery by NASA of possible remains of hydrothermal springs on the surface of Mars, within the boundaries of the equatorial Vernal Crater. Booya! You can get a glimpse of the photo in question here.

So, it goes like this. For her birthday, I ordered Spooky an iPod Nano (candy-apple red, 4 gigs), and, of course, it had to be shipped from frelling China, because, you know, globalization and disreputable American and Chinese labour practices and shit. FedEx (you know FedEx, once known as Federal Express in those distant, trilobite-haunted days before humans spoke mostly in acronyms, abbreviations, leet, txtspk, & etc.), which usually makes deliveries here in the afternoon, showed up at dawn thirty on Friday and left nothing behind but a notice saying they'd tried to deliver the iPod...at 8:45 in the gorram morning! They would try again today, said the thoughtful, kindly note hung upon our doorknob. Last night, Spooky checked the FedEx website and saw that delivery was scheduled for today, sometime before 10:30 a.m. So, she slept in the living room, and I slept alone in the bedroom, and neither of us slept well. And here it is 11:50 a.m. and no sign of FedEx. Which surprises me not one whit nor jog. Next time I want an Apple device, I will do what I have always done and brave the heat/cold and traffic and press of bodies and go to the frelling Apple Store. This morning, Monsieur Insomnia is delighted, and I could pinch the heads off kittens. An Ambien and two kava hardly did more than give me fever dreams and leave me drugged upon finally giving up and abandoning the bed. Oh, and Hubero, you didn't help, either.

But, whatever.

There is a matter I have not discussed in quite some time, but I fear it's time to speak of it again. The last two or three months, I have been getting — rather suddenly and out of the blue, it seems — a lot of requests to read and blurb (or just read and critique) the work of unpublished writers. And here's the deal, and I hope I do not come across as a grouchy old cunt, but I do not, as a rule, do either of these things. In very rare instances, if asked by a publisher, I will read an unpublished manuscript, and if I like what I read, I might offer a quote. I think I do this maybe once a year. There are a number of reasons. For one thing, it's work. And it's work that no one's paying me for. And I have enough of that all on my own. There are, I would point out, far more successful authors than I who charge reading fees in these situations, fees that are paid with no guarantee of a blurb. I have never felt they were out of line asking for these fees, because, like I said, it is work. Another reason I'm not so keen on reading unpublished manuscripts is that it is possible for copyright issues to arise. It has happened to me once, and I know of other authors who have experienced far worse examples of this than have I. In short, an author is asked to read an unpublished story. She agrees. Years later, the author writes something with a passing similarity to said story — because it all goes into the hopper, everything that is seen and read and experienced, and fuck knows, later on, what you got from where — and the unpublished author, whose story is still unpublished, cries plagiarism. Yes, this really happens. These two reasons are cause enough for me to be wary of reading unpublished manuscripts.

At any rate, I have already agreed to read one unpublished manuscript this year, a book of poetry, which I will be writing an introduction for, and I ask politely and without ill-will that further requests from authors cease now, please. At this point, such requests will go unanswered (as answering them is also work for which I am not being paid). I do not know what has led to this recent spate of requests, but it is time for them to end. Thank you. My advice to first-time authors is the same as it has always been — get an agent, and if your writing is not yet good enough to get you an agent, become a better writer and then get an agent; avoid self-publishing, because later on, if you have hopes of becoming a published author, it almost always looks bad on your resumé (an unfamiliar name is more valuable to NYC than a dubious reputation); be sure that you're ready before you begin trying to publish, and this will probably mean waiting until you're in your thirties (I was 31 when I sold my first novel), because good writing is born from life experience as much as talent and hard work (and pointing to notable exceptions does not weaken this argument — assume you are not an exception); finally, when you do submit a manuscript to an editor or agent, follow their guidelines, and for the love of Spock, check and double- and triple-check for grammar and spelling. That's it. All my useful advice to young writers. If you still want more, there are lots of writing workshops and seminars out there happy to take your money to tell you more. And don't write me to say I'm mean, because I already know that, and I will only ignore your email.

12:14 p.m., and still no FedEx.

Move over, platypus. Your hogging the chair...

Postscript (3:44 p.m. EST): FedEx delivered the parcel at 2:20 p.m. And so it goes...

So, I just got news from thingunderthest that LJ is finally going to have another permanent-account sale, beginning on June 21st and lasting for a week. And I must admit, $150 sounds like a good deal for a lifetime account. Which is to say, if the folks who read this blog want to pass around the collection plate, I wouldn't be offended.

Here in the shadows and blinding shafts of light I call home, we are presently "between checks." It's a peculiar state of pseudo-poverty generated by a general slowness on the part of publishers when it comes to actually paying their writers (please note that subpress is exempt from this statement; I'm talking the big NYC houses). So, we reach these interminable stretches of time where oodles of money is due, and/or past due, and I have learned to live in a sort of perpetual "feast or famine" cycle. When there's money, there's money. When there isn't, well, there is the promise of money to string me along. It's kind of like life on the savannas of Africa, what with the very dry and the very wet.

Meanwhile, yesterday, I tried to get back to work on The Dinosaurs of Mars. I returned to the "editor's preface." I even added a little to it. But it still doesn't work for me. I continue to be dogged by self doubt and questions of language in the mid 22nd Century. Always am I plagued by self doubt, but here it is actually preventing me from proceeding with the story. I didn't have this problem with The Dry Salvages or "Bradbury Weather" or "Riding the White Bull," but all that was before the Locus review's comment about my "facile use of shorthand TV-series lingo." Honestly, I'm not even sure what that means. And right now, I don't care anymore. I just want to tell this story. I am not a linguist, and even the best linguist would be hard-pressed to forecast the evolution of the English language over the next 141 years. I should simply put that review out of my mind and write the story and stop obsessing over the voices in which it will be told. I know that's what I should do. It occurs to me that there are people out there who take science fiction far too seriously, in that they forget that it is fiction and that there is no looking glass through which we may catch glimpses of the shape of things to come. Well, other than the predictive abilities of science, but that's another matter. The yardstick by which we measure the success of fiction is story and character and syntax, not predictive success. There's a quote from William Gibson that I would bring up here:

When you write a science-fiction novel set in some sort of recognizable future, as soon as you finish it you have the dubious pleasure of watching it acquire a patina of quaint technological obsolescence. For instance, there are no cell phones in Neuromancer. I couldn't have foreseen them. It would have seemed corny, like Dick Tracy wrist radios.

And Mr. Gibson is a much, much brighter fellow than I am. Well, actually, I don't suppose I'm any sort of a fellow, but you know what I mean. Unless you don't.

Not much else to say about yesterday. Byron dropped by at 7 p.m., and we had a very enjoyable dinner at The Vortex. Thank you, Byron. Sometimes, I think he should just marry me and Spooky and be done with it. Make honest, respectable women of us. Anyway, later there was Second Life...speaking of the future. My flat in Babbage is pretty much decorated and furnished. Soon, I must turn my thoughts to a public exhibition, as one thing Babbage is lacking is a NeoVictorian-Era geological museum. Sir Arthur says Salazar will be around this week to fix the lift, and I think I'm getting new windows, as well. Maybe a shiny new jet pack or a steam-powered Victrola would lift my spirits.

There's not much good to be said for yesterday, unwriting wise. I did add about 300 words at some point, because three thumbs are apparently better than two. I am fairly certain that the Mordorian Death March at last and finally ends tomorrow. There will be aftershocks, to be sure, and I will deal with them as they arise, but I will be free to get some rest and then move on to the work that has been languishing — The Dinosaurs of Mars, the "Onion" screenplay, Joey Lafaye, etc. So, today as I snip and cut and disfigure I will at least be doing so full in the knowledge that the surgery is almost done.

Though it seems to be taking me forever to read, I'm very much enjoying the Jay Parini Steinbeck biography. I was especially pleased with this bit I read last night — What is the common touch that it is supposed to be so goddamned desirable? The common touch is usually an inept, stupid, clumsy, unintelligent touch. It is only the uncommon touch that amounts to a damn. (John Steinbeck, 1949) Over the years (and sometimes in this journal) I have lamented that I do not have the common touch and never shall; these three sentences make me feel a little better about it. Also, we finished Lemony Snicket's The Austere Academy, which I think is my second favourite of his so far, after The Reptile Room.

I am enormously flattered that docbrite has seen fit to name her new baby corn snake, in part, after Deacon Silvey. As for her long entry of this morning, I don't think she would want me commenting upon it. I will say only that there's a good reason I've spent many years trying to convince would-be fiction writers that there are hundreds of much easier ways to be miserable, that the life of a writer is neither romantic nor glamorous, and that garbage men and office temps have it better than most professional novelists. The publishing houses of NYC have always been a harsh mistress, but since the 1970s or so, they have become another sort of beast altogether, one that chews first, spits wherever it pleases, and asks questions latter. But this is turning into a commentary, which I already said it wouldn't do.

Oh, and Superior Court Judge Ronnie Batchelor has ruled that the Harry Potter books will remain in Gwinnett County school libraries. Honestly, someone needs to adjust poor Laura Mallory's meds.

---

After taking my rest at the edge of the deep rift or fissure where Suregait forced me to pause in my blind retreat from setsuled and his orcs, when the sun was rising again, we rode east, hoping to discover the end of this mighty crack in the brittle skin of Gorgoroth or at least an unguarded goblin bridge across. But we searched that way to no avail, and shortly after noon turned and retraced our path westwards. By late afternoon we still had found no crossing, but I did locate a ledge, wide enough for a horse, leading down into the fissure. I thought perhaps we might have no choice but to make our crossing by entering the crack and hoping that a similar ledge could be located on the far side, the route by which we might manage our exit back to the surface. But this seems now to have been only my latest deadly error in judgment, for we are lost, and at least an entire night and day must have come and gone since entering the fissure.

After searching in vain for a corresponding, ascending path, I led Suregait along a narrow side branch or, were this a river and not but a dry crack in the world, I might say tributary, which seemed, for a time, to rise, bearing us up from those black depths. But too soon it proved a dead end, pinching out with at least two hundred feet still remaining before we might have regained the surface. By then the sun was well down, and it seems that neither the light of star nor moon can reach us here. I do not believe I have ever known or imagined such a profound absence of light. I am writing this by the stub of a candle from Suregait's saddle bag, where I also found my flint. When this wick is gone, there shall be no more light until the dawn.

I believe this rift must have been opened during the final eruption of Orodruin, when the One Ring was cast into the Forge of Sauron and unmade. It is a labyrinth, Inwë, and I have passed entrances to what I take to be ancient tunnels, leading yet deeper into the rotten flesh of Mordor. I paused at one and listened, thinking I heard the distant sound of running water. My thirst had grown so great that I almost followed that path wherever it might lead me, but Suregait blocked my way, though her thirst must also be terrible. I hear things in the darkness. I fear I am not alone in this dreadful pit. I was mad to take this road. I was mad to ever have come within twice a hundred leagues of Mordor or to have accepted this impossible quest. And if I was not mad then, I must be mad now. Mad with fear and with thirst. And with guilt and doubt, as well, for I can not conceive why Radagast would not have rejoined me, save his shame at my deserting the imprisoned Easterlings. I will stop writing here, Inwë. I must conserve what little remains of the candle. I may need it farther along. I will try to sleep now and hope to dream of the shining Vales of Anduin, of brave horesmen with green shields emblazoned with golden suns and flying green banners with fine white horses painted upon them.

---

I made the grave mistake yesterday of allowing my mind to wander, to reflect, and so lost the day. At least, I lost the work that needed to be done. Though I'd awakened in good spirits, by one thirty p.m. or so (CaST), my mood had soured to such a degree that I could not even imagine sitting in this chair all day, pecking at this dratted keyboard. It had become unthinkable, which is what happens on those days which are not "days off," but on which I cannot write. Writing becomes an unthinkable chore.

But we did get Sirenia Digest 13 (59 pp., as it turns out) e-mailed to all the subscribers. Thank you, Spooky; thank you, Gordon. And hopefully it is being read and enjoyed. Feedback is welcomed, please, as always. Better here, as comments, than by e-mail. I've gotten quite behind with my e-mail.

—————

I think this "new book" thing would not continue to be so weird, and would not seem weirder each time it happens, if each new book did not seem to come and go with so little fanfare. Were I the sort of author lucky enough (and it is a matter of luck) that I enjoyed nationwide publisher-sponsored book tours, actual publicity, reviews in the New York Times Book Review, bestselling status, and so on — if these novels were, as they say, celebrated — I think it would not seem so odd. Because then a novel would be finished, after two or three years of diligent work on it, and there would be this period following publication where it was noticed for a time, before I had to sit down and begin another. Instead, they just come and go. They accumulate like dead leaves. With luck, they sell well for a month or two, get a few good reviews here and there, and then, for me (and most everyone else), they are forgotten. I have to quickly move along to the Next Thing. I have to find the Next Thing, because the Last Thing certainly won't be paying the bills. And so it just seems weird, that there is this book, again.

My thanks to Catherine M. Diedrich for the first Daughter of Hounds fan letter of 2007.

—————

This freakishly warm weather. Last night at midnight (EST), I went out on the front porch pretty much undressed. I do that sometimes at night, when I'm fairly certain no one is watching. It always gets a moan from Spooky, which only tends to encourage me. Anyway, the fireworks started up at midnight, and I walked out onto the front porch. And despite the rain, it felt as though I'd stepped from the house into an early June evening, not a January evening. It is disquieting.

And speaking of disquieting things, a new poll by Associated Press-AOL News found that an unfathomable 25% of those Americans polled believe that the Second Coming of Jesus will occur in 2007. I am going to pretend that the poll is simply flawed beyond all measure (consider the source), as it's much preferable to believing that one in four Americans — people who are allowed to vote and breed and take up space that might otherwise be occupied by trees — is that delusional

—————

Today, as it is New Year's Day, and as I have not entirely abandoned all tradition, we'll be having collards, black-eyed peas, mac and cheese, and cornbread.

—————

Yesterday, having realised there was no hope of work and not wanting to spend the day wallowing, I asked Spooky to begin reading me Cormac McCarthy's The Road. And she did. And by about eleven last night (CaST), we'd finished the novel. It is sheer and utter brilliance. If I could but write a novel half that powerful. I am not ashamed to admit that I cried, in a number of places. It's a heart-breaking book, filled as it is with such terrible loss, with the uttermost end of loss. It is not a novel about finding hope or beauty in despair. It's a story about The End. About survival when survival is its own end, when it has become little else but some burdensome biological imperative. But it's also about love, in a way that too few authors today are able to write of love. McCarthy never relents from the bleakness of his vision. His language is extraordinary. I am quite certain this is the best book I've read since House of Leaves. I suspect one would be better off, emotionally, not reading the whole novel in a single day, though, on the other hand, setting the book down and interrupting the narrative with the events of the everyday, the mundane, would likely weaken the blow. And the blow should not be weakened. The blow should be suffered. It is a blow, The Road, a blow to the illusion that this world is not a thing as fragile as spun sugar, as precious as sunlight and green grass and white snow and a blue sea. Books only rarely bring me to awe, but this one did, and for that I am grateful to its author.

And here we are, and the sky is blue, and the sun is bright, and the only ash is in my cluttered mind. And the platypus says it's 11:53, and we need to get to it.