Not nearly as ill this morning as I was afraid I would be. Yesterday, I loaded up on elderberry extract, zinc, Smith Brothers' cherry cough drops, and with the help of two Red Bulls, managed to get through a long and arduous day of proofreading and reformatting.

As soon as the Afterword (it was going to be an Introduction, but now it shall be an Afterword) for A is for Alien is finished, the ms. will go to Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press, and it will be out of my hands. At least until the page proofs. And I can get back to work on The Red Tree. Well, right after I write a 3,000-word Introduction for Joshi's Arthur Machen collection.

Anyway, after we did another five or six hours of work on the AifA ms., Spooky and I took a mountain of books back to the Woodruff Library at Emory, and then had blisteringly spicy Thai noodle bowls for dinner. After dinner, back home, I suffered an absence seizure (which are beginning to seem almost routine). I crashed on the sofa, too exhausted for anything but the passive comforts of television. We watched an episode of Millennnium, "Maranatha," then the new ep of Deadliest Catch, and then the last episode of Season One of Millennium, "Paper Dove."

And there's this email, from Tim Huntley, regarding Sirenia Digest #29:

"I wanted to offer some (very brief) words on 'Concerning Attrition and Severance'. I am pleased this story was not a hidden piece and that it did make it into the Digest. As well as resembling a disturbing twist on Huis Clos peopled with Cenobites, the piece made me think of Pirandello (well, Six Actors in Search of an Author, to be exact).

"And, on today's anniversary of Sigmund Freud's birth, an almost randomly located line from Einige Charaktertypen Aus Der Psychoanalytischen Arbeit (1916): 'Let us leave it to future research to decide how many criminals are to be reckoned among these "pale" ones.' Perhaps not a citation - or a paper - that has anything truly in common with your story, but it seemed an apposite conjunction of sorts.

"'Flotsam' was another splendid brine-soaked piece which lingered with me and spiraled in my thoughts across this May Day weekend. Together with 'Concerning Attrition...' it made #29 feel like an old-style Digest in that it was, as your Prolegomena informed, comprised of two rich vignettes."

The parallel with Barker's Cenobites seems natural, in retrospect, though, with "Concerning Attrition and Severance," I was trying for something a bit more subtle and a bit less concrete than "The Hellbound Heart." Thank you very much, Tim!

Someone else asked for details on Robert McCloskey's Time of Wonder, so I thought I'd post a scan of the cover of Spooky's copy (behind the cut, mais oiu):

( Time of Wonder )

Oh, and here's a marvelous little thing, which I can now stare at to my nerdy heart's content, thanks to sclerotic_rings, the Solar System Visualizer. It even includes numerous extrasolar star systems!

And once again, because it is my Royal Birthday Month, the Amazon wish list thing. A mere 19 days until that dreaded -04...

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.

It is with some considerable pleasure that I can say that Chapter One of Joey Lafaye is finished. I did 1,280 words on Sunday, then another 1,550 words yesterday. And never mind that my 5,000-word chapter actually comes to 7,357 words. A chapter in only five days is remarkable (for me), and now my foot is the door. I think I'm very pleased with the first chapter. There's a darkness there, but only an idiot would call it "genre horror." Now, of course, I have to turn my attentions to Sirenia Digest #24. This month, if you are a subscriber (the few, the proud, the polymorphously perverse), you'll be getting the reverse lycanthropy story and something about zombies. I think.

Oh, and Spooky found another story about my Second Life BBC2 interview, which you may read here.

Now, a question sort of thing re: Tuesday's journal entry from pwtucker:

You're eschewing your prologue? Interesting. I've been wrestling with this issue ever since reading Elmore Leonard's 10 Writing Rules or whatever in which he states that prologues are just back story, and should be inserted into the body of the text. But then a week ago or so you said that prologues help set the tone and mood, and I liked that, I agreed with it, which is why I wrote one for the thing I'm working on.

But now you're cutting the prologue. I understand that you had a false start on it, but why drop it altogether? Is this due to the character of this particular novel, or have you begun to distance yourself from prologues in general?

Elmore Leonard is a fine, fine writer, but "writing rules" are pretty much always a bad idea, or something even worse than a bad idea. That said, yes, I'd decided to drop the prologue, because it just wasn't working. And I decided to drop it altogether because, at the time, I'd decided it was unnecessary. However, since then, having finished Chapter One, I see how a very short prologue may work after all (though an entirely different one from what I was trying to write before). Basically, what I'm saying is that a writer must remain almost infinitely flexible, which is one (but only one) reason that trying to follow someone else's "writing rules" is generally a bad idea. Even when following my own writing rules, I never view them as anything more than possibly helpful suggestions which may be disregarded should the need arise. Do not do a thing because a writer you admire made it sound like a good idea. Do it because you need to do it.

Also, this question from "The Brain" via MySpace:

I assume you may get approximately 100,000 of these questions a day, and if you have a scripted answer that's fine, but anyway: What advice would you give to a fledging writer coming from a background not too dissimilar from yourself?

I only get about a hundred of these a day, and I have no ready answer, if only because the question is too broad. The first answer I thought of was stay in school for as long as possible. Not because creative writing courses can teach you to write, because they can't, but because a) it buys you time to find your voice, and b) there's no course you can take in college that won't prove useful at some point when you're writing. However, if you have to run up huge student loan debts to attend college, given that most writers don't make enough to eat, much less pay back student loans, the whole college angle becomes a very bad idea, unless you get a degree in something that will actually allow you to make a living when it becomes obvious, as it almost inevitably will, that you do not wish to spend your life as a writer. The first rule of writing is: There are no rules. The second rule of writing is: There are no rules. The third rule of writing is: What works for me almost certainly won't work for you. Sure, I can say that you won't get anywhere if you don't have perseverance, and you shouldn't get anywhere unless you have talent (though many do), and a solid knowledge of grammar and spelling helps, but these things should be obvious. Beyond that, I have no advice.

And speaking of LiveJournal (well, I was, a few paragraphs back), I've been doing less of it, having discovered that the entries are more interesting if I allow a day or so between them.

Last night, we went with Byron to see No Country for Old Men, which is definitely one of the best films of the year. Tommy Lee Jones better get an Oscar nomination. There has yet to be a film by the Coen Bros. that I did not like, and most of them I love, but it's good to see them do something grim again. And No Country for Old Men is unrelentingly grim, which is the very least one should expect from a film based on a Cormac McCarthy novel. See it, but don't expect resolution or justice, because you're not going to get either.

There are two novels on my "Must Be Read" list that have been languishing for some time now, and I resolved yesterday to try to get through them before January 1st. One is Neil's Anansi Boys. The other is Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. I will try. We shall see.

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.

A day off, but I'm making an entry. Putting behind me a long sleep with all its uneasy, unwelcome dreams. Spooky's making me coffee, which cannot arrive soon enough. Hubero's hiding beneath the bed. Micheal's singing in my ears.

Because I would like to order a number of books from Amazon, I'm going to offer one of the Gauntlet hardbacks of Silk on eBay. Not today, but soon. But here's the thing. This copy is not in mint condition. The dustjacket has some wrinkles, maybe a small tear. It's the copy Spooky read along in while we were doing this latest edit. It's a PC from the numbered limited, of which only 450 copies were printed, long ago sold out. Art by Clive Barker. Signed by me and Poppy (docbrite). But here's the other thing. I'm going to go through with a red pen and make all the changes to this copy that were made in the Great Revision of March 2007. This is a daunting prospect and will likely require the better part of one day soon. Anyway, this is advance warning. It will be a unique item.

Late last night, I got the initial sketch for "In View of Nothing" from Vince. Subscribers should look for Sirenia Digest #16 sometime in the next week or so. Those who have not subscribed should do so. Subscribe, that is.

Another reminder that Nebari.net is coming down next week. Only the costuming page shall be spared. Look now, or don't.

Oh, and Spooky is obsessed with the godless $1 coins. You know, the recent frell-up that left "In God We Trust" off a whole bunch of US dollars, and then they went into circulation before anyone noticed. She has three she got from the stamp machine at the P.O. She intends to have more. Beware.

A few more comments from readers, regarding Silk, characters, "A Season of Broken Dolls," etc., but I'm putting them behind a cut so as not to dominate people's friends lists.

( Thoughts and Ruminations )

These are all good and thoughtful thoughts, and I cherish them, and I thank each of the authors in question for taking the time to speak. Now, I must go and not work. Somehow.

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.

Quite a good writing day yesterday. 1,801 words, which means the Word Bank is looking good at 1,896. Technically, I could now lose a day. Or even take a day off. But I shall endeavor to do no such thing, as there may yet be some emergency. But here I am — 15 down, 16 to go.

I did manage to get out of the house yesterday for a short walk, just over to Freedom Park. Everything is blooming — daisy fleabane, clover, dandelions, etc. There was a wonderful wind from the northwest and spectacular clouds heralding the change in the weather, the sort of sky that makes we want to climb to the top of an especially tall hill, raise my arms, and howl at the sky. The low last night was 52F, which is today's forecast high, with a low of 27F. So, we shall have a taste of winter after all. Spooky made spicy Thai food for dinner. There was not much more to yesterday than that.

We also finished Christopher Priest's The Prestige (1995) last night. On the one hand, it is a fine novel. On the other hand...I find that I have recently acquired an odd reticence to actually criticize the work of other living writers. My reasons, as best I can discern, are twofold:

1) The author might be reading this journal. It's happened before.

2) I've been making my living, such as it is, as a writer since the mid nineties, and it has caused me to look more kindly on the perceived shortcomings of others.

Basically, I wish I could read the way I used to read. I did not dissect as I read. I simply became immersed in the story and let it sweep me happily along. Now I cannot help but dissect. I try not to, but I do anyway. I cannot help but see "flaws" and all the ways I think I could have done this better. I would suspect that all writers are like this, to one degree or another. Writers are the gods of their universes, and we are never at a loss to suggest how some other god might better run herhisits universe/s. At least, this is true of me. It is one reason I read so much less fiction than I did fifteen years ago. And, actually, stage magic is not a bad metaphor for this problem I now have as a reader. I am precisely like a magician watching another magician's act. I should be suckered in with the rest of the crowd. I passionately desire to have the wool pulled over my eyes. Only it very rarely happens, as I'm too busy figuring out how it's all being done and how I could improve upon it.

Which is to say, The Prestige is a fine novel. But I would have done it differently, and I think that means I would have done it better. I cannot help but think that. I also wonder how seeing the film first changed my perception of the novel. Personally, I think it's a book that could stand to lose the first twenty eight pages and the final eleven — the whole present-day frame. It is neither needed, nor are those characters sufficiently well-developed to compete with the meat of the book, the story of the feud between magicians Angier and Borden. If the frame is to be part of the story, at least another one hundred pages is needed to truly make those characters real to the reader. And if the frame goes, I'd also cut Part Three, Kate Angier's diary. Pare this down to the story of magicians Angier and Borden, as the film wisely does, and you do not have a fine novel, you might have a great novel. Or that's the way it seems to me. As it stands, Andrew Westley and Kate Angier and the late 20th Century are only a distraction and the source of a number of problems with the internal logic of the novel. I would also suggest that the story might have been relayed more effectively had "Alfred" Borden and Rupert Angier's journals been broken up and presented in alternating sections. I adore epistolary storytelling, and I usually point to Stoker's Dracula as a stellar example of how this is done well. Alternate between characters.

Nonetheless, it is, as I have twice said, a fine novel. I am not seeking to damn it with faint praise. I just can't help but read it as a novelist. This is, from my perspective, unfortunate. I don't want to know how the trick works. I want to be amazed. I want to be convinced of the magic. But this is what I do. I spend my days gluing words together to try and fool other people. And I can't help but try to see how other writers, especially writers who have found more commercial success than have I, make it work. Sadly, I don't even find the mechanics & theory of fiction writing remotely interesting, which makes this doubly frustrating. It's just a reflex.

Now, it's time to write.

(All times CaST = UTC/GMT -4 hours)

I woke this morning at a few minutes past five. After having gone to sleep about two a.m.. And I did not get back to sleep. I awoke wide awake, my mind working at some problem in some story. Ambien didn't even put me back to sleep. I sat at my desk and watched the sun rise. I edited some paleontology articles on Wikipedia. I talked to Hubero. So, three hours sleep. And with this schedule, there can be no missed days, no sick days, no days off, no lost days. This keeps up, and there will be another trip to the doctor, which I can neither afford nor tolerate. Whatever shade of insomnia this is, I don't know. Sometimes I think on the dreams and consider clinophobia, but that doesn't explain these awakenings. Anyway, I've been up for six and a half hours now (as of 11:31 a.m.) and the day has not even begun.

Ugh.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,658 words.

There was good news from my editor at Penguin, that Daughter of Hounds debuted at #21 on the Barnes & Noble science fiction/fantasy trade list. So, someone's buying it, somewhere.

So what else was there to yesterday. I would say there was nothing else at all, only, lately, I've had more than one reader of this journal tell me they like the minutiae, that it's the little things, elevate the mundane, and so on and so forth, as they say. So, from that perspective: the weather finally turned cold, and I left the house near sunset, but the wind was bitter, and my walk lasted less than a block. After dinner, I watched an episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, then there was another ep, and I tried not to doze. I read "Onion" aloud to Kathryn (this will be explained at some future date). There was hot cocoa.

After the aborted walk, we went to the B&N on Moreland to see how many copies of Daughter of Hounds and the Threshold mmp they had on the shelves. I looked at the 2006 Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (Vol. 19) for the first time. I'd not known that Kelly, Ellen, and Gavin had said such nice things about To Charles Fort, With Love. I also did know that "Bradbury Weather," "La Peau Verte," and "From Cabinet 34, Drawer 6" had all received honourable mentions. We browsed about the bookstore a bit, which I hardly ever do these days — browse through bookstores.

We finished reading Gregory Maguire's Lost last night, and I am pleased to say that it won me over in the last 75 pp. or so, and I wound up finding it quite effective. I think perhaps I came to the novel asking it to be something it was not, possibly the least fair treatment any novel may receive. A book may only be judged for what it is, not what you'd like it to be. Next we read The Prestige by Christopher Priest.

My thanks to setsuled. I snurched the wonderful new icon from him.

A couple of things before I go forth and try to salvage this day:

'Irreversible' global warming claims its first victims of the New Year. Not so bad, if you aren't bothered by the loss of Lake Qinghai and the death of hundreds of baby hedgehogs.

And at dawn and dusk, you might want to keep an eye out for Comet McNaught (C/2006 P1), which is proving to be one of the brightest of the last one hundred years.

I will not go back to bed...

Today, David Bowie is 60 years old. Which makes my -2 seem utterly insignificant, and I can only hope to age with such grace and dignity. The regular infusions of alien DNA help.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,693 words, and so made it through seven consecutive days wherein I wrote at least 1,500 words. Seven down, twenty-four to go.

It rained here all day yesterday, then just before dark, about 6:30 or 7 p.m. (CaST), a line of intense thunderstorms passed through the city. I watched their progress on Doppler, which remains a fascination for me. But mostly I sat here at my desk, watching the steady rain outside, the blue-grey day. I did not leave the house.

Spooky baked blueberry muffins.

While she fixed dinner, I did manage a hot bath. Then I watched a documentary on the geology of the Great Lakes, dozed, snuggled with Hubero, played a bit of Final Fantasy XII, ate a few Skittles, then went to bed and Spooky read to me from Gregory Maguire's Lost. I am sad to say I do not find this novel anywhere near as agreeable as Wicked or Son of a Witch. It is burdened with a central character who is so painfully humdrum, ordinary, unremarkable, & etc., and though there have been moments of brilliance, the overall effect of the novel is not so very different from Winnie herself. Winnie's only outstanding character flaw is that she's a bit of a compulsive liar, but given that she's a writer, that's hardly surprising. The weight of the ordinary drags me down. But there is yet dim hope that some peculiar and grim revelation may present itself. Genuine mystery and awe have been hinted at. We are nearing the end of the novel, though, so it'll have to happen soon if it's going to happen at all. I hate to say unpleasant things about another author's work, especially one I do generally admire, but what the frell. He's rich. My comments will have no effect whatsoever on the course of his career. I bear Gregory Maguire no ill will, but this protagonist needs to get a life. As it were.

People (writers, editors, people) talk about "flawed" characters and "difficult" characters as though they are a problem. Personally, I cannot imagine literature without them. Who else would I ever write about? Who wants to write about unflawed, easy people? Not me. Nor do I wish to read about them. Give me Merricat and Francis Phelan, Elphaba Thropp and Deacon Silvey. But maybe that's just me. Unflawed, easy people bore me, and they always have.

Spooky is working on a series of bird dolls. The first that she has completed is wonderful. I at once discovered the doll is another Joey LaFaye character and named her (for a her it is) Hieronymus Borscht. Spooky will post photos soon, I think. This will be known as her "Bird Phase," her Ornithaceous Period.

If you have not yet procured a copy of Daughter of Hounds, I hope that you will do so today. Please. It is filled with difficult, flawed characters whom I love.

Maybe I will leave the house today. I have not yet begun to write, so it is too early to say. We shall see.

Postscript (1:21 p.m. CaST): I just saw that Daughter of Hounds has been honored in the Sinister Sixth Annual Tropism Awards, receiving "Best Standalone Novel." Also, Alabaster gets "Best Story Suite/Mosaic Novel." Oh, I love specificity! By the way, MySpace readers do not get addenda and postscripts and the like. Count yourselves lucky, kiddos.

I did 1,550 words yesterday.

I also obsessively checked the Amazon.com sales ranking on Daughter of Hounds at least once every hour. The book made it all the way up to 8,014 at one point. By the way, the platypus says that the 5th of January, should it happen to fall two days after the full moon, is the best date of all to order a copy of Daughter of Hounds. Hesheit is an amazing beast, the platypus, filled with wisdom and wit, piss and vinegar. Hesheit claims to have once lived beneath the desk of Isaac Asimov, and I wouldn't put it past himherit. One must never short-change a platypus.

There's a great wall of thunderstorms barreling down on Atlanta as I type this.

Last night, we watched Neil LaBute's 2006 remake of Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man, and, really, the less said the better. This film would have been right at home in some mid-70s TV line-up, it was just that dull. Long have I said that Nicolas Cage makes two sorts of films, the brilliant and the abominable. This falls squarely into the latter camp. And just about anything else I might say about the film would only open one of those cans of political worms, and I've better things to do. After the wretched film, we read quite a bit more of Gregory Maguire's Lost, which grows more interesting.

—————

This morning I escaped a severe bout of dreamsickness by the merest fraction of a hair. I woke just after 10 a.m. (CaST), an hour later than I would have liked, from some cybernoir fiasco. There was snow the colour of rust. I may be able to blame The Road for that part. I'd lost a syringe of some sort and all manner of nonsense depended upon my finding it again. There were interminable conversations, and I cut my hand (I can't recall which one) on a broken bottle. The "plot" of this thing, Margaret Atwood's dreaded "a what and a what and a what," has faded almost beyond recollection. And that's a good thing, I suspect. But there were robots — not androids, but robots — none of which seemed to work quite as they should. I had a tiny, unheated apartment garishly lit by exposed fluorescent tubes that seemed to flicker incessantly. The floor was always wet. Not damp, but wet tile. I had sex with a very beautiful legless albino woman, and she had whole galaxies in her blue eyes. There was something that happened on a rickety fire escape overlooking a sort of gigantic excavation. I don't think I ever did manage to get the syringe back, so that's probably why I wound up back here, pecking at this keyboard. That dream me was probably murdered by a corporate hit man or North Korean double agents or a legless albino woman. I will never know.

Yesterday, I did 1,529 words, which I count as none too shabby. Also, I worked on an interview for a local paper (more on this later), which I need to finish up today.

When the work was done, we drove over to Borders on Ponce de Leon, because it was January 2nd and I felt some vague duty to actually see copies of Daughter of Hounds and the mmp of Threshold in a bookshop on the day they were officially released. Borders had two copies of each, and I was disappointed to see them in the "horror" section. For a while there, I was mostly finding my stuff under "fantasy and science fiction," which I would much prefer. Of course, as long as the books sell, it really does not matter where they are displayed or what they're called. Anyway, Spooky took a blurry photo (behind the cut), to commemorate the occasion.

( Two by Me )

The book has been doing decently in Amazon.com's sales rankings. It made it all the way up to 5,950 last night. If you have not yet ordered a copy, please do so. I cannot help but feel that an awful lot is riding on how Daughter of Hounds sells during its first six months. You might also consider picking up the new edition of Threshold, as it is now pocket-sized and contains far fewer mistakes than the original 2001 edition. Also, if you've already read Daughter of Hounds and liked it, please consider leaving a "review" to that effect at Amazon, because, sooner or later, some idiot's gonna hit it with a one-star review because hesheit found it too artsy or is jealous of the vast fortune I am so obviously making off my fiction.

But I have to admit that I find the cover art for Daughter of Hounds a little more ridiculous each time I look at it. Please do not blame me if you read this book and are disappointed that it's not even remotely some sort of confabulation of The Road Warrior and Underworld.

While we were at Borders, we picked up Gregory Maguire's Lost and Christopher Priest's The Prestige. Began reading the former last night. I'm not yet sure what I think. Previously, I've only read Maguire's Oz books. And so far this is a very different beast. We shall see. Certainly, I should not dislike it for not conforming to my expectations.

That's all for now. Have a day.

Happy birthday to Neil, who is -06 today!

I am feeling much, much better this morning. Which is a great relief, as there simply wasn't time to be sick for very long. The writing is a mountain threatening to topple over and bury me in a landslide of missed deadlines.

Yesterday was mostly spent resting, taking it easy, letting my meatsack...er, body...recouperate. I read. First George Herriman's Krazy Kat (thanks again, David), then a great deal of Richard C. Hoagland's The Monuments of Mars: A City of the Edge of Forever, which is yet more research for The Dinosaurs of Mars. I've already complained about Hoagland's abuse of the ellipse. Let me add that he also has an inordinate fondness for the exclamation point, which somehow manages to make the illogical and bizarre twists and turns of his "argument" seem even more pathetic. Made it through Chapter XVII of House of Leaves. It was warm yesterday, the low 70s (and it's going to be even warmer this afternoon), and late in the day I thought I was feeling strong enough for a short walk. But I only made it across the street, where I sat down on a stone wall and waited for the strength to make it back again. Fortunately, I was on the north side of the street and there was bright sunlight, which was wonderful after being couped up in the house for two days. Last night, I was too tired to do much of anything but sit on the sofa and play Final Fantasy XII, which I think I'm going to like a great deal.

The unexpected illness totally derailed our plans to move my office this week, and so the house is presently a bit of a wreck.

The platypus, who's been going through Kleenex even faster than me, just peeped over the edge of my desk and reminded me that November 10th is surely one of the most fortuitous days of the whole damn year (his herhisits words, not mine) to subscribe to Sirenia Digest. In fact, says the platypus, subscribe today (that is, before midnight PST), and you'll get one back issue of the digest absolutely free. Whoops. There he goes again. Poor ol' platypus. Few things are sadder than a platypus with a head cold.

I think that's it for now.

If you haven't already, please do have a look at the current eBay auctions. Bid if you are so motivated. Meanwhile...

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.

First off, congratulations to Christa (faustfatale) on the sale of her novel Money Shot to Hard Case Crime. Money Shot is slated for a February 2008 release (which will be here much sooner than you think). Very good news, indeed.

Despite my swollen, aching tongue, I decided that what really needed doing yesterday was the proofing of the galleys for Tales from the Woeful Platypus and the chapbook version of "The Black Alphabet." It turned out to be a bit more reading than I'd expected, almost five-hours worth, but now it's done and I don't have to worry about it anymore. Also, my agent got me a two-week extension on the corrections of the galleys for the mass-market paperback of Low Red Moon, which were originally due on December 1st. Thank you, Liz. So, the mountain of proofreading is looking quite a bit less mountainous today.

However, I did not begin The Dinosaurs of Mars. I intend for that to happen this afternoon.

My tongue is much better, by the way, and my thanks to everyone who offered to send a copy of the October '06 Locus yesterday.

A couple of days ago, looking for some reasonable explanation for my exhaustion, I sat down and made a list of what I've written since returning from New England on August 22nd. It looks like this (not in chronological order):

01. "Untitled 23" for Sirenia Digest 10
02. "In the Praying Windows" (coauthored with Sonya Taaffe) also for Sirenia Digest 10
03. "Daughter of Man, Mother of Wyrm" for Tales from the Woeful Platypus
04. "The Garden of Living Flowers" for Tales from the Woeful Platypus
05. "The Forests of the Night" for Tales from the Woeful Platypus
06. "Still Life" for Tales from the Woeful Platypus
07. "Excerpts from Memoirs of a Martain Demirep" for Tales from the Woeful Platypus
08. afterword for Tales from the Woeful Platypus (discarded)
09. "The Most Beautiful Music I've Ever Read" for the PS Publishing edition of Ray Bradbury's The Day It Rained Forever
10. "The Ammonite Violin (Murder Ballad #4)" for Sirenia Digest 11.

Not to mention having proofread Daughter of Hounds. Now, if I can just get The Dinosaurs of Mars started.

Last night, just barely into Mark Z. Danielewski's Only Revolutions, I was seized with an urgent desire to stop and re-read House of Leaves before proceeding any farther. The same sort of thing happened the first time I tried to read Finnegan's Wake: I stopped and read Ulysses for the third time. I think when we're done with Danielewski, Spooky and I will be reading all thirteen of the Lemony Snicket novels, though I'm also suffering a fierce need to begin Cormac McCarthy's The Road and read Moby Dick again.

And, just to complicate things, Final Fantasy XII arrives on Tuesday.

I'm pretty sure this entry has turned into a Wicked Tool of Procrastination, as it's now fourteen minutes past time to make the doughnuts. The platypus just frowned at me. Okay. Right. I know. I'm coming...