Spooky just told me that the foreclosure rate in the US has jumped 112%, on average more than doubling over the last year, with Nevada, Florida, and California being the hardest hit. Actually, the increase in California was 213%. And so it goes.

So, yesterday I was Distraction's bitch. You know Distraction, right? One of the nine of the Seven Deadly Sins of Writing. Anyway, I think I left myself wide open by getting up too late, then spending too much time on my LJ entry. After that, well, there was the lease for the new place in Providence (mailed off yesterday), and there was research I should have done days and days ago, and there was lunch, and there were questions about when the moving company is coming to give us an estimate, and there were hydrothermal vents on Mars, and there was news of the new Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds album — Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! — and there was email, and there was a sudden obsession with figuring out which of my British Museum prehistoric animals had come from Philadelphia in 1986 and which from London in 1997. And so forth.

The research, for "Rappaccini's Dragon" (for Sirenia Digest #30) concerned tracking down the following quote from Robert Burton's very, very lengthy The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it. In Three Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Philosophically, Historically, Opened and Cut up (1621):

“Mithridates by often use, which Pliny wonders at, was able to drink poison; and a maid, as Curtius records, sent to Alexander from King Porus, was brought up with poison from her infancy.”

Now, I knew that bit about Porus (Parvataraja) sending the tainted woman to Alexander came from Burton, but finding my way through that maze to discover that, in fact, it came from the First Partition, Section 2, Member 2, Subsection 1, that was another matter. And I start reading, and I keep reading, even when I know Distraction has intervened and I am no longer seeking the relevant passage, but just reading. Oh, and on top of Robert Burton, there was also a related bit from the Hindu Pranas I needed to find, and that led down another avenue of Distraction. In the end, I wrote a meager 268 usable words yesterday.

Then I took a damn bath. I did not leave the house yesterday. Spooky made a pot of chili for dinner, and we watched the eleventh episode of Millennium. And then, despite AADD-afflicted Leetspeaking dumbasses who choose names like Ferretfart Frog (I'm not making that one up), I spent a few hours on Second Life, rping with Pontifex and Ardere. Imagine a film co-directed by Alex Proyas, David Lynch, and Joss Whedon, in which demons congregate in a deserted nightclub in 22nd Century Tokyo, throw in lots of blood and a trippy cyberlounge soundtrack, and there's the rp we did last night. I think the MMPA would have rated it Z. But, I was a good nixar and made it to bed by 2 ayem. I think I was asleep well before three. Go me.

One of the very few good things about packing is finding things you'd thought you'd lost. A few days ago, it was my copy of Animal Ghosts, a book I ordered from one of those Scholastic Books fliers back in 1973 or '74, when I was in fourth grade. The book was actually published in 1971 by Xerox Education Publications, and produced by Walt Disney. Its an odd mix of actual and fanciful paleontology and neobiology, with a smattering of cryptozoology thrown in. I think what made it one of my favourite books for several years were the better than average black-and-white illustrations — lots of old-school dinosaurs and such, often portrayed in rather dynamic (if sometimes absurd) situations. Anyway, yeah, book not lost. There are a couple of scans behind the cut (but, again, I warn you that they are LARGE):

( Animal Ghosts )

Also, Spooky just (humglum) posted her photos of the dinosaur-washing ordeal of Sunday, which you can see here. And yes, that is the magical Liopleurodon that can show us all the way to Candy Mountain (hiding behind the Brachiosaurus).

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.

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.

A good writing day yesterday. I did 1,345 words on the new piece for Sirenia Digest #30. I should be able to finish it today. It still has no title. By the way, this piece is not for the next issue of the digest, but the issue after next. #29 will include my vignette "Flotsam," and as well another vignette by Sonya Taaffe (sovay).

As soon as I'm done with the piece for #30, I need to take care of the line edits on A is for Alien (thank you, Sonya) and write a foreword so that the ms. can go to Subterranean Press.

Also, it would appear that Amazon.com is finally offering the new mmp of Murder of Angels. Just follow the link, unless you'd rather get it from Barnes & Noble, in which case you should follow this link.

Also, the good news is I should be able to get back to The Red Tree much sooner than expected, as Spooky's mother has kindly agreed to investigate the length of Barbs Hill Road between Coventry (to the south) and Moosup Valley (to the north), where the novel will be set, in far western Rhode Island and send me a CD of photos that should allow me to write the editor's note bit that should allow me to return to work on Chapter One. Oh, and Spooky's dad is in Bangkok again, doing his anthropologist thing.

As to the non-writing, non-work part of yesterday, not much to say. I packed six boxes (books and videotapes, mostly). I've not left the house since Monday. There is this hope that once we are in New England, I will wander out more frequently, as there will be new things to see, friends to visit, etc., but, for my part, I am skeptical that my reclusive ways will change a great deal. Last night, we watched two more episodes from Season One of Millennium, and then I did a few hours of Second Life rp. Nareth was severely chastised by her Sire for being such a boastful, unfeeling beast, and, so, once again, Nareth is hiding in the sea. And that was yesterday, near as I recall. There was a bad seizure towards dusk, and it left me feeling brittle and unanchored the rest of the night.

I wish I could spend the day beneath a tree, getting bugs in my hair and smelling the sky...and, yet, I know that I will likely not even step Outside.

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.

A day of relief and some small bit of rejoicing yesterday, as we learned that we got the apartment near the Armory district in Providence that we were hoping we'd get. It is very, very good to know, again, where we will be sleeping two months from now. We plan to leave Atlanta, probably, on Friday, May 30th, and arrive at the new place on June 1st, just about the time the movers arrive with our furniture. It's a wonderful apartment, in a building dating back to 1875. This is the move I wanted to make in 2002, when we landed in Atlanta, instead, so it feels like some long-delayed goal has been achieved. Our five (going on six) years in Atlanta have not been a total waste, just awfully close to a total waste, and I'll be glad to be shed of this city. Of course, now we have less than six weeks remaining to pack everything.

Byron will be driving up with us, to drive Spooky's car while she drives the van that will transport more fragile belongings (fossils, computers, Hubero, framed pictures, etc.) that we don't trust to the movers. It's good to know we won't be on the road alone. He'll take a plane back (though we have hopes that Providence will seduce him, as well).

A decent writing day yesterday, though it took me forever, or so it felt, to get started. I did 1,131 words on Chapter One of The Red Tree. As for the footnotes vs. endnotes thing, I think I have (after many comments from readers) come down on the side of footnotes. We'll see how it goes when I finish this chapter and backtrack to add them in, see if footnotes look and feel right.

Email yesterday from Frank Woodward of Wyrd Co., to let me know that the editing on the documentary, H. P. Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown, is finished, and wanting to know if I'd like to be one of the first to see it. Of course, I said yes. And I cannot recall, offhand, who it was, back during the medical/dental crisis of February who bought letter "L" of Tales from the Woeful Platypus (plus Beanie platypus #4), and for whom I promised a letter "L" limerick, but I apologize for not having gotten around to it yet. Yesterday, Spooky shoved the Beanie platypus at me and threatened death if I did not take care of this. So. It's on the list for this weekend, promise, and I thank you for your patience. Spooky has decided, by the way, that there shall be no more eBay until after the move.

Last night, Byron came over for the premiere of Series Four of Doctor Who, and I thought it was a very excellent episode, indeed (of course, UK folks saw it about three weeks ago, I guess). A good start, though I would so have loved Astrid to have become the new companion, if we can't have Sally Sparrow or Martha Jones. I was not, however, impressed with the The Sarah Jane Adventures. Maybe if I were twelve. But the new episode of Battlestar Galactica was also quite good, with a nice tummy punch there at the end. Byron did not stay for BSG, as he still holds a grudge against the SFC for canceling Farcscape, and says that Doctor Who is one thing, since it's actually produced by the BBC, but BSG is another. I hold the grudge, as well, but fell in love with BSG on DVD and couldn't help myself. Later in the night, some good rp in Second Life.

Someone got me thinking that today was Darwin Day, when, in fact, Darwin Day was February 12th (his birthday). Today is actually the date of his death in 1882. However, since I missed Darwin day this year, I shall recognise it today:



I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.

—— Charles Darwin, from Autobiography (1958, edited by Darwin's granddaughter, Emma Barlow)

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...

By now, everyone who is a subscriber should have Sirenai Digest #28, as it went out about 6 pm on Monday. The first part of yesterday was spent hammering down the last few nails, and then it went away to Gordon (thingunderthest) for vinyl siding (er...PDFing). Hope you like it. Comments would make me happy. And if you are not a subscriber, the part where it's too late to become one hasn't happened yet. Oh, and I cannot believe no one pointed out to me, after Saturday's entry, that "The Sphinx's Kiss" appeared in #27, and so obviously wouldn't be part of #28.

Yesterday, once the digest was out of my hands, became a much needed day off. A day off and out (even though it was cloudy and a bit chilly). Too much time spent sitting in the house lately. Too much time staring at the monitor. First, Spooky and I caught the 2 pm matinée of Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino's adaptation of Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who, which we enjoyed a great deal. Jim Carrey may now stop apologizing for his part in the abominable 2000 adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. After the movie, we swung by The Fernbank Museum of Natural History, because we'd not yet seen the "In the Dark" exhibit. Nocturnal animals, subterranean animals, deep-sea animals, blindness, etc. Right up my alley. Sadly, the exhibit is very kiddy oriented, but there were still a few cool things for us ancient types. Two photos (behind the cut) from the Museum:

( tube worms and sponges )

After the Museum, back home, I finished reading the article on Ennatosaurus tecton, and even made it through the rather frustrating phylogenetic analysis of the taxon. Then I read George R. Guffey's essay, "Aliens in the Supermarket: Science Fiction and Fantasy for 'Inquiring Minds'" (1987). And after dinner, well, I gorged Second Life rp in Toxia, during which time, among another things, I cleaned a tombstone with a scrub brush and finally met scarletboi's SL alter-ego (insert lesbian wolf-whistle here), who brought me the gift of lower-abdominal tentacles. I don't think I made it to bed until almost 5 ayem, which was stupid, yeah, and I'm paying for it today, but it was fun while it lasted. Somehow, I survived most of yesterday on nothing more than a cup of coffee and a handful of candied walnuts. Will wonders never cease?

Also, cdennismoore asks that eternal question, "Have you TRULY not been to Oxford Town?" No, I have not. Neither in England nor in New Jersey.

We may have found a house in Providence. Spooky and her mother are working on it, and I'm thinking what a huge relief it will be, to know where I'll be living come June.

And now, it's time to make the doughnuts...

Yeah, two days with no entries. There's just no way to make day after day of the minutiae of proofreading interesting. But, yesterday we did "Bradbury Weather," which brought us to the end of the eight stories in A is for Alien. And taking it all at once, over just four days, these tales written between 2003 and 2007, I am really quite pleased with the collection. It's a better book than Tales of Pain and Wonder, a far better book than From Weird and Distant Shores, and probably even better than Alabaster and To Charles Fort, With Love. There is a certain overt repetition of central themes, and at first that bothered me. But, really, it's no different than what Angela Carter did in, say, The Bloody Chamber (1979), and I am always happy to make "mistakes" like those. Anyway, the contracts on the book have been signed, and today they go in the post to subpress, and the ms. goes off to Sonya Taaffe (sovay) in Massachusetts for a thorough proofreading. As soon as subpress starts taking pre-orders, I'll let you know. There will be a chapbook included with this collection, though I'm still finalizing its contents.

And speaking of Sonya, congratulations on what I hear was a very well received reading at ICFA.

So, it's been something like thirty six days since I came down with the flu (started showing symptoms on February 13th, the day I had to be in Birmingham for the second round of dentistry). And, twelve tins of Altoids later, the goddamn wracking cough is still with me. It's a little better, but not nearly better enough. At least it got me off cigarettes again. The desire to smoke utterly vanished as soon as I got sick last month. Meanwhile, Spooky's ears are still giving her fits, and she has four days of antibiotics left.

Not a whole lot else to say about the last few days, really. I managed to go from Saturday afternoon (March 15th) to yesterday without leaving the house, a total of eight days. My record is, I think, eleven, set back in 1998 or so. And now we have a cold snap, so I won't be going out today (in fact, I hear rumours of snow flurries this ayem). But Spooky did drag me out yesterday, all the way to Freedom Park. She's spending most of her time searching for an apartment or house in Providence, and we have some hopeful leads. I packed the first two boxes yesterday, one shelf from one bookcase in my office, an exercise which led to the rather grim conclusion that, by a conservative estimate, we'll be packing a minimum of 140 boxes of books (printing paper boxes from Staples, Kinkos, etc.). Never mind all the boxes of comp copies of my various books. Another twenty or so there, but they are mostly already packed.

Saturday night, Byron came over for a couple of episodes of Torchwood. We are already missing him, and truly, there won't be much else to miss about this city. We're well into Season Five of Angel, having watched "Life of the Party" and "The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco" (later Saturday night).

A nice reader comment from Friday's entry, courtesy fuchsiafalling:

Love your books. Love seeing us queers in fiction as just regular old main characters, the plot being about something other than queerness, it just being NBD. It thrills me.

It's the way I've almost always approached writing about queerness. Two editors once rejected a story (this was back in '95 or so) because, although the two main characters were lesbians, the story was not about them being lesbians. The editors lamented the fact that "they just happened to be lesbians," and that I'd not used the opportunity to explore the social ramifications of lesbianism. Never mind that the story was set at least a hundred years in the future, and that I have no bloody idea (and neither does anyone else) what it will mean to be a lesbian in the 22nd Century. But, yes. Thank you.

A big night for me in Second Life last night, as Nareth (well, the Nareth in Toxian City) stopped being a somewhat cybernetic Nephilim bound to two aspects of the same demon, and recently driven to some schizophrenia-like dementia, and became, instead, a rather spectacular vampire. My thanks to omegamorningsta, Lorne, Larissa, Pontifex, Merma, Denny, and the rest of the Omega Institute for a marvelous night of rp. As Lorne (the aforementioned demon) observed "You are a vampire wrought of one with an angel's soul. Some might consider you something more profaned than a vampire wrought from a human, but such is the perspective of overzealous idiocy...You are a diamond crucifix turned to a ruby dagger for drawing hearts out of supplicants..." Nice. But the really cool thing about this scene — or so it struck me — is that we had players from the US to Nova Scotia to Madrid to Brisbane, making almost a complete global loop, all working together to create story in realtime. Awesome.

Okay. There's coffee out there somewhere.

I think that, when I made my post yesterday, I was not quite yet cognizant of the extent of the damage done to Atlanta by the storms of Friday night. And while it's not as bad as the media hype makes it out to be — not Cloverfield: Atlanta or The Doom That Came to Peachtree Street — it's bad enough. I think the hardest thing to see was the damage done to the Fulton Cotton Mill lofts, as that was such a beautiful old set of buildings. And, I should mention, we thought seriously about moving in there when we left the Kirkwood Lofts and moved in here three years ago. This is, by the way, the first tornado to touchdown in Atlanta proper since March 24th, 1975, when the worst such storm in the city's history ripped the roof off the Governor's mansion.

Not much to say about yesterday. There was the bath, and then, because we thought the weather had calmed down, we headed over to Emory University so I could get a few books and do some research. There was a grand exhibit up at Woodruff — first editions of the works of many poets and prose authors (mostly poets; many volumes signed and inscribed), including T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Burroughs (as "William Lee"), and Emily Dickinson. But then, we came back outside and the air was deathly still. No birds. One confused-looking squirrel. No wind. Halfway home, the civil-defence sirens went off and another storm hit. I thought the hail was going to come through the windshield of Spooky's car. The streets around Candler Park flooded in minutes. But by the time we pulled into our driveway, it had passed.

Today, the world is sunny and bright, an early Spring day.

And also today, while I was having my morning oatmeal, I decided that the third erotica collection will be titled Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart.

Spooky continues frantically searching for a place for us to live in Rhode Island (mostly looking at Providence). We've got some good leads, though it's still nerve-wracking, knowing this huge move is a mere two and half a months away. But, it's hard to image that our lives won't be better in just about every sense possible for having made the move. More than anything, I think I dread packing and unpacking the 60 or 70 boxes of books, and all the fossils, and having to find a new doctor, and a new dentist. But then I think about the ocean, and the cemeteries, and the museums, and the Not South, and so forth, and it more than balances out. I believe we've reached the point where it's hard to do stuff like cleaning and tidying up this place, knowing that as soon as we get back from Maryland it's all going to start going into boxes. Which reminds me, the event at the O'Neil Literary house is free and open to the public. I'll post a schedule later.

Not much else to last night. My apologies to everyone (Lorne, Larissa, Omega, Pontifex, Brit, etc.) for having to leave the Omega Institute St. Patrick's Day party so early. I have a keeper (a kindly keeper, mind you). She makes me sleep. Well, she does her damnedest.

Enough prattling for one day...

And Obama scores Wyoming. Very good.

A nasty cold snap, but it's passing now. The temperatures for the coming week look solidly spring-like. And I'm still struggling with a bad cough, the very end of whatever hellbug hit me back in mid-February. And, also, I'm beginning to think I waste at least a quarter of every day trying to fight back and think through the grogginess and murk that come from the anti-seizure meds and sleep aids. But hey, no fits in about two weeks, which is a good thing.

I sort of screwed the pooch yesterday, as regards time management. I was ready to start writing, then decided I would "quickly" download the new NIN album, Ghosts I-IV (all instrumentals). Only, it actually took me about an hour to download, an hour I couldn't really spare. Still, it's a rather grand showing from Reznor and Co. I splurged and paid $5 for the 36-track download, but the 9-track version is free. Strongly recommended. But I'm getting offtrack. Hard writing day, in part because of the lost hour, but also because it was one of those insane research-as-you-go days. It's not that I don't already know a good deal about the subjects at hand (Hollywood scandals, Aleister Crowley, theurgy, hermeticism, drugs laws in the 1920s, the fall of LA District Attorney Asa Keyes, LA County hospitals in the '20s, the history of Paramount, LA newspapers in the late '20s, the history of California sodomy laws, libraries in Boston in the '20s, and so forth...I could go on and on), but being able to crack wise on any given subject does not mean one is prepared to write a short story in which all these things come into play. And I've never been much for doing all the research that needs doing beforehand. So, a good half of my writing day was spent researching. Between NIN and answering various esoteric questions, I only managed 797 words yesterday. Not a good writing day. There's another way I could have done this story, an easy way, but no, I had to be ambitious.

I'm now hoping I can have the story finished by the 11th, as I so desperately need to get back to Joey Lafaye. And we have the trip to Maryland, for the appearance at the O'Neil Literary House, coming up fast, and I have to buy something decent to wear, and I haven't been shopping for clothes since, I'm guessing, November 2004. At any rate, "Pickman's Other Model" will appear in Sirenia Digest #28, and you really ought subscribe, if you haven't already. Because Herr Platypus says so, that's why.

Oh, I have decided. The sf collection will be called A is for Alien. And no, I do not know why Amazon is not yet taking preorders for the new mass-market paperback of Murder of Angels when it's due out next month. They really ought to be. I'll ask my editor about it on Monday.

Last night, we got pizza from Fellini's in Candler Park, then watched an episode of Angel ("Spin the Bottle"), and it's really a shame that Whedon wasn't able to write and direct all the episodes, because on those he did, it shows. "Spin the Bottle" is sort of to Angel what "Crackers Don't Matter" is to Farscape. Anyway, after that we watched the new Torchwood, and once again I was pleased to see the series is really finding itself.

That was my nerdy yesterday, for the most part. Spooky spent much of the day looking at potential apartments in Providence on Craigslist. We have a number of possibilities lined up. Oh, and before I forget, the "Sirenia Players" group now has eight members. I'm still aiming for a bare minimum of a dozen. If you're interested, let me know. Spooky's even located a platypus avatar that I think I'll use for our initial orientation gathering.

I was up a wee bit too late last night (but thank you Lorne and Larissa), and then there were the nightmares, so I'm presently somewhat dazed and disoriented. I'm awake, I'm just mostly elsewhere.

Yesterday, I did 1,070 words on "Pickman's Other Model." The writing started out slowly, but then built up some momentum. A much better day of it than I had on Wednesday. If it'll just all hold together, in terms of the story's historical authenticity, I think I'm going to like this one.

I want to say again how happy I am with the Subterranean Press edition of Tales of Pain and Wonder. My thanks to everyone who has ordered a copy thus far.

After about half a dozen people expressed an interest in participating in the Second Life "Sirenia Players," I went ahead and established the group yesterday evening. At this point, four people have been invited in, three have accepted. More invitations will go out this evening. We'll probably have an informal get-together in a few weeks, to talk through the basics, lay some ground rules, and so forth. If you're interested, I need your SL username, otherwise I can't find you to send you an invitation, and the group is invite-only.

A good walk yesterday, down Sinclair Avenue to talk to Daisy Dog and the dinosaur. The Narcissus and camellias are blooming. I'm going to miss these Southern springs, but I figure it'll be more than fair, the trade off. Speaking strictly in terms of climate, it's a bloody shame the great industrial (and cultural) centers of this country were not founded in the southeast, instead of the northeast. Oh, fickle fucking happenstance. Anyway, after dinner, another two episodes of Angel. I enjoyed "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," but "Supersymmetry" was just a little too something.

And really, I think that's all for now. Time to dance with the platypus in the pale moonlight (of..um..day).

Yesterday, I did 1,144 words on "Pickman's Other Model," and I think it's going well. It is an especially daunting undertaking, as I'm writing it in first person, set in 1929, which means these have to be the thoughts of someone alive in 1929. The piece is told from the POV of Eliot, the man to whom Thurber is telling his story of Pickman in Lovecraft's tale, though this story actually concerns Eliot's search for a film actress named Alma Endecott. "Pickman's Other Model" will be appearing in Sirenia Digest #28.

I have what is, at least to me, some fairly momentous news. Our lease here is up on June 1st, and with the generous assistance of Spooky's parents, we will be moving from Atlanta to Rhode Island. We do not yet know where in Rhode Island, though we're talking about places in Westerly, Newport, Peacedale, and Providence. Just about any part of the state (except Woonsocket) is a possibility. I've known this was likely coming for a couple of months, but I've wanted to hold off saying anything about it until we were absolutely certain, since there have been false alarms dating back to 2002, when I'd first hoped to make the move to New England. A big part of this is that we both loathe Atlanta, and Spooky's very homesick, and it'll be easier on her being near her family as we try to cope with all the bullshit from my PNES. So, we will be moving at the beginning of June, right in the middle of my writing Joey Lafaye, which will make for all sorts of chaos. And, one thing is certain, this journal should get quite a bit more interesting as the days go by.

A good walk near Freedom Park. Someone was flying a kite, and there were happy dogs everywhere. Last night, we watched Danny Boyle's Sunshine. And my third viewing (I saw it twice last summer in the theatre) only served to confirm my conviction that it is a breathtakingly sublime and beautiful film, in all ways. My thanks to wolven for gifting me with the DVD. Later, I had rp in Second Life, the Nareth who is Nephilim, and lessons on pain in the Omega Institute's library with the help of one of Lorne's apprentices, Larissa. I think we got to bed about 4 am. I seem to have shifted onto some odd (for me) schedule, whereby I go to bed between 3 and 4 am (CaST) and get up around noon. Which means I usually get seven to eight hours sleep (more than I'm used to), and then begin writing about 2 p.m. It seems to be working just fine. Still, it's odd.

Congratulations to Rev. Margo, who had the winning bid on the Japanese translation of the Beowulf novelization, and also to Cliff Miller, who snagged the Tails of Tales of Pain and Wonder chapbook. Thank you both!

This morning, I need to email Joshi and see if he knows the name of the theatre in Providence where Lovecraft once worked the box office selling tickets. I know it's in H.P. Lovecraft: A Life somewhere, but I can't find the page, and I can't find it on the internet, either. Also, I need to get the signature sheets for Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy back in the mail to Joe Lansdale.

Postscript (5:06 p.m. CaST): I have just learned via several people on my LJ friends' list that Gary Gygax has died at age 69. On one occasion, early in my publishing career, Gygax and I had stories appear in the same anthology — Pawn of Chaos (White Wolf's short-lived Borealis imprint, 1996). I never met him, and I've not played D&D since 2005, but it's a bit sad hearing that someone who invented a game that has given me so many hours of nerdy joy (in my case, since 1979) has passed.

Something like eight hours of sleep last night, and this morning I am much improved.

I wrote only 631 words yesterday. I am amazed I was able to write anything at all. But, here's the thing. When I set this 1,500-word a day obstacle course for myself, I devised a modest sort of cushion. The Word Bank. Each day I must write 1,500 words, all the way to January 31st. But I knew something would go wrong, eventually. So, I try to write as much more than 1,500 words/per day as possible. Those extra words go into the Word Bank. Savings against a rainy day. As of yesterday, I'd accumulated 1,017 words in the Word Bank. That meant that, to stay on schedule, I had only to write 483 words yesterday. And I actually wrote 631. So, while this leaves the Word Bank momentarily depleted, it does mean I am not yet entirely screwed.

Meanwhile, Spooky learned this morning that Book and Tackle in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, has been demolished. Go back to my entries from our trip to Rhode Island in July and August and there's a photo of Book and Tackle somewhere. It figures. Whatever makes a place special, it cannot much longer endure. They also took out Watch Hill Pizza, which has relocated to Connecticut. I predict that next time we're in Watch Hill, a combo Starbuck's/Dunkin' Donuts will have been erected on the spot, there where the road curves towards to lighthouse, and above the combo there shall be condos. That's the holy commercial triptych of early 21st Century America — Starbuck's, Dunkin' Donuts, and condos (from the low 200s). Okay, well, maybe the Dunkin' Donuts part's not true outside Rhode Island (where one of the damn things occupies every other square foot), but you can substitute some other chain, if you wish. Book and Tackle will be mourned and missed.

My thanks to Sarah C., who writes re: Daughter of Hounds:

I just wanted to tell you that I have been reading your work for the past eight years of my life. I've read and reread my copies of The Dreaming because the stories you wrote are some of my favorite of all The Sandman-type books.

So tonight I went to Powell's bookstore here in Portland Oregon and bought a copy of your latest book. It's now four hours later, and one hundred and fifty-seven pages in. I am tired and excited about going to sleep because I want to wake up fresh faced so I am able to read the rest tomorrow. I hope that this book gets a wide audience of readers, and I will push this on all of my friends. Thanks for filling my head with amazing stories.

157 pp.? Let's see. That's the start of Chapter Four ("Woonsocket"). Anyway, thank you, Sarah. And to everyone else reading this journal, I do hope that if you have not already acquired, by whatever means, a copy of Daughter of Hounds, that you will do so today. There's a lot riding on this one.