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...

So, even though there is absolutely no time for being sick, I'm sick. Hard to tell yet just how sick, but sick enough. It started off yesterday morning as a scratchy throat. Thing is, Spooky's been sick for almost a week, and every time I'd ask her about it, she'd tell me it was just allergies caused by the dust we're stirring up packing. To me, she looked sick, not allergic, but hey, she ought to know. So I didn't worry about catching it. But now I'm sick. Last night, fevers and chills. We have to hope this fucker is short lived, because here it is May 6th, and we leave Atlanta on Thursday, May 29th for Providence. And there is all the packing, and a mountain of work, and deadlines and scheduling that simply can not be Put Off Until Later. I used up all my sick time, back in February. And, possibly the worst problem here is that colds and flu often (since the mid '80s) leave me with a severe cough that can last, literally, for months. After I had the flu in February, I coughed an additional six weeks. And the bad tooth cannot be pulled if I'm coughing, because then it won't heal properly. So. Yeah. It's sort of a disaster.

Yesterday. We spent eight hours (1-9 pm) working on the corrections to A is for Alien, and we're still not done. So, that will be today. We also need to take books back to the Emory University library, but that may have to wait until tomorrow. Today, I get more misplaced or missing commas, fact checking, clumsy word repetitions, and other assorted tedium. Oh, and a good example of why sf writers should worry only just so much about the science in their sf stories. When I wrote "Zero Summer" in the summer of 2005, Saturn was believed to have 43 moons, but now, revising the story in 2007, I know that Saturn has more than 60 confirmed natural satellites. But the story is set in the nearish future. By then, we may know that Saturn has 80 moons. Do I stick with 60, knowing that astronomers consider that number provisional? Do I "guesstimate" ahead? Do I revise the story again in a few years? Frankly, the facts are hardly relevant to the truths of the story, so screw it.

My thanks to robyn_ma for pointing out that I can now actually see Isabella Rossellini's "bug porn" (Green Porno) at the Sundance Channel website. Yesterday, the site wasn't letting me in; today it is. Oh, and yes, I have downloaded the new, free NIN, and I'm listening to it now.

At some point yesterday, I left Spooky alone to work on the corrections to A is for Alien. I lay down on the sofa, thinking I could at least read the next chapter of Chris Beard's book on primate origins, but, instead, the best I could manage was an hour of being half asleep, dreaming though I was partly still awake. Later, late last night, Spooky read me more from House of Leaves, the terrible scene on the staircase, Navidson trapped alone at the bottom when it suddenly grows to impossible proportions, Tex's story of the sinking of the Atrocity. Not the perfect thing before bed, so then she read me Robert McCloskey's Time of Wonder (1957), which won a Caldecott Medal and is one of my all time favourite children's books. "Where do hummingbirds go in a hurricane?" Beautiful.

I got the following from Alan S. Montroso, via email, "...As was your story "Concerning Attrition and Severance"; its imagery and majesty have haunted me through the weekend. I understand why you felt it belonged in the obscurity of a closed drawer, but I am also grateful such a cruel creature has been unleashed." Thank you, Alan. It's good to see these reactions, because the story's out there now, and there's no pulling it back in. Comments on Sirenia Digest #29 are still welcome, by the way.

I haven't given the list of books in print in a while, so here it is again. And, though it might be cheaper and the "green" thing to do, buying used copies of my novels from Amazon, sadly, in no way helps my sales figures. Sadder still, I have to actually think about shit like sales figures:

Daughter of Hounds

Silk

Threshold

Low Red Moon

Murder of Angels

Tales of Pain and Wonder

And here's the Amazon wish list, because, after all, this has been declared my Royal Birthday Month and -04 is a mere 20 days away.

There's a lot more of substance I wanted to write about this morning, but I feel like unto butt, and somehow I have to make it through the remainder of the corrections to A is for Alien.

One of the marvelous things about having two consecutive days off is, on that second day I can blog about anything I want, and it doesn't have to have anything to do with writing, unless I decide that it will. For example, the fact that Spooky made toasted slices of raisin-cinnamon bread with cream cheese for breakfast. It's as relevant in this moment as anything else.

I can, for example, take another moment to mention Panthalassa, which is the name I have chosen to signify the sea "goddess" whom I shall use to encompass all sea goddesses and all non-anthropomorphic features of the sea. In paleogeography, Panthalassa ("all seas") is the name given the world-wide ocean that surrounded the ancient supercontinent of Pangaea. In the NeoWiccan/Neopagan system I'm working on, Panthalassa will function as one of my primary godforms, and will never be given any single physical form. I arbitrarily refer to Panthalassa as "she," and even as "goddess," but, in truth, Panthalassa is by definition without gender (though she contains all genders and all forms of reproduction), as she is without any single form. I would be equally justified in giving her the form of a trilobite, a stone lying on a beach, a water molecule, a kelp forest, a seal, a great white shark, a sailing ship, a hurricane, or a mermaid's purse. She is equally all these things. Within her is contained all true and useful myths of sea deities and beings: the Oceanids, Poseidon, Amphitrite, Oceanus, Tethys, Triton, Proteus, Rán, Ægir, the nine daughters of Ægir, Pontus, Nereus, Doris, the numerous Nereids, Varuna, Manawydan, Manannán mac Lir, Arnapkapfaaluk, Idliragijenget, Nix, Susanoo, Bangpūtys, Tangaroa, Yemaja, Neptune, Phorcys, Ceto, et al. Panthalassa, though not factual, is true, in that she is the avatar for my reverence of the sea, the focal point of my devotion and meditation. From space, the world is blue, and blue is the colour of Panthalassa, but so is black and all shades of brown and grey and green and the white of sea foam and clouds and water spouts. She is as colourless as she is colourful. It's an idea I've been working on for some time, and it seems to satisfy my needs for a central, infinitely faceted godform tied to something which evokes awe in me (magick being the willful evocation of awe). All life on Earth comes from Panthalassa, and all rain, snow, all rivers and swamps and marshes and deltas, the act of sedimentation, salt, plate tectonics, and so on, all these things are merely expressions of Panthalassa. Panthalassa is indifferent, non-conscious, unfathomable, and endlessly seductive. The choice of name was made largely for personal aesthetic and symbolic reasons; Mother Hydra would work just as well. So far, it's only an idea, an appealing, functional idea filled with contradiction, but it's a start.

As for yesterday, a good day off. Spooky and I drove up to Roswell, to the Phoenix and the Dragon, the witchcraft shop we've used for years now, because we knew we'd likely not have another chance before the move to Providence (not counting today, we have about 26 days until the move). Spooky got me a new hematite ring to replace the last one I broke, and a pretty little Pierre Shale ammonite, Jeltzkytes nodosus I think. Oh, and a night light for the bathroom in the new apartment, translucent porcelain with the moon and a mermaid. The traffic up Peachtree and back down Piedmont was awful, but the day was cloudy and not too warm. I packed four boxes. My tooth hurt less than the day before. I read Chapter 8 of The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey ("Ghost Busters," mostly about the Duke University primate origins conference in the early '90s). After dinner, we watched two more episodes from Season One of Millennium (1-17 and 1-18, "Walkabout" and "Lamentation"). Later, there was a bit of Second Life, and when we went to bed about 1:30 ayem, I read McElligot's Pool to Spooky, which is unusual, because she usually reads it to me. I got a remarkable 8 hrs. sleep. That was yesterday, pretty much.

Oh, two screencaps from SL last night, courtesy omegamorningsta. The first one should put Sirenia Digest subscribers in mind of "Flotsam." Behind the cut:

( Omega and Nareth )

And speaking of Sirenia Digest #29, my thanks to scarletboi for the exchange yesterday on "Regarding Attrition and Severance." One of my greatest fears about letting people read the piece was that it would be misinterpreted as mere "torture porn," that they would miss the Cosmicism that is critical to understanding the story's intent. He wrote, "I'm glad you chose to share it. It was graphic and horrific (in the original meaning) and brutal. But it was also beautifully written and deeply involving. To be honest, I probably shouldn't have read it until my current work is finished, because I have a feeling it's going to affect the mood of it...I understand the worry. The narration is indifferent enough to be almost clinical, academic. If it took more glee in the proceedings it might edge toward the torture-porn of Saw or Hostel. But I think it came across more elegantly than that, and I hope other readers pick up on the cues as well." Too which I can only add — me, too.

Whoops. I went and fucking wrote about writing. Ah, well. Blame the neglectful platypus for not yet having brought me coffee.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coffee, platypus. Coffee, you fool!

By now, everyone who is a subscriber should have Sirenia Digest #29. It went out about 11:30 p.m. last night. It would have gone out earlier in the evening, but there was a slight hitch (Spooky forgot to attach the file, which is funnier today than it was last night). Comments are welcome, especially as regards "Concerning Attrition and Severance."

Today, I'll finish "Rappaccini's Dragon" for Sirenia Digest #30, and then, tomorrow I get a day off, the first in eighteen days, I think. And then I'll finish up the ms. for A is for Alien and get back to The Red Tree.

And now it is May again, and Beltane. Last night, there was something I wanted to write out about how I've come to view choice as regards belief and paganism, but now it's mostly slipped away from me. For a long time, I could not allow myself to involve choice in matters of belief, as I held belief back for objective science and material concerns. I did not see how one could ever choose to believe. Partly, the epiphany simply required a different perspective on things I've been saying for years. The Cosmos (=tripartite goddess/horned god/divine adrogyne/etc.) may, in my veneration of it, assume any form. It contains all forms within it that can be realized or conceived. It hardly matters if I "worship" Brighid or Mórrígan or Aphrodite or Kali. They are all merely attempts of a conscious being to sum up an incomprehensible and nonconscious universe. They may, perhaps, each function like characters in a novel, avatars that grant access to the story of existence. It does not matter if they are not factual in their existence, as their existence is true, if they are true in our minds. If they contain within them useful truths, as is the way with all myths. It is not their objective existence which makes them useful avatars, but their subjective truth, what these deities mean to each of us. For me, this is the heart of Neopaganism. Designing ritual and godforms to function as conduits between conscious organisms and the remainder of the Cosmos, which is generally a nonconscious entity. Anyway, it went something like that, and today is Beltane.

A beautiful first day of May. The sun and all the green. It's 75F outside. The holly bush below the kitchen window has a nest of fledgling robins.

I did not leave the house yesterday, which makes five days straight, I think. I wrote the prolegomena, did everything else that needed doing to pull the digest together. We finished the chili Spooky made on Monday. I got no packing done.

Some good roleplay last night. I am shifting away from trying to functon in large roleplay communities (such as Toxia or the late, imploded Dune sim), in favour of rp with a small group of individuals with an especial talent for it (and no, I haven't forgotten the "Sirenia Players": just let me get moved to Rhode Island, and I'll get that going). This way, I avoid the idiots and all the noise and strife that idiots bring. Last night, well, we were in 1920s New Orleans, a beautiful house with a grand piano. A street car rattling past outside. There was Paganini and a game involving truths and falsehoods, and blows from a walking stick, and blood drawn with obsidian sharp nails. A game, and a dance, and a cold tile floor. Sublime. Oh, and I also began planning the pterosaur exhibit for the new and expanded Palaeozoic Museum in New Babbage.

I was in bed by two ayem, so good for me, and asleep shortly after two-thirty, with is even better. Today, the moving guys are coming to look at all our furniture and junk and give us an estimate on the move. I'll slip out to Starbuck's or the park or someplace until they're done.

Another amusing Nick cave quote: "A man without a mustache is like a woman with one."

The platypus is grinding beans, so I guess that means I should wrap this up. The wheel of the year turns...

So, yes, Sirenia Digest #29 (April) will be going out to subscribers this evening. That said, there has been a last minute change to the line up this issue. It will actually be comprised of two pieces by me this month, instead of one — "Flotsam" and "Concerning Attrition and Severance." The latter is the especially "brutal" piece I was fretting over so much a few days back. It was originally intended for Sirenia Digest #30 (May). However, Sonya (sovay) needed more time on her new piece, and I absolutely cannot stand to rush another author. So, next month, #30 will include the new vignette by Sonya and my "Rappaccini's Dragon" (which I hope to finish writing tomorrow). Also, there will be no illustration from Vince this month, due to a death in his family. However, he'll be back next month. I hope that was something like coherent, because I am nothing like awake.

I received a very nice email yesterday from Mr. Robert Feldman of Manhattan, the sort that keeps me from taking a claw hammer to my skull:

Ms. Kiernan,

I write to you from the dank, dark, and foreboding depths of the New York Public Library (yes, we do have ghosts and they do wear roller-skates!) where I am currently cataloging the new edition of your Tales of Pain and Wonder. I've read Alabaster and your contributions to Wrong Things and am very much enjoying the stories in Tales.... The Salmagundi and Salammbo stories are truly blowing me away because I attended the Storm King School (1971-74) and am very familiar with that part of the Hudson Valley. Your Pollepel Island is obviously your take on Bannerman's Island with it's spooky ruined castle right near Storm King Mountain. I climbed that mountain many, many times, and slept out overnight there; it is very creepy around there and a perfect setting for your stories. The Hudson Valley has many many places like this, certainly Sleepy Hollow inspired Washington Irving to write his tale of the headless horseman. A bit further north there is an island off the town of Staatsburg where wicked old Uncle Aleister Crowley spent the summer of 1918, supposedly writing "Do what thou wilt"....etc...in red paint on the rocks for passing ships to see. Then there is the town of Tivoli, much gentrified now but an extremely haunting place in the '70's when I attended Bard College just down the road from there. Thanks for reminding me of these places; they have an atmosphere that's very misty and otherworldly and I have many memories of them. I am enjoying your work very much and am looking forward to reading more. I've cataloged at the Library for twenty years now but this is the first time I've contacted an author. This is a good day job for an old Punk Rock/Goth guitar player and the perks are I get to discover writers like you and Poppy Brite while I'm working. Best wishes and I'll be looking forward to reading more of your work.

It makes everything just a little bit easier to take, knowing there's a copy of Tales of Pain and Wonder at the central branch of the NYC Public Library, where once I climbed a stone lion. Thank you, Robert.

I did 1,189 words yesterday on the new story, the aforementioned "Rappaccini's Dragon." I'd really hoped to finish it this month, but the mess that was Monday made that impossible. Then I packed four very heavy boxes of books, and Spooky washed more dinosaurs (photos here in her LJ; humglum), including my set from the Royal Ontario Museum and the Boston Museum of Science. Just now, she was making a joke regarding "Bathosaurus," and I checked, because I figured there was surely a "Bathysaurus," and there is, though it's not a reptile, but the Deepsea Lizardfish, Bathysaurus ferox. Anyway, after the packing, we read over "Flotsam" and "Concerning Attrition and Severance" for the sake of line edits. I think we finished that up at 7 pm, then had leftover chili for dinner. I looked over the new National Geographic, which is largely devoted to China and the ecological catastrophe that is China (fully 50% of the Yellow River [Huang He] — the sixth longest in the world — has been declared "biologically dead").

More Millenium last night, episode #9 from Season 1, "Loin Like a Hunting Flame." And then the new episode of Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel. And why the hell do I write all this crap down? Some odd compulsion to record.

Tomorrow is Beltane. Already.

I really am loving the new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds disc. After last years Grinderman solo project, I had a feeling they'd be headed back this direction after the low point of Nocturama (2003). Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! feels a lot more like Let Love In with smatterings of the earlier albums.

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.

Sunday morning. I know it's Sunday morning because the Xtians one block over are wailing like the rapture came yesterday and none of them were taken. I have music (PJ Harvey) playing on the iMac as loud as is reasonable, trying to block out the PentecostalBaptistwhatever whooping and caterwauling. I am fairly certain there are no churches so near the new place in Providence, and if there are, they almost certainly won't be of the yodeling variety. Some nice, quiet Catholics, please, or Episcopalians or something of that ilk. Maybe a synagogue or mosque.

Asleep about 3 ayem last night, but then awake at a little before 9 ayem, after a long and unnerving series of dreams. Mild dreamsickness now, almost three hours since I awoke. I don't recall much of the bloody thing (thank you, Ambien). Even less I'm willing to put down here. But there was some bit where I was sitting on the kitchen floor with a carving knife, and all the lights were out. All the lights, as though from a power outage. It was so dark, and I sat there with the knife, gouging at the wall, listening to something moving about outside, just beneath the kitchen window, rustling through the holly bush. And another fragment, still with the knife, but I was sitting in a very brightly lit room at a sink, scrubbing at the blade. It was clean, but I kept scrubbing at it. The water from the tap was icy cold. I had nothing to scrub at the knife with but water and my bare fingers, and always there was the sensation of being watched.

---

Yesterday, I wrote 1,030 words on a new story/vignette for Sirenia Digest #30 (May; the issue after #29, the forthcoming April issue). For several years now, I've been trying to find a story to accompany the title "Rappaccini's Dragon." Sitting here yesterday, paging through Laurence Gadd's Deadly Beautiful, the story found me. It's a fairy tale, sort of, about revenge, and toxicity, and the limits of the human body as a weapon.

A rather nice little review of Threshold at Rambles.net. I figured I'd mention it, since I made such a fuss about that silly Amazon.com "review" of Low Red Moon a few days back. The comment, "It's hard to believe Threshold is only Kiernan's second book," made me smile, because, in truth it was my fourth novel. The first was The Five of Cups (though it wasn't published until 2003) and then there was the ghostwritten novel I did after finishing and selling Silk (and no, I can't tell, so don't ask). I do wish reviewers would resist this urge to summarize, and remember that book reviews are not book reports. But yes, a nice review.

Otherwise, not much to yesterday. I didn't leave the house. I packed exactly one box (books). Spooky went out and got BBQ from Dusty's for dinner (truly, I will miss Dusty's). There were splendid thunderstorms all night, it seemed. In Second Life, Spooky and I worked a bit on the new wing of the Palaeozoic Museum in New Babbage, then attended a Very Special Event in Toxia. And that was yesterday.

Ever seen a platypus brew a cup of coffee? Someday, I shall have to take photos.

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.

Yesterday, I did a very respectable 1,472 words and finished the new and still untitled vignette, the one for Sirenia Digest #30, not #29. Truthfully, I'm not sure what to make of this piece (it comes in at a total of 3,950 words). It's stranger than usual, and darker. I think unrelentingly brutal would be the most precise description, and all I can figure is that it came from the "place" where I am at the moment. It makes me think of early Dunsany, if Dunsany had written odes to sadism. Spooky likes it a lot, but I just don't know. I half suspect I should lock it in a drawer somewhere and never take it out again. Instead, though, I'm sending it to sovay today to see what she thinks of it.

April has been a productive month, in spite of itself. First, I wrote "Flotsam" for #29 (April 4-6), then I began Chapter One of The Red Tree (April 14) and did 28 pp. before realizing my problem with the "Editor's Note" (April 19). And then I wrote this latest piece over the past three days. Now, I'll either begin the second piece for May's issue of the digest, or go back to The Red Tree far sooner than I'd hoped possible. Likely, I'll get the May digest out of the way first. And the introduction to A is for Alien.

I packed four more boxes yesterday, the rest of the VHS tapes and more books. I'm packing in a way I've never done before, a little at a time, as I'm just not up to the Big Push I usually do two weeks before a move. I've told Spooky that if I like this place in Providence as much as we expect to, I'm not leaving for thirty years, at least. I did get Outside yesterday, once the writing and packing were done. We took the picnic blanket blu_muse gave us and spread it out at the top of the hill in Freedom Park near Moreland, beneath the oaks. I dozed a little and undoubtedly got bugs in my hair. And took some photos, mostly from the lying down position. The time Outside did me good. There was a hawk, and we heard woodpeckers, though we never spotted one (wait, Spooky says she saw one). Anyway, they're behind the cut (the photos, not the woodpeckers):

( Yesterday )

Two more episodes of Millennium last night. And my thanks to Merma, Omega, and Pontifex for some exquisite rp last night. Fire and blood — what more do I ever need? Tonight, of course, we get Byron and Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica. I think the day will be consumed by the busyness of writing, rather than by actual writing, and by packing.

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.