I'm truly not awake, so bear with me. Or lion with me. Or tiger with me. It really makes me no never mind, so long as you don't expect me to be terribly coherent or entertaining. I think I actually slept too well last night, which is odd, given I have finally started to get stressed out about The Move. 19 days to go. Maybe two-thirds of the packing left to be done, and a thousand odd little bits of detail to be attended to. And the blasted trip to Birmingham we have to make on Monday. So, yes. I overslept, and I'm just a bit nervous.

A blustery spring/early summer day yesterday, great gales of wind, and then a little rain last night. Clouds today.

Yesterday, after catching up on many long-neglected emails, I went back to work on The Red Tree. First, I looked over most of the material Spooky's mother had sent, especially the photos of the Moosup Valley area, and topographic maps, and a map from 1870 showing the division of Providence County, Rhode Island by landowners. Looking at a genealogy website, I found a name for the old Farm where the "red tree" grows — Battey — and then I was rather surprised (well, almost unnerved) to discover that a Mr. Battey had once owned the land adjacent to the parcel where I'm putting the tree. These things happen. By the way, today's icon was taken from that 1870s map, from the relevant corner. I did 1,269 words on the "Editor's Note" that will preface the book proper, the journal of Sarah Crowe, which contains within it excerpts from a manuscript left at the farm by a deceased folklorist. I committed my first two footnotes of the book yesterday. Oh, and I emailed the full manuscript for A is for Alien away to Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press.

After dinner, we watched another episode of Millennium ("Monster"), then packed four or five boxes in my office (Spooky had spent the whole day packing), then watched two more episodes of Millennium ("A Single Blade of Grass" and "The Curse of Frank Black"). I spent a little time on SL, nothing fancy, just fishing with Miss Paine in McElligot's Pool behind the Abney Park Laboratory in New Babbage. And then we went to bed and read more of House of Leaves. I think we read until about three ayem.

My cold seems all but gone, which is a great relief.

The office is beginning to feel odd and empty, too many shelves without books.

Anyway, the sun just came out, as if to remind me that the day isn't getting any younger and there's so much work to be done. So, let's wrap this up, kiddos.

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...

First, apologies for having screwed up the link to Sirenia Digest in two successive entries. I have fixed those links, and the one I just gave is also correct, and yes, if you subscribe this week, before Sunday at midnight (EST), you will be receive #28 ("Pickman's Other Model," "Pickman's Model" by HPL, and "Madonna Littoralis") absolutely FREE. It says a lot about my questionable mental state the last few days that I screwed up that link twice and did not catch it. My thanks to those who did and who then let me know. Also, my thanks to those new subscribers who have taken me up on this offer, and somehow managed to reach the subscription pages despite my blunders.

The chief reason that I have been so especially scatterbrained the last week or two, aside from trying to find a place to live in Providence, dealing with seizures, and the incessant insomnia, is that a short while back I called my agent (Tuesday, March 25th) and told her that there was simply no way I could have Joey Lafaye written by September 1st, and that I would not ruin it trying. I suggested, instead, that I first write the second book on this contract, which is, for now, called The Red Tree. It's a book much more like Daughter of Hounds (without the guns and poker-playing demon), much more familiar territory. So, I had to write up that proposal, submit it, and wait. This morning, I got the go ahead on The Red Tree, which I shall begin immediately, as I have only four and three-quarters months to write it. While keeping the Digest up and running and moving from Atlanta to Providence. But, yes. The next novel will not be Joey Lafaye, but The Red Tree. Consider yourselves warned.

And, once again, I want to direct readers who are interested in the mass-market paperback of Murder of Angels to Barnes & Noble, as they are actually being bothered to sell the book. And, please, do be interested. I'd like to see this book, and all the others, still in print this time next year. Also, here are the correct links to purchase the other novels and, also, Tales of Pain and Wonder. Thank you. Please feel free to repost these links in your journals:

Daughter of Hounds

Silk

Threshold

Low Red Moon

Tales of Pain and Wonder

---

Very little to say about the last couple of days. I mean, yeah, the insomnia. Spooky forced me out into the bright springtime on Tuesday, and we walked as far as Freedom Park before spreading the red plaid picnic blanket blu_muse gave us some time ago. I lay down, staring first at the sky and then the dandelions, and then I proceeded to fall asleep. Later there was Thai food, which would have been better had I not been to sleepy to taste it. Yesterday, we walked down Sinclair, and the foliage is a comfort, the foliage and the woodpeckers and the mockingbirds. I did manage to read, over the last two days, another JVP paper, "A new aigialosaur (Squamata; Anguimorpha) with soft tissue remains from the Upper Cretaceous of Nuevo León, Mexico." I've tried to drown the insomnia with Ambien and Kava and Diazapam and Second Life, none of which have been especially effective. But, as for Second Life, I stepped back a bit from Toxian City to explore a dark sf rp called Necronom (at Hypnos), which has to be one of the most gorgeous builds I've ever seen anywhere in SL (but then, I don't get out much).

Oh, that reminds me, I have not forgotten you, Sirenia Players. I've just been too stupid from sleep deprivation and stress and meds to do anything constructive. I'll try to make amends in that regard sometime in the next week, and at least send everyone a notecard (an inworld nc, so you'll have to log into SL to get it). I just want you to know I haven't given up on the project, and to say thanks for your patience.

Platypus says time to get to work. But, remember, subscribe to Sirenia Digest before Sunday at midnight (EST), and you will be receive #28 FREE.

I think the insomnia has reached a point where it's easier to count how many hours I didn't sleep than those I did.

It's spring outside today. It's spring, and it looks and feels like spring. High 60s today, low 70s tomorrow. The trees are going green.

And I keep forgetting to mention that the mass-market paperback of Murder of Angels is out. Indeed, I think it's been out for a week or two. With great luck, you can find it in bookshops. You can't yet get it from Amazon.com, for reasons no one is bothering to explain, but you can get it from Barnes & Noble (just follow the link above). If you can, if you are interested, please pick up a copy. Spooky put a lot of time into the corrections on this edition. And it has a nice cover (and a dubious cover blurb):



By the way, anyone who subscribes to Sirenia Digest between now and midnight (EST) on Sunday will get #28 FREE when they receive April's issue (#29).

Yesterday, we made the 3:15 screening of Carter Smith's The Ruins (based on the novel by Scott Smith). And despite having four or five interchangeable and utterly vapid protagonists, once I got past the sluggish first half hour or so (and my annoyance at the bland glamor of the aforementioned "characters"), the film suddenly comes alive and delivers a deeply chilling bit of weird fiction. Two words: screaming flowers. That ought to be enough, right there. For a short bit, I feared that The Ruins would merely be a crawl through a perilous underworld, such as that already delivered quite well by Neil Marshall's The Descent (2005). Instead, The Ruins turns out to deal with a sort of horror that occurs almost entirely above ground and usually in broad daylight, which, of course, makes its horror all the more horrible. There's something here that harks back to films of the seventies, in the bleakness of delivery, in the wonderful abruptness of the conclusion. I am reminded, in the main, of Stephen King's short story, "The Raft," and in a lot of ways, The Ruins is that story moved from a lake in Maine to the jungles of Mexico. The gore is handled skillfully and never overpowers subtler effects. Graeme Revell delivers a score that helps to move it all along. I can't say this is a genuinely good movie, if only because the beginning fails so completely, but it is a very rare film that juggles darkness well enough to artfully unnerve me. When it was over, I'd had enough, which, I think, is the way a film like this ought to make you feel. I'd even been made to feel sympathy for the idiot American college students, because the Bad Thing waiting for them in the ruins of the title is bad enough, wrong enough, that the threat to life and sanity it poses struck me as something not even those disposable fools deserved. Had the director seen fit to insert actual characters for his carnivorous Cannabis to munch on, I think this might have been a genuinely good film. Regardless, definitely worth a matinée, though you shouldn't pay full price.

Back home, we watched Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street again, and it's still gorgeous and brilliant and sexy. The rest of the evening is a blur of insomnia and Second Life.

My coffee is cold, which is probably for the best.

Today, Gary Oldman is 50 years old. That's why you get the Vlad and Mina icon, because one of my Hollywood fixations is now half a century old.

---

And now it is spring. And, here in Atlanta, a bright, sunny spring day it is. I pulled back the curtain in my office to let in the sun. I have survived another winter. And if you are someone who observes the Wiccan sabbats, I wish you a fine Ostara (though, of course, the actual equinox was yesterday). For me, spring is hope, the nearest I come to hope, hope and a balm against the hardness of winter, a season that more closely approximates my usual mental state — and it is a promise of the coming of summer.

---

Spooky (humglum) is feeling pretty miserable, and she still has six days left on her antibiotics. We've been trying to work around her being so under the weather. But it's all editing, proofreading, etc. Wednesday, we read through "The Ape's Wife," because I wanted to go over it again before sending a "fresh" e-copy to Steve Jones for The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror (#19). Also, I started printing the manuscript of A is for Alien, though I didn't finish printing it until yesterday. On Thursday, we started proofing that, and made it through "Riding the White Bull" and "Zero Summer," a little better than the first 100 pp. Reading "Riding the White Bull" was rather annoying, as I'd somehow managed to print out a version that was neither the draft that sold to Argosy nor the reprint draft, and whole passages where missing. Anyway, I hope to have finished this read through by tomorrow evening, at which point I'll send the manuscript away to Sonya (sovay) for a proper proofreading.

Not much to report, aside from work. In a fit of annoyed depression over not being able to make the appearance at the O'Neil Literary House, I think I tried to do myself in with Second Life on Wednesday evening/Thursday morning, at least twelve hours, and I didn't get into bed until about 5:30 ayem. Insanity. We've finished Season Four of Angel, and last night began Season Five with "Conviction" and "Just Rewards." And I'm having to be annoyed all over again that such a rare bit of wonderful television fantasy was canceled in its prime (despite good ratings and rave reviews). The suits rule the world; we just dance here.

---

We've taken a short break from eBay, but expect to get it going again in the next few days, because the medical bills are still here, and I'm no closer to having any sort of health care than I was a month ago (and the blasted taxes are looming just ahead). In the meanwhile, if you have not already subscribed to Sirenia Digest, the first day of spring, says Herr Platypus, is just about the best time to do so. This month, you'll get "Pickman's Other Model," and, well, something else, most likely.

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 was not a good writing day. It took me all afternoon to produce a measly 716 words on "Pickman's Other Model." The constant need to fact check (everything from the movie industry in 1920's Fort Lee, New Jersey to the geography of the Massachusetts North Shore) didn't help, and there was one paragraph I spent almost an hour on — writing it, rewriting it, re-rewriting it, trying to get the wording just right. The voice of this story does not bear much resemblance to the peculiar use of first-person narrative that Lovecraft employed in "Pickman's Model." It's far more reserved, as the character of Eliot, as i am choosing to write him, is quite a different person than was Thurber (the narrator of HPL's story). One neat thing, yesterday I discovered an unexpected overlap between Low Red Moon and "Pickman's Other Model," and, as it turns out, this story will provide a bit more history to Narcissa Snow's family. Anyway, hopefully today will go better. Truthfully, I should not have attempted such an ambitious short story when I have so many deadlines pressing in on me, but, damn it, this is what I want to be writing. Also, my thanks to derekcfpegritz for pointing me to a better e-text of "Pickman's Model" (at Wikisource).

So many things in my head this morning, I'm bound to forget something.

Yesterday, after the writing, UPS dropped (literally) a 45 lb. box of Tales of Pain and Wonder and Tails of Tales of Pain and Wonder onto our front porch. And now I have seen the 3rd edition of the collection, and it is beautiful, and I am extremely grateful to Bill Schafer at subpress for giving me another chance to get this book right. In particular, Richard A. Kirk's artwork is reproduced beautifully. It's just a gorgeous book, and if you haven't already ordered, I urge you to do so now, because soon it will be sold out once again, and, if you wish to own it, you'll have to resort to paying exorbitant eBay prices to people who are not me.

And I was extremely pleased that Christian Siriano won Project Runway 4. I just had to say that, because I am a fashion nerd (thank you, Diana Eng).

No walk yesterday, because I just wasn't up to the chilly wind. It's much warmer today, I'm glad to say.

I'm considering (and I know this is a strange idea, bear with me) of establishing an rp group on Second Life to try rping through certain scenarios before I write them as vignettes or stories for Sirenia Digest. I'd probably call it "The Sirenia Players" (how could I not), and it would be a small group, no more than ten people, I think. Part of the great, untapped potential of SL is all the ways it can aid authors, and this would be another way of taking advantage of what it has to offer. To date, I have derived a number of pieces for the digest from SL rps, including "The Steam Dancer," Scene in the Museum (1896)," and "In the Dreamtime of Lady Resurrection". Anyway, speak up here or via email — greygirlbeast(at)gmail(dot)com — if you might be interested, and I'll keep you posted.

Also, you can now "See the Alternate Ending for I Am Legend That Was Too Satisfying for Test Audiences," courtesy New York Entertainment (my thanks to chris_walsh for pointing me to this). It's still not the right ending, but is an ending that follows logically and emotionally from the rest of the film, doesn't reinforce the myth that the military can save us from a doomsday of our own devising, and it is far, far preferable to what was shown in theatres. Of course, if you have not yet seen the film and want to, it's probably best not to watch this ending, as it is undeniably spoilerish. If only the practice of employing "test audiences" to aim films at the lowest common denominator (which is to say, the average audience) would go the way of the non-avian theropods...

Regarding my quote yesterday (from a March 2, 2005 entry) on the ease with which one may find my books via the internet, ariander writes:

To add to that, if people are really bent on buying through their local bookseller, said bookseller has all sorts of access to ordering systems and will most likely order whatever people want if those people make the effort to ask for it rather than wandering the aisles, giving a shrug when it can't be found, and walking back out the door.

This is, of course, entirely true, and I was remiss in not mentioning it. Don't see what you want at your local bookstore? Just ask them to order it. Easy as pie (whatever that means).

The latest round of eBay auctions will be ending later this afternoon, including the only copy of the Japanese translation of the Beowulf novelization I am likely ever to offer on eBay. Ever. So, please, have a look and bid if you are so disposed and able. Thank you.

Yesterday, while I did not actually write, I did manage to prepare myself to write today. Sometime last week, a title came to me — "Pickman's Other Model" — and so yesterday I reread "Pickman's Model" for the thousandth time and did various other bits of research related to the story and 1927 Boston and a slew of artists (from Goya to Sidney Sime), and I think today I am ready to begin the piece (which will appear in Sirenia Digest #28). I'm pretty sure it will be set not in Boston, but on College Hill in Providence, Rhode Island, and that it will be a first person narrative written by "Eliot," the man who is being told the tale of Thurber's encounter with Richard Upton Pickman in Lovecraft's story.

Also, I have been invited to participate in ReaderCon 19 in Burlington, Massachusetts this July, and I am going to try to actually attend.

A good walk yesterday. The weather was fantastic. Tank-top weather. We walked through Freedom Park, and I took photos of things that were budding and blooming. I meant to include some of the photos in this entry, but forgot until this very moment. Maybe I'll get them in tomorrow. Oh, and I washed my hair, which is always a chore. And, Second Life aside, that was yesterday.

Long have I regarded March 1st as the first day of Spring, and never mind that the equinox is still three weeks away. I actually wrote an entry about this two years ago. Anyway, for me, Spring begins March 1st and ends on June 1st. So, hello Spring. Right now, it's 60F outside, and the meteorologists say we'll go to 63F.

By now, all subscribers should have Sirenia Digest #27. If you don't, email Spooky at crk_books(at)yahoo(dot)com, and she'll make it right. I'd love to hear some feedback on the issue today, but it is a long issue, so I expect many people won't have finished reading it for several days yet.

Yesterday was an odd blur of work and movies. Early on, I did some work getting the last loose threads tied off for Sirenia Digest #27. Then Spooky and I went to the 2:40 pm (CaST) matinée of Justin Chadwick's The Other Boleyn Girl (based on Philippa Gregory's novel). Truthfully, I mostly went for the eye-candy factor. Most of the film is carried by Natalie Portman, though Scarlett Johansson's role is more robust near the ending. Not a great film, and I don't expect it to wind up on many "Best of 2008" lists, but I found it quite enjoyable. Back home, the signature pages for Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy arrived via UPS, and I received the final version Vince's illustration for "Beatification." I think the Digest actually went out about 6:30 pm (CaST). We found our Kid Night movies from Videodrome this week, which got me out of the house twice in one day — a Val Lewton double feature, I Walked With a Zombie (1943) and The Body Snatcher (1945). The latter is a particular favorite of mine, and surely one of Boris Karloff's finest films. Lewton produced and wrote The Body Snatcher, but it was directed by Robert Wise. I Walked With a Zombie was also produced by Lewton, but directed by Jacques Tourneur. Anyway, a great double feature, and I ate too many Oreos.

Someone sent me a link to the video for Björk's "Oceania," which I almost based a vignette on, a year or so ago, but never got around to finishing the piece. Regardless, it's very Sirenia Digest, and so I'm including it below:



Also, thanks to Wikipedia, I finally know why eBay is named eBay: "Originally, the site belonged to Echo Bay Technology Group, Omidyar's consulting firm. Omidyar had tried to register the domain name echobay.com (the domain has recently been put up for sale) but found it already taken by the Echo Bay Mines, a gold mining company, so he shortened it to his second choice, eBay.com." So, don't go sayin' I ain't never learned you nothin'. And speaking of eBay, please have a look at the current auctions, set to end on Monday.

And, lastly, I could not resist taking the "Deep and Meaningful Winnie-The-Pooh Character Test." I am not in the least bit surprised by my results (behind the cut):

( Deep and Meaningful )

And here it is, the first day of Spring, the Vernal Equinox, Ostara. And I greet it with great relief, that another winter has come and gone.

There was very little to yesterday, except the continued reading and correcting and editing and rewriting of Silk. Many commas and hyphens were added, a few compounderations were hewn asunder. Some atrocious phrasing was made less so. In the end, we did three chapters, though I'd hoped to do four, and this morning the Zokutou page thingy looks like this:

225 / 354 (63.6%)

Going over the novel again after all these years, I remain perplexed that so many readers found the characters so loathsome. Sure, Robin and Byron are a bit much, too goth for their own good or anybody elses, but all in all, I still find the people inhabiting Silk as sympathetic as I ever did, and I do not waste my time trying to write characters with whom I cannot sympathize. I would not know how to do that. But I've heard it from so many people. This person, for example, in an Amazon.com "review":

If you are really into super-confusing, creepy books with self-pitying, annoying, wear-it-on-their sleeve outcast characters-- this might be just the tale for you.

Or this "review":

I had a hard time sympathizing with these pathetic, soullessly conformist waifs.

Or this one:

What bothers me is that I find the characters so enormously unappealing. They're all self-absorbed 20somethings proudly and defiantly wrapped up in their own pain and dysfunction. I couldn't find any sympathy in me, much less empathy, for any of them, not even Spyder, who was horribly abused as a child. Every time Daria lost her temper over her junky boyfriend I wanted to slap her. Every time Spyder evaded the questions of those who wanted to love and help her with vague mumblings I wanted to strangle her. These are people who enjoy wallowing in their pain.

Even now, a decade after the book was first published, fourteen years after I started writing it, these reactions simply mystify me. Much of Silk is awfully close to autobiography, and I was writing about a time and places and people I had known and been. And though I am now someone very, very different, I still do not understand these reactions, this hostility. For me, Silk is a novel about people doing the best they can do, given their unfortunate situations and histories. Yes, many of them are broken and insane and self-destructive, and they usually do not behave like or have the priorities of sensible, down-to-earth, workin' class folks or property-flipping yuppies. But, for the most part, they are true. And that is my first and most important job as a writer, to write true people. Maybe what rubbed these people the wrong way was that I didn't turn Silk into some sort of tiresome morality tale or a cautionary screed: Be careful, or you'll end up like these losers. Anyway...

I did find one extremely annoying error in the book yesterday, one that has made it into print three times now. I refer to the black widows Spyder's keeping as "Latrodectus geomstricus," thereby managing to make both a taxonomic and a spelling blunder. There is no such beast as Latrodectus geomstricus. Latrodectus geometricus, on the other hand, is the brown widow. But. The Southern black widow, which would have been the species in Spyder's care, is Latrodectus mactans. I am at a loss to explain how I made this error in the first place, much less how it was carried on through three editions. People pick on my characters when they ought to pick on my taxonomy.

Like I said, not much else to yesterday. I was up until 1:30 a.m. writing Wikipedia articles, one on Judeasaurus and one on the squamate clade Varanoidea, because that's just the sort of self-absorbed, dysfunctional, pathetic dork I am.

The temperature may go as high as 80F today. As much as I love New England, it's mostly these early springs that keep me chained to such hostile southern climes. The sun is bright. Blooms are blooming, and buds are budding. The world is waking up again.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,645 words and finished "Untitled 26," which has turned out to be a wonderful little story, after all and despite my having been too tired to write another story. It's a couple of different shades of Bradbury, though I'd not set out for it to be. I am pleased, on those rare occasions, when I begin a story that I "know" will be dark and awful and then it goes another way, instead. Anyway, you may read both "Untitled 26" and "In View of Nothing" in Sirenia Digest #16

And I have some good news. As of December, Silk will once again be in print. Roc will be re-releasing the book as a new mass-market paperback, to be followed in early '08 by the mmp of Murder of Angels. I should have the new Silk cover art very soon and will post it here. This will make the fourth edition of the novel since its original release in May/June 1998, almost ten very long years ago. There will be some revision, because there are errors and typos that were never fixed, but I think I will mostly be refraining from making stylistic changes. That's not the way I write now, but it is the way I wrote then, and it's the voice of that book. I will be expanding the author's note slightly. I also contemplated rewriting the ending to dampen the ambiguity factor, but realised that would be exactly the wrong thing to do. There are voices in my head, and some of them I should heed, and others I should not.

To celebrate the good news, the next four people who subscribe to Sirenia Digest will receive a free signed copy of the 2002 tpb edition of Silk — personalised if you so desire.

So, I have to deliver the Silk corrections to my editor by April 15th, plus I have to edit the results of the Forced and New Consolidated marches for my other editor (at HarperCollins), so it looks like, once the Locus essay is done, I'll be spending a couple of weeks on proofreading. It's almost like a vacation, except that it's nothing at all like a vacation.

I forgot to mention all the birds we saw on yesterday's walk: all the usual suspects, but also a Carolina chickadee (Poecile carolinensis), two Canada geese (Branta canadensis), and one of the local Red-tailed hawks (Buteo jamaicensis).

Regarding Georgia's dumb snake-related laws and our having to release Drinker, blueharlequin writes:

Having been involved in the snake breeding community for quite a number of years now, I too have had my fill of bullshit legislation about the keeping of reptiles. That being said, in many cases, I find the laws surrounding the keeping of native species often work the way that they're supposed to, which is to say, they keep unscrupulous keepers/breeders/re-sellers from collecting large numbers of animals from the local wild populations.

As I said yesterday, I fully support laws designed to protect threatened species and populations from commercial collectors and breeders (and snake-hating ophidophobes). And that may have been the intent of this law (it's kind of hard to say exactly what the intent of this legislation was). However, it should be noted that it is not illegal to simply kill most of the native Georgia species that it is illegal to keep as pets. And then there's the problem with there being no protection for venomous species, and the problem of encouraging the keeping of non-native, non-venomous species that could escape or be intentionally released and end up displacing native Georgia species. I have decided to write a long letter to the State Herpetologist about all this today or tomorrow.

Also, bucketopants writes:

I know that the law regarding piercing passed the House, I do not see anywhere on the net, or looking up Georgia law, that the bill passed the Senate, or was even voted upon. I know there was a great uproar when the Georgia House passed the bill, but for some reason I remember hearing that the bill died and the law was never passed. I remember because hearing that made me feel a little less ashamed for living in Georgia.

You are, in fact, entirely correct and I am wrong. I think I must have heard about the bill passing the House and then never heard about its defeat in the Senate. Here's a link.

Right. Well, anyway, the platypus (who is oddly agreeable this morning) says it's time to sit on the front porch and drink a cup of coffee.

This morning the weather has turned just a bit nasty. It's only 51F out there right now, with a projected high of only 63F, about ten degrees cooler than yesterday's high. And it's cloudy. But. Truthfully, hearing how awfully cold it is at Spooky's parents' place in Rhode Island, I shouldn't complain about 51F. When her mother woke this morning, it was 8F. Ugh. That makes 51F seem positively balmy.

I am taking the day off. The writing went very well yesterday, 1,831 words on "In View of Nothing." I think I finally found my way into the story, and yesterday was the first day I've worked on it that I wasn't left feeling frustrated and depressed afterwards. I will finish it on Saturday, I suspect. But not today. Today, I think Spooky and I are going to see The Host and then meet up with Byron for 300 later on (I was encouraged by curt_holman's reviews of both films in the new Creative Loafing). We might even have dinner, somewhere in there. I am glad to be done with the March, so that my writing may now resume its usual pace, and I may only write too much, as opposed to writing too, too much.

Drinker (the chosen name) ate at least one snail yesterday, so it looks like sheheit is here to stay, at least for now. Sheheit is named for Prof. Edward Drinker Cope, one of the preeminent herpetologists, paleontologists, and ichthyologists of the 19th Century and long a personal hero of mine. Also, there is a genus of Late Jurassic hypsilophodontid dinosaur named Drinker (also in honour of Cope, natch), so I can say sheheit's named for both Cope and the dinosaur genus named for Cope. Spooky just came in with another snail and a slug, a regular Storeria dekayi molluscan buffet!

Congratulations to faustfatale and nathan_long on the occasion of their Scribe Award nominations!

Last night, we watched Christopher Guest's For Your Consideration (2006), a marvelously wry look at Hollywood and hype, and we also watched Ace of Cakes, because Geoff is just so damned cool. And then I read, more of Lewin's Bones of Contention. Soon, I have to set aside the paleoanthropology and get back to my Mars reading, as The Dinosaurs of Mars looms ever larger on the horizon.

Okay. The platypus say if I'm not gonna work today, I have to get off the iBook so sheheit can "surf the web for sizzling monotreme porn." Also, says the platypus, if I'm not gonna write today, doing anything else at my desk is just mocking the poor beast.

But...do please pick up a copy of Daughter of Hounds, if you have not done so already. Thanks!

The writing at last went well yesterday, the first truly good writing day I've had since January 31st. No forced march, though. Still, I did 1,355 words on a new SFish piece for Sirenia Digest. Something that presently has no title. Something I almost did not even begin writing, it seems so grim, and I don't wish to be grim right now. But I'm writing it anyway, because I think it "wants" to be written. The quotation marks there merely signify that I do not actually think one should speak of herhisits fiction in teleological terms. Anyway, Spooky read what I wrote yesterday and liked it a lot, which is good, as I was uncertain.

My agent has read the three-page fleshed out proposal for Joey LaFaye, and she loves it.

So far, it appears that Daughter of Hounds is selling better than all my previous novels have sold, excepting Silk. This is a Very Good Thing. It's not actually fair to compare sales of Silk and Daughter of Hounds, however, as the former was a $6.50 mmp and the latter is a $14 tpb. And Silk had loads more publicity, and I was loads sexier back then.

I have noted, with some amusement, that people are less likely to comment on these entries when I actually talk about how I write and how I feel about writing. Yesterday, for example. Now, if I talk about magick or dreams or movies or being accosted by homophobic winos, people talk, usually. Discussions of writing tends to clog the pores, block the bowels, back up the plumping...so to speak. But that's okay, 'cause it bores me to.

To wit, I have been watching the reactions of various readers to Daughter of Hounds, as expressed in blogs and elsewhere on the interweb, and a curious sort of pattern has emerged. Most everyone is saying very positive things about it, but there's a small number who feel that I've abandoned what's best about my fiction, that Daughter of Hounds is too concrete, the pacing is too fast, not enough atmosphere, that too much is resolved, that the sense of mystery has been lost, and so forth. These people tend to cite Threshold or Silk as my best novels, or they think my writing works better in short fiction (I agree with that latter sentiment, but that's primarily because I think almost everyone's writing works better in short stories; novels are grotesque, unwieldy things in all but the most capable hands.). However, there is also a small number who feel rather strongly that this is my best novel...for these very same reasons listed above by people who think it's my worst. I find that remarkable, and it also makes perfect sense, that Daughter of Hounds would create this sort of polarization. I could point to specific examples, but people would only feel picked on, so I shan't.

I was kind of amused by whoever referred to Emmie Silvey as a deus ex machina plot device, in her timely arrival beneath Woonsocket (I shall not say more, as I do not wish to spoil the story for those who've not yet read it). I would argue that in a novel where "larger forces" are clearly at work, concerns about deus ex machina solutions are irrelevant, especially when the convergence was set in motion very early in the novel. And, in any case, wouldn't Pearl be the actual deus ex machina? Or her father, the alchemist? But, anyway...

We had an excellent walk yesterday, the first excellent walk we've had since December, most likely. We headed west. There was some sort of film shoot blocking the south end of Seminole. Turns out the filming was being done on the roof of Junkman's Daughter. Probably a music video. We headed down Sinclair Ave., pausing to play with Daisy Dog and say "hi" to the Dinosaur of Sinclair Ave. Despite all the cold, there were still buds and blooms everywhere. The temps went as high as 64F before the afternoon was over. We walked all the way to the intersection of Sinclair and Carmel before turning back for home. I wish I'd taken the camera.

Back home, Spooky opened the windows to air the place out, and the warmth hung around long enough that my office window wasn't closed until 5:53 p.m. (CaST). It gives me hope for spring. Last night, after dinner, I played quite a bit of Final Fantasy XII, picking my way through Giruvegan, which is one of the most breathtaking things I've ever seen in any video game. The House on Ash Tree Lane meets V'ger, or something like that. Later, I finished reading Christopher G. Janus and William Brashler's The Search for Peking Man (1975) and didn't get to sleep until just after 4 a.m. (again).

And this entry has gone on far too long. And there's still stuff I wanted to squeeze in. Maybe I'll do an addendum later today. But a quick thanks to Poppy (docbrite), and she knows why.

Rain came in at some point last night. I awoke at eight or so and lay listening to the downpour. As I type this, the sun is coming through the clouds, glinting off the water on the new leaves. I feel sort of giddy, sort of absurdly relieved at this particular spring, as though some part of me truly thought it would never come. The world's awake again. The trees are green, flowers are everywhere, as are bees (both bumble and honey). And red wasps. And yellow jackets. And hornets. A very determined hornet tried for about an hour to get in through my office window yesterday.

I sort of hate to come back after three days away from LJ/Blogger and cause a ruckus right off the bat, or right out of the gate, or whatever, but something's been bothering me for some time now. I resolved yesterday to deal with it, as tactfully as possible (which probably won't be very). It concerns a question which I've raised here before, in passing, regarding, well, realizing that one has readers that one would just as soon not have. And that's an inherently strange thing to say, I know. On the one hand, I need all the readers I can get. But on the other, I must admit that s