It is raining, a very fine spring rain.

Reports of my untimely demise have been greatly exaggerated. However, the same may not be said of Hindrance (née Victoria Regina, aka Crackbaby), my seven-year-old iBook. The last few days she's been fading fast — literally — as her screen gave up the LCD ghost (so to speak). Between iBook anxiety and being unable to find the beginning of The Dinosaurs of Mars, I've been in something of a tizzy. So, Friday afternoon I spoke with my accountant. I have one of those now, ever since She Who Will Not Be Named played havoc with my finances. Informed that yes, I could afford to spend some of the proceeds from the Forced March on a new computer (especially since I'm cutting back on boy whores), yesterday evening Spooky and I made the trip to the Apple Store at Lenox Mall, and now I have a most marvelous machine, my third Apple since July 1993, a 17-inch iMac desktop, whom I have yet to name. Of course, most of today will be spent not-writing, transferring data from Hindrance and getting the new machine just the way I need it to be so I can write tomorrow. And she has not yet been named. This is the computer that should last me until approximately 2013, provided that I last that long myself.

I've just turned up the following PW review of my contribution to Thrillers 2:

EDITED BY ROBERT MORRISH. Cemetery Dance, $40 (230p) ISBN 978-1-58767-122-7 (JUNE)

Caitlin R. Kiernan’s blend of deft characterization and eldritch atmosphere are displayed in two excellent tales of cosmic dread: "The Daughter of the Four of Pentacles" is a prelude to Daughter of Hounds which raises some unsettling questions about our circumscribed position in the universe, while "Houses Under the Sea" handles its Lovecraftian roots with a poignant sensitivity that intensifies its impact. Thrillers 2's effective mix of styles and themes offers a sampler of the best that modern horror offers.

A good Kid Night on Friday. We watched the perfectly ridiculous (nigh unto laughable) William Girdler 1978 adaptation of Graham Masterson's The Manitou, followed by Koji Hashimoto and Sakyo Komatsu's Sayônara, Jûpetâ (1984), as surreal and inexplicable a bit of space opera as Japan has ever produced, complete with toy space ships, hippie ecoterroists, a dolphin, and a Godzilla cameo. Boy howdy.

I'm thinking about adding a monthly podcast to Sirenia Digest. Does this sound like a good idea? Very likely, I shall.

Okay, the platypus says it's time to get back to work. This afternoon, I am in no mood to argue with a platypus what cracks such a damn mean whip...

Ah, to wake in my own bed in my own room and to a day with no tornadoes and no slack-jawed, staring rednecks. Truly, 35% of what I find offensive about Alabamians (and Georgians and lots of others people) would be eliminated if only someone out there could teach the rednecks not to stare in slack-jawed, beady-eyed, unabashed contempt at those of whom they disapprove or simply cannot comprehend. This is not a stare of wonder, not the stare I might stare when first looking upon a new species of neoceratopsian or the latest batch of photos from Mars. This is an intensely hateful gaze meant to intimidate, a gaze that bespeaks a certain odd sense of entitlement, as though the slack-jawed, beady-eyed rednecks have paid someone for the right to stare. They have not paid me.

And the optical gnomes have not yet returned my lost glasses. Damn gnomes. Just call me Squinty J. Kiernan.

Someone, I can't recall who, asked last week if the reason for the trip to Alafrellingbama was too personal to talk about. At the time, I sort of felt it was and didn't answer. But now I will, but with a proviso. I do not make a habit of discussing my health problems here. It's just not something I feel comfortable doing. However, the reason I went to Alafrellingbama has a lot to do with why I have not made any sort of public appearance since Fiddler's Green (Minneapolis, November '04), so I have decided it is not out of place here. I likely will not mention this again, though.

Anyway, I have always had difficult feet. For my height, they are much too small, too short, with uncommonly high arches. My doctor says to blame my Japanese heritage (she says that sort of thing all the goddamn time). In the winter of '03-'04, I began to have peculiar sensations in both my feet, and soon thereafter severe shooting, stabbing pains radiating out from the balls of my feet along my big toe and my second toe. This went on through the summer of '04, and in October '04, the pain was replaced by numbness and tingling, swelling, then more pain, and so forth. By the winter of '04-'05, the condition worsened dramatically and for several months it was difficult to walk without a cane. Since then, my feet have been very, very gradually improving. But I have weeks that are so bad I want to just give up and buy a goddamn wheelchair. Always have I been a moderately to very active person, and I often prided myself on moving with a certian grace borne of years of dancing and rock climbing. However, this condition has made me clumsy and inactive. I have spent the last couple of years trying to treat it myself, with mixed results. My doctor believes, as do Spooky and I, that is tarsal tunnel syndrome, though I have so far declined the somewhat invasive (and expensive) tests that would determine if this is, indeed, the correct diagnosis. Very few people were told of this problem — my mom, my lit agent, Neil, Poppy, Sonya, Byron, Jim and "Hannah," Spooky's parents. That's about it. So, that is why I had to go to Birmingham, and why I have made no public appearances since 2004 (I have sometimes offered other excuses), and why I talk so often about taking walks (as the walks are part of my physical therapy, though more for the rest of my body than my feet). Now, having said all this, I would ask that readers please, please, please refrain from offering their own diagnoses and/or suggested treatments. Though I know you'd mean well, I would only find such things very annoying and ignore them. I am in more than capable hands, and slowly it would seem I am getting better.

I thought I'd post some photographs from Wednesday, tornado day. Late in the afternoon, I became fidgety, having been cooped up in my Mom's house all day waiting for twisters to descend upon us, and finally I talked Spooky into a drive through Leeds, the town where I spent most of my childhood. We drove by the high school (one of two I attended), but it had been evacuated because of the tornadic threat. I looked around, even opened a door and peered inside. There was that intensely eerie feeling of backwards time-travel I get when visiting places where I once spent so much of my life, but have not seen in many years. I was last at Leeds High School in May or June of 1980, I believe. So, this was really my first time back — discounting a couple of drive-bys — in twenty seven years! I was only sixteen the last time I set foot in that school. And yet it has changed in no way that I could discern, which only added to the eeriness. Had the place not been all but deserted, I might have summoned the courage to visit a couple of teachers, and wouldn't that have been surreal? Anyway, photos behind the cut, eleven of them, most by me. There's also an old cemetery I took Spooky to see, and a couple of our storage unit in Birmingham.

( March 1-2 2007 )

I need to go catch up on my e-mail, but I do want to thank Pat Hawkes-Reed (girfan) for sending me the marvelous UK "Lesser Octopus" stamp (as well as the accompanying postcard set). I just got the package this ayem. I love getting mail from England. Also, I wanted to mention that Cemetery Dance Publications now appears, at long last, to be taking preorders for Thrillers 2, the anthology which includes two longish short stories by me — "The Daughter of the Four of Pentacles" and "Houses Under the Sea." Both these stories were written way back in the spring of 2003, and Sirenia Digest readers should note that the story Sonya (sovay) and I wrote together, "In the Praying Windows," is a sort of sequel to "Houses Under the Sea." "The Daughter of the Four of Pentacles" is a prequel to Daughter of Hounds. Unless I miss my guess, John Myroshnychenko's cover painting for Thrillers 2 is also an illustration from "Houses Under the Sea." Thanks to Robert Morrish for the heads-up. Finally, we still have a copy of The Five of Cups on eBay, and Spooky will be adding more items soon.

Postscript (3:28 p.m. CaST) — Byron just called to say that it wasn't optical gnomes. He stole my glasses. They will be listed on eBay, says he, as the "Magickal Write Like Caitlín Kiernan Spectacles." Only 80 bazillion dollahs. I think he also stole shampoo and toilet paper. So, the gnomes are off the hook. For now...

So, I think it's safe the say the "yays" carried the day in yesterday's photo poll. I'll try to upload a couple or three of the photos this afternoon, this evening, sometime today. When the writing's done.

Yesterday I did an very respectable 2,264 words and finished "Metamorporphosis A," which will appear in Sirenia Digest 12 late this month. The total word count came to 3,714 (in just two days). It all began with the aforementioned word game that Spooky and I play. I asked her for a word. She gave me "dirigible" (probably because I'd been singing The Decemberists' "Sons and Daughters" at the top of my lungs all damn day). It's a strange piece, and having finished it, I was entirely uncertain how I felt about "Metamorphosis A." It seems bleak and brutal, even for me. I read it to Spooky, and she liked it, comparing it to one of David Lynch's early short films. I asked Sonya (sovay) if she'd read it, and she liked it, too, and said that it reminded her of "Persephone" and "Riding the White Bull." And I suppose it does share some common ground with those two stories. I suppose it's sf, in some sense. But I think it more fair to say it's what Elizabeth Bear (matociquala) and I were calling eco-gothic, only in a more intense and personal and claustrophobic way. An organic dread. A horror of physical transcendence. Something like that. I'd meant for it to be something rather different, but it turned out to be one of those shopping carts with one wobbly wheel that pulls me the way it wants to go. And that's where I let it take me.

Sonya and I have decided to postpone our second collaboration until Sirenia Digest 13, next month. Which means I still have one piece left to write for SD 12, and it will be the retelling of the Pied Piper that I mentioned earlier. I hope to start it today.

Locus has the long-delayed Thrillers 2 anthology listed for a December 2006 release. I hope some of you will pick it up. Edited by Robert Morrish and published by Cemetery Dance, it includes new fiction by Gemma Files, Tim Waggoner, and R. Patrick Gates. My contribution includes "The Daughter of the Four of Pentacles" (one of the stories that inspired Daughter of Hounds) and "Houses Under the Sea" (the first Jacova Angevine story). Both of these were pieces that I really wish could have been included in To Charles Fort, With Love. Ah, well. I suppose that's what 2nd editions are for. Together, my two stories for Thrillers 2 come to more than 20,000 words, so you might want to track it down.

The eBay auctions ended late yesterday afternoon. The Daughter of Hounds ARC sold for much more than I'd expected. Unfortunately, the lettered edition of Alabaster with chapbook and Spooky's doll failed to make our reserve by about $33. I'm pretty sure that's the first time we've ever had that happen. Spooky has not yet decided whether or not she wants the doll relisted. Personally, I'd prefer she didn't sell it. But there will be other eBay news forthcoming, today or tomorrow.

A rainy day today. There was wonderful rumbling thunder a few minutes ago.

Today, the featured article on Wikipedia is J. R. R. Toilkien. Drad.

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