Colder again today, but knowing that spring is near helps.

Here's a nice little write up from "The Agony Column" regarding the forthcoming third edition of Tales of Pain and Wonder. The piece was posted way back on November 11th, but I only just saw it yesterday. Obviously, I don't agree with its take on the cover of the Meisha-Merlin edition, but that is a small affair. I do rather adore being called an "odd writer," especially when that comment is followed with these sorts of comments: Her work is at once visionary and hyper-real, shrouded in the supernatural yet anchored in the gritty evocation of our hardscrabble lives. Reading almost anything she has written, you might find yourself thinking "Faulkner" one second and "Lovecraft" the next. These are not names or styles that rest comfortably close beyond those pages penned by Kiernan. So, yes, thank you, Rick Kleffel. Lovecraft and Faulkner I can live with.

When I was talking to Bill Schafer at subpress yesterday (or was it the day before?) about the sf collection, he told me that I "could not allow this book to become a burden." And he's right. A big part of what he was referring to is the nightmare of copy-editing and revision I took upon myself in preparing the ms. for the third edition of Tales of Pain and Wonder. Between my poor health and all the work that must be done for Sirenia Digest and the writing of Joey Lafaye, there simply is not time or energy to put myself through that again. Fortunately, however, all the stories that will be included in the sf collection are recent, and I have not yet grown uncomfortable with their voices, or, rather, with the voice I wrote them in. The oldest of the stories, "Riding the White Bull," was written in 2003 (as opposed to 1994 with Tales of Pain and Wonder). But yes, no burden this time out. I promise.

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Again, my great thanks for the generosity, the donations that have come in the last four days, the eBay bids, the well wishes, and the new Sirenia Digest subscribers (some from as far away as Australia!). All of you, thanks. I thought about trying to list everyone by name, but the list would be gigantic, and I would inevitably leave someone out. So, please accept this blanket expression of my gratitude. For now, the medical/dental expenses are covered, which I find nothing short of amazing, given how worried I was about money as recently as Wednesday morning. Now, I can simply concentrate on getting well and getting Joey Lafaye written, and that is such a huge relief that it is rather dizzying. Overwhelming, as I have said. You guys are the draddest, which is to say, you rock. I'm not putting the PayPal button up again today, but the eBay auctions continue, and it's never too late to subscribe to the Digest.

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About 5:30 pm yesterday, we had a walk. The weather was good, just a little nip in the air. The dogwoods have buds. The Narcissus do, as well, and the Camellias have bloomed. Mostly, we walked up and down Sinclair, as far south and east as the intersection with Carmel Avenue. There are a few photos behind the cut:

( February 9, 2008 )

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Last night, well, not much to last night, but we did catch two new episodes of Torchwood. And now, the platypus says I'm being a slacker, and the coffee has not yet magically appeared. Damned unreliable caffeine gnomes.

One reason I have so few days off is that it's too easy for them to turn into Bad Days. Which only almost happened yesterday. I may not love the work I do, but at least it keeps my gnawing mind occupied. It seems that I am incapable of simply resting, no matter how exhausted I might be, mentally and/or physically. My mind will not be idle, and if not given some object on which to fix, it will find some object of it's own, and these are usually things I should not dwell upon. And so the Bad Days ensue. So I write to keep my mind busy, which is really how this all began, way back in 1992. I started writing because writing was a less self-destructive means of occupying my thoughts than the distractions I'd been using for years. Today is supposed to be a second day off, but I can't yet say if that's actually going to happen. Spooky has said it can only be a day off if we get out of the goddamn house and find something to do*, so that I don't run the risk of a Bad day.

And, yeah, all this is probably TMI. Probably more than you want to hear and more than I want to be saying. But there it is anyway. The confession that my mind is bereft of an OFF switch.

We did at least have a very good walk yesterday. A bit more than two miles, through the three easternmost of Olmsted's Atlanta parks, beginning with Oak Grove (née Brightwood). We discovered a wonderful bit of wilderness between Oak Grove and the next park over (Shadyside), a swath of woods along the banks of Lullwood Creek. A steep descent from Ponce, but it's wonderfully green and leafy down there. Turns out, this is the northern end of the same patch of woods where we released Drinker, connecting to the south with Candler Park. Spooky and I speculated on all the varieties of reptiles and amphibians we could possibly glimpse there in the green shadows. In the presence of those trees and vines and the creek, it was easy to pretend we were nowhere near a city. Anyway, after our detour to Lullwood Creek, we continued east to Shadyside Park, where we left Atlanta and walked into Decatur. We followed Shadyside all the way to the easternmost edge of Dellwood Park at the intersection of Ponce de Leon and Ponce de Leon South.

David called from Athens yesterday, but Spooky spoke with him; I didn't. We read another chapter of The Children of Húrin. I did a drawing for girfan that I should have sent her weeks and weeks ago. I had a bath. Long after dinner, we watched The Creature Walks Among Us (1956), certainly the least interesting of the Creature trilogy, but still a very serviceable monster movie. There isn't much else to say about yesterday.

I think an actual political entry is brewing. Maybe. I haven't made one of those in ages, it seems. My appetite and tolerance for politics have diminished until they are almost nonexistent.

Here are the lyrics to Tori Amos' "Bouncing Off Clouds," behind the cut, because it seemed I should point out that they have nothing much whatsoever to do with the actual story that is "The Ape's Wife." That's almost always how it is. It's the sound of the song, the mood it evokes, not the lyrics, when it comes to the music I get stuck on while writing:

( Bouncing Off Clouds )

By the way, turns out I actually listened to "Bouncing Off Clouds" 160 times, over the course of three days, while writing "The Ape's Wife."

* That is, something besides a walk, as walking rarely ever manages to occupy my mind.

Yesterday, I wrote 885 words on "The Ape's Wife," finally finding THE END. The total word count for the story comes to 8,683 words. But, fortunately, I have a very understanding editor, and he was cool with the extra 683 words. I am not yet entirely certain how I feel about the ending. This story first occurred to me as a 2-3k-word vignette for Sirenia Digest and, in the writing, became a sort of hallucinatory mini-epic of the weird. Sort of like what might have happened if Lord Dunsany had written a sequel to the 1933 King Kong. Anyway, after dinner, I did four good pages on the "Onion" screenplay, so the Zokoutu page meter looks like this:

8 / 115 (7.0%)

Which gets me almost to the end of Scene 3. Frank and Willa in their horrid little apartment above the Chinese apothecary. But. Today is a day off. Spooky finished with Murder of Angels yesterday, and I need to put some distance between myself and "The Ape's Wife" before I can determine if and how and why it might need to be tweaked. Plus, now that the short story is finished, I must proceed to the revisions of the spawn of the Forced and New Reconsolidated marches, which will likely consume most of next week.

I never did mention that I thought last Monday's episode of Heroes was somewhat less mediocre than usual, and it caused me to suspect that maybe some part of the problem is that they started the story in the wrong place.

A good walk yesterday, continuing our exploration of the parks along Ponce de Leon. We crossed Springdale and Virgilee to Oak Grove Park, which used to be Brightwood Park. It is shown as Brightwood on Olmsted's blueprints for the five parks, and I cannot imagine why the name has been changed. Except that Atlanta seems allergic to its own history. Spooky spotted a luna moth (Actias luna) chrysalis hanging in a tree. There were squirrels and robins. A very pleasant stroll. Back home, after dinner and screenplay writing, we watched Steve Anderson's hilarious documentary Fuck (2005), followed by an old favourite of mine, George Roy Hill's The Sting (1973).

Okay. I think that's all for now. I should get out of here before the dozing platypus awakens and slaps the manacles on me once again. I leave you with this image, Merian C. Cooper dreaming of Kong, which seems appropriate the day after finishing "The Ape's Wife."

Despite getting a very late start yesterday (a bit after 3 p.m.), the writing went well. I did 1,186 words and finished the new piece. No longer is it "Untitled 24." Now it is "A Season of Broken Dolls." Anyway, you can read it in Sirenia Digest #15. Today, I need to start the second piece for #15...something short...an actual vignette, I think. But the subject has not yet fixed itself in my mind.

Dreamsick this ayem.

The Raven Red auction ends in about nine hours. I hope you'll have a look. You can find all the raven auctions here. I thank you, Spooky thanks you, Hubero P. Wu thanks you, and Herr Platypus certainly thanks you. Someone recently suggested that perhaps the platypus is my totem animal. No way, no how. If I have a totem animal, which I kind of doubt, it's not even from this planet.

Looking back at old entries this morning, I came across this paragraph regarding Daughter of Hounds, from this same date one year ago:

Some part of me feels sick this morning. Not germ sick. Some intangible bit of me I can't treat with pills and the like. I'm very, very tired. I feel as though I could sleep a week. At least. We finished with read-through on Daughter of Hounds yesterday. Spooky cried again. It just left me feeling drained and at a loss. Like, okay, here it is. I've done this thing again, this book thing. I'm not sure I know what to make of it, all these stories I keep telling. A little bit after we'd finished, I admit I also got weepy, for the characters, for all the work that's already gone into the novel, for all of it. It's part relief. It's part dread. It's part weariness. Right now, I feel as though I could never write another novel and it would be for the best. Maybe I won't feel that way next week or next month. I suppose we'll see. I've put too much of myself into Daughter of Hounds, much more than I could spare. Now I want to hide it away somewhere, in a closet or beneath the bed. I don't want to see it edited and copyedited and published and reviewed and commented upon by readers. I just want to put it somewhere safe, and it could always be mine and never anyone else's. I don't know that I've ever felt this protective of one of my novels. I just want to keep it safe.


365 days farther in, I think I've resigned myself to the fact that Daughter of Hounds has moved forever beyond my ability to "protect" it. But looking at those words, while some of the urges in question may have diminished in intensity, I still know exactly what I meant.

A very fine walk yesterday, which is why I got such a late start. I was determined to wait until the air temp climbed above 50F, and that meant waiting until about 1:30 p.m. Bright sun. Blue skies. We walked far down Sinclair to Inman Park, then south to Euclid. We saw a hawk, gliding between the trees. We heard a woodpecker but didn't see it. We came back via L5P, and there were a lot of people out. But I miss what L5P was back in the early and mid '90s. These days, it seems so diminished. Anyway, we took a few photos on the walk (behind the cut):

( From a Walk )

Last night's ep of Battlestar Galactica was an improvement, and next week looks like it will be still more space opera, less soap opera. So I shall continue to watch for the time being. Also, the new ep of The Dresden Files was nice enough, but I couldn't help thinking how much better the show would be if Whedon were directing, or if they'd stick with one writer. It needs less bland TV appeal, more genuine darkness, more black humour, an edge that's actually sharp. Later still, Spooky read me chapters 4-6 of The Terror, which I am liking quite a lot so far.

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Back to the Motel this morning. I do not for a fact know that it is a motel. That's just how I've come to think of the white room, the white tile floor damp with rain from a leaky roof, the flickering fluorescents. I think that I am being haunted by this goddamn dream, and I can not begin to puzzle it out. I half suspect it's not even my dream. But I am going to stop writing about it here. It must be getting tedious. Instead, I shall make a short story of the thing. Maybe that will act as a binding and lock it safely away.

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.

There are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.

We came across that sentence while reading The Hobbit last night, the scene where Bilbo first gets a good look at Smaug's hoard, and it just floored me. Not only is it a grand sentence in its own right, but it struck a nerve with me, as too often I am writing and come to some marvelous or terrible thing...and the words just are not there. I know they should be. I sense they may once have been. Anyway, nice.

The thing about days off when one is actually expected to rest, they do not make for interesting blog entries. Because, as I have found, resting is generally boring as hell. And there are few things I hate as much as boredom. Republicans, polenta, NASCAR, Christina Aguilera, leafblowers, Stargate SG-1, and boredom. So there was not nearly as much pure and unadulterated rest yesterday as there should have been. I'm just no good at it.

We had a really nice, long walk, though, as it was bright and almost warm. Warm enough the dogwoods are budding, which is, of course, all sorts of wrong. We walked west as far as Inman Park, crossing Austin Avenue down to Euclid, which we followed back towards L5P. We played with Daisy, a very friendly black dog. It was about 3:30 p.m. (CaST), and the moon, one day past first quarter, was already high in the southeastern sky. We spotted a Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens). We saw a mysterious trail of fresh bloody dog prints on the sidewalk.

Back home, instead of resting, I worked at cleaning my messy office. It looks much better today. About 6 p.m., I did finally lie down and read for a while, from Janus and Brashler's The Search for Peking Man (1975), but that's as close as I came to doing nothing. I cannot do nothing. I will do plenty of nothing when I am dead. Later, Spooky made soup for dinner. We watched Anthony Bourdain in Indonesia. I did a Wikipedia entry for the new sauropod clade Turiasauria. Spooky rescued the neighbor's chihuahua, as it had somehow gotten outside without them knowing. Then we read The Hobbit, which is where all this began.

Yesterday, after all the "you're not a kid anymore" crap, a couple of people asked about Kid Night, if we still do Kid Night. Truthfully, things have been so crazy the last six or eight months, that Kid Night has been allowed to fall by the wayside. However, inspired by these questions, we resolved to have a proper frelling Kid Night this evening, and maybe it will help. I think we're going to watch The Descent, which must surely qualify as Kid Night fodder. There will be mac and cheese.

My thanks to Tim Pratt, not only for writing that marvelous review of Daughter of Hounds for Locus, but for sending me the full text yesterday. And that reminds me, Spooky pointed out that if you buy Daughter of Hounds and Alabaster together from Amazon.com, you not only save $10.55 off the cost of the books, you also qualify for FREE Super Saver shipping. And hey, you could always toss in the mmp of Threshold for just $6.99 more! But wait! There's more! Well, actually there isn't. But that what they always say of television, so...

Meanwhile, if today is going to earn a W, I must attend to some editing and get back to Vince Locke about the sketch he sent me last night for "The Voyeur in the House of Glass."