tiredWednesday night, UPS delivered three big (and one little) box of Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea and False/Starts II to our doorstep. The helpful UPS dude helped Kathryn get them inside. The book is beautiful. I am, in almost every possible way, delighted with it, and if you do not yet have your copy, you should order it now, because there only a very few remaining at Subterranean Press. It is an amazingly strange and disconcerting feeling, seeing Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 sitting together on a shelf. They represent a long journey, not only across the two decades during which the stories were written (1993-2013), but also the five years that were required to compile, edit, and publish the two collections. I announced the project on July 21, 2010, the same day that Bill Schafer asked if I'd like to do the books. Five years. That sort of blows my mind, though not as much as realizing that these two books distill twenty years of my life. Together, they total 1,230 pages in length, or 415,115 words (based on the limited editions). Will there ever be a volume three? Talk to me when I'm sixty.
Because there's never enough money (and taxes really cut deep this year), please have a look at the current eBay auctions. Thank you.
I believe that my next short fiction collection – the one after the forthcoming volume of juvenilia – will be titled either Away With You or Heads and Houses.
As I've said, I've not been sleeping. The past year is a muddy blur of insomnia, but the last two weeks have been an extra special Hell. It's possible that going off gabapentin back in November is, in part, to blame. But not sleeping has only compounded the trouble I've been having writing. Not sleeping and the side effects of the drugs I've taken to try and sleep. Everything has collapsed into a long and monotonous train wreck of days when I don't write and nights when I can't sleep. Oh, and then there's the disruption of our landlord having the house painted, which seems like it's never going to end. There's been a scaffold set up directly outside my office window for two weeks, and the general chaos began back in October.
Okay, I'm gonna stop here. No way I can catch up in one morning. You should comment. I actually read those.
Back Again,
Aunt Beast