awakeAfter I'd finished "Untitled 11," Spooky and I walked up the street to Starbuck's (if there were a good coffeehouse nearby, I wouldn't have gone to Starbuck's) to clear my head. Then I came back home and found a PDF of To Charles Fort, With Love waiting for me, including the redesigned cover, which I like a lot. I'll post it later. I think this will be a very handsome book. Spooky and I will be receiving 250 of the ARCs to send out to bookstores, hopefully encouraging some of them to carry it. We'll have a couple of days of nothing but addressing envelopes. Ugh. I don't usually take such an agressive role in the distribution end of things, though I probably ought to do so. It was Bill's idea. Also, before dinner, I had to get some work done for Marvel and off to my editor there, so, by seven o'clock I was quite entirely done for. I ate, took a hot bath, watched a Mythbusters blooper episode, and played three hours of Jade Empire. I have been asked to do a review of the latter for a couple of websites, by the way. Details TBA.
Tonight, we have dinner with an rpg friend (well, he's a friend in other ways as well, but lately we mostly see each other during AD&D sessions). We're having Thai. It is no longer in my nature to be social or eat out, so this will be an adventure.
And I really hate to be a goddamn parrot (or minah bird, or echo, or whatever), but I wanted to second this bit Poppy wrote in her blog yesterday:
I doubt I will make any friends by saying this, but one of the things that most sorely tries my patience about the horror genre (though it certainly isn't exclusive to horror) is the attitude that "nothing is happening" if people aren't being gored and eaten in every paragraph. It's as if the characters cannot be interesting in and of themselves; they must be involved in Plot-Driving Suspense Generators at every turn. I enjoy an exciting story as much as anyone, but I also tend to feel that plot is the least interesting aspect of a good story; it's simply a mechanism, an artificial construct for depicting the lives of characters in a way that will be more interesting to your average reader than, "They woke up, they made coffee, they cut their toenails, they went to work, they came home, they had sex, they went to sleep." When plot becomes far more important than character (as in, say, the fiction of Dean Koontz or John Saul), you end up with interchangable cardboard characters and, in my opinion, unreadable books.
Frelling A. Thank you. Bravo. Etc.
Finally, we've started our eBay auctions again. For the first seven days, every "buy it now" and "fixed price" purchase will get you one little monster doodle, AND THIS TIME THEY'RE IN COLOUR!!!!!. It has been many months now since monsters were offered. As always, your generosity will be greatly appreciated.
