Yet another good writing day yesterday, thank the gods. I did a whopping 2,011 words and finished (!!!) the second "vignette" for Sirenia Digest #2. About four o'clock (Caitlín Standard Time) I asked Spooky to call the salon and see if I could get my hair appointment moved to this afternoon, because the words were coming and getting to THE END of "Pony" seemed a little more important than hiding the grey in my hair. She did, and there was an opening for today, so I had more coffee and kept writing. I really like this piece. In truth, it's a full-fledged short story, albeit a short short story, and not a vignette. It feels, to me, a great deal like "Spindleshanks (New Orleans, 1956)" and "The Road of Pins," which is drad, as they're two of my personal favourites. On the one hand, the kinky stuff is a bit more overt than in a lot of the Frog Toes and Tentacles vignettes, but, on the other, it's cushioned by a great deal of story and doesn't stick out like a sore thumb (which, in this context, seems an odd simile). It's a peculiar little thing, almost a ghost story, almost a modern fairy tale. The total word count for "Pony" stands at 3,824, which means that the total word count for this issue of the digest really will be almost six thousand words. So, yeah, I have the hair thing at 2 p.m. (my time), and as soon as it's done, I start getting the digest ready to be assembled into PDF form. I haven't seen the final version of Vince's illustration for "Orpheus at Mount Pangaeum" yet, but it should be here this afternoon or evening. With a little luck, everyone will have the digest sometime Monday. And I vow to have #3 out by February 14th, which I suppose will be the special Valentine's Day issue.
Also, congratulations to Samm Deighan, who is the winner of Monster Doodle Sculpture #6. It's almost finished, and I'll post photos sometime in the next couple of days. It's another Nebari critter, the larval stage of the Roughbacked Puddle Shelt, which is fairly common to Nebari Prime's equatorial ice forests.
My thanks to J. D. Kimmel for the copy of Gods and Heroes of Classical Antiquity (Aghion, Barbillon, and Lissarrague; 1996). Curiously, the publisher is Flammarion. How cool is that?
And here's another cool thing. January 27th is the Second Annual LJ Rabbit Hole Day. I, for one, intend to participate. Spread the word!
A good Kid Night last night (and unlike last week, I felt as though I'd actually earned a Kid Night). We watched The Transporter II and then the new ep of Battlestar Galactica, then read more of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. And, yeah, The Transporter II is a silly sort of pleasure, a decent enough follow-up to the first film — Kate Nauta steals the show as the villain's murderous sidekick ("Death by Bunny," indeed) — but I do kind of wish we'd see Jason Statham in something else along the lines of Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels; he really shined in both those films. Okay. I gotta get moving if I'm going to make the salon on time. You kids try to play nice. Don't put anything unnatural in the microwave....