awakeYesterday...yesterday...yesterday. I know it's here somewhere. Ah. Yes. Here it is. Yesterday, we proofed "Bainbridge" (pp. 117-159), which I'd begun to have second thoughts about, but which I have come to think works after all. On the one hand, I want to talk about what a fantastically weird story it is, and on the other, I absolutely don't want to give anything away. When the book arrives, you are all, every last one of you, forbidden to read "Bainbridge" first, and never mind that I included that alternative Table of Contents. Anyway, after "Bainbridge," I proofed the introduction, and today Spooky will type up all the corrections, and then I'll e-mail them away to Subterranean Press (which is currently experiencing some sort of server problem; the website's been down since yesterday).
My editor at Penguin wanted the "final" draft of Daughter of Hounds back in NYC by May 5th, but I asked for more time and now have until May 15th. But not one day later, and this means I'll likely only have a week with the CEM (copyedited ms.). That last bit's not too daunting, as I've gotten pretty damn fast at writing "stet" in the margins of CEMs. Anyway, I do appreciate the extra time and thank my editor for that. I had a talk about the book with Merrilee, my lit agent, on Monday. She says my children read like children, which must be my greatest achievement since I managed to write a pregnant protagonist in Low Red Moon. Well, at least I have been a child, even if it was way back there in the Age of Trilobites, so maybe it's not quite as great an achievement as was pulling off Chance's pregnancy. Anyway, between the talk with Merrilee and my editor's notes, and all the editing I didn't get done before I sent the ms. away in March, I've an enormous amount of editing to do in the next six weeks or so. Monday or Tuesday I have to go to Birmingham, but as soon as we return I'll be getting back to work on DoH. And somewhere in all this I still have to write the chapbook to accompany the limited (sold out) of Alabaster, and also the two vignettes for Sirenia Digest #6. Clearly, April and the first half of May are shot. I'm going to need some major stress release to get through all this without breaking things I probably shouldn't break. Perhaps if someone were kind and generous enough to send me the new Tomb Raider (PS2)*...
After all the proofreading yesterday, Spooky and I took blankets and suchlike and went to Freedom Park. We sat beneath the greening oaks and I read to her from Drawing Down the Moon while she worked at sanding the oak wand she's been finishing. It was nice. Later, she fixed a truly magnificent stir fry for dinner: porta bella and shitake mushrooms, cucumber, roma tomato, red onion, garlic, red bell pepper, thai chilis, cashews, lemongrass, and sesame in a sauce of red curry paste, rice vinegar, Tamari soy sauce, and fresh lime. Over jasmine rice. With spring rolls. We both ate too much, I'm sure.
Oh, this morning Vince e-mailed me his initial sketch for the illustration to accompany "For One Who Has Lost Herself," and it's headed in exactly the right direction. We may yet get this issue out on time.
Okay. That's it for now. With Alabaster almost out of the way, I think I get a little bit of downtime today. But tomorrow I'll likely begin the aforementioned chapbook. If not tomorrow, then on Friday. Anyway, I hear the mournful call of the platypus...
*Conveniently, it's on my wishlist.