neither waking nor asleepA morning of exceptionally grotesque nightmares. I'm neither awake nor asleep. The caffeine is pushing me up, but the dreams are still pulling me down.
Yesterday was a day of good graces. Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press has granted me a two-month extension on Tales from the Woeful Platypus, pushing the ms.' delivery date from August 1 to October 1. I hate missing deadlines, but, what with one thing and another, I'd only finished one of the five new pieces for the book. Also, Liz Scheier at Penguin was very understanding when I told her she wouldn't have the Daughter of Hounds CEM back by the 21st, that she wouldn't have it until at least Monday (the 24th). There are just too many things left that I need to double check and fret over. Plus, on top of the extensions, an unexpected royalty check arrived from DC Comics, because my work on The Dreaming is apparently much more popular in Europe than it ever was here in America.
We made it through the rest of the CEM yesterday, though it needs a second pass, which we'll be doing this afternoon. I fear I have given too much of myself to this book. I have no reason to believe it will fare any better in the literary marketplace than my previous novels, which makes editing it especially hard. There is a certain sense of futility.
Turns out, someone at Roc moved the release of the mass-market paperback of Threshold from July to January, to coincide with the release of Daughter of Hounds, and didn't bother to tell me. So, yes. January 2, 2007 for both books.
Thank gods for the Whole Foods salad bar. Yesterday, it spared us a repeat of Sunday evening's broiling kitchen debacle. Later, I read "The Strange Case of X" in Jeff VanderMeer's City of Saints and Madmen, a book with which I am falling ever more in love. Or at least ever more in lust. Later still, I played a little Final Fantasy X, and then we watched Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in The Odd Couple (1968), a favourite film of mine, but I'd never seen it with Spooky. It's been too hot for our evening walks, two days straight.
I think that's it for now. Except to mention that the ESA's Venus Express probe continues to send back astounding photos of Venus. And that I want to write something for International Blog Against Racism Week, but now is not the time.
