goodYesterday, I wrote 1,645 words and finished "Untitled 26," which has turned out to be a wonderful little story, after all and despite my having been too tired to write another story. It's a couple of different shades of Bradbury, though I'd not set out for it to be. I am pleased, on those rare occasions, when I begin a story that I "know" will be dark and awful and then it goes another way, instead. Anyway, you may read both "Untitled 26" and "In View of Nothing" in Sirenia Digest #16
And I have some good news. As of December, Silk will once again be in print. Roc will be re-releasing the book as a new mass-market paperback, to be followed in early '08 by the mmp of Murder of Angels. I should have the new Silk cover art very soon and will post it here. This will make the fourth edition of the novel since its original release in May/June 1998, almost ten very long years ago. There will be some revision, because there are errors and typos that were never fixed, but I think I will mostly be refraining from making stylistic changes. That's not the way I write now, but it is the way I wrote then, and it's the voice of that book. I will be expanding the author's note slightly. I also contemplated rewriting the ending to dampen the ambiguity factor, but realised that would be exactly the wrong thing to do. There are voices in my head, and some of them I should heed, and others I should not.
To celebrate the good news, the next four people who subscribe to Sirenia Digest will receive a free signed copy of the 2002 tpb edition of Silk — personalised if you so desire.
So, I have to deliver the Silk corrections to my editor by April 15th, plus I have to edit the results of the Forced and New Consolidated marches for my other editor (at HarperCollins), so it looks like, once the Locus essay is done, I'll be spending a couple of weeks on proofreading. It's almost like a vacation, except that it's nothing at all like a vacation.
I forgot to mention all the birds we saw on yesterday's walk: all the usual suspects, but also a Carolina chickadee (Poecile carolinensis), two Canada geese (Branta canadensis), and one of the local Red-tailed hawks (Buteo jamaicensis).
Regarding Georgia's dumb snake-related laws and our having to release Drinker,
blueharlequin writes:Having been involved in the snake breeding community for quite a number of years now, I too have had my fill of bullshit legislation about the keeping of reptiles. That being said, in many cases, I find the laws surrounding the keeping of native species often work the way that they're supposed to, which is to say, they keep unscrupulous keepers/breeders/re-sellers from collecting large numbers of animals from the local wild populations.
As I said yesterday, I fully support laws designed to protect threatened species and populations from commercial collectors and breeders (and snake-hating ophidophobes). And that may have been the intent of this law (it's kind of hard to say exactly what the intent of this legislation was). However, it should be noted that it is not illegal to simply kill most of the native Georgia species that it is illegal to keep as pets. And then there's the problem with there being no protection for venomous species, and the problem of encouraging the keeping of non-native, non-venomous species that could escape or be intentionally released and end up displacing native Georgia species. I have decided to write a long letter to the State Herpetologist about all this today or tomorrow.
Also,
bucketopants writes:I know that the law regarding piercing passed the House, I do not see anywhere on the net, or looking up Georgia law, that the bill passed the Senate, or was even voted upon. I know there was a great uproar when the Georgia House passed the bill, but for some reason I remember hearing that the bill died and the law was never passed. I remember because hearing that made me feel a little less ashamed for living in Georgia.
You are, in fact, entirely correct and I am wrong. I think I must have heard about the bill passing the House and then never heard about its defeat in the Senate. Here's a link.
Right. Well, anyway, the platypus (who is oddly agreeable this morning) says it's time to sit on the front porch and drink a cup of coffee.