• Location: Dittaino Valles
• Mood: awake
• Music: Seabound, "Watching Over You"

To the crag that braves the tide...

Sirenia Digest #24 will go out this evening. Yesterday, I got the finished illustration for "The Wolf Who Cried Girl" from Vince, so all that's left to do is send it all away to thingunderthest to be PDFed.

Most of yesterday was spent putting together the Tails of Tales of Pain and Wonder chapbook (which comes FREE when you order Subterranean Press' 3rd edition of Tales of Pain and Wonder), as subpress needs it by Monday. Writing a preface for the whole thing and then little introductory notes for each story. Here's the Table of Contents as of this morning:

1. Author's Note
2. "Little Conversations" (original version of "Salammbô Redux")
3 "Bela's Plot" (original pre-Love in Vein II version)
4. "And Prayers for Rain" ("the orphink," unfinished short story)
5. "A Study for 'Estate'"
6. "Angels You Can See Through"
7. "Monochrome and Jasmine" (unfinished story from 1993)
8. "Aperçu" (poem)

Oh, and yesterday I discovered that my South Korean detractor is a Mr., not a Ms. His name is Park Kyung Beom, and he posted the following to the discussion area of Amazon.com's page for the Beowulf novelization:

how can a novelsit like u write following the twisted movie story?
perhaps woman's feeble mind could not boldly reject the seducing.
Movie story is affected by many non-literal factors.
to be played within required time
to consider photograhing set
to minimize payments for actors and actresses
So, as a novelist, to follow the story structure of the movie is very absurd and humiliating.

To Amazon's credit, when I complained, they took it down rather quickly. I didn't complain about Park Kyung Beom's "review," which is almost the same as the text quoted above, only without the sexist "perhaps woman's feeble mind could not boldly reject the seducing" bit. And in case anyone is wondering, "novel story" is also affected by many "non-literal" factors, such as what the film's producers and the studio would and would not allow me to do. If you've seen the film and read the book, you will know there are significant differences, changes I fought for tooth and nail. There would have been more, but this is a give-and-take situation. In the end, it was a work-for-hire job, and I did as I was told if I wanted to be paid (and yes, I wanted to be paid). So, whether or not "as a novelist, to follow the story structure of the movie is very absurd and humiliating" is a true statement or a false statement is not relevant here, as anyone who writes a film novelization will tell you, it's a prerequisite of the job. And to Mr. Park Kyung Beom I say, dude, this is your fifteen minutes. Enjoy it.

Okay. This "woman's feeble mind" must get back to work on Tails of Tales of Pain and Wonder...

Postscript: Yet another nail in the coffin of free speech via LiveJournal. Huzzah.