uncertainMy recent Subterranean Magazine interview is now online: Feeding the Tree - An Interview with Caitlín R. Kiernan.
Yesterday, I wrote 1,152 words on "Werewolf Smile," but did not find THE END. This has turned out to be one of those pieces. I meant it to be a vignette, and it's turned into a full-fledged short story. But I must find the ending today, as I still have a second piece to write for Sirenia Digest #45. This is, by the way, another story about my mysterious recurring, fairy-tale obsessed painter of the grotesque, Albert Perrault. I started wondering how many times he's shown up in stories. Here's the list I've come up with (in chronological order):
1) "The Road of Pins"
2) "La Peau Verte"
3) "Rappaccini's Dragon (Murder Ballad No. 5)"
4) The Red Tree
5) "Last Drink Bird Head"
6) "Werewolf Smile"
I am fairly certain there are other examples that aren't coming to mind. This is what happens when you write as much as I do. You lose track of characters. Anyway, if his first appearance really is "The Road of Pins," he's been in my head since 2001, and "Werewolf Smile" might be the closest I've come to writing about him directly.
A thought that just crossed my mind, and I present it disconnected from all the thoughts that inspired it: Increasingly, I feel as though I'm writing for some past generation, some past decade. Maybe the 1950s. Maybe even further back. It's a strange sensation. Some new expression of my long-standing temporal dysphoria, or a fear that most people who read no longer read in a way that's conducive to the way I write.
Yesterday,
blakesrealm asked:This is just a personal curiosity thing ... Does it matter how a book is bought, in terms of recording a sale I mean? My wife and I bought our copy at our local Borders store with one of their coupons (in this case it was 40% off of a paperback) they email on occasion. Does buying it with a discount coupon change the type of sale it is, or is a sale a sale?
All sales of new copies of The Red Tree are equal. It doesn't matter if you buy it from Amazon, another online bookseller, a big-box brick and mortar store, your local independent/mom and pop, or the dealer's room at a con. Roc printed X number (the number is unknown to me) of copies of the trade paperback, and they all need to sell. But it truly does not matter who you buy them from. A sale is a sale is a sale. Well, unless you find it used somewhere (truly used, as in previously owned and being sold by a previous owner); those don't count, as it's a resell. But thanks for asking.
The current round of eBay auctions continues. Please have a look.
And the platypus says we're out of time for now. And I need more coffee...