Dear Sweet Filthy World

Sunny again today, but still with some clouds. Our high was, and presently is (so our high so far), 87˚F, with the heat index at 92˚F.

I woke at six this morning, which was earlier than I'd intended. But what the fuck, I'd gotten to sleep by midnight, so I figured I'd get up, have some breakfast, then get to work. And, instead, I fell the fuck back to sleep and woke at 8 a.m. Because I am a creature of excruciating habit, or excruciatingly a creature of habit, this threw the whole day into a less than productive tailspin. I finally gave up and played Guild Wars 2 and tried not the think about the words I did not get written today.

What am I writing? Fuck it, I'll tell you. The novel is called The Night Watchers, and it is essentially a new and more supernatural incarnation of the novel that would have been Interstate Love Song (based on the short-story of the same title). I really like it, all of it that's in my head, and that's a lot of it. If I can quit fucking around, it could be done by the end of the summer. The print and ebook versions will be published by Subterranean Press, and hopefully there will be an audiobook. Likely there will. It's set mostly in and around north-central Alabama, but spans many, many decades. The title is borrowed from Peter Straub's Ghost Story, one of my favorite books of all time, ever.

But you knew that about me and Ghost Story. I mean, if you are one of those Constant Readers.

But I gotta admit, balancing the fiction, no matter how much I like the novel at hand, with the sudden and marvelous paleontology opportunities is a challenge. But. Fiction keeps the rent paid and the lights on and food on the table. Paleontology just, you know, makes me feel like I'm doing what I was put on earth to do. And it's all sort of ironic. For me - as frustrating as I might find it, as much as I would usually rather be doing something else - writing is easy as pie. On the other hand, paleontology is fucking hard work – and I'm not talking about physically demanding fieldwork and fossil preparation. I'm talking about the intellectual rigor, discipline, and plain ol' smarts involved. So, I'm going to be busting my butt to do the fairly easy thing that pays the bills to earn the luxury of busting my butt to do the very hard thing that pays not one red cent. Irony. But, that said, I am just grateful for both opportunities, at this point in my life and at this point in history.

By the way, SubPress has announced Vile Affections (and the accompanying chapbook Cambrian Tales), and you may see the cover. In fact, you can now place preorders! Right here. Note: Only those who bought the signed numbered edition of Comes a Pale Rider may preorder the signed numbered edition of Vile Affections at this time. Anyone may preorder the trade hardcover.

And here's some crap I posted today to Twitter and Facebook:

I'm just waiting for one of these anti-COVID vaccine yahoos to realize that, in effect, every time they use any medication they are – in the eyes of pharmaceutical companies and medical science – essentially guinea pigs or lab rats or Rhesus monkeys, FDA approval or no.

~ and ~

Fact: When you are so afraid that you can only win an election when fewer people vote, so you try to make it harder and harder for folks to vote, especially those whom you suspect won't vote for you, you've failed democracy.

~ and this, which someone else said and which I retweeted ~

Let's perfectly clear...Democrats do not want to de-fund the police. Dems want to demilitarize and de-brutalize the police.

I leave you with my level 80 holosmith (an elite engineering specialization), Mandy J. Wolowitz (née Hansen), at Timberline Falls. Yes, she has a lightsaber.

Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast




3:50 p.m.

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Overcast and rainy. Currently, it's 49˚F, with the windchill at 46˚F.

I went out into the world yesterday. I'd not been off the property, and only out of the house twice very briefly, since January 20th. So, yesterday was my first time out in twenty-one days, which is terrible even by my standards. We went over to Thayer Street – the ruins of Thayer Street – to the Army Navy store, because I needed a book bag. It was oddly warm for a February day in Providence, and I think we made it as high at 56˚F.

I got a decent night's sleep last night, decent for me.

Today, I need to have one last look at the mss. for The Dinosaur Tourist and The Chartreuse Alphabet and then send those off to Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press. Tomorrow, I'm going to put together Sirenia Digest No. 145, which will feature on of the stories that would have appeared in Cambrian Tales, something I wrote back in the eighties, in college. Something no one but me and Spooky has read in thirty-one years. Anyway, that's the last bit of work I'll have time to get to before we leave for Birmingham on Thursday,.

Yesterday, I began reading Larry McMurty's Lonesome Dove (1985).

TTFN,
Aunt Beast




1:39 p.m.

And here, the last day of this foul year. It's appropriately overcast here in Providence, 32˚F, windchill at 25˚F. It should be overcast the world over, mourning 2016 and the fear of 2017. This year, the ball drops on an entirely different variety of uncertainty.

On the one hand, I feel like this was an unprecedentedly unproductive year for me, thanks to a prolonged spell of writing difficulty, pretty much the beginning of April through the beginning of September, five months during which I was able to finish only a single story, "Whisper Road (Murder Ballad No. 9)." And yet, when I tally the year's stories, I am surprised to see that I did better than I did in 2015:

"Eurydice Eduction" (Sirenia Digest #119, December 2015)*
"Study for an Electronaut's Ovid (AD 2052)" (Sirenia Digest #120, January 2016)
"Pillbug" (Sirenia Digest #122, March 2016)
"Objects in the Mirror" (for Dave McKean and William Schafer's forthcoming The Weight of Words)
"When Even the Darkness is Something to See (A Fragment)" (Sirenia Digest #123, May 2016)
"Epithalamium (A Fragment)" (Sirenia Digest #123, May 2016)
"Whisper Road (Murder Ballad No. 9)" (Sirenia Digest #125, July 2016)
"The Chartreuse Alphabet (Parts One & Two)" (Sirenia Digest #128 and #129, September 2016)
"Animals Pull the Night Around Their Shoulders" (Sirenia Digest #128, September 2016)
"M is for Mars" (novella for Houses Under the Sea: Mythos Tales)**
"Antediluvian Homesick Blues" (Sirenia Digest #129, October 2016)
"The Line Between the Devil's Teeth (Murder Ballad No. 10)" (Sirenia Digest #130, November 2016)
"Untitled Psychiatrist #1" (Sirenia Digest #131, December 2016)
"The Sick Rose, Redux" (Sirenia Digest #131, December 2016)

* Written in January 2016, though it appeared in the belated December 2015 Sirenia Digest #119.
** Built from the bones of The Dinosaurs of Mars, but mostly new prose.

I should say also that I spent an enormous amount of energy in 2016 (that could have been spent writing) editing three collection, Houses Under the Sea: Mythos Tales, Dear Sweet Fithy World, and the stillborn Cambrian Tales: Juvenilia.

Meanwhile, yeah, a lot of famous people died in 2016, and some of us felt like the year was in a vendetta kind of mood as regards our personal heroes. I lost an uncommon number of heroes to this evil year, including musicians (David Bowie and Leonard Cohen, for fucks sake), actors (Alan Rickman, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, and Gene Wilder), and authors (Katherine Dunn and Harper Lee, Pat Conroy and Umberto Eco and Richard Adams). There are fucking lists of the dead all over the fucking place, and I'm not gonna attempt anything like that here.

There were some good films, though I saw fewer than I usually did. Here are some favorites, unranked:

01. Arrival (dir. Denis Villeneuve)
02. Hail, Ceaser! (dir. the Cohen Bros.)
03. Hell or High Water (dir. David Mackenzie)
04. 10 Cloverfield Lane (dir. Dan Trachtenberg)
05. Midnight Special (dir. Jeff Nichols)
06. Café Society (dir. Woody Allen)
07. Captain Fantastic (dir. Matt Ross)
08. Green Room (dir. Jeremy Saulnier)
10. I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (dir. Oz Perkins)
11. The Neon Demon (dir. Nicolas Winding Refn)
12. One More Time With Feeling (dir. Andrew Dominik)
13. Zootopia (dir. Byron Howard et al.)
14. Elvis & Nixon (dir. Liza Johnson)
15. Rogue One (dir. Gareth Edwards)
16. Anthropoid (dir. Sean Ellis)
17. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (dir. David Yates)
18. Doctor Strange (dir. Scott Derrickson)
19. The Founder (dir. John Lee Hancock)

And a special honorable mention of the marvelous Stranger Things, created by Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer.

Yesterday was spent moving 4,849 entries over to Dreamwidth. You can find them under The Real Aunt Beast (therealauntbeast). It's a work in progress. It's still unformatted and the 65,421 comments haven't yet made it over. However, LJ is still the main journal. That's just a backup, in case something happens to LJ.

And here is my last photo of 2016. Well, no, probably my next to last photo of 2016. I was not yet quite awake when I took it:



Ta Ta Until 2017,
Aunt Beast
12.

It's sunnyish out there, blue between white clouds. Wind came sweeping in last night, and the house is still, being buffeted. It's cold, only 50˚F. I miss those balmy early March days we had there for a bit, when it looked as if spring were coming very early.

I have some news: Over the past few months, I grew increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of actually releasing Cambrian Tales: Juvenilia into the world. Even as I was editing the book back in January, I was deciding I didn't want to see it published. It was a strange, disconcerting state of affairs. Anyway, I spoke with Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press yesterday, and he has agreed that we'll shelve Cambrian Tales indefinitely. I'll be replacing it with my next (as yet untitled) short-fiction collection, to be released early in 2017. It will include The Aubergine Alphabet as a hardback chapbook. Details TBA. Someday, we'll come back to the juvenilia collection, but, to be honest, it will be many years from now.

And that's a huge load off my mind.

Also, I finished "Objects in the Mirror" yesterday, which revealed itself to be, structurally, an odd tale, indeed. Finishing that story, it's another load off my mind.

Onward to Sirenia Digest #122. No rest for the wordy.

TTFN,
Aunt Beast

Cold as fuck here. Currently, 29˚F, with the windchill at 21˚F. Not a cloud in the sky to calm the hideous blueness.

Yesterday, I finished the manuscript for Cambrian Tales: Juvenilia, just a little after 4 p.m., and then I sent it off to Subterranean Press. I don't yet have a release date. I'll post it when I know. I'm really very glad to have this one out of the way. I don't need to let my mind wander back there, all of those other lives. This one's plenty enough fucked up, thank you very much, without revisiting all the past fuck ups that are the history of me. And each story comes complete with its own unpleasant associations.

Yesterday was a shitty, wretched excuse for a day, and I'm just not up to this. At best, I slept five hours.

TTFN,
Aunt Beast

Hellishly cold here. Currently, it's sunny and 23˚F, with a windchill of 6˚F. The wind spent the night trying to pull the house down, and today it's still at it.

I wasn't able to finish the story notes for Cambrian Tales yesterday. I still have four to do, so I'll finish today. I was sidetracked yesterday, trying to recall the date of a forest fire, and I had to call my mother to help me puzzle it out. She thinks it was the spring of 1978. I think it was October 1978. I was either thirteen or fourteen. We lived in the old house by the cement plant in Leeds.

Please have a look at the current eBay auctions.

Watching people argue politics puts me in mind of gulls fighting over dead fish. It's ugly, and it makes me glad I have better table manners.

Later Taters,
Aunt Beast

We got snow last night, maybe an inch. Just enough to make the world white. Last night it had the beauty that snow at night has, softening the knife's edge of winter, grinding down the rusty blade. But today it's nothing but a reminder of the season's bitterness. The sun is blinding off a billion ice crystals. Currently, 26˚F, with the windchill at 8˚F. I've not left the house in a week.

I swore I would not still be in Providence when winter returned again, but here I am.

That's what I get for swearing.

Yesterday I wrote a passable preface for Cambrian Tales: Juvenilia and started work on the notes for each story, which I'll finish this afternoon. And then, this evening, I'll send the whole thing away to Subterranean Press.

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. ~ MLK, Jr.

Please have a look at the current eBay auctions. Thank you.

Later Taters,
Aunt Beast

Currently, it's 36˚F, with a windchill of 31˚F, overcast, and there's a forecast of snow for tonight and tomorrow morning. At least winter started late this year.

This thing with Cambrian Tales: Juvenilia, it's really messing with my head. I hope to be done with the ms. by tonight, because I need to be here and now, not revisiting high school and the mess that I made of the eighties. I knew this was going to be harrowing, but I didn't know it would be this harrowing. Yesterday, I finished assembling the ms., then typed in the one piece I insisted on transcribing myself, something called "Bedtime Story," written in 1983. As of this morning, the ms. stands at 31,521 words, but I still need to write the preface and short notes for each story. Then I'll send the whole thing away to Subterranean Press.

There was a delay with the PDF for Sirenia Digest #119, but the issue should go out to subscribers sometime between tonight and tomorrow. Thank you for your patience.

Spooky made her three-legged chicken stew for dinner, with zucchini and tomatoes and mushrooms, and after dinner we watched Howard Brookner's Burroughs: The Movie (1983) and also most of the extras on the DVD, just out from Criterion. It was our late Xmas gift to ourselves. Really a wonderful thing, and you should hunt it down.

TTFN,
Aunt Beast

A grey and rainy day here. A dismal day. Warmer, at 40˚F (windchill at 26˚F), so there's that. But I didn't want to get out of bed, and now I just want to go back. I never used to be like that. Well, only rarely.

Yesterday was spent putting together the manuscript (ms.) for Cambrian Tales. It's going to come to about 30k words, when all is said and done, with material spanning about eleven years, from 1979 to 1991. We're looking for a cover artist. This will be a small hardback, like The Dry Salvages and In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers. It's a strange, disquieting affair, looking at these bits and pieces of other lives, or other iterations of me. Spooky spent months transcribing this stuff from typescripts, some of which are decaying. The original manuscripts go back to Brown University soon. They will safe there.

Yesterday was the sort of day when multiple relatively minor sources of discomfort coalesce to make me utterly miserable. Perhaps today will be better.

That's all I have for today. See you tomorrow.

TTFN,
Aunt Beast

The sun's still with us today, and it's a little warmer, currently 36˚F, with a windchill of 32˚F. First time we've been above freezing since, I think, Tuesday.

Yesterday, quite by accident, I came across Liz Downey's obituary, someone who once was a friend of mine, and who was, for a time, very important to me. She died in November of 2012, and I had no idea. For about a year, beginning in 1988, she and I were very close. And then we weren't. I honestly cannot recall why. We probably last talked in late 1989. She was an addict, and I'm an addict, and we shared a love affair with Xanax. And vodka. And Billie Holiday. Liz was the second person, after my partner, to whom I came out – not counting all the shrinks. She was, in her way, very supportive. Indeed, she was the first person who ever encouraged me to transition. It's a very odd, detached sort of sadness I feel. I wish we'd not drifted apart. I hope she wasn't unhappy.

Yesterday was spent trying to figure out how to order the stories and poems that will make up Cambrian Tales: Juvenilia. Most of this material is undated, and I'm working from memories that are twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, and, in one case, almost forty years old. I had to email my mom yesterday so that she could try and help me date one story. I'm going to be done with this ms. by Monday, because it's not healthy for me to spend so much time with all these ancient memories. Truthfully, I'm having second thoughts about doing this book. Oh, I think people will like it, but I've had to drag myself back to times and places I'd meant never to revisit.

Last night, I had a bowl of black bean soup for dinner, with a little cheddar cheese and two pieces of buttered toast. And we watched the first episode of Season Ten of Face Off. We adore this show.

TTFN,
Aunt Beast