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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Sunny and clouds by turns, today. Our high was 85˚F. Currently, it's only 73˚F. We are having a coolish summer so far.

Today was not especially more worthy of comment than yesterday. I managed some email and reading. I spent some time trying to clean my office.

The afternoon's comfort movie was Mad Max: Fury Road, which I think I am now watching about one a month.

And here it is already July. What the fuck.

Later,
Aunt Beast




12:49 p.m.

Yeah, so...mostly cloudy yesterday and a rainy night. Our high was a measly 73˚F, and the heat index only got up to 74˚F.

And because I can be kind of an idiot, I got nothing done. No writing. No paleo'. Wasted day. Lost day.

Last night we watched Robert Altman's M*A*S*H (1970) on the Criterion Channel, which is still hilariously brilliant, some forty years or so after I first saw it. I adore its raunchiness and irreverence and absurdities, its surprisingly quiet chaos, its dogged humanity. It is a film that probably could not be made today, which makes me very glad Robert Altman made it when he did. He's one of my favorite directors, by the way.

As I posted yesterday, yes, this is my 57th wretched birthday month, fifty-seven trips around the sun, and yes, you may have a link to my Amazon wish list. Gifts are distractions, and distractions keep me functional.

Later Taters,
Aunt Beast




11:48 p.m.

And, just so you know, the last time I did two LJ entries on two consecutive days was October 18th and 19th.

What happened? I went into COVID-19 self-isolation about March 15th and within a couple of months, between one thing and the other, I wasn't writing. Sirenia Digest, my bread and butter, stopped going out. Indeed, though I managed some editing, I wrote virtually nothing worth mentioning until December 15th, when I began a story titled "The Woman Who Blew Down Houses." And suddenly I was writing again. In three months I wrote a total of eight stories, all for Sirenia Digest, and new and back issues began to go out to subscribers. Between mid December and March 14th, I wrote:

"Untitled 45" (Sirenia Digest #175, August 2021)
"L'hommes et la femme terribles" (Sirenia Digest #176, September 2020)
"Untitled Psychiatrist #5" (Sirenia Digest #177, October 2020)
"The Woman Who Blew Down Houses" (Sirenia Digest #178, November 2020)
"Threnody for Those Who Die December Deaths" (Sirenia Digest #179, December 2020)
"Blackwater" (Sirenia Digest #180, January 2021)
"Heart-Shaped Hole" (Sirenia Digest #181, February 2021)
"The Jar" (Sirenia Digest #182, March 2021)

April (#183) and July (#174) should be along soonish.

And I've been working with Subterranean Press on new books and with Blackstone Publishing, who are producing all my audiobooks (which are really piling up), and there's been a LOT of paleontology, but...I think I'm gonna save that stuff for tomorrow.

I am going to talk some about my experience during the year of lockdown (and, for me, it was near absolute), but I'm going to try to avoid attempting any sort of lengthy recap of all that missed time. Like much of the world, I lost a year, and, also like much of the work and like many authors, a lamentably large portion of that lost year was entirely unproductive. There's not much to say about it.

On Saturday, March 27th, Spooky and I got Shot 1 of the Pfizer vaccine, at the Wal-greens on Clairmont Avenue, which was my first trip over the mountain into Birmingham proper since May. I get Shot 2 on April 24th.

I've been reading a lot (more on this later), and we've been watching a lot of television, of course. Right now, we're working our way through Superstore (NBC), which is generally fucking hilarious. The last season of Vikings was very good. We've been watching Debris, from J.H. Wyman, who was a writer and co-executive producer on the brilliant and much-missed Fringe, but, so far, what made Fringe great is absent from Debris.

I got back to work at McWane Science Center on (or about) May 10th, once I am fully vaccinated and immune, after an absence of about 14 months. That's been one of the hardest parts of all this.

I have wasted gigantic junks of the lockdown in the time-such of Second Life. But thank you, Chris, all at the same.

And that's enough for now. It's full-on spring here and Joe Biden is President, so have a fucking flower.

Later Taters,
Aunt Beast




4:23 p.m. (by Spooky)

I didn't mean to go six days without making an entry. I also didn't mean to to go the last thirteen days without leaving the house. But I did both.

Which might tell you where my head's at, especially when you factor in my not doing much of anything during all that time I've kept myself shut up in here.

I have my office window open, and I can here katydids and cicadas in the summer night, just about the best sound in the world. Our high today was only 86˚F, with the heat index, and it's currently 75˚F.

Anyway, I'm pledging to myself to do better beginning tomorrow. I'm tired of being useless.

Later,
Aunt Beast




6:07 p.m.

Cooler weather again today, but things are warming back up beginning tomorrow. Our high today was only 81˚F, with the heat index. Currently, it's a chilly 69˚F.

And, once again, I slept no more than about four hours.

I sorta (but only sorta) miss the old days when I allowed myself to drone on here about more private and personal matters. Like depression. Because right now, yeah, it's pretty fucking bad. Of course, talking never helps. I know that. But years of therapy have instilled in me a knee-jerk belief to the contrary. Of course talking helps! Why else would people pay therapists? Or have priests? Or...anyway.

Plus, because I am an idiot and an utter masochist, I allowed myself to look at the news today. Because it isn't bad enough that I'm already struggling with my usual background levels of depression, anxiety, dread, and despair. No, I gotta go adding the latest on a zoonotic pandemic, the imminent collapse of Western civilization, the largest global recession since the Great Depression, and lots of fun shit like that. So, whee. That was my day. I didn't write. I didn't prep. I didn't write paleo. I didn't do diddly squat.

Oh, except I logged into GW2 for the first time in three weeks.

I feel as if we have all been sentenced to a very strange and lingering death. That's what I said to Spooky when we were out walking around the building in the twilight (just before I took the photo of the very obliging Leptoglossus phyllopus, below).

I also went with Kathryn to Walgreens and the market today. Did I mention whee? At least most people were wearing their masks, the new pink.

Okay. Enough wallowing. For tonight, at least.

Later Taters,
Aunt Beast




6:23 p.m.

A sunny early summer day, without the expected thunderstorms. We reached 90˚F, with the heat index at 91˚F. Currently it's 75˚F.

Today was not the day I got back to work. And it won't be tomorrow, and likely not Tuesday (my birthday), but maybe it will be Wednesday.

Pursuant to the "not writing, not working" problem, I posted the following to Facebook this evening:

I'm having a great deal of difficulty these days performing the most basic day-to-day functions that any working author with no other source of income HAS to perform. If you read my blog, you know this. But it just sort of hit me, like a pile of bricks. Never mind that I can't write. A publisher or editor makes a simple or a relatively simple request, and I let it sit for weeks before I finally force myself to deal with it. I've supported myself as an author since 1995, but this is the hardest it has ever been to motivate myself to do the job...and it has often been hard.

Which kinda speaks for itself.

We had a walk today around the building. I found a very, very old tin solder that the last thunderstorm had washed from the earth. It was missing both legs below the knees. The costume on it looks WWI or WWII. This building has stood since 1933. It could certainly be either. I wonder how long it lay there? Later, we finished the latest re-watch of Season 1 of Twin Peaks. And this morning I finished my latest re-reading of William Kennedy's Ironweed. I then began the second book in his Albany trilogy, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game.

That toy soldier, though. How long ago was it lost? In what decade? To what child? And is that child long since dead or are they still alive and, if so, how old?

That was today.

Later,
Aunt Beast




11:16 p.m.

Not a wretched day. Not a good day. I forgot to go outside. But it was warm and mostly sunny. We reached 86˚F, and it's still 76˚F. My window's open. I hope there are a lot of cicadas this year.

Today is Selwyn's eighth birthday.

Being away from McWane is truly wearing on me, maybe worse than any of the rest of this mess. I need to be doing prep. I need to be doing science. I need the lab about me.

This morning I finished my re-read of Mark Frost's The Secret History of Twin Peaks. I answered email from Subterranean Press and Writers House. With the latter, I approved cover art and discussed potential readers for the forthcoming audiobook of Agents of Dreamland. I watched episodes of RuPaul's Drag Race in the middle of the day. I played GW2. I ate. Tonight, Kathryn and I watched David Mirkin's Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion (1997). I'd never seen it. Damn, what a weird fucking movie.

That was my day.

And speaking of Twin Peaks, soon I'll tell you about Twin Peaks: Rocket 88, a just-for-fun vanity project I've been playing with during lockdown.

Also, from my Facebook today:

It always surprises me – in a good way – when people make me realize that I'm actually not cynical.

~ and ~

I hope fervently, though perhaps naively, that I will live to see the day when Americans finally shed their long and abiding distrust of science, so that future crises whose solutions so depend on trusting scientists and their advices (such as the Covid-19 epidemic) can be more efficiently, safely, and sanely navigated. When functioning properly, science is, by definition, apolitical, which of course means that it's not in the business of telling us what we want to hear or shoring up our belief systems. It's about trying to get at the truth of things, independent of political agendas. Over all my years, I have known as many conservative-minded scientists as liberally minded scientists, in many fields.

Later,
Aunt Beast




1:33 p.m.

Today seems to have been the antithesis of yesterday. The weather was good, but nothing much else was. We made it to 84˚F, and it's still 75˚F.

But I accomplished nothing. I did eat. I had a short walk around the building. And all the rest is a blur. Yesterday, this whole thing seemed just at the edge of manageable, these days and days and days all bleeding together. I went to bed last night with something that was at least an illusion of optimism, and this morning all of that was gone.

Later,
Aunt Beast




4:27 p.m.

If I say that today is absolutely the worst day I've had since we all went into hiding from Covid-19, I hope you'll believe that I'm telling you the truth.

It's all about getting from one side to the other, doing as little damage along the way as I can.

Later,
Aunt Beast




6:16 p.m.