Caitlín R. Kiernan

On this day in 1965, the stars were right, and the Old Ones dropped some especially gnarly acid and, in the throes of their LSD-induced mischief, delivered unto Iceland the sparkly, polymorphous girl-thing duly named Björk Guðmundsdóttir. So don't tell me we don't have proof of alien civilizations. Hamingjusamur Björk Day!

Today is going to be weird. I feel it coming, like a great black tsunami.

As for yesterday, well...let's put it this way: Fuck me dead. After spending three days I could ill afford to lose trying to write "Sexing the Weird" I realized (about 6 p.m. last night) that I was writing shit and, at least, had the good sense to stop. Eighteen pages of shit. And if I'd kept going, I'd have wasted another day or two, and have thirty-two pages of shit. So, I've just emailed Bill Schafer to tell him there will be no introduction to Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart, or if there will be, it will be very short. Something like, "This is my weird sex book about weird sex." Only I'll have it translated into Icelandic first. Or Finnish. Or maybe Basque. Basque is suitably weird. But yeah, washout. And throwing away words is among the most distasteful things I have to do as a writer, which is one reason I do not write in drafts. But better to know when you've made a horrid mess of things than to be such a moron that you just keep on keeping on.

Last night, I took a hot bath and tried to drown my horror at all those lost words in innumerable hours of Rift. Iron Pine Peaks was hit by the Endless Air Invasion®. No, really. I think one of the programmers spilled his Cheetos and Mountain Dew in a server. The baddies just kept fucking respawning, and there were no air rifts to close to stop the attacks, so an impromptu alliance of Guardians and Defiants were forced to band together to protect the imbued wardstone outside the Chancel of Labors against the merciless forces of Crucia's Storm Legion. This insanity continued about an hour and forty-five minutes before we realized the game had burped, and the "boss" was never comin' round to end the event. But, hey...stuff blew up. Thank you, Mountain Dew.

Just this second got word from Subterranean Press that preorders on Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart "will start soon, likely in a few weeks." So, there you go. Ba da pa pa. Oh, and signature pages are on their way to me. Whee!

Er...I guess that's it for now. But you should join us in Rift for RP and party favors, ice cream and yetis. Defiant side, Faeblight shard. Watchers of the Unseen. Our guild especially needs warriors. Bahmi make good warriors. But, yeah. Come. Play. You'll wonder how you ever lived without it. I shit you not, kittens.

Meanwhile, I have an obsidian tsunami to face.

Virðingarfyllst,
Föður–Eða Móðursystir Óþokki

Bjork's "Oceania":

1. No idea why I'm using the cute Bjork icon the morning. I just couldn't seem to help myself.

2. Still happy about The Red Tree, A is for Alien, and "Galápagos" having all three landed on Locus Magazine's 2009 Recommended Reading List. It's always nice to know someone has noticed.

3. This morning, I awoke to a dusting of snow here in Providence. Maybe half an inch. We've had much less snow this winter than last.

4. Last night, Spooky and I celebrated her release from jury prison by binging on movies. First we watched Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock, which I found completely delightful. It's the sort of film that leaves me with nothing at all to complain about. And then we watched Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys again. It's a favorite, but both of us had only seen it twice ("Fuck the bozos!"). And speaking of movies, Geoffrey read me the Oscar nominations yesterday and I was...baffled. It's a baffling, and, at times, ridiculous list. But I am glad see Tarantino and Inglorious Basterds getting the attention it deserves, and I'm also rooting for Avatar, Up in the Air, A Simple Man, and a few others. And yeah, I did like District 9. I liked it a lot. But it's presence on the Oscar list still leaves me a bit perplexed.

5. Today, I finish pulling Sirenia Digest #50 together, and tonight, barring any unforeseen cataclysms, it will go out to subscribers.

6. There are few surer signs that's I'm not firing on all cylinders than discovering I've failed to get a set of revisions to an editor on time. Last night, I got an email from S.T. Joshi, wondering about my line edits to "Pickman's Other Model" (which will be appearing in Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror from PS Publishing). And I thought, "I sent those." But no, I'd not. I made the edits, back on December 16th, but I never actually typed them up and emailed them to Joshi. It is likely now too late. Fortunately, it was all very minor stuff. But it is a warning from me to me, to get back on the ball.

7. Back on Sunday, Spooky bought a new coffee maker (I've not had a coffee maker since 2005). It has a single glowing blue eye, and I call it Hal (yes, even though the eye is blue). She also got a pillow, two pairs of pajama pants for me, and a new bath mat. Combine this with the gifts from her mom, and it's been an odd (but needed) shower of domesticity around here.

8. Remember how much I loathe the cover of The Red Tree? I first saw this video devoted to the evolution of the "tramp stamp" urban-fantasy cover a year or so ago, but Spooky came across it again last night, and I thought I'd share. It would be funny, if not for the damage this sort of drek has done my own books (or at least done my nerves and aesthetic sensibilities):