Caitlín R. Kiernan

And today, is Ray Bradbury's 91st birthday. Thank you, Mr. Bradbury, for Mars, Cooger and Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show, bottles of dandelion wine, that foghorn, the Elliot family, and a thousand other wonders.

Sunny and cool here in Providence, thanks to a low humidity and dew point. Very windy.

Turns out, as of yesterday, we're moving the entire shoot for The Drowning Girl book trailer and The Drowning Girl: Stills From a Movie That Never Existed from Boston the Rhode Island. This happens this coming weekend, so things here will grow increasingly chaotic. kylecassidy and crew will arrive on Friday evening, and as we only really have about a day and a half to shoot, it's going to be intense. But, hopefully, fun intense, and hopefully many wonderful things will come of it. Oh, and yesterday Michael Zulli showed me the underpainting of his version of G.P.S.'s The Drowning Girl (1898), and, even at this unfinished stage, it's beautiful. A part of the novel is coming alive and will exist beyond the printed page, and I thank him so much for that.

As announced, yesterday was a "day off." I still spent about three or four hours working, but there was no writing. What we did do, though, is go to Swan Point Cemetery for the first time since the ugly fiasco of the 20th of August 2008. I do not know if it was my post, then Boing Boing picking up the story of the verbal assault against me and Spooky, and the story spreading across the interwebs that led to a major change in Swan Point security, or if it was that combined with other incidents, or if it didn't involve my experience at all. But it has changed, and wonderfully so. There are visitors again, and bicyclists, and the air of oppression has been lifted. For the first time in three years (!!!) we were able to visit Lovecraft's grave. Likely, things have been better there for a year or two, but I've just not been able to return, that incident in 2008 was so upsetting. There was a big gathering on Saturday to commemorate HPL's birth date, but I didn't want to be a part of the crowd, so I waited until yesterday (I don't think the Old Gent would have minded my tardiness). We walked around the beautiful cemetery, me making notes, recording names for future stories and novels, getting mosquito bites, and marveling at trees. We found a huge red oak (Swan Point is also an arboretum) , and I took a single leaf and pressed it in between the pages of my Molskine. The cemetery was so, so peaceful: bird songs, the wind through trees, insects, the Seekonk flowing past to the east, and very little else. It was at least part ways as grounding as the sea.

We saved HPL's grave for the last. There were many a wonderful offering carefully laid above the grave. I left a tiny button in the shape of a black cat; knowing his love of cats, it seemed very appropriate. Anyway, hopefully we are now all free to visit the grave whenever we like, and I can only hope that asshole security guard was fired. Yesterday, I felt like I'd gotten back something very grand and important to me. There are photos below, behind the cut.

Afterwards, we had an early dinner at Tortilla Flats.

And I have a long day ahead of me. Spooky's begun cleaning the apartment in anticipation of the arrival of photographers (and all their gear) and models/actresses on Friday. I have to begin Chapter 8, the final chapter of Blood Oranges, which I hope to make very significant progress on this week and finish early next week.

( 21 August 2011 )

This is a post I meant to make a couple of days back, but better late than never.

Thursday May 19, 2011, the woman that Frank Frazetta once called "the greatest living painter," Jeffrey Catherine Jones ("Jeff Jones"), died. If, like me, you grew up in the 1970s and '80s, reading magazines like Heavy Metal and novels by the likes of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Fritz Leiber, Andre Norton, and Robert E. Howard, then you are likely familiar with the work of Jeff Jones, even if you have no idea who she was.

In particular, a lot of people don't know she was a transwoman. She also suffered from mental illness, and to quote Wikipedia, "In 2001, she experienced a nervous breakdown and lost her home and workspace. In 2004 she had her own apartment and started producing work again."

And now another visionary is gone from the world, and we are poorer for the loss. There are some examples of her work behind the cut.

( Wondrous Things )

Hard rain last night, rainy today.

Yesterday is the day I've feared. After three fantastic writing days, yesterday The Drowning Girl sputtered and hit a speed bump. I did only 595 words. Even emptying the Word Bank, I was still 234 words short for yesterday. Today, I have to do much better and get back on track. I'm giving myself until the 7th (instead of until the 6th) to finish Chapter One (which, in the book, is just 1).

Spooky had to go out to get her new glasses (which look great), and when she got back home I was pretty panicked and flustered. But there was much good mail, which rather helped my spirits. Best of the lot was a Lovecraft pin, sent to me by my editor, Anne Sowards. The administrators of the World Fantasy Awards present each nominee with one of these pins, which are miniatures of the actual award (designed by Gahan Wilson). It made me very happy, and helps me feel better about The Red Tree, and now I shall always wear it on my lapel, whenever I have a lapel on which to wear it. There's is a photo behind the cut (yeah, my nail polish is looking rough):

( Because I Done Good )

My thanks to everyone who bid on Study #2 for Yelllow, and to the winner of the auction. Likely, as mentioned already, it'll be at least a couple of months before I offer another painting. There's a large canvas I want to do next, and I don't intend to sell it.

Other good mail yesterday included my Shaharrazad mousepad. I've used the same mousepad since...forever. It's an Emily Strange mousepad I got when I was still living in Athens, round about 1996 or '97. And finally it had worn smooth and needed replacing. But getting thirteen or fourteen years out of a mousepad is surely to be counted as a good deal. Also, thanks to Steven Lubold, who sent us a copy of Current 93's Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain, which I'm listening to at this very minute. The mail also included my contributor's copy of Steampunk Reloaded (edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer), which reprints "The Steam Dancer (1896)."

Last night, after dinner, we began the annual November reading of House of Leaves. This will be reading #5 or #6, I suppose. We also read Kelly Link's hilarious and charming "The Fairy Handbag" and her absolutely brilliant "Pretty Monsters." I cannot stress how much I adore "Pretty Monsters." The structure of the narrative is a trick I wish I'd thought of first, and the characters are so perfectly executed (make of that verb, executed, what you will). And these lines, from near the end, are wonderful:

Except you can't judge a book by its cover. Whether or not this story has a happy ending depends, of course, on who is reading it. Whether you are a wolf or a girl. A girl or a monster or both. Not everyone in a story gets a happy ending. Not everyone who reads a story feels the same way about how it ends. And if you go back to the beginning and read it again, you may discover it isn't the same story you thought you'd read. Stories shift their shape.

I also got some very, very good rp in CoX (thank you Sekhmet and Enth'lye). I've just about decided to cut all the Lovecraftian out of Erzébetta's backstory, and just avoid bastardized HPL whenever it crops up in the game. This is not the sort of thing about which I can compromise. I'm not even willing to try. Do it right, or do not bother, because doing it wrong is an insult to the source material. Oh, also, darkarmadillo managed, in yesterday's comments, in only three words, to perfectly summarize the essence of Lovecraft's cosmicism:

Nobody saves nothing.

Damn straight.

My insomnia's been getting worse again, which drags everything else down the shitter, of course. My work habits. My mood. My ability to tell if Drug X is dealing with Symptom Y. My ability to remember if I've taken Drug X. My appearance. I do not sleep, it all goes to Hell in a little rowboat.

And I have a reading in six hours. Before the reading (six o'clock p.m. at the Brown University Book Store; at least I get to wear a mask), I need to wash my hair, let it dry (NO BLOW DRIERS), make edits for the two stories for Sirenia Digest #59, layout the issue (including cover), and...stuff. Lots of stuff. How this is going to happen, I don't know.

Yesterday, what? Oh, yeah. Yesterday, I wrote the prolegomenon for #59, which went a bit long. And I read over and made line edits to "And the Cloud That Took the Form" and "At the Reef."

I consume virtually no caffeine.

I think my body has spent a decade forgetting how to sleep.

My thanks to the reader who sent me Richard Kaczynski's Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley, so now I can be reading about six books all at once.

Really excellent rp in City of Heroes and Villains last night, and I wanted to say thank you to stsisyphus, Mel, Enth'lye, and Blair. Yes, it would seem that ecsedi Báthory Erzsébet and La Bête du Gévaudan are one and the same, who now exists as an insane super villain with freezy powers, after being enslaved by Vlad Tepes who wanted to use her undead womb as a vessel to allow Nyarlathotep to be born into the world! Yeah, I know. Wacky. I'm waiting for the zombie unicorns to appear.

Here are four photos of Study #2 for Yellow. The painting will go up on eBay later this afternoon. The platypus is giving me the finger, so...later...

( Study #2 for Yellow )

Yesterday was warm, and the night before ferociously windy. Night before last, I sat at my desk with the window open, and the wind blowing the world around Outside. There was sun yesterday, though it was still chilly in the shadows. Today, it's still warm, 70F at the moment, still warm, but cloudy. There must be something wrong with the commas in that last sentence. Anyway, I left the House yesterday, but the junk shop we wanted to scour is closed on Tuesday, and we didn't know. Still, it got me Outside. Last night, I was so tired I slept almost nine hours.

Back home, I all but finished the newest painting, Study #2 for Yellow. I'm much happier with it than I was with Study #1 for Yellow. I tweeted yesterday, "I am painting a convulsion." This morning, looking at the painting, I see it was an accurate description.

---

Back to the subject of my doing podcasts, and my discomfort with my voice, and how it follows from being transgendered. Back to being very weary of how so much of the world perceives gender. Back to vocal dysphoria (from Greek δύσφορος [dysphoros], from δυσ-, difficult, and φέρειν, to bear). Day before yesterday, the following was tweeted:

Um...Is Caitlin R. Kiernan a tranny, or just a really deep voiced woman? :/

Yeah, the witty emoticon was part of the post. A few minutes later, there was a second tweet, by the same person:

I'm STILL not sure if Caitlin R. Kiernan was born as a woman with a deep voice, or what. Apparently she's/he's an expert on H.P. Lovecraft.

To which I replied:

What the hell's the difference? Does gender, or birth gender, make one a better scholar or author?

I received this reply (and it's clear that the person asking these question didn't know I was, well, me, the person about whom he seemed so intensely curious...and yes, it's a he...I checked, because clearly gender is germane to all such discussions):

No, not at all! It's just hard for me to react to something my brain can't categorize. It's not a problem with her.

So...he cannot react (which he apparently must do) to something I've said unless he's capable of pegging my gender. Or sex. Or both. And, of course, it's more than that. My birth sex must be pegged, so that he can categorize, then react. A few minutes later, he tweeted:

@greygirlbeast For the record I have no problem with anyone's sexuality--it's just a first reaction to something like that to say 'Huh?".

To say "Huh?" Note, he doesn't say, "it's my reaction," but implies the reaction is universal (and it may well be). Anyway, I suppose I should be relieved. After all the hateful comments people made at YouTube when Frank Woodward posted an outtake from my interview for Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (which I almost didn't do, because I hate my voice), this is kid stuff. The "tweeter," was, by the way, an actual kid. This, of course, excuses nothing.

But it should serve as an illustration to those who simply seem unable to grasp the source of my discomfort. Not because there's actually anything wrong with women having deeper voices, or with being a transsexual. But because it wears me out. It exhausts me. Seeing this shit after all these years. My gender will always be a reason for many people to dismiss me out of hand. Or to hate me. Or to spew transphobic and homophobic vitriol. Or whatever. I know that. I accepted that ages ago. But it still wears me out. I always expect it, and yet it comes when I least expect it. It almost always blindsides me.

That someone must know my gender before he can "react" to my comments. And it hardly matters that there are better, smarter, more tolerant people in the world. It matters not one whit. Sometimes, I get tired of fighting the good fight. I've been fighting it my whole life. But, here I am still fighting, because I don't know how to stop.

I'm talking in circles. I just wanted to put this out there, as a case in point. This is why I dislike my voice, and this is why I am hesitant to do podcasts, or live interviews, or cons, or public readings. I'd like to move through the world being treated no differently than other women, those women who happen to be cisgendered. The lucky women who've never had anyone doubt their identity.

And if I've revealed anything here you didn't already know, well...either you haven't been paying attention, or you're too good and intelligent a person to give a shit. Or both. However, should it make you think less of me, in any way, you can go fuck yourself with a rusty corkscrew. I'll even help, if you can't figure out how that works.

Rainy yesterday, and rainy again today. Which is a good thing. This is rain that was desperately needed. Providence has been so dry all summer (after the floods back in the spring).

I've had to stop taking Prazosin, because the hypotension wasn't going away, and it was beginning to make me genuinely ill. I look up, and almost the whole summer's gone. And we didn't do much of anything we'd planned to do in June, July, and August, and a lot of that was because the Prazosin was making me feel so bad. Nothing much worse than a lost summer.

On Saturday, I wrote 1,261 words, T-V of "The Yellow Alphabet." Yesterday— well, I don't have the word count on hand, because I didn't write it down, but I did W and X. Today, I do Y and Z, and it'll be done. Then, tomorrow, I have a doctor's appointment, then Geoffrey (readingthedark) will be visiting tomorrow night.

I need a new keyboard (sticky damn keys) and a new mousepad (I've been using this one since sometime in the late 90s and it's smoother than a baby's backside).

Very good rp the last couple of nights. I've gone and gotten hooked again. Last night, Spooky and I also worked on finishing up the quests in Icecrown (WoW) with Shaharrazad and Suraa. We're at 100 out of 140. Yesterday, I read an article on the evolution of bipealism in hominids, in the July issue of National Geographic. I also began a new painting yesterday. Night before last, we watched more of Season Four of Dexter.

Lately, I feel like all my thrills are either vicarious or virtual.

Please have a look at the current eBay auctions. Thanks.

Today is, of course, the 120th anniversary of the birth of H.P. Lovecraft.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,233 words on the second half of "The Yellow Alphabet," N through P. O came out especially well, I think.

This month, Vince Locke and I will be doing that switch thing we sometimes do, when we reverse the usual order of things, and I write a story to an illustration he's done for Sirenia Digest. So, #57 will feature a story inspired by this image:





Not much else to say for yesterday. After the writing, I cooked a pot of chili. I read an article in the July National Geographic on Ardipithecus. There were three exhausting, wonderful hours of rp in Insilico (thank you, Blair). Spooky and I watched two more episodes of Season Four of Dexter (I'm loving John Lithgow's extremely creepy portrayal of the "Trinity" killer).

Sometime around 2 a.m. I finally found the nerve to open the box containing copies of the mass-market edition of The Red Tree. The cover is still hideous and inappropriate, and the smaller format does nothing good for the layout of the novel. But Roc did a nice job with the cover blurbs (quotes from various reviews). Hopefully, it'll sell.

That was yesterday.

There are about four hours remaining in the auction of the first painting I have ever offered for sale, Study 1 in Yellow. And the auction for a copy of the lettered edition of Tales from the Woeful Platypus (plus handmade Beanie platypus) ends in less than an hour.