just frelling fix it already

I'm not certain exactly how I neglected to mention this yesterday. Anyway, I'll mention it now. The very best thing about Wednesday was that during lunch at the Jamaican place, when I ordered a Bass, the waiter, who looked all of twenty-four, actually carded me.

It ain't much, but what the frell. With only 11 days, 12 hours, 13 minutes, and 39 seconds to go, I'll take whatever I can get.

(An interruption here, because Sissy called about my website, and then Spooky came in with some huge ass piece of furniture that a neighbor was throwing out, and now I have to convince her we should throw it out.)

Yesterday, we only managed to make it through Chapter Eight of Murder of Angels, before I discovered that I just couldn't take any more of the book, that I needed more time away from it. And that means that we have to get the final 79 pp. done today (in the next six hours, to be precise). Gods, I'm frelling sick of proofreading. It's bad enough, having to write a book, but then to be dragged back over it again, and again, and again, in this futile struggle to make it perfect. It will never be perfect. It's filled with flaws and warts and contradictions, and it's maddening to know that that's the best I can do. That this warped child is the best I can spawn. The fruit never falls far from the tree, blah, blah, blah, frelling blah. Maybe the next book will be My Perfect Book, and the whole world will be awed, and I'll never have to write another. Yeah, sure, and maybe Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny will get together and bring me a new cybernetic body, complete with my own temporal displacement field. One's at least as likely as the other.

Actually, no. That's no true. My money's on Santa and the rabbit.

Last night, I started reading William Gibson's Alien 3 screenplay. I love David Fincher's film, but Gibson's screenplay is a fascinating look at a direction the story could have gone instead. Later, I staved off sleep with Kya: Dark Legacy, which is sort like Primal for ten year olds. But it's very, very playable, with an extremely low frustration threshold (all important, at the moment).

It's already 12:28. I have to go face the pages...

keep your laws off my eyeballs

Addendum: It's done. Come Monday, I'll pack up Murder of Angels and away it will go to NYC, and good riddance. I couldn't have endured another day of proofreading. But I am pleased with this novel. I'm not sure anyone else will be, but I am. And in that fantasy world where writers pretend that it's all about Art, instead of sales figures and advances and bills and so forth, that's all that matters. For the remainder of this afternoon I will live there, and accept willingly the conceit that what I want to write is more important than what a "wider audience" would like to read.

There's one small bit of editing to be done, which I shall explain tomorrow.

I didn't get to the contact lens rant this morning. I'm too tired for it now. Suffice to say, it's time for me to buy another pair of black contacts for Nar'eth, and Spooky has to get a pair as well. Yesterday, we tried to order two pairs from LensQuest, the company I've always ordered from before, and we were informed that they are now required by the FDA to obtain a verifiable prescription for every pair sold, even for non-prescription SFX lenses. This because some idiot somewhere whined about an eye infection, or some mother got up in arms because her Manson baby slept with his one white contact in and stinking his eye rotted out, or some such foolishness. So, now we both have to go to the added expense and bother of having our eyes measured for contacts. I think we're just going to go ahead and spring for prescription black contacts. At least it means we won't be blind at Dragon*Con this year. But I'm still pissed about the whole FDA thing. It's my goddamn, traitorous body. If I want to risk ruining what's left of it, in ways that ruins no one else's body, that's my business.

Grrrrrrr.

But wait. I can't be in an angry, growly mood. I finished the proofreading. I like the book. And it's Kid Night. Oh, I'm so damned conflicted!