in my last life I was a one-legged Nazi whore

It's done. Finally, it's done. I finished "Bradbury Weather" about 5:30 p.m. yesterday. I did 1,351 words yesterday, bringing the total length of this story to 15,097 words, which, in my estimate, makes it a short novella instead of a short story. Today, Spooky and I will read through the whole thing, beginning to end, to see how it works as a whole, looking for errors, etc. It will be published in a few months in the second issue of Subterranean Magazine, along with a new interview and a reprinting of "Andromeda Among the Stones."

This morning, I got word from my film agent that a couple of Very, Very Big producers want to see The Dry Salvages. I shouldn't say who, of course, but they don't get any bigger. I doubt this will come to anything, but it's a good feeling, nonetheless.

The cold Spooky and I caught at Dragon*Con has left me with one of my interminable, lingering coughs.

What else happened yesterday? I fell asleep on the sofa again. We cooked a big pot of chili with lime, fresh jalapeno, and tequila. We rented Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, one of those films I'd refused to see in a theatre for fear of it being spoiled by cretinous, loud-mouthed fools. It was worth the wait. Brilliant. Beautiful. More poignant than I expected. A film that is simultaneously frightening and sad and sweet. Sweet is not a bad thing, if it's not handled by a hamfisted moron. Whoa. I just used "moron, "cretinous," and "fools" in the same paragraph. Good for me. Anyway, I thought Jim Carrey's performance was very strong. A very, very fine film. Afterwards, Spooky told me the story of Hobart the One-Footed Duck of Piedmont Park and Frank the Luminous Goldfish of Doom (who is, you see, responsible for Hobart's handicap). Then we went to bed early, around midnight, and I fell asleep to Lisa Gerrard and candlelight.

Thanks to everyone who voted in the "Best Novel" poll yesterday, all fifteen of you (a total of 89 people have voted so far) . But I still need eleven votes to reach 100. So, please, if you haven't voted already, click here and scroll down to "9/24/04 12:51 pm." Thank you.

Back to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for a second. I really did love this film. I think Joel Barish will be added to my list of heroes.

I was just reading about some cretinous, moronic fool (yes, all three at once) giving douglas_clegg shit for not blurbing his book. docbrite has already expressed my feelings on this sort of thing quite well, so I shall be lazy and quote her:

I understand that it can hurt when, after you've sweated blood writing a book, someone who could help you says they don't have time to read it. I know that. But as a writer yourself (I'm addressing the imaginary rude person here, of course), you should know that writers often need to exercise careful control over what goes into their heads. It may not be that your book doesn't interest me, but that I'm in a phase where I need to read about a certain subject, or in a certain style, or can't read fiction at all for fear of having someone else's voice bleed into mine. It's never personal. Furthermore, when you ask a writer for a blurb, especially a writer you don't know, you are intruding on his life and putting him in a slightly awkward position, because he remembers when he was young and hungry and had to do that kind of thing himself. (He's likely still hungry, but never mind.) That's not necessarily bad or wrong -- it's a hazard of the trade -- but the writer owes you nothing. Even a polite refusal is gravy. Being rejected and ignored are hazards of the trade too, and you'd do well to learn that early.

Damn straight.

transient overcast of the sullied mind

Addendum: This day has been crazy hectic so far. I just got off the phone with my film agent at UTA and my lit agent at Writer's House, about this whole thing with The Dry Salvages. Also, we've been talking to a couple of indie filmmakers in Toronto who want to do "Two Worlds, and In Between," so I've been having to make decisions about that as well. We managed to read through all of "Bradbury Weather," which I'm very pleased with, I think. It needs a few nips and tucks, but it's a clean story (well, not a clean story, as it actually contains more references to sex than most of my stuff, but anyway). I had a scare with the iBook that turned out to be something really stupid, something that was just me being a dumbass. I had to call my editor at Penguin. I remembered that I haven't sent in the first round of Bookslut interview questions, though I'd promised to send them yesterday. That's the sort of day it's been.

I think I'm about to flee the apartment just to catch my breath.

But. Yes. Stuff I forgot earlier today.

First, just a dream. And occurring as it did amid my usual array of big-budget nightmares, it seems very tame and of little consequence. But it's stuck with me all day. I was looking at a photograph of myself, taken years ago when I lived in Athens. My hair was bright, bright neon red and in dreads. I had some really beautiful tattoos on my right arm and the right side of my face and neck (in fact, I have no tattoos whatsoever). And I just looked so much younger and prettier than I've ever looked in my life. Softer. Anyway, when I awoke, this is what stayed with me. I lay in bed, waiting for Spooky to wake up, feeling a strange sadness that it was only a dream of a memory of a former me, that that former me had never actually been (unless...but let's not go there just now).

Also, I received this e-mail yesterday, which I shall post in order to fulfill the request it's author has made of me (from mrs.logic@gmail):

I'm e-mailing to ask if you could possibly mention on your blog that the deadline for registering to vote is this Saturday, October 2nd 2004 in many states.

A lot of people, maybe a lot of young people, don't realize that the deadline is a month before the actual election day, and they lose their chance to vote.

I read your blog enough to know that you would love a change of leadership in this country, and perhaps many of your readers would too.

Well, I should hope so, at least. Consider yourselves warned. If this deadline applies to your state (I don't have a list, but I know Georgia's one of them), register by Saturday, or you'll be sitting this one out. And, on the one hand, I've ceased to be one of those "participate or you have no right to complain" people. This system is just too entirely screwed to justify that attitude. But. On the other hand, we must consider the lesser of the two evils, and that one evil may be far, far greater than another. You may dream of better things and ideal systems, but you have to live in this world. And, right now, the most powerful man in this world is a war-mongering, theocratic, fascist bastard with no regard for your life, your liberty, or the future generations who will inherit this planet. You can change that part.

By the way, if someone has the list of states with Saturday deadlines for voter registration and will e-mail it to me at lowredmail@mac.com, then I'll post it here later.

Addendum to addendum: Thanks to Zpydah Violent, who just e-mailed me a link to the site with deadlines for voter registration. It is here. Also, I've just learned that my old publicist at Penguin is leaving the company, and I'll be getting a new publicist. The flux continues.