Live from Europa!

Another eight hours of sleep, which is really a bit amazing. Two in a row. I think my exhausted body is rebelling aginst my restless mind. There's a catch, of course. The longer I sleep, the longer and more elaborate are the dreams. Mere phantasmagorias become epics. But I will say this. At least the monsters and other assorted horrors in my dreams have the integrity to let me see behind their masks. I wake, and it's this masquerade again.

There's a brown thrasher in the tree outside my office window.

A few weeks ago, Bill Schafer at subpress asked me to do a chapbook that would be given away with the (sold out) limited edition of Alabaster, and he asked if I would be willing to write a vignette-length Dancy piece. I agreed. Then I realised that such a vignette would defeat my goal of finally having all the Dancy stories, except Threshold, collected in one volume. I dithered for a time, and then asked Bill if he'd accept, instead, a vignette-length piece on the Ladies in Savannah, the ones from "Les Fleurs Empoisonnèes" ("In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers"). And Bill replied that he'd prefer the Dancy story, and added, "And who are we kidding...at some point you're going to want to revisit Dancy. Might be 5 or 10 years, but she's in your blood, now." And before I could even be annoyed at the presumption, I was already reminding myself that, in its earliest conception, Dancy was to have been a character in Daughter of Hounds, and that if DoH does well enough that I'm allowed to write another novel about Emmie Silvey and Soldier, I've had it in the back of my mind that it would include a somewhat older Dancy (late twenties, early thirties). So...yeah. It sucks when you're so transparent. And Bill will likely get the Dancy vignette, because the man has a point, and you'll all just have to wait until some other time for more of the Ladies. I suppose they would work well in Sirenia Digest, wouldn't they?

Speaking of which, as I listened the Spooky curse an unruly mounatin of receipts yesterday, it occurred to me that right before the tax deadline might not have been the very best time to angle for new Sirenia Digest readers. And then again, hey, it's only $10. The cost of a couple of those wretched Starbuck's drinks or maybe a cheap pizza. So, what they frell. The offer stands. And I shall even repeat myself: The next twenty people who subscribe will get a free copy of the trade paperback of Silk, signed and, if you so desire, inscribed to you (or someone else). Also, On the last day of April, I'll draw one name from those twenty people (or however many have newly subscribed between now and then) and that person will win a signed copy of the Italian edition of Threshold — La Soglia! All this on top of the extra-long Issue No. 6. How the frell can you resist? Just click here, read the FAQ, and then subscribe. Such wondrous delights for a mere $10! Don't delay. You snooze, you lose. The early bird gets the annelid, etc. & etc. Quick, before I change my mind.

I think I'll wind this up. Oh. Wait. I meant to say, I've my first mosquito bite of the season. Er...okay. That's all. You can go now.

Boredom, Idle Hands, Meme

I just snurched this from barrygraham. I've also ommitted the negative categories, for more or less the same reason he did. I did keep the "worst movies" category. I cannot presently explain this inconsistancy...

List ten favorite novelists:

1) Gregory Maguire
2) Shirley Jackson
3) John Steinbeck
4) William Kennedy
5) Neil Gaiman
6) Thomas Pynchon
7) Ray Bradbury
8) Mark Helprin
9) Peter Straub
10) Ursula K. LeGuin

List ten favorite nonfiction authors:

1) Richard Ellis
2) Charles Fort
3) Stephen Jay Gould
4) David J. Skal
5) Carl Sagan
6) Joseph Campbell
7) Harlan Ellison
8) R. F. Foster
9) Pat Shipman
10) Adrian Desmond

List ten favorite poets:

1) William Butler Yeats
2) T.S. Eliot
3) Matthew Arnold
4) Sylvia Plath
5) James Dickey
6) Dorothy Parker
7) Emily Dickinson
8) Anne Sexton
9) William Blake
10) Ovid

List ten favorite movies:

1) Key Largo
2) Lawrence of Arabia
3) Blade Runner
4) Dark City
5) Casablanca
6) Citizen Kane
7) The Lord of the Rings (dir. Jackson)
8) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
9) Alien
10) Apocalypse Now Redux

List five worst movies:

1) Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
2) Saving Private Ryan
3) Pearl Harbor
4) Mortal Combat II
5) Waterworld

List ten favorite musical artists/groups:

1) The Dresden Dolls
2) The Decemberists
3) Pink Floyd/David Gilmour
4) VNV Nation
5) Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
6) Radiohead
7) The Cure
8) David Bowie
9) Moby
10) P. J. Harvey

List ten favorite magazines (I have only seven):

1) Game Informer
2) Wired
3) National Geographic
4) Popular Science
5) Scientific American
6) Gothic Beauty (bite me)
7) The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

List ten favorite TV shows:

1) Farscape (duh)
2) The Sopranos
3) Deadwood
4) X-Play
5) Battlestar Galactica (new series)
6) Dead Like Me
7) Firefly
8) Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
9) Barney Miller
10. Taxi