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The frelled-up thing about having done 2,835 words on Sunday is that it makes me feel like a slacker for having done "only" 1,519 yesterday. I go and let myself fall prey to the idea that speed is anything more than speed, that quantity has some inherent value. I mean, hey, if I can do 2,835 words in three hours on Sunday, then why does it take me three and a half hours to do 1,519 words the very next day? The answer is simple, of course. Because. I could elaborate. Say, because this is not an assembly line. Or. Because I am not a reliable bit of word-producing machinery. But the truest answer is just plain old because. The writing requires what the writing requires. The time it needs. Because.
Even as I type this, Spooky is in the process of sending out Sirenia Digest #14, so, if you are a subscriber, you ought to be getting it very soon. If you are not a subscriber, but would like to be, that is easily remedied. And if you subscribe between now and midnight on the 31st (and send Spooky your snail-mail address), I'll even throw in a FREE signed copy of the trade paperback edition of Silk. I will point out that there is one annoying typo that somehow made it into the "prolegomena" this months, a missing apostrophe that's about to drive me nuts, but we're running late as it is, and I figured most people would rather go ahead and have the new issue than have the new issue a day later with one additional apostrophe.
Anything else about yesterday? Well, I washed my hair.
But before that, I threw caution to the winds and mounted an expedition to the Mailbox, taking my bearings and reckonings from a 14th-Century Scandinavian map and my expert sense of direction. Packing only those provisions required and what scientific instrumentations I deemed absolutely necessary, I set out from the Living Room, leaving my porters at the Threshold and trusting my hardy sled dogs (huskies, the lot) to get me up and over and back down that formidable bit of topography. It was touch and go near the summit. Then, heading out onto the vast grey expanse of Front Porch, blasted by a NW gale and sub-freezing temperatures, I skirted both crevasse and yeti to take valuable observations of Sidewalk and Street and Holly Bush and, thanks to favourable and perhaps unprecedented meteorological conditions, seeing even so far as Other Side of the Street. By the time I'd reached the dizzy precipice that signaled the proximity of that ancient monolith Mailbox, I was set upon by a confederation of snow leopards and three mockingbirds and a bull mastodon, but trusting in my trusty revolver and a handful of salted sunflower seeds, I escaped, losing only half the dogs to the Arctic fiends! Then, despairing that I would ever again return to the warmth and safety of Office, that I, indeed, would die alone and forlorn on the steppes of Front Porch, I began the perilous ascent. Even now, I struggle for the words needed to recount the awe and terror when at last I beheld the black portal of Mailbox. If only the snow leopards hadn't made off with all my photographic equipment. Shivering and half-starved, I pushed on, entering that cyclopean interior, those arched and eldritch metallic walls echoing my every footfall. At any moment, I expected to be set upon my some new horror, though whether I most feared beast or man or some mythic denizen I cannot now say. In the end, I was rewarded with a few artefacts and Pre-Columbian documents — a bank statement and National Geographic, to be precise — such evidence as might prove the truth of my tale, should fortune favour and I make it back alive. The journey back is a spine-chilling tale, but one that I shall not now relate, as the expedition's sponsor, the firm of Mericale, Scheheraz'Odd, and Touchshriek, have been granted exclusive rights to that half of the adventure.
Oh, and Harlan called.
Last night, we watched Heroes, which seems as determined as Battlestar Galactica to become mired in soap-opera tedium and domestic humdrum. It may lose me very soon. Afterwards, we watched Frank Capra's Meet John Doe (1941), because of what I said before about Capra and Cary Cooper and comfort.
I have mentioned Daughter of Hounds, haven't I?
Gotta go. The platypus says time's up, and hesheit's still pissed at me for leaving herhimit behind in my bid for the Mailbox. Poor, slighted beastie.
Even as I type this, Spooky is in the process of sending out Sirenia Digest #14, so, if you are a subscriber, you ought to be getting it very soon. If you are not a subscriber, but would like to be, that is easily remedied. And if you subscribe between now and midnight on the 31st (and send Spooky your snail-mail address), I'll even throw in a FREE signed copy of the trade paperback edition of Silk. I will point out that there is one annoying typo that somehow made it into the "prolegomena" this months, a missing apostrophe that's about to drive me nuts, but we're running late as it is, and I figured most people would rather go ahead and have the new issue than have the new issue a day later with one additional apostrophe.
Anything else about yesterday? Well, I washed my hair.
But before that, I threw caution to the winds and mounted an expedition to the Mailbox, taking my bearings and reckonings from a 14th-Century Scandinavian map and my expert sense of direction. Packing only those provisions required and what scientific instrumentations I deemed absolutely necessary, I set out from the Living Room, leaving my porters at the Threshold and trusting my hardy sled dogs (huskies, the lot) to get me up and over and back down that formidable bit of topography. It was touch and go near the summit. Then, heading out onto the vast grey expanse of Front Porch, blasted by a NW gale and sub-freezing temperatures, I skirted both crevasse and yeti to take valuable observations of Sidewalk and Street and Holly Bush and, thanks to favourable and perhaps unprecedented meteorological conditions, seeing even so far as Other Side of the Street. By the time I'd reached the dizzy precipice that signaled the proximity of that ancient monolith Mailbox, I was set upon by a confederation of snow leopards and three mockingbirds and a bull mastodon, but trusting in my trusty revolver and a handful of salted sunflower seeds, I escaped, losing only half the dogs to the Arctic fiends! Then, despairing that I would ever again return to the warmth and safety of Office, that I, indeed, would die alone and forlorn on the steppes of Front Porch, I began the perilous ascent. Even now, I struggle for the words needed to recount the awe and terror when at last I beheld the black portal of Mailbox. If only the snow leopards hadn't made off with all my photographic equipment. Shivering and half-starved, I pushed on, entering that cyclopean interior, those arched and eldritch metallic walls echoing my every footfall. At any moment, I expected to be set upon my some new horror, though whether I most feared beast or man or some mythic denizen I cannot now say. In the end, I was rewarded with a few artefacts and Pre-Columbian documents — a bank statement and National Geographic, to be precise — such evidence as might prove the truth of my tale, should fortune favour and I make it back alive. The journey back is a spine-chilling tale, but one that I shall not now relate, as the expedition's sponsor, the firm of Mericale, Scheheraz'Odd, and Touchshriek, have been granted exclusive rights to that half of the adventure.
Oh, and Harlan called.
Last night, we watched Heroes, which seems as determined as Battlestar Galactica to become mired in soap-opera tedium and domestic humdrum. It may lose me very soon. Afterwards, we watched Frank Capra's Meet John Doe (1941), because of what I said before about Capra and Cary Cooper and comfort.
I have mentioned Daughter of Hounds, haven't I?
Gotta go. The platypus says time's up, and hesheit's still pissed at me for leaving herhimit behind in my bid for the Mailbox. Poor, slighted beastie.
