Howard Hughes and the Pirates

Insomnia overdrive. That was last night. And then, sometime after 5:30 a.m. sleep, waking again as the sun was rising, then drifting down into a dream I can only describe as "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner" meets Alien, art direction and sfx a collaborative effort between Gustav Doré and H.R. Giger. And now you might call me awake, unless you happened to know how well I type when asleep.

Yesterday, I wrote 918 words on something new. Probably a piece for Sirenia Digest 21. Right now, it's called "Penance to the Idol of Perversity (1917)," but I think that's going to change. I have no idea what happens next. Oh, and this morning I got an email from my editor at Penguin letting me know that the corrected page proofs for the Silk mmp finally arrived in NYC. So I can stop having heart attacks over that. We feared them lost in the mail.

It's very fucking hot here in Atlanta. Last I looked, 91F, with a heat index of 97, 50% humidity, but that was at least an hour ago. The white hell of August.

Last night, we read chapters 24 and 25 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and we put a new roof on our little garret above the Palaeozoic Museum's gallery. which greatly increased the available living space.

mech_angel inquires: May I ask, then, how you force yourself to work, when those sparks aren't working? Hopefully without getting swatted?

No swattings today. I'm too hot to lift the swatter, and too asleep. How do I make myself work when the sparks won't ignite? Fear of fucking homelessness. Guilt. Various intoxicants. Self-discipline. And so forth. That's not a pretty answer, but it's the truth, and truth trumps beauty any day of the week.

PSA

Also, note that on this day in 1945 the U.S. Army Air Force dropped an atomic bomb, named "Little Boy," on Hiroshima, Japan, killing an estimated 80,000 people.