Not enough days...
Apr. 30th, 2008 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greygirlbeastSo, yes, Sirenia Digest #29 (April) will be going out to subscribers this evening. That said, there has been a last minute change to the line up this issue. It will actually be comprised of two pieces by me this month, instead of one — "Flotsam" and "Concerning Attrition and Severance." The latter is the especially "brutal" piece I was fretting over so much a few days back. It was originally intended for Sirenia Digest #30 (May). However, Sonya (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sovay) needed more time on her new piece, and I absolutely cannot stand to rush another author. So, next month, #30 will include the new vignette by Sonya and my "Rappaccini's Dragon" (which I hope to finish writing tomorrow). Also, there will be no illustration from Vince this month, due to a death in his family. However, he'll be back next month. I hope that was something like coherent, because I am nothing like awake.
I received a very nice email yesterday from Mr. Robert Feldman of Manhattan, the sort that keeps me from taking a claw hammer to my skull:
Ms. Kiernan,
I write to you from the dank, dark, and foreboding depths of the New York Public Library (yes, we do have ghosts and they do wear roller-skates!) where I am currently cataloging the new edition of your Tales of Pain and Wonder. I've read Alabaster and your contributions to Wrong Things and am very much enjoying the stories in Tales.... The Salmagundi and Salammbo stories are truly blowing me away because I attended the Storm King School (1971-74) and am very familiar with that part of the Hudson Valley. Your Pollepel Island is obviously your take on Bannerman's Island with it's spooky ruined castle right near Storm King Mountain. I climbed that mountain many, many times, and slept out overnight there; it is very creepy around there and a perfect setting for your stories. The Hudson Valley has many many places like this, certainly Sleepy Hollow inspired Washington Irving to write his tale of the headless horseman. A bit further north there is an island off the town of Staatsburg where wicked old Uncle Aleister Crowley spent the summer of 1918, supposedly writing "Do what thou wilt"....etc...in red paint on the rocks for passing ships to see. Then there is the town of Tivoli, much gentrified now but an extremely haunting place in the '70's when I attended Bard College just down the road from there. Thanks for reminding me of these places; they have an atmosphere that's very misty and otherworldly and I have many memories of them. I am enjoying your work very much and am looking forward to reading more. I've cataloged at the Library for twenty years now but this is the first time I've contacted an author. This is a good day job for an old Punk Rock/Goth guitar player and the perks are I get to discover writers like you and Poppy Brite while I'm working. Best wishes and I'll be looking forward to reading more of your work.
It makes everything just a little bit easier to take, knowing there's a copy of Tales of Pain and Wonder at the central branch of the NYC Public Library, where once I climbed a stone lion. Thank you, Robert.
I did 1,189 words yesterday on the new story, the aforementioned "Rappaccini's Dragon." I'd really hoped to finish it this month, but the mess that was Monday made that impossible. Then I packed four very heavy boxes of books, and Spooky washed more dinosaurs (photos here in her LJ;humglum), including my set from the Royal Ontario Museum and the Boston Museum of Science. Just now, she was making a joke regarding "Bathosaurus," and I checked, because I figured there was surely a "Bathysaurus," and there is, though it's not a reptile, but the Deepsea Lizardfish, Bathysaurus ferox. Anyway, after the packing, we read over "Flotsam" and "Concerning Attrition and Severance" for the sake of line edits. I think we finished that up at 7 pm, then had leftover chili for dinner. I looked over the new National Geographic, which is largely devoted to China and the ecological catastrophe that is China (fully 50% of the Yellow River [Huang He] — the sixth longest in the world — has been declared "biologically dead").
More Millenium last night, episode #9 from Season 1, "Loin Like a Hunting Flame." And then the new episode of Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel. And why the hell do I write all this crap down? Some odd compulsion to record.
Tomorrow is Beltane. Already.
I really am loving the new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds disc. After last years Grinderman solo project, I had a feeling they'd be headed back this direction after the low point of Nocturama (2003). Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! feels a lot more like Let Love In with smatterings of the earlier albums.
sovay) needed more time on her new piece, and I absolutely cannot stand to rush another author. So, next month, #30 will include the new vignette by Sonya and my "Rappaccini's Dragon" (which I hope to finish writing tomorrow). Also, there will be no illustration from Vince this month, due to a death in his family. However, he'll be back next month. I hope that was something like coherent, because I am nothing like awake.I received a very nice email yesterday from Mr. Robert Feldman of Manhattan, the sort that keeps me from taking a claw hammer to my skull:
Ms. Kiernan,
I write to you from the dank, dark, and foreboding depths of the New York Public Library (yes, we do have ghosts and they do wear roller-skates!) where I am currently cataloging the new edition of your Tales of Pain and Wonder. I've read Alabaster and your contributions to Wrong Things and am very much enjoying the stories in Tales.... The Salmagundi and Salammbo stories are truly blowing me away because I attended the Storm King School (1971-74) and am very familiar with that part of the Hudson Valley. Your Pollepel Island is obviously your take on Bannerman's Island with it's spooky ruined castle right near Storm King Mountain. I climbed that mountain many, many times, and slept out overnight there; it is very creepy around there and a perfect setting for your stories. The Hudson Valley has many many places like this, certainly Sleepy Hollow inspired Washington Irving to write his tale of the headless horseman. A bit further north there is an island off the town of Staatsburg where wicked old Uncle Aleister Crowley spent the summer of 1918, supposedly writing "Do what thou wilt"....etc...in red paint on the rocks for passing ships to see. Then there is the town of Tivoli, much gentrified now but an extremely haunting place in the '70's when I attended Bard College just down the road from there. Thanks for reminding me of these places; they have an atmosphere that's very misty and otherworldly and I have many memories of them. I am enjoying your work very much and am looking forward to reading more. I've cataloged at the Library for twenty years now but this is the first time I've contacted an author. This is a good day job for an old Punk Rock/Goth guitar player and the perks are I get to discover writers like you and Poppy Brite while I'm working. Best wishes and I'll be looking forward to reading more of your work.
It makes everything just a little bit easier to take, knowing there's a copy of Tales of Pain and Wonder at the central branch of the NYC Public Library, where once I climbed a stone lion. Thank you, Robert.
I did 1,189 words yesterday on the new story, the aforementioned "Rappaccini's Dragon." I'd really hoped to finish it this month, but the mess that was Monday made that impossible. Then I packed four very heavy boxes of books, and Spooky washed more dinosaurs (photos here in her LJ;
humglum), including my set from the Royal Ontario Museum and the Boston Museum of Science. Just now, she was making a joke regarding "Bathosaurus," and I checked, because I figured there was surely a "Bathysaurus," and there is, though it's not a reptile, but the Deepsea Lizardfish, Bathysaurus ferox. Anyway, after the packing, we read over "Flotsam" and "Concerning Attrition and Severance" for the sake of line edits. I think we finished that up at 7 pm, then had leftover chili for dinner. I looked over the new National Geographic, which is largely devoted to China and the ecological catastrophe that is China (fully 50% of the Yellow River [Huang He] — the sixth longest in the world — has been declared "biologically dead").More Millenium last night, episode #9 from Season 1, "Loin Like a Hunting Flame." And then the new episode of Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel. And why the hell do I write all this crap down? Some odd compulsion to record.
Tomorrow is Beltane. Already.
I really am loving the new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds disc. After last years Grinderman solo project, I had a feeling they'd be headed back this direction after the low point of Nocturama (2003). Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! feels a lot more like Let Love In with smatterings of the earlier albums.
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-30 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-30 07:40 pm (UTC)I was lucky enough to snag the ROM Chasmosaurus from the Dallas Science Place back in the late Eighties, but I never had access to any of the others.
I totally lucked into a full set back about 1984, I think.
Tell ya what: since the Czarina definitely doesn't want them, how about I will you all of my dinosaur figures once I've gone back to Hell? (I've even got a couple of the Toyways Walking With Dinosaurs figures that were sold in the States exclusively through the Discovery Channel Store, namely the Postosuchus and the Torosaurus...)
How could I say no to that! I saw the Walking with Dinosaurs figures, but for some reason never got even one of them. And they don't ever seem to show up on eBay. My most recent obsession in this area has been the beautiful Japanese "Dinomania" figurines. I have most of Series 1, and none of the later ones.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-30 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-30 08:48 pm (UTC)Ahem. Just don't take them all: I was going to buy about a hundred for terraria projects.
Well, this looks like its only Series One. I ahve but maybe two of Series 1.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-30 11:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-30 11:47 pm (UTC)Hmmm. I have 23 of the 25 (including the 25th, the "mystery" dino, Tyrannosaurus). I don't have the Acrocanthosaurus (though I have the Acrocanthosaurus skeleton) or the Deinonychus skeleton..
Or any from Series 2 or Series 3.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 01:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 06:11 am (UTC)but I can't help you with Sets 2 and 3. It's really a damn shame, too, because I understand that the Acanthostega is the best of the lot. Right now, I could use about twenty of them for a big project I'm working on right now.
Oh, there are so many wonderful pieces in those two series. It sucks that these are so hard to get.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-30 06:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-30 06:32 pm (UTC)What a great charming note from Mr. Feldman.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-30 07:37 pm (UTC)btw, i like your compulsions. do continue. :-D
Sometimes it just feels like a crazy woman prattling to herself.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-30 07:37 pm (UTC)Pleas let Spooky know that my latest deposit in PayPal seems to have been delayed.
Will do.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-30 08:31 pm (UTC)Unless paypal decides to unsubscribe you, all should be well.
I think they try 3 or 4 times, every few days, before canceling subscriptions for lack of funds.
In other words, don't worry about it :)
no subject
Date: 2008-04-30 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-30 06:46 pm (UTC)Which makes this Walpurgis Night. Go do something naughty and spooky.
That sort of came out awkwardly, but sorta funny too.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-30 07:36 pm (UTC)Which makes this Walpurgis Night. Go do something naughty and spooky.
If I can find the energy...
Walpurgisnacht
Date: 2008-04-30 08:22 pm (UTC)For the past few years now (since I've discovered the work) I've made it a ritual to listen to Felix Mendelssohn's choral oratorio, "The First Walpurgis Night". The text is based on Goethe's poem from Faust. If you ever come across it, it's worth a listen.
One nice little gem from the piece, which is sung by a chorus of druids:
"Come with prongs and pitchforks,
like the devil they fable about,
and with frantic wooden rattles
amid the rocky outcrops.
Owl and screech-owl,
howl in our howling-circle."
no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 04:12 am (UTC)"Flotsam" is beautiful.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 06:10 am (UTC)"Flotsam" is beautiful.
Thank you.