A Few Words for a Cold Saturday
Dec. 6th, 2008 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greygirlbeastDefinitely the sort of day for which Jethro Tull Season was created. 34F out there, and a sky so blue I am quite certain of its predatory nature.
Not a bad day yesterday. An unremarkable day, tainted only by this nagging, dry cough I've had since the beginning of November. We are old friends, this cough and I. It first came to me in the late '80s, and usually returns once or twice a year. No diagnosis or medication has ever made much sense of it. Peppermint helps, but nothing else ever seems to. It rattles my eyeballs, and I half suspect it's some brand of psychosomatic. It was unusually bad yesterday. Oh, and there's this damn tooth, the one that had a temporary fix in September to buy me the time to finish The Red Tree. It's going hot, and I'd planned to have it extracted on Monday, but I think I may be able to last a little longer. But, these things aside, still a decent enough day.
We did housework. I puttered about on the computer. The day was peppered with writing-related odds and ends. To wit:
A is for Alien has received an excellent review from Booklist (reviewed by Regina Schroeder):
The grace and subtlety with which Kiernan inverts the roles of us and them, of those who seek to belong
and those who watch from the sidelines, makes for unnerving but extraordinary storytelling. When the
usual humans are the other, there’s a lot of rather dystopian ground available. Whether the focus is on alien
possession, as in “Riding the White Bull,” or on humans choosing to make themselves into other creatures,
as in “Faces in Revolving Souls,” Kiernan deals with transformations real and imagined, forced and
voluntary. She works on the self-centered strangeness of humanity with the way she approaches aliens as
indifferent, strange, and usually difficult to deal with. Kiernan’s style relies on clarity in prose, the
extraordinary related as if it were everyday, and a subtlety that belies her disturbing imagery. The eight
stories in this slim volume are, in short, exquisite containers for the strange paths of her imagined futures.
In reading these pieces, you become other, and the better for it.
Also, my comp copy of the sold-out limited edition of Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy was delivered yesterday. It includes my sf story, "The Steam Dancer (1896)." I think all that's left are copies of the lettered edition.
Also also, Vince is almost finished with the interior illustrations for A is for Alien, which include some of the best work he's ever done for my fiction. There will be a black-and-white illustration for each story. The platypus and the dodo both agree this is an excellenet day to preorder the collection, if you've not already.
Last night we re-watched two more episodes of Series 4 of Doctor Who, "The Fires of Pompei" and "Planet of the Ood." Spooky made chili for dinner. Late, she read to me from The Fellowship of the Ring. Hubero listened, too. He insists that Sméagol is a Byronic Hero, and I've learned not to argue with Siamese cats.
Not a bad day yesterday. An unremarkable day, tainted only by this nagging, dry cough I've had since the beginning of November. We are old friends, this cough and I. It first came to me in the late '80s, and usually returns once or twice a year. No diagnosis or medication has ever made much sense of it. Peppermint helps, but nothing else ever seems to. It rattles my eyeballs, and I half suspect it's some brand of psychosomatic. It was unusually bad yesterday. Oh, and there's this damn tooth, the one that had a temporary fix in September to buy me the time to finish The Red Tree. It's going hot, and I'd planned to have it extracted on Monday, but I think I may be able to last a little longer. But, these things aside, still a decent enough day.
We did housework. I puttered about on the computer. The day was peppered with writing-related odds and ends. To wit:
A is for Alien has received an excellent review from Booklist (reviewed by Regina Schroeder):
The grace and subtlety with which Kiernan inverts the roles of us and them, of those who seek to belong
and those who watch from the sidelines, makes for unnerving but extraordinary storytelling. When the
usual humans are the other, there’s a lot of rather dystopian ground available. Whether the focus is on alien
possession, as in “Riding the White Bull,” or on humans choosing to make themselves into other creatures,
as in “Faces in Revolving Souls,” Kiernan deals with transformations real and imagined, forced and
voluntary. She works on the self-centered strangeness of humanity with the way she approaches aliens as
indifferent, strange, and usually difficult to deal with. Kiernan’s style relies on clarity in prose, the
extraordinary related as if it were everyday, and a subtlety that belies her disturbing imagery. The eight
stories in this slim volume are, in short, exquisite containers for the strange paths of her imagined futures.
In reading these pieces, you become other, and the better for it.
Also, my comp copy of the sold-out limited edition of Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy was delivered yesterday. It includes my sf story, "The Steam Dancer (1896)." I think all that's left are copies of the lettered edition.
Also also, Vince is almost finished with the interior illustrations for A is for Alien, which include some of the best work he's ever done for my fiction. There will be a black-and-white illustration for each story. The platypus and the dodo both agree this is an excellenet day to preorder the collection, if you've not already.
Last night we re-watched two more episodes of Series 4 of Doctor Who, "The Fires of Pompei" and "Planet of the Ood." Spooky made chili for dinner. Late, she read to me from The Fellowship of the Ring. Hubero listened, too. He insists that Sméagol is a Byronic Hero, and I've learned not to argue with Siamese cats.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 05:44 pm (UTC)Can you use it as a regular blurb?
no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 05:48 pm (UTC)Can you use it as a regular blurb?
I don't think it would work for the novels.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 06:23 pm (UTC)extraordinary related as if it were everyday, and a subtlety that belies her disturbing imagery.
That could work for the novels.
Looking forward to A is for Alien (so will it have the acronym AifA?).
no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 06:42 pm (UTC)That could work for the novels.
Perhaps.
(so will it have the acronym AifA?).
Yep.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 06:54 pm (UTC)I hope to develop a skill Harlan Ellison has. I remember an essay by Clifford Meth recounting how he got to know Harlan in the 90s while doing a huge Harlan-vs.-Fantagraphics article: one day they were on the phone and Harlan told Meth he needed to try writing a novel. He added that Meth had said something during their chat that could be a novel's opening line, and he repeated it back. Meth said "I'd read that book." "Then write it!" Harlan said (or something like that; obviously I'm not in Harlan's mind so I'd probably not know the exact quote).
That skill can be applied to finding worthy blurbs, too. Thus, this.
Congrats on the review.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 07:11 pm (UTC)Thank you.
The thing is, it seems my NYC publishers are more interested in blurbs by Big Name Authors. And in blurbs that do not rely upon particularly literate readers. I know it's an oxymoron, the "illiterate reader," but I think it's also a fact of modern publishing. "
"Kiernan’s style relies on clarity in prose, the
extraordinary related as if it were everyday, and a subtlety that belies her disturbing imagery." That's all well and good, and it makes me happy. But the average genre reader's eyes will glass over at the concepts, and they'll wonder what the hell Booklist is, anyway, and why they should care.
This makes me no less happy with this wonderful review.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 08:34 pm (UTC)The path is clear. 1) I become a Big Name Author. 2) I blurb you: something like "Imagine if H.P. Lovecraft and Ray Bradbury somehow had a kid."
Or...maybe it won't work like that.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 11:24 pm (UTC)I think the biggest flaw in your plan is that an awful lot of people have no idea who either Bradbury or Lovecraft are.
Also, I think someone may have actually already used that line in a review.
But it's the thought that counts, yes.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 12:56 am (UTC)There's that.
Also, I think someone may have actually already used that line in a review.
It is how I described you to Colin Meloy (http://chris-walsh.livejournal.com/292576.html)... :-)
no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 07:45 pm (UTC)Your next collection of short fiction?
no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 11:22 pm (UTC)Possibly.