Caitlín R. Kiernan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
greygirlbeast) wrote2009-01-23 12:01 pm
greygirlbeast) wrote2009-01-23 12:01 pm
Entry tags:
I want to reach my hand into the dark, and feel what reaches back.
I did a modest 801 words yesterday, and began "The Thousand-and-Third Tale of Scheherazade." Turns out, it's not so much a "Yellow House" story, as it is another story about the old house on Federal Hill where the changelings can go to be, briefly, free of the attentions of the ghûl. It looks as though both the stories this month will be snow stories.
Also, I began work in earnest on a Secret Project. I've not had one of those in a while.
I don't think all this snow is ever going to melt.
Last night, we watched Francis Ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth (2007), which I thought was a genuinely splendid sort of fantasy (or, arguably, science fiction). Imagine a collaboration between Coppola, Orson Welles, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and Hermann Hesse, and it's a little like that. Beautifully filmed, and, by turns, haunting and sublime. One of Tim Roth's finest performances, and I was taken with Alexandra Maria Lara. I wish I'd had a chance to see this film in the theatre. It is, by the way, based on a novella by Mircea Eliade, which I'm going to have to hunt down and add to the Stack That Never Gets Any Smaller.
Later, I got in a good scene in Second Life. Currently, I'm playing a paraplegic vampire, which, the more I think about it, is a short story that I need to write.
Completely unrelated to last night's rp, there's a very peculiar grammatical habit that I've noted in SL, and it drives me nuts. But, although I first noticed it many months ago, maybe even a year ago, I've never felt like being rude enough to correct anyone I've seen doing it. It results in paragraphs constructed in the following manner:
X walks into the room and takes a seat near the television. "I remember seeing this once before, years ago," she says. She wondered if anyone else had already seen the show.
That is, a player will begin in present tense (the norm for rp), then, in the last sentence switch over the past tense. It's as if they have learned somewhere that the purpose of present tense is to begin sentences, while the purpose of past tense is to complete them. I've considered the possibility that it's an artifact of another language, of people writing in English when it's not their first language. But I've seen it done by people I'm quite certain are American and British. So...it continues to baffle (and, I'll admit, annoy) me.
I need to get part of an interview done this morning before I start back in on the new story, so I should wrap this up. Please do take a moment to order A is for Alien, due out next month from Subterranean Press, if you have not already. I'll also remind you that the limited edition comes with an unusually lengthy chapbook of supplementary material. Thanks.
Also, I began work in earnest on a Secret Project. I've not had one of those in a while.
I don't think all this snow is ever going to melt.
Last night, we watched Francis Ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth (2007), which I thought was a genuinely splendid sort of fantasy (or, arguably, science fiction). Imagine a collaboration between Coppola, Orson Welles, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and Hermann Hesse, and it's a little like that. Beautifully filmed, and, by turns, haunting and sublime. One of Tim Roth's finest performances, and I was taken with Alexandra Maria Lara. I wish I'd had a chance to see this film in the theatre. It is, by the way, based on a novella by Mircea Eliade, which I'm going to have to hunt down and add to the Stack That Never Gets Any Smaller.
Later, I got in a good scene in Second Life. Currently, I'm playing a paraplegic vampire, which, the more I think about it, is a short story that I need to write.
Completely unrelated to last night's rp, there's a very peculiar grammatical habit that I've noted in SL, and it drives me nuts. But, although I first noticed it many months ago, maybe even a year ago, I've never felt like being rude enough to correct anyone I've seen doing it. It results in paragraphs constructed in the following manner:
X walks into the room and takes a seat near the television. "I remember seeing this once before, years ago," she says. She wondered if anyone else had already seen the show.
That is, a player will begin in present tense (the norm for rp), then, in the last sentence switch over the past tense. It's as if they have learned somewhere that the purpose of present tense is to begin sentences, while the purpose of past tense is to complete them. I've considered the possibility that it's an artifact of another language, of people writing in English when it's not their first language. But I've seen it done by people I'm quite certain are American and British. So...it continues to baffle (and, I'll admit, annoy) me.
I need to get part of an interview done this morning before I start back in on the new story, so I should wrap this up. Please do take a moment to order A is for Alien, due out next month from Subterranean Press, if you have not already. I'll also remind you that the limited edition comes with an unusually lengthy chapbook of supplementary material. Thanks.
no subject
I presume, of course, that this is a Secret Project for pay. Is your health up to it? You've had problems with this in the past. Best wishes, of course, but we do worry so.
no subject
I presume, of course, that this is a Secret Project for pay. Is your health up to it? You've had problems with this in the past. Best wishes, of course, but we do worry so.
It is a Secret Project for pay. At this point, Spooky certainly wouldn't let me take on any other sort. It's also one that will require only a modicum of my time. Thank you for worrying.