Notes from my Bubble (2)

[greygirlbeast]

I forgot, yesterday, to include a link to the interview I gave to the Brown University Bookstore newsletter.

Rainy and cloudy and cold in Providence today.

Almost all of yesterday was spent on the interview for WoW.com, which was actually fun, for the most part. I dread the comments it will elicit, though. I can't help but dread that sort of thing, those wild, unfiltered comments. Anyway, I think I'm going to rescind my moratorium on interviews, as I think it's only attracting interviews I want to give. Maybe if I say, sure, I'll give more interviews, I'll give interviews until the proverbial cows come home, people will stop asking for them, and I can get back to the business of just writing. I think I wrote more than two thousand words yesterday, but they don't count, as they were all interview answers. I also went through a mountain of old WoW screencaps for my favorites of my two mains, Shaharrazad and Kalií, which I'm supposed to send back with the interview answers. It's insane how many screencaps I've taken over the last year.

Yesterday, my complimentary copies of Jonathan Strahan's Eclipse Three arrived. The collection looks excellent, and includes a new sf story of mine, "Galápagos." I urge you to pick up a copy. The street date is tomorrow, October 28th. This is one of those anthologies in which I am especially proud to have been included.

We have begun a new round of eBay auctions, still trying to recoup what went out to the IRS a couple of weeks back. We're about halfway to our goal. Please have a look. Thank you.

Last night, Spooky made an excellent apple pie with apples we picked on Sunday.

And, speaking of Sunday, here are photographs of the abandoned house on Old North Road. Spooky has learned that it was built in 1888. I could tell, from the field-stone foundation, that it was very old, but I'd not thought it quite that old. Spooky will be posting more photos of the house, the ones she took in sepia, and I'll link to those tomorrow:



















All photographs Copyright © 2009 by Caitlín R. Kiernan and Kathryn A. Pollnac.

Comments

[ganglare.livejournal.com]

It's terribly sad that a place, with that long a history, could fall into that level of disrepair after only a couple of years.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

It's terribly sad that a place, with that long a history, could fall into that level of disrepair after only a couple of years.

Truthfully, from what I understand, it's been a long, slow, steady decline for twenty years or so.

[humglum.livejournal.com]

Oh, at least. For as long as I can remember (over 30 years), there were broken down cars and piles of junk out by the house. And the house, itself, always looked to be slowly sagging.

[amethyst-clan.livejournal.com]

My sentiments exactly.

But it's somehow beautiful in its sadness.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

But it's somehow beautiful in its sadness.

There is always beauty in decay.

[amethyst-clan.livejournal.com]

I totally agree. If I ever got healthy, I would totally be one of those people who explores sites of urban decay.

[txtriffidranch.livejournal.com]

Well, now we know that happened to the farmhouse in Night of the Living Dead.

[elmocho.livejournal.com]

Is that an old 16mm home movie, strewn and fading?

[humglum.livejournal.com]

I think so. Though it may be fairly recent, given the proximity to the university. I think the previous owner took a lot of stuff out of the trash. My dad shot some photos last spring showing a pile of dolls on a table, and we saw a Gremlins thermos on the ground.

[derekcfpegritz.livejournal.com]

There's a house near to me that looks almost exactly the same. The family who used to live there, the Kotyuhas (pronounced "Ka-CHEW-a"), were...well, they were the southwestern PA version of those "decadent" New England backwoods weirdos from Dunwich and the area around the blasted heath.

The old man lived in one single room, while the rest of the house caved in around him. His wife--who may have also been his sister--was certifiably insane and would wander around the woods buck-ass naked; all the local kids said she was a witch--a regular Lavinia Whateley--but she was just some poor old lady with a mental problem. I knew their daughter, a singularly beautiful girl who ran away and was never heard from again when she turned fourteen. I don't blame her.

Been meaning to write something about them for years....Kinda weird to see a house built almost exactly like theirs in Lovecraft Country. I always like to call where I live Lovecraft Country South, though, so....

[humglum.livejournal.com]

Pennsylvania, especially in and around Pittsburgh, is definitely a bastard sister-cousin to Lovecraft's New England.
My dad grew up just outside of Pittsburgh, so I have a little inside knowledge in that I spent a bit of time there in the summers when I was a kid and we'd visit my grandmother.

[ardiril.livejournal.com]

Ah, the mystique of the rural regions of the Appalachians. The children of these mountains are brimmed with the horror of maturity's self-realization and the terror festering behind a neighbor's door. As large as this area is, from Alabama to Newfoundland, those of us who lived most of our lives in these forested mountains share a unique brand of fucked-up.

[derekcfpegritz.livejournal.com]

The area around Pittsburgh, especially about an hour south in Fayette County (where I live) was once a huge, booming industrial wasteland, and today is littered with decaying, rusting, empty mine and steel-production ruins. My little town of Lambert was once a busy coal-patch filled to brimming with immigrant families; now, it's just a handful of old company houses surrounded by woods in which the ruins of foundations, abandoned mine equipment and buildings, and assorted other vanishing traces of the past can be found. It's an incredibly...stimulation environment for anyone with Lovecraftian propensities!

[spank-an-elf.livejournal.com]

Wasn't part of the new movie "The Road" filmed in that area?

[derekcfpegritz.livejournal.com]

Yep--because the film crew literally could not find a place in America that looked more depressing in winter than the rustlands around Pittsburgh! Unfortunately, from what I can tell, the movie utterly butchers the novel--a hanging offense in my McCarthy-riddled world.

[spank-an-elf.livejournal.com]

I hope that's not the case but considering all the release shifts, welllll...

My brother lives in Pittsburgh but he has no idea regarding the rustlands. My photographer partner and I have explored a few desolate drive-ins but I might pick your brain regarding other sites.

[derekcfpegritz.livejournal.com]

Anytime! My buddy aRvin is a photographer living in Pittsburgh and he's got quite an eye for ruins and other characteristic elements of the Pittsburgh cityscape. Check out his portfolio (http://www.freezeframereality.com) and see! Myself, I stick more with the rural ruins around where I live, which is south of the city.

Great Decay

[spank-an-elf.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of when my partner and I gained access to the Divine Lorraine Hotel in North Philly. Floors and floors of creepy, cold decay. Peeling paint, shattered windows and glass, rotting furniture, and dead birds topped with a huge chapel decorated with rotting theater chairs. Wild. There's something about decayed bathrooms that always freaks me out... shades of Psycho?

[capnskusting.livejournal.com]

The Lovecraft Unbound reading in NYC was a lot of fun. Good turnout, and intimate setting. You were right, Michael Cisco was not to be missed. His reading came off sounding like the telling of a story by somebody it actually happened to. It didn't sound like he was "reading" it. Meeting Ellen Datlow in person was strange. She looked very familiar to me, somehow. I thought I might have remembered seeing her at an old friend's parties years and years ago, so asked her if she knew him (Steve Ringgenberg). To my surprise, she said that she did, but not from as long ago as I thought.