"Our blood is gold; nothing to fear."
Mar. 5th, 2010 12:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greygirlbeast1. Most of yesterday was spent looking for a new short story. I haven't yet found it. I sat here at the keyboard, allowing my mind to wander wherever it seemed to need to wander. At some point, I ended up reading S.T. Joshi's The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos (2008, Mythos Books). Around 5 p.m. (CaST) my agent called, and we talked a while, mostly about my health and how I'm not making progress on The Wolf Who Cried Girl. She was both understanding and encouraging. "You'll get it written when you get it written," she said, which is a truism, sure, but one of the comforting sort to hear from one's agent.
I believe, at this point, finding my way into the book may be a matter of taking a rather complex plot— which I worked out back in December and January —and tearing most of it away until only the most central and essential elements remain. I want a novel less like, say, Daughter of Hounds or Threshold, and more like The Red Tree. The fewest characters possible. The most personal and claustrophobic narrative I may manage. A story driven more by characterization, mood, and theme, and less by plot. It's in there somewhere, the story that I need to tell. I need only tease it free of my annoying preconceptions of this novel.
2. The postman brought me a review copy of Thomas Ligotti's forthcoming The Conspiracy Against the Human Race (Hippocampus Press)— his first work of nonfiction —which, at least from a cursory glance, seems like something I meant to write ten years farther along. Ah, well. Now Ligotti can take the heat for speaking the nihilism and for this "unsparing dissection of the sophisms spun by life's apologists," and all I have to do is sit back and nod my head from the shadows.
3. Last night, we played more WoW than I've had at a sitting in...well, a couple of months. It's a game I have to go away from and come back to every now and then, if it is to retain my interest. Shaharrazad and Suraa quested in the Grizzly Hills, and Suraa (Spooky) made Level 77. Shah is almost to 77. I hope that the great reboot of Cataclysm brings the design of the rest of Azeroth more in line with Northrend, as these environments are so much better realized than anything in either Kalimdor or the Eastern Kingdoms.
4. The sleeplessness was back last night. I read from John Steele Gordon's A Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable (2002), until I finally got sleepy, sometime after four ayem.
5. And here at four photos I snapped at Harbor of Refuge on Wednesday. They're not terribly good. It was freezing, sleeting, and the wind was so strong it actually kept threatening to push me over. The photos failed to capture the actual color of the sea, but they do capture something of the bleakness of the day:
View to the west and south, towards the jetty at Harbor of Refuge.
View to the east, towards the lighthouse at Point Judith.
"Boomer Rock" (as named by me and Spooky). View to the south.
Another view of the jetty (to the southwest).
All photographs Copyright © 2010 by Caitín R. Kiernan
I believe, at this point, finding my way into the book may be a matter of taking a rather complex plot— which I worked out back in December and January —and tearing most of it away until only the most central and essential elements remain. I want a novel less like, say, Daughter of Hounds or Threshold, and more like The Red Tree. The fewest characters possible. The most personal and claustrophobic narrative I may manage. A story driven more by characterization, mood, and theme, and less by plot. It's in there somewhere, the story that I need to tell. I need only tease it free of my annoying preconceptions of this novel.
2. The postman brought me a review copy of Thomas Ligotti's forthcoming The Conspiracy Against the Human Race (Hippocampus Press)— his first work of nonfiction —which, at least from a cursory glance, seems like something I meant to write ten years farther along. Ah, well. Now Ligotti can take the heat for speaking the nihilism and for this "unsparing dissection of the sophisms spun by life's apologists," and all I have to do is sit back and nod my head from the shadows.
3. Last night, we played more WoW than I've had at a sitting in...well, a couple of months. It's a game I have to go away from and come back to every now and then, if it is to retain my interest. Shaharrazad and Suraa quested in the Grizzly Hills, and Suraa (Spooky) made Level 77. Shah is almost to 77. I hope that the great reboot of Cataclysm brings the design of the rest of Azeroth more in line with Northrend, as these environments are so much better realized than anything in either Kalimdor or the Eastern Kingdoms.
4. The sleeplessness was back last night. I read from John Steele Gordon's A Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable (2002), until I finally got sleepy, sometime after four ayem.
5. And here at four photos I snapped at Harbor of Refuge on Wednesday. They're not terribly good. It was freezing, sleeting, and the wind was so strong it actually kept threatening to push me over. The photos failed to capture the actual color of the sea, but they do capture something of the bleakness of the day:
View to the west and south, towards the jetty at Harbor of Refuge.
View to the east, towards the lighthouse at Point Judith.
"Boomer Rock" (as named by me and Spooky). View to the south.
Another view of the jetty (to the southwest).
All photographs Copyright © 2010 by Caitín R. Kiernan
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Date: 2010-03-05 07:32 pm (UTC)http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=36122698
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Date: 2010-03-05 08:20 pm (UTC)Er...whoa.
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Date: 2010-03-05 08:54 pm (UTC)Ok this might be getting weird. I can never tell. I worked in an adult store, I'll talk about dildos to anyone, so apologies if this is in fact weird and awkward.
*Harder than it might sound, once you start thinking about hygiene and phthalates and things
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Date: 2010-03-05 09:07 pm (UTC)Are you kidding? This is me.
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Date: 2010-03-05 09:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-05 07:48 pm (UTC)http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/03/02/sign-of-the-apocalypse-blood-waterfalls/
There's a story in there somewhere...
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Date: 2010-03-05 08:21 pm (UTC)Very nice. Actually, for years, I've been wanting to write a story about only of Antarctica's hidden lakes...
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Date: 2010-03-05 07:50 pm (UTC)I remember walking along that same beach with my then-GF, a decade ago -- reckon I like your photos better than the memories.
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Date: 2010-03-05 08:24 pm (UTC)When you say "bleak", I know (linguistically) what to expect the pictures to look like, but (psychologically) they're pleasant and inviting and glamorous, to someone as photophobic as me :) It's the blue skies and sunshine that are oppressive and brutal when your eyes are as crap as mine!
Well...for one thing...without serious polar fleece or gortex or something, you'd not have spent much time at Harbor of Refuge Wednesday. My hands and face were burning with that "frostbite is just around the corner" sensation after only a few minutes.
For another, the older I get, the more I seem to need the sun. I'm not the nocturnal thing I used to be (no matter how my sleeping habits might beg to differ).
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Date: 2010-03-05 09:45 pm (UTC)Don't get me wrong, it's not a nocturnal/sleep pattern thing for me; or goth symptomology for that matter. My eyes are just crap and can't handle direct sunlight any more. Leaves me squinting, migraine-prone, cranky, and longing for some cloud cover so I can see where I'm going :) That the quality of overcast light is just so damn purty is all gravy.
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Date: 2010-03-05 09:52 pm (UTC)I certainly remember New England winters feeling just about right, but not long enough. (And too bright!)
Are we talking about the same New England, the one where winter seems (to someone who spent most of her life in the South) to start in September and linger until June?
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Date: 2010-03-05 10:01 pm (UTC)Delicate icebox flower that I am, I wilted dangerously in the South, and that was in winter.
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Date: 2010-03-05 11:05 pm (UTC)One word.
Brrrrrr.
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Date: 2010-03-05 11:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-05 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-05 09:06 pm (UTC)Maybe I'm just too groggy to understand what this is all about. Regardless, by blog is public, and always has been, and Xanga or Xenga or whoever already highjacks and reposts all my entries...so privacy isn't much of an issue. I don't make locked posts.
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Date: 2010-03-05 11:37 pm (UTC)