...and boxes and boxes and boxes and...
Nov. 17th, 2004 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greygirlbeastIt just so happens that this move has come along at a time when, suddenly, lots of things are happening, careerwise, and right now I feel like I've been stretched about three molecules thin. Trying to think about work and dealing with all the packing. Gagh.
It seems there will be an Italian edition of Threshold. I'll post details when the deal is finalized. I've never been very agressive about seeing my work translated, as I'm just not sure how my prose will hold up in other languages. And it's not like I can check the results of whoever does the translation. In a way, it's like handing a book to another writer and saying, "Here, rewrite this." And the prose in Threshold is just unconventional enough that I can see it being a real headache for whoever gets the task. But. Regardless, I am glad of this development.
Today, I have to speak with Jenny Lee at Marvel and with someone else at a videogame company (which I cannot yet name) about various projects, and I have to speak with some people at Penguin. I hate the frelling telephone. And then I have to pack more books. It feels like all I did yesterday was pack books (and select more books for the mountain that's going to the used bookstores) and move boxes of books over to the new place. I'm getting rid of as many books as I can bear to part with. Sometimes it's kind of funny, like realizing we have five copies of Frankenstein, for example. No one on earth (or any other planet) needs more than two copies of Frankenstein. Trust me on this. I think it would be a very telling exercise to force myself to get rid of everything except what will fit on one bookshelf. That would be something like one hundred books. Could I get by with just one hundred books? Sure, I could. What would be the one hundred I would retain? Ah, there's the rub! Some authors are safe en toto — Ray Bradbury, James Joyce, Anne Sexton, John Steinbeck, Angela Carter, Harlan Ellison, H. P. Lovecraft, Peter Straub, Dr. Seuss — but others would definitely have to fight for a space on the Ark. Writers accumulate books the way that knick-knacks accumulate dust. And writers accumulate knick-knacks, too. Or at least I do. They look good sitting on the shelves in front of all those goddamned books.
My thanks to Georgiana Lee for an eloquent and much-appreciated e-mail yesterday.
As promised, here are a few pictures from Fiddler's Green. Better late than never, right? Spooky's going to put all her photos up later on, but right now she's utterly consumed with the task of locating empty cardboard boxes:
Saturday: Neil and I script a two-page Sandman story in 1 hour, 6 minutes.
Saturday: Is "snow ball" one word or two?
Saturday: Me watching Charles Vess draw the page I scripted.
Sunday: The Last Panel, or The Five Hangovers of the Apocalypse (left to right: Jill Thompson, Charles Vess, Me, Himself, and Todd Klein...and my fang'd bunny there in the middle)
Anyway, I have all these boxes calling me with their crackly cardboard voices and these phone calls to make, so I should go now. I will not move again for a long, long time. I swear it. Again.
It seems there will be an Italian edition of Threshold. I'll post details when the deal is finalized. I've never been very agressive about seeing my work translated, as I'm just not sure how my prose will hold up in other languages. And it's not like I can check the results of whoever does the translation. In a way, it's like handing a book to another writer and saying, "Here, rewrite this." And the prose in Threshold is just unconventional enough that I can see it being a real headache for whoever gets the task. But. Regardless, I am glad of this development.
Today, I have to speak with Jenny Lee at Marvel and with someone else at a videogame company (which I cannot yet name) about various projects, and I have to speak with some people at Penguin. I hate the frelling telephone. And then I have to pack more books. It feels like all I did yesterday was pack books (and select more books for the mountain that's going to the used bookstores) and move boxes of books over to the new place. I'm getting rid of as many books as I can bear to part with. Sometimes it's kind of funny, like realizing we have five copies of Frankenstein, for example. No one on earth (or any other planet) needs more than two copies of Frankenstein. Trust me on this. I think it would be a very telling exercise to force myself to get rid of everything except what will fit on one bookshelf. That would be something like one hundred books. Could I get by with just one hundred books? Sure, I could. What would be the one hundred I would retain? Ah, there's the rub! Some authors are safe en toto — Ray Bradbury, James Joyce, Anne Sexton, John Steinbeck, Angela Carter, Harlan Ellison, H. P. Lovecraft, Peter Straub, Dr. Seuss — but others would definitely have to fight for a space on the Ark. Writers accumulate books the way that knick-knacks accumulate dust. And writers accumulate knick-knacks, too. Or at least I do. They look good sitting on the shelves in front of all those goddamned books.
My thanks to Georgiana Lee for an eloquent and much-appreciated e-mail yesterday.
As promised, here are a few pictures from Fiddler's Green. Better late than never, right? Spooky's going to put all her photos up later on, but right now she's utterly consumed with the task of locating empty cardboard boxes:
Saturday: Neil and I script a two-page Sandman story in 1 hour, 6 minutes.
Saturday: Is "snow ball" one word or two?
Saturday: Me watching Charles Vess draw the page I scripted.
Sunday: The Last Panel, or The Five Hangovers of the Apocalypse (left to right: Jill Thompson, Charles Vess, Me, Himself, and Todd Klein...and my fang'd bunny there in the middle)
Anyway, I have all these boxes calling me with their crackly cardboard voices and these phone calls to make, so I should go now. I will not move again for a long, long time. I swear it. Again.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 05:33 pm (UTC)Yep. The wonderfully demented work of Cat Gray.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 05:32 pm (UTC)No one on earth (or any other planet) needs more than two copies of Frankenstein.
No one who isn't patching them together to build a monster, anyway.
You have, by the way, better skin than Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess put together.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 05:36 pm (UTC)Okay. Now you have me imagining Lord of the Flies with an all-Nebari cast...
You have, by the way, better skin than Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess put together.
Thank you. I blame it on the asparagus.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-18 10:45 pm (UTC)You have, by the way, better skin than Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess put together.
Reading those lines just after reading about Cait's bunny gave me a truly scary visual.
The bunny is quite snuggly. He cozied up to me the night before the auction, but the teeth scared me off.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 05:37 pm (UTC)Yep. A house about a mile from where I am now. Still in Atlanta.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 05:43 pm (UTC)I wish I could've made it out to the con, but...well, I haven't a spare penny to travel with, and my health isn't the best thing in the world, either. ONE of these days (hopefully before the next century begins) we'll be in the same city at the same time, though!
no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 05:59 pm (UTC)You were missed. But aRvin was charming, and now I feel like I have a former connection with you guys. I think aRvin is absolutely in love with Umchandra Murdin.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 06:01 pm (UTC)Er..."firmer," not "former."
Though I'm sure we have that, too.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 06:49 pm (UTC)He really needs a girl with tentacles. I'm doing my best to find him one!
no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 07:54 pm (UTC)He had it on his laptop in Minneapolis, but, alas, I never had time to listen.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 05:54 pm (UTC)Noun or verb?
no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 06:02 pm (UTC)Adjective.
I was being rhetorical. Or something.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 10:21 pm (UTC)Got it. It's just that Clerks has forever ruined that word (those words?) for me, and the thought of the verb form showing up in your collaboration was so unsettling that my brain immediately went there.
Moving out - Handy Tip.
Date: 2004-11-17 07:05 pm (UTC)Scorp
no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 07:56 pm (UTC)I think he's been sporting those whiskers for a while, now. But, sadly, he shaved them off a couple of days ago.
Mrowr!
Date: 2004-11-17 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-18 04:28 am (UTC)You might need three - one for lending, one for reading, and a back up "shelf copy" in case of the theft or damage of the other copies. But then I may be the only person in the world who keeps back-up novels.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-18 05:31 am (UTC)I just don't lend books. I used to, but then I learned that even close and otherwise reliable friends can inexplicably fail at the task of returning borrowed books, so I stopped.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-18 10:36 am (UTC)Oh, we *all* swear it. Just like we all swear to save boxes in case we need them, and get a good headstart so the move isn't chaos.
*shudders* We moved 3 months ago. You have my sympathies.
I hope y'all are happy in your new home.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-18 10:43 am (UTC)That was supposed to be an italicized Caitlín quote, not a bolded title. sorry.
*wanders off to bed*
no subject
Date: 2004-11-18 09:14 pm (UTC)(Must better than the blonde, though that was lovely, too.)
~80~