"Get the water right down to your socks."

[greygirlbeast]

Rainy and cold in Providence. Each spring, this actually-late-winter stage seems to last longer and longer. Like a sort of time dilation. I need it to fuck away elsewhere, but Nature does as Nature does. Except, of course, when we break it. Though, even then, it does as it does given a new set of rules, as it always would have done. Regardless, fuck you day of drizzle and clouds. If I don't go out today, I'll not have left the house, for more than three or four minutes on one occasion, in the past twelve days.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,755 words on "Random Notes Before a Fatal Crash," and found THE END. It is a very peculiar story. No surprise there. I'm tempted to spend two days adding footnotes, because they'd certainly fit right in. Then again, it's usually better to leave the reader to puzzle out whatever may not be clear (only too many readers hate to think; they just want "a good read" or "a quick read" or "an easy read"). It's a fine story and I'm pleased with it. Well, it's not so much a story, as journal entries from the final days of a man's life. And the word "random," it should come as no surprise that the use of that word here is a boondoggle. Anyway, when I was done with the story yesterday I realized a very important thing. The sort of very important thing I should have realized long ago. Gobsmacked by the obvious. I've spent at least three years mining my gradual and inexorable mental (and, to a lesser degree, physical) deterioration. And now it's time to stop writing novels like that. Imp and The Drowning Girl, that's the last time I do it. Probably forever. I've sold the most private confessions far too cheaply. Likely, I can't keep these elements out of my short stories, but it'll not find its way into my attempt to write YA. Blue Canary is going to be a creepy, whimsical, adventurous, fun sort of quasi-detective story. If anyone's insane, they'll be safe caricatures. I see people whine about how Kathe Koja gave up the ghost after Kink, how she "lost it" when she started writing YA, to which I can only say – fuck off. I've had enough of this. Howard Hughes is tired of telling the truth.

I forgot, a couple of days back, to mention that I'd been sent copies of Graham Joyce's The Silent Land (courtesy the publisher, Doubleday) and Carrie Ryman's The Forest of Hands and Teeth (courtesy Cassandra Brewtser). They have been added to the Mountain of That Which Must Be Read. Avalanche warnings have been posted.

Comments

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

I keep thinking that your To Read pile must be at least as tall as you are!

I haven't read any of Joyce's recent novels, but The Tooth Fairy is fucking marvellous; have you read it?

I'm not sure if I could face an 'easy read'; I'd like a book to charm or challenge me, or affect me in some way. I guess most 'supermarket novels' are equivalent to ready meals.

I hope that Blue Canary turns out to be fun for *you* to write.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

but The Tooth Fairy is fucking marvellous; have you read it?

I haven't.

I hope that Blue Canary turns out to be fun for *you* to write.

Same here.

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

I hope that Blue Canary turns out to be fun for *you* to write.

And that it happily surprises you: "Holy shit, I can do this!" May the stretching of your writing muscles be a little more comfortable than it's often been.

Now I'm wondering, do you know any young people who you especially hope get to read Blue Canary? I don't know if you're acquainted with many youths.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

"Holy shit, I can do this!"

That would be wonderful.

Now I'm wondering, do you know any young people who you especially hope get to read Blue Canary? I don't know if you're acquainted with many youths.

Nope.

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

Now I'm hoping that when Neil Gaiman reads it, he both likes it and lets Maddy read it. (Remember, he's weird, but you're cool.)