"Lay the young blue bodies with the old red violets."

[greygirlbeast]

I'm glad Lindsay Lohan's community service gig at the LA County Morgue is working out so well, because it doesn't seem like jail's willing to keep her even five hours. But, really, here's my thing: who gives a shit? Everywhere I go on the goddamn internet this morning, there's Lindsay Lohan skulking about, and it's not like I felt so fucking great when I woke up. I have to get Lindsay "I don't want to classify myself" Lohan, too?

Hell in a handbasket.

Yesterday, I sat here and tried to think of an idea for a 10k-plus word short story/novelette/novella sort of a thing (requests welcome), and....nothing. People think writers are bottomless wells of Ideas. And maybe some writers are. But speaking as an insanely productive author, occasionally you go to the well and there's nothing down there but dust and old spiderwebs. So, I sat and I stared at the screen, and I typed in a title, stolen from Milton, that I almost certainly won't use. It just sounded good. And there is not a single spare day this month (those so-called weekends) included for me to be not writing. Today, though it's in the list of the Last Ten Things I Want To Be Doing, I'll sit here and stare at this fucking screen again. How hard can it be? It's not like real work, right?

Speaking of which, I finally gave up about 5:30 p.m. (CaST) and loaded the van with about a hundred pounds (no, really; I checked) of books, mostly my comp copies of Two Worlds and In Between and carted them away to Pawtucket, to our second, and supposedly temporary, storage unit. The place was like a fucking icebox.

Please, I know it's hard to believe...

And I'm not even going to get started on how I couldn't get my fountain pen to work.

Last night, we read more of House of Leaves, to that wonderful line where Karen Navidson screams. I read more of The Log From the Sea of Cortez. I might have slept, because I might have dreamt. And fuck you, LJ, for not knowing how to spell dreamt.

Also, please, if you pre-ordered your copy of Two Worlds and In Between and you've not yet received your book, understand that telling me won't help. The book will come. I can't speak for Amazon.com, a company that's making a mint ripping people off (authors included), but I can speak for Subterranean Press. You will get your book. Be patient. Pre-ordering doesn't mean you get a book early, or at the same time as everyone (or anyone) else; it means you'll get a book.

Not Daring To Hope For a Better Day,
Aunt Beast

Comments

[sillylilly-bird.livejournal.com]

Yep, your copy will come. I just got my note from SubPress that my copy of Two Worlds shipped today. :)

[joshrupp.livejournal.com]

The idea of celebrities working in morgues appeals to me. They could be bitten by zombies. It would take everyone years to notice. Their fans would get bitten, blog about it, then die. There'd by brains and autographs from hell to breakfast.

[corucia.livejournal.com]

Topic: I've always wanted to hear your take on the bleeding Taylor Glacier in Antarctica. We've heard the scientific explanation, but really - how hard would it be to cover up the actual cause, given the rather inaccessible location and required expertise to make a true evaluation? So... an entombed ancient god/monster/alien/Thing? A wound in the world? A breach into another dimension? Something even more esoteric?

ideas...

[xjenavivex.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scylla_and_Charybdis

The Helike, Greece tsunamis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historic_tsunamis#373_BC:_Helike.2C_Greece

Cherokee Water Cannibals http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/TheWaterCannibals-Cherokee.html

[rexallen.livejournal.com]

How about a story that highlights the implications of infinite space or time? Poincare recurrence. Loschmidt's paradox. Boltzmann brain weirdness...

Alternatively, maybe something that expands on Stephen Hawking's "fundamental paradox":

"Now, if you believe that the universe is not arbitrary, but governed by definite laws, you ultimately have to combine the partial theories into a complete unified theory that will describe everything in the universe. But there is a fundamental paradox in the search for such a complete unified theory. The ideas about scientific theories outlined above assume we are rational beings who are free to observe the universe as we want and to draw logical deductions from what we see. In such a scheme it is reasonable to suppose that we might progress ever closer toward the laws that govern the universe. Yet if there really is a complete unified theory, it would also presumably determine our actions. And so the theory itself would determine the outcome of our search for it! And why should it determine that we come to the right conclusions from the evidence? Might it not equally well determine that we draw the wrong conclusion? Or no conclusion at all?"

[papersteven.livejournal.com]

I'm still patiently waiting for "There Are Kisses For Us All." One day?

so sad

[rednettles.livejournal.com]

It's so bad - I pre-ordered my copy of Two Worlds and in Between on July from Amazon, and just two days ago they said they didn't have it. It was awful, I was waiting for it all summer :( from now on I'm preordering from Subterranean Press.

[subtlesttrap.livejournal.com]

Yesterday, I sat here and tried to think of an idea for a 10k-plus word short story/novelette/novella sort of a thing (requests welcome), and....nothing.

Here's my request: I've had a recurrent fantasy that you would someday write about more of the "survivors" in Zoroba's group, particularly Janice's story about losing her friend Nadine in that Trenton, NJ crypt. The blue light at the bottom and something else that sounded like a dog panting still intrigues & terrifies the living shit out of me everytime I re-read "Onion".

[opalblack.livejournal.com]

If it's ideas I'm short of, I wikisurf for a while. Flamingo, convection, Tay al-Ard, Agatha Christie's lost days, the process of folding steel. Idea salad. Something usually sticks to something else.

It's so seldom ideas I'm stuck for, though, it's stories. There was one, the other day, out of a conversation with you about the darkness, about people who, no matter where they are, cause the back door to lead to an endless, shapeless, fairly unpleasant abyss. And how, this is a contagious condition, and as feared and misunderstood as HIV. And I couldn't figure out how to get that into a story. I thought maybe a Real Estate agent showing a woman a house gets a little overzealous about showing her the back garden, and...I don't know, maybe they could save the world or fall in love. It never got any further.

I couldn't get it to turn into a story, even with that much to go on (it's more than I usually start with). I have buckets of these promising miscarriages. Sometimes if I leave them long enough they grow or they get jammed into something else. Mostly they just sit and rot into forgetfulness. If its any use to you, you're welcome to this one in part or full (bold of me, perhaps, who the hells am I to tell you what to write?). I'm not likely to shake anything out of it, especially with A Seed Catalogue Of Extinct Animals locking up my brain the way it is.

[girfan.livejournal.com]

I read As Red as Red yesterday and really liked it!