"Looking for heaven, found a devil in me."

[greygirlbeast]

0. Comments, please. Prove to me LJ is not dead (again). I'm sick to death of self-fulfilling prophecies. You comment, I'll reply. Cause and effect.

1. Never, ever tell people on Facebook that "A release date has been set for the release on my first studio CD since 1999, which is called LOVEAMOEBA (band of the same name). TBA." Because, while this looks, to me, like a very obvious practical joke, many other people will appear to take it seriously. C'mon, guys. Loveameoba? No. Anyway, apologies. This whole humor thing, this beast has yet to master it in any way as to please anyone but herself.

2. I dozed off sometime after four, and woke at nine. Ayem, that is. If there's a part of me that doesn't hurt, please write my brain a letter to that effect. Er...wait. No, if there's a bit of my anatomy that is not in agony, it needs to send a telegram to my brain. Oh, wait. I mean, it needs to phone home. Oh...shit. I mean, it needs to twat at my brain. Yeah, that's what I mean. Hold on. What year is this?

3. A long phone call with my agent yesterday, at 2 CaST (1 EST), regarding Blood Oranges, ebooks, The Drowning Girl, etc. & etc. The usual. It seemed like we talked for an hour, though I suspect it was more like twenty minutes. Still feels like an hour. Afterwards, I discovered I was still so disgusted with the travesty that is "Sexing the Weird" that I couldn't even think about writing. I went with Spooky while she ran errands, instead. Sometimes, even the bland light of late autumn in Providence is better than the light of this monitor.

4. So, yeah. A Question @ Hand will be posted here tomorrow. All replies will be screened and will be confidential. The ten responses that please me the most will appear in Sirenia Digest #72. Anyone with any last moment ideas should post them here today. You know, like "If a circle of Dante's hell were to be designed especially for me, what would it be like?" Or "If you were to choose me as the test subject for an experiment involving the effects of a genetically designed parasite, what would the organism be, and what effect would it have upon me?" See. That sort of thing.

5. If I cannot put it on my shelf, it's not book. And no, placing a Kindle or a Nook or a whatever on the shelf doesn't count. Call it a data-storage or media delivery device. I have no problem with that. But it's not a book.***

6. Later this week Kathryn will be beginning a new round of eBay auctions (the first in a long time), and we'll be including ONE signed copy of The Drowning Girl ARC. Be the first on your block and all that.

7. Last night we played too much Rift again, but this time with a new guild member, opalblack. I dusted off my Eth warrior, Indus, and it was pretty fucking cool tanking for a change. Watchers of the Unseen (Defiant side, Faeblight shard) is always looking for new members, especially those interested in RP.

8. I'm ending the Aunt Beast Book of the Month Club. Results were, at best, mixed. And I think I never recovered from that Carrie Ryan fiasco.

9. The postman just brought Nos. 1 and 2 (Fall 2010 and 2011) of Centipede Press' The Weird Fiction Review. No. 2 includes the first print appearance of my story, "Fish Bride." And, honestly, the Review is a gorgeous thing, more in the fashion of an academic literary journal than a pulp magazine. I'm very impressed. Oh, also, I've sold a poem I wrote last year, "Atlantis," to Strange Horizons. This is the first time I have ever actually sold a poem. Sure, I included "Zelda Fitzgerald" in Tales of Pain and Wonder, but that's different.

Epilogue:

Would you leave me if I told you what I've done?
And would you leave me if I told you what I've become?

~ and ~

You can't choose what stays and what fades away. ~ Florence + the Machine

Anger's Little Petri Dish,
Aunt Beast

*** Please comment on things besides ebooks. Thank you.

Comments

[vulpine137.livejournal.com]

Agreed, as much as I like my kindle for portability, it's not a book. It can't been signed by an author, or contain a present from a friend, or smell like a book. It's just a easy way to carry stories with me when I'm out and about, so I don't have to pack the book I'm reading, and a backup book...and oh yeah, I should bring that in case my reading mood changes.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

It's just a easy way to carry stories with me when I'm out and about, so I don't have to pack the book I'm reading, and a backup book...and oh yeah, I should bring that in case my reading mood changes.

I hear this from a lot of people, but I just don't get it. On rare occasions I might leave home with a single book...but even then I only rarely read it. Two? Three? It's just never come up. Well, unless I'm returning library books, or unless we're counting notebooks.

[wood-dragon.livejournal.com]

I like your definition of the Kindle. I don't know how anyone could call one a book. (Sometimes I think of the e-readers as expensive toys ... but that's just me.)

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

(Sometimes I think of the e-readers as expensive toys ... but that's just me.)

I don't think it's just you.

[wolfsilveroak.livejournal.com]

You can't choose what stays and what fades away. ~ Florence + the Machine



Hmm. Wish I could.

While part of me wouldn't be at all sad if members of my family decided to never speak to me again, even if they had been looking for me for 33 years, the other part looks at the EIGHT kumihimo cuffs in progress, in the last week, and thinks maybe I need to get more unexpected letters and sudden emails...

It's a trade off. Bad memories or a sudden creative burst. Too bad they were linked in this case.

[wolfsilveroak.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I've been known to take 2-3 books with me on vacation and finish them all. Yeah.}:/

Last time, I went with 2, and came home with 11 more.

[solstice-lilac.livejournal.com]

LOVEAMOEBA! It might be possible -- there are worse band names. But what really piques me is how Facebook dulls the point. People who might normally catch the humor can't on Facebook, because everyone is skimming for quick bites of information rather than taking time to read. (I also hope LJ is not dead.)

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

People who might normally catch the humor can't on Facebook, because everyone is skimming for quick bites of information rather than taking time to read.

Okay. That explanation makes sense.

(I also hope LJ is not dead.)

Well, so do I. But the world is screaming it is, and everyone's fled to Twitter and FB because it offers that All-American instant gratification and requires almost zero effort. And people say, "Oh, but those are only the people who were never serious about blogging." If only the people who were "serious" about blogging are left here, LJ will cease to turn a profit and fold.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

Is it true you are working on a book about a teenage girl who falls in love with a were-mosasaur?

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

Um.

[fornikate.livejournal.com]

i hate facebook so much

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

i hate facebook so much

It's apparently great for practical jokes.

[calendula-witch.livejournal.com]

LJ is not dead! It's just more exclusive than it used to be. :-)

I'm with you: I love books. Pretty, lush hardcovers; easy-to-carry paperbacks; all of 'em. I have bookshelves all over the place, and books in piles around them. I bring too many books on vacation and still run out. And I am tired of hearing about ebooks...

I'm sorry "Sexing the Weird" is giving you such fits. I was looking forward to reading it (I proofed that volume for Sub Press).

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

LJ is not dead! It's just more exclusive than it used to be.

As I said, that means it's on its deathbed, as the business model was always based on mass appeal (as are most "social media" business models).

And I am tired of hearing about ebooks...

Yep.

I'm sorry "Sexing the Weird" is giving you such fits.

It no longer is. I am now recovering from the fits.

(I proofed that volume for Sub Press).

It needed proofing?

[shanejayell.livejournal.com]

*waves*

It's not dead! Mostly.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

It's not dead! Mostly.

Well, that's good news.

[birgitriddle.livejournal.com]

I've been looking at Rift for a replacement for WoW since I stopped playing it for various reasons and I saw you touting it's wonders. I am interested in playing it, but I'll have to wait until I have steady employment until I can play it. I do hope your guild is still looking for members when I do get around to it as I am interested in RPing.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

I do hope your guild is still looking for members when I do get around to it as I am interested in RPing.

Probably. Unless you're talking years. Still, it's cheaper than most entertainment options (or fast food, or...well, lots of things).

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

You suckered me good, Beast. Should have realised you'd have gone for a better name. I am a gullible Ash (glad I didn't ask if you'd approached Brown Bird...). Erm.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

You suckered me good, Beast.

You and about sixty others, including my mother.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I don't regard lj as dead, and am still trying to use it so well as I can; not best pleased with how much less that is in the job I've held for the past fifteen months as in the one I held for the previous eight and a half years. I'm not drawn to facebook or twitter or the like because I don't often think in units smaller than whole paragraphs, and lj's a sight better adapted for essay-shaped thoughts. One of these weeks I hope to get around to having something choate to say about recent mulling about photographs of people, in that I think I've identified the direction in which I am primarily interested as abstraction without objectification and that's proving interestingly challenging (I've only really been doing this seriously for a couple of years, and understood what I was doing well enough to define what I am interested in for less time than that.)

The first emotional response I have to LOVEAMOEBA is "how does one tell the difference between masturbation and incest in this context?"

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

The first responses I have to LOVEAMOEBA is "how does one tell the difference between masturbation and incest in this context?"

See? How can people miss these subtleties?

[faffinz.livejournal.com]

9. Congratulations.

Thanks for answering my Harlan Ellison question the other day. It's probably been two decades since I've read anything by him. I'm going to borrow Mind fields : the art of Jacek Yerka, the fiction of Harlan Ellison (http://www.elgar.govt.nz/record=b2218792~S2), and The essential Ellison : a 50-year retrospective (http://www.elgar.govt.nz/record=b1861405~S2.).

[witchchild]

re: the FB prank, I maintain it's all the same thing. It's been posted on the internets, therefore it is true. And now that I feel the need to do so, I cannot come up with something suitably off the wall enough to prove my point.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I still wish I lived in a universe where the Trent Reznor-The Crow 3 internet hoax was real. (Though not so much as the one where Powell and Pressburger made a film version of At the Mountains of Madness in a style akin to Black Narcissus.)

[joshrupp.livejournal.com]

Bummer ... I was getting into the Book of the Month thing. It's not your fault that Carrie Ryan is almost certainly going to follow you to your lonely grave.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

It's not your fault that Carrie Ryan is almost certainly going to follow you to your lonely grave.

I will have no grave.

[kaz-mahoney.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on the poetry sale. That's pretty cool.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on the poetry sale. That's pretty cool.

I thought so.

[papersteven.livejournal.com]

regarding Blood Oranges...

I hope Blood Oranges finds a home soon. Congrats on the sale of the poem!

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

I hope Blood Oranges finds a home soon.

It will.

[homewardangel.livejournal.com]

The kindle is not a book. I bought it for the books I consume and move on from. I have every intention of remaining a paper folding, margin-writing, dust-acquiring bibliophile forever.

Too bad about the book of the month club.

BTW I was reading Two Worlds and In Between last night and I found out that you wrote a short story with PZB ... and I near on died of joy.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

BTW I was reading Two Worlds and In Between last night and I found out that you wrote a short story with PZB ... and I near on died of joy.

Actually, we wrote two together.

OT

[nykolus.livejournal.com]

If I may... check out the latest episode of The Simpsons, "The Book Job." It aired 11/20 and featured Neil Gaiman and the "business" of writing a bestseller. I found it hilarious. Cheers.

None

[crowsink.livejournal.com]

I have an LJ account now thanks to you. I don't know yet what I'll do with it, other than be signed in when I read your posts. My (15, 17) daughters will look at me funny, also.

Looking forward to the eBay auctions (I sent a note).

Nice (short) article in the new WIRED titled "A New Hope for Books" that draws the comparison to the "paperless office" nonsense. Not that all need convincing; those of us who got our first high from sneaking around in Brentano's and sniffing new Bantam paperbacks will never abandon ink and paper.

[stsisyphus.livejournal.com]

LOVEAMOEBA

God, it's so obvious that this wasn't serious. You wouldn't be in a band by this name.

LOVEAMOEBA is obviously a song title.

Meanwhile, I will drop back into Rift at some point this week. Juggling chainsaws at the moment.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

Meanwhile, I will drop back into Rift at some point this week.

That would be cool. If you'd just drop that silly City of Heroes and Slightly Less Heroic Nice Guys....

[edwarddain.livejournal.com]

We've actually been noticing a number of people returning to LJ complaining about privacy policies on things like Facebook and Fetlife.

D.

LOVEAMOEBA

[josephfinn.livejournal.com]

I'd buy that as a late 90's Red Hot Chili Peppers album title, really.

[smu.livejournal.com]

I just ordered "Two Worlds and In Between" and it would make my life if you took the title from one of the best Sisters of Mercy songs ever, "Lucretia, My Reflection".

I love your writing. I just wanted to say hello.

[pepsiswinger.livejournal.com]

8. For what it's worth, I'd never have discovered The Orange Eats Creeps if you hadn't brought it up. And any monthly selection that includes The Sundial gains major points in my book.

[r-darkstorm.livejournal.com]

I tend to read more on LJ than I write on LJ, because I'm always feeling as though I have nothing important to say. And that is never an issue on Facebook or Twitter. So yes, I tweet a lot.