Caitlín R. Kiernan

Well, first the good news. Peter Straub has selected "The Long Hall on the Top Floor" for Fantastic Tales: American Stories of Terror and the Uncanny, which he's editing for the Library of America. The volume is due out in October 2009. I count this, with the reprint of "In the Water Works (1889)" in S. T. Joshi's American Supernatural Tales (Penguin Classics, 2007), as among my most notable accomplishments thus far. "The Long Hall on the Top Floor" first appeared in an issue of the now-defunct Carpe Noctem magazine, in 1999, and was thereafter collected in Tales of Pain and Wonder.

But, the bad news is that it looks like my plans for a March "vacation" are going to have to be scrapped, as I owe ellen_datlow a story, and somehow the deadline, and, indeed, the whole book, had slipped my mind, until she emailed me about it last night. So...I have until March 23rd to get that done, and when you figure in Sirenia Digest #40, the month is pretty much shot. I might be able to squeeze in a week between the story and the digest, maybe.

I spent all this morning figuring out fair-use and public-domain questions concerning three quotes used in The Red Tree. Specifically, a quote from Seneca the Younger's Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, one from Hesiod's Theogony, and another from The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe. All these were, of course, translations, and what is at question is when the copyright on the translations I used expired, or if they have not yet expired. Turns out, we're clear on Hesiod (Evelyn-White translation) and Goethe (Saunders translation), but not on Seneca (Gummere translation). Fortunately, sovay is very kindly providing me with a new translation of the Seneca passage in question, so I won't have to cut it from the book. That was my extra-tedious morning.

Here in Providence, the day is cold, and the sun blindingly bright off all the snow that isn't melting. Right now, it 29F, but 19F with wind chill factored in.

I'm still looking back over comments I've made regarding sf, and my science fiction, in particular, and there's this interesting bit from March 5th, 2006:

matociquala (Elizabeth Bear) and cpolk (Chelsea Polk) have coined a literary neologism for a certain sort of sf, a term which I'm finding extremely useful: eco-gothic*. I quote: "We look around at the world and we're fucking scared. There's this underlying idea of the implacability of the universe and the smallness of humanity. We know that there is no guiding, caring force. That life is amazing in its tenacity and persistence, but that ultimately, it's completely pitiless. And if you take it too far, if you unbalance it enough, it will crush you. This idea of the tenacity of life in a pitiless universe. And nobody else seems to fucking GET IT. Because life is tenacious, but humanity is disposable. It's not a tragedy that the passenger pigeon perished. And it won't be a tragedy when we go either...God doesn't care if we persist. We're not special. We're not essential. The universe doesn't love us bestest of all. Because you know, there's this critique that a Black Novel is not Relevant because it's about Blackness, not Humanity. Which upon I call bullshit. Because a human novel isn't relevant. Because it's about humanity. Six point five billion ugly bags of mostly water on a second-class planet in an arm of a barred spiral galaxy. Pretending like Hell that we signify." Click here for the transcript from which this quote was cobbled together.

Certainly, all of my sf would fall into this category of "eco-gothic." The Dry Salvages, "Riding the White Bull," "Faces in Revolving Souls," "The Pearl Diver," "Persephone," "Hoar Isis," "Between the Flatirons and the Deep Green Sea"...all of it. And I think one thing I found particularly intriguing was the suggestion that writers of "eco-gothic" sf may, perhaps, do so because "we were the second-class geeks who took life sciences instead of physics with the hard-line geeks." That's one of my dirty little secrets. Sure, I took chemistry and physics and mathematics in college, but I had no real aptitude for it. It was in the life and earth sciences that I excelled, particularly in paleontology, which is often disparagingly labeled by the math and physics types as a "soft science." Anyway, it's just something I wanted to note, because of the things I said about sf on Friday, and because it's something I want to think about. I have no problem with a neologism or a literary category so long as it is useful and needed and I suspect this one may be both. It is, of course, inherently Lovecraftian, and minor caveats and questions do arise. Perhaps I will come back to those later. Not only does this remind me why I shall never appeal to those sf readers who dislike "dystopian" sf, but also why I shall likely always find myself in a rather minuscule fraction of Wiccans. The gods do not care because, after all, they're only hopeful metaphors for needful humans. Anyway, thank you Bear and Chelsea.

So, it's not surprising that Elizabeth Bear ended up writing an afterword for A is for Alien, an afterword which, in part, explores the idea of the eco-gothic.

Also, it has been one year to the day that I announced in the journal that Spooky and I would be moving from Atlanta to Providence. What an eventful year it has been.

Yes, the Immaculate Order of the Falling Sky has duly noted the Earth's recent near-miss by a Tunguska-sized asteroid. Hope springs eternal.

Last night, I stumbled across some bloody frakking idiot, somewhere on the web, who'd referred to Echo (from The Dreaming) as a "Mary Sue" character, and I'm still laughing...

* matociquala later found a use of "eco-gothic" dating back to 1996, in a description of Stephen Palmer's novel, Memory Seed.

Yesterday, the edited ms. for The Red Tree went back to Manhattan. And now, it really is finished. I typed THE END way back on October 24th, but, of course, I knew then that it wasn't truly finished. The manuscript I sent back to my editor yesterday was 100,860 words long (424 pages). The ms. I sent her in November was 95,815 words long. So, there was a net increase of 5,045 words during the editing process. And I do think it is a better novel now, for the past two weeks or so of tweaking, no matter how frustrating and tedious the process might have been.

Mostly, what baffles me is how any sense of accomplishment continues to elude me. I know I've done a good job, and done something few people can do, and that even fewer will ever actually do. But this is my eighth novel (not counting Beowulf, which I don't), and I have yet to feel any genuine sort of achievement. When Silk was done, I thought I would feel it on the day that I finally held the printed book in my hand. That day was May 11, 1998. And on that day, holding the book, which I'd begun in October of 1993, I felt...nothing. And I thought maybe I might feel it with the next novel, but no. And so on. Sometimes, I feel a sense of pride in the material object. I will appreciate that, as was the case with A is for Alien, I have produced a very fine-looking volume. But that's not the same. And, often, I sit and wonder what some favourite author of mine might have felt, in my place. How did it make Angela Carter feel? Or Shirley Jackson? Or John Steinbeck? Was there joy for them? Did they ever know, in that moment, fulfillment? Were they even remotely satisfied? Did they celebrate? I've never yet have the nerve to ask another living author this question.

So. It's done. Sure, there's still the CEM to come, but, as I've said, Spooky's handling that this time. For all intents and purposes, my part in the writing of The Red Tree is done. And I am still waiting to feel much of anything at all, aside from the fact of it being finished, or the fact of having done a good job. I am still waiting on...something else, something far more substantial, even if it's far less concrete.

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Congratulations to Allyson Bird of Sheffield, South Yorkshire, who had the winning ticket for my contributions to the Shirley Jackson Award lottery.

Please have a look at the current eBay auctions, if you've not already. Thanks.

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Sometime in the next few days, or next couple of weeks, I will be posting what will likely be my final words on Second Life. They will not be kind words, and I want to choose them with great care.

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As for today, well, I need to begin a piece for Sirenia Digest #39. I have something in mind, I just hope I can find my way in without too much trouble. Also, I fear this issue may come out a day or two late (March 1 or 2, perhaps). There was all that editing to get done, and February is a short month. Regardless, I do apologize.

Today is not only Darwin Day, it marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, who was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England on February 12th, 1809. Viva la Evolución!

Yesterday, my comp copies of A is for Alien arrived, along with copies of the chapbook, B is for Beginning. I was a little overwhelmed; I still am. A is for Alien is a very handsome volume, and I'm very pleased with how it turned out. I sat down and tallied up all the books I've done with subpress since I first began working with Bill Schafer late in 2001. I've done twelve hardbacks (not counting hardback states of chapbooks) and something like fifteen chapbooks. In only about eight years. And here is this latest one, and I just want to take the day off and do something I pretty much never do when a new book comes out: bask in the satisfaction of having done a good job. But, no, too much work to be done, too many deadlines. My thanks to everyone who's ordered a copy, and to Bill for taking the book on, and a special thanks to Vince Locke. Also, my thanks to Elizabeth Bear and Jacek Yerka. Like I said already, I'm a litle overwhelmed at this one. My next release from Subterranean Press will be the new trade-paperback edition of Alabaster in April (by the way, I love that on a search for the word "alabaster" on Google, out of 4,880,000 hits, this book comes in at sixth place).

Yesterday, I wrote 690 words, adding a short scene to Chapter Eight of The Red Tree, at my editor's request. Unlike the new scene I wrote on Monday (and ditched on Tuesday), yesterday's scene doesn't feel dropped in. It blends smoothly with the whole, and creates no unsightly ripples. Today, I need to substantially revise the preface, primarily because I wrote the preface before the novel, and, thereafter, The Red Tree became a somewhat different book than I thought it would be when I began. So, the preface no longer quite works with the rest.

More books up on eBay, so please have a look at the auctions.

Much of the snow has finally melted. The temperature was in the high fifties (F) yesterday, and I was even able to open my office window and let some fresh air into the room.

A very busy virtual life last night. To start with, I'm in the process of tearing down the Abney Park Laboratory in the Second Life steampunk sim, New Babbage. It will be replaced by an Arabian Nights-themed "Ladies Social and Arts Club" (with a steampunk edge, of course), which is a nice way of saying an Arabian/NeoVic lesbian bordello. I finally got bored with the whole "mad scientist" thing, so, in Babbage, Nareth Nishi will be replaced by my new alt (created just last night), Scheherazade Muramabhad. Construction of the place will begin as soon as the laboratory is leveled. Nareth will continue to rp in Toxian City, but not in Babbage. And then, later, Shaharrazad and Suraa discovered that is is possible to rp in WoW. While questing in the Eastern Plaguelands, we happened upon a bloof-elf paladin named Sularyn, and together we took the four towers in the region back from the Alliance and held them. Shah and Suraa didn't make it to Level 61, but it was a good night, all the same. Well, except for the utter apocalypse of hearts and flowers and Valentine's Day bullshit that is making it impossible to move in Undercity.

The platypus and the dodo are pretty mellow today. Darwin Day, and the bicentennial of Darwin's birth, seems to have made them both somewhat less grumpy.

A black day yesterday. A day of anger and disconsolate bitterness, that was really only the climax to a wave that I think began building on Tuesday. There was a fairly bad seizure on Tuesday, and, oftentimes, they are followed by these intense black moods. All week, this one built up like thunderheads, exacerbated by everything from this horrid winter to insomnia to the tedious line editing on The Red Tree to the idiocy of people who cannot be expected to know better. Then yesterday afternoon, the mood lifted rather suddenly, as often happens. Mostly, the lifting of these post-seizure funks seems to be a completely irrational matter. They come. Then they go. But yesterday, at least in part, this funk was driven back by a sudden dose of perspective. Seeing my place, as clearly as I ever can. And I hope you don't mind me babbling on like this. Point is, I got nothing done yesterday. It gets an L in the day planner ("Lost Day"), and today I have to try and make up for it. And keep myself, who and what I am, in perspective.

Set me aflame, and cast me free.
Away, you wretched world of shadows...

I wish I had nothing to nothing to do today, and Spooky and I could brave the cold and drive to Beavertail and celebrate the esbat. There are few better places hereabouts to watch moonrise than Conanicut Island. But, no, I have to make up for the work I haven't gotten done.

At least I slept more than seven hours last night, more sleep than I've gotten at a single stretch in...a while.

Bill Schafer has asked to reprint "The Belated Burial" in Subterranean Magazine, probably in the October issue. And I've just signed contracts for a forthcoming Lovecraftian anthology edited by S.T. Joshi that will reprint "Pickman's Other Model." I am always very pleased when pieces from Sirenia Digest are reprinted.

As I said yesterday, the limited edition of A is for Alien is now sold out, but you can still get the regular trade edition. And I hope that you will, if you've not already.

Not much else to say about yesterday. It was warmer here in Providence, and snow that has lain on the ground since New Year's Eve finally melted. The rivers must be swollen. But I didn't leave the house. Late, we played a little WoW. Mostly Shaharrazad is trying to gain "exalted" status with Orgrimmar and the Darkspear trolls. So, low-level quests in Durotar.

It seems the windows have been iced over, to one degree or another, for weeks. Behind the cut is a photograph Spooky took back on Thursday. The ice crystals are beautiful, no matter how the winter might have begun to weigh on me:

( Ice )

This morning, stuck in a dream I genuinely do not want to remember, I'm listening to ABBA. The hope was that ABBA was absurd enough to dispel the dreamsickness. But, so far, it's only adding a surreal fucking soundtrack to my recollections of the nightmare. Having written "The Z Word," you'd think I'd know better.

Yesterday, we made it to page 249 of The Red Tree. I'm not good with tedium, not good at all. We very much need to finish with this round of line edits today, so I can begin to address the more substantive issues raised in the editorial letter, but my mind reels at the thought of forcing my way through five more chapters of the most minute mistakes possible. We still have 148 pages to go. Argh.

So, the book that will include my comments on Second Life as a tool for fiction writers is Jeff VanderMeer's forthcoming Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for 21st Century Writers (Tachyon Publications, September-October 2009). As to exactly what I said, you'll have to wait for the book's release. Though, I will admit here, I didn't pull any punches, and that I continue to view SL as an untapped resource for writers, and, perhaps, as an inherently untappable resource, given the reluctance and/or inability of most of the "inhabitants" of SL to engage in fully immersive, simulationist roleplay, the sort that has the potential to create the interactive stories I've tried to foster there. As it stands, SL is, sadly, very little more than just another social-networking/dating service.

I'm getting reports that some people who've pre-ordered A is for Alien from Amazon are encountering problems with their orders. I've been told that some in the U.S. are being informed their orders will not ship until the middle of March, though subpress is shipping the book now. I've gotten word from a reader in England who pre-ordered the book months ago, but says that Amazon is now refusing to ship it to the UK. I exchanged email with Bill Schafer about all this an hour or so ago, and I am told more copies of the book have been sent to Amazon. But it takes time for Amazon to process and ship them out to buyers. Hence the delay. As for the UK problem, I honestly have no idea what's up. But I will reiterate that supplies are running very low, and there are presently no plans for a reprinting, so you should order now, directly from Subterranean Press. I'm disheartened that people are having trouble with Amazon, and I do apologize for that (though, obviously, I have no control over what Amazon does).

Also, I thought I should repost the link for the "A is for Alien in 60 Seconds" article at Tor.com.

As I said yesterday, A is for Alien is very near to selling out. The limited edition is down to less than 25 copies, and 75% of the regular trade edition's printing has now sold. And my very grateful thanks to everyone who has ordered the book.

Last night, we watched Wes Anderson's Rushmore (1998), certainly one of the most brilliant psychonerd movies in the history of film. And Shaharrazad reached Level 60.

It's getting late, and the platypus is giving me the hairy eyeball. But I thought I'd leave you with one last image from Monday's trip to Moonstone Beach. Here we have proof positive that the seas do indeed harbour a heretofore undescribed family of iron squid:

( Ferropetrateuthidae )

The snow stopped sometime this morning before we awoke. Now it's sunny, but cold as hell. Currently, the temperature is 20F, but only 8F when you factor in wind chill (that's 6.66C, and -13C, for those in Celsius countries). The sun is making diamonds of the snow. The sky is impossibly blue, with only a few stray wisps of cloud. I shall not be going Outside today.

The FREE surprise went out to Sirenia Digest subscribers yesterday afternoon. And, as expected, it bounced back from at least 50% of those to whom it was sent, though only a handful of people gave us instructions not to address to their usual email accounts. So, we're working on how to get it to everyone who hasn't gotten it. We may have to put it up somewhere on the website as a downloadable PDF, then send a password to subscribers.

Oh, and the moral of yesterday's entry is: If you want to get people talking on your blog, just impugn a popular social-networking service (in this case, Twitter). If only my fiction elicited such passionate reactions!

Now, I'll try to play "catch up."

Monday afternoon, we made our way from Federal Hill to downtown Providence. Sonya (sovay) was arriving by train about 3:30 p.m. (CaST). The streets were all slush, and water dripped from everything as a month's worth of snow and ice melted away. There's new snow and ice now, but on Sunday, all of Providence seemed like a great salt- and dirt-flavoured Slushie. The capital building, across the street from the Amtrak station, was stunning in the bright sun and remaining snow. Once we'd rescued Sonya from the pigeon-haunted train station, the three if us headed south, having decided that a trip to Moonstone Beach was in order. We stopped in Wakefield, at the Wakefield Mall, because toilet facilities were needed. First, I discovered that my much-beloved Toy Vault has closed, and then I dropped my iPod in the restroom. It appeared, at the time, that I'd broken it. Only slightly daunted, we continued on to Moonstone.

All the fantastical growths of dog roses, green brier, poison ivy, and etc. were only brown ghosts of their former summer selves. Trustom Pond, set back behind the dunes, was still frozen over, and there was a great noisy flock of mallards scattered across the ice. This beach, as I have said before, has many moods, and on Monday it was covered with cobbles and pebbles. I'd only seen it like that once before, back in the summer. As all the piping plovers have flown south for the winter, the barriers that keep people out of the nesting areas were down, so we could stroll much farther to both the east and west than I'd ever done before. We picked up stones, shells, beach glass, the claws of crabs and lobsters. I found a small white toe bone, from a fox, I think, bleached white. Then, almost immediately, Spooky found the ulna of a very large bird (the bone measures 22 cm. along the mid-line). Back towards the dunes, I located a thin layer of black sand, no more than a couple of cm. thick, marking the January 19th, 1996 oil spill that devastated the beach. A geological fingerprint, so to speak. There were a few other people out, but it was bitterly cold, and we had the beach mostly to ourselves. After walking west a while, we turned and walked east, about a quarter mile, as far as the inlet where Card Pond connects to the sea at high tide (the tide was going out, so we could cross). Almost all the way to the place where Moonstone Beach becomes Browning Beach. We found innumerable mermaid purses of at least two species. Spooky found an enormous piece of driftwood, shot through with large rusted iron spikes. I guessed it had once been part of a pier's piling. It had evidently spent years, if not decades, at sea, and had snagged all manner of detritus——ropes (of all sorts and sizes), old gloves, a lobster pot, netting, etc. About 5:30 p.m. (CaST), clouds moved in from the west, and the sun abruptly vanished. The beach grew much colder at once, and we quickly, reluctantly, made our way back to the car. All told, we must have walked at least a mile, which seemed three times that far, given the cold wind and how stiff I've gotten sitting in this chair every damn day.

I should really wrap this up, as I have to get back to editing The Red Tree today. Much tedium awaits, as we return to the line edits. Also, I should be seeing actual copies of A is for Alien this week, so I'm pretty excited about that. If you've not yet ordered a copy, please do so today. Thanks.

And yes, I am extraordinarily amused to see Stephen King taking Stephanie Myer to task. Bravo! To quote King, "...Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good." Which is, of course, a much more tactful choice of words than the ones I've tended to use when describing Myer's novels.

Oh, the iPod was working again on Tuesday morning. Lucky me. The thing's a bloody tank. This is a first or second generation iPod I got back in the spring of '05.

Photos from Monday, behind the cut:

( Moonstone Beach, February 2, 2009 )

A hard rain last night, which got rid of a little bit of the snow, and made an utter glacier of our driveway. And the temperature won't rise above freezing today.

Yesterday, I did a very satisfactory 1,732 words, and so finished my second piece for Sirenia Digest #38, "The Belated Burial." Vince is working on the illustration for "The Thousand-and-Third Tale of Scheherazade," and thinks it will be done tomorrow, so, with luck, #38 will go out to subscribers tomorrow evening. As for me, I just wrote two short stories in a week, and now I'm going to take a couple of days off, a very short and well-deserved micro-vacation, before I have to go back to The Red Tree and get those revisions/corrections finished.

Also yesterday, I send an .rtf of "The Wolf Who Cried Girl" to Sean Wallace, as the story is to be reprinted in a forthcoming Horror: The Best of the Year (the volume covering 2007, I think).

It has been suggested to me that a good way to promote Sirenia Digest, and possibly draw a few more subscribers, would be to offer podcasts of some of the stories via iTunes. I'm considering this. I might run a poll here to try and gauge interest. This whole podcast thing is new to me.

If you've not yet ordered A is for Alien, well, this is me reminding you once again. And to those who have, I thank you, and I hope these repeated entreaties for others to do the same are not too annoying. The truth is, most authors must either promote themselves or go without promotion. And going without promotion means...well, it's pretty straightforward.

I think we're going to have a house guest Sunday and Monday, so, part of the micro-vacation will be spent helping Spooky clean this cluttered house. But not today. Today, I rest.

Trying desperately (and with mixed results) to simultaneously stop taking the Ambien and catch up on my sleep. And stay hydrated.

Today, Spooky has to drive down to Wakefield to have the car inspected. They do that in Rhode Island, have mandatory safety inspections. Anyway, she's going to Wakefield, instead of doing it here in Providence, because she wants to see Wakefield in the snow.

I spent all of yesterday trying to find the Next Story. Or, rather, trying to find my way into it. No actual words were written. It's the worst sort of Writing Day, being really only an Almost-Writing Day. I did learn that in the UK "As of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008*, it is also illegal to possess physical depictions of necrophilia, electronic or otherwise. Necrophilia-pornography falls under the governmental description of extreme pornography, of which, possession is classed as illegal under the aforementioned act." However, here in the US, there are no Federal laws against necrophilia, and only nineteen out of fifty states have anti-necrophilia laws. Rhode Island is not one of them.

Anyway, quite apart from actual acts of necrophilia, the UK legislation seems a bit excessive, as it would not only affect "extreme pornography," but all manner of non-pornographic art, some of it quite old. And, of course, I have to wonder if anyone's realized this would apply to vampires. Vampirism, that socially acceptable incarnation of necrophilia. "Well, yeah...sure..he's dead, I know...and he sucks the blood of unwilling victims...and he sleeps in a coffin filled with moldering earth. But, jeez, he's sooooooo dreamy."

So, today, I try again to find my way into the new story.

Last night, we watched Matt Reeves' Cloverfield for the first time since we saw it in theatres. And I still think it's one of the most brilliant monster movies ever filmed.

I'm listening to Elvis Costello's The Juliet Letters, recorded with the Brodsky Quartet. It's one of my favourite albums from the early '90s, but it's been ages since I listened to it. Yesterday, I remembered it. Oh, and Spooky brought me a sheet of Edgar Allan Poe stamps from the PO.

The platypus and the dodo concur that any Tuesday in the year 2009 is a very fine time to order your copy of A is for Alien. Me, I've learned to listen to the wisdom of peculiar beasts.

I am utterly in awe of the news that Neil has won the Newbery Award for The Graveyard Book.

And now....I should go write something that's illegal to read in the UK. For the greater good....

* scarletboi reports that a review of the text of the Act reveals it does not apply to prose.

Postscript (3:23 p.m.): John Updike has died.

I did a modest 801 words yesterday, and began "The Thousand-and-Third Tale of Scheherazade." Turns out, it's not so much a "Yellow House" story, as it is another story about the old house on Federal Hill where the changelings can go to be, briefly, free of the attentions of the ghûl. It looks as though both the stories this month will be snow stories.

Also, I began work in earnest on a Secret Project. I've not had one of those in a while.

I don't think all this snow is ever going to melt.

Last night, we watched Francis Ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth (2007), which I thought was a genuinely splendid sort of fantasy (or, arguably, science fiction). Imagine a collaboration between Coppola, Orson Welles, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and Hermann Hesse, and it's a little like that. Beautifully filmed, and, by turns, haunting and sublime. One of Tim Roth's finest performances, and I was taken with Alexandra Maria Lara. I wish I'd had a chance to see this film in the theatre. It is, by the way, based on a novella by Mircea Eliade, which I'm going to have to hunt down and add to the Stack That Never Gets Any Smaller.

Later, I got in a good scene in Second Life. Currently, I'm playing a paraplegic vampire, which, the more I think about it, is a short story that I need to write.

Completely unrelated to last night's rp, there's a very peculiar grammatical habit that I've noted in SL, and it drives me nuts. But, although I first noticed it many months ago, maybe even a year ago, I've never felt like being rude enough to correct anyone I've seen doing it. It results in paragraphs constructed in the following manner:

X walks into the room and takes a seat near the television. "I remember seeing this once before, years ago," she says. She wondered if anyone else had already seen the show.

That is, a player will begin in present tense (the norm for rp), then, in the last sentence switch over the past tense. It's as if they have learned somewhere that the purpose of present tense is to begin sentences, while the purpose of past tense is to complete them. I've considered the possibility that it's an artifact of another language, of people writing in English when it's not their first language. But I've seen it done by people I'm quite certain are American and British. So...it continues to baffle (and, I'll admit, annoy) me.

I need to get part of an interview done this morning before I start back in on the new story, so I should wrap this up. Please do take a moment to order A is for Alien, due out next month from Subterranean Press, if you have not already. I'll also remind you that the limited edition comes with an unusually lengthy chapbook of supplementary material. Thanks.

Yesterday was a day of mail. Well, yesterday was a day of pleasant mail. A package from txtriffidranch, including many things, but the most marvelous bit is a recording from 1966 of Harlan reading "Repent, Harlequin, Said the Ticktockman" and "A Boy and His Dog." I used to have these recordings, long, long ago, and lost them in one or another move, and I am very pleased to own them again. Thanks very, very much. Almost as cool as the British Museum Dimetrodon. Also, a package from mellawyrden, which, among other things, included a copy of Mac Wellman's A Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds. And, also, a complimentary copy of the Fall 2008 Dead Reckonings arrived (Hippocampus Press), which includes S.T. Joshi's review of the 3rd edition of Tales of Pain and Wonder, "A Slow-Moving Tsunami" (though it says "Caitlín Kiernan, Remastered" on the cover). I will now shamelessly post a short quote:

Kiernan has inexorably ascended the echelon of supernatural horror with an array of distinguished novels and story collections that have already led some critics to rank her with such luminaries as Ramsey Campbell and Thomas Ligotti. The comparison with Campbell seems to me particularly apt, for there are few writers in the entire history of supernatural fiction who have simultaneously mastered both the short story and the novel and who have combined such copious productivity with such a high level of meticulous craftsmanship.

And if posting that quotation is self-aggrandizing, so fucking be it. There are precious few rewards, writing what I write, and being ranked, by Joshi, with Campbell and Ligotti is among them. So, yes, a splendid day for mail.

Unfortunately, it was a pretty lousy day, otherwise. Sometime after one, I had one of the worst seizures I've had in a while. I came to on the floor in the middle parlour, surrounded by Spooky and the cats. So I spent most of the afternoon in bed, dazed, feeling like I'd been run down by a truck. Spooky read me Chapter Four of The Red Tree, and I tried hard to pay attention. Mostly, I drifted and stared at the patterns the sun made on the bedroom wall. It was after dinner before I began to feel halfway decent again.

Last night, we watched George Clooney's Leatherheads, in which George Clooney plays Clarke Gable and Renée Zellweger plays Claudette Colbert. Well, no, not really, but pretty close. It was a thoroughly charming, film, despite the fact that football bores me to tears, and felt more like something from the late sixties or early seventies, during the nostalgia boom that spawned movies like The Sting and Paper Moon.

And today I will try, again, to begin the Long Sought Epilogue, because Herr Platypus is not a happy camper. Please take a moment to order A is for Alien, due out next month from Subterranean Press, if you've not already done so. I promise it doesn't suck.