Caitlín R. Kiernan

After four days of snow, the sun is out this morning. I assume the melting will begin in earnest. Right now, it's 27F, but the windchill has it feeling like 16F. I've not left the House since New Year's Eve.

I sat here all day yesterday, trying my best to begin the next novel, The Wolf Who Cried Girl. I managed to type the title page, and I know section one will be called "Imago," and section two of the novel will be called "For I Shall Do Thee Mischief in the Woods." If there's a prologue, it may be called "The Heaven of Animals" (for a James Dickey poem). Much of yesterday was spent dithering over whether or not there will be a prologue. I am in that space at the beginning of a novel where there is, effectively, an infinitude of possibility. Anything at all can occur. But the moment I write the first sentence, the infinitude collapses into a mere multitude of possibility. It would be so easy to make the wrong decision. And yesterday I just sat and stared, for about five hours, while the snow fell outside my office window. A bottle of truly disagreeable absinthe didn't help (a French brand I'd not tried before, La Muse Verte, and it louches a muddy yellow). Well, it disagreed with me. Spooky likes it. Anyway, I assume today will be more sitting here trying to find the beginning.

I'm getting some intriguing responses to the question I posed on the evening of December 30th: If you had me alone, locked up in your house, for twenty-four hours and I had to do whatever you wanted me to, what would you have me/you/us do? I think I'll be taking replies most of the month, and the best will be included in Sirenia Digest #50 (printed anonymously, and the responses are being screened, so I'm the only person who will see your reply to the post with your screen name attached). You can reply here. And remember, honesty is worthless in situations like this. Right now, I need pretty lies. And some of the prettiest lies are hideous. At this point, I've received forty-one replies, I think.

I have a mountain of email to answer this morning, and I need to send the corrected ms. for The Ammonite Violin and Others back to Bill Schafer. Everyone who's a subscriber should have Sirenia Digest #49, but if you don't, let me know. And comments are welcome.

My coffee's getting cold. Here are a few photos I look yesterday from the front parlor. The bleak things that we shut-ins see through our dirty windows:

( 3 January 2010 )

I'm probably feeling far too rabidly antisocial even for a journal entry this morning, but here goes. And isn't it odd that in 2009, an undertaking that was once the very definition of private— writing an entry in a journal or diary —has now become a public spectacle? It seems to me that "we" are so very afraid of a moment alone, truly and completely alone, without even the promise that someone will at least eventually look at what is being done, what we are thinking, what we are feeling. A society that is becoming increasingly exhibitionist, and, of course, also becoming increasingly voyeuristic. It's a nice psychotic balance, I suppose, a new ecosystem of excessive interaction. Or not new, only made more intent, more intensely so. Makes Big Brother's job easier, I suppose.

No writing yesterday. No busyness of writing yesterday (a few emails aside). We went to the shore, to see the heavy surf that was the aftermath of the storm. We went first to Narragansett, to Harbor of Refuge. We were both surprised by the violence of the waves. It was greater than what we'd expected. We walked out on the beach on the western side of the granite jetty. The air was full of salt mist and sea gulls, and the wind was bitter, though the day was freakishly warm (high 60sF here in Providence). The sun was bright, a white hole of fire punched in the sky. It was almost impossible to hear one another over the roar of the waves, but then, there was nothing that needed saying, anyway. We found a surfboard washed up on the sand, its owner nowhere to be seen. It was clear that the high tide, which had been sometime around 9 a.m. (CaST), had come well inland, into the brush and salt marshes north of the harbor. It appeared that wooden barricades had been erected the day before to keep back sightseers, but the waves had smashed them. Spooky found an orange blob of fish eggs amongst the flotsam. I'm not sure how high the waves were— officially, I mean —but they were slamming against and over-topping the jetty (which is 5-7 feet high, if you're standing on the beach it protects), sending spray twenty or thirty feet into the afternoon air.

We left Harbor of Refuge, having decided we wanted to see what was going on farther west, at Moonstone Beach. But first we went all the way down to Point Judith, where the tide was lower than I'd ever seen it before. Mossy green rocks were exposed, and tide pools, but the waves were too treacherous to try for a look at what might be stranded in them. The foghorn at the lighthouse called out over the crash of the breakers.

On the way to Moonstone Beach, I pointed out a bumper sticker to Spooky. "Do No Harm." As if that's even possible, as if every human action, no matter how profound or mundane, doesn't do harm in some way. Still, I suppose it's a nice sentiment.

We reached Moonstone as the sun was getting low. We'd stopped somewhere along the way so I could photograph a field, still green in December. We passed cows and flooded pastures. When we finally reached Moonstone Beach, we found it completely transformed by the storm. The usual carpet of cobbles and pebbles was swept away or buried. Much of the sand was stained black with the ghost of the '96 oil spill. The waves were almost as impressive as those at Harbor of Refuge, four and half miles to the east. Despite low tide, the brackish tea-colored water in Trustom Pond was very high, rushing loudly through the spillway into Card Pond. Spooky and I walked west, towards Green Hill, walking into the wind. But we only went a hundred yards or so. The sun slipped behind clouds advancing from Long Island Sound, and the temperature abruptly plummeted. By the time we made it back to the car, we were shivering and the dunes were in shadow.

And that was yesterday. I have enough photographs for several days, and the first seven are behind the cut below.

Please note that we've begun a new round of eBay auctions. And that Spooky has only four of her Cthulhu-headstone Cehalopodmas ornaments remaining (of the ten she made); you can see (and purchase) them in her Etsy Dreaming Squid Dollworks shop.

There will be no writing today. I have to finish editing "Sanderlings" and get the chapbook ready to send to Subterranean Press. Also, I need to undo a large number of changes that an over-zealous copy-editor wrought upon one of my stories. I will not name the story, the book, or the editors— it wasn't their fault. I just wish publishers would start firing copy-editors who try to become authors vicariously, by "correcting," and thereby mangling, prose. It is an enormous waste of my time that I have to go back, now, and fix what wasn't broken to begin with.

Photos from Harbor of Refuge:

( 3 December 2009 )

A sunny late autumn morning here in Providence.

Today, I go back to work, and I do so in earnest. I feel as though most of October and all of November (thus far) have been allowed to lay fallow. Sure, I tried to write "Romeo and Juliet Go to Mars," and I did write "The Dissevered Heart" for Sirenia Digest #47 and last week I tried to get started on "The Wolves, the Witch, and the Weald" for Sirenia Digest #48. I managed to write the flap copy for The Ammonite Violin & Others, and give more interviews, and there were various other bits and pieces of work that did not get ignored or set aside. But, still, mostly, health issues and depression and various sorts of uninvited chaos conspired to encourage me to slack off and allow so much needed time to slip away.

Today, I intend to hammer out a proposal for Blood Oranges (working title), which I will have to my agent before the end of the week.

Saturday was mostly spent on housecleaning, as sovay and readingthedark were expected in the evening. I'd asked them both to come down from Massachusetts to help me talk through some of the barriers between Me and the Next New Novel. Saturday night was long, and filled with good and useful conversation. The novel, and many things pertaining to the novel (and no shortage of things not pertaining to the novel). First and foremost was the problem of evil, and how it relates to the book I'm about to try to write. Spooky and Geoffrey went out and got pizza from Fellini's on Wickenden Street. I'd thought we'd actually talk about plot, but I find it too absurd, discussing "plot points" as if they are something that should be worked out beforehand. This is, by the way, the first time I have ever asked friends to step in and help me get over a story hurdle, and it speaks to my current desperation. But it was a smart move. The talk went on until almost dawn. Geoffrey left about five a.m. (CST) for the drive back to Framingham (though I'd offered to let him crash on the sofa). Sonya spent the night, and took the train back to Boston yesterday afternoon.

I think it was the most socializing that's taken place in this House since we moved in. I ought to have taken photographs.

If you have not already, please do have a look at the current eBay auctions. I have a medical thingy coming up at the end of the week that I fear is going to seriously dent our finances, and every little bit helps. Frankly, as everyone crows about how publishing is being forced "to reinvent itself," I think I'm ready to return to true and genuine patronage. Find myself a patron or ten willing to pay me to keep this up, this writing, or to shower upon me offerings of land and property (a modest house of my own would be fine and dandy). As long as we're talking revolution, I may as well dream.

By the way, I have learned (rather belatedly) that the German-translation of Low Red Moon will be out December 1st. Out in Germany, I assume. Unfortunately, it has been renamed Kreatur. What? Is it not possible to translate the phrase "low red moon" into German? I admit, I've only gotten as for as "red moon"— rendering it as roter Monde —but I do not speak German. Anyway, I thought someone might be interested.

Okay. Work.

My thanks to everyone who braved the storm on Saturday night to attend the Brown reading. Special thanks to Barry Dejasu, Bob Geake, and the rest of bookstore's staff, for inviting me and organizing the event (and thanks to Barry for the wonderful Charles Fort omnibus edition!). I read portions of chapters Six and Seven of The Red Tree. There are two or three photos, below, behind the cut.

Also, my thanks to everyone who bid in the most recent round of eBay auctions.

Saturday night, after the reading, readingthedark treated me and Spooky to a very fine Indian dinner on Thayer Street. Outside, the rain was coming down in buckets. Walking to the car, my feet got soaked. Geoffrey accompanied us back to the house, and we stayed up until about 3:30 a.m., talking about anything and everything: Lovecraft, Crowley, music, witchcraft, the impending environmental collapse, misanthropy, writing and writers, chess, our misspent youths, the publishing industry, David Lynch, peculiar cats, and whether pigs have wings. It was a very fine evening, and it made me wish I had people over more often.

Yesterday was sunny and not-quite-cold, and Spooky and I were determined to get out and enjoy the autumn foliage, as it's falling fast. We made it down to her parent's place in Saunderstown, and got eggs, and picked apples for pies. I also picked up three ticks, but found them before the little bastards had a chance to bite. Spooky's mom gleefully incinerated them. Her dad's heading to Venezuela next month. But before stopping by the farm, we stopped in Wakefield, and admired the leaves, and a brilliant sun dog, from the bridge over over the Saugatucket River. The water was stained a dark black from tannin, and was very still and high. Indeed, it was so still, there was not a trace of current, and I suspect the dam's spillways might have been backed up.

Before Wakefield, we stopped at a deserted, decrepit house on Old North Road. The property is for sale, but the house itself, which must be at least a century old, is beyond saving. A man named Robert Mulholland lived there until a year or two ago, and apparently, all of his belongings were left in the house. Since then, the weather and vandals have not been kind to the place. We didn't risk the sagging roof and exposed nails to venture inside. We found a wonderful piece of pottery, and a china tea cup, and carried those away with us. That enormous slumping house, lost in a chest-high sea of brown ragweed, seemed to radiate (or at least focus) a sort of despair and desolation. Being there, and seeing the cast-off remnants of someone's life, abandoned like that and left to rot, the effect was ultimately more sad than creepy. That place, and all those decaying possessions, were once important to someone.

On the way back to Providence through Slocum, we saw the most spectacular sunset. It was almost a perfect day, and I get so few of those.

We took over a hundred photographs, and I'll be posting selections from them during the next few days.

---

I was pleased to get a very flattering mention in "Jonathan Maberry’s Big, Scary Blog," in his article "Still Scary After All These Years," which is a sort of compound interview with Del Howison, Joe Lansdale, Ramsey Campbell, Christopher Golden, Deborah LeBlanc, Scott Nicholson, Ellen Datlow, Ray Garton, David Wellington, and Joe Nassise. When asked, "Who is writing good horror today?." Joe replied:

Caitlín Kiernan – A phenomenal writer who doesn’t get the public recognition she deserves for her work, Kiernan is a deft hand at creating worlds in which the supernatural is alive and well and hungry. She’s the type of writer that can make me doubt myself and throw up my hands in despair at ever being so good. Her Darcy Flammarion stories, featuring an albino teenager who speaks to angels and slays monsters lurking in human guise, are crafted extremely well and her novel length works, particularly her latest, The Red Tree, are fabulous. She’s a writer who cares about every word that goes on the page, it seems.

To which I can only reply, how can a writer not care about every single word that goes on the page? Regardless, as I said, I'm flattered, even if I prefer not to be considered a "horror writer."

---

Here are the photos from the reading Saturday night:

( 24 October 2009 )

Last night is the first night since at least December 2007 that I've managed to sleep without Ambien. I've been cutting the dosage back for weeks now, and last night, I just said fuck it, and didn't take any. And I slept.

We take our victories where we can find them, no matter how small.

There was no writing again yesterday, so I think I can officially say that I am now in a crisis state. We'll say Code Yellow. Tomorrow, if I've still not written, we go to Orange.

I did read Holly Phillips' "Cold Water Survival" in Lovecraft Unbound, and I liked it quite a lot. It's very rare for me to actually read an anthology in which I have a story, but I'm reading this one. At least for now.

In the midst of all the Not Writing that was going on yesterday, I also resolved to begin withdrawing from Facebook and Twitter, and stop using them as anything but a mirror for this journal by the end of October. Well, truthfully, I made my last post to Facebook yesterday evening, after being prodded with one pointy stick too many, and discovering I couldn't turn off comments. That is, discovering I could not disallow comments. As I said yesterday, what kind of fucked-up forced-socialization fascism is that? So, no more Facebook (except that the LJ entries will continue to show up there). I think the thing I will most miss about it is the fact that people seemed almost always to use their real names. I won't miss having people I've not spoken to in ten or fifteen or twenty years suddenly thrusting themselves back into my life uninvited. So, yes, I'll try to stick with Twitter until the end of the month. But a lot of things are wrong in my life at the moment, and one of them is having allowed myself to wander off into all this "social networking" brouhaha. I do not think in sound bytes of 140 characters (or whatever Facebook allows, for that matter). I don't write in them. It was a mistake for me to try and force it.

Of course, this leaves me here in the wasteland of LiveJournal, which seems to be losing writers and readers like a sinking ship purportedly loses rats. But, at least I can finish a thought here without being told I'm over my character limit. And if I don't want to interact, or hear someone else's thoughts, it's easy enough to turn off comments.

If you've not yet, please take a moment to order a copy of The Red Tree. It's the reason I'm still bothering to communicate with the public at all. Which means, if you're reading this, you probably would benefit by reading that.

A cloudy day here in Providence. The sun's never around when I actually want to see it.

So, I suppose this will be my quick and dirty "con report" on ReaderCon 20. There are three photographs afterwards, but only three. I avoided cameras like the plague this year. Last year, I only avoided them like a bad cold. But Spooky took two, anyway. The third, I took on the way home yesterday.

Like last year, I generally enjoyed ReaderCon a great deal. It's that rarest of beasts (in my opinion): a convention that's actually good for writers. I was very heavily booked, but didn't really mind. I prefer not to have a lot of "downtime" at something like this. Anyway, I suppose I should mention what were, for me, the highlights, and do the overview, recap sort of thing. I should say, my great thanks to Geoffrey Goodwin (readingthedark), who very kindly helped Spooky keep track of me, and was generally good company.

Friday: We got to the con hotel, a Marriott in Burlington (Mass.), sometime between 2:30 p.m. and 2:45 p.m. And despite what their website promised, there were no PS3s in the rooms, rather like how last year they promised free internet that turned out not to be free. Sooner or later, someone has to call them on this shit. They speak lies that sucker in geeks, and create unrealistic expectations. Anyway, my first panel, at 4 p.m., was the reading for Ellen Datlow's forthcoming Lovecraft Unbound (Oct. '09). I read from "Houses Under the Sea," as was very pleased to meet, and hear, Michael Cisco. It's going to be a fine book, but then Ellen's always are. Next up, I had the solo presentation for A is for Alien, which was very well attended, and that's about the best you can ever ask for. Then I had a panel, "Reality and Dream in Fiction," which wasn't so bad, though I suspect the subject was rather too broad for an hour-long discussion. I spoke about my "dreamsickness" and my pathological inability to know that I'm dreaming while I'm dreaming. After the panel, I had another solo presentation, "You Never Can Tell What Goes on Down Below: Reading Dr. Seuss as Weird Fiction." It came off better than I'd expected, at least the first half hour. Thereafter, though I'd been asked to read the entirety of The Lorax, and had agreed to do so, the whole thing was hijacked by a number of annoying people in the audience who wanted to argue the political correctness and sociological implications of children's books that were neither "weird" nor authored by Dr. Seuss. Before that, though, it went rather well, and I also read from Lewis Carroll and James Reeves. No dinner on Friday night, because there wasn't time. I did have a short break, and then managed to see Greer Gilman's (nineweaving) wonderful reading from Cloud and Ashes (Small Beer Press), which opened with a genuinely amazing performance by Sonya (sovay), who exquisitely set the mood for Greer's prose with a ballad. And after the reading, there was the ReaderCon 20 Grand Ceremony, and the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award, and then the annual "Meet the Pros(e)" thingy. I hid in a corner with Peter Straub, whom I'd not seen in ages. Getting to spend time with Peter (and his wife, Susie) was definitely one of the very best aspects of the con. And later still, because I lacked the good sense to go to bed, several of us retired to a vacant meeting room and talked until 2 a.m. or so (me, Spooky, Geoffrey, Michael Cisco, Sonya, Eric Van, and a few others whose names have been lost to me). I got to bed about 2:30 a.m., I think.

Saturday: The day started off with my signing, at noon in the dealers' room. Many books were scarred by my hand, some of which I'd not looked at in years. Then I had an hour free before the first of two rather unfortunate panels, starting with "Is Fiction Inherently Evil." The whole affair was predicated on a highly dubious pronouncement made by French ne'er-do-well Simone Weil, that (deep breath) fiction is inherently evil because it portrays good as dull, glamorizes the wicked, and fails to point out the supposed banality of evil. I sort of disqualified myself from the whole discussion right off, by noting that I don't actually recognize the division between good and evil in any traditional sense, and by asking if we were really supposed to see Grima Wormtongue as being more glamorous than Aragorn or Galadriel. I think Peter had the most cogent comments on the panel, though Michael Bishop and James Morrow added good bits, as well. And after that, I didn't even have to leave my chair, because the equally questionable "Is Darwinism Too Good for SF?" took place in the same salon. The premise was, simply, that it has been suggested that Darwinism has proven such a successful theory that it has left sf writers with very little room to wax fantastic. I started off by pointing out that all of biology is based on a single data point (Earth), and, therefore, no matter how well we might presently understand life on Earth, we may understand very little about life as a cosmic phenomenon. The panelists all had scientific credentials, and we quickly concluded that there was plenty of "wiggle room" in SF for nonDarwinian (not antiDarwinian) stories of evolution. My favorite moment was when Anil Menon was asked (by Stephen Popkes) if India has seen the sort of resistance to Darwinism we see in America, and he said no, there'd been no friction to speak of, no creationism in the school systems, and so forth. After the panel, we were corralled for a truly grand and delicious dinner at a nearby Szechuan restaurant. Too many dishes and tastes and flavours to even try to recount here. But we made it back in time for the "Kirk Poland Memorial Bad Prose Competition Tournament of Champions," which has forever etched the phrase "she cupped him where he was soft" into my brainmeats. Later, those of us who'd gathered late the night before reconvened and talked until sometime after two. Oh, we were interrupted by some very rude harpy of a woman wearing two cameras, who noted that we were, collectively, wearing a lot of black, and so felt compelled to ask, "Isn't goth getting old?" I almost smacked her with my cane. Geoffrey almost asked, "Like you?" But we were all somewhat too stunned and polite to do much of anything. That was Saturday.

Sunday: I had only a single bit of programming, so it was an easy day. After we checked out of the room, Spooky and I prowled about the dealers' room, where I was very good and bought only a single book. At 2 p.m., after saying my goodbyes to Peter and Susie, I had my reading. All of Chapter Four of The Red Tree was read, and my thanks to everyone who stuck around and missed part (or all?) of the closing ceremonies while I went so far over the one-hour time slot to get it all read. We left the hotel sometime about 4 p.m., and made it back to Providence just before five, I think. Before dinner.

Also, it was good to meet Chris and Meg, as I'd only met them previously in Second Life.

And yes, I will likely be back next year, and no, I will not be at Necon (I never said I would). And yes, I did wear masks almost the entire convention, and will likely do so next year. In fact, I may do so at all future public appearances. Friday's Cthulhu mask (and the Kambriel dress) was the most popular. Alas, there are no photos from Friday of that outfit (to my knowledge); some might turn up online somewhere. Oh, by the way, my masks were crafted by E. L. Downey; they were gifts to Spooky and me in May 2005. Also, my grateful thanks to everyone who took part in the recent eBay auctions that made it possible for me to attend the con.

And now, the photographs (behind the cut):

( ReaderCon 20 )

Okay. Yeah. That wasn't quick. Or even particularly dirty.

No writing yesterday. No, that's not true. I began one story, wrote about 400 words, then realized it was not the right story. So I stopped and began another story, which I hope will be the right story. "The Sea Troll's Daughter," and I wrote more than 500 words on it. But I'm pretty sure it was a false start. So, you figure it out. I have most of the story in my head, the characters, the tone, the plot...and that very rarely ever is the case at the outset. Now, I only have to locate the words.

Um...how could it have taken me half an hour to realize that this is not 1931? The iPod should have been a dead giveaway, but there are so many temporal shifts lately, it's hard to keep track.

Still cloudy. Still raining. Still not summer.

I fear I have become addicted to Twitter. In one week, I went from detesting it on general principle, to addiction. Which is pretty much how I do things. Ah, well. Beats the crap out of backsliding into Second Life (It's been two months now, so yay me!). I will say that there are two things about Twitter that have pleased me greatly. First, none of this misuse of the word friend. On Twitter, one has followers, and one follows others, which, in all ways, makes much more sense, without linguistic perversions. Several times now, I've had people (from LJ, SL, Facebook) pull that "But you're my FRIEND" shit on me, and I have to point out that no, I'm not, that we've never even met, and so on, and so forth. Drama ensues. And, of course, the misuse of friend has led to the neologism friending, when there was already befriend to function as an accompanying verb, and it would have worked just fine. "But, you friended me!" No, I befriended you. And, in this qualified sense of the word, that only makes us sort of vaguely acquainted, at best. Anyway, that's one thing.

Another thing that pleases me about Twitter is that, at least among the people who are following me thus far (362), and those I'm following (57), there's been, in more than three days, almost no l33t or lolspeak or emoticons. Which surprises me, as we're limited to 140 characters per message, and yet, all of these people stop and think of a way to make themselves understood without resorting to idiotic acronyms. I have not seen "lol" even once (but maybe that's because I'm not following Eliza Dushku). I am told this would change were I to descend into the realm of "people who do real-time conversation," but I'm not even sure what that is——I mean, how it would differ from what I've seen so far, since it all seems rather "real time"——so I shall simply avoid it. Anyway, I'm greygirlbeast.

Yesterday, I tweeted the first part of The Red Tree micro-sneak-peek experiment. Today, I'll repost yesterday's bit, then add Pt. 2.

My thanks to everyone who's bid in the current round of eBay auctions. I will remind you that the clothbound copy of The Merewife up now is probably the only one I will ever auction, as I received but four copies, back in 2005. Among my hard-to-find publications, it's surely one of the hardest to find. And, yes, all proceeds from these auctions will go to help offset the expense of my attending ReaderCon in July. So, thank you again, if you've bid or already won an auction.

Yesterday, Serena Valentino (serenavalentino) wrote to relate to me a dream she'd had, a dream in which I appeared, and a dream which delighted me, when I heard of it. She's given me permission to include her description of the dream in this entry:

I had an interesting dream about you, even more interesting by virtue of rarely remembering my dreams. You were dressed in an Edwardian era outfit, a hybrid of a lady's outfit, but with long riding breeches under your skirt. I know this not because I got under your skirt, mind (it wasn't that sort of dream) your skirt was split in the front, revealing the breeches. Your long coat was also rather masculine, but tailored for a woman. It was very fetching. We were sitting near each other during a performance of some kind (candles illuminated the foot of the stage) and you commented on the performance, it was a very witty sort of comment, one would expect from Oscar Wilde, or yourself for that matter. I remember laughing a little too loudly for the people sitting near us, and that made us laugh even harder.

I only wish I could remember any of this.

Anything else? No, not really. Oh, except one thing. I'm pretty sure that very few people under the age of thirty-five remember what the word angst actually means, or know that "angsting" isn't a word, or that feeling and expressing angst is not a sign of weakness or something to be loathed and mocked. We'll talk about "emo" later. How can a nation be simultaneously so overwrought and emotionally constipated? Anyway, class dismissed. I need to see a lady about a platypus.

As my vacations go, I suppose it was a decent enough ten days. Better than usual, though I've taken so few "vacations" over the last decade that I'm not sure there's enough data available for statistically significant comparisons. Mostly, I stayed in the house and read. Which isn't bad, even if it probably would have been better for me to get out more than I did. I have so little interest in socializing these days, less than ever. It requires so much effort to motivate myself towards that end.

So, yeah...lots of reading. There were a few short stories worthy of mention. David Morrel's "They" was especially nice. Also, Gahan Wilson's "The Outermost Borough" and and Tim Pratt's "Gulls." And I read a good deal of the latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, including "Redescription and Phylogenetic Relationships of Doswellia kaltenbachi (Diapsida: Archosauriformes) from the Upper Triassic of Virginia," "Utility and Validity of Middle and Late Triassic 'Land Vertebrate Faunachrons,'" and "The Skull of Teleosaurus cadomensis (Crocodylomorpha; Thalattosuchia), and Phylogenetic Analysis of Thalattosuchia."

I probably would have left the house more than I did over those ten days, had the weather been more amenable. So much rain. And the temperatures are still pretty wintry, despite what the calendar says. Right now, it's 41F here in Providence, but feels like 32F, when you factor in the 18 mph wind blowing from the NNW. The forecast low for tonight is 29F. There are signs of spring when you head out of the city. Budding trees, a few flowers. The grass is green again. But spring still seems a long way off.

Yesterday, I attended to a lot of email that had accumulated during my time off. I also make a couple of minor edits to "As Red as Red," at the editor's request. We read through the story again, and I can't believe I was able to do that in the utter stupor of exhaustion that I was in for most of March. Oh, and there was a minor seizure yesterday. Today, I'm going to be working on the "secret project" I last mentioned back on February 20th. Tomorrow, I'll get started on a new story for Sirenia Digest #41.

Please have a look at the current eBay auctions, if you're so disposed. Emma, the Beltane Bunneh is still looking for a good home, and Spooky has added a nifty pendant she made yesterday with sea glass we've collected.

And now it's time to dust off the dodo and the platypus, rouse them from their slumber. Oh...never mind. They're waiting on me.

At least my dreams are varied in their subject matter. If I am to be haunted by dreams, there's some small solace that I can take pride in their diversity. Last night——or, rather, this ayem—the barrage included (but was not limited to) a performance by the Chieftens (I actually did see them play in Athens back in '96), golf with Johnny Depp, a zombie apocalypse, collecting the fossil bones of a giant ground sloth, and an alternate ending to Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring that more closely followed the conclusion of James Joyce's Ulysses and yet was entirely true to Tolkien. Look into my ears and see the weirdness in my skull. Sometimes, it astonishes even me.

Only six hours sleep last night, and I've not left the house since Tuesday.

Yesterday was about as rough as the writing gets. Having shelved "There Are Kisses For Us All," I began casting about for a replacement idea, and found one almost immediately. By 12:30 p.m., I think. But then I couldn't find my way into the vignette, and I sat here until after four, grinding my teeth, growing ever more anxious and edging near panic. And then, abruptly, the words began to flow, and I wrote 1,207 words in less than an hour and a half.

I think my body is experiencing some sort of accelerated atrophy. I suspect it comes of too much chair-and-computer time and almost no exercise whatsoever. This morning, it's hard to find a part of my body that doesn't ache. And that reminds me, I have a doctor's appointment on Monday, with my new doctor, which is really weird, since my last doctor was my doctor for twenty years. The new doctor will likely say this body's ready for the scrap heap. A shame there's no shiny robotic replacement on hand, designed by Hajime Sorayama.

Turns out I've promised four editors stories in 2009. There was a deadline hiding behind November that I'd forgotten about. So, that's my limit for the year.

The current eBay auctions continue. Congratulations to the winner of Letter V of Frog Toes and Tentacles, with its velvet and silk cozy. Letter W* has been added to the auctions. Let me stress again that these are unique items, the copies of FT&T with the cozies. Each was was sewn by Spooky, and I embroidered the letter on the velvet. There will only ever be one Letter W, and, so far, I think we've only made and sold about seven of the cozies. Please have a look. Bid if you are able and so disposed. Thank you. Also, today or tomorrow, we'll be adding some of the recent mass-market paperback editions of my novels, which might be your only chance to get these editions signed, given how rarely I do readings and signings these days. And remember, auction winners this month will receive monster doodles, which I've not offered in years.

* Sorry. That's a photo of Letter V. We'll get new photos up ASAP.

A chilly morning here in Providence, mid fifties (F), and we have rain on the way. But the tree outside my office window is still green.

The problem (as I have said before) with having three consecutive days like Friday, Saturday, and Sunday —— days when I wrote in excess of 2,000 words each day —— is that I will very soon be exhausted. And I will have something more like (for me) a normal writing day. Like yesterday, when I "only" wrote 1,327 words on Chapter Nine of The Red Tree. Perfectly respectable, leaning towards very good, in terms of word count, but after those three exceptional days, it feels like I slacked off. Even though the 1,327 words I did yesterday actually took me longer to write than the 2,238 words from Sunday. Regardless, it's going well. It's wrapping up.

Not a lot else to say this morning. We went back to Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket last night, and were reading until about 2:30 ayem.

I have not left the house since...Jesus fuck...October 15th. This is not the way I want to be.

This evening, after the writing, I have to get around to signing off on the proofreading for A is for Alien, as the book goes to the printer in late November.

I think that's all for now. I must get back to Sarah Crowe.

---

I fell asleep and read just about every paragraph.

Read the scene where gravity is pulling me around.
Peel back the mountains, peel back the sky,
Stomp gravity into the floor.
It's a Man Ray kind of sky.
Let me show you what I can do with it.
Time and distance are out of place here.

Step up, step up, step up. The sky is open-armed.
When the light is mine, I felt gravity pull.

Somewhere near the end it said,
"You can't do this." I said, "I can, too."
Shift, sway, rivers shift, oceans fall, and mountains drift.
It's a Man Ray kind of sky.
Let me show you what I can do with it.

Step up, step up, step up. The sky is open-armed
When the light is mine, I felt gravity pull onto my eyes,
Holding my head straight (looking down).
This is the easiest task I've ever had to do...

I fell asleep and read just about every paragraph

Read the scene where gravity is pulling me around.
Shift, the swaying river's shift.
Oceans fall, and mountains drift.
It's a Man Ray kind of sky.
Let me show you what I can do with it.
Time and distance are out of place here.

Step up, step up, step up. The sky is open-armed
When the light is mine, I felt gravity pull onto my eyes,
Holding my head straight (looking down).
This is the easiest task I've ever had to do...

Reason had harnessed the tame.
Holding the sky in their arms.
Gravity pulls me down. (R.E.M., "Feeling Gravity's Pull")