Caitlín R. Kiernan

I am presently so very not awake, but I wanted to get past the journal entry early today. I have already let so much of December slip past me when there was not a single day to be spared, I can't lose any more days. I can begin losing days again in April or May.

No writing yesterday, but that should be fairly obvious from the paragraph above. I started to have a go at the prologue for Joey Lafaye, but then I got to talking about the book with Spooky, which led me down all sorts undesirable side roads until I was no longer in the mood to write anything. So, I dithered about. Cleaned my office a bit, and cleaned the kitchen a bit. Filed a few things in my big black filing cabinet. But mostly, I dithered. I traded the buggy, unreliable ptp programme Frost Wire for the extremely functional Poisoned, which, after a day of downloads I'd recommend to any Mac user running OS X or higher. I straightened up my desktop (the iMac's desktop). I finally sat down and put my meager sewing skills to work making two little (7.75") beanie platypi. I've been meaning to do this for ages. See below.

The weather was unseasonably warm, still 71F at 5:30 p.m., and I had my first good walk in weeks. I have to try to get back into something like decent shape, and not walking because I'm too depressed to walk only makes me more depressed and less likely to walk. So, we walked all the way to Washita Avenue NE, south of the Carter Center and Freedom Park, before turning for home. There were irises blooming along Sinclair. On the way back, we stopped at Criminal Records, and I picked up copies of Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards (Jim Ottaviani and Big Time Attic) and the first volume of Fantagraphic's E. C. Segar's Popeye collection, I Yam What I Yam. More on both later.

After dinner, we watched Len Wiseman's Live Free or Die Hard, which despite the title, was exactly what I needed last night: a good Die Hard film. A big, dumb action film with just the right ratio of explosions and car crashes to snarling one-liners. It was good to see Timothy Oliphant outside Deadwood (no, I haven't seen Hitman, and won't until the DVD release). Justin Long — the "Mac guy" — was a blast, and Maggie Q was, well, kick-ass hot. Later still, there was some Second Life, because sometimes nothing makes you fell better than roleplaying a cyborg angel in a post-apocalyptic world.

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This comment/question from seph_ski:

As someone who holds your books, Silk especially, in a very dear place in my heart, to hear that there are changes made in the latest mmps makes me wince a little in fear of that "Han shot first" kind of situation. Part of me really wants to pick up the latest and give it a read because I'm quite certain that if you think it's better, it's better. But the sentimental part of me says if I want to reread the story, I should just pick up the well worn and loved copy from my shelf and indulge in the very same copy of the book that completely enchanted me years ago. I read quite a bit, but there' only a short list of books I love enough to come back to (my to-read list is too long to allow for many rereads), and even fewer authors I'm fond enough of to keep up with, so your journaling is the first I'm hearing of changes made between earlier editions and mmps. Is it standard practice for authors to make changes between editions? (I'm a little nervous to hear this answer because it could mean a mass add to my already avalanching read pile.)

I know I'm going to wind up reading your mmps regardless, but I admit I'm still feeling a little conflicted, like reading an edited version would be cheating on an old favorite, ...as ridiculous as that may sound.

I think the revision that always drove me most nuts was the release of Stephen King's uncut version of The Stand. The previously unpublished material was great, but he also, inexplicably, tried to update the text from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s. Hell, he even changed the brand of candy bar that Harold Lauder eats! Anyway, these are not the sorts of revisions I've made. The changes have been made mainly to the book's language, it's voice, not the plot or details or characters. Spyder is still Spyder. Daria is still Daria. Deacon is still Deacon. Some people may not like the changes to the prose, but they were something I felt I had to do, as the old text no longer worked for me. All the changes were entirely voluntary, by the way, and for that matter I was not paid by the publisher for all that editing (and it was a lot of editing). Also, near as I know, it is fairly unusual for writers to make these sorts of revisions to books that have already been published. Oh, and once again, here are the correct links and ISBNs for the new mass-market editions:

Silk (ISBN 978-0-451-45668-7)

Threshold (978-0-451-46124-7)

Low Red Moon (978-0-451-46164-3)

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To help cover my recent and soon-to-come medical bills, we will be beginning a new batch of eBay auctions today or tomorrow. Among other things, we'll be offering copies of the lettered edition of Tales from the Woeful Platypus, with the aforementioned handmade-by-me platypus beanie. Each platypus beanie (actually, they're stuffed with rice, not beans) will be initialed and lettered to match the copy of the book it is sold with. You will recall that the lettered edition of this book was not offered for sale by Subterranean Press (or anyone else). I have been sitting on the 16 copies Bill gave me (K-Z, if I recall correctly — I kept K for myself). We will auction letter X first. I'm not sure how many of these we will be auctioning just now, as I can't say how many platypi I'm going to feel like sewing. We shall see. Details and link TBA.

Oh, and I got another request for my Amazon wishlist, which you may find here. And you can find Spooky's here. Solstice gifts will not go unappreciated.

Okay. I need breakfast and coffee. Then the words must flow.

It seems impossible that six years have now elapsed...

Yesterday, we proofed "Angels You Can See Through," "Lafayette," and "...Between the Gargoyle Trees," so we almost finished the Tales of Pain and Wonder read-through. And I made a decision regarding the "Table of Contents" — the new edition will include "Mercury," which did not appear in the first and second editions (as it wasn't written until late 2003). It will not, however, include "Angels You Can See Through." Reading back over the piece yesterday, I have to admit I found it clumsy and insubstantial. I had already decided to include "Mercury" in this edition, a week or two back, and it is a far better story than "Angels You Can See Through." Today, we proof "Mercury," and then I begin the actually editing, which I hope to have completed by tomorrow evening or Thursday evening at the latest.

There was also a phone call from my lit agent, as we're having some trouble with the wording of my new Penguin contract. And I'm getting gentle nudges from producer D. It is time I remember how to be a "workaholic" once more. I went too easy on myself in August, and now I am dreadfully behind.

Much to my amazement, there is actually one page in the new Tales of Pain and Wonder typescript with no red marks — p. 396, in "Lafayette." I think there's an average of twenty or thirty corrections per page. And at 471 pages...well, you do the math. This falls into the category of work that was definitely not in my best interest, financially, but this collection has been published twice before, and neither time was I happy with the outcome; this time, I am determined that I will be.

Beowulf will be out very soon, and, in the meantime, there's Daughter of Hounds, Threshold, and Low Red Moon, as well as Tales from the Woeful Platypus. The new editions of Silk and Murder of Angels will be along in December and April, respectively. And if you can't find these books at Borders or Barnes and Noble, there's always Amazon, which has everything, in or out of print. Oh, and of course there's also Sirenia Digest, in case, by some odd chance, you have not yet subscribed.

Last night, we walked at sunset, made a big pot of chili, and very late I watched Carol Reed's adaptation of Graham Greene's The Third Man (1949) on TCM, with Joseph Cotton, Orson Welles, and Alida Valli. I adore this film, but I will admit the zither drives me nuts. Oh, and I found time to make another entry to Professor Nishi's journal. All in all, a fine and busy day.

"Shut up and get to work," says the platypus, and who am I to ever argue...

This is why I hang onto books that I will likely never read or consult again. Likely, but nothing's ever certain. Yesterday, I found myself going back to Elaine Pagels' Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988), which I probably haven't read since it was new. But there was this One Last Scene I wanted to add to "The Ape's Wife," and there was this bit of gnostic poetry I could not quite recall, but which I suspected I first encountered in a Pagels book. Turns out, it's "The Thunder: Perfect Mind". So, yeah, there was Elaine Pagels yesterday, and the etymology and origin of Cherubim, and how Xtians went and got themselves so hung up about sex, and so on and so forth. I wrote the new scene, the last new scene, which came in at about 300 words. At that point, the total word count for the story had reached 8,974. I read it aloud to Spooky, which led to a great number of corrections. Before the day was done, I'd put in another six hours on the story, and the total word count had inched up to 9,011. Finally, I have come to a point where I have to force myself to step away from this one. About 10:30 p.m., I e-mailed it to Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press, and also to sovay, because I needed another opinion. Though some very minor line edits may remain, I think that it is finally finished.

Thank you, Elaine Pagels. And Tori Amos.

Yesterday brought my contributor's copy of the May 2007 issue of Locus, the "horror issue." My short article, "Awful Things," can be found on page 56, right next to Ramsey Campbell's short article. There were a number of things in the issue to make me smile. Ed Bryant's comments on Alabaster and Daughter of Hounds, for example. He pronounces the latter "...a terrific contemporary Lovecraftian novel that never parodies or condescends, but pays loving tribute to the Great Old Guy of prolix horror even as the author crafts a tautly pyrotechnic tale of ghouls and wizards, alcoholism and strained family ties, love and violence." Also, jlassen makes reference to "the Baudelaire-ian epics of Caitlín R. Kiernan." It almost seems I'm getting more comparisons to Baudelaire these days than to HPL.

The issue also contains a review by Tim Pratt of Tales from the Woeful Platypus. When I learned of this review, I admit that I was leery. With both Platypus and Frog Toes and Tentacles before it, I asked subpress to please forgo advanced reading copies (which they did), as I really did want to see reviews for these books. I cannot say for sure whether I did this because I saw the "weird erotica" as just a minor and unimportant detour, or if I was afraid that writing it would adversely effect how my "serious" books were perceived, or if I was just being insecure. Regardless, the weird erotica has now become a significant part of my writing, and a part I genuinely enjoy, and I am decidedly not ashamed of it and have seen no evidence of these two books or Sirenia Digest having any sort of adverse effect on my career. And I am glad for Tim's review, which concludes that "...Kiernan has made magic and art from the intersection of sex and haunted lives, magic and secret desires." I was also pleased that he deemed the writing in "Daughter of Man, Mother of Wyrm" to be some of my "best, creating a wonderful derangement of the senses. Of "pas-en-arrìere,' the review says "...and the two [characters] do a dance of circling seduction, advancing and retreating, and delving into unexpectedly treacherous emotional territory; it's a remarkable character study." So, yeah, how could I not smile over all that?

What else was there to yesterday? Somehow, I managed not to leave the house, but I did catch a new documentary on the Discovery Science Channel about NASA's "Starship Orion" project. We read another chapter of The Children of Húrin (Chapter VI, "Túrin Among the Outlaws"). I half watched Katharine Hepburn in Sylvia Scarlett (1935) on TCM, which had some marvelous gender-bending moments and I wish I could have given it my full attention. After Spooky was asleep, I started Jay Parini's 1994 biography of John Steinbeck, but only made it through the prologue before I finally got too sleepy to read any farther. I think that was about 3 a.m.

Okay. Time to make the doughnuts. Or bagels. Or what have you. You know, things with holes.

With only a modicum of fanfare and just a tad of hullabaloo, the New Consolidated March ended at 4:57 p.m. (CaST) on Sunday. It "only" required 2,025 words of me. It is done, and now I can move on.

Outside, the day is bright, and the sun actually seems warm today. Recently, we've been had many warm days that were not actually warm, mostly due to chilly winds. But today might be different. Only 55F right now, but there's a forecast high of 63F. I have not left the house since February 22nd. I have promised Spooky I will have a long walk today.

Just as soon as Vince sends me the art for this issue, Sirenia Digest #15 will go out to subscribers.

Me, I have to go to Birmingham, tomorrow or the day after. I was supposed to go last week, but thanks to friends, I was able to delay the whole thing by a week. But no more. I've not really left the Atlanta metro area since we returned from Rhode Island back in August. Sheesh.

I have long been an Oscar geek, but this year I just couldn't seem to care. Last night was the first Oscar ceremony I have chosen not to watch since sometime in high school, maybe 1980. But, I am pleased with some of the results. Three for Pans Labyrinth. I'm extremely happy that An Inconvenient Truth received Best Documentary. I'm also glad to see that the Academy has finally honored Scorcese, even if The Departed is far from his best film (and certainly not the best film of 2006). Very pleased to hear that Alan Arkin got Best Supporting Actor, and how can I not be glad that Helen Mirren won (though I've not seen the film in question). Great news that the R&B yodeling from Dreamgirls lost out to Melissa Etheridge's song from An Inconvenient Truth, and I'm cool with Best Visual Effects going to Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. But I am still angry that the very deserving Marie Antionette was all but shut out. Same with The Fountain and The Prestige.

Yesterday, saphfyre wrote:

I received my copy of Tales from the Woeful Platypus in the mail last week (damn waiting for things to get to Australia) and it is just as beautifully written as Frog Toes. So far i've read it in bed, and in church when forced to go to my cousins christening (much to my family's disgust), its the perfect size to carry around to read whenever one has a spare five minutes. My favorite story is still Untitled 17, but they're all amazing in their own ways.

To which I say I think she deserves the First Annual Brazen Platypus Award. And that one's gonna be hard to top. Or bottom.

And may I just please say how unspeakably sick I am of all this "Mercury in retrograde" nonsense? No, really. It's one thing to see stupid people saying stupid things. That's what stupid people do. That's why we have them. But it's another thing entirely when I see seemingly intelligent people blaming the relative positions of the Earth and Mercury for various aspects of their lives not going quite right. Mercury in retrograde, indeed. It would be less annoying and just as rational if they'd blame Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the ghost of Jesus Christ.*

Note that some of the eBay auctions end today, the ARCs for both From Weird and Distant Shores and Low Red Moon. So, if these items interest you, have a look. Thanks.

*Allowances are made for that which is purely ironical, natch.

I suppose it was entirely appropriate that UPS delivered unto me a great box of Tales from the Woeful Platypus (and "The Black Alphabet" chapbook) on February 14th. It's a gorgeous book, both editions, though I have to admit that I prefer the red leather. These are such grand little volumes, they make up for a lot of the day-to-day crap that comes with this freelance life. Has everyone who pre-ordered received hisherits copy by now?

In a fine bit of serendipity, I was just now looking back at old blog entries and discovered that yesterday was the 2nd anniversary of the day Spooky and I first visited the frog exhibit at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History. So, how fitting that yesterday we used my day off to visit the new "Lizards and Snakes: Alive!" exhibit at Fernbank? A wonderful exhibition, all in all, and I was especially pleased to see the "e"-word prominent in the exhibit text (despite this being Georgia), along with cladograms and a small number of fossil squamates (Peltosaurus [cast], Estesia [cast], Madtsoia, Megalania [cast], and Platecarpus tympaniticus). I was disappointed that there were so few snakes, only about seven species, while there must have been at least three or four times that number of lizard species. The lizards were, for the most part, surprisingly active, and I saw a number of taxa I'd never before seen in person. There are a few photos (all by Spooky) behind the cut:

( 3 lizards, 1 snake )

Otherwise, yesterday was windy and bitterly cold, and I can only look forward to next week and the return of warmer temperatures.

The platypus just gave me the 30-second warning, as there is writing to be done today, so I best cut this short before I suffer the wrath of those venomous spurs...

Spooky says this is a day off. I haven't yet written the O on my engagement calendar, though. In fact, we already did some work that had to be done (sending the corrections on "Zero Summer" to subpress). But I am not writing. For the first day in twenty days, I am not writing.

Yesterday, though, I wrote 1,558 words. Which brings my total since January 1st to 32,229. Which is likely a personal record.

Tomorrow, I have to work on Sirenia Digest, getting #14 ready to go out on Wednesday. Though I have not seen the final version, I am extremely happy with Vince's illustration for this issue. Gorgeous. Perfect for "The Sphinx's Kiss," as you shall see. Unless you are not a subscriber. In which case you will miss out and be sad.

I should not do journal entries on days off, as HTML definitely feels like work.

Anything else about yesterday? We read a great deal more of Ironweed, all the way past 2 a.m. we were still reading. docbrite called last night, and we talked for almost an hour, which is the most social contact I've had with anyone but Spooky since New Year's Day, when Byron came for dinner. I washed my hair. We set out to take a walk, but only made it as far as the southern edge of Freedom Park before the cold convinced me that exercise can wait until warmer weather. I put more Concrete Blonde on the iPod (Walking in London and Concrete Blonde). That was yesterday.

Okay. Now for something that is actually important. Today (Sunday) and tomorrow (Monday), Subterranean Press is running a benefit book sale to help defray costs of medical treatment for Sam Jones, a preschooler who has been diagnosed with cancer of the brain stem. Here's how it works:

"The special we’re running is very simple. To make it an appealing offer to you, every in-print title is 25% off if bought January 21 or 22.

For our part, we’ll be donating 25% of the retail price of each sale book bought on Sunday or Monday (Jan 21-22) to Sam’s family to help with their expenses while he’s in treatment, and will guarantee a donation of at least $2000."

So, if you still haven't picked up a copy of Tales from the Woeful Platypus, The Five of Cups, or "Mercury" (all my other subpress books seem to be sold out), today would be a very good day to do so. There are so many talented folks publishing with subpress these days, there's bound to be Something by Someone you'd like.

Let's wrap this up. Because it is manifestly not time to make the doughnuts. I've locked the platypus in hisherits carrier until tomorrow morning.

Yesterday I wrote 1,774 words, which isn't so bad. Better than "That'll do pig." Still, that number, two more words and it might have been mistaken for some bizarre act of patriotism. Blah, blah, blah. I've been at this two solid weeks now, the 1,500+ words every day and no days off for good behaviour thing. It's not so very different from prison, I would imagine.

Despite the remarkable weather, there wasn't time for a daylit walk yesterday. And walks after dark, they seem too much like someone I used to be. Our high today is supposed to be 69F*, last I checked, but then the cold and wet comes back. Weather like that is good for little but writing. So I must get out for an hour or so today, even if it means a lower word count. Because we're in for a week and a half or so of highs in the 50s, lows in the 30s, drizzle and clouds — ugh. Anything else about yesterday? I signed a box full of signature sheets for Tales from the Woeful Platypus, finishing up about 10 p.m. (CaST) only to remember that the mail isn't running today, so I can't get them back to subpress until tomorrow.

Oh, I also got a PDF galley for Subterranean Magazine #6, which includes my sf story "Zero Summer" (formerly known as "Night"). I have to make time to proof it it sometime this week. I like this story a lot. It's a piece I wrote during the bleak and dismal summer of 2005. The title comes from T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets." I also did the three illustrations (photomontage) which accompany the story.

Today would be a good time to order Daughter of Hounds or snag a copy at your local bookshop, if you've not done so already. Thanks.

Late last night, as we were getting ready for bed, I began to ramble on about the coming year, what I will and won't be writing. Dinosaurs of Mars and Joey LaFaye. Those are definite "wills." Also, I began thinking about the next two collections. Likely, they will not be finished before 2008, but they are taking shape in my mind. The sf collection, which I was going to call A is for Alien, as an homage to Bradbury, until I learned Neil will be titling a book M is for Magic as a tribute to Bradbury. Now I'm thinking that the sf collection will be called, maybe, Rumors of a Strange Universe, but that's way, way subject to change. The other book will be dark fantasy stories and might be called Worse Things Yet*, a title I've been sitting on for years.

Okay. I gotta wake up. Somehow. Coffee's a start.

* In point of fact, the temperature has reached 70F (as of 6:39 p.m. CaST).

** A nod to Manly Wade Wellman's Worse Things Waiting (1973), of course.

The comments to the last entry were much appreciated. Though I think the idea for that novel first occurred only as an angry, vengeful rant, by the time I crawled away to bed last night (4 a.m. CaST), I'd started looking at it much more seriously. If nothing else, it is a safe place where I can pour all my frustration and anger and spite for humanity. Better than going postal with a pointy stick or turning the violence inwards upon myself (my usual strategy).

I started thinking, the story will likely begin a few centuries after the aliens have completed their clensing of the planet. The central character would be an unsuspecting human girl, a teenager who has been befriended by one of the aliens. The aliens would be something completely non-humanoid. insectile, perhaps. This girl lives on the African preserve where humans have been allowed to survive, co-existing with other wildlife and getting by with only the most rudimentary sort of tech (stone tools, at best). All memories of the World Before have been lost. It would seem to the reader, at first, as though we are looking at the Earth in the latest Pleistocene, not the Holocene. These would seem like pre-agricultural humans, hunter-gatherers surrounded by elephants and giraffes and zebra and so forth, who have been visited by an alien civilization. But then this girl is befriended, and the alien teaches her things, and she begins to learn about the purge. She is eventually given access to historical records. This way, it becomes more a novel about the consequences and cultural evolution and conflicts than a space opera about alien invasion. These are, of course, only the most initial ideas. All is yet in flux, back there in my head where stories slowly, slowly take shape. My agent will tell me that there's no money to be made these days in publishing "literary sf" (she's told me that before), but I might just write it, anyway. I feel like it's a book that I need to write, and these days I feel that need all too infrequently.

Today was my first productive day since Tuesday. It has been a black and futile week. An ugly week. The deep trough between the towering waves which bear we forward. Here I cannot afford to lose even a single day, and this morning I had to sit down and mark three full days L. I do not know for sure what dragged me down this time. I never do know for sure. I strongly suspect that proofing Low Red Moon — rearranging those deck chairs — played a role. But it "had" to be done, or I'd have just had to deal with all that nasty regret. Now, at least I know the book that comes out in August will be better than the version released in 2003. And I suspect the nightmares and insomnia played a large role, as well. On Monday, I go back on the damned Ambien. Anyway, I've already canceled plans to see my family in Alabama on the 23rd-24th, to help make up for those three lost days.

The most productive thing about yesterday was an hour or so I spent tinkering with Second Life. I couldn't get very far in my investigations, however, as my iBook's OS is too antiquated to run the requisite software. Once a certain publisher sees fit to finally pay me, there will be a new Mac in Casa de Kiernan y Pollnac, and I won't be limping along on OS 10.2.6 any longer. I can play with the big kids again. Anyway, the thing with Second Life, it's actually research for the piece I started writing today for Sirenia Digest 13 (December), an sf story called "The Path of Silence." Though I'm intrigued by these attempts at creating cyber-environments, I am appalled that they are all so goddamned obsessed with commerce. Linden dollars and the buying of virtual land, the paying of taxes on that virtual land. Shopping in virtual malls, even. What the frell? Isn't there enough tedium in the real world? Is this the best humans can do in their fantasies? Shop? Spend pretend money? Are the masses really that imagination deprived? I'm sure there's more to Second Life than that, but the commercial/capitalist aspect seems awfully front and goddamned center. That shit interests me about as much as fantasy football. Leave the mundane behind, people. It'll still be there when you have to come back.

I believe that the Immaculate Order of the Falling Sky is adopting -H as it logo, in opposition of the singularitarian, transhumanist use of >H and H+.

I wrote 1,101 words this afternoon on "The Path of Silence." Spooky and I had a walk, as it was very warm and sunny, and I'd not set foot outside this dismal house since Wednesday. I read William Gibson's "The Winter Market," which is one of my very favourite sf stories.

All 274 copies of the numbered state of Tales from the Woeful Platypus have, at this point, sold out at Subterranean Press. But there are still copies of the cloth-bound trade hardcover ($20) available.

Also, please have a look at the eBay auctions. These are genuinely unique items. I know Xmas is not the best time to be eBaying (actually, Poppy says it's an excellent time for eBay), but I already explained about the belated check, etc. I really want to see the green-haired boy go to a good home. I'm going to try to list some other items tomorrow, once the writing's done.

As all the gloom began to lift last night, I did get in a couple hours of Final Fantasy XII. Fran, Penello, Ashe, and Co. made their way through the Stilshrine, found the lair of the beautiful Mateus the Corrupter, and kicked her butt. We'll, since she's sort of mermaid-like, maybe it would be more accurate to say we kicked her tail. Either way, we prevailed. Sure beats virtual shopping and paying virtual land taxes.

I've learned from Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press that, as of this morning, the limited, leather-bound edition of Tales from the Woeful Platypus has very nearly sold out. This edition consists of 274 numbered copies, and only 25 of those now remain. So, if you want the limited, you probably should pre-order now. It includes an extra story, "Excerpt from Memoirs of a Martian Demirep ", and comes with the chapbook version of The Black Alphabet.

I do not suffer from chronic migraines. These days, they hit me hard once every month or two. Unfortunately, today was one of those rare days. I woke with it, and it's still here.

No writing today, just proofreading. We made it through chapters Seven ("Forests of the Night"), Eight ("Proverbs of Hell"), and Nine ("In Caverns of the Grave") of Low Red Moon (pp. 140-205 of the Roc tpb). So, today is merely a W, but tomorrow, I suspect, will be an X.

I've been listening to David Bowie's Outside (1995) quite a lot lately, and as a result I believe that a new alter-ego is forming — Algeria Touchshriek — presently only a shapeless, sleeping thing lodged somewhere at the outermost edge of my consciousness. I am not sure who or what sheheit may become. I suppose that, in the fullness of time, we shall see.

Long months now have I searched for a simple litmus test that would demonstrate what I knew to be true (and I know that was very unscientific of me), that LiveJournal is loads cooler than MySpace. Last night's entry yielded just such a test. LiveJournal recognizes katakana, while MySpace does not. Case closed. Which reminds me, something's gone awry with my ability to crosspost to Blogger. It's been several days now. I try and get these weird "no such file or directory" error messages that I can't makes heads or tails of. I suspect there's some incompatibility between my OS and the new Blogger, but it might be something else. Anyway, sadly, as I do not intend to invest a great deal of time in solving the mystery, this likely spells the end of the mirror at Blogger. I just wish there were a way I could let those who read this journal from Blogger know. It hardly helps to post the news here or at (the inferior) MySpace. Ah, well.

Spooky had some messed up dream this morning, in which select residents of Bikini Bottom were members of the Lovecraft's mythos. She wandered around all morning muttering the eldritch tidings of Spongebob Cthulhupants. I don't know where she gets this stuff. Really.

Last night we watched John A. Davis' The Ant Bully (2006). Truthfully, I was not yet over the bitter tatse that Monster House had left in my mouth, plus I could not help but wonder if the world really needed a third CGI movie about ants (the first two being Antz and A Bugs Life). The answer is a resounding yes. Indeed, The Ant Bully will probably end up on my list of favourite films from this year. It was quite delightful. The voice acting was superb, but what really nailed it was the art direction, creature design, and animation. It was beautiful, and it rocked, and it went a long ways towards lifting my spirits. Afterwards, Spooky read to me from Chapter One ("An Unexpected Party") of The Hobbit. I first read The Hobbit when I was in fifth grade, way back in 1975.

The weather was warmer today. Not a lot, but just enough. We took a short walk along the north edge of Freedom Park, and Spooky located several wax-myrtle bushes (Myrica cerifera), and now she's talking about making bayberry candles. and I learned quite a lot about the Family Myricaceae.

I've noted that comments seem to have fallen off now that I'm doing evening posts. Of course, I have only noted a correlation, not demonstrated a casual connection.

I am at this moment exceedingly groggy, though I've been awake now for more than an hour. I did get about seven and a half hours sleep last night, which is much better than my average.

If all my days were like yesterday I surely would give up this writing thing and become a bartender. I wrote 2,264 words (3,324 if you count the blog entry), which is about the best I can ever expect from any single day. I also had to deal with last minute corrections to the galleys of Tales from the Woeful Platypus and the cover copy for Low Red Moon. I'm sure there were other things as well, but I'm too groggy to recall them all. I was still working at 12:12 a.m. (CaST), when I finally decided enough's enough and called it a day.

Sissy (scarletboi) and Spooky (humglum) have been working on the new website design. There's a temp front page up right now. You should have a look. I like what they're doing with the place. By the way, the Whitman's Salmagundi tin in the photograph was a gift from Poppy (docbrite) in 1996 (?autumn). To quote from an old interview I did sometime in 2000:

Poppy Z. Brite sent me one of the original [1920s] tins, which she'd come across in a Magazine Street antique store [in New Orleans]. She bought it for me, even though she had no idea whatsoever that I'd used Salmagundi as a character or that the box had any significance to me. It sort of freaked us both out just a little, I think. Anyway, I guess that's not so much who Salmagundi Desvernine is, as the inspiration behind her, isn't it? Doug Winter has called her my 'avatar,' which is partly true. Like Jimmy DeSade (another recurring character and Salmagundi's consort), she's a focal point for certain ideas. But she's also a character I care about a great deal, that I think of first as a person. To me, Salmagundi is something beautiful and strong that the world has lost or given up, like faith and hope, something that we're not likely to see again.

By the way, anyone who subscribes to Sirenia Digest today, any time before midnight (PST), will receive a free signed copy of the trade paperback edition of Silk. All you gotta do is click here, read the somewhat out of date FAQ (the stories are longer; it comes on or about the 21st of each month, not the 14th), then subscribe.

I continue to try to take Wicca apart and rebuild it, reconstruct it, making of it something more suited to my needs (at least until something better comes along). Part of this is the systematic expurgation of those many elements in Wicca which Gerald Gardner borrowed from Judeo-Xtian mysticism, specifically from the Ordo Templi Orientis, Rosicrucianism, and Freemasonry. All this stuff would be fine, if I wanted to study ceremonial magick or the Golden Dawn. But I do not believe it has any place in paganism. For example, for the time being I'm still using the "black-handled knife" of Gardner's Wicca, but I'm choosing never to refer to it as an athame, a term which can be traced back to The Key of Solomon, where the black-handled knife is referred to variously as arthanus, artamus, and (most tellingly) arthame, depending on the ms. copy in question. Instead, I'm using the Sindarin word sigil (= dagger or knife; pronounced "see-geel"), as Tolkien's mythos resonates with me much more strongly than does Judeo-Xtian mythology (despite Tolkien's own Xtianity). Indeed, ultimately, I may use Sindarin as my ritual language. All this may seem like "mere" semantics, but words are magick, after all, in that words carry powerful conscious and unconscious connotations. If magick is truly the "art of changing consciousness at will," then I would argue that the precise words involved, and all their connotations, are of the utmost importance. And as all mythologies are equally fictional (and therefore equally "true"), it hardly matters if I draw upon terms gleaned from Hebrew mysticism, ancient Greece, the Elder Edda, or The Silmarillion, excepting in that these different mythologies have very different subjective meanings to me.

As with most of the country, the weather here has turned bitter cold. I did not even leave the house yesterday. I think the low last night was 26F, and the forecast is calling for even colder temperatures tonight.

Okay. That's it for now. The platypus is looking askance, and that's never good.