Caitlín R. Kiernan

So...I'm tooling along through Ashenvale (long story), and Suraa and I come upon a Draenai being pursued (or so it appears, and one would reasonably assume) by a troll hunter and her cat. We stop. We attack the Draenei. The troll starts shouting, "Don't do that! That's mean!" I kill the Draenei. The troll says, "I wish I had an Alliance character :(" (Yes, she used the emoticon in rp chat). I asked why. She said, "So I could come kill YOU!" I said (without breaking character), "Are you giving aid and comfort to the enemy? Shall I carry word or this behavior to your superiors?" She said, "Don't be a hater :(" (yes, emoticon). Suraa and I rode off, utterly baffled, after Suraa rped kicking the dead Draenei in the head.

I'm pretty sure we strolled into the midst of some hot Draenei-on-troll action, or someone's trying the use World of Warcraft to wage peace.

Anyway...

As for the earlier post, I'm not dead or anything, though I do appreciate all the well wishes. Too many nights of serious insomnia and nightmares, compounded by the frustration and stress of trying to write a story that I finally had to shelve yesterday. Mostly, I need to sleep, without dreams. And find a new story...

Draenei and trolls. What's the world (of Warcraft) coming to?

I think the worst of this bug has passed. I gradually began to feel better yesterday, and by last night, much of the discomfort had abated. This morning, it's mostly post-nasal drip and sniffles. So, that could have been a lot worse.

I wrote 1,371 words on "At the Gate of Deeper Slumber" yesterday, and reached THE END. Today, I'll read through the whole story, and I think I'll be doing a lot of polishing and tweaking afterwards. It seems a little more rough than usual, what with me having written it while sick and all. Remember, this one will appear in Sirenia Digest #41 at the end of the month.

Also, the first-pass page proofs for The Red Tree arrived yesterday. I have until May 7th to get them back to NYC. It's starting to look like a novel, this thing that I'd hardly begun writing this time last year. That never ceases to throw me a little. I was talking to Kathryn about The Red Tree late last night, mostly about how it's not really connected to all the other novels, and how I intend to push it the way I pushed Silk, way back when. I have some hope, some small hope, that it might reach a wider audience than my earlier novels.

Last night, Spooky went out and got a pizza, and we spent the evening binging on Season 6 of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, including one of my favorite episodes, "Once More, With Feeling." We watched that one twice, actually, because we let it play a second time with Joss Whedon's commentary. We had the bedroom window open until late, and the air smelled marvelous.

You know, I'm genuinely beginning to miss the world where "google*" was a relatively obscure mathematical term, where "yahoo" referred to "a crude or brutish person" (derived from the Yahoos of Swift's Gulliver's Travels), where "Amazon" referred either to a South American river or to Ἀμαζόνες, a nation of fierce female warriors. When a "blackberry" was a fruit, and "twitter" was just a noise that birds made. When phrases like "bluetooth" and "facebook" and "livejournal" meant nothing whatsoever (well, there was Harald Bluetooth Gormson), and to send someone mail, you needed a stamp. I've been feeling even more nostalgic than usual. Also, I'm beginning to have trouble properly allocating the resources I have available for worry, between the economy, Pakistan, melting ice caps, and now the swine-flu outbreak in Mexico. Is this the darkness before the dawn, or the calm before the storm? I'm guessing the latter.

* Okay, yeah, I know, technically that was "googol" (the digit 1 followed by one hundred zeros), but, fuck it, it was such a great way to begin the paragraph...

So, I don't know what Spooky and I managed to contract. It certainly isn't the flu. It seems to effect the ears and throat, mostly. Whatever it is, we feel like ass, both of us. And I best be feeling better very soon, as warmer weather is on the way, and the trees are greening, and I have no intention of missing it by being sick. At least I slept last night, about eight and a half hours, so perhaps this bout of insomnia was bested by the bug.

However, sick or not, I managed yesterday, somehow, to write 1,074 words on "At the Gate of Deeper Slumber," which will appear in Sirenia Digest #41.

This is going to be a short entry. There's only so much sitting-up-and-typing energy to be had right now, and I have to conserve most of it for the short story.

My thanks to David Kirkpatrick, who sent me two volumes from a series of books on Early American architecture, New England by the Sea and Village Architecture of Early New England (both from 1987). These will be put to good use.

Someone asked, via my Facebook page, "Since you started me Tarot reading I thought I'd ask you. If I'm trying to learn is their a book you'd suggest?" To which I reply, there are about a million books on Tarot out there, but, if you can find it, my favorite is still Eden Gray's The Tarot Revealed. First published in 1960 (I think), I see it's still in print. The book works from the Rider-Waite deck, which happens to be my favorite, and which I also think is a good place for beginners to, well, begin.

Okay. I think that does it for me. I must resist the urge to go back to bed, where I probably belong right now. Oh, and just to demonstrate how utterly out of touch I appear to be with mainstream pop culture, I had no idea that American Idol was still on the air, much less that it was immensely popular, and apparently considered newsworthy. I will take this as ample evidence that ignorance is bliss.

Er...maybe I can write an entry in my sleep. Let's find out, shall we? At the very least, the attempt will amuse the Platypus and the Dodo, and their lives are so devoid of genuine entertainment. I was in bed a little after two a.m. last night, so I ought to be awake. But, then, just as I was dozing off, I had a small seizure, which woke me up. I had to take another Ambien, and still didn't get back to sleep until after three. That's two seizures in two days. There was a rather bad one on Sunday. And no, they're not making it any easier to get this short story written. Truthfully, the stress surrounding this story is likely the trigger.

Even after a year, I'm still uncomfortable talking about my fits here. But, they have a great impact on my writing, and on my ability to write, so leaving them out would be a sort of dishonesty. It's not that I mind lying, but I hardly see the reason in keeping this journal if I'm not truthful about what being a writer is like for me.

To add to the fun of the last two days, our internet connection (and that of everyone in the area) has been touch and go. Mostly go. These days, I rely primarily on the web for both dictionary and thesaurus. And because I'm writing so goddamn much, there's little time for out-of-house research, so I'm forced to rely heavily on sources such as Wikipedia, Google books, and thousands of websites. It usually works out okay, so long as you carefully check everything against other sources (it's especially important to double-check what you find on Wikipedia, given their dubious policies regarding neutrality and their practice of placing consensus before authority). Anyway, yesterday the internet was down until sometime after sunset, and virtually nothing was written. Maybe 250 words. I desperately need to finish "As Red as Red" by tomorrow evening. Oh, and to add to the fun, the CEM for The Red Tree is due any day, and Penguin wants it back in Manhattan by April 3rd, which means we have to manage Sirenia Digest #40 and the CEM simultaneously.

Last night, there was an hour or so of rp with the Alpha Institute in Ethereal. And, afterwards, I played WoW for a bit. I have discovered that I have a lot more fun with WoW if I focus on low-level stuff, rather than the high-level quests. And that I enjoy soloing more than playing with Spooky. She took me to Outland, and, yeah...it's pretty. But, honestly, I'm enjoying myself more trying to getting exalted with Orgrimmar and the Darkspear trolls. Go figure. Maybe Shaharrazad's just not an epic kind of girl.

After the seizure, trying to get to sleep, I re-read much of Lovecraft's "The Shunned House," which is actually relevant to "As Red as Red."

My thanks to everyone who bid in the latest round of eBay auctions. Don't forget that the trade paperback edition of Alabaster will be out soon, there's now a mass-market edition of Daughter of Hounds, and there are still (I think) a few copies of the trade hardback A is for Alien available. The more books I sell, the fewer scars I get from Herr Platypus' venomous spurs. This is the economy of my life.

The snow came again last night. Outside, the world and the sky are competing to achieve the brightest shade of grey imaginable. And there's that discomfiting silence that the snow brings, almost a smothering removal of sound from the air.

Mouthwise, I'm feeling much better. Most of my strength is back. I'm eating semi-solid food, and there's no pain to speak of. After nursing that broken, aching tooth for more than a year, it's very weird, the absence of it.

Spooky got me a little tarantula hand-puppet as a get-well present. I have named it Hairy Bellafonté, for obvious reasons.

Not much to report. I begin writing again tomorrow, because I cannot possibly afford all this bullshit convalescence. Financially or psychologically. My brain has had far too much "downtime" the last three days. Ergo, the insomnia's bad again. Less than six hours last night.

Still wading through Season One of Jericho. It really does get better towards the end of the first season, but simply cannot overcome the gravity that comes with being a network series. Gerald McRaney is almost as much of a joy to watch here as he was on Deadwood, and Lennie James is nice. Even Skeet Ulrich has become less annoying. But I can't help but see all the missed opportunities for Jericho to have been something genuinely good, instead of something that's just okay. Great stuff for when you don't feel like getting out of bed, but I know I never would have watched this week to week. I never would have made it past the first few episodes, where the bad science was especially bad. And now I see that the series was canceled partway through Season Two, so I'm not sure I'll even proceed beyond the end of the first season. It's not hard to see why it was canceled (writers strike and economy aside). It's difficult to imagine an America that wants to ponder the possibility that the head of the Department of Homeland Security might mastermind a domestic nuclear terrorist plot.

And a stray thought. Take it or leave it. Without wisdom, cynicism is only another way of being stupid. That is, if one becomes a cynic, it should arise from firsthand observation. It should not be assumed as a default setting.

Last night, in the storm, I went Outside for a bit. I'm not sure I was up to it, still a little woozy, and I think it annoyed Spooky. To her, this is merely snow. To me, it's...well, snow. Walking about Federal Hill, I took a few photos (behind the cut).

( January 10, 2009 )

Just a short entry.

We've spent most of the evening watching South Korean horror films, via Asian Horror Movies.com. The first, Hansel and Gretal (2007), was really quite wonderful, in a subtle and thoroughly creepy sort of way. Though, in all honesty, it owes as much to Jerome Bixby's "It's a Good Life" (1953), as it does to the Hansel and Gretal story. However, the second film was an awful mess of a thing, The Dollmaster (2004), which started from an interesting premise, but amounted to no more than a confused, dull slasher film with annoying Asian actors, instead of annoying American actors. But I do recommend Hansel and Gretal.

More than a bit stoned on pain meds right now. And wondering why I'm bothering to make an entry at all. Obsessive communication?

Rain much of the day. Slush and unmelted snow.

And I should repost the link to the auctions. Otherwise, I think I'll "see" you on the other side of the dentist's office.

This morning, Elizabeth Bear (matociquala) said some good stuff about writing, and if you're interested in that sort of thing, you should have a look. Though I gather she and I have very different systems for getting it done, I think she's mostly bang on. My only quibble was with this line, in her summation, "You must revise what you write." And I say that because, generally, I don't revise what I write. Oh, I might come back fifteen years later and do some damn fool rewording, but, usually, what comes out as my "first draft" is what sees print (at least the first time it sees print), be it vignette, short story, novella, or novel. And since I'm a moderately successful published author, it is obviously not true that revision is a "must." In the end, this all comes back to what I've said again and again and again. There is no set of rules. There are people who will tell you there is, and there are people who make a living doing just that. But it's a lie. The only set of musts is what works for you. Unless, of course, what works for you isn't working, in which case, it might be that you simply weren't meant to be a writer, and all the formulae under the sun won't change that. Anyway...yes, a good post.

Because I made a somewhat idiotic miscalculation as to when I would be receiving my next check from Penguin, we're starting a new round of eBay auctions. Please, if you can, bid. I'm even going to do something I've not done since 2005 or so. Every winning bidder will receive one of my patented Monster Doodles. Okay, so they're not patented, but people seem to like them. Right now, we have copies of the "Mercury" chapbook, the trade edition of Frog Toes and Tentacles, and the Little Damned Book of Days chapbook up. But more is coming. Spooky's even going to be doing a couple of the black velvet/red silk "cozies" to accompany lettered editions of Frog Toes and Tentacles. These were, as they say, all the rage back in 2006. But she only made a handful, and they all sold. So, yes, please have a look at the current auctions. Because I'm lousy at finances. Thanks.

As for yesterday, it was all I could do not to head for the Cape (Cod), once I learned the extraction had been postponed pending the cessation of this damned cough. The weather was so warm (low sixties), and the sea was calling. Instead, I was good, and I sat here in my chair and worked. I did the line edits on "The Colliers' Venus (1893)." I spoke with my agent in NYC. I finally almost caught up on my email. I spoke with the artist who will be spotlighted in Sirenia Digest #37. I was productive, which just seems stupid, all things considered.

Today, we have winter-weather warnings, and will be seeing a mix of snow and rain tonight.

Last night, after Chinese leftovers (pork moo shu and beef fried rice), we played WoW, and played, and played...and played. And yet we managed, somehow, not to reach Lvl 42. We wound up out in Desolace, trying to help orcs start some sort of centaur civil war. Yes, we went all the way to Desolace, the wastelands on the western edge of Kalimdor, just to escape the Xmas idiocy that has infested WoW. In Silvermoon City, there are Xmas trees and blood elves in Santa suits. I shit you not. Undercity looks like the Xmas decorations section at Hot Topic threw up all over everything. So...I'll either be sticking to the wilderness until this insanity passes, or I'll lay off WoW until the new year. Sticking to the wilderness is no guarantee of safety, as I hear "grinches" are now roaming the Alterac Mountains. I will not do even a single of those stupid Xmas quests or accomplishments. I don't care if they would instantly catapult me to Lvl 80. And what amazes me, players love this silly shit. Go figure. Anyway, yeah...we finished up at the Dustwallow Marshes and traveled, on horseback, east across the Barrens and the Stonetalon Mountains to Desolace. Aptly named Desolace. I'm not exactly sure what the orcs want with the place, truth be told. Somehow, we were up until after four ayem (!!!!) trying to reach Lvl 42. Mostly, I think the pain in my mouth was keeping me awake, and playing WoW in pain was better than trying to sleep in pain. There are a couple of screencaps behind the cut.

Okay...so, here's another day. Well, the few hours remaining until sunset. Let's see what's next:

( Desolace )

Not a lot to say about yesterday. Sometimes, it seems as though the mission of this journal is to say as much as possible about very little.

It's slightly warmer today. Hubero and Linus are getting along; it was a short adjustment period.

Last night, we went out into the cold to see Steven Sebring's Dream of Life, the Patti Smith documentary, at the Avon on Thayer Street. It was beautiful. In every way. It was cool seeing footage from the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta. We're so lucky to have the Avon. We can see films without going to a googleplex, and without enduring National Guard recruitment propaganda. One theatre, one screen. No nachos.

I think I've mostly been in a haze of pain and painkillers for two days now. Maybe three. It's all blurring together. Work that needs doing is not getting done. I'm getting behind. I don't seem truly fit for anything but movies and sleeping.

There are two photo of Linus, including a close up of his polydactyl forepaws:






Photographs Copyright © 2008 by Kathryn A. Pollnac

There was a bad seizure a little after ten p.m. I came to on the kitchen floor. And often after seizures, if there is not deep, deep sleep, here is insomnia. Like now. I've been dozing for hours, and just took a second Ambien. I'm sitting here at my desk, while the neighborhood sleeps. While the house sleeps. My mind is racing. Such profound quiet. Only the faint hum of the fridge, a fainter clicking from the baseboard radiators.

I haven't made an entry since September 14th, when I made a short and scattered entry. And now I am faced with the unenviable task of trying to play catch up. Except, I know that I can't, so, instead, I'll just touch on the highlights of the past few days. They are a blur of some genuinely impressive mouth pain, and almost no sleep at all. Last night, finally pain free, I slept a remarkable eight hours, and almost feel functional again today.

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Friday night (September 12): After writing all day, we drove to Warwick, because Newbury Comics was having a thirtieth anniversary sale. 30% off lots of stuff, including used DVDs, which was our main interest in going. We picked up Kill Bill (Vols. 1 and 2), Amelie, Slither, and Interview with the Vampire. All of which came to just under $40. Yay sales. However, by the time we left the store, it was dark and rainy, and when Spooky cranked the engine, the windshield wipers wouldn't wipe. The motor that drives them had burned out. So, we called AAA to get the car towed back to Providence, and called Spooky's mom, who came up from Saunderstown and gave us a ride home. Back home, cold and damp, we had night #2 of the Amazing Chicken Soup, watched Slither again (love that movie), and read more of Interview with the Vampire. And it was that night that the mouth pain went from a nagging, minor thing, which it has been since my last dentist appointment in May, to full-blown Hurt. First night of not sleeping.

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Saturday (September 13): All day, stoned off my ass on Oxy and zolpidem and Klonopin, and I managed to get nothing written, no work done. I could hardly concentrate on listening to Spooky read, though that's mostly what we did. I lay on the sofa and bed, my mouth throbbing, and listened to Spooky reading Anne Rice aloud to me. Late, in a fit of desperation, unable to listen to more of the novel (Claudia had just poisoned Lestat, a part of the book that leaves me heartsick for all three characters)...this sentence has clearly lost direction. Let's try again.

Later, in a fit of desperation, needing distraction, I signed up for the free ten-day trial of World of Warcraft and played for five hours straight. It's like....crack. Actually, it's a lot like Morrowind, with better (though more stylized, more like a Final Fantasy game) art and animation. It's actually a very, very playable game, much to my surprise. I don't see a lot of room for rp in WoW, and even though I signed onto a supposedly rp-dedicated client, there were still people with idiotic, inappropriate "names" —— Chickenwing, Imripped, etc. What the hell. Are there really people who can't stop being jackasses long enough to get into the spirit of a game? Or do they not even grasp the concept of character? Also, when I'm anyplace I can pick up chat (Darnassus, for example), the homophobic lolspeak is excruciating. But, other than those three drawbacks, like I said, WoW is quite playable, and I'm having fun with it. I'm now a Level 13 night-elf fighter named Merricat (thank you, Shirley Jackson). Day #3 of the ACS.

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Sunday (September 14): Sick from my second night without sleep, and sick from all the Oxy, and the bloody pain, I stared out the window a lot, unable to even begin to work. I did play some WoW. There was a 5 p.m. meeting of all the folks in the Howards End rp and build-team groups, and I think I managed not to make an ass of myself, despite being asleep and sick. My thanks to everyone who came. Great turn out. There was ooc banter (which will be rare in HE), and many questions were asked, and, afterwards, people wandered about the sim. It gave me some hope this will actually happen. But, as the evening wore on, after dinner and night #4 of the Amazing Chicken Soup, the pain in my mouth became too great a distraction, and I just sort of shut down. I've had a LOT of tooth pain in my life, but Sunday night and Monday morning were truly unforgettable. I think I got to sleep about 5 ayem, and slept fitfully.

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Monday (yesterday): It was suddenly summer again, hot. Spooky found me a dentist over on College Hill, and I had a 3:30 appointment. I took Oxy and Advil and waited. Oh, I bathed. Rarely, have I so looked forward to a dentist appointment. Anyway, it went as well as such things can. No abscess, which surprised me, but there's no saving the cracked tooth. He removed the filling that was put into it back in February, then packed it with antibiotics and something that tastes of clove oil and made the pain stop. It will buy me some time, though no one can say how long. Then, I'll go back for the extraction.

After the dentist, I needed the sea. I loathe feeling frail, and I felt extremely frail yesterday. So, after we swung back by the house, Spooky drove me down to Point Judith and Harbor of Refuge. The sea does not make me feel less fragile, but it puts my fragility in perspective. Next to Panthalassa, even granite is frail, so who am I to feel dread or disappointment at my own weak flesh? We walked about just a bit, because I was woozy, and watched dragonflies and Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus), which were everywhere. I picked up some clam shells (Mercenaria mercenaria), and we headed back to Narragansett. My mouth was still a bit numb, but we stopped at Iggy's, because we were both starving, and I managed a bowl of chowder (Manhattan style) and a couple of doughboys. On the way home, I dialed the iPod to Sigur Rós, and dozed until we were back in the city. That, in synopsis, was the last four days.

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Please have a look at the current eBay auctions. Hopefully, today marks a return to "normal." Oh, the reprise of summer lasted only a day, and it's cool again.