Caitlín R. Kiernan

Rainy and cold in Providence. Each spring, this actually-late-winter stage seems to last longer and longer. Like a sort of time dilation. I need it to fuck away elsewhere, but Nature does as Nature does. Except, of course, when we break it. Though, even then, it does as it does given a new set of rules, as it always would have done. Regardless, fuck you day of drizzle and clouds. If I don't go out today, I'll not have left the house, for more than three or four minutes on one occasion, in the past twelve days.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,755 words on "Random Notes Before a Fatal Crash," and found THE END. It is a very peculiar story. No surprise there. I'm tempted to spend two days adding footnotes, because they'd certainly fit right in. Then again, it's usually better to leave the reader to puzzle out whatever may not be clear (only too many readers hate to think; they just want "a good read" or "a quick read" or "an easy read"). It's a fine story and I'm pleased with it. Well, it's not so much a story, as journal entries from the final days of a man's life. And the word "random," it should come as no surprise that the use of that word here is a boondoggle. Anyway, when I was done with the story yesterday I realized a very important thing. The sort of very important thing I should have realized long ago. Gobsmacked by the obvious. I've spent at least three years mining my gradual and inexorable mental (and, to a lesser degree, physical) deterioration. And now it's time to stop writing novels like that. Imp and The Drowning Girl, that's the last time I do it. Probably forever. I've sold the most private confessions far too cheaply. Likely, I can't keep these elements out of my short stories, but it'll not find its way into my attempt to write YA. Blue Canary is going to be a creepy, whimsical, adventurous, fun sort of quasi-detective story. If anyone's insane, they'll be safe caricatures. I see people whine about how Kathe Koja gave up the ghost after Kink, how she "lost it" when she started writing YA, to which I can only say – fuck off. I've had enough of this. Howard Hughes is tired of telling the truth.

I forgot, a couple of days back, to mention that I'd been sent copies of Graham Joyce's The Silent Land (courtesy the publisher, Doubleday) and Carrie Ryman's The Forest of Hands and Teeth (courtesy Cassandra Brewtser). They have been added to the Mountain of That Which Must Be Read. Avalanche warnings have been posted.

So, first my grateful thanks for the bazillion or so comments to yesterday's post. It's good to know that I'm not talking to an empty room, after all. And after seeing that I'd ranked #23 in the Top 50 in BlogRanks SciFi & Fantasy Novels Category, I feel a bit better about the time I spend on this journal (usually about an hour and a half a day). Your responses were interesting. One thing I'm always surprised to hear is the oft-repeated concern that someone feels hesheit will be intruding or perceived as "stalkerish" or "fanboy/girlish" for commenting. This is most emphatically not the case. I began this blog in 2001 at the urging of Neil Gaiman, as a means of promoting my work. And though I have allowed the blog to become more personal over the years, this remains its primary function. Promotion. This is not my private journal, or some place where my RL friends gather. This is, essentially, a forum that allows me to describe what being a writer is like (for me), someplace to vent, post news, and someplace to interact with my readers. It was built to have comments.

That said, I don't argue online. So I do ask that readers show some degree of discretion in their comments. Don't troll. Don't pick fights. Please don't make what are obviously inflammatory statements. Don't rag on my friends and acquaintances. Otherwise, comment away, please. One thing that's especially helpful is getting feedback on Sirenia Digest. Unlike my novels, and short-story collections, and unlike my short fiction that appears in anthologies, all of which is reviewed, I don't get much feedback on the digest, unless it appears here or arrives via email. Thanks.

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Yesterday, the dithering came full circle. After a long conversation with Spooky, I decided to continue with "The Alchemist's Daughter," despite my reservations. It just feels wrong not to finish it at this point, even if I really shouldn't have undertaken such an ambitious story for this month's issue. Also, I hope to have time to get a second piece written for #43, "The Mermaid of the Concrete Sea." We shall see, as I also have an anthology deadline this month, and various other things to get done, and here we are, already one third of the way through June. Anyway, yesterday, I wrote 1,055 words on "The Alchemist's Daughter."

I have given my agent House of Beasts as a working title for the next novel after The Red Tree, though I don't actually plan to get to the proposal until September.

Things seem to be rapidly coming together for The Red Tree book trailer, by the way. Yesterday (thanks to Sonya, Bob, and Anita) we found our Constance Hopkins, the only character who will appear in the clip. Details TBA. This is such a different project for me, and I'm excited about it. Though it began as a promotional effort, I'm starting to look as it as a creation in its own right. This very, very, very small film we are going to make. This visual impression of the novel. Ah, and I posted another clip from the test footage we shot at Beavertail last Sunday (June 7) to YouTube. I think I'm going to use YouTub, and maybe Vimeo, to post "making-of" snippets as we proceed towards the finished product (which I hope to have completed by mid July). Anyway, here's clip 2 (the wind screws with the mike for the first 27 seconds or so, but then the sound clears up):

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A quick reminder about the current eBay auctions. Several new items up today. Also, Spooky's taking part in the "yart sale" (yard + art = yart) over at Etsy, so you might want to drop in on her Dreaming Squid Dollworks shop. Thanks!

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A reader at MySpace, "Oddly Enough," has written, "I notice Howard Hughes wiggles his way into your blog titles quite a bit, why is that? Some interest you have, or some relevant point I am missing?"

Howard Hughes is one of my quasi-alter-egos. A sort of avatar. Another neurotic recluse with whom I identify on many levels. Sadly, I'm not also a billionaire, and if I were, I'd certainly never loan $205,000 to the brother of a Republican presidential candidate. However, I do save nail clippings, and bottle caps, and movie ticket stubs, and it would be very like me to build a plane that's too large to actually fly. Also, I would have gladly dated Katharine Hepburn. So, you see where I'm going with this. Or not.

The platypus and the dodo say wrap it up. Thank you for your order. Drive around please.

Of all the silly, stupid things, I believe that I am suffering from "vacation guilt." I think it's because I have actually been enjoying myself for most of the past six days. Never mind how much I've written since last August, or that I haven't had a week off in nine months, the guilt comes anyway. But. Today is the last of the vacation. I have to email editors and agents and publishers and producers and let them know I shall be getting back to work tomorrow. My thanks to Spooky (humglum) for convincing me I was deserving of two days more than originally planned. I think I'm ready now to begin The Dinosaurs of Mars and the next new piece for Sirenia Digest and to return to the "Onion" screenplay, and then in July I will begin Joey LaFaye. It is good to feel rested for the first time in almost a year, and it is good to know the work that lies ahead of me.

Speaking of humglum, she was just regaling me with some bizarre nightmare about being trapped in a high school during a zombie attack. Fortunately, though, Tim Gunn was there with her. So, at least it was a stylish apocalypse. All the zombies were students returning to a familiar place, and Spooky and Tim Gunn and whoever else figured out that if the zombies thought you were gay or lesbian or any other sort of "freak," they wouldn't come near you for fear of freak cooties. Since Spooky's such a dyke, this worked to her advantage. And Tim Gunn, well, that's obvious enough. Still, she sharpened a mop handle into a zombie prod.

Getting back to the subject of writing, and my recent misgivings, salmagundislove commented yesterday:

At best I'll say that I've always felt those earlier works invoked genuine awe and wonder in me as a reader (amongst other things). That they laid me open to something that transcended the stories themselves. Jimmy DeSade's grief was near palpable in "Glass Coffin", as was Narcissa's terrible desperation at the start of Low Red Moon. She tracked blood through every page of that novel which (and I hate sounding like a gushing fanboy) was something I'd never encountered in literature before. I'd never seen that potential so fully realised.

I'm under no illusions that you are not doing the finest writing of your career. It's demonstrated each month when Sirenia falls into my in-box. I'm not like those infuriating Poppy Z fans who believe she should have pulled down the blinds after Exquisite Corpse.*

This may be my point, such as it is. The sense of meaning in your work may feel illusive because you're branching out in so many new and exciting ways. Again, Sirenia is the best example of this. It may not seem as obvious to you because of all the demands your life as writer may be making on you, but it's still there. It's continually taking on new forms, and I'll wager the "Onion" screenplay will be further evidence of that...

Okay, setting my concerns about Daughter of Hounds aside for a moment (and I do, truly, consider it my best written novel to date), I think you have managed to tell me what seems to be bothering you personally. Here's the thing. I began writing as a sort of therapy. To say that I was not a happy person would be an understatement of gargantuan proportions. I was a bottomless well of anger and sorrow, and for the first eleven years or so of my writing career (let's say The Five of Cups through Low Red Moon, 1992-2002) almost everything I wrote was me working through that anger and sorrow, which had accumulated throughout my childhood, my teens, and the first half of my twenties. But finally, as I was finishing with Low Red Moon in the summer of '02, I realized that I was getting better. I would go to the story place, the place where I let my emotions run wild, and there was less and less misery to draw upon. And I also realized this meant that my writing would have to change, because I certainly wasn't going to try to fake it. All those characters — Narcissa Snow, Deacon Silvey, Gin Percel, Chance Matthews, Spyder Baxter, Daria Parker, Jimmy DeSade and Salmagundi Desvernine, Jenny Haniver, Keith Barry, Echo, Lucien (as I wrote him), Dancy Flammarion, Crispin and Lark, Sadie Jasper, etc. & etc. — all of them were me. I assume this is obvious to an attentive reader. They were, in fact, avatars, and I think this is why those emotions came through so loud and clear. But when Low Red Moon was finished, I knew something different had to happened. I had to build a bridge. What I actually did was end up writing a whole book about building bridges — Murder of Angels. And that book was me laying the ghosts to rest, as best I could. And when I talk about this sense that I might have lost my way, more than anything, I'm speaking of the last couple of years. Anyway, this paragraph is very long, and I can only hope it helps make sense of your feelings about the Old Stuff vs. the New. It helps me, just to write it out. There was also a very good email from jtglover on this subject, which I will try to get around to tomorrow.

I decided I'm not up to posting all those O.O.T.S.S.O.E.R.A.A.A.P. merit badges right now. Maybe tomorrow. Oh, there was a wonderful thundershower yesterday. I did want to say that. I hope the drought is at an end and soon the park will be green again. Now, I'm off to attend to emails. Then it's back to my Second Life. I swear to the gods, this is the Best Toy Ever, and yet it is more than a toy. Do come and have a look. Sign up. It's free (and if you do sign up, please say that Nareth Nishi referred you). Late last night, early this a.m., I found myself in a wonderful tick-tock city in the company of a certain Doctor and a young woman best known for her work as a mechanic on a Firefly-class starship named Serenity. It's a goddamn box of wonders. And I will be dancing at the Dark Goddess (in Dorje) this evening from 6-8 SL time (PST; 9-11 EST). Okay. See ya, kiddos.

* Good, because those people are what is known in polite company as morons.

Yesterday was both an extraordinarily good writing day and a very confounding writing day. I did 1,674 words on "To One Who Has Lost Herself," bringing the current total word count for the story to 5,348. Once or twice I came so near to THE END that I could almost see it, but then the story would reveal some new wrinkle, some new bit of dialogue, and I'd realise that my sighting of THE END was only a mirage. In that way, it was a very frustrating day. Finally, about 5 p.m., too bleary to trust myself with so many nouns and verbs and adjectives, I called it a day, admitting defeat, admitting I'd not be finding the last sentence until today. This story (and, at this point, it isn't a vignette, but an actual short story) will go where it will. I can only follow. When it's ready, it'll make an ending for itself. I just hope it's ready today. As it is, the piece will go to at least 6,000 words. And I suppose I should say, in case I haven't said it already, my, what a different sort of story this is for me. I'm not sure just how to quantify these changes in my writing. A softening of voice, perhaps. An opening up. Not a "lightening up," but the prose is clearly less dense.

Oh, and even though all those hours of writing left me cross-eyed and foggy, I still managed to write a Wikipedia entry for the Argentinian ceratosaurian Genyodectes serus. Go figure.

My thanks to stardustgirl for hearing my poor antique heart's longing for the sound of clacking keys and pointing me towards Typewriter 2.10. Now the iBook has a voice not too dissimilar from the ancient Royal I grew up on (which had been my mother's before me). I loved that typewriter, despite the tangling ribbons and the jamming keys and the keys that sometimes punched straight through the paper. Sadly, the Royal fell prey to some part of my tumultuous twenties. I last saw it about 1987, I think. At any rate, I can now clack clack clack to my heart's content.

And speaking of changing prose, last night I was talking to Spooky about the ways that Daughter of Hounds is different from the novels and short stories that have come before. There is an undeniable difference, but I've been a little at a loss to explain to myself or anyone else the nature of that difference. Last night, I finally hit upon it. It's about avatars, sensu "An embodiment, as of a quality or concept; an archetype," et also sensu "A temporary manifestation or aspect of a continuing entity." And, perhaps, as well, "The distillation of some aspect of myself." In all my novels, up to DoH, certain characters have functioned as my avatars. I'm not sure I was even aware of this on a conscious level until Peter Straub wrote his afterword to Tales of Pain and Wonder and declared Salmagundi Desvernine to be my avatar. And it's true. She was. But only for a particular part of myself, not the whole. Salmagundi was my longing, my nostalgia, my despair at the meaning and civilization which mankind cast aside in its race through the 20th Century.

I've had many other avatars. Deacon Silvey was my avatar, too. He has been that viciously self-destructive part of me which always means well, always intends to do the right thing, and yet which usually succumbs to the weaknesses and shortcomings of my personality. He's the hopeless fuck-up side of me. Spyder Baxter was the incarnation of my unsane mind and my unceasing fear of abandonment. Chance Matthews, she was the part of me which cannot escape a blind adherence to mechanistic rationalism, even when faced with its occassional shortcomings, and the part of me that would have remained a paleontologist even though the world decided to push in some other direction. Chance was also my regret and my mourning. Narcissa Snow was the alien in me, the outsider and inhuman which is neither this nor that nor the other, but which is ever seeking to take a side, which is to say that she is the avatar of my monstrosity. Even Gin Percel, way back there in The Five of Cups, she functioned as an avatar as well. She was my seemingly bottomless anger at and despite for the world around me and the circumstances of my life. Later, Dancy Flammarion became a more refined version of that same avatar. Niki Ky was the most vulnerable and strongest bits of me, and Daria Parker was all my stubbornness and perseverance and passion and the razor sharp corners of my self which will never soften. And, finally, Sadie Jasper has been, three times now, an evolving avatar who first appeared as the younger, headstrong, sulking goth bitch I was during those years in Athens, and then she was the resigned writer, writing for herself and herself alone, and the part of me that knows better than to lie down and die, even when the wolf has me by the throat, and then, finally, in Daughter of Hounds, she became...well, you'll see. I shall not spoil it.

In each case, the avatar has served as my route into and through the book, and they have also made of each book deeply personal artefacts. Now, I look at Daughter of Hounds and see that the only personal avatars I seem to have placed there are Sadie and Deacon, the old standbys, but only in supporting roles. They are never allowed to take center-stage. That space is reserved for Emmie Silvey and for Soldier and for the Daughter of the Four of Pentacles. Even Odd Willie Lothrop and Saben White and Esmeribetheda are more central to the novel than are Deacon and Sadie. And last night as I was talking through this with Spooky, I understood, at last, that DoH is the first time that I've taken a backseat to the story. And that this isn't a Bad Thing. It's merely my inevitable evolution as an artist. Finally, my psyche was strong enough to relax and tell a story, instead of putting myself through another round of public psychoanalysis via my fiction. Deacon and Sadie are there, and just a faint hint of Chance, and they are still my avatars, but they're watching from the wings, unable to directly act upon the course of the play. And this is my epiphany. And I feel somehow freer for having had it. Make of it what you will.

So...with that out the way, I should mention that echidnas and hedgehogs everywhere agree that Thursday, April 6th, 2006, is a stellar day to subscribe to Sirenia Digest. The way things are going, Issue #5 will feature close to or in excess of 10,000 words of new fiction. Do not deny the wisdom of spiny mammals. Subscribe today!