Caitlín R. Kiernan

The sun is hidden by clouds today, and it's cooler again. Not cold, but cooler. Though I find that the longer I live in New England, the more liberal I am with my definition of warm. When I left Atlanta, my comfort threshold was somewhere between 75-80F. These days, it's dropped to something more like 55-60F. Acclimation, I suppose. I think the cooler weather bothers me quite a bit less than the "delayed" return of green. Anyway, yes, the clouds and rain are back, and it's Ostara.

Yesterday was an exceptional writing day, in terms of word count. I did 1,718 words on "Houndwife." I'm thinking I'll be able to finish the story tomorrow or Wednesday. Yesterday's biggest surprise (if a story fails to surprise me, I see no reason to be telling it) was learning that not only is "Houndwife" a sort of sequel to HPL's "The Hound" (1922), but that it's also tied to my own "Les Fleurs Empoisonnées" (2001), one of the Dancy Flammarion stories. Turns out that during her childhood the narrator of "Houndwife" met one of the Ladies of the Stephens Ward Tea League and Society of Resurrectionists and...well...you'll see. If you're a subscriber to Sirenia Digest. Anyway, I didn't see this coming at all. I've not thought about Miss Ararmat's bunch since I wrote "Still Life" for Tales from the Woeful Platypus in October 2006.

I was reading back over old entries this morning, old entries for this date, and I was especially pleased with what I had to say on this day one year ago, regarding my feelings towards competitiveness. None of this has changed, except that it's become even more true than it was a year ago.

Last night, Spooky and I watched the new episodes of Spartacus: Blood and Sand and Caprica. I grow ever more impressed with the latter, and it occurs to me belatedly that I should be looking at the plot and characters with an eye towards parallels in Greek and Roman mythology.

Yesterday...I wrote. I don't know how many words. Less than a thousand, and that took all day. The good news is that my editor for "As Red as Red" has kindly consented to extend my deadline by a few more days, so perhaps I will actually be able to finish this story. The bad news is that this means "As Red as Red" is going to start eating into time that needs to be spent working on Sirenia Digest #40, and my next day off lies somewhere in early April. I'm trying hard not to look at the big picture. I'm trying to get from one day to the next, and that's about all. Baby steps. No grand plans. No foresight. It just locks me up these days.

Our latest round of eBay auctions will be ending this evening. I'd be grateful if you'd have a look, and bid if you are so inclined and able. There are copies of two subpress chapbooks, The Little Damned Book of Days and Mercury, a copy of the mass-market paperback of Daughter of Hounds, and a PC (author's) copy of the numbered hardback edition of The Five of Cups. I don't have a lot of these left, and I can pretty much guarantee that this is a book that will never see print again. Please have a look, and thanks.

The weather here remains very cold, 31F at the moment, but the wind chill has it feeling like 20F. It's sunny, but, somehow, that only makes it worse. Most of my life, March has been the month when the world goes green again. I'm having to learn to think of it as the end of winter, not the beginning of spring.

Last night, we watched the last three episodes of Battlestar Galactica. I'm going to withhold any detailed commentary until sometime later, after I'm certain that everyone's had a chance to see the finale. I will say that I was very pleased with the conclusion. I still feel like the series was at least a season too long (season three, I'm thinking). But the ending pleased me. Sure, I have scientific quibbles, but this is space opera, not hard sf. If I fixated too much on the bad science, I'd never have been able to make it through the series premiere, much less all the way to the story's conclusion. The story being told and the characterization outweighed the bad science, which is what good space opera does. It's not about the nuts and bolts, or how well the writers can handle physics, astronomy, engineering, biology, and what have you. It's about telling a good story with the trappings of sf. I would say that's what Battlestar Galactica managed to do. I was especially pleased with the first hour of "Daybreak," which I suspect I'll watch again and again, but the second half also managed to hit a lot of good buttons. I was even pleased with the way the writers handled the "god" problem. A shame that the "SyFy" channel is apparently embarrassed by the likes of Battlestar Galactica. Or rather, embarrassed by the viewers it attracts.

Time to make the doughuts. So say we all.

Too much sleep last night, and how often do I get to say that? I'm groggy, but from sleep, not insomnia.

Days off, I end up with all this random crap, instead of actual journal entries. Day like these, my journal entries must consist of the random crap that floats through my days, or they will consist of nothing at all. To wit:

Yesterday, I read back over "Ode to Edvard Munch," before sending it off to the editor of By Blood We Live, a vampire anthology from Night Shade Books that will be reprinting the story. Reading it again, I realized (again) that sometime between the writing of Low Red Moon and Frog Toes and Tentacles —— so between 2002 and 2005 —— I quite suddenly became a much better writer. I don't know how it happened. I didn't do it on purpose. I followed no conscious agenda of change. It just happened. My style was greatly pared down. My voice simplified. My descriptions became more precise. My dialog became sharper. I learned to do much more with much less. It seems to have just happened.

Also, yesterday, while reading through "Ode to Edvard Munch," Spooky found a royalty check for $300 tucked inside a comp copy of The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance. The check is dated August 18th, 2008. And this, kiddos, is why I have to have a keeper, and why I cannot manage my own finances. I wonder how many checks I've mislaid over the years. A very small fortune, probably.

---

Friday evening, I was listening to WBRU, the college-rock station out of Brown University. The music's pretty good, but the DJs are insufferable. Anyway, Friday evening I heard two of them —— one male, one female —— trying to figure out what the word cretin means. Finally, after much debate, they achieved consensus on a definition. Cretin: a small, horned demon, sort of like an imp. And no, they were not trying to be funny. That much was obvious. And I thought, This is fucking irony.

---

Lots of "television" last night (which is to say, shows streamed via Spooky's laptop). The latest episode of Battlestar Galactica, "Someone to Watch Over Me," was very, very good, though I wish it could have ended on the scene with Starbuck at the piano, just after she played the bit of "All Along the Watchtower." I can't believe it's almost over. Well, it's not, really. The feature film is slated for a 2011 release date. We also watched a decent episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. It was good to get back to Cameron, though I can do without that horrid kid that plays John.

And after that, we played WoW, killing alien bugs in Silithus for the druids of Cenarion Circle, which just feels all sorts of wrong to Shaharrazad. Working for night elves, I mean. I've been sitting at Level 62 for...I have no idea. Let me check. Since February 19th, as it happens. I haven't been playing much WoW. And when I have, I've mostly been mining. Indeed, after giving Shah a second profession, mining. I discovered that I was enjoying "the mining game" much more than all that questing and leveling nonsense. Last night, my blue bar moved for the first time since the 19th, I guess. Anyway, the bugs in Silithus were so obviously modeled after the bugs in Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers (1997), it got me to wanting to see that ridiculous film again. So we stopped playing WoW and streamed it from Netflix. Quite an odd film, odder even than I remembered, though the creature effects have aged well.

---

I have resolved that I will now cease to read reviews of my writing. And I mean not only "reviews" (that is, readers "reviews" on Amazon, "reviews" in blogs, and so forth), but, also, actual, professional, published reviews. They almost always annoy me, even the positive ones. I cannot hope to make everyone happy. Hell, most times, I can't make me happy. Reading those reviews never changes the way I do what I do even in the least, with the exception of the review in Locus of The Dry Salvages that almost made me stop writing sf forever. So, I'm going to spare myself a lot of grief and stop reading all reviews of my work, period. No exceptions. Not if I can help it. So, please do not send me links to them online, or point me towards them, or whatever. I am cultivating disinterest and detachment. I am trimming away stress.

And I think that's all for now. It's warmish Outside, and Spooky says I can't stay in all day.

A heavy snow again this morning. It began sometime in the night, or, rather, the pre-dawn hours after we went to bed (a little after three ayem). I am beginning to think there will be snow all winter.

Yesterday, after the journal entry, Spooky and I discussed what should be covered in the epilogue of The Red Tree and what should not, and how the presence of the epilogue will effect the novel, and, indeed, whether or not there should be an epilogue at all. I made notes. The epilogue is meant, along with the preface, to bookend Sarah Crowe's narrative, conveyed by the manuscript published after her death. The prologue is written by the book's fictional editor, who had been Sarah's editor. The epilogue would be written for a second edition release of the novel, by someone who has spent several years investigating the validity of the manuscript, its origin and authorship, the legend of "the Red Tree of Barbs Hill Road," and the possibility that the entire matter is a literary hoax.

We talked, and I stared out the office window, and I made notes. Finally, about 2:30 p.m. (CaST), it occurred to me that I needed to see Moosup Valley, where the story is set, in the snow, and it was a seemingly valid excuse to escape the house for a few hours. I'd not been out more than ten or fifteen minutes, all told, since the Great Extraction of January 10th. Spooky agreed, we quickly dressed for the bone-chilling cold, and left the house about three o'clock.

Here in Providence, the snow quickly becomes ugly, as it does in any city, I would suppose. But it's beautiful beyond the city's borders. There were clouds moving in from the south and west, and the sun was a dim blot that offered no heat whatsoever. We followed 6A to 102, passing through Chopmist and other towns whose names I can't ever recall. The Scituate Reservoir was frozen over, as were all the other lakes and ponds we passed. The woods were stark, brown and grey slashes against all the white. The town of Moosup Valley is located about twenty-six miles southwest of Providence, near the Connecticut state line. I'd not been there since the early summer. We stopped a while in town, and I took some photographs, mainly of the snow-covered cemetery. There were boys playing hockey on the small pond behind the cemetery. After Moosup Valley, we folowed Barbs Hill Road south towards Coventry before heading back home.

Last night, we watched the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica (thank you, Hulu), which I'd rank as one of the best in the series so far.

And now, I need to work, and try not to be distracted by the snow. If you've not yet ordered A is Alien, I do hope that you will please take a moment to do so. Thanks.

( January 17, 2009 )

Oh, if only I had magical coffee, the coffee that bestows instant and perfect wakefulness, and eternal youth. That coffee. No, I just have this milky brown water.

Er...yeah.

Yesterday morning, Spooky took the following two photos (behind the cut) of me while I was trying to wake up. They should give you some idea of the disassembly of the hole where I hide...I mean, the office. Fold it all up. Stick it a box. Send it a thousand miles northeast. And hope this is the last big move, ever.

( Waking in an Empty Office )

Yesterday, I wrote 1,138 words on Chapter One of The Red Tree. Good pages. I think I'm finally beginning to find my way into Sarah Crowe. And after the writing, there was, of course, packing. Sorting through a mountain of papers and such atop my file cabinet (visible in the first photo, packed or discarded now) and on a shelf. But the good news is that Byron showed up about 6:15 pm, and we went to the Vortex for dinner. Moose was our waiter, which is always good. Afterwards, back home, we watched the final episode of the 9th Doctor's run, "A Parting of the Ways," because I found myself needing Christopher Eccleston. And then there was Martha Jones in the new episode of the current series, and then a particularly good episode of Battlestar Galactica. Good enough that even the commercials didn't ruin it for me. Afterwards, I spent a little quiet time in New Babbage (Second Life), mostly just sitting in the Great Hall of the Palaeozoic Museum, listening to a recorded thunderstorm (on Radio 3, Bratislava), unwinding, contemplating future exhibits. Later, Miss Paine (Spooky) showed up, and we walked down to her pie shop in the Canal District, on Bow Street. There's a room upstairs I rather love.

And after that little bit of Second Life, Spooky read to me from House of Leaves. That most frustrating chapter, at least for me. XVI. The examination of the wall samples, following the "Evacuation" of the house on Ash Tree Lane. But most of the data recovered by Mel O'Geery's Princeton lab, the knowledge of the age and geological composition of those walls, has been lost, replaced with XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, because Johnny placed a leaky fucking jar of ink on that stack of pages. And pages went missing at the publisher. And, on the one hand, every time I read the book, this section drives me mad, and on the other, this is Danielewski doing it exactly right. He taunts with hints of answers, then pulls back, lest the mystery be dissolved in mere fact. When Spooky got sleepy, I read some of Chapter 7 ("Osborn, Nature, and Evolution") of the Henry Fairfield Osborn biography. At 2 ayem, I turned off the lights and drifted down to the dreams.

Spooky's taking Hubero to the vet at 2 pm, to have him checked out before the move, and to get him a bottle of kitty Valium.

Oh, and I should post this again, because the sale price of $12.99 is good until Monday:



And, also, 350.org.

Yesterday, I did a very decent 1,416 words on "The Wolf Who Cried Girl," but still did not find THE END. What I'd planned as a 3,000-word vignette, is now almost 5,000 words long and will likely go to 6,000 before I'm done. It was a case of the idea being bigger than I'd thought, hoped, intended. Pick one. But I refused to rush it, despite the frelling deadlines (technically, this is one of the frelling deadlines).

It's damp, cold, overcast here in Atlanta. Last night there was fog, and more rain this morning. Regardless, I hope to have a good walk this evening, as this whole not-exercising thing was, at best, ill-advised.

Last night, Spooky made a very delicious stew from the carcass of the turkey (adding tomatoes, celery, white onion, baby porta bellas, tons of garlic, bay, rosemary, sage, thyme, etc.). Then we popped into Miss Hyasynth Tiramisu's ice-skating social in Second Life, a mostly NeoVic and steampunk crowd skating to lots of synthpop, future pop, etc. I never learned to ice skate worth a damn in RL, but in SL, I've found it quite relaxing (and far less painful). Later, we watched Stanley Kramer's adaptation of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee's Inherit the Wind (1960), one of those films that had a tremendous impact upon me as a preteen. Spooky had never seen it. Afterwards, we briefly returned to SL, as I needed to take care of some business at the Abney Park lab in New Babbage. That was yesterday, near as I can remember.

Commenting on yesterday's entry, Justine Musk (moschus) wrote, regarding those bizarre Quizno's "confimercials" that aired during Battlestar Galactica: Razor:

I am officially boycotting Quizno's for the rest of my life and encouraging all friends and family members to do the same because of those FUCKING. COMMERCIALS. Note to Quizno's and their ilk: people who watch a show like BG are not. fucking. idiots. Save that kind of shit for The Hills, okay? (I'm sorry. Do I sound bitter?)

Well, I can't boycott them, because I already never eat at Quizno's, but I was glad to see, poking about the interwebs this ayem, that lots and lots of other people were just as annoyed at those "Yes! It's true! Admiral Kane is a big ol' dyke! Now, go out and eat a large phallic sandwich!" spots as I was. Like I said, I wish I'd known the DVD would be out December 4th, then I could have avoided the obnoxious, homophobic Quizno's ads.

And getting back to Miss 박경범 in Korea's objections to the "malicious international cheat" that is my novelization of the Beowulf film, her allegations that I am "some rash story twister," I would just like to wonder if she is aware of the story's genesis? Which is to say, all we have of Beowulf is a Xtianized version of an obviously originally pagan story (likely concerning the clash between worshipers of Odin and the goddess Nerthus, a recollection of the defeat of the Vanir religion by Aesir-worshiping Danes). So, mind you, the story comes pre-twisted, courtesy some Xtian Anglo-Saxon monk, ca. 1,000 A.D. But, I lavish attention on an email that never warranted a reply to start with, so I shall now desist. It's just that this admittedly rather obvious question only just now occurred to me.

Have you preordered a copy of the Subterranean Press edition of Tales of Pain and Wonder? Well, it's still not too late. Also, the last Monday in November is a wonderful time to indulge in, say, a crisp new copy of Daughter of Hounds or Threshold or even Low Red Moon. Thank you.

We've gone straight from early spring to early summer down here. Days in the '80s. Spooky is not pleased.

Yesterday, because there was insomnia and Ambien the night before, was both slow and late getting started. I did eventually make it to the Woodruff Library at Emory — more research for The Dinosaurs of Mars (metallurgy, mostly, but also some other stuff, history and Native American archeology). On the way home, we stopped by Books Again in Decatur, having forgotten that they are closed on Sunday. Octavio was curled up in the windows, sunbathing, and all we could do was talk to her through the glass.

Last night, after a hurried dinner, we watched the first three episodes of Planet Earth on the Discovery Channel, "Pole to Pole," "Mountains," and "Deep Ocean" (this series aired in the UK in 2006, by the way). Superb. I was especially pleased with the way that images of humans and mention of humans was kept to a bare minimum (and then mostly as a cause of extinction or species/biodiveristy decline). We were given a view of the Earth in the late Cenozoic, free of those pesky hairless Fancy Apes, what Earth could be without humans. An Earth that at least seems unspoiled. Anyway, I do strongly recommend this series. There are still nine episodes to go, continuing with "Deserts" and "Ice Worlds" on April 1st. Then we watched The Dresden Files, and I was delighted to see Claudia Black, even if she was affecting some weird American accent. And then, of course, the season finale of Battlestar Galactica. I have to say that I think last night's ep ("Crossroads," Part 2) was one of the best of the whole series, and I actually cheered out loud at the last scene. Though I know that the SFC has greenlighted another thirteen eps, I would personally be satisfied had that been the series' conclusion. But you probably already know how I am about conclusions — less is always more. It makes me think that the series' creators knew they might not get a renewel and wanted to end the season in a way that would work as an ending for the series in a pinch, if it came to that. Seeing it last night, it made me wish the creators of Farscape could have done the same, and then that whole rushed, garbled wrapping-things-up mini-series (with which I have become increasingly annoyed) would never have been necessary. But yes, very, very good Battlestar Galactica, and now we have to wait until 2008 for more.

After all that television, we read more of Sweet Thursday, and I drew monsters, and Hubero pondered how one makes gold from lead...and why the sea is boiling hot...and whether pigs have wings.

Today, I will get Sirenia Digest #16 together, and it will go out to subscribers today or tomorrow. Vince sent the final version of his illustration for "In View of Nothing" yesterday, and it is eerie and gorgeous and perfect. I am very fortunate to have Vince along on this ride.

Also, I wanted to pass along this bit of news from Richard Kirk (richard_a_kirk), whom you will recall as the illustrator for Tales of Pain and Wonder, From Weird and Distant Shores, Wrong Things, and To Charles Fort, With Love:

Hi Everyone! Well after months of work, the images for my April show at the Strychnin Gallery in Berlin are now available for online preview. There are two places to do this, at the Gallery website under works for sale, or on my website, where I have posted larger format images. I'd love to hear your thoughts, comments and reactions.

The show opens in Berlin on April 13, 2007 and runs until May 9th. It is a two man show with artist Kris Kuksi. The opening reception will be on April 13th from 7pm to 11pm, if you happen to be in the area.

Okay. Yeah. I hear you, platypus. You don't have to raise your voice.