Caitlín R. Kiernan

First, a quick update to say that Sirenia Digest 10 has gone away to Gordon (thingunderthest) for PDFing (good and frelling proper will he PDF it, too!). If all goes well, I believe Spooky's sending it out late this evening. If not, you'll get it early tomorrow. It came to a whopping 33 pages! Not too late to subscribe, you non-subscribed gardas and nixars. Not too late at all.

Sometimes, usually when we're hanging out with Byron and Jim, who are also survivors of Athens, Georgia, and usually when I've been mixing my Guinness and Bass, I start speculating how my life might have gone if I'd not left Death's Little Sister in February 1997. If I'd stayed in the band, taken the musician road instead of the writing road when Silk sold and The Dreaming wanted all my time and I had to make the choice. Most often, we imagine that the band would have survived a year or so, with one disastrous southeastern US tour, before interpersonal problems tore it asunder. Thereafter, sometime in 1998, about the time Silk was published, I'd have formed a second band, Crimson Stain Mystery. Also, by this time the booze and pills and heroin would have begun to take their toll upon my person. But still, CSM would get one indie/college radio hit before it imploded in late 2000. We would have made a video, directed by Athens' own James Herbert. There would have been a lurid three-week affair with (sorry about this) Marilyn Manson before the band, stuck in Japan and sick to death of my wicked ways, reluctantly abandoned me, split, and I ended up in rehab. By 2003, I'd have worked in a couple of Athens record shops before finally becoming a bartender at Lunch Paper and then The Manhattan. I'd still be struggling with the heroin problem, and every now and then I'd write a short story. I'd have a lot of tattoos. And these cassettes (behind the cut) might have existed (thank you Derek oneirophrenia, for the link):

( Might have beens )