Caitlín R. Kiernan

Yesterday, I did 1,080 words on "Shipwrecks Above," which seems to be coming along well. I'll likely finish it today. The title, by the way, was borrowed from P.J. Harvey's "Liverpool Tide." Also, I've been meaning to post this for a while, and this new story has reminded me. From Heather Ehrenstrasser, a very cool piece inspired by "Fish Bride" (Sirenia Digest #42, May 2009), behind the cut:

( Fish Bride )

By the way, the platypus says today would be an excellent day to pick up that second or third copy of The Red Tree, for a friend or family member, or to chuck at annoying rodents (your choice), and help us sell out the first printing. Please, and thank you.

Speaking of The Red Tree, I'll be signing Saturday at Friendly Neighborhood Comics, 191 Mechanic Street, Bellingham, Massachusetts, from 4 to 6 p.m. Hope to see you there. Also, I've been invited to do a reading/signing at Brown University here in Providence at the end of October, and I'll get you the details as soon I have them.

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So many books and movies the last couple of weeks, and I'll eventually get around to saying more about them. Last night, having just finished watching the first season of Dead Like Me for the second time, we started Pushing Daisies (both shows from Bryan Fuller). A shame that Pushing Daisies didn't survive for longer than two seasons, because it's genuinely wonderful. Many elements from Dead Like Me are reworked, revisited, but in a completely different tone. Sort of Lemony Snicket meets the Cohen Brothers. I adore it. Less character depth than we got in Dead Like Me, but grand, all the same, and I could just look at those sets forever. We made it through the first five episodes last night.

And now...time to make the doughnuts.

Sirenia Digest #6 went out late yesterday afternoon and last night (thank you, Spooky), so everyone should have it by now. I've received some very positive comments on "The Black Alphabet," which is reassuring. Note, though, that this piece will not be reprinted in Tales from the Woeful Platypus, as the collection only covers issues #1-#6.

Spooky says today is an off day. It will only be my fourth in the past forty-two days, so that seems fair. We have no plans. The day is going to be hot, so we'll likely spend most of the afternoon indoors, reading and suchlike. I like the idea of a day off with no plans. Tomorrow, though, I'm going to begin work on the second half of "The Black Alphabet," as I really do intend to get the next issue of the digest out by June 14th.

There was much more work yesterday than I'd expected, and afterwards I was bleary and unfocused. Spooky had gotten a watermelon from the co-op, and we ate watermelon on the front porch and spat seeds into the grass. It was a very good, locally grown, "organic" watermelon, not one of those flavourless, thick-rinded things from Publix. After dinner, we had a long twilight walk around Freedom Park. Most of the day's heat had bled away, and there was the slimmest crescent of the waxing moon. We saw a few lightning bugs, but no bats. The pink and purple remains of sunset hung above downtown Atlanta. I picked some flowers for our altar. It was a very good walk. Back home, we finished Chapter Nine ("Matrix") of The Triumph of the Moon. Hutton's book grows ever more captivating, but...no one, not even a Professor in History at the University of Bristol, should be permitted to use a word like "revivifying" when "reviving" works just fine. Or so I say. Later, we watched Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), which I'd never seen before. Certainly it was better than Star Trek V, but then most things are. Iman was much appreciated, though there was too little of her. Kim Cattrall made a perfectly cute Vulcan saboteur, and I kept singing the Kim Cattrall song from MST3K, mystifying Spooky no end. I was baffled by Michael Dorn's appearance in the film (as ST:TNG had already established him as Worf), but it was nice getting so many Klingons all at once. Oh, and we watched some of the extras on the last Dead Like Me DVD, including the short making-of documentary, Dead Like Me...Again.

That was yesterday.

I think I am in direst need of breakfast. I could murder a produce stand.

Postscript: Cari at Darkshire...you need to e-mail Spooky at crk_books(at)yahoo(dot)com. Your digest bounced last month, and it bounced again last night, so we need a new e-mail. Thanks!

First things frelling first. A very, very happy birthday to docbrite. You old bastard, who'd have ever thought we'd both stick around so goddamn long, hmmm?

Yesterday was something I don't seem to get very often. Yesterday was a genuinely good day, top to bottom, side to side, stem to stern. When it was over and done and I was lying awake in bed at 3:30 a.m., it occurred to me that I had no complaints. And it had not been merely a neutral day during which the shitstorms had been held at bay, but a day which was simply nice. So, if the Cosmos listens, thank you. May I have another, please? It was also a stellar writing day. I'm no longer sure what my personal best is, my "most words in a single day" count, and some kind soul should scour the journal for me and figure it out. But. Yesterday I did a perfectly astounding 2,404 words between about 1:45 p.m. and 7:12 p.m. and finished the first half of "The Black Alphabet." And, what's still more amazing, it was actually fun to write. I did G-M. I'm pretty sure that "The Black Alphabet" trumps everything else I've done thus far in Sirenia Digest for raw, undiluted, honest kink. That's my soul up there, you know? Reading it to Spooky late yesterday, I was like, wow, I actually wrote this stuff down, and I'm actually going to let all these people read it. Exhibitionist me. So, yeah. A very good writing day. The first half of "The Black Alphabet" comes in at 3,674 words (before proofreading/editing). I'd meant to do only a hundred to two hundred words per letter, but a few, like L, went on much, much longer. The second half will appear in Sirenia Digest #7 in June.

stsisyphus has suggested I run a poll to help decide which of the vignettes will be selected for the 10,000 words of reprint that will comprise half of Tales from the Woeful Platypus, and I may do that. Thing is, since only half the book is reprint, and since the vignettes have tended to run on a bit longer than those in Frog Toes and Tentacles, I can only choose three or four for reprint. Yet another reason to subscribe (hint, hint). Most of what goes into the digest will not be reprinted in these Subterranean Press volumes. I am considering asking Bill if we can increase the length of TftWP from 20K to 30K words, but we're constrained by the small format of the book, which I do definitely want to keep. As they say on Nebari Prime, Srai' brel yi v'rest ("See we shall").

Neither of us felt like cooking last night, so we grabbed take-away from the Mellow Mushroom in Decatur. I celebrated having mostly finished writing this issue of the digest by watching a favourite ep of Farscape, "Fractures" (poor Hubero is still the cutest), and then we binged on four more eps of Dead Like Me. Sadly, only three remain, and it's painfully clear that there will be many, many loose threads left dangling by the show's untimely cancellation. Alas and alack and all. After dinner, before all the frelling television, we walked over to Freedom Park, the first time we'd braved it after dark. The park doesn't actually close until 11 p.m., and there were still a few dog-walkers out. The stars were surprisingly bright, considering all the Atlanta light pollution. Venus was ablaze. We spotted a satellite. I just wanted to lie down in the grass and spend the whole night there. Perhaps later in the summer. Oh, and I read another JVP article, a description of the cochleosaurid temnospondyl amphibian Nigerpeton ricqlesi. Really, the very worst thing I can say about yesterday is that Spooky and I both ended it with insomnia. She was up until after 5 a.m. I got to sleep about 4, but was awake before 9. And really, that's more about the space between yesterday and today than a reflection on either day.

However, this morning I had one of the worst cherry Danishes I've ever suffered through. Spooky brought it back from Aurora Coffee at L5P (she meant well). Locals, consider yourselves warned. The cherry part resembled nothing so much as candied monkey testicles.

At some point, Poppy was doing a "pet grammar peeve" of the day sort of thingy. Aside from my absolute loathing for l33t and txt tlk, I make a pretty poor excuse for a grammar Nazi. But I did think of one thing this morning which has begun to bug me, as I seem to notice it with increasing regularity — people who do not comprehend the difference between "were" and "was." There is a difference. For a reason. No, really.

Okay. My coffee cup is almost empty. Spooky's getting out of the tub. I have much to do today so that I won't have to work on -2. Well, -2 & 9 months. Oh, and just so you don't think this post has been entirely too cheery, I leave you with this sobering fact: at the current rate of deforestation, the rainforests of Madagascar will be gone, entirely gone, in only another 40 years, and with them will go all the lemurs and the Malagasy civet and the falanouc and all those other last vestiges of the Madagascan fauna will vanish, along with innumerable endemic plant species. By then, if I haven't departed this particular rock, I shall be -42. There. A little gloom and doom to see you through the day...