Caitlín R. Kiernan

I'm sitting here composing, in my head, a Tom Waits song that Tom Waits will never compose, much less record. But it's about not sending "wish you were here" postcards to nightmares.

Someone said something. I won't say who or where the comment was made. The "You're a horror writer" thing. No, I'm not. But. If you insist, maybe it's simply that my definition of "horror" and yours are so vastly different that we possess incommensurable worldviews and can't actually communicate on the subject in any mutually intelligible way (by the way, if you grew up without phonetics/phonics, you're screwed; then again, I guess that's why we have "l33t," "texting," and online dictionaries).

Why no, I'm not in a good mood. Not at all. Not after those dream worlds. And given the fact that there's no way for me to conclusively demonstrate to myself that they're any less objectively "real" than this waking world wherein I'm typing this LJ entry (never mind the world wherein you're reading it; I'll not open that can of worms). Still, this mood has to be bent far enough in that direction that I can get "Sexing the Weird" finished today. I have to be productive. No option, even if there's a hypothetical option.

Problem is, I have this thing I thought would take me two days to write, and today will be day four...I think. I spent yesterday navigating my way through the original and expurgated texts of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and then it was Machen's "The Great God Pan," and finally that got me to the central focus of Part One of the introduction, which is simply that Lovecraft wrote a LOT about fucking. I began with "The Dunwich Horror," a lamentably silly, sprawling tale that I sincerely wish were not thought of as one of HPL's best. But, nonetheless, it is a tale of interspecies and interdimensional sex, and therefore serves my purposes. Today, onward. The thesis statement is remarkably simple: sex (and especially "deviant" sex) has often been at the heart of weird fiction, all the way back to the Gothics. Though...I only go as far back Le Fanu, and if anyone wants to go farther back, well...the path is marked. And yeah, I see the repetitive nature of two of those sentences. Let's pretend I did it on purpose.

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Today is the 13th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. The whole thing is explained here, for those who need an explanation. I'd like to think that no one does need an explanation. Transgender people live with the constant threat of physical and psychological violence, and even death, every single hour of our lives. No matter who you become, that threat, and the fear it engenders, never goes away. Even when you might actually be genuinely safe. Because too many times you haven't been, and you know what might happen if you're not careful and can't figure out how to cheat all the immutable pink and blue rules of a cisgendered world (and you can't). Me, I have about a hundred tales. Someday, maybe I'll tell one of the closest calls I ever had, which concerns three drunken Athens, GA frat boys bearing down on me as I gripped a can of pepper spray. Playing chicken with hate, as it were. No one can count the dead, but we can remember a few who must serve, in these grim mathematics, as the symbols for an unknown (and unknowable) number.

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Last night a new episode of Fringe, "And Those We Leave Behind," and it was so good I cannot imagine how this series is still on the air. It just keeps going to stranger places. We all do this at our own risk, going weird places, if we expect anyone to follow. And storytellers tend to have to wish for followers. Elsewise, we're only talking to ourselves. Not that there's anything wrong with talking to ourselves. Me to myself. You to yourself. Unless you need to make a living telling stories (an awful, awful situation). Anyway, a fine episode, and I think they finally made me care about Peter Bishop, who has almost always felt like a great slab of nothing interesting. I just hope that the series either a) wraps things up this season or b) doesn't lose it's following and is permitted another season. Were it me, I'd have taken this season to end the story, especially considering how this season almost didn't happen.

The platypus shakes the word basket, and I reach inside, hoping this isn't one of those days the platypus is being cute and has slipped in a few razorblades just for shits and giggles.

Remembering,
Aunt Beast

I need to just stop making plans. I mean completely. I need to quit making plans altogether.

I should be in Boston right this very minute, with kylecassidy and Co., but I'm not. I'm home. Sitting in my stupid chair at this stupid fucking desk, typing on this stupid fucking keyboard. Because the car's acting fucking sketchy again (bad crankshaft). Kyle just called. He'll be meeting up with our Eva Canning this afternoon (as played by Sara Murphy)*, scouting locations and getting test shots for our sort of Secret Drowning Girl project. Oh, and Neil even went to the trouble to get us on the guest list for Amanda's show at the Mill tonight...but...no. I'm. Sitting. Here. Maybe I'll go back to bed and be done with it.

Tiddly pom.

Oh, and, here in Rhode Island, we're still having a wonderful March.

Anyway...yesterday, we had a very fine birthday for Spooky. I even made her the World's Most Strawberry Cake Ever. Maybe too strawberry. But it was appreciated. By Spooky, I mean. She spent most of the day playing American McGee's Alice: The Madness Continues, I think. There are photos below, behind the cut.

All the work part of my day yesterday was taken up getting material to jacobluest for the new Sirenia Digest website (which is looking amazing). I did that, but nothing much else. I did read a couple of stories in Supernatural Noir, Melanie Tem's "Little Shit" and Brian Evanson's "The Absent Eye." I played Rift. Selwyn made Level 50 and capped. Yes, this is the breathtaking excitement of my life. Maybe I just have everything backwards. Maybe it's a problem of perspective. In this Post-Modern Age, perhaps it is the digital experiences we ought to cheer as "genuine," and not those troublesome and inconvenient analog ones.

Looking at it all fucking backwards.

Here are the photos from yesterday:

( 24 June 201 )

And yeah, Peter Falk died. Which I think I'm just having trouble processing. Is that a computer analogy? Having trouble processing? If so, fuck it. Anyway, I grew up in the seventies, with Columbo, but I try not to think of Falk as that character, because too few people remember that he was a very good actor. For example, his role as "Der Filmstar" in Wim Wenders' Der Himmel über Berlin (1987). Here's a clip I love:

But on the brighter side, gay marriage is now legal in New York. So, we have New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. But I don't think it'll ever happen in Rhode Island. Too many goddamn Catholics.

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Last night, we watched a genuinely exquisitely creepy film, Brad Anderson's The Vanishing on 7th Street (2010). Anderson also made such superb films as Session 9 (2001), The Machinist (2004), Transsiberian (2008), and also directed ten episodes of Fringe. Right now, The Vanishing on 7th Street is streamable from Netflix, and you really, really ought to see it. Cosmic horror wonderfully translated to film. Man's fear of the dark and the dissolution of self. An apocalypse of darkness and aloneness. Beautiful.

And now I should go. Sit in the chair. At this desk. Maybe I'll try to write the introduction to Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart (Subterranean Press, 2012), which will be called "Sexing the Weird." HPL and sex. My own refusal to be apologetic for the seemingly explicitly brutal nature of so much of my erotica, etc. One woman's pain is another's pleasures and affections.

* Turns out Sara hurt her arm at an audition at an audition, and I may have another chance to make it to Boston tomorrow. By the way, that came out wrong. Don't mean to imply I might benefit from Sara hurting her arm.

So, the last two issues of Sirenia Digest have featured articles built around answers readers of this blog has written in response to questions I post early in 2010. And sorting through the answers had been so much fun, I want to post a third question:

If you were to make of me— of my actual, physical body —a work of art, what would it be?

Absolutely no answer can be too outlandish, too grim, too disturbing, too violent, too erotic, too personal, too whatever. Get your hands dirty. And mine, as well. Feel free to employ any imaginable medium, even fictional ones. No minimum or maximum word limit; write as much or as little as you wish. The answers I like best will appear in Sirenia Digest #63.

Same rules apply as with the questions last year: All comments are screened.* That means, no one but me can read them. That's an extra incentive for you to leave the inhibitions behind. Only I will read these. The answers that are selected for the digest will appear without their authors' names attached, so there's complete anonymity from everyone but me. Have fun!

* If you're reading this via Facebook, obviously I cannot screen your comments, unless you post them to LJ. However, I will be taking private messages through Facebook.

I went straight into writing this morning, rather than pause to do a blog entry, so now I'm playing catchup. I did edit a bunch of photos from yesterday, edit them this morning, I mean, and I'll get to those.

Yesterday, I did 1,035 words on "A Paleozoic Dreamquest." Today I did another 1,452, and found THE END of the vignette. So, everything (except the prolegomena) has been written for Sirenia Digest #45, though I still have a bit of editing to do. Oh, and as promised, here's the "trilobite pr0n" illustration that Vince Locke sent, upon which I based "A Paleozoic Dreamquest." Pretty literally, I might add. I love when we reverse the process, and I get to write for what he's already drawn:



It's been a rainy, cool day here in Providence, as Danny approaches.

After work yesterday, we headed to Moonstone Beach, as we'd wanted to get some post-Hurricane Bill beachcombing in. But as we were walking from the van, along the sandy trail that leads between Trustom and Cards ponds and out to the shore, we came upon a female Double-Crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus). Clearly, there was something wrong with it, as they never allow us to approach so close. Of all Rhode Isalnd's sea birds, the cormorants are my favorite, and it was wonderful to be able to get so near to one, but alarming, too, as we realized it was either sick or injured (even though no injury was visible). I sat down on the bridge near it, and a few minutes later, a man came along who'd already called the Department of Environmental Management about the cormorant. We talked about the threat posed to her by coyotes, raccoons, minks, and other local predators. But thinking that help was on the way, we headed along to the beach.

The storm had moved the sand about quite a bit, and there were more cobbles and pebbles than usual. There were shattered spider crabs, sponges, horseshoe crabs, and a few unusual varieties of snail. The air was so clear that Block island seemed close enough to touch, though it lies ten miles to the south, across the sound. As the sun was setting, we headed back to the van, and found the ailing cormorant had not moved from its perch on the stone wall. However, it had been joined by a male, presumably its mate. Not wanting to leave before the DEM showed up (assuming the would show), we waited a bit. Spooky got some video of the birds, and I sat near them on the bridge. Before long, the man who'd called the DEM returned, with a cat carrier and heavy gloves, and we helped him bundle the female cormorant into a towel (she offered no resistance) so that he could get her to a local wildlife rescue vet. The male dove into the salt marsh, and swam away. It was almost dark when we finally left. I spent most of the night worrying about the cormorant, and have no idea what has become of her. I suppose I never will.

I should definitely write these things in the morning, when I'm not too exhausted from fiction writing to do them justice.

If you've not had a look at the current round of eBay auctions, please do, and thanks.

And here are the photos from yesterday evening:

( 27 August 2009 )

I seem to be unable to wake up today. I blame the Vitamin D from all that unexpected sunlight yesterday evening.

Yesterday, I did 1,123 words on "The Sea Troll's Daughter," which I think I'm almost halfway through. Or maybe a little less than almost halfway. Thereabouts. It's a very different piece for me. The closest I've ever come to doing this sort of "sword and sorcery" fantasy is the Beowulf novelization. Spooky's (humglum) liking it, and Sonya (sovay) is liking it, and that's usually a good sign. I've not shown it to anyone else yet.

I spoke with Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press this morning, before I was quite awake. So there's no telling what I said. I have been told that I can announce (drum roll, please) that subpress will be doing my next short-fiction collection, The Ammonite Violin and Others, which will include an introduction by Jeff VanderMeer, and which will be a 2010 release. We also talked about Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart, the third (and final) erotica collection, which I think is still planned for 2010, and about The Dinosaurs of Mars, which is, alas, still anybody's guess.

My thanks to everyone who's taken part in the latest round of eBay auctions. Spooky will be listing new items sometime this afternoon.

As I said (or did I?), the sun came out late yesterday afternoon, and that's the only thing that finally got me moving, that got the words flowing. After work, we drove down to Warwick and picked up Spooky's belated birthday present, a new turntable so that she can begin digitizing the squillion or so pieces of vinyl she has stored at her parents. The drive was good, getting out of the House, and seeing the sun and blue sky after all these days without either. It's sunnyish today, though I think thunderstorms are inbound.

Watch for today's micro-excerpt tweet from The Red Tree, over at greygirlbeast

So, yeah. Time to make the doughnuts.

Almost eight hours sleep last night. Which is grand, except it permits more time for the nightmares to unfold.

I did 1,063 words on "Galápagos" yesterday, and it seems to be starting off fairly well. I'm forcing myself to write at a much slower pace than I've become accustomed to lately. In part, I have no choice (and that's a good thing), as it's offworld sf, and I'm constantly having to check this fact or that calculation. Also, I spoke with the anthology's editor yesterday, because I wanted to know how much leeway I have regarding erotic content in the story. That is, how erotic can the story be? Only a little, it turns out, which isn't so bad, as it will force me to rely on subtler, more indirect techniques to communicate a number of inherently sexual elements in "Galápagos."

The panic I wrote about a couple of days ago has backed off enough that I can work, thank fuck.

Not much else to say about yesterday. Leftover chili for dinner. We watched a few episodes from Season Five of Angel, to wind down from our three- or four-month long Buffython. We're going to begin The X-Files again next week. Later there was a little WoW. Shaharrazad and Suraa were finally able to journey to the Isle of Quel'Danas, off the northernmost shores of the Eastern Kingdoms. Of course, the Scryers and the Aldor from Shattrath are trying to take the island back from Kael'thas Sunstrider, and it's weird to see blood elves and Draenei working together (Shah and Suraa are allied with the Scryers). After WoW, I goofed about with my Facebook page, because no one else had bothered to create a "Favorite Basal Thyreophoran" list thingy or upload the requisite images. Got to bed sometime after two a.m.

I slept almost eight hours, but feel like I have a hangover. So, all I can figure is that I dreamt of an absinthe binge.

More editorial slogging yesterday. But it is very, very nearly over. An amazingly productive day yesterday, really. Countless typos and continuity errors were corrected. A couple of new scenes were added. The Red Tree is nearing its final countenance. I meant, yesterday, to speak on the horror of sticky notes. When this began, the manuscript was festooned with 2"x1.5" sticky notes. Yellow ones. Neon yellow ones. On Tuesday, we spent fours hours dealing with fifteen sticky notes. Yesterday, the last ones were vanquished. No more sticky notes. At least not until the CEM (copyedited ms.) arrives, and hopefully that won't be until early April. I think that I'm feeling better about The Red Tree again. It really is, by far, my best novel yet. If you ask me, and I'll note that you didn't.

I can't seem to decide what The Red Tree is actually about. It might be a dark fantasy about a malevolent oak that hides an entrance to the underworld of the ghouls. And it might be a novel about insanity. And it might be a study of unreliable narrators and the inherent weaknesses of first-person narrations. It could be a discourse on the nature of secret histories. Likely, it's all those things.

Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press has given me the green light to announce that the third erotica collection, Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart, will be released sometime early in 2010.

No, that's not the secret project. I'll get to that as soon as I can.

I got an email from Ted Naifeh yesterday and it's been a while since we talked, so that was cool. He's still doing things that delight me. I also got word yesterday that I am still scheduled to be a Guest of Honor at this year's Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland. I can't remember the dates. October, I think. That and ReaderCon 20 (in July) will probably be the only public appearances I agree to this year.

If you have not already, please have a look at the current eBay auctions. Thanks.

A misspelling blunder on my part last night led to the creation of a new word: tyransitiuon. So, I thought I'd post it here and solicit definitions, etymologies, whatever.

It seems as though there were other things I meant to say today, but, if so, they escape me now. There was a little WoW last night. Not much. Shaharrazad and Suraa made Level 62 in Silithus. They're both very unhappy about working for night elves. I'm losing patience with the game, which seems to get harder and harder on solo players the higher you go. That is, it gets harder and harder to find enough quests to advance, and, less and less, I fail to see the point of it all. Got a spiffy new jade-handled katana, though. Okay. Time to finish the coffee.

The current eBay auctions are ending today. Please have a look, if you are so inclined. That seems to be our last copy of the sold-out trade hardback edition of To Charles Fort, With Love.

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Woke to a rainy morning here in Providence. It is impossible, of course, not the check into the NOAA website to keep an eye on the progress of Gustav, and for that matter, Hanna. I know too many people in the paths of each storm not to worry.

A week or so ago I mentioned being somewhat pleasantly baffled that Trisha Telep chose "Untitled 12" and "Ode to Edvard Munch" for her anthology, The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance. From Amazon, the following quotes illustrate my point. A reader reviewed the book story-by-story, giving each story a star rating (X out of 5). Of my two, she wrote, "My least favorite were both of Kiernan's entries...the vague poetic style of these stories left me unconnected to their characters." I am amused:

"Ode to Evdard [sic] Munch" - Caitlin Kiernan - A man shares his blood with a mysterious vamp for a piece of her dreams. (3 stars - no romance and the connection between the leads was odd)"

—— and especially ——

"Untitled 12" - Cailtlin R. Kiernan - A sick woman searches until a vampire finds her. (1 star - I detested this one. More on the horror side, the vampire and the turning were truly icky, though I debated giving an extra star to the author for inspiring such strong negative feelings with so few words.)"

There's no place here where I can say that the reader seems to have misunderstood anything, unless, perhaps, it was the fundamental principles of fiction and that low-brow bit about "vague poetic style." I am rather pleased that "Untitled 12" inspired such loathing, as it was written, in part, as a response to the glut of "romantic" vampire prOn, and "Ode to Edvard Munch," being, in part, a dream cycle, it is undeniably "odd" (though I am left to wonder how a mortal and a vampire would have a non-odd connection). I think this gets back to what I have said before about the expectation of genre readers defeating texts, and writers who cater to such readers. And the "supernatural romance" crowd is at least as bad as the hard sf crowd. For my part, I'm pleased that Telep wanted these two stories in her book, and that pleasure arises specifically from the knowledge that they were so completely opposite of what the readers would be expecting. You know, blood, instead of red cotton candy. In the end, I blame Anne Rice (who once knew better), and her idiot step-daughter, Laurell K. Hamilton, for the the sad state of affairs with vampires in genre fiction, as well as this whole absurd "paranormal romance" subgenre thing.

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Yesterday. It throws me off making entries late in the day. But, yesterday there was...stuff. Last night, Spooky and I watched Martin McDonagh's genuinely brilliant and thoroughly delightful In Bruges (2008), which I recommend most highly. Great cast. Great script. And Bruges. I read another paper from the new Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology —— "Mahajangasuchus insignis [Crocodyliformes; Mesoeucrocodylia] cranial anatomy and new data on the origin of the eusuchian-style palate." Mahajangasuchus is one of those grand bull-dog crocs, and the observations on the evolution of the "hard" palate in crocodyliforms was especially interesting, that the structure might have arisen both as a response to the need to decouple the oral cavity from respiration (an advantage only to aquatic forms, and pretty much the leading idea since Huxley proposed it in 1875) and also as a response to torsional feeding stresses. I even have a picture:


Cast of the skull of Mahajangasuchus from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar

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Last night, more EVE, which I do enjoy, despite the breakneck learning curve and despite the emphasis on PvP action. The latter is especially problematic, and I'm disappointed the game places so much stress on conformity and cooperation and makes no real provision for loner malcontents like me (and most of the characters I create). Then, too, there is the game's manic devotion to corporate commerce as a driving force for its story, when there could have been so much more of substance to motivate its players (religion, race, politics, etc.). Economics has always bored me to tears, and much of EVE revolves around buying and selling and stock and shares and blah, blah, blah. I just want to zip around the universe fighting space pirates (or, better yet, being a space pirate), shagging hot aliens, and gawking at new star systems. So, EVE gets two thumbs up for realizing such an amazingly complex gaming universe, and for making it beautiful, and two thumbs down for turning it into a dreadful capitalist bore that expects me to constantly interact with PvP-obsessed teenagers who name their starships after their penises and wouldn't know "suspension of disbelief" if it cut off their allowances. Regardless, tonight I have to get back to work on Howards End. It's time to attend to a lot of the details of the necropolis/warren/train tunnel complex, and soon we'll be laying the streets. My thanks to everyone who's sent me information on potential characters. If I have not already been in touch, I will soon. I just badly needed a break from SL.

Postscript (4:32 p.m.): from NOAA: 000
WTNT62 KNHC 301718
TCUAT2
HURRICANE GUSTAV TROPICAL CYCLONE UPDATE
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL072008
120 PM EDT SAT AUG 30 2008

DATA FROM AN AIR FORCE RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT INDICATE THAT GUSTAV HAS CONTINUED TO STRENGTHEN AND NOW HAS MAXIMUM WIND NEAR 145 MPH...230 KM/HR WITH HIGHER GUSTS. THIS MAKES GUSTAV AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS CATEGORY FOUR HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON HURRICANE SCALE. A SPECIAL ADVISORY WILL BE ISSUED AT ABOUT 200 PM EDT TO MODIFY THE INITIAL AND FORECAST INTENSITIES. THE SPECIAL PUBLIC ADVISORY WILL TAKE THE PLACE OF THE INTERMEDIATE PUBLIC ADVISORY PREVIOUSLY SCHEDULED FOR THAT TIME.

I have an email this morning from director Frank Woodward, maker of Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown. Frank writes. "Just wanted you to know that Lovecraft won Best Documentary Film at Comic-Con. Your section on Deep Time continues to mesmerize. People consistently mention it to me after they see the film." So, that's cool. Very cool. May it win many more awards.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,015 words on "Derma Sutra (1891)," for Sirenia Digest #32. This piece is genuinely "weird erotica." No. Ditch the silly, pc "erotica" tag. This is "weird pornography." If Lovecraft had ever decided to write porno, well, I think, honestly, it would have looked a lot like "Derma Sutra (1891)." Even though there's not a single tentacle or a squamous batrachian fish-person in sight.

I haven't been wanting to write here about my dratted health. The last month I've been struggling with pain from that upper left molar I cracked in the grand mal seizure back in October. My dentist in Birmingham was skeptical of her chances of saving it. And now I'm thinking that she didn't. She sent me off to Providence with a penicillin script and another for Lortab, should the tooth go hot before I find a dentist. I have not yet found a dentist. And I've only taken one of the Lortab, as ibuprofen is controlling the pain, mostly, even though it does a number on my stomach (and me and pain meds have an ugly history I do not want to see replayed). So, if I have seemed out of step or extra curmudgeonly or whatever, it's mostly the pain and worry about the pain and the uncertainty and so forth. The pain wakes me in the mornings. It's become that very first thing of the day, this sensation like someone's socked me in the jaw right proper. But I absolutely can't stop work on The Red Tree and the digest to have a tooth pulled or root canaled or whatever. I cannot risk being sidetracked, not at this point (yes, this is part of the "romantic" life of a freelance writer).

Spooky's added a PC copy of the leather-bound edition of Frog Toes and Tentacles to the new round of eBay auctions, along with another copy of Alabaster Please have a look, and bid, should you be so disposed. Thanks. And I'll remind you that subpress is now taking preorders on A is for Alien.

After the writing yesterday, we escaped the house and headed for Moonstone Beach. I was hoping that the storms on Sunday would have cast up some interesting things. And, in fact, when we reached Moonstone, we discovered wonderful lag deposits of pebbles, which are not normally present there, not in such great numbers. So, as the sun set and Asian families fished for blue crabs in Trustom Pond (using chicken legs on string), we crawled about on the sand and stone, looking for bits of beach glass. Spooky found the best pieces. My eyes are just too lousy these days. We picked up a bag full of plastic garbage. At some point, I just lay down on the wet pebbles and sand, just lay there listening to the surf and the birds. And it occurred to me, This is what I have, and this is why I do the writing, and put up with the pain. This is why I'm hanging on, because I can lie on the beach, with the sea lapping at my feet, and know that this one thing, at least, is real. It's not much, but, then again, it's everything, the seashore, that liminal space where earth and ocean meet. It's what I desire, and what I have earned. Ah, and I found a very nice carapace of a spider crab (Libinia emarginata) and brought it home with me. We left as it was getting dark, and the Asian families were still snagging crabs with chicken legs.

Set me aflame and cast me free.
Away, you wretched world of tethers...

After dinner at Iggy's in Narragansett, we stopped by Spooky parents' on the way back, to get cucumbers and yellow crooked-neck squash and eggs and just visit. The sky is so marvelous over their farm, the stars so brilliant. Heading back into town last night, I think my mind was still lying on the beach. Entering Providence, I had some weird flashback to Southland Tales, and it seemed to me —— and the sensation lingers this afternoon —— Here is the Future, as much as there is ever a "future," and it is bizarre and deadly, ugly and wondrous, and I have no place here. It's an unsettling sort of realization, and yet I can't find any fault with it. I think it was about 10:30 pm when we finally got home again.

Oh, there was a question from a reader, who asks, "I was reading some of your old posts today and it reminded me you sometimes referred to your 'favorite Thai place' in Atlanta. Could you share the name with me or in the blog?" And yes, now that I am here in Providence and no longer have to worry about dinner being interrupted by a well-meaning fan, I can (it actually happened at that restaurant a couple of times, which is why I never named it). Thai Bowl in Decatur, though the old, now-deceased location off Highland was better. Thai Bowl is one of the few things I miss about Atlanta.

And one last thing in this long entry. Yes, to create an avatar in Second Life that looks good, that moves well, etc., you will have to go beyond the default freebie av. And roleplay is far better with good avs and decent animation overrides and so forth. But, here's the thing —— compared to the charges incurred by popular MMORPGs, (which SL is not, not an MMORPG, I mean), such as WoW and The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, creation of a good av is really incredibly cheap. For $10 (US; and that's a nice pile of Lindens), or $20 (if you want to get really fancy), you can create a wonderful, unique character, and it's not like there are monthly charges on free accounts, or like the rp sims charge you to play there. Just saying....

Below are four photos from yesterday evening:

( Moonstone Beach, July 28, 2008 )

Because, you know, you can only write "yesterday I didn't write anything" so many times. It gets old. But yesterday I did write, 1,332 words on a piece called "Scene in the Museum (1896)" for Sirenia Digest #21. It did about 300 words the day before. I'm getting back in the saddle, as they say. I am striving, presently, to write an erotic tale that has neither fantasy nor sf elements (though it has a murder-ballad edge); we shall see how that goes.

The heat continues, though we did get a brief respite yesterday, and it won't be too terrible today — only 90F right now, with a heat index of 98F, high forecast at 96F. But if the meteorologists are to be trusted, the worst of August will arrive later this week. I went five days without leaving the house. Last night, Spooky pushed me out the front door and we had a good and bat-haunted walk. Then, later, we went out again to try to catch a glimpse of this year's Perseid shower, but between the inescapable light pollution of Atlanta and the humidity (which was making a glowing haze of the former), little could be glimpsed of the sky, and no meteors were seen. I think it was about 2:45 a.m. when we came in from not seeing meteors.

Nothing much to say about the last couple of unblogged days. Besides the writing. We're working our way through the Matrix trilogy again: The Matrix on Saturday (nine years already?), then The Matrix Reloaded last night. They hold up well, and the second film is, I think, far better than I gave it credit for being at the time of its original release. I'm still reading bits and pieces of Anaïs Nin, and yesterday Spooky picked up a copy of Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters (1998), a sort of modern Victorian erotic novel. We seem to be swaying in that direction these days. Well, that and wooden legs with secret compartments for the stowing of Derringers. I've been getting by on absinthe, iced coffee, Red Bull, pink lemonade, and as little food as possible. Byron came around on Friday night for Dr. Who and didn't leave until sometime after one a.m. It's official: David Tennant has grown on me. Now Byron's in Chicago for a week of job training, so we shall be even more reclusive than usual. On Friday, I guess it was, I read all of Mike Mignola's Jenny Finn, which I'd been meaning to get to for forever. We've had quite a bit of Second Life, though I closed the Palaeozoic Museum until August 17th, while I prepare the cephalopod exhibit. And really, those are the highlights.

This week, I have to decide on the cover artist (likely to be a photographer) for the forthcoming subpress edition of Tales of Pain and Wonder.

I've been pointed towards the blogs of various members of Abney Park: robert_from_ap, abneyangel, nathan_fhtagn, and magdaleneveen. My thanks to ellyssian and chenderson for those links!

Though I think I have made this announcement already, I'll make it again, to avoid confusion: No, I will not be at Dragon*Con this year. I'm too busy, too far behind on deadlines, and, at any rate, I think the days of conventions are behind me.

Okay. It's 12:39, and I must get back to the writing. I'd still love to see more comments on Sirenia Diigest #20!