Caitlín R. Kiernan

Very cold in Providence today; my feet are spun glass.

Most of yesterday was a good day. I only managed about 500 words on "The Lost Language of Littoral Mollusca and Crustacea," because I realized it was a lot longer and a lot more complicated than I expected. Not the sort of thing you can do in a day, but maybe over the course of a week. Maybe. But it was still a good day. Spooky came back from the p. o. box with a letter from Harlan, the Coolest T-Shirt Ever® (see the photos behind the cut), and Solstice gifts from my mother. I saw Brian's final cut for the "teaser" trailer for The Drowning Girl: A Memoir. It's truly gorgeous, light-fucking-years beyond what I expect from book trailers, and I wish I could show it to you now. There was a spaghetti for supper, a favorite, because, when it comes to food, I'm pretty easy to please.

And then, early last night, it all went to hell, and it did so violently, a shitstorm to lay any good day low. I'm I'm still not on an even keel. I think it was very after six ayem before I got to sleep. Like maybe six-thirty, but I honestly have no fucking idea, and it probably doesn't matter. I read stuff, like a Peter Crowther short story, "Ghosts With Teeth." Mostly, I sat in the smoking crater that was the night, and tried not to think, and the harder I tried not to, the more I did. So, five and a half hours sleep? Possibly six? I can't even call it insomnia.

So, Two Worlds and In Between keeps making these "best of" lists. Seriously, it seems like it makes a new one each day. Yesterday, it was an article at io9, "Recent Science Fiction and Fantasy Books that Make Perfect Gifts" (at least io9 knows how to capitalize a headline). The ironic thing, though, is that the book is, essentially, out of print, and will likely remain so for a while to come. Subterranean Press is sold out. Amazon.com claims to have a few copies (and I stress a few), but I wouldn't trust them as a source for this book, not after they fucked so many people over on the preorder. Better you try AbeBooks or Powell's, both of whom have it in stock, I believe. Point is, it's not like you can't get the book, just that it's quickly getting very hard and expensive to get the book. Which seems ironic. Or maybe I ought take that as a compliment. And yeah, my agent's working in selling another edition (and foreign language rights), but that's something far down the road, if it ever happens at all.

Also, while I very much appreciate receiving gifts, please don't send me ebooks. I didn't even know you could do that, give someone an ebook, until someone did try to give me one, and I got this download coupon thingy from Amazon. For a Kindle. Of course, anyone who reads this journal knows I loathe ebooks on principle, and I do not now (nor ever shall I) own a Kindle. So, while I also know that ebooks are almost as cheap as the air they're printed on, it's probably best not to waste your money on something I'll never see. Or even want to ever see.

As we approach the release of The Drowning Girl: A Memoir and the first issue of Alabaster, which is to say March and April, respectively, I'm planning public appearances. Yeah, I haven't made a habit of that, but now I have to. There are a lot of plans, but here are the only two "for sure" dates (times TBA, and more to come, mostly nestled between March 6th and sometime in June):

April 4: North Kingstown Free Public Library, Rhode Island Voices series (reading/talk)
April 18: KGB Bar (Manhattan), Fantastic Fiction series (reading)

And here are the T-shirt photos, which I'm going to trying to believe are all that there was to yesterday (I love my expression of innocence, displaying my ignorance of what was soon to come). Well, it and the finished book trailer:

( Versus )

By the way, if there are typos in the entry, all I can say is you're lucky there's any entry at all.

A rare alignment of cranial discomfort. Parallel lines of eye-bleeding hurt. I'm not sure Spooky and I have ever before had multi-day headaches at the same time. But we have now. And it sucks rancid weasel ass through a crazy straw, and it needs to fucking stop. My scalp feels like there's broken glass just beneath the skin.

This is a day on which there must be comments. I won't survive without them.

My thanks to Joah, who sent me a link to someone's list of "The Six Creepiest Abandoned Places." I'd argue the list isn't definitive, but it's still a pretty good list. I'm especially taken with Gunkanjima, Japan and Hellingly Asylum. The latter is genuinely exquisite. I would live there in a heartbeat:

On the sheets and pillow case,
In my bed for heaven's sake,
The devil's dancing until late in my head there.
But I could sleep with you there.
I could sleep with you there.

That's interesting. Firstly, that while thinking of Hellingly Asylum the lyrics to a Catharine Wheel song occurred to me. Secondly, that they apply so aptly to last night's insomnia (which was Nigh Unto Monumental, no sleep until after six ayem) and also apply to my emotional reaction to the photographs (follow the link from the article) of that place. Rabbit hole. Subconscious association. Pink Freud. 5 and 1/2 minute hallways. It's all the same thing in here. Anyway, I loved this bit from the article (about another asylum, one in New Jersey):

Listen, because this is important advice: If you ever start a sanatorium, you need to tear that shit down once you’re done with it. Not repurpose it or leave it empty or something; that is just begging – literally begging – for a group of stupid teenagers to sneak inside of it to have illicit sex, where they will inevitably get murdered by the ghosts of madmen. It’s like a Roach Motel for horny morons. You may as well put an “Idiots Fuck Here” sign out front and start up a mortuary next door; you’d make a killing.

See, I don't get to genuinely laugh – that sort of laughter that makes you hurt yourself – that often. That paragraph made me laugh. Oh, in particular, I was soothed by this photo from Hellingly. I'm not bullshitting you. I'm not being sarcastic. That's just...soothing. I think I look like that inside. If you cracked me open, you'd find that room.

---

On this day in 1900, Aleister Crowley broke into and took over the Golden Dawn temple in London, providing the catalyst for the demise of the original Golden Dawn.

---

Yesterday, despite the black mood and the headache, I wrote 1,072 words on "Fake Plastic Trees" while Spooky drew ravens. The story seems to be coming together. After reading yesterday's pages, Spooky said, "This makes me feel so bad. Really, really bad. The complete wrongness of it, of that whole world." I'm taking this as a compliment, because I know she meant it as one.

Intention isn't everything, kittens, but it carries a lot of weight with me.

After working on the story, I wrote an actual Wikipedia entry on Hauffiosaurus, because when I linked to it yesterday there was just a sad-ass, one-sentence stub. That took about another hour.

We saw the latest episode of Fringe last night. Jesus fuck, this show is brilliant. It's gone from a dull first season, all monster-of-the-week nonsense, to sheer fucking wonky universe-warping brilliance. Last night's episode, "Lysergic Acid Diethylamide," has to receive an Emmy nomination. If the Emmy's mean anything (and we already know they don't). This is the first series since Farscape that truly isn't afraid of being as weird as it needs to be, but which isn't just being weird for weird's sake. Pushing Daisies tried to be this brilliant, but was murdered long before it achieved this level of supremely masterful weirdness.

Spooky's doing the tax thing today. Taxes, taxes, we all fall down.

Gods, I just realized I've been wearing the same T-shirt for four days. "Reynolds/Washburne 2008: You Can't Stop the Signal." Dirty fucking nerd. Take a bath and change your damn clothes.

Oh, hello. How long have you been standing there?

You know, for kids,
Aunt Beast

Home again. Well, home again since 5 a.m. this morning (CaST).

And we forgot to take the camera, and I can't hope to reduce it all to mere words. The reading was genuinely marvelous, and my great thanks to Ellen (ellen_datlow) for having me, and to everyone at KGB Bar, which is still as wonderful as it was in May 2001. I read two short pieces, both from Tales from the Woeful Platypus —— first "Still Life," and then "Untitled 17." And the two worked well together. "Still Life" is funny and sweet, perverse but almost naïvely so. Then "Untitled 17" comes roaring in like a steam engine, all anger and blood and wickedness. And, I swear to fuck, I think my reading of "Untitled 17" last night was one of the two or three best readings I've ever done. I wish I had it on tape. I doubt I could reproduce it. The story combined with the atmosphere of the bar, with the crowd, with my weariness, with everything, to make that reading what it was. Also, I had my first bottle of Baltika 4 (Originalnoe), a dark Russian lager brewed with caramel and rye malt. Delicious. Also also, my thanks to all the folks who came, especially the two guys who came all the way from Toronto (!). I signed a lot of books, when I'd not expected to sign any at all.

We left Providence about 2:30 p.m. (CaST), and made it to Union Station in New Haven about 5 p.m. (CaST). We took the train into Grand Central Station in Manhattan. I'd never seen Grand Central, and my gods, what a beautiful building. I wanted to lie down on the marble floor and stare up at the astrological mural painted on the vaulted ceiling. But we were running late, and it took longer to get a taxi than I expected. My taxi-fu used to be quite good. Last night, it took forever. So, we were almost late getting down to KGB. Benjamin Parzybok read first.

After the reading, we walked over to St. Mark's Place, about four blocks I think (passing a bakery window, and Sonya taught me about hamantashn), and had a delicious and enormous dinner at Grand Sichuan. There were about thirty of us, and a bezillion dishes were ordered. I'm not sure I can remember it all. There was a huge flat-screen television showing Chinese soap operas (or something of the sort) with Mandarin subtitles, and I had serious Firefly flashbacks. Let's see. We had: cold diced cucumber in scallion sauce, steamed pork soup dumplings, Sichuan cold noodles (with a peanut sauce), chicken with string beans, orange-flavored beef, double-cooked pork with chestnuts (my favorite), the braised whole fish with hot bean sauce (yum), the smoked tea duck, sautéed pea shoots, fried pumpkin cakes, and shrimp with salted pepper. Afterwards, we walked back out into the freezing night (it was in the 20sF), to a dessert truck parked about half a block away, and Sonya got the pomegranate macaroons and shared them with me and Spooky. And then we had to say our good-byes and grab a taxi (much easier to hail than the first one), and rush back to Grand Central to make our 11:22 p.m. (EST) train back to New Haven. My feet were numb by this point, and I was very grateful for the walking stick that Spooky's mom gave me last week. I sat down on the floor in GCS and stared at the painted stars. A homeless man gave me a pack of peanut M&Ms.

On the train, Spooky tried to get some sleep, while Sonya and I had a long conversation about Harry Potter, and all the opportunities Rowling missed to make the books truly good (on the way up, we'd talked Firefly and Babylon Five and Farscape, Joey LaFaye, "Tam Lin," and Thomas the Rhymer). I think we made it back to New Haven about 1:30 a.m. I'm not sure. It was all such a blur. We were only in Manhattan for maybe four or five hours. I'd forgotten how much I adore NYC, especially at night. Driving back through Connecticut, we stopped at a convenience store in Mystic, where I apparently left my iPod. My iPod from 2005, so it was sort of a fossil, anyway, the Millennium Falcon of iPods, but it did have all my music on it. We're hoping it was turned in, but won't know until tomorrow. Back home, I went straight to bed.

And that was last night, as best I can translate it into words. I'm sorry I forgot the camera.

I've received news from my sister that a member of my immediate family is seriously ill, and so now I have to go and speak with my mother.

Oh, by the way, yes, I did post the video to the Editors' "An End Has a Start," but it was some autoplay thing, so I took it down again. Sorry. It is, however, my new favorite song.

A cold, clear day here in Providence. The trees are quickly shedding their fall colors. Winter will be coming on, soon. Back in Atlanta, we'd be freezing, and I'd be bitching about the cryosphere in my office. Here in Rhode Island, ironically, we're quite toasty. And, before I forget, happy birthday to Neil, who turns -08 today, and also to Spooky's sister, Steph, in faraway Brooklyn.

I've begun a second LiveJournal account, as of yesterday. It's purpose is to serve as a more stable and accessible archive for the entries from my old Blogger journal, which was begun in November 2001, just before I started writing Low Red Moon (and which I'd originally intended to end when the book was done). As such, it bears the rather unimaginative title crk_blog_vault. Each day, I'll be reposting one to three entries from the old Blogger account, with the original date and time for the entries included as the subject line. Hence, the first entry is "November 24, 2001 (12:40 a.m.)." Anyway, have a look if you're interested. "Low Red Moon Journal" has been orphaned since December 2006, but mostly I'm interested in mirroring those hundreds of entries that were made before I began this LJ in April 2004. I've shut off the comments feature for the new journal, and I'm still fiddling about with the look of the thing.

Yesterday, I did 1,453 words on "The Colliers' Venus (1893)," previously titled "The Automatic Mastodon (1893)." The automatic mastodon still makes a cameo appearance in the story, but I realized yesterday it's not the centerpiece. So, a very good writing day.

And a lot of work besides the new short story. After the writing, while Spooky made a quick trip to the market to get dinner, I went through the ARC for A is for Alien, for the very last time before it goes to press, and found only four problems. I'll send the corrections to Bill at Subterranean Press as soon as I finish this entry. After dinner, Spooky and I began reading through The Red Tree, and managed all of the Preface and Chapter One. Lots of corrections. I think we finished with that just after 10 p.m. Oh, and this weekend Sonya (sovay) and Spooky dad, Richard, both read the ms. And they both loved it, and are helping with the proofreading. Hearing it aloud last night, I remembered again just how much this one means to me. Oh, and I think I'll repost the cover, for anyone who might have missed it on Saturday:

( The Red Tree )

Also, we received the images for the artist interview for Sirenia Digest #36, the interview originally scheduled for #35. My thanks to both Heather Eve and Geoffrey (readingthedark). So, yes, a very busy day yesterday (but it made up for Saturday, which was a bit of a washout). And I fear that it's going to be this busy all the way to December.

I played a couple hours' worth of WoW last night. Back to Shaharrazad, my blood-elf warlock, after three nights playing Mithwen, my night-elf fighter. I fear Shah is much closer to my heart, but I've probably said that already. Spooky ("Suraa") and I did some questing in Hillsbrad and the Alterac Mountains north of Tallin Mills, then slaughtered trolls in the Arathi Highlands, just because. And after WoW, we watched an episode of Firefly (the marvelous "Objects in Space") because I was exhausted and needed "comfort food" before bed.

I'm doing some concerted magickal work for the first time since October, mostly protective spells and wards and such. Getting a little Enochian. Crowley meets Wicca meets the Greek pantheon. Something like that. Nothing I want to go into detail about, just making the walls a little stronger, you might say. Anyway, now the platypus and the coffee are waiting for me. The day lies ahead.

Poking about the web yesterday, I came very unexpectedly upon a review of Silk and Murder of Angels at BlogCritics.org, the two books reviewed together. A right grand review, at that, which I'd never before seen, even though it was posted October 8th, 2004. Someone who — mostly — gets it, and the review is intelligent and insightful. Being described as "H.P. Lovecraft's spiritual granddaughter" made me smile for hours, even though I suspect I'd probably scare the bejesus out of poor old H. P. ("At least," says Spooky.) By the way, my offer of free signed copies of the tpb of Silk still stands for any new Sirenia Digest subscribers...by the way.

Today, I begin an experiment in which my usual morning post is replaced by an evening post. Here's the deal. There's so goddamn much work right now, the only hope I have of having time left to walk and exercise during the day is to bump the blog entry to the evening. And exercise I must. So, we'll see how this works out. But it's only temporary. I'm gonna go back to morning entries sometime this spring, at the very latest.

I wrote 1,188 words yesterday, and 1,341 today. Then Spooky and I spent the rest of the afternoon getting started on the proofreading of Low Red Moon for the mass-market paperback. We made it through the prologue and chapters One and Two. I had forgotten how much I love this book. At this point, it's my second favorite of my novels, after Daughter of Hounds. I do hope that this new edition (the third since 2003!), gives it another shot and a wider readership. Many typos and errors will be corrected in the text. Also today I dealt with the last bit of Tales from the Woeful Platypus, which is no longer mine to deal with. It's out of my hands now. Which is a relief. That's one thing off my plate.

In the comments to Tuesday's entry regarding my reworking of Wicca, my use of the Sindarin word sigil rather than the "traditional" athame for the black-handled ritual dagger, someone noted the parallel with the English word sigil and all its connotations (some of which I admit I find annoying, because of chaos magick's use of the word). Today, I recalled the name Sigel, which, despite spelling differences, is actually closer to a genuine homonym of the Sindarin sigil ("see-geel"). Sigel is the Old English incarnation of the Norse sun goddess Sól, which actually works out very nicely. I'm sure Tolkien must have been aware of this parallel.

Someone else asked what I thought would be left when I'd finished purging Wicca of all Gardner's Judeo-Xtian elements. Which is a good question. The answer is likely complex, though I might, for the time, say "Very little, I suspect." Indeed, so little will likely remain that I shall have to abandon the name Wicca in favour of something else. A lot of the elements in question are not only to be found in Wicca, but in NeoPaganism, in general. The pentagram or pentacle, for example. That's not a pagan symbol. Though it is not impossible to imagine that some Celtic or Norse or Eastern European architect or proto-mathematician might have stumbled upon this geometric configuration, it comes to Wicca directly from ceremonial magick, Freemasonry, the Order of the Golden Dawn, etc. Instead, I am employing a simple circle to define "sacred" ritual space. Many other basic elements of Wicca have already been discarded — calling to the four quarters, for example, another thing which Gardner borrowed from ceremonial magick. And the "Rede," which likely comes to Wicca via Aleister Crowley's formulation of the Laws of Thelema. The "Three Fold Law" seems more like a weird marriage of Buddhism and Xtianity than anything else, and is a concept which I find fundamentally absurd (for reasons discussed in earlier entries). Likewise, I have no use for Wicca's obsession with gender duality, which is, at best, dated and rendered irrelevant by transgenderism and over-population and a number of other things. At worst, it is sexist, homophobic, and skewed towards the cisgendered. The system which will work for me must regard gender not as a duality, but as a continuum.

So, as you can see, it looks less and less like Wicca all the time. I am keeping many of the ritual tools — the black-handled dagger (as mentioned above), the chalice (as it has mythic resonance beyond the Xtian "grail"), the cauldron, the broom, the altar stone, and so forth. In the end, this is about my belief that a) NeoPaganism should not be infused at every turn with Judeo-Xtian elements, b) that a Nature religion should be a Nature religion, reflecting the complexities of the natural world instead of outmoded human dualisms, and c) the belief that while a NeoPagan may reach back for myth and tradition and history, sheheit must also reach ahead. As I've said before, we need a paganism for the 21st Century, not the 17th or 5th.

We shall see where all this leads. Comments and feedback is welcome on all these points, by the way.

I'm still giving Heroes a chance. The last couple of episodes have hooked me again, as they have seemed less bland, less televisiony. Maybe I just have a crush on Hiro.

Oh! I almost forgot. I got Zoe, which pleases me immensely.

What Firefly Character Are You?
Zoe Alleyne Above all things, you're tough. You're also very private and prefer to keep your personal life just that. You know what to do to get the job done, and can always be counted on. You may not have much of sense of humor, but you're strong, reliable, and loyal.
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