Caitlín R. Kiernan

Not sure why I'm using my Carolyn Fry icon today, from that marvelous scene as the Hunter Gratzner crashes. It just felt right. Maybe it says something about the health of Frank the Goat this morning and early afternoon, as LJ suffered another DDoS attack.

1) A late start to the day. But I've already signed 600+ signature sheets for Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart (coming from Subterranean Press in 2012) and proofed inked pages for the Alabaster comic. I wish I could show you more of the art; the first issue is going to kick ass, and a lot of that credit will go to Steve Lieber (artist and letterer), our colorist Rachelle Rosenberg, and cover artist Greg Ruth.

2) I'm still hoping to be able to begin the new short story, for Sirenia Digest #72, started this afternoon. A tale about two women who become cities. And yeah, sorry, the digest will be woefully late this month. November was a right proper cunt, was she. So, blame her. But, still, I hope to have it out by the 10th of December at the latest.

3) And speaking of Sirenia Digest #72, come on, kittens. Get in those responses to the fifth Question @ Hand. Don't be shy. You get complete anonymity, and you DO NOT have to worry about the feasibility of the science in your replies. Oh, and I'll be especially pleased by entries that make no mention of my being a writer. But don't tarry too long. If these are going to make it into #72, I need all replies in by midnight CaST (EST +1 hour) Wednesday, December 7th.

4) Good RP in Rift last night. Thank you, all who took part. You were splendid. I'm hoping to double our numbers by the end of December, and then worry a lot less about recruiting for a bit. I'm beginning to wonder if a surprisingly (to me) small number of my readers are gamers. My calls for players go mostly unheeded, and, truly, not only is Rift an awesome game (as in, it fills me with awe), it's a great entertainment value. For the price of a large pizza, for less than a single movie for two, you get a month of unlimited play. Can't do much better than that. Dump that crappy cable TV, and come and play with us!

5) We've been working our way through Disc One of the most recent season of Doctor Who, and last night we finally saw the episode written by Neil, "The Doctor's Wife." Frankly, I was completely unimpressed by the four episodes (or was it three?) that preceded it, but then "The Doctor's Wife" blew me away. It is no lie to say that I very almost cried at the end. It shows that Matt Smith can be a good doctor, if given good scripts (though I still miss David Tenant, and I miss Christopher Eccleston – my doctor – even more). However, no author can redeem Rory Williams (BORING), and I want him gone.

6) Whoever is responsible for the portmanteau "advertorials" (derogatory shutter quotes!) needs to die, along with whoever invented the concept. And Jesus fuck, LJ knows how to spell the goddamned "word"!

Anyway, I think that's all for now. Carry on.

Eating A Cupcake,
Aunt Beast

Yesterday, I wrote 1,689 words on Chapter Five of Blood Oranges. The chapter is now about halfway finished, but I'm clearly going to have to set it aside and attend to Sirenia Digest until #68 goes out to subscribers.

Yesterday's pages were...different. Grimmer (or at least gorier) than most of this book has been. But as Spooky pointed out, still funny. It's a strange, strange trick – for me – that this book is being used to turn. Anyway, when I say funny I do not necessarily mean guffaw funny. Maybe sometimes I do. Maybe. More often than not, I mean the sort of funny that brings a knowing smile. I'm not a comedian. Remember the scene in Pulp Fiction (1994) when Vince accidentally blows Marvin's head off? The scene is funny as hell. I'd like to think that when this book will make you "laugh out loud," it'll be because a scene or a line of dialogue worked like Marvin's unfortunate head. The way that scene worked. Or, better still, the funnier stuff that followed immediately afterwards. Or Vince and Jules trying to wash Marvin's blood off their hands in Jimmie Dimmick's sparkling suburban bathroom:

The actual scene I'm referring to here is behind the cut:

( Pulp Fiction 74 )

Now...it's trickier than this. Much so, actually. Because Quentin Tarantino, he had your eyes on his side. He had Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta and the film's camera crew and editors. Tarantino had delivery, inflection, subtle and not so subtle facial expressions, a whole bag chocked full of visual aids (the bloody towel is, for example, hilarious). But if you are one of the three people on Earth who have never seen the film (well, shame the fuck on you), odds are this scene might read rather flatly. Even though (I shit you not, as Siobahn Quinn would say), "I watched you get 'em wet," is one of the funniest lines ever uttered in any film.

Coming to Blood Oranges, I was well aware of my handicap. No visual aids. No actors bringing their talents to bear on the problem at hand. Just me, and me, and me, and a whole lot of words. If I can't make you see it the way I need you to see it, make you hear it as I intend it to be heard, and so forth...all attempts at humor will fall flat.

There's a reason I've never tried this trick before. Well, hardly ever have I tried it. Anyway, thing is, Pulp Fiction, though very funny throughout, isn't actually a comedy (and if you throw out that "dramedy" shit, I'll punch you in the face; sorry, that's what Quinn would have said...or Jules Winfield...or Vince Vega). And see, Blood Oranges isn't actually a comedy....

Comedy and horror live right next door. Hell, most times, they share a bunk.

***

Yesterday, stsisyphus commented, regarding the WFA nomination for The Ammonite Violin & Others, "Who would have thought that an online poll to start up a few monthly vignettes would have led to all this?" And I realized that, in effect, Sirenia Digest has been nominated for a World Fantasy Award. Which left me completely stunned and delighted.

Oh, and you sorry-ass Russian hacker scum, I can only hope that every time you close your goddamn eyes, you see this staring back at you:



Stunned,
Aunt Beast

Even though LiveJournal is experiencing the latest round of massive DDOS attacks from Russian hackers, I have at least limited access to my LJ, so I'm going to attempt an entry. Because that's what I do every day before I start working. Even if no one will be able to read it. I'm thinking about to moving to Typepad. I'd move to Dreamwidth, instead, but it's owners are bona-fide scumbags.

I honestly thought this would be the entry wherein I said something like, "Oh, I'm sorry the entries have been so angry and grim the last few days. I'm better now. Let's get back on track."

No.

That's not happening today. The shit-storm continues.

Yesterday, though, I did write 1,465 words, and so began Chapter 5 of Blood Oranges. It was the first time I'd been able to bring myself to work on the book since June 19th.

There is a reason for this, a reason why I wrote the entire first half of a novel in one month (something I'd never even thought possible for me), and then locked up for a month and was unable to go back to it. There is an explanation. But like many explanations, it's divulged at a risk. At the risk of pissing off people who are better left unpissed off.

Which leaves me wondering, why does no one in this great clusterfuck of a publishing industry care if the author gets pissed? It leaves me wondering that, though the answer is obvious. The author, in the eyes of Industry, of Business, is a disposable cog. One makes too much noise, causes too much trouble, there are at least a thousand waiting to take her job. Gods, I'm sounding like a Marxist. But it's the fucking truth. You want to be a professional author? One whose sole source of income is her writing? Fine, just don't think it's ever going to "make you your own boss." I'm as answerable to The Boss as any poor cubicle schmuck. Yes, I can walk away anytime I choose. But so can anyone, no matter their line of work. It only requires the resolve to live in a cardboard box on a street corner.

I'm with Parker, in The Way of the Gun. I think a plan is just a list of things that don't happen. Back in May, I had something I'd never had during my publishing career. I had a plan. A good plan. I allowed it to be reshuffled. And now...

No, it's not the end of the world. In fact, it's sort of a paper cut. But you know what happens if you get a few hundred paper cuts. See Forms of Torture in China, Pre-1905.

Maybe you'll be able to read this. Maybe you won't. Frank the Goat only knows.

Cut,
Aunt Beast

Grateful thanks to everyone who said that yes, they could see the test entry. I think I had to make a new entry to prime to pump, so to speak. The test entry seemed to fix everything. It's reassuring to know that the CEBS actually works. And on a Sunday morning, at that.

I think I was one of maybe seven people who were actually able to make an entry on LJ yesterday. If you want to read it (hawks, crows, Terry Gilliam's Tideland, spider bites, writerly isolation), just click here. I'll be watching it for comments today. Clearly, someone at Six Apart needs to buy Frank the Goat a muzzle.

Anyway...

It's colder today than yesterday. Still, we took a walk before I settled into my freezing office to bang away at the keyboard all day. Saw one of the hawks, soaring over North Ave., looking for pigeons or starlings or rats. Not much else. Spooky contemplated going down to Grandma Luke's for a fried banana and peanut butter sandwich, which almost sounded too good to pass up. My right shoe kept coming untied.

We ended up at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History late yesterday afternoon, because Spooky's been wanting to see the Roman exhibition. I wish someone could have warned us it was "girl scout day." I'm just glad it wasn't "boy scout day." I said hi to the dinosaurs and we saw an IMAX film, Deep Sea. Then we had to go to the pet store, because Hubero was out of cat litter. And then we went to our favorite Thai place, because we were both in need of comfort food and the spicy basil rice bowl does the trick every time. On the way, we spotted a beautiful, huge white full moon rising over the tree tops and a few low purple-pink clouds. I checked the clock in the car; 6:41 (CaST). It was not a bad day.

Back home, we watched Terry Zwigoff's Art School Confidential and Steve Buscemi's Lonesome Jim. I liked the former, though not quite as much as I thought I would (I think I've ODed on irony), but was a bit disappointed with the latter. It just wasn't nearly as good as Tree's Lounge, and I'd hoped it would be. It didn't help that Casey Affleck acted as though he was in a high-school play. But it was oddly consoling to discover that I do not actually think Liv Tyler's hot. It was just the ears. That was a huge relief, even if I'm not sure why. After the movies, a little past midnight, I called Poppy (docbrite), because she'd left a message on my poor neglected answering thingy. I'd not talked to her in ages, and we wound up talking until 2:30 a.m. (CaST). Assorted topics of conversations included, but were not limited to, getting old, health insurance (and the lack thereof), cats, spider bites, tattoos, sex, lit agents, editors, reviewers, New Orleans, Realtors® (snork), Daughter of Hounds and Dead Shrimp Blues, wikipedia, MySpace, kids these days, how much I hate writing novels (but will always have to write them, anyway), Athens (GA), and self medication. We'd have talked longer, but my cellphone was overheating and I making my ear hurt, and I fully expected it to explode and bury shards of molten plastic in my brain.

Then we went to bed and Spooky read to me from House of Leaves until 3:30 (CaST), and I do not seem able to get it through my head that this is not the book to read Right Before Sleep.

Tilda Swinton, who rocks my world (even without ears), is 46 today.

Okay. There are words that must be written and no one to write them but me. Oh, and there's this photo (behind the cut), because the pink house (see 6/2/06 05:23 pm), the one that was being used to pimp that idiotic Paris Hilton show, was unpinked a couple of months ago and I keep forgetting to post a photo. Spooky got this one on our walk today. I don't go in for the whole southwestern sunset thing they have going down, but still, it's better than frelling Barbie pink.

( Pink No More )