Caitlín R. Kiernan

We're having a rather wonderful thunderstorm.

I've seen a couple of people speculating that, because of Monday's seizure and yesterday's doctor visit, I won't be at ReaderCon 20. However, this is not the case. Despite yesterday's unexpected expense, I will be at ReaderCon (July 9-12). I have decided, though, that I am going to request people please not take photos (or audio recordings) during my two solo presentations, or at my reading and signing, or that I pose with them for photos. I have a feeling I'm just not going to be up to the camera. But I will be there.

News from the neurologist: Nothing new. Rest more. Sleep much more. Do everything I can to minimize stress. Try to work less (HAH!). The dosage on my anti-seizure meds was upped. And then I was handed an exorbitant bill, which, of course, ironically, added more stress and sleeplessness and, well, like I said, nothing new. Frankly, I wish I'd never brought this up in the blog. This is the sort of thing I prefer to keep to myself, whenever possible. To say the least, I've not been thinking clearly the last few days.

My thanks to the people who took a moment yesterday to comment on Sirenia Digest #43. Frankly, I'm starting to feel as though "The Mermaid of the Concrete Ocean" is one of those stories I want to be "remembered for." lady_theadora wrote: "'The Mermaid of the Concrete Ocean' —— a beautiful story. I love it that you write about art. Just like the library in The Dreaming contains books that have never been written, I think there's also a gallery containing the works of all your artists." Yeah, I'm fond of writing about paintings. Sometimes, I think its mostly because some twit told me, years and years ago, that they weren't suitable subjects for fiction, because the "reader cannot see them." Right. Anyway, it should be noted that another of my fictional painters, Constance Hopkins, plays a very important role in The Red Tree.

Speaking of which, I apologize for missing micro-excerpt 10 yesterday. It'll go up as soon as I'm done with this entry, and you may see it at greygirlbeast. I've almost reached 500 followers on Twitter, by the way (in about nine days), which gives me hope I can easily reach the 1,000 mark by the end of July.

Last night, Spooky and I finally began reading Max Brooks' World War Z, and I'm enjoying it immensely.

Yesterday was the 101st anniversary of the Tunguska explosion, and no one seemed to take note. I find that odd, what with it being a high holy day for the Immaculate Order of the Falling Sky.

But I should go. I need to try to get back to work on the last third of "The Sea Troll's Daughter," as it's due July 5th. If you have a moment, please look at the current eBay auctions. Bid if you are so able and disposed. Thanks. Oh, and I'd love to see more comments regarding Sirenia Digest #43.

My thanks to everyone who took time to offer comments to my second entry from Tuesday. Following the horticultural advice and directions of Paul Riddell (sclerotic_rings), we salvaged some branches and twigs and are now attempting to produce at least one viable clone of the tree. Spooky spent much of yesterday collecting willow cuttings, boiling willow bark, extracting salicyclic acid, refrigerating twigs, looking for Rootone or something of the sort, and etc. Today, the last of the tree is being taken down. Chainsaws, chainsaws, chainsaws. I am beginning to suspect that an insurance company is in back of this affair, and many of the other murdered tree stories I've been hearing. Anyway, right now our bathtub looks like this:



Yesterday, I wrote 2,053 words. Sunday, February 25th has been decided upon as the date on which the New Consolidated March shall at last reach THE END. Our goal is now in sight. There's just this one big hill before the finish. Then my life will belong to me once again.

Only a very short walk yesterday. The weather was fairly warm, but drizzly, and besides, I needed to get back to the March. There were starlings and robins everywhere, hundreds of them. I am intending a longer walk today.

eldritch00 asked: And oh, cf. the comment below, a collection of your SF? I think I missed that bit of news, too!

There has not yet been any sort of official announcement, but Subterranean Press will be doing my first collection of science fiction at some point in the nearish future. This is the book which was to be titled A is for Alien before Neil decided to call a collection M is for Magic. Now it might be called Bradbury Weather or Rumours of a Strange Universe. Anyway, this book might be ready by late 2008, I'm thinking. There are still many stories left to write.

Last night, after dinner, we read more of The Terror, reaching Rescue Camp at the southeastern corner of King William (Is)Land, and then we watched Howard Hawks delightful Ball of Fire (1941) on TCM, sort of a postscript to our recent Gary Cooper binge. I didn't get to sleep until sometime after 3:30 a.m.

Also, my thanks to all those who've sent me links to recent news articles regarding the near-earth asteroid (99942) Apophis. It should be noted that the Immaculate Order of the Falling Sky thinks that 1/45,000 are pretty good odds, all things considered, and is contemplating designating April 13, 2036 as our official tentative Doomsday. If I have not yet shuffled off this mortal coil, I shall have reached the age of -31 on that date, so I might even still be around to see the fireworks. All hail the coming biological reset and the dawn of the Postanthrozoic Era and Earth Mark III. Bring on the Big Space Rock. Yes, indeed.

Yesterday was, in all respects, a vast improvement upon Wednesday and Thursday. First off, the words finally began to come again, and I did 851 words (all written to I Megaphone) on a new vignette, "Ode to Edvard Munch." It's an interesting little piece that I'm liking a great deal. I've been reading a little Saki and Virginia Woolf, and that might be showing through. That's always a danger, and why I usually avoid reading fiction while writing novels. In the introduction he wrote for Harlan's Stalking the Nightmare (1982), Stephen King discussed a phenomenon that many young writers experience, the tendency to write like whoever they're reading at the time. "Imitativeness," he calls it. He goes on to say:

The imitativeness shakes out, and we become ourselves again. But. One never seems to develop an immunity to some writers...or at least I never have. Their ranks are small, but their influence...has been profound. When I go back to them, I can't not imitate them. My letters start sounding like them; my short stories; a chunk of whatever novel I'm working on; even grocery lists.

I think not even my harshest detractors would argue that I lack my own voice, but I have to admit that, even now, at almost -2, I am particularly vulnerable to this problem of "imitativeness." And yes, certain writers are murder to read and keep out of whatever I'm doing. Bradbury. Harlan. Hemingway. Shirley Jackson. Kathe Koja. Faulkner. And Saki. And Woolf. So, yeah, you might detect them in "Ode to Edvard Munch." Or you may not. We shall see. Oh, and perhaps more than a hint of Portrait of Jenny, as well. The 1948 film, more than the Robert Nathan novel. I hope to finish the vignette this afternoon. I hope. I'm soooooo far behind (thank you, Editing Monster).

Yesterday, I printed out Chad Michael Ward's artwork for the new paperback edition of Threshold and noticed something wrong right off. I got out the magnifying glass to be sure. Dancy has Sadie's blue-white eyes. I e-mailed Liz, my editor, immediately and asked if it's too late to fix this, to made the blue-white pink. She hasn't written back yet. But I'm hopeful, so, once again, we shall see. Other than the eye-colour problem, I still love the artwork (which I'll post as soon as posting is permitted).

Spooky spoke with her mother yesterday, and I have a tentative ETA for the trip to New England this summer. It will probably be late July through mid August. I want to be back in time to get ready for Dragon*Con, the first week of September. Anyway, as soon as I have the exact dates, I can set up the reading/signing in Boston, and then I'll post the date, etc. here. It shouldn't be too much longer. I am very much looking forward to this trip, even if I will have to get a lot of writing done while we're gone. I'm eager for the train ride up, the beaches, the lighthouses, Del's lemonade, and about a hundred other things. Fortunately, we've found someone to housesit for us, which relieves some of my concern about being gone so long. However, our housesitter isn't up to dealing with Sophie and her injections and attitude, so she will be boarded the entire time.

It occurred to me yesterday that sheheit might make a nice gender-neutral pronoun. I detest hir, and it amuses me that sheheit sounds like shit in Southern Redneckese.

The Imogen Heap show last night was superb. I stopped writing at exactly 4:28, and the show wasn't until 8:30, but we needed to be there at 7 to get a good seat. After the writing, my mood wasn't such that I felt like being rushed, and I grumped about and wasted time, so much so that there wasn't time for dinner. Still, I'm glad that Spooky didn't allow me to back out. Zoe Keating opened, and she never fails to amaze. She was having some computer trouble, the box not responding to MIDI commands, and had to reboot after the first song, and this had something to do with her having just returned from France, but I wasn't clear what. Imogen Heap was absolutely wonderful. I am entirely seduced by her charm and her voice and her geekiness and her iBook. Oh, she also had to reboot after the first song or two. This is how I know I live in the Future.

While rebooting, she told about getting all "Jägermeistered-up" in Knoxville and letting Ryan Obermeyer talk her into stealing a cookie jar at the Hampton Inn where they were staying and almost getting arrested the next day. At this point, I realised that Ryan was out front at the merch table. I said hi on the way out. The constant reader will recall that Ryan did the beautiful covers for the The Dry Salvages and To Charles Fort, With Love, as well as the cover and endpapers of the subpress edition of Low Red Moon. So yes, all in all, a wonderful night. And even with the show, we still managed to get home in time to see Dr. Who at midnight, which rocked. Christopher Eccleston, you know. Though, afterwards, while searching for the misplaced remote, I was subjected to a few moments of Stargate: SG-whatever, and there was John Crichton, only he wasn't, and there was Aeryn Sun, only she wasn't (and she was dressed horridly), and it was all sorts of wrong. I almost had a seizure before I found the remote. Anyway, there are a few of the 85 photos we took at the show behind the cut:

( Zoe and Imogen )

Those frelling naysayers at NASA have gone and lowered the odds of asteroid Apophis impacting earth in 2036 from 1 in 6,000 to 1 in 24,000. Naturally, the Immaculate Order of the Falling Sky looks askance at this change in forecast and suspects conspiracy. You know, to keep the panic to a minimum. We shall continue to hope for the best. And even at 1 in 24,000, those aren't such terrible odds. I mean, the odds of someone in America being struck by lightning in any given year are a whopping 1/700,000 (!) and all sorts of people do get struck. We must remember that that which is improbable is not impossible. Indeed, that which is improbable may often be inevitable, given enough time. By the way, I think I'm getting a permanent tongue-groove worn into my left cheek...

The platypus says that I should mention that wishing thing on Amazon again, what with only a week remaining until the dread -2, but I fear that would be poor form. The platypus cares not about poor form. Just look at sheheit...all webbed feet and fur and duck-bill...

Yesterday, driven half-mad by editing and continuity problems, I declared that I will never again write such a long novel. And I mean it. The target length for Joey LaFey (the spelling keeps changing, but there you go, continuity problems) will be about 70,000 words. Certainly no more than 100,000. Anyway, we made it through the rest of the January/February notes yesterday, which involved no small amount of rewriting. Today is loose-ends day. I made a short list late yesterday of everything that's left to be done, and hopefully by six or seven this evening, it will all be done. Because I need to move on to Sirenia Digest and about a hundred other things. I love this novel, and I mean to do right by it, but I'm also sick to death of the thing.

Despite all my kvetching about the weather, yesterday turned out to be quite nice, and other than a 47F low forecast for tonight, things are looking up. Back to the 80s very soon. About three yesterday afternoon, we took a break from editing and had a long walk. It was so gorgeous out, a brilliant and blustery spring day, that I seriously considered falling asleep beneath a tree in Freedom Park and letting the ms. fend for itself.

Let's see...interesting stuff. A previously unknown genus of monkey, Rungwecebus kipunji, has been discovered in Tanzania, the first new extant genus of monkey described in 83 years. Also, for those of you keeping an ear (or whatever) to the heavens, note that between May 14th-17th, the fragmented comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 will be making its closest pass to Earth, a scant 10 million miles. While the Immaculate Order of the Falling Sky has formally acknowledged that this is not "The One" we're waiting on, it has been dubbed a "harbinger." Oh, I think we may have the slogan for the first IOFS bumper sticker (because what's a doomsday cult without bumper stickers?): "The End is Near Inevitable."

Yesterday, while proofing DoH, I found myself at the American Museum of Natural History's website, double-checking opening and closing times (when you read Chapter Three, you'll understand why). I'm hoping Spooky and I will be able to made it down to NYC when we visit New England this summer, because I'm hoping to have a chance to see the AMNH's Darwin exhibit before it ends on August 20th. Also, "Lizards and Snakes: Alive!" begins on July 1st.

Okay. Time to wrap this up. The platypus says I'm stalling. If you haven't already, please take a moment to vote in the Sirenia Digest poll. This is important. I'll be watching it for at least another two or three days. Thanks to everyone who's voted thus far.