greygirlbeast: (sol)
The heat is back. Dr. Muñoz can, at best, handle but one room at a time. And this is likely to be the only thing of substance I shall get written today. I leave for Readercon 19 tomorrow, my first con appearance in almost four years, and there are a hundred things to do. Make sure I have clothes for two days. Make a trip to a Mac counter somewhere, because I've mostly stopped wearing cosmetics. Figure out what the fuck I'm going to be reading tomorrow evening, and at least give a little thought to the panels I've agreed to do. Oooh. Bad déjà vu. Must be a glitch in the Matrix somewhere. Anyway, we attended to hiding all the Nebari grey showing through in my hair yesterday, so at least that's done. We'll be taking Spooky's laptop, so I'll have internet access. I'll likely make at least one post from the con. As soon as I'm back, I have to finish up Chapter Three of The Red Tree, then get two pieces written for Sirenia Digest #32 in time to get the issue out by July 31st.

Please have a look at the current eBay auctions. Thank you.

Since the beginning of my participation in the Second Life Toxian City rolepaly sim ("urban dark fantasy") back in November, I've lamented that the nature of my character/s there are not conducive to keeping an ic blog, as I did for Professor Nishi last summer and autumn. However, I just have to post this bit, which is actually from Pontifex's blog. It might not make much sense out of context, but someday I'll look back at this entry regarding Labyrinth (Eris Discordia, Azathoth, etc.) and it'll make me smile:

Testament of Pontifex, Chapter 1:
1 In the beginning, the Goddess Eris was void and without form. 2 The Gods of Night and Day saw this and were filled with hate, for they were defined. 3 They plotted that one day she too would be bound, and it was so. 4 But they were forgotten and their plans had brought her to their beasts. 5 The beasts felt her presence and came to gaze into her void. 6 Some were stricken with madness and fear. These were called the Unnamed. 7 Others lost themselves into her void and became her Dancers. 8 Those that understood and could still stand called themselves her Prophets.


Also, there are other character blogs, those who've interacted with Nareth and now Labyrinth, and if you don't mind jigsaw puzzles, you can sort of piece the story together from entries in the ic journals of Joah Menjou, Omega Althouse, and Larissa Starostin. Aside from the lolspeaking morons and the occasional encounter with powder-blue (or pink, or green, or...) "werewolves" (why people insist on using those laughable "funny animal" avs when there are very good werewolf avatars available in SL is beyond me; there's no accounting for fetish), it's a pretty good ride.

Er...yesterday. What else. Last night, we watched Michel Gondry's Be Kind, Rewind (2008), which I found entirely delightful, and quite a bit more than I'd expected. Which should not have come as a surprise, given my fondness for Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and La Science des rêves (2006). Also, I've started missing old-fashioned console gaming in the worst sort of way, so last night I began Tomb Raider: Anniversary, a remake of one of my all-time faves, the original 1996 Tomb Raider. I reached the "Lost Valley" last night, and so far (a few issues with the controller and camera aside), I'm loving it. Too long have I forsaken the console! Oh, also also, intrigued by Fraser's book, I dug out "The First Record of Erpetosuchus (Reptilia; Archosauria) from the Late Triassic of North America" (JVP 20(4), Olsen, Sues, et Norell 2000), which concerns the discovery of remains of Erpetosuchus in Connecticut from beds of the Newark Supergroup.

And if that's not enough sheer nerdiness for one entry, then I'll remind you not to miss Act Two of Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog...because it just frelling rocks.
greygirlbeast: (kermit!)
So, having survived the trip to Birmingham, the time has come, finally, to face down the 691 ms. pages of Daughter of Hounds. Counting today and the day the ms. absolutely has to be back with my editor in NYC, I have a mere 19 days to do a read-through, consider her suggestions for revisions, make whatever revisions must be made, and get the thing out of here. Fortunately, I'm being allowed to submit the ms. electronically (ah, the future) or my eema would be toast. No way I'd be able to do this in, oh, say, ten days. So, yes, the marathon begins. For the next two weeks and five days, Spooky and I will being doing precious little that isn't directly related to getting this ms. ready for my editor (who's name is Liz, by the way). To that end, I shall be doing something I've never done before and swore I would never do. I shall be employing the Zokutou Word Meter. I've always looked askance at those things, as I cannot imagine how one knows the length of most fictions until they're finished, but it may serve me in this effort, since I do know the precise length of the present draft (shown below in pp., which I guess makes this my Zokutou Page Meter). A visual aid of my progress during this crunch might be useful. We'll see. I'll start one now, to track our progress through the ms., the read-through, and then when I begin the revisions, I'll restart it (or start a second one, to be more exact). This morning, it looks like this:

Zokutou word meter
0 / 691
(0.0%)


Isn't that frelling encouraging? I'm hoping we'll finish the read-through on May 6th. That's assuming we get through the prologue today (over 10K words) and then do one chapter a day with no lost days. It's a daunting schedule. The last time I can recall being so under the gun was the novel I ghosted back in '97, which was written, start to finish, in about three months. Today, I'm printing a clean copy of the whole ms., since the first draft is so marked up that many pages are illegible, hidden behind my red scribble. But I also need to read all the way through "Highway 97," tweak it however much it needs to be tweaked, and write a little intro for it. So, yeah, that's what I'll be doing today.

We stopped by my storage unit in Birmingham yesterday. I've had tons of stuff stored since we left Liberty House (the first time) in August 2001, and every now and then I stop by and rescue something. It may interest you to know that the storage facility is in the Harris Warehouse and Transfer Building, on the third floor, as featured in "The Long Hall on the Top Floor." The story was written before I even knew the building was being used for private storage. Oh, serendipity! Anyway, I found my copy of The Chocolate Alphabet, a wonderful little black-and-white comic Harlan did with Larry Todd. It was published in 1978, and I'd feared my copy was lost. But I discovered it yesterday, hidden in a box of notebooks from college.

Decent enough sleep last night, despite the nightmares. I saw my pusher...er, doctor yesterday, and she set me up with some free samples of the new AmbienCR. I gave up on Ambien quite some time ago, as I was only getting four hours a night off the stuff, far too little sleep for the steep price tag. Supposedly, AmbienCR will keep me down longer. Even my doctor was doubtful it would work for me any better than regular Ambien, but we shall see. I got about 6.5 hrs. last night.

Oh, here's a link to the official announcement from Subterranean Press regarding the extended print-run of the limited of Alabaster. Right here. I must say, I am extremely pleased to learn "The Limited Edition sold out far quicker than any CRK title we’ve done before." Perhaps mass-market success continues to elude me, but at least I have the specialty press thing down pat! My thanks to everyone who's bought the book thus far.

Also, I wanted to thank the reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, who heard my pleas and sent me Tomb Raider: Legend. It arrived late last week. This is how I shall vent at the ends of these long days of editing. It may save my life (or at least may save several fragile objects from being smashed). My gratitude.

And here's a drad sort of something, courtesy Boss Tweed of Seattle (sorry, I'm not up to LJ tags this a.m.), a dead squid become a Martian in a photoessay based on H. G. Well's War of the Worlds. Yum!

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Caitlín R. Kiernan

February 2012

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