greygirlbeast | Entries tagged with locus

Not much in the mood for an entry today. We'll play a nice game of catch up tomorrow.

My thanks to everyone who has donated mine and

kylecassidy's Drowning Girl Kickstarter project. At this point, it's 141% funded, and we still have twenty-eight days to go. And there are some amazing new rewards, soon to be announced. So, it's not too late. Also, people seem shy about those donations between $1-$14, but they ought not. Every bit helps, plus those donations grant access to the project blog.

Today, I am going to the sea.

Try to go seventy-two hours without using "lol," in any context (unless it's part of an actual word, such as lollipop). Maybe future generations won't thank you, them being doomed and all, but I'll sure be grateful.

Oh! One last thing. From Richard Horton's review of Ellen Datlow's Supernatural Noir, in the August issue of Locus:

Finally, Caitlín R. Kiernan’s ‘‘The Maltese Unicorn’’, which is as stylishly noir as any story here, is about a used bookstore owner who is friendly with a mysterious brothel owner, and thus ends up trying to track down a strange object – a dildo – for her, and gets involved, to her distress, with a beautiful and untrustworthy woman mixed up in the whole business. I thought this the best story in the book, and the story that most perfectly, to my taste, matched the theme.

Booya!

Lastly, thanks to

sovay for news of this wondrous fossil, a plesiosaur found with an unborn plesioaur in its abdomen:

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Aromatum Chaos
Current Music: R.E.M., "Two Steps Onward [Athens Demo]"

I only just got the news of Joanna Russ' death.

I think we're taking the day off, even though today isn't as warm as yesterday, by about ten degrees. So, this entry will be a swift recounting of yesterday. Or at least I mean for it to be that.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,709 words on "The Carnival is Dead and Gone," but it wants to be a short story, not a vignette, so I'm, at best, only two thirds of the way through it. I find it one of my especially disturbing pieces, for various reasons. Also, I exchanged many emails yesterday with

kylecassidy regarding the book trailer for The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, though conversation also strayed to the Matawan Creek shark attacks of 1916 and Providence's HPL landmarks.

My story "Tidal Forces," which appears in Johnathan Strahan's forthcoming collection, Eclipse 4, has been singled out for the "Good Story Award" over at Locus.com. Thank you, Lois Tilton. (This is not an actual award award, but it made me smile, nonetheless).

If everything stays on track, Sirenia Digest #65 will go out to subscribers on Wednesday. It will include "The Carnival is Dead and Gone," the best replies to the most recent Question @ Hand, and a profile of German surrealist Michael Hutter, featuring examples of his marvelous artwork.

Last night, we watched what was almost a rather serviceable thriller, Jonas Åkerlund's Horsemen (2009). Unfortunately, there's an utterly implausible upbeat ending that blows the whole thing, causing it to veer into after-school special territory at the very last. I strongly suspect the studio forced that ending on the director, but haven't been able to confirm the suspicion. Ziyi Zhang was, by far, the best thing anywhere in the film. Anyway, I also did a little rp, and Spooky and I began reading the novel that will be May's selection for Aunt Beast's Book of the Month Club (TBA).

That, kittens, was yesterday.

Spooky has begun a new round of eBay auctions, so please have a look.

Current Mood: been worse
Current Location: Hecates Tholus
Current Music: Arcade Fire, "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)"

Sonya and I are reading through The Dry Salvages (Subterranean Press, 2004). It's the last real hurdle in finishing up editing Two Worlds and In Between.

There's a lot of ancient history here.

The Dry Salvages (for those who do not know) is a very short sf novel about the ill-fated exploration of an extrasolar moon — Piros, which orbits a planet named Cecrops. It's dystopian, dark, tense, a bit Lovecraftian, heavily influenced by the cyberpunks and New Wave writers, with a big Stanislaw Lem influence, and pretty much devoid of optimism. I did an enormous amount of work on it, and went to great lengths to get all the science as right as I could get it. The physics, paleontology, robotics, astronomy, geology, biology, engineering, mathematics...everything. I enlisted the aid of people knowledgeable in areas where my own expertise was lacking.

The book meant a lot to me. I was weary of writing dark fantasy and wanted to make a switch to sf. So, I had a lot riding on critical and reader reaction to the book. I likely had somewhat unrealistic expectations. Subterranean Press did wonderful things to promote the novel. It got a grand cover from Ryan Oberymeyer:

The Dry Salvages, Copyright © 2004 by Ryan Obermeyer

The review that meant the most to me, the one I awaited with bated breath, was the Locus review. It finally arrived. And it wasn't exactly glowing. Moreover, it had been written by a reviewer for whom I had (and still have) a good deal of respect. Whether or not I should have been, I was...I still don't know the right word for the way I felt. Confused, mostly. I'd never gotten a bad Locus review. Even The Five of Cups had received a good review. But Locus is, first and foremost, a magazine devoted to sf, and this was sf, and now I was playing in the Big Leagues. And I think the way I felt was that I'd been told to stay in my place. Indeed, the review included a line which I shall paraphrase, as I don't have the actual text on hand (those files are in storage): "This is what happens when horror writers try to write science fiction." I'm sure that's not an exact quote, but I think it's the exact sentiment. To be fair, the reviewer did not think the book was entirely without merit, just not up to the standards of contemporary literary sf.

Though I am absolutely certain it was not the reviewer's intent, the review had an immediate and chilling effect on me. I believed he knew what he was talking about, and so obviously I'd blown it. I resolved to stick to dark fantasy (my agent hadn't wanted me writing sf, anyway, but that's another story).

The Dry Salvages sold well, and there was even a weird bit of business with a Very Big Hollywood Production Company of which nothing ever came. I still wrote sf short stories, many of which appeared in my 2009 sf collection, A is for Alien (which I don't think Locus even reviewed). But I haven't tried to write another piece of sf even half as ambitious as The Dry Salvages. (And no, I do not believe that was the reviewer's desired effect; not at all.)

And now, more than six years after that review, I'm reading The Dry Salvages for the first time since I sent the final manuscript to subpress (I didn't read it after it appeared in print). And I'm reading it with fresh eyes, almost as if it were written by another author. We're halfway through, and I'm delighted with it. Anyone who knows me, or who's read this journal for a while, knows I'm one of my own harshest critics, and that I usually grow unhappy with a story or novel after only a few years. But...I'm enjoying The Dry Salvages.

And this is the perfectly fucking obvious thing that I am concluding: Reviewers whom you respect, whom you very often — but not always — agree with, can be very wrongheaded. For years I believed what that review said about this book, but reading it now, I see that I was mistaken, as was the reviewer. Is it "hard" sf? Well, sort of, but not exactly. It's not space opera, but there's far more emphasis on wonder and awe and the perils of space travel to the human mind than there is on tech. It's also not the recently fashionable "mundane" sf, which eschewed space travel and alien contact. But the science is good, and the writing's some of my best from that period.

And the review was wrongheaded. This doesn't mean the reviewer doesn't often offer valuable insight about books. It just means that, in this instance, a book failed to measure up in their eyes (and, in part, I think that's because there was a strong and mistaken preconception that I was a "horror writer"). But, the only real fault here was my reaction. No review should ever make you waver the way I did in the wake of that review.

And now, reading The Dry Salvages again after all these years, I'm reclaiming it. I did a good job. And maybe someday I'll write another sf story like it, of that length and scope.

Regardless, very soon the story will be in print again, and as I read it tonight, I'm glad of that.

No hard feelings.

P.S.: With all due respect, I AM NOT A HORROR WRITER!

Current Mood: resolute
Current Location: Piros
Current Music: Lost Signal, "Blind"

The snow and ice are here to stay. What little melting takes places during the day freezes solid as soon as the sun sets. I'm not kidding about glaciers. I may have to do a driveway glacier photo essay. The low last night was something like 9˚F.

Today, your comments would be most appreciated. Fridays are always slow.

I tried, yesterday, to take a day off, and failed. At this point, there's not been a day without work since Monday the 17th, and there have been seventeen days of work since. Today will make eighteen. Starting to feel thin, but the work is piled on top of the other work. I've got to get through chapters 7 and 8 of The Drowning Girl: A Memoir this month, and finish up the editing and layout (and other stuff) for Two Worlds and In Between, and get Sirenia Digest #62 out to subscribers (the latter should happen tomorrow).

Yesterday, I tried very, very hard not to work. We made it through chapters 33-35 of Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which seemed a good way to begin a day off. Only, then there was some sort of anxiety storm, that ended with me working on the layout and editing for Two Worlds and In Between, and realizing I hate the introduction I wrote, and that I have to write a new one today. And answering email. Oh, and the page proofs for "Hydrarguros" arrived in the mail yesterday. The story's being reprinted in Subterranean 2: Tales of Dark Fantasy.

Day before yesterday was spent trying to talk myself over the wall that has suddenly appeared between chapters 6 and 7 of The Drowning Girl: A Memoir. Like magick. As soon as I realized the novel would take a different shape, and that Chapter 5 was actually chapters 5 and 6...boom...the first real wall I've encountered since the novel started gathering momentum back in November. I have to find my way over the wall by Sunday morning, at the latest. Anyway, yeah, work is presently a higgledy-piggledy twilight sort of place, too many things happening all at once and no time to stop and take a breath without worrying I'll drown. The weather isn't helping.

I was pleased to see that The Ammonite Violin & Others made the 2010 Locus Recommended Reading List.

--

Last night, we finished reading Kit Whitfield's In Great Waters, which was quite good, and I recommend it to anyone who's ever wondered at the direction European history might have taken if all the kings and queens (except in Switzerland) had been half-mermaid. There's a passage I want to quote from pp. 321-322, a "deepsman's" thoughts on Jesus, the Second Coming, and death, just because I love it:

A man might come back after three days hiding; it was not impossible. But the landsmen seemed to think he'd come back again, some day when the world ended— a thought that, in itself, was inconceivable. Creatures died; the world was what creatures died in. A broken back or a gouged throat created not a shiver of notice in the world, in anything except the dying creature. The world was what happened before you were born and kept happening after you died; there was no need for some dead landsman to come back and have everything living die at the same time and tear up the world while he was at it. Everyone would die anyway if they waited. It seemed to Henry that the landsmen were confused, that they hadn't seen enough dead things to know how easily the water kept flowing after a death, that however much you dreaded the end nothing stopped the tides. And no landsman could destroy the world, anyway, however clever he was at dodging in and out of seeming dead.

Also, we began Grace Krilanovich's The Orange Eats Creeps last night, and I'm already amazed. Also also, it has one of the few truly good and artful book trailers I've ever seen.

---

Two good movies over the last couple of nights. Wednesday night, we finally got to see Gareth Edwards' Monsters. And wow. I'm fairly certain that, after Inception, this is the second best science-fiction film of 2010. I'm appalled it got such a limited release. For an alien-invasion film, Monsters is superbly soft spoken, a symphony of whispers rising, at last, to a distant rumble of thunder. The climactic encounter between the protagonists and two of the aliens invokes not terror, but awe, arriving at that moment of transcendence when eyes are opened and "monsters" become something else entirely. Highly recommended. This is a must see, now that it's finally on DVD and the vagaries of film distribution are no longer holding this masterpiece hostage.

Last night, we watched Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders' How to Train Your Dragon (based on Cressida Cowell's book), and I was pleasantly surprised. I'd not been particularly enthusiastic about seeing it, perhaps because of all the 3D nonsense. But it's sort of marvelous. Sweet without going saccharine. Beautiful animation. And it all ends with a song by Jónsi. Very, very nice.

---

At this point, the Tale of the Ravens project is 160% funded (!!!), but it'll be open to donations, however large or small, for another 49 days. Please have a look. Spooky and I are both excited about this, our first collaboration and the beginning of Goat Girl Press. Please have a look. Oh, wait. I said that already.

And speaking of big black birds, here's the cover (behind the cut) for Ellen Datlow's forthcoming Supernatural Noir (due out from Dark Horse on June 22nd), which includes my story, "The Maltese Unicorn":

( Supernatural Noir )

Current Mood: pleased
Current Location: Parva Planum
Current Music: Throwing Muses, "Graffiti"

1. No idea why I'm using the cute Bjork icon the morning. I just couldn't seem to help myself.

2. Still happy about The Red Tree, A is for Alien, and "Galápagos" having all three landed on Locus Magazine's 2009 Recommended Reading List. It's always nice to know someone has noticed.

3. This morning, I awoke to a dusting of snow here in Providence. Maybe half an inch. We've had much less snow this winter than last.

4. Last night, Spooky and I celebrated her release from jury prison by binging on movies. First we watched Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock, which I found completely delightful. It's the sort of film that leaves me with nothing at all to complain about. And then we watched Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys again. It's a favorite, but both of us had only seen it twice ("Fuck the bozos!"). And speaking of movies, Geoffrey read me the Oscar nominations yesterday and I was...baffled. It's a baffling, and, at times, ridiculous list. But I am glad see Tarantino and Inglorious Basterds getting the attention it deserves, and I'm also rooting for Avatar, Up in the Air, A Simple Man, and a few others. And yeah, I did like District 9. I liked it a lot. But it's presence on the Oscar list still leaves me a bit perplexed.

5. Today, I finish pulling Sirenia Digest #50 together, and tonight, barring any unforeseen cataclysms, it will go out to subscribers.

6. There are few surer signs that's I'm not firing on all cylinders than discovering I've failed to get a set of revisions to an editor on time. Last night, I got an email from S.T. Joshi, wondering about my line edits to "Pickman's Other Model" (which will be appearing in Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror from PS Publishing). And I thought, "I sent those." But no, I'd not. I made the edits, back on December 16th, but I never actually typed them up and emailed them to Joshi. It is likely now too late. Fortunately, it was all very minor stuff. But it is a warning from me to me, to get back on the ball.

7. Back on Sunday, Spooky bought a new coffee maker (I've not had a coffee maker since 2005). It has a single glowing blue eye, and I call it Hal (yes, even though the eye is blue). She also got a pillow, two pairs of pajama pants for me, and a new bath mat. Combine this with the gifts from her mom, and it's been an odd (but needed) shower of domesticity around here.

8. Remember how much I loathe the cover of The Red Tree? I first saw this video devoted to the evolution of the "tramp stamp" urban-fantasy cover a year or so ago, but Spooky came across it again last night, and I thought I'd share. It would be funny, if not for the damage this sort of drek has done my own books (or at least done my nerves and aesthetic sensibilities):

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Enipeus Vallis
Current Music: VNV Nation, "Defiant"

As of today, I have not left the House in 11 days. If I don't leave tomorrow, I shall have broken my old record.

I am very pleased to see that The Red Tree, A is for Alien, and "Galápagos" all three made Locus Magazine's 2009 Recommended Reading List.

My great thanks to Geoffrey (

readingthedark) for making the drive to Providence the last two days to keep the shut-in invalid lady company while Spooky was stuck in jury duty (which is now over, thank fuck).

Work on Sirenia Digest #50 continues, and it should go out tomorrow night. My thanks to all the subscribers for their patience this month.

Current Mood: contained
Current Location: Apollinaris Patera
Current Music: Arcade Fire, "Black Mirror"

The thing about entries like this one, wherein I need to describe the day before, when nothing much happened, is that it tempts me to write about all the stuff I need to do during the day that lies before me. Which only serves to subvert the next day's entry.

There are a few things about Readercon 20 that I forgot to mention. For example, during the "Meet the Pros(e)" thingy on Friday night, when all the authors in attendance have sheets with peel-off stickers, and each sticker contains a single sentence the author has written. Con guests roam through the crowd, asking authors for sentences. Some authors exchange sentences with other authors. I gave lots away, but only received three stickers this year (I wasn't asking for them in return for my own). One reads, "Obsessives, doubters, workaholics: When the world ends, we will die, too." The second reads, "'We wage our deadliest battles,' Gundack said, 'against ourselves.'" Finally, the last reads, "Our words are the death masks of dreams." A theme is immediately apparent, and that I received these completely at random makes it all the more curious. I do not know who wrote these sentences.

Also, my thanks to

readingthedark, who gave me a copy of Placebo's Battle for the Sun the last day of the con. And there were other people I met for the first time, and that was cool. Catherynne Valente, for example, and Jeffrey Ford, and, gods, I forget. My mind is a sieve. Only, it's a selective sieve, which is the way of most sieves, now that I think on it. I expect there are other things I wanted to mention, but now I can't recall what they are. Oh, I did, once again, arrive at the conclusion that I will never be considered a "great" sf author, because I'll never concede that ideas are more important than characters, and I'll never be a technofetishist, and I'll never confuse the purposes and nature of literature with the role and nature of science.

I got the news yesterday morning that Charles N. Brown, co-founder and editor of Locus magazine (begun in 1968), died in his sleep on the way home from Readercon. I didn't know him well. We were once part of the same little dinner gathering in Chicago (2002), but that was about it. Nonetheless, his passing leaves a peculiar void in the world of sf & f publishing, and I was stunned at the news.

As I said, not much to yesterday. We had to make the drive back down to Spooky's parents' place in South County to check on things. Things were fine, except for a catbird trapped inside the netting that covers the blueberry bushes. The netting is there to keep the catbirds out. We call this irony. Spider cat was getting grumpy from all his time alone. More and more, I wish we'd rented a place in Kingston or Peace Dale, instead of Providence. Anyway, Spooky's parents return from Montana on Thursday.

What I was supposed to do yesterday was rest and recover from the weekend, and that's what didn't happen.

So...I have about a billion things to do today. Okay, maybe only about thirty, but still. Too much. July is swamped. Turns out, there will be a re-relaunch of the website later this week. It'll retain the same look and minimalist feel, but there will be a bit more content, especially relating to The Red Tree. So, please keep a weather eye on the website. And there's an interview I have to do, and a mountain of email to answer, and some promo stuff I need to get to for my editor, and preparing to shoot the book trailer, and I have to get started on Sirenia Digest #44. It really is a bit of a train wreck, is July. I didn't think it would be so bad. I was wrong.

Oh, and I should say, it has been decided that my next novel will be only 140-characters long.

Postscript (2:28 p.m.): Thanks to Franklin Harris for bringing this Readercon write-up ("Some important things/people that I saw/met/learned/heard about at Readercon" at Time.com) to my attention. I quote: "I didn't talk to Caitlín Kiernan, but I watched her swanning around in a tentacled mask and grey lipstick, and I felt awe. It is so important that cons have freakish people at them." I'm going to take this as a compliment. Did I "swan" around? There is an Old English meaning of the word, "to wander about without purpose, but with an air of superiority." So maybe I did swan around. Bjork and I, we swan. Also, the lipstick was green. Regardless, good to be mentioned, and yes, I am a freak, and I'm pleased the author included the fada in my name.

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: Pityusa Rupes
Current Music: Placebo, "Kings of Medicine"

Overwhelmed by dream this morning. The insomnia finally broke, as the snow broke (causal connection or coincidence, I don't know), and I was assailed by dreams I won't repeat here. I slept almost nine hours. Now, I feel like my body is trying to recollect how to breathe. The sun is out, a white hole bored in a too-blue sky, a single white eye staring out, and it's blinding, shining off all that snow. The temperature is 18F (with the wind chill at 1F). Spooky says there won't be much melting today.

And yes, this is my 2,000th entry this LiveJournal since it was begun back on April 15th, 2004. I shudder to think how many millions of words, how many days worth of composition. And, of course, that's just LJ. This journal was begun to mirror my now moribund Blogger journal, which was begun in November 2001, and so there are surely another two thousand entries over there. Taken together, it's a damned peculiar document.

I feel like this is one of those entries where there's too much that needs to be said, and too little time to say it. I am reminded of Dark City, when Dr. Schreber is about to inject John Murdoch with the memories that will allow him to best the Strangers. Schreber says, "I'm sorry, but I have no time to do this the right way." But at least that statement can serve as a starting point.

I should have gotten this next bit up days ago, but what with the snow, the tooth pain, and the insomnia, I kept forgetting. Here's the deal: For a limited time (I'm not sure how limited), Locus is making a special offer to my readers. Simply put, you may order the issue with the interview I did for Locus (December 2008), postage free (save $3.00), or get it completely free with a one-year subscription. To receive this special offer, follow this link. Also, you may see the cover from the relevant issue behind this cut (and it's also a link):

( LOCUS offer )

Day before yesterday, an idea for a new story came to me. Not a vignette, but an actual short story, one that would work quite well for Sirenia Digest. A Dracula story, as it happens. Something about the three brides who were left behind, and then killed later by Van Helsing. Then, yesterday, the crux of the story came to me. The thing that I suppose some people would call the "plot." I'm never clear on exactly what a "plot" is supposed to be. Anyway, this would be a story wherein we learn that the brides were the vampires who, in fact, infected Dracula, not the other way around. That they were the true source of power, and that when Dracula departs for London, he is fleeing, and he leaves them Harker, hoping to distract them just long enough to make his escape. The story would be set a hundred or so years later, and the narrative would be fragmented, representing the inability of these ancient creatures to perceive time the way that mortals do. All of that came to me yesterday morning in a bright flash (this sort of thing does not usually happen to me). I sat down to write, and all I could find, instead of the beginning, was the title, "There Are Kisses For Us All." Suddenly, I was afraid that so much of this story had occurred to me because I'd either already written it, or because someone else had already written it. I suspected Angela Carter, and took Burning Your Boats down off the shelf, thinking if this were the case, I knew exactly where to look.

I read both "The Scarlet House" and "The Lady of the House of Love" aloud to Spooky while she sorted a box of fabric scraps, and I was relieved to see I'd not lifted the story from Carter. Also, though, I was amazed at these two marvelous tales, and how they play one off the other, as the author has a first and then a second try at the same problem. "The Lady in the House of Love" was first published (in The Iowa Review) in 1975, while "The Scarlet House" was first published later, in 1977. I don't know which one was written first, but, clearly, in both examples, Carter was working through the same set of concerns. And, fortunately, those concerns share very little ground with what I hope to do with "There Are Kisses For Us All."

So, today I will try to make a beginning....

And, of course, today is Cephalopodmas, the final part of my November/December holiday triumvirate (Jethro Tull Season/Solstice/Cephalopodmas). I'd meant to write a new carol this year, but never got around to it. Hell, Spooky and I never even got around to procuring one another Cephalopodmas gifts. I suppose that means we'll have to...get creative...tonight. Anyway, yes, a very Merry Cephalopodmas, Cthulhu damn us everyone.

Last night, there was World of Warcrack, and Shaharrazad, my blood elf warlock, reached Level 43. Suraa, Spooky's blood elf paladin, is now at Level 44, because I haven't been playing quite as much, and so she's gotten a little ahead. Also, I'm very annoyed that I've gotten my skinning skills up to 300, which means I qualify for "Master Skinner" or whatever. Only to be awarded that title, I have to reach the Hellfire Peninsula in Outland (the remains of the orc homeworld), BUT, I need to be Level 58 or higher to pass through the Dork Portal...um..Dark Portal...to reach Outland. Blizzard excels at placing the cart before the horse. Anyway, we also read from The Historian last night.

The current eBay auctions continue. Please have a look.

And now, kiddos, it's time to make the doughnuts.

Current Mood: pleased to see the sun again
Current Location: Issedon Tholus
Current Music: The Editors, "Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors"

Despite a bit of panic here and there — because I always go and wait until the last possible handful of minutes on these sorts of things, and then there's always panic — I wrote my piece for Locus yesterday. My gracious thanks to the three folks who kindly read the article for me. Today, I will send it away to the magazine and move along to the next thing (mostly, lots and lots of proofreading).

There has been a good deal of feedback regarding "A Season of Broken Dolls" (Sirenia Digest #15), which pleases me. It also pleases me to announce that the story will be appearing in an upcoming issue of the free online version of Subterranean Magazine. I do not yet know just when, but quite soon, I think. I shall keep you posted.

I am also very, very happy to announce that Bob Eggleton will be the cover artist for The Dinosaurs of Mars, with interior art by J. K. Potter.

My thanks to Samantha Collett of Shropshire, England for sending me the complete set of UK marine life stamps, along with a fabulous page of sea creature stickers, four of which now adorn the "lid" of my iBook (the Giant squid, Architeuthis dux; a viper fish, Chauliodus sloani; a dragonfish, Grammatostomias flagellibarba; and an angler fish Lophuius priscatorius). Also, congratulations to the industrious

tjcrowley on landing the new job! Also also, the four new Sirenia Digest subscribers to whom I owe copies of the Silk tpb — you guys need to email your snail-mail addys to Spooky at crk_books (at) yahoo (dot) com. Thanks!

Yesterday evening, when all the writing and writing-related work was finally done, Spooky and I had a late walk from Candler Park east down McClendon Avenue NE, turning north onto Clifton Road NE, then west again onto Marlbrook Drive NE, which we followed back to the park. A nice sunset walk. After dinner, there was Scrabble, then I sat up later than I should have and watched Nancy Drew — Detective (1938) and Nancy Drew - Reporter (1939) on TCM, neither of which I'd seen before. It was sometime after four before I finally got to sleep. "What a dorky evening," says Spooky.

Anyway, I must now go polish the Locus article one last time and attend to other authorial tasks.

Current Location: Atrax Dorsum
Current Music: Utada Hikaru, "Sanctuary"

How wonderful to wake this morning and discover that most of the U.S. has adopted Caitlín Standard Time.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,289 words and finished the story that I'm presently calling "In View of Nothing" (total word count: 8,243). It's as close as I can ever imagine coming to a literal transcription of the "white-room dreams." However, there is a bit more "story" here than in the dreams themselves, my conscious mind futilely trying to tie disparate bits together or fill in blank spaces on the map. But it's much, much closer than "A Season of Broken Dolls." I'm unsure how I feel about having done it, having written the dream out this way. Certainly, it's one of the most personal stories I've ever written. There is a lingering sense that I have failed to capture the bleak atmosphere of the dreams. Anyway, it will be there in Sirenia Digest #16.

Today, I need to begin the second, shorter piece for #16, and my deadline for the Locus article is the 15th. I have no idea what the Locus article will be. The issue is horror-themed, and as I do not consider myself a genre "horror" writer, well, I'm not sure what I will say. Perhaps I'll write about the importance of maintaining mystery and a sense of the inexplicable at a story's conclusion, as opposed to tidy endings and resolutions. At least, that's how it works from my perspective.

Today is my mother's 63rd birthday, which is just all sorts of weird.

I would rather do almost anything than write today.

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Biblis Patera
Current Music: Moby, "When It's Cold, I'd Like To Die"

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Caitlín R. Kiernan

February 2012

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Page Summary

"I struck that picture ninety times, I walked that path a hundred ninety."
"And grind my soft, cold bones below..."
The Dry Salvages Redux
"It fell right under my feet. Now I only lean..."
"Quell the rage that deeply seethes, the extremes of these devotions."
Howard Hughes Limps Along
"My weakness laid bare, as people stop and stare."
Entry #2,000
Howard Hughes and the Twelve Enchanted Letter Openers
if your world is a monster

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