Caitlín R. Kiernan

Yesterday, I wrote only 810 words on "The Prayer of Ninety Cats," but I spent hours and hours picking though words from the Great Nothing. The story is, at this point, 6,145 words long, so I'm guessing it'll go to 7,000+ words. This month, Sirenia Digest subscribers, you get no mere vignette, but a full-fledged short story.

Great talk with my editor at Dark Horse yesterday. Details as soon as I may.

No Thanksgiving here today, and if you want to know why I do not observe Thanksgiving, well I wrote this last year, on November 23rd:

This whole Thanksgiving thing came up yesterday. That is, the fact that I do not observe this whole Thanksgiving thing. And various people (including my mother) were like, oh come on, you have a lot of things to be thankful for. To which I can only reply that, in this instance, thankfulness implies that there is someone or something out there to thank. I would say that yes, sure, I am appreciative of many things in my life— Spooky, my mom, Spooky's mom and dad, Rhode Island, being able to mostly pay my bills, the sea, and so forth. But being appreciative does not entail being thankful, in the sense that is generally meant when people speak of Thanksgiving. I am not thankful, not in the Thanksgiving sense, which implies gratitude towards some "higher power," even when you've completely stripped the holiday of its Christian roots and made it just "Turkey Day." I can appreciate turkey any day. I don't need a special day to eat turkey, or cranberries, or that disgusting stuff made of sweet potatoes with melted marshmallows on top. And there's no one for me to "give thanks," other than myself, and Spooky, and my readers, and maybe half a dozen other people. So, I'm not trying to be a wet blanket. I just don't do Thanksgiving. I try to make sure the people in my life to whom I am grateful for this or that know that I am grateful for their kindness and concern. I don't need to set aside a special day for it. To some, it may seem like I'm worrying over semantics and only mincing words. But that's what I do. All day, almost every day. I mince words, in an effort to get to what I genuinely mean. Usually, I choose my words with obsessive care.

That said, as I was too busy and tired to properly observe either Mabon or Samhain, we'll be having a huge autumnal meal to retroactively celebrate both. I am told there will be Brussels sprouts.

A sunny, warm day in Providence. I want to be Outside, but there's so much work to do. Only ten days left until the trip to Oregon for the HPLFF, and there's so much to get done twixt now and then. Still, if I finish with the writing early, I may try to persuade Spooky to take me to the sea.

Tomorrow is Mabon.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,039 words on a very strange new piece for Sirenia Digest. Sort of a post-apocalyptic vignette, wherein the apocalypse seems to have been the coming of Nyarlathotep and Azathoth to earth. Or, more accurately, earth tumbling into Azathoth. I felt like doing something explicitly Lovecraftian just before the Festival in Portland, and this seems to be it. Also, I'm thinking #58 will be devoted entirely to my explicitly Lovecraftian tales (which are fewer and farther between than some may think), the new piece plus several of the old ones. By the way, I am adopting the term that Joshi sets forth in The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos. Which is to say, I have never written Cthulhu Mythos stories, which are stories arising from August Derleth's bastardization of Lovecraft's vision into an inane struggle between good and evil. Instead, I do occasionally write stories that fit into the Lovecraft Mythos (if one must put a label on these things).

This morning I got word that the Jeff and Ann are very pleased with "The Key to the Castleblakeney Key," which was good news to wake to, as it is also a very strange story.

Spooky made the front page of Etsy this morning, with one of her Pumpkinhead Ghosts, between noon and one. You can see the rest of her Etsy shop here. And please have a look at the current eBay auctions (unless you intend to immediately resell on Amazon for a profit).

Anyway, the good writing day gave way to a very frustrating evening. I was supposed to do a bit of rp in Insilico. We started it and took a dinner break. And then I couldn't log back in, though I spent about an hour trying before I gave up. I have no idea what was going on (I was able to log on just fine this morning). So, instead, Spooky and I did some WoW, the Warsong Gulch Battle three times (because it was Call to Arms this weekend); Horde won twice, so not bad. But then we tried to do one of the Outland dungeons, the Steam Vault, and the boss kicked our blood-elf butts five times. And he's only some dumb ass fucking naga! So...yeah, a night of geeky frustrations.

In the wake of a week of illness, I'm now on a diet of Utterly Fucking Bland Food. Chicken and rice. Bananas. Potatoes. Bland, mushy, pale food. But at least maybe I'll be able to get back to digesting what I eat. Oh, and once you're past -05, you're are allowed to talk publicly about gross shit like this. Look it up.

Okay. Time to work.

Like I said yesterday, not ready for autumn. But it's here all the same. And I will greet it as best I can. Spooky and I are taking the day off. We'll go to Beavertail, to the sea, and by her parent's farm for eggs and green tomatoes (and probably other things).

A joyous Mabon to all who observe the Sabbat, to all who celebrate the turning of the Wheel of the Year.

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Yesterday, I did 1,039 words on "Charcloth, Firesteel, and Flint," the second piece for Sirenia Digest #46. And discovered that what I needed to be a 2k-word vignette is determined to be a 4k-word short story.

And as soon as this story's done, I need to sit down and gather all my notes and thoughts on Blood Oranges into some sort of coherent whole. And begin my Martian YA story, which is due November 1st. It will be set on the same Mars as was my "Bradbury Weather."

And promotional stuff for The Red Tree continues.

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Last night, we saw Paul McGuigan's Push (2009), which I actually liked quite a lot. It was rather like an especially good episode of Heroes, only less goofy. We played some WoW; I'm really getting addicted to doing the battlefields, but, gods, I wish Blizzard could give us battlefields that were actual battlefields, something a little more imaginative than endless rounds of "Capture the Flag." No, I wish they would, because they certainly could. Then again, I see plenty of players who can't seem to grasp the simple concept behind "Capture the Flag." Later, we watched another episode from the second season of Dead Like Me. I didn't notice this so much the first time through the series, but Season Two really loses direction. It's not surprising, given the way the network ditched the show's creator, Bryan Fuller, back in Season One. The performances remain true, but the scripts just sort of flail about.

That was yesterday.

An extremely good writing day yesterday. I did 1,864 words and finished Chapter Six of The Red Tree. Much better than Sunday, when I wrote only 1,010 words and did not finish the chapter. The manuscript is now 68,003 words long. There was no writing on Monday, because it was Mabon, and I had no intention of spending the whole sabbat at a keyboard. And now it is Wednesday, and I see that my last real entry was made on Sunday morning, which leaves me to play catch up again.

First, I want to announce that Frank Woodward's documentary, Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (in which I appear), winner of best documentary at this year's San Diego Comic thingy, will be screened at the Chaplin Theatre on Saturday, October 4th, at the absurdly early hour of 1:45 p.m. It's part of this year's Shriekfest, whatever that might be. This will be the film's Los Angeles premiere. Frank tells me it's also been slated for festivals in Buenos Aires and Montreal.

Sunday night we watched Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (2001), which I'd only seen the one time in the theatre. I'd forgotten what a truly perfect film it is.

Monday, we got out of the house as soon as we could, which I think was about 2 p.m., and headed south from Providence. First, we visited Game Stop in Warwick, because they had the World of Warcraft "Battle Chest" (Wow plus the "Burning Crusade" expansion) on sale, and we picked up a copy for me and another for Spooky. Yes, it's gone that far. I'll return to the subject of WoW shortly. Anyway, after Warwick, we'd intended to drive down to Moonstone Beach, but changed our minds (we have two of them, most of the time) and instead headed east towards Beavertail. But there was to be yet another change in plans. In Jamestown, we decided that instead of going on to Beavertail, we'd explore the southeastern edge of Conanicut Island, around the ruins of Ft. Wetherill. The first fort built on the coast here was Fort Louis (named for the King of France, yes), erected during the American Revolution. Later, it was Fort Dumpling (named for Dumpling Rock), after being lost to the Brits during the occupation of Newport. In 1900, the fort was renamed in honor of Captain Alexander Wetherill, an infantryman killed in the Battle of San Juan during the Spanish American War.

We parked and spent the afternoon on the rocky beaches, surrounded by high granite cliffs (an unnamed granite formation dating from the Late Proterozoic), searching for bits of beach glass. It was a grand way to spend the first day of Autumn, and I was more in need of actual Nature than Ritual, so it was also a grand way to spend Mabon. I needed that nearness to Panthalassa. So, I lay for hours on the cobble-strewn beach, the clear water of West Cove literally lapping at my feet. It was a grey overcast day, and quite chilly, but no rain. There were ravens and gulls and cormorants. We found lots of glass, including some rare violet and pink bits. The only other people we saw, I think, were two guys who'd been scuba diving in the cove. There were sail boats, and the wind made my ears ache. It was close to a perfect day. There are photos below, behind the cut.

As for World of Whorecrack, and what should have been Level Grind Part Two, let me just say that nothing takes the gung out of your ho (or mine, anyway), like having to endure two hours (!) loading the game software and innumerable patches. My free trial was almost up, so I went ahead and activated a paid account. But, yeah, the software took for fucking ever to load. And load. And load. It was after 9 p.m. before I actually got back to, you know, playing. I'd hoped to get back up to Lvl 15 last night, but having lost all that time loading the game, I only made it to 13. Still, not bad for two nights. Mithwen advances. But. I am beginning to wonder why I bothered switching from the PvP server to an RP server. In two nights, and maybe twelve hours of play over those two nights, except for a few exchanges between me and Spooky, I have yet to see anything resembling rp. I don't mean that I'm seeing bad rp. I'm just not seeing any rp at all. Not even an attempt. I do see lots of annoying ooc behavior and chat. And there's more traffic on the new server, which is sort of irritating, and people keep challenging me to duels (I decline, as it makes no sense in story, and they make no attempt to rp the requests). So...I am left to wonder. Why does Blizzard bother with rp servers, and why do all these people sign in to rp servers, when no one even tries to rp. There's no attempt that I can see at being in character, playing someone who is actually a part of Azeroth. As near as I can tell, it's not that players in WoW can't rp, it's more like the concept is entirely alien to them. I begin to suspect it never even crosses their mind, what "roleplay" actually means. Fortunately, it's a good enough game that I don't really care about the missing rp, and I suppose I could form a group devoted to actual rp. We'll see. But I am annoyed that I switched servers and started over.

Oh, and last night, while I was trying to dump some loot in the bank in Darnassus, some goofball named "Thirstyblood" shoved a guild charter in my face and asked if I would sign it. I did, since it seemed like it would be more trouble to say no. I did not know this would automatically make me a member. Duh. Anyway, shortly thereafter, the guild was activated and the title appeared over my head —— "Unholly Strength." I "whispered" to Thirstyblood and asked if he knew he'd misspelled "unholy." At first, he said no, he'd spelled it that way on purpose. He then admitted "unholy strength" was taken. I asked to leave the group. He wanted to know if I was leaving over the spelling, and I said yes, for starters. At this point, he changed his story again, and said it was just how he wanted to spell "unholy," and made a stink about having a right to spell things as he wished. I said fine, wonderful, just please let me leave. Never mind that we're playing Alliance, so it's a given that we at least probably wouldn't think of ourselves as unholy. Or unholly, for that matter. The guy was getting really...apoplectic...over me not respecting his "right" to spell words as he "chose." But, after five minutes or so of this, he did finally eject me from the guild. I wanted to ask if he called himself "Thirstyblood" because "Bloodthirsty" (which would have been bad enough) was already taken, or if that was a personal choice, too. Jesus fuck, where does all the stupid come from?

Anyway, I have to get to work on Sirenia Digest #34 (subscribe!) and look over the page proofs for the B is for Beginnings chapbook...but yeah...photos behind the cut:

( Fort Wetherill, Mabon 2008 )

The last few months, my dreams have been strangely subdued. Strange for me, I mean. Only rarely have I had to cope with the old morning bouts of dreamsickness. I have no idea why. Anyway, the last week or so, the dreams have been back, bright and loud and insistent, and lingering long after I'm "awake."

Yesterday, I only managed 843 words on Chapter Six of The Red Tree. But. All my concerns about time aside, this morning I do at least retain the clarity to know that it's wrong to worry that you did not write enough on any given day that you sat trying to write. I will say, I think that The Red Tree is the book that I hope I one day have the opportunity to rewrite and expand. One day, I hope there might be a hardback edition with all the different fonts the text calls for, and the photographs, and facsimiles of letters, and all the rest. We can dream. By the way, here's the excerpt from Thoreau's The Maine Woods (1864) that appears in the novel (and offers a bit of insight into the novel, really):

…Nature was here something savage and awful, though beautiful. I looked with awe at the ground I trod on, to see what the Powers had made there, the form and fashion and material of their work. This was that Earth of which we have heard, made out of Chaos and Old Night. Here was no man's garden, but the unhandselled globe. It was not lawn, nor pasture, nor mead, nor woodland, nor lea, nor arable, nor waste-land. It was the fresh and natural surface of the planet Earth, as it was made for ever and ever, —— to be the dwelling of man, we say, —— so Nature made it, and man may use it if he can. Man was not to be associated with it. It was Matter, vast, terrific, —— not his Mother Earth that we have heard of, not for him to tread on, or be buried in, —— no, it were being too familiar even to let his bones lie there, —— the home, this, of Necessity and Fate. There was there felt the presence of a force not bound to be kind to man. It was a place for heathenism and superstitious rites, —— to be inhabited by men nearer of kin to the rocks and to wild animals than we. We walked over it with a certain awe, stopping, from time to time, to pick the blueberries which grew there, and had a smart and spicy taste. Perchance where our wild pines stand, and leaves lie on their forest floor, in Concord, there were once reapers, and husbandmen planted grain; but here not even the surface had been scarred by man, but it was a specimen of what God saw fit to make this world. What is it to be admitted to a museum, to see a myriad of particular things, compared with being shown some star's surface, some hard matter in its home! I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me. I fear not spirits, ghosts, of which I am one, —— that my body might, — but I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them. What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries! —— Think of our life in nature, —— daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, —— rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?

And I should also express my gratitude for the many words of encouragement yesterday, though, in truth, that's not why I posted that entry. Rarely do I publicly express the self doubt that I always, always feel. But, as this journal is meant to be an accurate portrayal of what writing is like for me, it seems unfair to never include that part of it, when that part of it is really very front and center. I will never be the writer I want to be. I will always fall short of my own expectations. And maybe that's important, even vital. Maybe it's what keeps me moving.

Please have a look at the current eBay auctions, three of which end today. Also, let me remind you that the mass-market paperback of Daughter of Hounds is now available, and also that subpress is taking pre-orders for my first sf collection, A is for Alien.

A nasty bit of a headache this morning, and I have to beat it down, because there's no time for headaches.

As for the non-writing portion of yesterday, I don't know. I think yesterday and the two days before have sort of blurred together. Spooky has changed the summer altar dressings to the autumn altar dressings, in preparation for Mabon. We spent some time yesterday evening working on my office, which never really got completely unpacked and set up back in June. I reached a point and just sort of stopped unpacking and began writing. But its been bugging me. Spooky spent part of yesterday out photographing various buildings in Providence that we are recreating in the Howards End sim. Last night, we both played far, far too much World of Whorecrack. I fear we are well and truly hooked. I made it as far south as Ashenvale, and the Zoram Strand, which is quite gorgeous, even if the deer can kill you. Merricat has reached Level 18, and halfway to 19. Back on Earth, and actually before WoW, I had a hot bath, and we had leftovers for dinner. I think that was yesterday, more or less. Hubero says hi, by the way.

Last night, the insomnia demanded two Ambien, and so this morning...this afternoon, which I see it has become...my mind is no where near awake. Any moment now, the floor will drop out from beneath me to reveal the deepest, darkest part of the sea, and maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll realize that I'm only dreaming.

Yesterday was all proofreading, editing, and so forth, and there is nothing much there to write about. Towering waves of tedium, that's all.

Oh, but now I have iced coffee. Thank you, Spooky.

I've got to find the time and motivation to get back to the "Onion" screenplay, because not only do I have the very patient producer D waiting on it, I now also have a director of some considerable merit wanting a look at it, and here I am stuck in these endless hallways of proofing and editing. This could be the project that changes everything, and, somehow, I have spent the last few months not being able to find the bloody time to sit down and do it. I have promised myself I will return to the screenplay tomorrow night (as tomorrow day must be spent editing Tales of Pain and Wonder). Opportunity knocks, and it seems I'm too obsessed with commas to answer the frelling door.

I've been meaning to say, Spooky's done more of her mini-Cthulhu figures — the last of the bunch, I think — and you can see a photo of #3 in her Squid Soup blog, here. I adore these wee bastards. They are for sale. $40 each. Which reminds me, we need to get eBay going again (groan), because Victoria Regina (my old iBook) needs a new battery, and that's gonna set me back about $150.

Tomorrow is Mabon. I swear, this summer was half a blink, at most. The wheel turns.

Last night, Byron came for dinner and Doctor Who. We did the Vortex at L5P, and though last night's episode was very intriguing, "Blink" is a damned hard act to follow. Later, the three of us dropped by Videodrome for the director's cut of Tony Scott's True Romance. I have it on VHS, but it's frelling pan and scan, and Byron has it on DVD, but can't find it. And we'd started reciting lines during dinner, so how else were we supposed to spend the last two hours of Friday night? After Byron headed for home, Spooky and I did just a dab of Second Life, because New Babbage grew by one-third its total size yesterday with the arrival of the Port Babbage sim. Right now, it's a flat expanse of rock and drying seaweed, crisscrossed by freshly lain railroad. Soon it will the bustling commercial heart of the city. I think we were in bed by 1:30 a.m., and Spooky read another two chapters of Dune aloud. And then I proceeded not to be able to fall asleep.

Today, we're going to take a break from editing long enough to clean house, because some times these things simply have to be done — so grab a broom, Mr. Platypus...