Caitlín R. Kiernan

First, an apology, of sorts, to the people who read this journal via MySpace. A few days back, MySpace mysteriously jettisoned the login cookie that prevents me having to remember my password and which email account I use for MySpace, and because I do actually rather hate MySpace, it was this morning before I could be bothered to try and remember what was what.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,267 words on Chapter One of The Red Tree. And I think that I have decided that there will not be footnotes, because too many people complain that footnotes break up the flow of the text. Instead, there will be endnotes for each chapter, which are really the same thing as footnotes, only they come at the end of the chapter instead at the foot of each page. Yesterday, I completed the first section of the chapter, and today I will begin the second.

It's that time again, time to point you to the places where you can easily acquire copies of all of my novels, and one of the short-story collections, so that no one has to utter those dreaded words, "I can't find your books." (shudder)

Daughter of Hounds

Silk

Threshold

Low Red Moon

Murder of Angels

Tales of Pain and Wonder

Not a bad day yesterday. I was done with the writing by 4:30 p.m. or so, and it was one of those perfect spring days outside. All those shades of fresh green bursting forth against the blue sky, and the sun so white and dazzling. I left the house for the second day in a row. We walked to Videodrome to return Enchanted (which I still name grotesquely charming). Then we got Thai for dinner, and then we watched the first two episodes of Millennium (now that we're done with Angel). Though I truly loved the second season, I missed most of the first. I think Millennium might have been Chris Carter at his creepiest, and I'm just glad it didn't show up on television until more than two years after I'd written my first Deacon Silvey story.

I passed much of the remainder of the evening in Second Life, rping with the Omegas in Toxian City. Really, it was all too complex and wacky and peculiar to try and recount, though Nareth's victorious battle against the sentient interstellar fungi that had infected her thrall's brain was quite invigorating. Later, Spooky read me more of House of Leaves. "Which is exactly when Karen screams." Such a sublime line. Oh, there was a very brief "absence" seizure following dinner, but I think I'm actually getting used to those little ones. So yes, a fine yesterday.

Setting out from the scabby foothills of Ered Glamoth, yesterday's portion of the Mordorian Death March made it only so far as the banks of the River Culdiun. Being a parched season, the river bed was bone fucking dry, but always fearing sudden and unexpected flood, I made the crossing and reached the eastern banks before calling it a day. The Plains of Nurn stretch out before me. Which is to say, yesterday I made many cuts, most of which made little sense to me, but I made them anyway. A paragraph requiring half an hour to compose may be dispensed of in only an instant. Snip. Delete. Easy peasy. It hardly even hurts. Strictly out-patient stuff. Just don't pick at it, or it'll never heal.

Today, we will linger on the banks of this bedroughted river, and the March will not continue until Monday. A communications breakdown has both permitted and made necessary this early interruption. I'm glad of it, for my part. It means I have today and tomorrow to write a vignette for Sirenia Digest #18 (May '07). Monday, though, the long walk resumes.

Spoke yesterday with producer D, letting him know that the "Onion" screenplay has been sidetracked until after the 23rd, and I was relieved to find him very understanding.

I forgot to mention that we saw Spider-Man 3 with Byron on Wednesday. I was reluctant , but I went. See, I owed Byron, having forced him to sit through X-Men 3, even though we all knew it would suck. My twisted Mystique fetish, what can I say. Anyway, yeah, Spider-Man 3. I enjoyed it more than Spider-Man 2, but not nearly as much as the first film. At least three films were trapped inside Spider-Man 3, and it went on maybe forty-five minutes too long for my liking. The Bruce Campbell cameo was a breath of fresh air. All in all, far too much in the way of touchy-feeliness, the mushy sort of sentimentality that makes me cringe. The film swings wildly between breathtaking and achingly dull. Too much plot, too little substance. But we did get a Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix trailer beforehand, so all was not lost.

Anything else about yesterday? Well, we had a short peregrination in the evening. It would have been longer, but a thunderstorm was moving in. Wonderful thunder and lightning, a marvelous wind sweeping over Freedom Park. Someone in a big red pickup truck stopped and warned us about falling trees. Ah, worry not, Chicken Little. Later, after dinner, we did a Toho Kid Night, first an unedited, undubbed cut of Daikaijû Baran (Varan the Unbelievable; 1958), which I think is actually one of the best of Ishirô Honda's films, moody and dark and fun. However, it's almost impossible to root for anyone but the monster, driven from his primeval sanctuary, where he was bothering no one, then murdered for posing a threat to humanity. Okay, well maybe he ate a few villagers now and again, but these things happen. Anyway, the second feature was Uchu daikaijû Dogora (Dogora, the Space Monster; 1964), and what a difference six years can make. Uchu daikaijû Dogora is a goofy sort of clash between diamond-stealing gangsters. the Tokyo police, and carbon-stealing aliens. It's what might have happened, I think, had Charles Fort lived long enough to write a kaijû eiga which was then rewritten by Maynard G. Krebs. There were some genuinely creepy visuals near the end, as gargantuan jellyfish-like aliens drift gracefully through the clouded sky above a Japanese coal-mining town and rocks rain from the heavens. I think this film must have been made after Ishirô Honda discovered LSD. Later, we watched The Sifl and Olly Show on YouTube, then an episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, and, finally, read a chapter of The Children of Húrin before deciding enough was enough, too much fun for us, and that bed must be faced. That was yesterday.

Oh, and Thursday night, while we were cleaning my office, Spooky found a stack of photos I'd meant to scan last month for my MySpace page, but then mislaid. Stuff from 1995-1996, including a shot from the '95 World Horror Con (my first) in Atlanta and one from the grand opening of Pain and Wonder in Athens (also 1995). Gods, I was a young'un. Anyway, they have now been scanned and you can see the photos here. I think I'm making peace with my MySpace page. I seem to have somehow taught myself a method of looking at the pages without seeing all the hideous flashing ads.

The platypus is tapping hisherits wristwatch and muttering that there's weird erotica to be written, and he wants something boy-on-boy this month, I think, so I suppose I should make an end to this. Later, kiddos.

I think it's a quasi-paradoxical intent, thinking that maybe I can write about these times when I am unable to write. It's hard to miss the contradiction. Never mind that I mostly hate writing about writing, which means I must probably loathe writing about not-writing. But. When it happens, the not-writing, the weather within these walls seems to change, growing increasingly inhospitable, tensed as if it means to spring and disembowel something that cannot run fast enough to escape, angry and desperate, and poised always at the unsatisfied edge of need and reason. The air becomes laced with unseen piano wires. The sensation of waiting comes to define the days. Not expectation, which can often be more pleasant than the thing which one is waiting for. Not expectation, but something else. Another kind of waiting. But not dread, either. If it had a sound, this waiting, it might resemble the spinning of wheels that cannot find traction, the scrabbling of claws that cannot find purchase. And the discomfort it brings me (and anyone near me) is ironic, of course, as I virtually never enjoy writing. I do not feel driven to write, as so many writers claim. I write, because it's what I do. Except for these times when I don't. And then I discover that not-writing is even worse than writing. And yet, quasi-paradoxically, here I am writing about not writing, and it's the best thing I've written in more than a goddamn month.

A storm is coming, and tonight's low will be but one degree Fahrenheit warmer than tomorrow's high. Happy thoughts.

There was work yesterday, and that's better than nothing at all. All the last-minute details that needed my attention before the page proofs for the new Silk mmp (April '08) went back to Penguin. Minutiae. Being certain that hourglass was spelled hourglass throughout and not hour-glass, and that goose bumps was spelled goose bumps and not goosebumps (this confuses me, because gooseflesh — a much older word — is, indeed, gooseflesh). I needed to expand the author's note at the beginning, and write a new author's biography. And find a surname for Walter, who never had one before, something that bugged me endlessly. Also, through three editions of the novel, Byron Langly was sometimes spelled Byron Langley. These are the sorts of things that consumed my yesterday. Before I knew it, the clock had reached 4:30 p.m. and I had to called it as finished as it would ever be so Spooky could get it to the post office before they closed, as the ms. needed to be back in NYC next week. So, yes, there was at least work yesterday, which helped things feel less wrong. Also, I loaded Photoshop onto the still unnamed iMac, so I can hopefully get some work done on the website.

We walked to Videodrome, and the unseasonal nip was mostly gone from the air. Spooky made dinner. I uploaded more photos onto my MySpace page. It has become an odd obsession.

Two movies last night, the worst excuse for a double feature ever. First, Edward Zwick's Blood Diamond (2006), which I thought was very, very good. I've admired Djimon Hounsou since Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000), and it was good to see him in such a substantial role. But we followed Blood Diamond with William Girdler and David Sheldon's Grizzly (1976). While more typical of our usual Friday Night fare, it was not nearly so much fun as I remembered. Of all the awful Jaws rip-offs, surely this was one of the least excusable and most blatant. A movie which hardly ever permits a break in the dullness. It's not even bad enough to be funny. It's just bad. But now it's out on DVD. After the movies, we worked on Spooky's MySpace page, which is slowly coming together. She wants to get more doll photos loaded this evening. I was in bed before three, but lay awake a long time. I think I was asleep before four. That was yesterday.

Yesterday was a day of eating Tums EX (assorted tropical fruit flavours, or so they do claim).

Anyway, now it is today, and it's time to kick the platypus some more.

About 2:30 a.m. this morning, I got the news that "La Peau Verte" had won the International Horror Guild (IHG or "Iggy") Award for "best mid-length fiction." In the old days, I think they called those novelettes, those stories longer than short stories, but shorter than novellas. I always hated the word, novelette, and would much prefer to think of "La Peau Verte" as "mid-length fiction." Anyway, yes, I am very, very pleased. This is my fourth IHG since 1999 (I've had eight nominations). I was honestly actually kind of suprised to get this one. I thought it would go to Joe Hill for sure (he won in the "Best Collection" category for 20th Century Ghosts). Jeff VanderMeer kindly accepted the award in my stead. What's cool, I think, is that now "To Charles Fort, With Love" includes two IHG-winning stories: "Onion" and "La Peau Verte." Still, no one in NYC will touch it. Yay me!

I did not mean to imply yesterday that there was any imminent threat of my jumping ship and abandoning LJ for the hellish din and flash of MySpace. It would take something pretty cataclysmic to drive me to such an awful end. Not gonna happen, but I do sense that a lot of other people have fled LJ for the glitz and sleeze and invasive adverts of MySpace; I just can't figure out why.

Note that Leh'agvoi (setsuled) has posted the 58th and final chapter of The Adventures of Boschen and Nesuko. And I just want to say thank you for that final panel on the fourth page.

Argh. I have an e-mail here from LJ telling me that my expanded icon feature expires in eight days and I need to renew. Argh.

I'm liking Final Fantasy XII, by the way. So far, the tone has been somewhat more adult, or mature, or something of that sort, than the previous FF games I've played. Okay, except for having to hunt down and kill the rogue killer tomato thingy. All in all, it's a beautiful game, though I've only had time to play a couple of hours in.

I am so very not awake, the sort of not-awakeness that seems determined to cling to me for many hours yet to come. But, fortunately, we finished with the galleys for Daughter of Hounds yesterday afternoon and today has been declared a "day off" after eight-straight days of proofreading and the busyness of writing.

Yesterday, we did chapters Nine ("The Bailiff") and Ten ("The Yellow House"), plus the epilogue, and think we were done by five p.m. And I'm pleased to say that I still like this book very much. I doubt I shall read it again for many years, having written it and read it three times in the last few months. I rarely ever read my books once they actually become books, especially the novels. I cannot say why. It's not an excessive familiarity with the material. I think that it has something to do with moving along to the next story. I feel like I'm always being propelled forward, as if on a river or as we move through time, headlong, and what I have done becomes memory while what I must do becomes the urgent present.

What I will say about Daughter of Hounds is that there's more plot contained in its pages than in my earlier novels. Or maybe it's just that the plot is more intricate. My approach to plot has always been haphazard. I don't see plot in the world, in life, and so I am very reluctant to impose it upon my novels. Maybe this is some holdover from my years as a paleontologist, but I am very leery of mistaking actual patterns for patterns that are illusory and vice versa. Most plot is a sort of illusory hindsight, weeding out everything that actually happened and choosing to make a story from the bits that interest us. Synoptic history, I call it. I'm sure it's why I've had to deal with so many "what happened?" complaints. I have always preferred to leave many of the "what happened?" and "why?" and "how?" questions to the minds of my readers, while I concentrated, instead, on giving them real people and places and mood and atmosphere and subtext. I tend to want my books to unfold by the gradual accumulation of happenstance, the consequences of cause and effect, rather than by following some preordained plot. But, that said, yes, there is a bit more plot to Daughter of Hounds. Hopefully, it won't get in the way. The characters are still what matter most, and the mood, and the bigger questions. I've always thought "what happened?" was a pretty small question. And one I had no desire to be enslaved by.

The novel takes place over six days in February 2010, in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

There wasn't much else to yesterday. After dinner, well after sunset, Spooky and I took our evening walk. It's much nicer after all the people have gone indoors. As it passed by, Ernesto had cooled things off nicely. Back home, my eyes and brain too weary from reading to read anything more, I watched three more episodes of Firefly ("Out of Gas," "Ariel," and "War Stories").

This evening a new cat will be coming to live with us. It's been almost three months since Sophie's death, and I think I'm ready. There was a great wonderful cat with us while we were in Rhode Island, and he kind of put us back in that place where we need to have a cat about. We're adopting a four-year-old seal-point Siamese. So, I think we're a little nervous in anticipation of his arrival.

It is beyond me (and perhaps that's evidence of my advancing years) how people endure, much less enjoy, MySpace.com. More than anything else, it's the plethora of obnoxious flashing ads that get to me, sometimes as many as three or four on my screen at once. These things are clearly designed to be garish. But there are plenty of other annoying features, such as "Cool New People" and "MySpace Horoscopes." But I'm hanging in there. I am nothing if not tenacious. To stay a writer, one must be tenacious above all else. Tenacity is the key. I have noticed that MySpace seems to run very, very, very slow at times. But I will continue to mirror this journal there for the time being, as long as I can stomach the ads. Here's my MySpace page. I'll friend just about anyone who asks. I don't friend bands, unless I know them personally. But I gotta say, what a gorramn tacky place, MySpace.

I would be remiss in my writerly duties were I not to point you to Poppy's (docbrite) post from yesterday concerning her inability, even with the help of the Author's Guild, to get blood from a turnip, water from a stone, the $4000 she's owed from a magazine called Sacred History. You can read her post here. Note that we may contact the editor in question, Mr. James Griffith, at jgriffith@sacredhistory.org to let him know how we feel about editors who stiff working authors who rely on the income from their writing for survival. Personally, I have no problem with flying monkeys.

Okay. Stuff to do, even though this is a "day off." Please do have a look at the current eBay auctions, especially the PC of the lettered state of subpress' edition of Low Red Moon. If you'd like to see more images of the book and its traycase, just have a look back at my second entry from yesterday.

In closing, as promised, here's the cover image from the mass-market paperback edition of Threshold, coming January 2nd, 2007 (behind the cut). The corrected text, as I've come to think of it. At least Dancy's eyes are pink:

( new cover )

Postscript (3:50 p.m.): The auctions have ended. My thanks to those who participated!

As of today, we have only ten days remaining until we leave for the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. A series of useless black days, precipitated, perhaps, by an unpleasant echo or repercusion, have cost me dearly. I've written nothing useful since finishing "The Cryomancer's Daughter (Murder Ballad No. 3)" on July 11th. I haven't even begun work on the copy-edited manuscript (CEM) of Daughter of Hounds, which I should have gotten to days ago, as it's supposed to be back in NYC on the 21st. But I am feeling better today, so it's possible all is not lost. Likely, this means I shall have to try to spend more of my time in New England writing. As for yesterday, I did some revision on "The Cryomancer's Daughter (Murder Ballad No. 3)," which will appear in Sirenia Digest #8. If you've not yet subscribed, please, please do.

After reading the cover story on the acquisition of MySpace.com by sleaze baron Rupert Murdoch in the July 2006 issue of Wired, I'm even more reluctant to do anything else with my MySpace page. But I also realize, having read said article, that if I neglect to take advantage of the exposure afforded by MySpace, just because it's tacky and annoying and I frelling loathe Murdoch and everything he represents, I'll be shooting myself in the foot (as "they" are wont to say). However, I'm going to talk with my agent about the wording of MySpace's TOS before I add any additional content to the site.

Nothing much else to say about yesterday. There was a trip out into the heat to Whole Foods, and I made a very nice balsamic vinaigrette. About 9 p.m., we walked through Freedom Park while the swallows and dragonflies circled and dove above us, and the sunset was spectacular. I wish I'd had the camera with me. It was still uncomfortably hot, but having seen what the heat's like out west, I'm grateful we're only having low and mid 90s. Last night was by far the best night's sleep I've had in a week or so, about seven and a half hours uninterrupted.

Today, I hope to get a good start on "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Ghoul," which will appear in Tales from the Woeful Platypus.

Okay. Time to make the doughnuts. Please have a look at the eBay auctions, all of which I believe will be ending tomorrow afternoon and Wednesday. Thanks.

Postscript: I've just noticed (12:55 p.m.) that there is now an Amazon page for Daughter of Hounds, though the release date is January 2, 2007. The cover's not up yet, but I expect it will be soon. Anyway, here's to head starts, and if anyone wants to preorder (the first printing will likely sell out before publication), there you go.

This morning (which is pleasantly hazy and does not make me fear the sky) I'm hoping that everyone's received Sirenia Digest #4 and are happy with its contents. Last night, as I was looking over my printout of the PDF, I discovered a very annoying typo, right there on the cover page. Never mind that three people proofed the frelling thing. Though it reads "No. 3, Vol. 3," it should read "No. 3, Vol. 2." My apologies. Otherwise, I'm pleased with how this issue turned out, and I'm already looking forward to the next. I have days when I worry that the vignettes are distracting me or leading me astray from other things that might be more important. But I think the truth is that they're giving me a much needed opportunity to experiment and explore voices and directions I might not have tried otherwise. This is a Good Thing, as they say.

Last night, as I mirrored the "red rain" entry over on my MySpace page, I was very annoyed to discover that there's no "Science" or "Science and Nature" category for entries. The categories are a dumb idea, but it's sad and symptomatic of the country's general disinterest in science that there are categories for "News and Politics" and "Life" and "Gossip" and the gods know what else, but nothing for science.

I did another 1,153 words on "pas-en-arrière " yesterday. I'm liking this piece a lot. It has a gentleness that's lacking from most of the vignettes. It's almost sweet. I finally realised how it should end yesterday, and it's a very soft-spoken ending. I'm curious how readers will respond to it. That was work yesterday, aside from getting #4 out. The new eBay auctions got off to a good start yesterday; my thanks to those who have already bid. Also, apologies if you've e-mailed in the last few days and I've not responded. I get in these moods where my generally anti-social nature spills over into my ability to answer e-mails. It's dopey, but true. I'll try to get through some of them in the next couple of days. I do appreciate e-mail, very much. Don't think that I don't.

Jerry Lewis turns 80 today.

Last night we continued our Oscarish movie binge with George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck, which I really, really liked. David Strathairn was superb. Mostly, I couldn't help thinking how much worse things are now, under Bush and the Patriot Act and this whole rogue Administration, than they ever were during the height of the McCarthy hearings. It's just that very few people seem to care. The paranoia is broadcasting on a lower frequency. Or a higher frequency. Maybe the dogs can hear it. The bogeyman of Middle-Eastern terrorists has supplanted the old bogeyman of Communism, and TPTB have more power over us than they've ever had before. After 9/11, America was more than happy to hand over their freedom to speak and think and act upon those thoughts, if only they could drive their SUVs and watch their widescreen televisions and shop at Wal-Mart without having to worry about further attacks. Consumerism has become the Great Teat, the Great Distraction. Even religion can't compete. But I am going on, aren't I? Yes, I am.

For what it's worth, to anyone who wasn't pleased with me for having no interest in seeing Brokeback Mountain, I find that I'm equally disinterested in Crash.

My thanks to David Kirkpatrick for sending me the paper from Nature describing the new Jurassic theropod, Juravenator, from the Solnhofen. What a marvelous little beast.

Okay. Time's up. I need to finish this vignette today. Tomorrow's St. Patrick's Day, and I intend to tie one on (in the parlance of our times).

I caved in to pills last night and got almost eight full hours sleep. There were bright dreams, filled with ominous events, but now they've faded down to the merest impressions of memory. But at least I'm more awake. The sky is grey today, but it's still warm here. We went over 80F yesterday and are supposed to reach 80 again this afternoon. Last night was so marvelously warm, I worked at my desk with the office window open long after midnight. We have a slight cool down coming, highs in the 60s, lows in the 30s, but it won't last long. Winter here is dead, and these will only be death throes. Hemingway said to write about the weather, and so I do.

Yesterday. What did I do yesterday. I know that a question mark would be orthodox at the end of that last sentence, but, having typed it that way, it didn't look much like what I was thinking, so screw it. I shall be the punctuation anarchist. Too much Limbo yesterday, but there was a good walk, and later I stumbled across an idea for a vignette that I'll try to begin today. It will be a quiet and simple thing about a girl with a small bit of a tail, a slightly autobiographical tale of a tail, and more I will not now say. Also, I reloaded just about everything by The Decemberists onto my iPod. I did Wikipedia entries for the ankylosaur Tsagantegia, and then, after dinner, I did another on the Palaeozoic Museum, the great Victorian shrine to paleontology that never was. I have long had a serious obsession with Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins. In October '98, I was able to see the Crystal Palace dinosaurs in Sydenham. Yesterday. What else. Oh, we watched the new episode of The Sopranos. A superb use of William Burroughs. That was the best of yesterday, that and the many thoughtful comments to yesterday's LJ entry. Unfortunately, I haven't had time (or maybe it's energy I'm lacking) to answer every question asked.

Also, yesterday was the first day I mirrored this journal at myspace.com. I'm not yet entirely sure what I think of myspace.com. On the one hand, the flashing, garish ads drive me mad. The system is poorly designed and sluggish. And I hardly see the need for me to be involved in yet another online thingy. There's something oddly meat-marketish about the place, and in an distinctly heterocentric way. And yet...there are some cool things, too. So I'll probably stick around. It has seduced me with forms to fill out and mail to answer and invitations to join groups and such. Here's the link to my page. If you'd like to be added to my friends list, just ask. I suppose myspace is the new pink, and LJ is now the old pink (pink being the new black and all), or something else altogether is the new pink. I never seem to be on time. Anyway, yes, you may now read this journal at LJ or Blogger or MySpace. And there's also the plog thing over at Amazon, but it doesn't yet seem to be amounting to very much.

Here's something wondrous, and my thanks to jacobluest for the link. A Google map of Mars, in visible and infrared light and by elevation. Beautiful and very useful, as well. And as if that's not drad enough, I should also thank jacobluest for the link to this virtual fly-over of Mariner Valley (you'll need the latest version of Flash).

And as long as I'm going on about marvelous things, let me refer you to this: Z Machine Sets Unexpected Earth Temperature Record, courtesy apod. A temperature in excess of two billion Kelvin. What do you say to a thing like that? Well, I'd say I hope the DOD isn't looking, but of course they are. Oh, and since I've been picking on headlines, I'll add that "Z Machine Unexpectedly Sets Earth Temperature Record" might have been a better choice.

We're going to try to get eBay up and running again this evening. There's the "pick your own letter" Frog Toes and Tentacles auction yet to start, plus copies of The Five of Cups, Silk, The Dry Salvages, chapbooks, and who know what else. Also, an inebriated lawn gnome told me yesterday that March 13th, if it happens to fall upon a Monday, is a sublime day on which to subscribe to Sirenia Digest. No, I don't usually talk to lawn gnomes, who are surely the most common of all fairie folk, but this one was rather noisy and I feared he'd attract attention if I didn't respond. Anyway, yes, weird and fantastic erotica and other fictions every thirty or so days for a mere ten dollars per month. This month, you get a vignette and a sneak preview of Alabaster complete with a Ted Naifeh illustration. For the price of a pizza, I'll frell with your head...or whatever. So, come on, kiddos. What are you waiting for? Drink me, already!

Postscript: Spooky just said, "There are dust bunnies falling from the sky," which I take to be her not so subtle way of telling me that the fan in my office needs dusting.