Caitlín R. Kiernan

Over breakfast (oatmeal with raisins and walnuts), I realized I am presently qualified for three jobs:

1) Writing
2) Writing
3) Time Lord

I forgot, yesterday, to write about the nightmare I'd just had (this morning's dreams were bad, but, mercifully, all but incomprehensible), and maybe that was for the best. But I remembered yesterday afternoon, so I'll write it down now. I (well, another me; the Me of Dream has a thousand forms, and rarely is she this me) discovered, much to my surprise that someone had made a film of Silk. Entirely without my knowledge. Finally, I was able to see it, and, to start with, it had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the novel. Secondly, it had clearly been filmed in the seventies, and was this weird quasi-exploitation thing filled with sordid hetero-normative relationships and guys sporting pornstaches. Like I said, this film had nothing at all to do with the book, nothing, but it was all over the place, and the dream seemed like weeks went by while I tried to understand how this abomination had been made. I woke up feeling vaguely raped. By the way, you can fool LJ into knowing how to spell heteronormative if you hyphenate the word to create a compound adjective, as above (and if you don't know what the word means, look it up). And, yeah, it sounds sort of funny, this dream. But it wasn't. It wasn't ironic ha-ha. It was truly infuriating.

Yesterday I wrote pages Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, and Eleven of Alabaster #3. I thought I'd only written four pages, but then I was in the tub and Spooky was reading it (she's still not well), and she informed me I'd written Page Eleven. Yes, I have declared Page Eleven to be a proper noun. Anyway, among the things I've forgotten over the years is that it's very, very, very hard to write comics well, and if you think otherwise, you've never written comics. Anyway anyway, I'm now exactly halfway through #3. The deadline I warned my editor I was likely to miss almost certainly will not be missed, because I am incapable of not working. I just hope it's good, this book. And I mean utterly, fucking, blow-your-mind-away good.

And, another bit of yesterday, Brian sent me several rough cuts from the innards of the "teaser" trailer for The Drowning Girl that we'll be releasing in January. Let me just say, I think people will be astounded at what they see. I know I'm astounded. Mostly that we made this. Me and Brian and Kyle and Nicola and Sara and Dani and Spooky and Geoffrey and Ryan and everyone who donated to the Kickstarter crowdsourcing thingy. We made this! Anyway, I owe Brian an email, but the teaser nears completion, I think.

Currently, I'm trying to figure out how to shed about ten pounds (mostly around my waist), build muscle, and...you know...get the fuck into shape again. I'm too old to be this out of shape. Maybe it's no longer acceptable to speak of being in "bad shape." But fuck that. I am. Swimming this summer was helping a lot, but then it got cold. Mostly, I sit in this chair. My dietary habits are circumspect. I get virtually no exercise (even though my "rotten feet" are better, this is not a neighborhood for walking and jogging, and, besides, jogging ruins your knees and I already have bad knees from paleontology work). I don't sleep enough. My stress levels are through the roof. I work like a fiend. Most of my meds (while very necessary) come with a long list of awful side effects, including weight gain. I'm listless, and I'm winded by a single flight of stairs (a problem in this house). And don't think I'm chasing some incarnation of the "Beauty Myth." I'm 47.5, and I'd prefer not to develop diabetes or a heart condition or something worse before I'm fifty (remember: no healthcare here), and that means getting into shape. Spooky and I are talking about a trial gym membership. But what I really need is a swimming pool.

At least Indus got a good workout last night....

These days, thanks to better sleep and meds, dreamsickness is rare. But I'm wrestling with a nasty bout this ayem. I woke three times from the same fucking nightmare, only to fall right back into it when I went to sleep again, continuity intact.

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Another day of proofreading yesterday, but it seemed much, much shorter than did Thursday. Spooky read the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters aloud (109 pages, 24,727 words) over the course of about three and a half hours. Yeah, not nearly as bad as Thursday. Though, 7 is sort of a long demonic yowl that pretty much has to be read in a single breath. Still, not as bad the day before, and today should be about the same as yesterday. And today, we'll finish this first pass. Only minor line edits and the very few continuity errors have been corrected, along with two or three sentences I yanked out altogether

The Red Tree is likely a more straightforwardly autobiographical novel, but The Drowning Girl: A Memoir is somehow much more personal. Yesterday, I kept thinking, I wrote this thing. I shouldn't have to hear it read.

And I keep finding things I want to go back and work into the book, like Billie Holiday (and Diamanda Galas) singing "Gloomy Sunday," and wordplay with Styx and sticks.

Spooky and sovay will spend the weekend making corrections to The Drowning Girl, while I work on the corrections on Two Worlds and In Between (because, yes, I am editing two huge books at once).

I believe that, yesterday (or the night before), I found the name of my first YA novel, Blue Canary. Regardless, that's what the project will be called, and not one word of the plot will be leaked until the ms. has been sold. Yes, lately, Howard Hughes is extra paranoid.

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Last night, we were both so exhausted. Spooky warmed up leftovers. I had a hot bath that, of course, made me more tired. I played an hour or two of Rift while she watched trashy television. Literally! She's become addicted to something called American Pickers. But anyway, I leveled an alt, Nilleshna, my Kelari cleric (inquisitor/cabalist/purifier) to Level 7, and read a lot more of the game's lore. The deeper I get into Rift, the goofier WoW seems. And it's weird, because I went into WoW knowing it was goofy. I remember my first time in the b'elf starting area, and excitedly describing it to Spooky as "Disneyland on acid," and also comparing it to Final Fantasy X-2. But at some point I forgot it was all so dumb and goofy, and when I eventually remembered, it really pissed me off. The whole affair is inexplicable.

I continue to see most, by far, Rift players on our RP-PVE server using world-appropriate names, though last night I spotted Slyce, Inkognito, and Jhaded. I figure some of these players learned everything they know about naming fictional characters from reading superhero comics...which would be fine, if this were CoX. As for Jhaded (Jaded was taken, of course), that's just some jackass who's too cool for school. I see a lot of that in MMORPGs. gamers who feel they're simply too worldly to "pretend." And all I can do is wonder, then, why chose an rp server, when they had plenty of non-rp servers from which to choose? I am forced to draw the conclusions that they mean to be disruptive, and I loathe them on principle.

Later, we read Catching Fire, which we've almost finished.

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And this is today. Fuck you, day.

Yesterday, I wrote another 2,292 words of Chapter 5 of The Drowning Girl: A Memoir. I begin to suspect this is the bottomless chapter. This book, its become a fever, and the pages are a fevered blur. Part of me says, slow down, slow down, I'm going to break it, but this other part of me is insisting, no, no, the speed of the telling is integral, its a confession and there's no way she'd write it slowly, so neither can I. Maybe I'll try to explain, someday, how I'm a "method writer."

Today I have to try to write the "hardest scene," or only the second hardest. Hard on Imp, and hard on me.

The nightmares are worse than they've been in a long time. A tumult of calamity and past events that never actually occurred.

The new issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology came yesterday, December 2010. It was late, in part because it was shipped with a huge memoir describing a pugnacious little terrestrial croc named Simosuchus. There's also the description of a new genus and species of bothremydid turtle, Chupacabrachelys complexus. The name's etymology deserves a moment of explanation. To quote the paper's authors, "The chupacabra (Spanish for 'goat sucker') is a mythical creature in contemporary Mexican-American legend said to feed on livestock in the border region of Texas and Mexico. The skull of Chupacabrachelys resembles that of a mangy coyote believed to be responsible for chupacabra sightings in South Texas during 2008." Also, for the species, "In recognition of 'the Complex Tour' performance of the Blue Man Group, which provided the authors with many hours of entertainment during collection and preparation of the type and referred specimens."

I left the house late yesterday and went to the market and an art supply store with Spooky. I was amazed at how much the snow hasn't melted. Everything is still blanketed. There are banks of snow five and six feet high where snowplows and shovels have heaped it. The Providence River below the Point Street Bridge is frozen over.

Good roleplay in Insilico last night (thank you, Tracy). It's been just a little more than a year since I discovered Insilico. And while it didn't live up to the embarrassingly optimistic hype I ladled over it, I've found that the sim does, nonetheless, provide a fine backdrop for private cyberpunk rp. Spooky and I played WoW, and I'm still liking the Twilight Highlands. Last night, for the first time since I started playing in October 2008, I found myself holding more than 20,000 gold. No, I haven't ever done raids, and most of the money I make in WoW comes from auctions and quests.

And now, there will be doughnuts.

One cannot genuinely hate a season, but autumn instills in me a deep uneasiness. Yesterday and today, it feels like autumn here in Providence. That carnivorous blue sky, low humidity, temperatures in the seventies Fahrenheit. I'm glad for the break from the heat, but not glad that means a splash of autumn in July.

Dreamsickness this morning for the first time in a couple of months. I have a pill to stop that now, but something nasty wriggled in under the pharmacological wire.

Every bit of yesterday was spent editing "The Maltese Unicorn." No, that's not quite true. Only the hours spent working. And I didn't finish the editing. It sprawls over into today, and maybe also into tomorrow. Did I write anything new yesterday? Yes, but I don't think there was any net gain. I would write a paragraph, which would take half an hour or an hour, and then I would erase it.

Please do have a look at the current eBay auctions. Thanks very much.

When the editing was done for the day yesterday, I watched an episode of American Experience about the Dust Bowl (Spooky had gone to the market). I found a curious parallel. During the 1930s, during a time of great economic hardship, the nation is suffering a man-made ecological disaster, an agrocalamity. Short-sighted farming techniques in the Southern Plains led to conditions in which a layer of topsoil that had taken a thousand years to form was blown away in a few minutes. Anyway, now, in a time of economic hardship, the nation has suffered a man-made ecological disaster, an petrocalamity. Short-sighted use of fossil fuels, combined with greed and carelessness, is threatening a gulf ecosystem that has taken many tens of millions of years to evolve. In the episode of American Experience, a number of people who had been children during the Dust Bowl were interviewed. There are two I would like to quote:

Melt White, Dalhart, Texas: "It looked like the greatest thing would never end. So they abused the land. They abused it somethin’ terrible. They raped it. They got everything out they could. And we don’t think. We don’t think. Except for ourselves and it comes down to greed. We’re selfish and we want what we want and we don’t even think of what the end results might be."

J.R. Davison, Texhoma, Oklahoma: "I think that most of those people thought this is just what we might say 'hog heaven’. It’ll always be this way. So they kept breaking this country out and they plowed up a lot of country that should never have been plowed up. They got the whole country plowed up nearly and, ah, that’s about the time it turned off terribly dry."

Change a few words here and there, and this could be an interview in, say, 2075, of people who were children during this year, recalling the spring and summer the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico bled crude oil and methane.

And now I have to edit.

I'm running late today, after inexplicably sleeping too much. And the dreamsickness has been much worse than usual. Only now is it starting to fade. Imagine, a worldwide high communicable, plague of inevitably fatal dysentery, the whole world shitting itself to death, only it isn't funny. Yeah, I don't know where I get this stuff.

A couple or three things I want to mention before I forget. First, Frank Woodward's Lovecraft documentary, Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown, will be released on DVD October 13th. It features interviews with me, Neil Gaiman, Peter Straub, Ramsey Campbell, John Carpenter, Guillermo Del Toro, Stuart Gordon, S.T. Joshi, and others. Also, my first ever interview with a gaming slant is now online. Finally, there's a short "writing of The Red Tree" essay up at Penguin.com (usa), "The Genesis of The Red Tree."

Yesterday, I did 1,312 words and finished "January 28, 1926." I have Dr. Muñoz to thank for keeping the office cool enough that I could actually work. I also signed a bunch of bookplates for Barnes and Noble Towson Circle, in Towson, Maryland. So, if you live in or near Towson, be aware that there will soon be signed copies of The Red Tree at Barnes and Noble Towson Circle. Oh, and I signed a whole bunch of books for eBay. Today, if I can shake off the nastiness, I have to get Sirenia Digest #44 together. Or mostly together.

The Very Special eBay auction continues.

I'm getting reports, from as far away as the Netherlands and as near to home as Brooklyn, that The Red Tree is already showing up on bookstore shelves and arriving from pre-orders. So much for street dates, I suppose. Which is cool, only I sort of like having benchmarks, being able to say, here, this is release day. It's official. The book is out. But, hey, that's just me.

Cloudy today, but hot. I assume storms are inbound.

I last left the house, was last Outside, on Monday, which was the last day we saw the sun. There are thunderstorms moving towards us now. The temperature is currently 70F, so that's something of a minor improvement. The insomnia was bad last night, and then the nightmares this morning, and you may think none of this is relevant. But everything plays a factor in the shape of the stories. Everything.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,207 words on "The Alchemist's Daughter," which now stands at 6,279 words. It will likely go to at least 9,000, though I sincerely hope to have it finished by Sunday evening, at the very latest, as there is another short story I have to write this month.

Do please have a look at the current eBay auctions. All proceeds go towards the expense of attending ReaderCon 20, which is likely the only convention I'll be doing this year. The cost of cons has simply become too exorbitant to justify (or maybe it's the cost of everything else). I will also probably be doing a very small number of signings/readings for The Red Tree, in Providence, Boston, and possibly Manhattan. But I don't presently foresee doing any other public appearances this year. I have enough trouble just making it out the door, most days.

How about something not so glum? We haven't been able to get any work done on the trailer for The Red Tree because of this vile weather (it's almost all exterior shots), but Spooky has been filming the cats. To wit, "The Waking of Sméagol."

Waking the Smeagol from Kathryn Pollnac on Vimeo.

Okay. Coffee now.

Almost eight hours sleep last night. Which is grand, except it permits more time for the nightmares to unfold.

I did 1,063 words on "Galápagos" yesterday, and it seems to be starting off fairly well. I'm forcing myself to write at a much slower pace than I've become accustomed to lately. In part, I have no choice (and that's a good thing), as it's offworld sf, and I'm constantly having to check this fact or that calculation. Also, I spoke with the anthology's editor yesterday, because I wanted to know how much leeway I have regarding erotic content in the story. That is, how erotic can the story be? Only a little, it turns out, which isn't so bad, as it will force me to rely on subtler, more indirect techniques to communicate a number of inherently sexual elements in "Galápagos."

The panic I wrote about a couple of days ago has backed off enough that I can work, thank fuck.

Not much else to say about yesterday. Leftover chili for dinner. We watched a few episodes from Season Five of Angel, to wind down from our three- or four-month long Buffython. We're going to begin The X-Files again next week. Later there was a little WoW. Shaharrazad and Suraa were finally able to journey to the Isle of Quel'Danas, off the northernmost shores of the Eastern Kingdoms. Of course, the Scryers and the Aldor from Shattrath are trying to take the island back from Kael'thas Sunstrider, and it's weird to see blood elves and Draenei working together (Shah and Suraa are allied with the Scryers). After WoW, I goofed about with my Facebook page, because no one else had bothered to create a "Favorite Basal Thyreophoran" list thingy or upload the requisite images. Got to bed sometime after two a.m.

I think this entry gets subdivided. Otherwise, I'll never find my way from one end of it to the other.

I did a very satisfactory 2,110 words today on "The Voyeur in the House of Glass." 10 pp. in four or five hours. Much better than my average. But it's a hard piece, harder than usual. Still, I hope to finish it tomorrow afternoon.

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Somehow, I managed all those words today despite an especially acute case of dreamsickness. I can't recall most of it now. I've spent much of the day willfully forgetting. But since I brought it up, and that always leads to questions if I don't follow through, since I do not wish to frustrate, this is what I do remember. This must have been near the end of it all, just before I woke. Being on the street of an Asian city, maybe Tokyo. I've never been to Asia, so likely it was only a conglomeration of images from photos and films. Night. Neon and cosplay girls and noodle shops. The commingled smells of cars and cooking and garbage. And I'm late for an appointment in this enormous silver skyscraper. I can't read any of the street signs, because they're Japanese or Mandarin or whatever. I'm lost. Men mutter as they pass me. Cosplay girls laugh and point. There's an immense animatronic Ganesh-like thing directing traffic (and I suppose this is foreshadowing), and I find someone who speaks English, and she shows me where to cross the street to reach the skyscraper.

There might have been a lobby and an elevator ride, or I may only be filling in a jump cut. But then I was in the examination room of what seemed to be something very like a dentist's office. Only there were a couple of laptops (not even Macs), and there wasn't that dentist-office smell. There was some other smell that only added to my unease and disorientation. I was asked to have a seat in this thing that wasn't quite a dentist chair. There was a woman with a Brit accent asking me questions, checking off items on a form of some sort.

She kept asking questions about my memory, and if I was comfortable, and suddenly I understood what was happening. That I was an android, but that most of the time I did not know I was an android. I only knew during these check-ups or whatever. And then the woman with the British accent pressed her thumb beneath my jaw, and I began to feel cold and fevery. She said something like, We'll be as gentle as we can. And then I saw that she was holding my jaw in her hands. And I could see my tongue and teeth and gums and lower lip and everything else. The sensation of cold got much worse, and she told me to please be calm. Then she pressed something like a dental drill to my forehead and there was this horrible whine and burring sort of pain. She set the drill aside and plugged a sort of jack into the roof of my mouth, something attached to an assortment of coaxial cables, and there was a suffocating blackness that seemed to rush up all around me. The most terrible sense of falling, and I jerked awake in bed. Shivering, freezing because I'd kicked all the blankets off, and Spooky had already gotten up, so I was alone. I suppose I earned that one, what with "The Winter Market" and "The Path of Silence" and all the godsdamn H+ bashing I've been doing lately. Maybe it's only a very elaborate version of my recurring breaking-teeth nightmare. But, either way, no more, please.

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The new ish of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology came today, and it's full of wonderful things: a redescription of the theropod dinosaur Compsognathus; juvenile specimens of the pterosaur Germanodactylus cristatus; the earliest known lizard, from the Late Triassic of India (!!); the oldest evidence for a dental lamina in sharks; Sauropod ichnology; Spanish hadrosaurs; an investigation of the ancestry of the great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) using a morphometric dental analysis. Yum.

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I'm very happy with the way the current eBay auctions are going, only there's been no bid so far on the green-haired boy doll/lettered copy of Alabaster (plus Highway 97 chapbook). I do hope that will change soon, as that auction ends tomorrow evening. The winning bidder gets two unique items. If this one goes for the minimum, it's a steal. Please have a look and bid if you are interested and able. I just found out today that my lending privileges at Emory expire December 30th, so that's yet another expense I have to cover ($100) well before there's any hope of the Very Late Check arriving. Thank you.

Nothing else much interesting to say about yesterday or today. We heard an owl hooting just after dark tonight. The temps today were very pleasant again, mid or high seventies (F), but cold weather is on its way back. Last night, Spooky read me "A Short Rest" from The Hobbit (which you wouldn't think would inspire cybernetic nightmares). Tonight, I have Ambien again, just seven pills to last me two weeks. My doctor, she keeps me on a short frelling leash.

Okay. I gotta go lay on my face and watch TV or something equally mindless. I've been at this keyboard since about ten ayem (CaST). If this entry is chockful'a typos, I apologise. I think there was a tense shift up there somewhere. Whatever.

Postscript (11:58 PM CaST): Is it just me, or is it awfully frelling quiet out there tonight? I know you're not all Xmas shopping. Anyway...here are two cute photos of Mr. H. P. Wu. And here are two more (Action Meezer!). Blame Spooky.