Caitlín R. Kiernan

1. A sunny day again here in Providence. It's very good to have the sun back after its recent extended absence. The meteorologists predict a high of 57F, which means windows will be opened.

2. The silence of the last two days has followed, largely, from the fact that I'm not getting anything written. Which follows, chiefly, from the fact that I'm still not sleeping. I think this stretch of insomnia is beginning its third week. Mostly, there's been exhaustion, anger, depression, worry, and more exhaustion. Nothing I want to write entries about, and (I assume) nothing anyone wants to read. I'm trying to think of good things from the last two or three days. Friday, I received my contributor's copies of The Mammoth Book of the Best of the Best New Horror: Two Decades of Dark Fiction. I got the year 1997, which was, by the way, the first year I made The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror (I've had stories selected for nine of those volumes). Which means it's "Emptiness Spoke Eloquent," though Steve Jones kindly let me rewrite the story a bit, so it's not quite the story that was reprinted in the '97 volume (#9). Those last two sentences could use a rewrite, but I'm not up to it, and trust you've muddled safely through. Anything else worth remembering? Streamed the new episodes of Spartacus: Blood and Sand (still good porn) and Caprica (still impressing me). That's about it, though. Well, except for yesterday.

3. Yesterday was the rain date for my trip to the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, to meet up with Sonya (sovay) and Greer (nineweaving), but Sonya was feeling under the weather...so we've postponed again. Instead of Boston, Spooky and I took advantage of the sunny, almost warm day and headed south and west to Connecticut. It's a hideous stretch of interstate, I-95 through western Rhode Island, and much worse this time of year. All stark, leafless trees brown beneath a white-blue sky. It burns the eyes and mind, that sight, slashed down the middle with black asphalt. But it led us across the state line to Mystic. There were already tourists, or so it seemed. We avoided them as best we could. An hour or so was passed in the shops along West Main Street. I found a cast-iron mermaid exactly like one I'd seen in the very same shop back on the summer of '06, and have often regretted not getting. So I bought it for the kitchen mantle. After Mystic, we followed 215 down to Noank, where neither Spooky nor I had been before. Narrow streets and pretty houses, boats and lobster pots. Out across the water we could see Goat Island, and beyond that, Fishers Island. It was quite a bit chillier by the water, but also mercifully free of people.

We headed back to Providence about five p.m. (CaST), and I dozed all the way home. The van is about the only place I seem able to sleep (without the aid of Ambien) these days. We stopped for Chinese takeout (dumplings and beef lo mein). I spent the night with WoW and Insilico. At 4:30 a.m., still trying to sleep, I read Lovecraft's "Dagon" (1917) for the bezillionth or so time. I did manage to get to sleep before five, and I must have slept maybe five and a half hours.

4. Spooky made a new doll, which you may see here. It is a lovely, gloomy doll. It'll be going up for sale on her Dreaming Squid Dollworks Etsy shop once she's finished with it.

5. Geoffrey (readingthedark) is dropping by tonight, and it will be nice to have company for an evening.

6. Not at all happy with the Oscars this year. I may post my own picks later today. It truly was a baffling year, and not for want of wonderful films. I was pleased to see that Christoph Waltz won for Inglourious Basterds. Though Neil was very dapper in his jacket and waistcoat (made by kambriel).

7. Finally, I have thirteen photos from yesterday's trip to Mystic and Noank, behind the cut:

( 7 March 2010 )

A sunny, cold day here in Providence. I want nothing more than to go back to bed and read House of Leaves (it's sort of become my November book). Yesterday there were clouds.It was the sort of day that swallows light, permitting nothing but a pervasive grey. You turn on lamps to try to brighten a room, and the light is immediately diluted and lost, canceled out by the grey.

There's nothing to report, so far as yesterday is concerned. We're on the sixth day of the month already, and I've been unable to get the proposal for the Next New Novel written or even make a good beginning on a piece for Sirenia Digest #48. I'm losing time (again) that I cannot (again) afford to lose.

All of yesterday, I sat here with a perfectly good short story title, and stared at the screen, and stared, and wrote nothing of consequence.

I've been writing long enough to know that there is no single problem I can blame for my current difficulties. But, honestly, I think that a great deal of it is fallout from the release of The Red Tree, its failure to sell better than the novels that came before, and the sense of futility that follows. Whatever the next novel becomes, it will be my eighth (I'm not counting the ghostwritten novel, or the Beowulf novelization, or The Dry Salvages). How do I bring myself to do this again, knowing, as I do, that the book will almost certainly be received with the same general indifference that my previous novels have encountered?

Yes, I know there have been scattered dribs and drabs of recognition. I see that, and I appreciate that. But I also can't shake the feeling that it's far too little, come far too late.

I think I'm not up to trying to explain myself, or defending my right to feel this futility, and I probably should not even have begun writing this journal entry.

Spooky has started a new round of eBay auctions. We've mostly covered the cost of this year's taxes, but now I've got medical bills to contend with. So, please, have a look. Thanks.